Episode 246: As the MSP leader, actions beat words

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This is a transcription for episode 246 of Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast: ‘As the MSP leader, actions beat words’.

Full show transcription

So here you are to do two things, chew bubblegum and keep your MSP clients’ businesses running like clockwork and you are all out of gum.

Well, I’ve got some Wrigleys Extra here if you want a bit of that. Here are today’s big things as the business leader, why your actions are 10 times more important than your words. How to take a three week vacation with zero calls from your MSP’s office, and my guest is a few years into his journey as an MSP. He tells us what he wishes he’d done differently. Welcome to episode 2 4 6.

Tell me, do you have children? If you do, you’ll know that they’re more influenced by what you actually do than what you say. It’s one of those little annoying things about being a parent and actually your staff are exactly the same. They are way more influenced by the way that you behave than the things that you say. Let’s explore how to set the right tone with your actions in a way which creates a culture that you love in your MSP and makes business growth easy. So it’s one of the early lessons that we learn as parents that our children are more influenced by our behavior than what we say. If you want your kids to eat more fruit and veg, guess what? You have to eat more fruit and veg. You can’t just tell them what to do. It’s also a bit of an early lesson for a business owner to realize that staff are no different.

I was reminded of this recently when my friend Dave popped in to have a catch up that’s not actually his real name. I’m hiding his identity because we seem to spend the best part of two hours talking about his boss and all the things that his boss does wrong. You’re going to love the story that I’m about to tell you. You see, Dave’s boss has been shouting at the team for ages about saving money. Everyone’s had to cut costs and justify expenditure, and I guess there’s nothing wrong with having that control, right? It’s good to be in control of the costs of your business and keep an eye on the profit. But here’s the thing though, the staff thought that they were doing it to help the business’ cashflow and just to keep the business healthy, and none of them could believe it when the boss turned up one Monday morning showing them photos of a massive boat that he’d bought at the weekend.

Now, you and I are business owners and we know that there is a difference between the money that the business has and the money that you have or I have, and I appreciate that sometimes that’s a slightly blurred line, but they are distinctly separate pots and if Dave’s boss chooses to go and buy a big boat having taken money out of the business to do that, that’s his prerogative, right? But this did not go down well with his staff. To them they could see that saving money in the business and all the hard work they’ve done was just that he could take more money out. They saw him taking money out of the business to spend on him personally, and none of them appreciated him coming in and showing off a massive, frankly, a massive toy that they themselves could possibly never afford in their lives.

In fact, it did trigger a whole series of grumblings about how infrequently pay rises happened in that business and that they were all working really hard for less money so that he could blow all of the money that was saved on a boat. Do you see how damaging that could be? Now, I’m not suggesting that he should not have bought the boat, but his team would not have been so aggrieved by it if they had proper pay rises and the business wasn’t run on a penny pinching scale. What the guy did had more influence than what he said. I have another example of this. It’s actually an MSP that I used to work with a very long time ago. A few years back, I used to run peer groups where we would meet in a room once a month and the MSPs would all collaborate on growing their business and there was one MSP in particular.

I’m going to give him a fake name too. Let’s call him Boris. So Boris desperately wanted to grow his business because it had been sort of flat. It had plateaued for many, many years. It had been in that situation and he really wants to improve his marketing as a route to improve the business. It’s just that he found marketing really boring and disinteresting and every time we talked about it, you could literally see his eyes glazing over him. Yes, I was slightly offended by this. The thing is, when he was sat in a room with me and other MSPs talking about marketing and looking bored, that was all right. The problem was when he was talking to his team about it because his mouth was saying one thing and his actions were saying something else, and I know for a fact that he had a full-time marketing coordinator who felt that he had so little interest in marketing that her job was pointless.

I know this because she told me that on a Zoom one day when I asked her why she thought that. She replied that every time they had their weekly catchup meeting about marketing, he’d pick up his phone, he’d look at text messages, he’d reply or he’d let other people come into the office and talk to him about text stuff. So his mouth was telling her that marketing’s really important to the business, but he was demonstrating to her with his actions that he didn’t really care. This was very, very dangerous. And what’s really scary is that he had no idea he was doing this. Side note, by the way, we did do some work together to make him aware of this and for him to overcome it, and that’s not normally the kind of problem I would leave someone to sort out by themselves, particularly when they’re not aware of it. Anyway, do you see the point that I’m making here? If you want your techs to clear all the tickets by the end of each day, then you have to do that on the day that you man the help desk. If you want your team to keep the kitchen clean every time they make a coffee, then you have to mop up your spills when you make yourself a drink. Our staff, just like our children are watching us all the time, and they will copy our behavior, both the bad stuff as well as the good.

Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast. Still to come…

If you are early into your MSP owning journey the first couple of years or so, then you’re going to love my guest this week. He’s going to tell us three things he wished he’d done differently in the first few years of his business. That’s coming up in the next five minutes. I can’t believe we’re at the end of July already. And of course, this is traditionally holiday season or vacation season. In fact, are you getting away for a proper holiday this year? And by a proper holiday, I mean a holiday where you have a complete break, no contact with the office regardless of any tech or client emergency. And if that’s not the quality of your holiday, let’s explore how you could make that happen quickly. Hey, I’m Paul Green, and don’t forget, for all the content, tools and training to market and grow your MSP, check out mspmarketingedge.com.

A few years back, one of my MSP Marketing Edge members was telling me about the three week break he’d taken from his business and his trip abroad was a kind of combined holiday and working trip, but what was really impressive was how he’d set up the business to make sure that he wasn’t interrupted while away. He replied to a few emails once a day, but he didn’t have any support calls or any what I term as like a disruptive call from the office. You see, he like most other MSP owners I deal with, he’s working really hard to remove himself from the day-to-day clutter. And sure, someone needs to do first line support, but it doesn’t have to be you. I recommend that you pick up this mantra and live by it. You should only do what only you can do. Now assuming that your business is mature, so kind of like three plus years old, then that means getting other people to do all the first line support, probably most of the second line, definitely all of the admin, and you need to focus your time on the marketing, the sales, and growing the business as well as having an epic life.

I asked this MSP exactly what he’d done to prepare his business to survive and thrive without him. And these were the three key items. Number one, it was resourced correctly after years as an MSP owner, he knew how much work there is in an average week, and he made sure there was enough resource to handle this comfortably. Now, if you yourself are a key part of the support team and you go away for a few weeks without covering yourself, you’re kind of setting your team up for failure, especially because as the business owner, you can do more things and operate at a higher level for longer than any of your team can. This is the business owner’s greatest asset and worst curse. His team had sufficient resources to get themselves through the break, including some senior technical advice on tap from a non-competing partner, MSP for those situations where they need a fresh pair of eyes on something.

Number two, clear systems were set up. 80% of what happens in your business today will happen tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. So why allow it to continue to create chaos and stress? Your goal should be to create as many systems, checklists and standard operating procedures as possible to remove the headaches of chaos. After all, system is an acronym, saves you stress, time, energy, and money. This MSP put in place clear systems to set out the behaviors and actions he expected for most predictable situations and combined with a bit of senior help on tap when needed, this was a good mix to allow a competent team to just get on with it, mostly drama free. Oh, side note on this, I’ve got some suggested reading on this, the E-Myth Revisited and the Checklist Manifesto, both great books go and get them.

You can get them on Audible as well. And then number three, he had clear visibility. Of course, having a long vacation without being interrupted by your staff isn’t just about the way they work. It’s as much about what you do and how you’ve set up your holiday. I once went on a three week cruise with no phone and no email. It was bliss, but there were odd moments of immense anxiety where it ran through my head all the ways that my staff could be destroying my business. I was doing this while I was sipping cocktails, but this MSP had full visibility on what his team were working on because he could just check in with his PSA. And do you know what? That actually made him more relaxed than if he’d been in the dark for three weeks. I understand that because it removed the anxiety that can be created in a void of information, a pleasant postscript.

This experience has taught my clients a very valuable lesson. He doesn’t need to be there every second in order for the business to run well. This is a major mindset shift. I had a similar leap myself in my last business around about 2010, and I can track our subsequent growth and the ultimate exit of that in 2016, right back to that moment of realization. Everything I’ve just talked about here is how I run the MSP Marketing edge today. And you see, I fully expect this MSP to continue to spend less time distracted by the daily clutter and more time working on his business because he’s created himself space to think time to get things done, and a business that will ultimately be more enjoyable, which means he’s going to retain his passion for it. I believe the purpose of any business is to be there for you and not the other way round. And this is a massive giant leap towards that goal.

Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast. Still to come…

Tell me, are you hoping to break into a new vertical and you’re not sure whether you can do it with your existing websites or whether or not you need a new website? Well, this is a question from another MSP and I’m going to answer it in the next five minutes. One of the fun things to do every now and then is to look back at your business owning career and ask yourself, if you did it again, what would you do differently?

My guest today is a few years into his MSP and looking back, there are three big things he wished he’d done differently. Today’s big interview is with an MSP owner who wants to share the mistakes he made, so you can avoid them.

I’m Alex Harvey and I run Snap It in Norridge. And I’m also a Halo PSA consultant.

And thank you so much for joining me on this podcast, Alex. Now you and I have known each other for years and years. I think if I’m right that you came to an event that I ran in the UK, and this must be pre covid because I haven’t done any events since Covid, so we must’ve known each other for years. What we’re going to do in this interview is we’re going to look at you and your career, and you are a very young newish startup. I’m guess you’ve been going a few years. We’ll find out in a second. What I particularly want to look at is the things you would do differently. So unlike most of our interviews on this podcast, this is for people who are early on in their MSP journey and you can tell us three things you wish you’d done differently if you could do it all again. And then we’re going to finish off talking about Halo PSA, because as you said, you are a consultant and I know you are helping some other MSPs get set up on that PSA. So let’s first of all hear your tech background. So before you decided to start your MSP, what was your tech background? What were you doing?

Sure. So I was a contractor for the National Health Service in the UK. I went through the hoops, so first line, second line, and then got up to third line doing network management. And then after then I did some IT manager roles, IT leader roles, and that’s kind of my background in it before I started the MSP, just right before covid.

So that would’ve been, I guess we would’ve met then just before you decided to start it when it was probably going through your head, I’ve got to start my own business. So what was that trigger? What made you have the, it’s called the entrepreneurial seizure. It comes from the book, the E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, where you get that idea in your head, I’ve got to start a business. What was your trigger?

Yes, so my trigger was I was working for an MSP and I thought a lot of customer service things they were doing could be done a lot better. I’d always wanted to run my own IT company anyway, my family’s quite entrepreneurial and yeah, I had that seizure, as you said, left my contract when it came up and started the business really. So that’s how it all happened.

Fantastic. And those of you who are watching you on YouTube will see that you’re about 15 now in age. How old are you actually? Because you do look very young, which it was a superpower that I had until I hit about 35 and then the gray hair kind of kicked in then. How old are you now, Alex, and how old are you when you started the business?

So I’m 28 now and I think I started it when I was about 25, 24, 25 ish because this is my birthday in July. So whenever something around that and without giving us any kind of figures or anything like that, just in general, how’s it gone because those first few years are always really tough years.

The first few years were really tough, especially I think launching it right before a pandemic was a very horrible timing, but I muddied through it and then now it’s really grown strength from strength. We’ve just officially taken on our first hire looking at the second hire now as well and those other different things we’re looking at. So yeah, it’s definitely changed in the few years it’s been going.

That’s amazing. And that first employee, I think it is one of those watershed moments, isn’t it? Where once it’s you and someone else, the whole business changes because previously it’s all kind of there in your head and they’re on your laptop. Is it a real business or is it just hiring Alex to do some stuff and Yeah, I mean if you first hire, great and now you’re moving on to your second hire. That’s really good to hear. So let’s talk about what you would do differently. So I want you to look back over your short but fairly intense business owning career so far and look back and I’ve asked you to prepare for me three things that if you were to do it all again, that you would do differently. So what would the first of those be?

The first thing I’d do is outsource tasks sooner.

And give us an idea of what kind of tasks do you mean? Are we talking help desk stuff or just general running the business stuff?

I think I held onto a lot of things when I first started, I was quite cost conscious, didn’t really want to spend a lot, try and keep it in the business for myself. So what I would’ve done is definitely get bookkeeping out first thing. Billing is something I think a lot of small MSP owners really struggle with is getting the time to do billing and actually doing it properly and sitting through it and then things like admin tasks, things like that. Just remove those things off your plate and I think things would’ve been a lot different back then if I did that straight away.

That’s interesting. So from what you’re saying there is if you’d been able to focus more on winning clients and servicing clients because you didn’t have to do all of those other things, then I’m guessing that would’ve made a bit of a difference to the business. Alex, I know you all have heard me say this, and for all of our listeners on the podcasts and viewers on YouTube, this is a great phrase to live your life by not just in your business but in every aspect of your life. Here’s the phrase, you should only do what only you can do. Let me say it again so you can get it tattooed on your head. You should only do what only you can do. And Alex, you’ve just given us a great example there. Can I give you a book suggestion? By the way, and this is something that I wish, I mean this book didn’t exist when I was 28, but I wish it had and I wish I’d read it because my own business trajectory, which is I’ve been going nearly 20 years, I would’ve got where I needed to get faster if I’d read this book or listened to this book.

It’s called 10 x is Easier Than two x, written by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy and I think it only came out a couple of years ago. They have a companion book called Who Not How. And both of these books together are about making those big jumps. So you going from being a one-man band to having your first employee big jump and then you letting go of admin and stuff, big jump. And the challenge goes as you grow the business. And I have no doubts whatsoever that you’ll be a very successful business owner, Alex, because I’ve been watching you from the shadows for a number of years and seeing how you operate and how resilient you are and how you deal with problems. But the quicker that you can get used to, I need to lose all the admin, I need to lose all the billing.

And then the next thing is I need to lose all the first line that’s going to come up for you soon where you all of your first line is being done by someone else, and then you’ve got to lose all the second line. And then there’s going to come a day where you’re going to lose all the third line and you are just going to be looking after the clients and then you’re going to hand over the client management and the account management and then the selling, and then suddenly you have a great life where you’re in your early thirties and you are making a fantastic income and you choose what you do in the business rather than the business needing you to do stuff. So please do listen to that book. It really is a great book. And again, for all of our listeners and our viewers, highly recommend that book as well. So what’s the second thing looking back that you wish you’d done differently?

So the second thing is hiring sooner. I think I’ve had highs and lows as running the business, but I’ve been ultimately comfortable at the same trajectory just sitting there. So I think if I had a hire that would’ve made me go out there and sell because I had someone to think about, someone to find the money for, that would’ve been the thing I wish I did sooner.

That’s awesome. So what was it, can you remember what the emotional the thinking was that stopped you from hiring help earlier? Was it that there wasn’t the work there or was it the concern about cash or was it something else?

I think, yeah, it was, the work wasn’t really, there was enough for me to deal with and I didn’t think hiring someone was going to be the right choice because of the finances were pretty early on back then and it was just paying for me really. So I think if I was to hire someone very early on, make sure I had to get out there, go and sell, really make it uncomfortable because I think sitting comfortable has maybe stagnate a little bit too much.

Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s a huge insight into yourself. Once you’ve got a team, it gets a lot harder to sit and stagnate because there’s always, well, this already now got a team, there’s always new things to do and new things to try and new problems, and it kind of starts you off down. You start to build up momentum from there, which is great. Just out of interest, as a side note, where did you find that first employee?

Yeah, so Kean joined us for a T level. So in the UK we’ve got the T level. I think they need to complete about 350 hours in a workplace environment. So he joined us from a local college. He kind of fit in really well, loved doing the tech stuff. And then it’s been a year long training with me and him, and then at the end of his college we offered him a position to stay with us. So I was quite lucky finding the right person, but the T levels, if you haven’t looked into it, are very good.

That’s great, thank you. No, I personally, I dunno much about the T levels. So for MSPs in the UK there’s a great piece of advice there of where you can get some entry level technicians, right? Third and final suggestion from you, what would you have done differently if you’d known over the last couple of years?

So when I first started, I took on any customer with a wallet so long as it could have been a one man band, it could have been anything so long as they had a wallet, that was what I was looking for. I think, yeah, going back and starting again, I would’ve made sure we had minimums. So user minimums or budget minimums. So let’s say start with us now, you need to spend over a thousand pounds a month. So that would’ve definitely grown the business a lot quicker. We were focusing on say the right size, the right sector that could also afford us as well. That would’ve changed everything back then. And it’s only now as I’m starting to remove the ones that don’t fit it is just made me realize how different things are now to what they used to be.

And the clients that are too small or don’t contribute enough profit into your business, what problems does that cause?

Customers that don’t meet your size, they can be quite controlling or they can be quite needy. They’re not paying you what your other customers are paying and they’re expecting a lot more from you for that sort of money they’re paying as well as they just don’t value what you do. And I think it’s just best to move them on to another company that will seek them better. And then that means you can focus on paying your high profitable customers and give them the experience and customer service they need.

Yeah, I think this is so true, and I’ve heard this from so many MSPs. I’ve had this experience myself in business that when you are desperate and you take anything, you end up not always, but often you end up with crap and you end up with crap that’s unprofitable. There’s cash coming in, which helps you to meet your commitments, but there’s no profit left from that. In fact, that book I was talking about earlier, 10 x is easier than two x. There’s a great quote in there where they compare a $500 customer to a $50,000 customer. So the $500 customer will come back asking about the contract and how many months before they can be released and what the terms are and the service delivery and how many meetings they’ll have and the $50,000 customer comes back and says, I’ve transferred the money. And when you see those kind of two comparisons on the page or you hear it in Audible, it’s a great reminder that just as you said there, Alex, not all customers are born equal.

So I think have to say overall, this is awesome. You and I haven’t had a proper catchup for ages and it’s great to hear that you’ve two, three, what, four years in nearly you. You’re going in absolutely the right direction. You’ve made some great decisions, a lot of the things that MSPs can run for 10 to 15 years before they fix some of these things. I know a lot of one man bands who got trapped in one man band, they just never quite got that first employee and got them to stick people who are still taking on rubbish clients, bad clients. So you’re doing a lot of the right things and bravo to you. We should get you back on in four years time to see are you at your first million turnover yet? No pressure. No pressure on you, Alex. So thank you for coming on. Let’s just talk about one final thing before you go. And you mentioned at the start that you are also a consultant for Halo PSA. So tell us what kind of work you’re doing with other MSPs and what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

So yeah, I started with Halo PSA two years ago. I bought it as RPSA for my MSP. I was using an email platform ticketing system before, but I wasn’t tracking my billings time spent on tickets and things like that. So I really didn’t know where I was in the business. So I moved over to Halo PSA. It was a good price. It’s always improving the amount of features it has now compared to when I started. It’s just insane. It’s just always growing and it’s no bolt-ons as well, so this sounds like a really good plug for them. But I see a lot of other PSAs where you have to spend loads of money for billing modules and all these other things where instead it’s just all in one. So yeah, my work at the minute is like a third party consultant, so I started only recently in December with them. So Halo PSA I completely adore. It’s really helped me connect with MSPs, get to know them, show them a journey with the PSA and how they can get the best out of it for them.

And someone at Halo PSA is driving along in their car right now with a big beaming smile on their face as you crowbarred in a free advert for them. So bravo on that. Well done. Alex. For those people that just want to connect with you, talk to you, just ask you about your experiences or indeed with Halo, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Best way to get in touch with me is through LinkedIn, just search Alex Harvey, and I’m wearing a purple top

Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast, Paul’s personal peer group.

I spend a large part of my week answering questions from MSPs about marketing and business growth. And I absolutely adore it, which is why we have this chunk of the show producer. James, what have you got for me this week?

Well, Paul, this week you’re going to love this question. It comes from Jerome, who’s based in NYC. His MSP is six years old. He does have a network of peers he talks to, but he’s not getting a definitive answer from them. He loves listening to the podcast. And so he’s turning to you with this question, do I need a new website to break into a vertical?

Alright, great question. So the short answer is yes, and the long answer is no. If you’re really serious about breaking into a vertical, the number one job of your marketing is to show that you understand that vertical and their needs, their wants and their fears. They want to believe and they have to believe that you are a specialist in technology for whatever it is that they do. And the more evidence that you can give them for that, the better. Now, that’s why a standalone website just for that vertical would be incredibly powerful. You can talk about their kinds of business, you can show them social proof from other business owners like them in their vertical, and you can make everything about their business and the type of work that they do. And this will make your marketing seem really, really relevant to them, which will give you much better results.

However, having said that, I would hate for you to delay launching into a vertical because it does take several months to get a new website sorted for some people, if that’s you and you just want to dip your toe into a vertical, then a vertical page on your existing website is the right thing to do. Even when you decide that your new vertical is very exciting and you want to focus a lot more effort on it, then that’s the point that you get yourself a brand new website. And by the way, this vertical website can sit alongside your general business website. It’s perfectly fine to do this. In fact, in a previous business, I had three separate websites for the three verticals that I was serving, which helped me to paint a picture as an expert in each of those verticals without any risk of diluting my marketing message. So if you’ve got a marketing or business growth question about anything in your MSP you’d like help with, just go to the contact page at mspmarketingedge.com. And while you’re there, check out all the content tools and training to market and grow your MSP. You can see it all at mspmarketingedge.com

Coming up next week…

Thank you so much for listening this week, next week. Why working 60 hours a week doesn’t grow your business any faster and is a big part of the hard work myth, let’s destroy that myth, shall we?

For MSPs around the world, around the world, the MSP Marketing podcast with Paul Green, I’ll let you into a secret. He’s had a piece of gum behind his ear throughout the whole episode.

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Full show transcription

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