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Live from the 2026 RSA Conference in San Francisco, Erick and Rich discuss the puzzling lack of interest in AI governance among MSPs and a go-giver lead generation concept proven to work by Erick himself. Then they’re joined by Jeff Loehr and Joe Rojas of MSP consultancy Start Grow Manage for a fun and fact-filled conversation about lead generation, sales meeting success, employee motivation, and operational efficiency. And finally, one last thing: You know spring has finally arrived when they’re burning socks in Annapolis.
Discussed in this episode:
Decades ago, a Maryland sailor burned his winter socks. Now it’s a spring tradition
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. Blast off. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome for our 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 to make it big in managed services. My name is Rich Freeman. I’m Chief analyst at Channel Mastered, the organization responsible for this fine show.
I’m joined physically, side by side, out in the great outdoors by your other co-host, our CEO and chief strategist at Channel mastered. His name is Erick Simpson. Erick tell the good folks where we are.
Erick: We’re in downtown San Francisco, rich, we’re attending the RSA conference for the next few days and mingling with the movers and shakers of the industry.
Rich: So I was [00:01:00] figuring this out, but we both just got here. I was figuring it out on the Uber, in from the airport. I’m doing 14 meetings in 28 hours and many of the biggest names in the industry. And I’m completely looking forward to it. I’ve been doing this, I think since 2017 minus a pandemic year or two.
And it’s always something I look forward to, even if it is a little bit intimidating the sheer volume of preparation and interviewing and writing, it’s craziness. But if you geek out on security like I do, this is fun stuff.
Erick: And Rich, you invited me to tag along with you last year for the first time, and I was not ready for the frenetic activity and I think it was like 37,000 steps in two days that I clocked following year round and sitting in on these amazing meetings.
Rich: And I can confirm folks that Erick is wearing much more comfortable shoe. This year than he was last year. Much more comfy footwear better for 37, 30 8,000 steps worth of walking.
Erick: Yeah. You learn a thing or two [00:02:00] when you’re wearing dress shoes and doing all those steps.
Rich: Let’s plunge into our story of the week here.
And it is security related. Actually it comes out of my most recent post on channel holic, which is my blog, and it has to do with AI governance and the prelude to this, the setup. Erick, once I get there, this is gonna be very familiar to you. And we’ve never actually spoken about this before.
I’ll be interested to get your take. AI governance, it seems like a pretty obvious thing for MSPs to be interested in, right? End users are interested in governance. Malwarebytes went out to end users just consumers basically, and found out 90% of them worry about their data being used by AI tools.
Jitterbit went out to decision makers at businesses, asked them what’s the primary bottleneck, keeping AI initiatives out of production Number one on the list. You think of all the other things that are probably on the list. Number one on the list was security, governance and data privacy risk risks.
We know that this is not just an imaginary [00:03:00] concern. Carmine did some research recently. They found that. 80% of workers use unapproved AI tools on the job, shadow it. A third of people they serve, have shared proprietary data with unsanctioned AI platforms. And here’s the kicker. Erick Logist, enormous solution provider MSP went out and asked people a bunch of IT decision makers in the corporate world mostly.
Who are you gonna be leaning on in the next two to three years for help with AI governance? 94% of them said MSPs.
Erick: Wow.
Rich: That’s where they’re going. They know it’s an issue. Who’s gonna help me with it? MSPs.
Erick: Say it again, rich. How many?
Rich: 94%. And keep in mind, as we just established, very real issue that the end users are concerned their employers are concerned.
Who doesn’t seem to be all that concerned, Erick? The MSPs, and here’s how I know that channel mastered is the consultancy responsible for the show. One of the things we do for [00:04:00] our clients is arrange focus groups. We’ll pull together some MSPs, we’ll test out a value proposition or some marketing messaging won’t name the company, but we did this for a company that makes a very interesting security and governance solution for ai.
And we tested that messaging out with a bunch of MSPs, some pretty sharp ones, and a few of them really just weren’t wowed by that message. And others understood the appeal, but said, if you go out to market and lead with AI governance, you’re just gonna put MSPs to sleep because they just, they don’t get it.
And they don’t care. And this struck me as really bizarre. Yeah. So much so that I went out and did some research and spoke to other MSPs and a vendor or two. And I can confirm everybody on planet Earth cares a lot about AI governance. Governance right now except MSPs for some reason or other. And this is a problem.
And obviously it’s a problem in part because there’s this huge opportunity out there for MSPs that they’re ignoring. There is also this huge [00:05:00] risk factor out there for their clients. And if and when really something does go wrong, you know who’s gonna get blamed. And guess what? There are some people out there and these numbers will get bigger and bigger over time.
MSPs who are talking to end users about AI governance, and it’s only a matter of time before one of the end users they talk to about AI governance is your client and they’re gonna wonder your client is why you’ve never spoken to them about this very real problem that they’re probably a little bit concerned about already.
I curious, first of all, we’ve never actually discussed this. Were you as struck by that focus group as I was? And then what do you think about the gap between the market size for AI governance out there for MSPs and the lack of interest?
Erick: It blows me away, rich. I think that there’s some sort of a, there’s an educational thought leadership opportunity here that the industry has to get behind.
It reminds me. Back in the days of, before there was managed services, there was, [00:06:00] when we were trying to figure out how to do this as a subscription, we called it flat Rate It, right? And we had to educate our clients on why it was a good idea for them to pay us in advance on a monthly basis so that we can manage things.
Proactive maintenance is always more cost effective and better in the long run than reactive firefighting. And we had to educate them and they caught on. And then when we started training, m IT providers through MSP University how to have these conversations, how to educate and how they should price and bundle and position those services, they got it.
So I think this is one of those situations where there’s these two things that are definitely a potential gold mine in terms of helping. Businesses and generating more strategic value for MSPs and giving everyone what we want is a secure way to participate in the applications that run businesses and supporting those applications that run businesses from [00:07:00] a governed, secure way.
And I just, there’s this gap that needs to be closed, and I think that’s the opportunity here.
Rich: And education, MSP education is what ultimately closes that gap. It is in the earlier example you were talking about on there. But somebody needs to educate the MSPs basically Correct. So that they’re talking to their customers about this.
So is this a thing that essentially the vendors, anyone in the security world, AI, security Microsoft beyond, they really need to be pushing hard on AI governance.
Erick: Absolutely. The vendors have done a great job of moving where the puck is going to, from a managed services perspective in the last 10 years, right?
It was slow going the first few years, but everybody now understands that what MSPs want most from their vendors is help in building and growing their businesses and making profitable businesses. Of course, they want, better pricing and discounts and things like that, and benefits from engaging with these vendors.
But they’re going to stick with the [00:08:00] vendors that help them grow their businesses through a partnership. And it’s incumbent upon those vendors and distributors to bring this Closing the gap, thought leadership workshops webinars, right in-person breakout sessions at all these conferences. That’s what needs to happen.
It has to app happen quick. It can’t happen quickly enough. Let’s just leave it there.
Rich: So get to it. Vendors and distributors, everybody wins if you do. We are gonna take a quick break from the security talk here. We’re gonna be joined a little bit later on the show by two interview guests this week.
Joe Rojas and Jeff Lair of Start Bro Manage. We’re gonna talk among other things about sales and marketing tips for MSPs and maybe to tee that conversation off a little bit. Erick, let’s go to your tip of the week, which is marketing related.
Erick: Yes, rich. And it is, watch the outtakes. That’s all I gotta say.
It is a deep cut, rich. A deep cut from the early days of US work, building our MSP, and then helping other [00:09:00] MSPs grow their practices. Some of you in the audience may remember. The Small Business makeover idea. And Rich, this is an idea that involves in the entire community. It takes a village to help small businesses grow.
And the idea is for an MSP to go to their direct technology vendors and get them to contribute gear licenses and things like that for a worthy small business in the community. But it doesn’t stop there, rich. We want to reach out to all of the vendors that serve the community, the landscapers, the office supply stores, the, anybody that serves small businesses.
We want to include them in this opportunity. And really what it is, it’s a way to give back to the community, but it’s also a way to generate a ton of leads for all the vendors that participate. So the idea is you get a local media involved, you get the Chamber of Commerce involved and you say, Hey, we’re gonna do a small business [00:10:00] makeover.
And here’s how to qualify. If you’re a small business, here’s an online form. Give us all the reasons why you should be considered as a finalist for this award. And then you select, judges from the panel of vendors, and folks come in and submit their applications. And the ones that kind of rise to the top and you have an interview with them, you get media involved, right?
It’s promo, it’s like it takes a few months to do it, right? So I don’t recommend doing it like once a quarter or anything like that. The best that a large MSP that I worked with for a while could pull it off was twice a year. And that was a lot of heavy lifting. So the idea is you’re gonna, you’re gonna solicit the community and say, Hey, we’re putting together this great group of vendors together, community leaders, and we want to give back to the community.
We’re gonna select a small business to do a makeover. Everything from technology to office, furniture to landscaping, to marketing services, you name it, rich. And the folks will come in and submit their [00:11:00] applications, and then you just judge it Now for extra credit, what, how this evolved with a couple of MSPs was we wanna pick a non-profit, right?
So what do we do? So they do a non, they would do a non-profit version and a for-profit organization if you can pull it off. But the idea is solid. It’s giving back to the community. It’s getting tons and tons of free advertising and marketing, and you’ve got a list of applicants that now will come to you and say, Hey, I wanna join, I want to be in the sweep six, but I’m having this technology problem right now.
Can you help me? So it’s a great way to grow together and build goodwill and serve the community. And hey, if you pay the bills by doing it, that’s not a bad thing. Is it Rich?
Rich: Not the slightest. No. And there, there are all sorts of ancillary benefits. You, your employees are gonna love being a part of this.
It feels great to give back to the community. This is something that will motivate your employees. It if you succeed in getting the media interested, this is free publicity, earned media, as [00:12:00] they say. Phenomenal stuff. And last but not least, you’re, you are forging or at least deepening relationships with vendors in other fields.
We’ve spoken on the show in the past about what a great idea it can be to exchange leads if a landscaper and they run into one of their clients who’s having it issues, right? Have, they’ll point their leads to you and you return. And now, so you’re introducing yourself to a bunch of.
Vendors in other fields like that and getting those relationships. There’s a lot going on here.
Erick: Yeah, the telecom vendors, the printer, copier manufacturer the vendors. And oh, by the way, rich, you are going to give away managed services as well. So let me just, let me not forget that you’re giving away six months or a year of managed services.
And then when you add up the value of all of those services and say, oh my goodness, you’re gonna win. And then you do, first place, second place, third place, maybe some runner up, so maybe they get laptops or something like that, right? So everybody feels, and watch what happens the [00:13:00] next time you put this on and you MSB, you own it.
You brand it so that you are the first one to do it. So now it’s your thing which distinguishes you and differentiates you. And the next year you wanna do it again. Watch how many more vendors come wanting to participate because it’s a great thing to do. And they get the publicity and they get to give back as well and pick up some clients through the whole vetting process as well.
Rich: So I very much hope some of you out there in our audience actually do this. If you do find us on LinkedIn, tell us about actually we’ll help you promote it. If you do it our email, I believe is [email protected]. You can email us about this as well. We would love to hear about anything we you do.
And we very much hope you do something, let us know about it.
Erick: And in fact, rich, I actually have lots of assets on how to do this particular thing. So hit us up, comment on the YouTube channel or [00:14:00] on LinkedIn or email us at podcasts with an [email protected] and let’s do something great together.
Rich: I love it.
I absolutely love it. Folks. Erick and I are gonna take a quick break. Right now we come back on the other side. We’re gonna be back in cyberspace for a conversation with Joe Rojas and Jeff Lair. Stick around. We’re gonna be right back
and welcome to part two of this episode of the MSP Chat podcast, our spotlight interview segment, or as I’m calling it this week, our spotlight panel segment. Because if you remember Sesame Street from your youth, you’re probably familiar with the one of these things is not like the other game.
And I’m the one in this picture right now. I’m joined by my co-host, Erick, of course, but also by Jeff Lair and Joe Rojas, start, grow, manage. The three of them are actually incredibly experienced, [00:15:00] smart MSP growth experts, and then there’s just me, a little old me here. So what we’re gonna do, which is a little bit different in this segment is I’m just gonna treat this like it’s a panel session and I’m the moderator and I’m just gonna give these guy, I’m gonna tee up.
Some suggestion areas for them to each share a an idea, a best practice with you. And you are gonna learn all sorts of great stuff in this segment. But first, what you need to learn is a little bit more about Jeff and Joe. And so I’ll start with you Jeff Tefl a little bit about yourself, but also start, grow, manage.
Jeff: Yeah. I come from the business side of things. I, after business school, I went into strategy and and I like to save. I like to introduce myself by the numbers that I’ve worked in 37 different countries. I’ve negotiated with two dictators. The largest project I’ve ever worked on was $40 billion.
And then I got into angel investing. So the smallest project I’ve ever worked on was $0. And and I [00:16:00] met Joe at one point, and I was really interested in his story because he comes from the MSP side and had some real success as an MSP implementing some business best practices.
And so we took my business brains that thing that I come from around how to build businesses, how to scale them and then mesh them together with Joe’s, MSP know-how to build, start, grow, manage, which is where we support MSPs in their journey to scale as effective businesses that generate lots of money.
Rich: All right. And you are the CEO of that company, I believe.
Jeff: Yeah. It was hard to get that title. I had to type all three letters.
Rich: I thought you were gonna say you had to arm wrestle Joe for it, but yeah, no, Joe said you, you’re CEO Buddy
Erick: Joe said you’re, he the founder, ceo.
Jeff: He, I don’t wanna do that. Yeah.
Erick: Yeah. No,
Rich: [00:17:00] thanks. Joe, so your turn. Tell folks a little bit about yourself.
Joe: So I came from a completely different direction. So I got all my technical training in the US Army, and then I came outta the Army. I worked for the Department of Defense for four years, and then I started in biomedical engineering of all things.
I had a friend, I had a friend, and I got a job at a biomedical engineering place. And I did that for a couple years. Then I got sprayed with blood, which was no fun in the nineties a couple of times. And I was like, you know what? I need a different job. And one of our lieutenants ran a national ms. It was really an MSP for places like Bear Stern, Goldman Sachs and stuff like that, right?
And so went to Lehman Brothers that, that kind of. Places a date for everybody and bid that for a bit. Managed one of their offices. Saw how poorly they treated small clients. Decided I wanted to go on my own. 1999. Started my first MSP, sucked [00:18:00] at it for a quite a few years, figured out how to run it.
Grew it, sold it, did it again. Grew it, sold it, did it again. Grew it, sold it. Bought a printer, company did, bought a couple other MSPs in the journey. And in 2015, when I exited my last one, I wanted to start my next one. And somebody asked me, Hey, can you help me grow mine? And then another person, and then another person, and then.
Then I was like, I need Jeff.
Jeff: He’s Hey, Jeff, can you tell me what it is I’m doing? Steve,
Joe: that’s really, that was really it. He could articulate what we were doing. I didn’t know how to explain it. Jeff can explain it because Jeff knows how to explain things.
Rich: Today you are working with lots of MSPs to help them get better at what they do and just buy the Bye folks.
It is not easy to be an Ms. P, but it beats getting sprayed with blood or negotiating with dictators. So be it does [00:19:00]
Jeff: negotiating with dictators is fun. You just have to watch your back,
Rich: yeah. Negotiating with clients can be like that too. I,
Jeff: they typically don’t have armies though, and that’s the little, yeah.
Rich: So we’ve got four areas here. And the these are really a direct, that everyone in our audience is going to identify with and want your expertise in each of these four areas.
And so we’re just gonna start with a perennial favorite among MSPs, generating leads. How do I generate leads? I’m gonna give each of the three of you a chance to give us one good single focus tip on generating leads for MSPs and arbitrarily. I’ll just start with you, Joe.
Joe: Alright. So for us it’s the Dream 100 strategy.
I love that. Dream 100 strategy. So the Dream 100 strategy looks like you decide who your ideal client is, and then you build a list of a hundred of that ideal client. And instead of [00:20:00] spraying and praying, like everybody does, you focus your spend on the first 20. And you just do special things for himself.
I’ll give you a perfect example. We have one of our clients who’s focused on engineers. Now, do engineers love pizza or do they love pizza? So he sends 20 engineering firms a pizza cutter. No, nothing. Just straight up pizza cutter. They get it from Amazon. He waits a day. He calls him up and he goes, Hey, I’m Tim.
I send you the pizza cutter. And they go, oh, that’s you. Oh, what? We didn’t know. How’d you get this? What is this pizza cutter about? It’s I’m a local IT company that works with engineers. I wanted to come visit and bring you lunch on Friday. Is that okay? And they say yes. And he shows up and he hangs out and he talks and he gets to meet with them.
And he gets to build with [00:21:00] them. It’s really cool.
Rich: And you, it’s the first 20 you concentrate in the first 20 because you can
Joe: use them as, see the reason why you concentrate on the first 20 is ’cause you wanna do all the trial and error first and then do the other 80. So you focus on the first 20 and then you do all that trial and error.
And I go shut this thing down. That keeps popping up on my son
Rich: much in demand. Joe. Jeff, your turn. Give us a lead generation tip.
Jeff: Ditto. No I think that, I actually think that the key is, with with the Dream 100, with anything, you’re gonna end up with leads, right? I find that most strategies actually work.
And the challenge actually comes back to following up, right? And when you have those leads to actually follow up and engage people I can’t tell you many people have sent the pizza cutter and never made the call. To schedule the lunch. And it’s that kind of consistency that drives it.
And [00:22:00] part of that is also investing in them. Like we have these ideas around, we want our cost of acquisition to be zero. We want to automate everything so that we just have leads who are interested in talking to us. And one of the things about the Dream 101 of the reasons you start with the top 20 is so you can really invest in them.
So you have to spend some money for people to become aware of you and and so those are my tips. Focus on the Dream 100, follow up and realize that generating leads is an investment. It’s not free.
Rich: Alright Erick I, it occurs to me that our listeners are gonna get five tips of the week this week.
This is a bonus show. Tip two for you on lead.
Erick: I can’t use the one I did on the tip of the week the small business makeover. Have a new one. Alright. Alright, I’ll do 1.5 new one. Number one, referrals is always your best friend. I don’t care how big you are, how small you are, you’re going to always [00:23:00] make sure that you’re asking for referrals from your existing clients.
And if you’re doing your QBR correctly, you should never leave a strategic business meeting without asking for referrals from your existing clients. Take those referrals. Sometimes, they take you in a weird direction, but, so you’ve gotta be cognizant whether they, these referrals are your ideal customer profile, right?
’cause you don’t wanna just take and do things on your dime, right? To figure things out. But that’s an easy one. The next one is business Breakfast and lunch and learns. Partner with local vendors, partner with your technology vendors, partner with. Your distributors and put on some really good business breakfast and lunch and learn events where you’re bringing in experts that speak on topics that are interesting to your audience and do them correctly so that you are delivering some value to the attendees.
Have them complete survey forms and then follow up with these folks. This is the [00:24:00] one to many approach that, yes, it costs money, but if you get the right partners behind you, you can help defray the costs or maybe even get the entire thing covered.
Yeah.
By doing so, just do these in your community.
You’re in the community, raise your raise your visibility and collaborate with the chambers local networking events, and just put these things on and deliver value.
Joe: And that’s a perfect thing for your Dream 100 by the way. So if you’re doing the Dream 100, you invite them to that event.
You send them gifts, you show up where they hang out, you like you’re, you are. That is the thing. It’s about building a relationship. It’s about getting them to trust you.
Erick: Yeah. And bring the people, persons from your company. Don’t bring the engineers because our jurors, they’ll be at the event in the corner, like closing tickets on their phone, waiting for the thing to be over.
You need to have those really, [00:25:00] and if you don’t have those, then work on yourself. I’m the, I am, I’ve always said this before, jokingly, the people hating engineer, but I have learned that you don’t get very far with that persona.
Joe: Yeah.
Erick: So you’ve got to work on yourself. You’ve got to be present.
You’ve got to, start shifting your. You’re what you care about away from checklists and process and procedures, and start caring about the people that you serve and the people that you meet. It’s di it was difficult for me. I work on it every day, which,
Jeff: yeah. Can I just say I think that’s a crucial that’s crucial is what you just said and the way you said it as well.
Is you don’t have to be anything that you’re not, but be curious. You go in and be interested in what they have a conversation with them. Go in. So I’m like you, I’m a converted introvert. I’m not converted committed introvert. I’ll go into these things with five questions.
So I know that I can just ask these questions and I start those conversations and it’s a beautiful thing. You don’t have to worry about how [00:26:00] am I going to sell to all of these people today? Just go be curious as to who they are and that’s gonna win the day.
Joe: It’s so interesting.
Before we move on, somebody asked me yesterday, what is the best piece of advice you ever got? And I said when I was 18, I was at I got this job as a security supervisor. I was like, at this. At Pfizer Pharmaceuticals working for, and the head of security of Pfizer pharmaceutical. He was walking this way and I was walking that way and he hit me in the chest with something and I looked down and it was how to win friends and influence people.
He just kept walking. He didn’t say anything.
He was waiting for you. This is you, Gerald,
Rich: that message received Unmistakably.
Joe: Unmistakably, yeah. I written a book and it changed my life and it’s everything that Erick said. If you don’t know how to go work on this, just go read that book. It’s been around since the 1930s. Go read that book. It will change your life.
Rich: So you [00:27:00] gotta be curious. You don’t necessarily have to worry about sell. But let’s move on to our second area here, which is about the sell sell opportunity. You’ve got a lead, you’re, you’ve now successfully gotten yourself into a room with a customer. So let’s get a tip from each of you on having a successful sales meeting with a customer.
And I’ll go back to you again, Joe,
Joe: really good. Start meeting.
Rich: I’m gonna go to the same order, so I don’t
Joe: Okay good. So I had a meeting with MSP. A couple weeks ago, Brendan must be not our client, just learning about him. And he said I had a meeting with this prospect, but they didn’t have a need.
Like I said, you got a lead and they have a need. I said tell me about the call. Who was on the call? He said on the call was the CEO. The CTO, the CFO,
Erick: and
Joe: the COO. They were on the [00:28:00] call and I said what do you mean they didn’t
Erick: have a need?
Joe: And he is they just wanted to know about us and they wanted to know the price. And I said what research did you do in advance? And he said I do the research on the call. And that right there. If you don’t do the research, if you don’t know, if you don’t come into that call, oh, you’re in this industry.
Clients in this industry are usually experiencing these three problems. Problem one, problem two, problem three. Are you experiencing anything like that? All of a sudden the conversation open up. The conversation opens up. But if you come in with zero research done, if you don’t know anything at all about that client, and he really didn’t, I was like how do they make money?
How do they grow? What do they do? He knew the type of company that it was. That was it. And [00:29:00] so do your research. That’s my piece that you wanna have a successful sales meeting come in knowing things about the people that you’re gonna be on the call with, and. The problems that industry faces, especially if they’re your ICP, you’re gonna know because you have 10 other ones.
Erick: Yeah. And that’s why exactly why they shut ’em down. Because when you come in completely unprepared, when you walk in and the door and go, Hey, what is it you guys do here? And you’ve got VC level board sitting there on a call immediately they were like, Nope, nope.
Exactly. Kidding
me you’ve seen Exactly.
Or collect and you know what, their hourly rate is like what it costs them to sit on a call for someone to just fly in and ask them what they do on the call. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Secrets of Question Based Selling is a book that I always recommend, but anyway.
Rich: All right, Jeff, you’re up.
Sales [00:30:00] meeting tip.
Jeff: Yeah so we have a model that we use for sales engagement, which I think is really important. And it it’s a, this emotional model. And we say that before somebody’s going to buy, they have to have confidence that you can deliver, and before they have confidence that you can deliver, they have to feel some level of empathy from you.
And before they can feel some level of empathy from you, they have to have some level of trust. And what we see people do all the time is, Hey, nice to meet you. Here’s my pro, my proposal, or, nice to meet you, and here’s what I do. Let’s see if there’s a fit. And the problem is you’re ignoring that process and you really have to know where they are.
Is this a meeting for just building trust? So they see you are a a human being with a pulse. Who can share the problems? Are you building empathy here? Are you building confidence here or are you actually moving through a sale? And getting that straight, I think is crucial.
Know where your where your prospect is in that journey. [00:31:00] How they feel about you, how connected they are to you, and have the meeting that you need to have in order to reassure them that they can go to the next stage of that emotional engagement.
Rich: I was just I was trying to remember the name.
I had to look it up very quickly. But the great marketing expert, Seth Godin has a thing about that, where, what too many people do, and this is true in marketing, but true in sales as well, is you meet somebody in, in a setting like that and you basically say you’re pretty great.
Let’s get married.
Joe: Yeah.
Rich: You gotta kinda work your way up to that a little bit. And in establishing trust
Joe: drink or something
Jeff: I, me coffee won’t you, but, and it’s a perfect analogy because you can think of it this way too if, somebody introduced you and said, look, you’re gonna love this person.
This is gonna be great. That’s a whole different conversation than if you just meet somebody on the street and you’re like, oh, you look nice. Let’s go get [00:32:00] coffee. There it’s very different and we don’t we understand that when we’re dating, but we completely miss it when we’re doing it in business.
Rich: All right, Erick, your turn. Give us a sales meeting tip.
Erick: So this is tagging it, tagging in with what Joe said about preparation and Jeff confirming, preparing, understanding, but understanding who is in the room. So what we send out the invite, right? When you send out the invite, all right, I’m gonna send you an invitation.
Who else will be joining us? So asking those questions and then you figure out who’s gonna be, sometimes you get surprised, the person that you mentioned, you’ll probably was surprised that all these people were in the room and was not prepared for that.
Joe: Yeah.
Erick: Who else will be joining us?
Understanding who they are and then doing the research on those folks as well. And then, this one’s tricky and it takes some training and we, I know this because I work like you guys work with MSPs all the time, train them to understand how they are wired. So [00:33:00] using, we use disc behavioral assessments.
So behavioral profiling, whatever your flavor is of that, lets you understand how you’re wired and helps you identify how your prospect is wired, right? So understanding human behavior and how someone’s wired during a sales engagement is like a secret weapon. So if I am interviewing someone for the first time.
I get the, Hey, I don’t have a lot of time. I wanna make quick decisions. I am all about, moving the needle. Help me go faster. Like I need quick decisions. I need You’re not, go ahead, Phil. You’re what? I said Hi. Hi. Yeah. Or so that’s the high, that’s the high DC guy, right? If he is the guy that wants, or the Yeah.
Leader that wants
Yeah.
Information quickly. Not a lot of chitchat. They’re not that people person. They are the process. Get it done person. If I come in and I’m the people person and I fail to adjust my behavior to that [00:34:00] person to match their intensity and their need for data, they don’t trust you because.
They like you. That’s the people person, right? Yeah. You can build some rapport. If they’re a people person, how do you know? Because they’re talking, they’re engaged, they talk with their hands, and you’re just getting to know them. You’re, you’ve gotta adjust. If you’re an engineer, you have to adjust and switch on your people.
Switch. And I tell you guys, I joke sometimes I say, yeah, when I get into these situations where somebody’s just talking, I’m an engineer, I’m just gonna, okay, just bite my tongue. Just let the blood, just drink it down a little bit. Just be patient and then connect with them. Connect with them.
They’re going to you. They’re the folks that wanna like you. They wanna like you. And if they like you, then you can open up and say, Hey, would it be okay if we, if I asked you a few specific questions about some of your needs? Something you can always also do before the meeting is send an agenda over, Hey, here are the topic areas I’d love to discuss.
And [00:35:00] it could be, what’s your pro like? Give them what you want to talk about so that we can switch to that. The person that is the not the people person, the data person, the checklist, the get it done person. Yeah. You have to adjust to that mindset and bring, leave behinds bring, oh
Joe: yeah. You gotta have, you gotta have 400 pitch.
We use we
Erick: documentation so that they go, okay, you guys are trustworthy. I see your testimonies, your case studies are all now I can begin to engage with you. So it’s just being able to shift in the moment and then to read the room. You may have someone that is this way, one, two people or people person, you gotta switch, engage with them that way.
It’s a, an advanced kind of a sales professional engagement. Yeah. When you’re reading the room and you’re adjusting on the fly and making sure that everyone gets what they need so that at the end of that meeting, they feel good about having that second meeting. And you’re not there to sell them anything.[00:36:00]
I’m here to see if there’s an opportunity for us to help you move the needle, not cash or check
Joe: and to build trust. That first meeting is about building trust. So we use bank. We use bank instead of disc. And it is that, that, when you have an action person, you have to action.
When you have a knowledge person, you have to have that stuff. Exactly. It’s really that first meeting. We call it the trust meeting because you just have to build trust. And that’s exactly what you’re talking about.
Erick: Yeah. When you are dealing with people on their same frequency, when you’re
Joe: communicated on their frequency’s
Erick: a secret
Joe: problem, you’re building trust.
That’s a secret superpower. You’re building trust. If you have the whole conversation and you never talk about their problem, and you get to book the next meeting, you’re good.
Jeff: You’re good.
Joe: You’re good.
Jeff: There’s one other thing I wanna add in here. You just, Erick you really sparked the thought in my mind when you’re talking about knowing who to talk to.
There was a story one, one story we know of [00:37:00] where the MSP went to meet with somebody and he’d been told by the CEO that the role of hiring the MSP had been delegated to the office manager. And the guy shows up and the office manager is meeting with him and he is no, I wanna meet with the ceo.
I didn’t. And he’s insisting on meeting with the ceo and of course he lost the business. And the if somebody tells you, oh, I’ve delegated this to the office manager, or if the only meeting you get is with the office manager. Build up the office manager. You build up, make them a friend, make them an ally, have a great conversation with them.
Take them to lunch. I don’t know, but the idea that you would go into a meeting and then say, oh no, you’re not the right person. I want to talk to you. You’re gonna lose every single time. Nobody’s gonna hire you.
Erick: Yep. You build that internal advocacy, right? Absolutely. And that’s the same thing.
Absolutely. Thing that we do, like in the old days when we used to call and try to set appointments and we’d get to the gatekeeper and they’ll always get shut down. You draw, same thing. You build a little bit of advocacy with them,
Jeff: build the [00:38:00] relationship
Erick: with the gatekeeper, then they become your internal cheerleader.
You, you can absolutely, Jeff, what you just said. It’s like that person just demanding to see the COF that, so the office manager person absolutely said, Nope, they are not the right,
Jeff: not gonna happen.
Erick: Because they basically. Just steamrolled over them. No, you don’t. Absolute don’t matter.
Jeff: Not basically, they brought the steamrolls and they’re like, lie down. And then they went right over them and they’re like, why do you even wanna buy stuff from me
Erick: Up a few times over you?
Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Oh, tire tracks aren’t down, let go sideways.
Erick: People, man, everybody deserves respect.
Engagement, especially when you’re trying to build a relationship with an organization. You’ve gotta, and let’s just say that you win the business and then you have to engage with that office manager and your team, and they’re just like, they’re just like, oh man, the first chance I get, you’re out. But especially when you’ve been specifically told that person was, he [00:39:00] gave you the secret maker, like you’re the secret handshake, just that
Rich: guy is decision maker.
You probably don’t wanna alienate the decision maker.
Jeff: Don’t alien. We used to vet that as a rule.
Rich: Yeah.
Jeff: Don’t alienate the decision maker. That’s another good one. That’s right. That’s when you should tattoo in the inside of your arm.
Erick: Hashtag
Rich: bonus tip. Bonus tip folks. Now we’re talking relationships here, so this is a good pivot point.
Let’s get into area three here which has to do with employees and specifically. Motivating employees. Joe, once again, you go first.
Joe: So we call ’em all threes one-on-ones, right? So we’re an employee. We have one-on-ones. And there’s a lot of things that happen in one-on-ones. But I think the most important, and the one that we see produces the best result is helping them solve problems so that they can solve it themselves.
And they’re not coming to you to solve the problem. So [00:40:00] how do you help them solve problems? How do you help them understand their role better? How do you help? And then when they get that win, when they come back on that next one-on-one or that next oh three, and they’re talking to you, they’re so excited about the thing that they figured out.
So it’s really, they ask you a question and you say what do you think you should do about that? And they tell you I think you should try that. I think you should try that. Then they come back and keep empowering and enabling them to solve the problem themselves. The more you do that, the more you can put over there, the more power and ownership they’ll take.
So that’s really the name of the game is that’s what I see across the board when we implement that in an organization. I didn’t know this person could show up this way. I get that from leaders all the time. I didn’t know this person could show up this way. You never give ’em a chance.[00:41:00]
Rich: No, I love it. And I love it. It is empowering for the employee and it helps them grow, but it also prevents them from becoming dependent on you. The last thing you want is for everyone in the company to think only Joe can make decisions at this company. And so every question has to go to Joe.
There are lots of benefits to that that kind of approach. Jeff, your turn. Give us an employee motivation idea.
Jeff: I’m gonna say I, I think it’s crucial to have a clear career path of some sort. That’s specifically aligned with the trajectory of the company. So one of the things that people come to us with all the time is, how do I get people to take ownership of their role?
How do I get people to take ownership of solving the business problems? Nobody seems as committed as I am, and on one hand they’re not ever going to be as committed as you are. But on the other hand, we were asking them to take ownership. Without giving [00:42:00] them ownership, I don’t mean like ownership in the company, but ownership in the work, ownership in the vision, ownership in the mission, and showing that you are also committed to their future trajectory.
And there are ways to do this even if you are a small MSP, their ways that you might, have somebody go to another organization for a while or participate in something bigger as you grow. But really thinking about that career path and that ownership of the mission and the vision and what we’re doing and how we’re getting there.
I think that’s crucial to motivating people to take action.
Rich: Alright. I like that too. Erick, your turn.
Erick: So everything that Joe and Jeff said plus, Ooh. Oh wait,
There’s more understanding. What motivates each individual on the team you, ’cause I made this mistake in my early days, like thinking, [00:43:00] oh my goodness, everybody’s motivated by money and bonuses and all this other stuff.
And man, I gotta tell you guys through my journey of just self-awareness, self-realization leadership, and then also behavioral. So I’m certified in just behavioral profiling and motivators and things like that. And it’s one thing to, to evaluate how someone behaves. But then what understanding what motivates them to behave that way is the next level.
This is the additional superpower that we can have. Once we understand in the DISC methodology, there’s six different motivators, right? Money titles, the finer things in life, helping others, right? There’s all these different things that motivate people. Every individual is uniquely different, even if we’re on a service desk.
What motivates one individual does not motivate all of the individuals. So [00:44:00] understanding. So a simple way is just asking, right? Hey, what is it? Dream with me, right? What does your future look like? What motivates you right? At a very base level. And for extra credit, give them a, an assessment that lets you identify what actually motivates them.
What motivates a sales professional is different than what motivates the office manager is different than motivates the dragons slang engineer. It’s different than motivates the tier one technician. Everyone has a different thing that motivates them. So in addition to what Joe, you said, and Jeff, you said, had succession, career plan, planning, making sure that everyone is in the right seat on the bus too.
Not just arbitrarily moving people because we have a, an opening over here that could be completely opposite of how they’re wired and they will not succeed and not feel fulfilled. So number one, understand [00:45:00] what they like to do and make sure that you have a spot for them to do that. And then how to reward them and incentivize them to succeed, right?
So just understanding that everyone has a different motivating factor and sometimes engineers will not. Do you guys know, right? Hey, take that CER study and take that certification exam. We’ll pay for the test and will give you a bonus. Some engineers will, or technicians will never do it, but you say, look, you take that certification exam, we’ll pay for it and we will give you and your significant other a weekend getaway.
Like to a resort and they’re like, oh man, this is a way for me to get some brownie points with my significant other. I’m motivated by that. Or we used to do things like, a night out on the town dinner reservations and movie tickets or a play or something. Everyone is motivated differently and once you understand what drives them, then of course Joe [00:46:00] coaching them, leading them Jeff, making sure there’s a success succession plan.
And the last one I’ll say is don’t wait for annual reviews. That is garbage. By the time the annual review comes along and somebody doesn’t get that raise they were looking for because they didn’t know that you wanted them to do these three things, that’s on you. I like doing quarterly coaching leadership, this is where you coach and motivate somebody and you, our job is to build other leaders in the organization so that we can start delegating things and they can feel that ownership that you guys are talking about, right?
And saying, I’m invested, I feel empowered. I’m really enjoying this relationship and this organization because we are a team and we’re building a strong team together.
Rich: And I’ll simply observe that as we established earlier in the conversation, engineers like pizza. So pizza is a great motivator as well.
Erick: Nobody’s, I [00:47:00] forgot that one. Yeah. The deal. Say the ancho. I don’t, that’s not my place.
Rich: All right. So fourth area here, a broad one, so it’ll give you guys a lot of room to to come up with some varied suggestions. Let’s get a tip from each of you on increasing operational efficiency beginning with you, Joe.
Joe: If you’ve ever talked to me, you’re probably tired of hearing me say this.
Have you watched my videos on YouTube? If you if you’ve had any conversation with me narrow. Not doctors, not healthcare. Gastroenterologists, ologist, like as narrow as you can get. The narrower you get, the more efficient you’re gonna be. Because if you’re doing the same thing over and over again, you can tweak, you can improve, you can tune, you can look at what’s next.
You can create an [00:48:00] amazing customer experience because things happen that customer never expected. They could ask questions that no ever and no MSP has ever asked them, oh, how do we improve your patient experience? Mr. Gastroenterologist? Oh, I know you have that camera that integrates into your EHR.
I can make those images go there and make it easy so that you don’t have to do this, and that step. Oh, I have a phone system that’s built just for gastroenterologists. It helps you code your billing in your EHR Oh, like on and on. You can improve operational efficiency when you’re solving specific problems for a specific person.
So I hate to be that guy, but I’m that guy.
Jeff: Love it. Embrace it, Joe, embrace it.
Rich: All sorts of other benefits, right? In terms of stickiness and referrals and, yeah. Nothing but, and
Joe: partners. And partners. You get he can get partners. All of a [00:49:00] sudden, all the people that are, that sell to that gastroenterologist, they’re your partners and they’re introducing it to other gastroenterologists and they’re intro and on and off.
Because that’s the way it goes.
Jeff: Is it sometimes when we talk about this ideal client profile, we get the pushback that I don’t want to be cookie cutter. And, I don’t understand. There’s a reason
Erick: that
Jeff: people invented a cookie cutter, right? It made making cookies easier.
And the people like the fact that they’re all the same shape. So it’s if you’re not and by the way, the people who are like, I don’t wanna be a cookie cutter, they all look really tired because they’ve been working 20 hours a week a day. But embrace the cookie cutter man.
You you want to have something that you can repo, you can repeat over and over again and get better and better at it. And that’s where you can charge more money and your costs are going to come down because you get better and better at delivery. Be a cookie cutter.
Rich: I don’t know. I I, is that what you wanna go with as as your, that’s a pretty good tip.
Or
Jeff: no, [00:50:00] that was Joe’s. Are you really gonna, you’re gonna cheat me out of my operational events here. I dunno, what kind of a podcast is this?
Erick: He’s leaking. Lemme just lifting Rich. Alright, Jeff.
Jeff: Alright, so I have one. I don’t really have anything. No, I’m kidding. What I was gonna say, like the key to making everything work, like the key to getting more efficient, the key to repetition is documenting your business.
Documenting what you’re doing, documenting how to do it, and creating those repeatable processes. Now people come to us, they say, oh, but it’s hard to get people to document. It’s hard to get people to, to actually do any of this or to pay attention to this. And so before you even get started with that.
What you really need is a standard operating procedure for creating standard operating procedures. This is the most important standard operating procedure you’re going to create. Because when you have an SOP for creating SOPs, and you can sit be [00:51:00] like how do I document here’s how, right? And it really breaks down a lot of these barriers to documentation and almost nobody had one.
So SOP for SOPs and Be a Cookie,
Joe: We did an s so P for SOPs to somebody who said had this problem and within six months they had over 300 SOPs. ’cause they just gave the s so P to S so P to everybody and said, you just need, you’re responsible for doing one SOPA week. And then they just followed the process and did the SLP.
Every week we had the naming conventions, we had all the, and everybody was happy to do it because it was a process for doing a process.
Erick: I love that. And I’m gonna lift you up, Jeff, for that one, because I remember back in the day when I, in my MSPI was the documenter, this is before documentation platforms remind everybody.
We were making, tools to make tools, right? So I was like, this is how I document. And it’s basically, this is how we take screenshots. This is the naming conventions, this is how we [00:52:00] walk through it. And then I taught that to the team. And then all of that kind of, like you said, create examples, probably do it.
And now you guys go forth and do the same. So I love that.
Rich: That is great. I, and I’m encouraged to hear that people will run with that when you give them the template. So that’s pretty great. Erick, take us home.
Erick: You guys just gave us some really great ones. I feel like I’m not gonna, I’m just gonna go back to the basic this is, to me, how do you increase efficiency?
Now, I’m cheating rich a little bit because you and I, we deliver webinars and sessions around, KPIs and things like that. And we had a stat recently, rich, can you remember what the stat was of MSPs that aren’t the percentage of MSPs that were pulled that are not even measuring basic KPIs?
Do you remember?
Rich: I Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. I can’t remember the exact number. I just remember the two of us were flabbergasted. Yeah,
Erick: I think it was, [00:53:00] yeah, 34% or something is what comes to mind. Measure start measuring. You can’t improve something without knowing where you are right now.
So where are you? What are your, like what, how long does it take you to close tickets? What percentage of time are you hitting your SLAs? What’s your customer satisfaction score? Some of these basic KPIs, how, what’s the utilization of your technicians? These are basic things that give you a barometer that say, okay, here’s where I am.
Here’s what best in class looks like. And then build that plan to get there. You’ve got to start measuring the performance of the things that matter, the things that you can, and then prioritize low hanging fruit. What do I fix? What’s the thing that I can fix? The quickest or the most value?
Like what’s constraining me? [00:54:00] What’s my Oh, that’s good. Yeah. What’s my secondary constraint? What’s my tertiary constraint? Let’s address them in that order.
Joe: Yeah.
Erick: And now we can reward our team. Remember we said what motivates them? Hey, let’s get some incentives and rewards to get them to do these things.
Do the documentation right, do and then measure, and then let’s deploy the improvement. Now, this is how we find your top 10 tickets. Document those first, and then measure the performance improvement when everyone is doing the same thing the same way so that clients have the same experience rather than waiting for their favorite engineer to come back from vacation before they wanna get their ticket worked up.
Joe: And when you’re doing that, Erick, what happens is, one of the things that you’ll notice is that the more bottlenecks that you clear up and the more things that you fix up here. The lower the utilization number goes. So if you had your technicians, that 90% utilization, that utilization will go [00:55:00] down to like first to 70, then to 60, then to 80.
It’ll start to go down. And what that means opportunity that you can now scale the same team because you are now fixing these problems that give you room to scale,
Erick: right? Just like firing d and f customers giving you more opportunity to scale and work with those clients that you need to be spending more time on those A clients and the B clients to get them to be A clients.
Yeah. Drinking all the Kool-Aid today, boys, baby, bring it, ch them luck
Jeff: some something. You gotta bring somebody on next time who completely disagrees. We’re all pretty aligned here, so somebody who comes on and says I don’t know, you should just bring a bull whip and they’re all gonna do what you say, that would be a, be a different voice.
Erick: When we’ve all seen a thing or two, we share a thing or two
Jeff: about but I think that’s the thing, right? When you’ve been in business and you’ve seen it’s like there aren’t that many things that, that really [00:56:00] change in the fundamentals.
It’s fundamentally about solving problems for people and then talking about those problems to the extent that they understand and believe that you can solve them. And it really isn’t. Complicated. And I think we spend a lot of time trying to be a professional and trying to make things complicated and it’s just not, it’s the same advice.
And I don’t know how many times people had to tell me to have an ideal client profile before I finally got it right? I’m like, oh, but I’m special. My business is different. You don’t know. It’s not business. It’s the same thing. It’s been the same thing forever. And
Erick: the reality they’re talking about here, team is not just because we’re addressing MSPs.
So this is, these are best practices for Amy
Jeff: fundamentals. Exactly.
Joe: The fundamentals. Now what I will say, one of the things that, that I really love about Jeff, Jeff did that whole SOP for SOP stuff and. He makes sure that SOPs are always in [00:57:00] plain English, because the other thing that happens to MSPs is that they wanna use all this fancy language that confuses the heck outta everybody.
And SOPs need to be in English. They need to be understandable so that anybody can read ’em and go, oh yeah, that I can do that. I can click here, I can do that. I can do, just keep ’em simple. That’s,
Jeff: but I think it’s actually not just SOPs, it’s also the communications with your clients and communications with your prospects and communications with your people.
Like we, we don’t have to be focused on impressing people by using 12th grade language and $50 words. We can just connect and have conversations and just use English, and I, I think that goes a long way towards building relationships and helping people understand who you are and take action in line with what you want them to do.
Erick: And making your clients and end users that you’re serving. Feel comfortable. The gastroenterologist. I not use the medical terms to tell you what’s going on. They’re they, that bedside [00:58:00] manner.
Jeff: Oh, I like that. We should start talking about bedside manner for MSTs. I like that. I
Erick: like that a
lot.
Jeff: Yeah, that’s good.
Erick: Welcome.
Jeff: Yeah, I got
it.
Erick: Look for the bedside manner. Blog post. It’s coming. Yeah. Hashtag It must be bedside, man.
Rich: Okay, like a perfect note. Perfect little closing note. Extra little idea there. Fantastic. For folks in the audience Jeff and Joe who wanna learn more about Stark Grow, manage, get in touch with you guys where should they go?
Jeff: The best place to go, you go to starco manage.com and right there on the front page is our assessment that you can take. It’s 20 questions, 21 actually. And it will ga guide you through our scale model and give you some advice on how to scale your MSP. And that’s the place to start.
Rich: Fantastic. I love it. Informative actionable and fun. Thank you Jeff Lair and Joe Rojas for joining us on the show here. [00:59:00] Folks, Erick and I are going to take a quick break. When we come back on the other side, we’re gonna share some final thoughts about this great conversation with Jeff and Joe. Have a little fun wrap up the show.
Stick around. We’re gonna be right back
and welcome back to part three of this episode of the MSP Chat podcast. We have taken you all over the place, haven’t we? We began from year above way of gardens in San Francisco at the RSA Conference. Erick I’m actually still in San Francisco. The conference ended yesterday, Erick’s back home. We recorded that terrific conversation with Jeff and Joe in fact, from the same respective locations post RAC RSA conference.
I really didn’t enjoy that. As somebody who isn’t, has never been an MSP it was still really informative for me. I learned a lot of stuff there. A lot of, there, there are a lot of great ideas obviously there that apply to anyone in any kind of business. I just enjoyed being in the audience for that.
One [01:00:00] thing I’ll, I’ll go all the way back to the very beginning of that conversation ’cause there was something that popped into my head when we were talking about lead generation. I think it was Jeff who said, the key thing is to follow up on the leads that you get.
You send somebody a pizza cutter make sure you actually do something with the attention that you got there. And it just reminded me there’s another MSP growth expert I know and a great deal named Steve Alexander, who we should have on the show one of these days. But I remember him saying once, if you don’t have the discipline and a process in place to act on leads, don’t, lead generation is not what you should be doing.
It’s a waste of time and money leads will come in, you’ll do nothing with them. So you’ve gotta get yourself in a place such that. Anytime a lead does come in you will always follow up on it, act on it, and put yourself in a position to convert it into a sale. And that was a great example of that.
Erick: Yes, rich. And there’s a term for that. When you just pay all this money and generate [01:01:00] all these leads and do nothing with them or, are prepared during the sales conversation to, to have the sales conversation, we call that burning leads and nobody wants to burn leads. ’cause that’s the costliest money you’ll ever spend, you’ll never get a second chance at those types of conversations.
And yeah lead generation is something that is part of the process that’s pre-sales and then following up after those meetings, this is where we tend to find a lot of folks that, aren’t. Sales isn’t their primary role. They haven’t taken a lot of training and really tried to perfect that in within themselves.
My rule rich is only stop following up with a lead when the prospect asks you to stop. So we will never stop ’em. Now, we’re not gonna follow up with them with the same intensity and [01:02:00] frequency that we might the first 30 or 60 days, but you’re always gonna put them on your newsletter mailing list. You’re gonna, ping them on LinkedIn.
That’s another good tip is whenever you’re engaging with somebody, connect with ’em on LinkedIn because you’re always more likely to rise up in their LinkedIn inbox than maybe in their email inbox with a lot of noise. And then over time, just quarterly check-ins, just.
Tickler file stuff, right? Remember, I remember we used to have a salesperson at RMSB Rich, that was, he he was born and bred and almost, it almost reminded me of like mad men type of, sales. He had, he actually had a shoebox and that was his cards. He would call index cards, tickler file. And he had it all sorted oh, I’m gonna follow up in like months, in like dividers in the box.
And he would move that index card and he was, that was it, that was follow up 1 0 1 tickler [01:03:00] file. I never really understood what tickler file meant until I saw him using his tickler file.
Rich: Alright. Yeah, and I’m you’re motivating me actually after we’re done here, to go online and look up tickler file and get, understand the origins and the history of the tickler file.
It’s one of those terms. Everybody knows why is the tickler file, but
Erick: yeah.
Rich: With that folks we have time for just one last thing, and it comes to us from the great state of Maryland, Annapolis, Maryland to be precise. The days are longer now. Erick, the baseball season is back.
Spring has arrived here, and one further away, it’s spring is when you go to Annapolis, Maryland and they’re burning socks. Yes, that’s right. It is an annual rite of spring in Annapolis, Maryland, as a matter of fact to they host right around the spring equinox. What this press account calls a potent blend of smelly socks, alcohol music, piles of oysters, and more than a hint of pyromania they roast oysters, they [01:04:00] drink quite a bit, and then they burn socks.
I guess the idea is burning the winter socks because it’s finally. Time for warmer weather and yeah we’re getting into the sock burning season in Annapolis. So it’s it’s a good sign, folks. Winter is behind us of efficiently now, and the the sweet odor of burning socks is what tells you
Erick: I have nothing for in that rich, I just can’t imagine just oysters, alcohol, and the stench of burning socks. Yeah, hey, it’s a tradition, so I guess you gotta go with it.
Rich: My recommendation is to begin with the alcohol so that the sock burning part is a little bit easier to handle. But yeah it’s an a combination that apparently works for them in Annapolis.
And if you are listening or watching from Annapolis, please send us a photograph of burning Socks, please. We wanna see some confirmation from our MSP chat audience. And speaking of MSP chat, did you know this is all the time we’ve got for you this week? Erick and I are gonna be back in a week’s time for another episode.
Until then, did you know this is both a video and an audio podcast, which means if you’re [01:05:00] listening to us right now, but you’d like to check us out on video, you can go to YouTube, you’ll find us there if you are watching us on YouTube, but you’d like to hear us because you’re into audio podcasts, go to Spotify, Google, apple, wherever you get your audio podcast.
You’re gonna find us there too. And wherever it is you find us. Please subscribe. Rate. Review. It’s gonna help other people find and enjoy the show just like you do. The show is produced by the great Riley Simpson, part of the team with us here at Channel Mastered, where we help vendors grow and build Thriving MSP channel through a wide variety of services.
You can read about all of them at our website, www.channel Mastered.com channel. Mastered has a sister organization called MSP Mastered, that’s Erick working one-on-one with MSPs to help them grow and optimize their business. You can learn about that at www.mspMastered.com. So once again, thank you for joining us.
We’ll see you in a week. Until then, please remember, as we always ask you to, you can’t spell channel without [01:06:00] MSP.
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