You know what DOA means, don't you?
You hear cops talking about it in TV crime shows: "He was DOA".
Dead. On. Arrival.
And it's what you will be, as a business owner trying to do everything all of the time, if you don't learn the other meaning of the acronym DOA.
Delegate. Outsource. Automate.
It's the only sensible way to run an MSP in 2023, whether you are a one man band with help, or have 80 staff.
Make a commitment that from today, you will stop trying to physically do everything yourself, and instead will oversee that everything is being done to a high enough quality.
That means:
Delegate
If you have staff, give them more of your work to do. Not at the detriment to their own. But there are always some staff in every business who find it exciting to get involved in different kinds of work.
The future managers of your business will thrive on taking on some of their future work today.
Delegate the task not the responsibility. Use task management software to keep track of what is due when.
And develop a ruthless reputation for chasing on deadline. You only have to do that for a few months, for your reputation to stick.
Outsource
We live in exciting times, where it is now normal to hire someone hundreds or thousands of miles away to do a job for you.
If it's not a core skill of yours, it's a false economy not to hire an expert who can do a better job in half the time.
Remember: You should only do, what only you can do. There are specialists out there to take everything else off your hands.
If it's marketing help you need, my MSP Marketing Edge is very popular and incredible value for money (if I may say so).
The standard platforms to get freelance help are Fiverr and UpWork.
Automate
What tasks can software do for you, without humans having to be involved?
I'm guessing you use Autotask or some other software system to handle ticketing and projects. What automated functionality does it have?
Can you get your ticketing system or CRM to automatically follow-up with users, to ask them the Net Promoter Score question?
Can you have KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) automatically assembled for you, so you can have a single 30 minute meeting once a week with your management team and focus only on what's not going well?
What other repeated tasks can be removed through automation?
We live in a golden age of software doing stuff for us, especially SaaS. In essence, we’re limited by our imagination only. The tools are awesome.
In fact, you probably already have access to some great tools right now. Have you looked at Microsoft PowerApps?
Do you advice to share on the best MSP productivity tools? Why not share them with 1,965 other MSPs in my MSP marketing Facebook group.
