Why Most MSP Marketing Leaks with Niall Mackay

Welcome to MSP Mastery Podcast.
I’m Jeni Clift, joined by my husband and business partner Nick Clift. Together, we spent nearly 30 years building, scaling, and eventually exiting our own MSP business.

Along the way, we learned something fundamental.
Operational maturity isn't just about your tech stack—it’s about how you present your authority to the market.

In this episode, we’re joined by Niall Mackay, the "Podcast Guy" and founder of Seven Million Bikes Podcasts. Niall lives and breathes audio and video production, helping founders move past the "shiny tool" phase to create content that actually sticks.

As the editor behind the scenes of Control Alt Deliver for the last six months, Niall has developed a unique outsider-in perspective on the MSP industry. He’s seen firsthand how the principles of delegation, automation, and niche authority apply just as much to a podcast as they do to a managed service provider.

What becomes clear in this conversation is that most MSP marketing doesn’t explode.

It leaks.

We explore:

• The Exit Strategy Reality Check: Why building a business around yourself is just selling a client list, not a saleable asset.
• The DIY Trap: Why spending 8 hours editing a podcast is a "false economy" when your time is worth hundreds per hour.
• Removing the Founder: How Niall used Notion and AI to automate his production and take himself out of the day-to-day grind.
• The ROI of Authority: Why your podcast should be a lead magnet that sends people back to your business, not your guests'.
• Consistency vs. Frequency: Why a weekly cadence is the non-negotiable standard for building trust.
• The "Cost" of Waiting: Why every business will eventually have a podcast and why the window to stand out is closing.
• Video & 4K Standards: The minimum viable tech you need to stop looking "grainy" and start looking professional.

We also discuss the psychological hurdle of "hating your own voice" and Niall’s pointed reminder:

“Don't give free advertising to your guests. They're there to help prop you up. You need to be the expert.”

This episode is not about shiny microphones.

It’s about operational discipline.
Brand authority.
Founder freedom.

If you are an MSP owner who has been "thinking about" starting a podcast but is worried about the time drain, this conversation provides the roadmap to doing it right.

Connect with Niall Mackay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niallmackay/

Learn more about Seven Million Bikes Podcasts:
https://www.sevenmillionbikes.com/

Listen to this episode and explore more MSP Mastery conversations at:
https://www.mspmastery.blog/episodes

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https://www.youtube.com/@MSPMastery

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https://instagram.com/mspmastery

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Don't give free advertising to your guests. They're there to help prop you up. You need to be the expert. You need to be the one that's sending people back to your business. Your time is worth hundreds of dollars per hour. So if you're gonna spend four to eight hours editing a podcast, how much of your time is that taking? Just hire somebody else that's gonna free up all of your time. And at the end of the day, your podcast over the long term should be making you money. Every business is gonna have a podcast because the way marketing works, especially now, people want to put a face and a voice to the brand. They want to know who's behind it.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Welcome to MSP Mastery Control Alt Deliver, the podcast for MSP owners and leaders who want to build a better MSP, one that actually works for them. I'm Jenny Clift, and alongside my longtime business partner and life partner, Nick, we unpack what's really working in thriving MSPs, including insights from the trusted partners who support them. Between us, we've clocked up more than 60 years in the MSP industry, long enough to have tried all the shiny new tools and the latest game-changing SaaS products that promises the world. This is Control Alt Deliver. Here's Nick, myself, and today's special guest. And today we're joined by Neil Mackay, the podcast guy and founder of 7 Million Bikes Podcasts. Neil lives and breeds podcasting, producing and editing podcasts across various fields. He helps people like us get podcasts off the ground, make them sound great, and turn them into something that actually sticks rather than fading away after a handful of episodes. Behind the scenes, Neil looks after all things editing for us here at Control Alt Deliver. And over the last six months, he's probably learned more about MSPs than he ever expected to. He's also been a bit of a mentor for us on our own podcasting journey, helping us focus on what matters and avoid overcomplicating things. We hear it all the time from our guests that they've been thinking about starting their own podcast. And that's exactly why we invited Neil to join us today. Neil, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. And thank you for that amazing introduction. And I have learned so much about MSPs, but more than that, just how to run a business. It it honestly has been really interesting. There's often times I'll be listening to your podcast when I'm checking it, and I'll immediately go and do something because I've heard something that you guys have said. I'm like, that's a great idea, and I'll go and take that on for my business as well. So your podcast has been really informative and really, really good.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

Yeah, and it's a good reunion, mate, because we I think we were one of the first guests physically in your podcast studio over in Vietnam when you first opened it. So yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

That is true. And that was really cool. That was amazing to have you guys here in this studio. And I still can't believe I'm in I'm in the podcast studio already now. It's pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

And it's interesting what you said about you learning because we started the podcast really aimed at MSPs, but I was chatting with one of our upcoming episode guests, and she's in the HR field, and she said she started listening to one of the episodes and intended just to sort of listen for 10 minutes because she wanted to get a bit of what's our vibe, and listen to the whole episode because she said she was really enjoying it and learning it. So it's good that it's what we started in that niche has really sort of come across into you know business.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Yeah, for sure. Um and and think a lot of the things you talk about running a team or dealing with people, and and I one of the things you talked about quite a lot is exit strategies or planning for an exit strategy. I think one of the things you said in the last episodes was every day you should be thinking about your exit strategy or planning for an exit strategy. And it made me think about it as something I'd never really thought about before. And I was like, what would that mean? Because you know, maybe you do want to do it forever and that's fine, but maybe you don't. How how would that look like, or when when would that be? One of the things I want to remember from the very beginning you talked about was you had a client or somebody approached you that wanted to sell you their business, but they ran the business basically, and you were like, you're just basically selling as a client list, you're not really selling as a business because as soon as you retire, you there's no business really left. And that really struck with me because I was like, Yeah, I need to make sure I don't do the same. I need to, and I've been working on that this year with like automations and um delegating things a lot more because I'm like, if I want to exit or retire, I mean I'm years away from that, but if I wanted to retire and I wanted to sell this thing that I've built up and I've created, and it seems to me like, oh, I've got a website and I've done all these cool things, and then I'm like, if I wanted to sell it to somebody, I'd probably be the same thing at the moment where I'm just like, hey, I got a client list, do you want to buy it? Which is not as valuable as having a working business. So that's kind of that's what I'm working on right now.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Nice. Yeah, and it is that it's just a it's not about having to exit, but it's about having option. And I came up again in a discussion the other day about when you go to sell your house, you clean up everything, you make sure everything looks good, fresh coat of paint, get the lawns done, get rid of all that crap out of the spare room. And once you do it, and I had so many people say, Oh, I've done all this work on the house, I don't want to sell it. This is great. So you enjoy the benefit of having something nice and clean, and the business is exactly the same. There's all these things in the background and that you know you should do or you want to do, or one day I'll get around to that. And if someone actually wants to buy your business, then you need to clean it up. You can sell it at a fire sale discount, and there's lots of people out there that are ready to take on that challenge. But yeah, I think it's having that mindset that you know, an opportunity might come up tomorrow for me to go and do something different, and I do that. Is it physically possible for me to walk away from the business if I want to? So yeah, good, good to know, mate.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Okay, so let's get into our as always. First thing we ask you is to share your personal and professional best from the last six months.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Yeah, so professional best is I spent most of December setting up automations, as you guys would know, and changing our back-end systems to be able to do exactly what I just talked about, kind of take me out the business more. And we use Notion, and it was I love that kind of techy geeky stuff, even though it takes so much time and effort. And I remember when I set up our first booking system, it must have been about two years ago, I spent a whole two days on it. And I remember at the time I was thinking, is this a waste of time? I'm spending two days on this, like it takes so much time. You're learning all these connecting. I mean, you guys wouldn't always send you a booking form. And I always think with everything, even in the studio, once it's finished, it looks so simple. It looks like, oh, that's so easy. You just have some cables and a camera, and same with the booking system. I send you guys a form, and it's like you just fill it in. When it's finished, it seems so simple, but most people, nobody would really know that it took so long and so much skill and so much effort to set up. You learn things that you would never expect. Like here in the studio, I was talking about when I first set it up, I just connected all the cables together with cable ties because I wanted it to look neat and tidy, and then the cameras weren't working and blah blah blah, things were flashing. And of course, I chat GBT'd it, and it's like, no, you need to have the cables far apart because there's interference, electrical interference, they can't be touching each other. And as a layman, I would never in a million years have thought about that. So for the professional good news or the professional best, was I spent honestly maybe two weeks setting this up, and I'm still setting it up every day, making it better. I just messaged you guys yesterday, we just made an upgrade and improvement. But setting that up, even though I knew at the time it wasn't the same this time because I knew it was worth it. I wasn't thinking like this is a waste of time, but I was like, man, this has taken so long, and you come up against things that don't work, and you're like, why did that not work? And then that there's the other thing as well where you maybe leave it for a day or two, and then you go back and you're like, How did I do that again? The amount of times in the beginning, I was like, How did I do that? I forgot, and I had to, you know, obviously, using ChatGPT a lot, I was just basically screenshots of stuff putting it into ChatGPT, right? This happened, how do I do this? How do I do that? And then I remember a couple of times I have to ask ChatGPT, like, I've completely forgotten how I did this. Can you remind me where what happened here? Because there were so many steps to it. Now I've got to the point where I remember it easily and I can do it every time. But you know what it's like, it just takes so so much. So that for me was just a big, big win. I'm connecting all of the dots with that and now making that system so much more streamlined that when you know when a podcast fills in that form and we really say to them that is that starts the whole system. So now when that form gets filled in, it automatically goes into our notion, it automatically alerts me and the editor. The editor has to tick accepted, then it alerts me that the editor has accepted it, then they start editing it. Once they're finished, they tick the button that they've finished editing it, then it alerts me, so then I check it. And then once I've if there's anything that I think needs to be fixed, I'll send it back to the editor. And then once I think it's ready for you guys, I tick ready for publication and it triggers an email which automatically sends you the links and everything that you need. And even yesterday I set it up on another level. But for to do that for all of our podcasts we work with, like everybody loves it, it just streamlines that whole process. Because before, again, talk going back to removing me from the business, it would be WhatsApp messages, emails, notion, all these different places, all these different messages back and forth. And even now I'm getting to the point where I've said to a couple of people, This is my working hours, please message between these times. Because you know what it's like as a founder or owner, you're getting messages often over the last couple of years, you know, going to bed at night, 10 o'clock at night. And there's time differences, I understand, but you get a message and you're like, shit, I can't sleep now, I've got to deal with this, or say to my wife, I've got to get up and deal with this, or you wake up and there's all these messages, and you're like, Alright, I've got to deal with this right away. So I'm trying to get better now as well, delegating it to the team so they can deal with it, not me. So I was a long-windy dancer. My professional best of the last six months is setting up all those automations. Personal best is going to or booked a trip to Korea for the Lunar New Year for Tet in a couple of weeks. So we're heading off there, which will be exciting. We haven't been to Korea in 10 years and done a little bit of travel as well recently. Went to Europe for Christmas, which was bittersweet, as you guys know. I had a bit of a drama with that. My wife couldn't join, so I had to go by myself. So it wasn't as good as it should have been, but it was still a good experience.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

And just going back to your professional best, the visibility that we now have has been an absolute game changer. Yeah, I just we we run a sauna just as a project tool with our our marketing employee Baguse, and I just noticed that he had an update or something in there, but I just jumped into the the dashboard and I can see exactly where it's up to. Where before it would have been messages to him, he probably would have messaged you. And yeah. So thank you for doing all of that work. It's very much appreciated.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

And I and I think for our listeners, yeah, I went through a very similar experience, Neil. And it is worth spending the time. You've just got to focus on what can make the biggest impact for your business. And for the MSPs out there, yeah, client onboarding and client offboarding seems to be a common topic that's coming up now. Businesses are getting more agile, they're employing more people, they're onboarding people overseas, they're outsourcing work, and it's it's different to how it used to be. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, in the old days, in the old days. Yeah, pre-COVID, 10 yeah, you'd you'd interview someone, you'd make them an offer, and it'd be a two-month process before they'd come on board. You'd know about it. And as an MSP, you if you had a really good relationship with your client, you would maybe get a week's notice that someone new was starting. But today, you come into the office and there's a ticket saying, Oh, Fred started today, he's in the Philippines, I need him in the system, everything going. So think about that. How do you automate? How do you make systems and processes like you've done, Neil? And I think that's a great example. And and I I do the same thing with my AI buddies now. I work on this stuff, and yesterday I was doing some video editing stuff and or AI video generation stuff, and it took me four hours to generate 30 seconds of video. And the chat history was massive. And I said, I went back to it and said, Okay, I'm happy with the output. Now write me a script so I can build a project. So next time I just have to tell you the topic and you do all the work. And it goes, Oh, sure, here, do this. And that was amazing. That's a game changer. So, yeah, if you are using an AI tool, just talk to it like a person and don't be afraid to ask silly questions at the end, like, hang on, how did I do this? Or what why did that work and why didn't it work? And tell me how to do it better next time. So, yeah, 100%. That's a great tip.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

And I love that as well, because you've just what you've just said there, this is why I love your podcast. You mentioned about onboarding, and immediately I'm like, yeah, I actually need to write an onboarding document for new podcasts that we work with. I've just created part of the new systems is the terms and conditions, which I'd never really had before. One of these things that's in your head, and then maybe something goes awry, and my wife will be like, Did they know that? And I'll be like, I think so. I think I told them maybe verbally, and I've started getting better with agreements, but now on our website, and I don't you may not have noticed, but part of the new booking system, we have a link that links to the terms and conditions, and it's I was able to set it up one of those things that's already pre-ticked, you know, I agree to the terms and conditions. They're there if you want to see them, but by by filling in that form, you're agreeing to our terms and conditions. But I definitely see now you've just got me thinking I need to go away after this and make a client onboarding document for all of our new podcasts that we work with to be like, hey, this is the system, just again to have it in writing. And it was because of one of your episodes, I actually have one who's our operations coordinator. I've tasked her with writing up a staff onboarding document, which we don't need desperately right now because we're not hiring at the moment, but that was part of it. I was like, after listening to you guys, I think I messaged her immediately and I was like, Can you create a staff onboarding document so that people come in? And we do have one for the studio now, which I created, so that we send it to people, and I think it's literally called onboarding guide or something like that. And it's to try and give them the best experience so before they come to the studio, if they read it, which they should, they will explain everything that they need to know before they get here to make their experience as smooth and as pleasurable as possible.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Okay, now tell us about you because you're the Scottish guy living in Vietnam, and I was introduced to you by somebody who's in New Zealand who is, I think, English and German by heritage. So how the hell did you end up in Vietnam recording podcasts?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

I will keep that as brief as possible because that could be a three-hour episode in itself. Long story short, I lived in America for a bit after university, then I moved to Australia, then I moved to New Zealand. I met my American wife in Australia. We moved to New Zealand, and then we came to Vietnam for a vacation in 2015. Fell in love with the country. As you guys have been here, you know, it's just there's something special about it. We went back to New Zealand and we said, Hey, let's let's go do a trip around Southeast Asia next year. And so we did. We saved up for a year, went back to Southeast Asia. We did Thailand, Malaysia, came back to Vietnam. We were gonna be here for six weeks. We loved it. We thought there's more to do here, there's more we want to see, so we said, right, we'll stay for three more months, then six more months, then one more year, then two more years, and COVID hit, then suddenly it was five years, six years, and then now this is gonna be ten years coming up, and then we are those people that we thought we would never be when we met people 10 years ago. When you're like, How long have you been here? Ten years? Wow, that will never be us. But we've been here now, and because I had always loved podcasts, I decided, like many people, to start my own. I bought a microphone. I wanted to learn more about people who lived in Saigon. It was just gonna be a pet project, so it's back in 2019, and it was pretty successful right away, and it was doing quite well, and it was just a fun, as I said, side project. My background is in fundraising, working with not-for-profits, and uh had my dream job here in Vietnam, here in Saigon, helping give education to underprivileged children. We built a school in the Mekong Delta, used my fundraising background. We raised, I think it was 60,000, 70,000 US dollars in one year, and the plan was to do more schools and keep building this project up. And then COVID hit, and unfortunately, I lost that job because they were making cutbacks, as many people were at the time. They didn't renew my contract as I was about to go into my third year, and basically I had to decide what the hell do I do now. And at one point I had eight different jobs. It was crazy. I was making TikTok videos, I was doing pharmaceutical marketing research, I was doing just doing some podcasting work, I was teaching, I was doing comedy shows, quiz night, and it was eventually after that where I was getting just the podcast side of the business was not going anywhere. I think I had one or two podcasts that we worked with, and I was like, why is this going so slowly? And then I realized because I was doing eight jobs, and I really was having about four hours a week to do the podcast side of things, and so I was on a trip back to America to visit my wife's family. Had a little downtime, and I said to myself, listening to a lot of podcasts, and you always hear the same thing, you have to say no to things, right? And I was like, I need to start saying no because I would say yes to everything because post-COVID, post-losing my job, just trying to make some money, trying to get by, trying to do everything. At one point, I was going to start an entertainment company, so we did comedy podcast events, and it just didn't really fit. But you're like, how can we make this come under one umbrella? And eventually I was like, I'm gonna just focus on podcasts. And you know, I know this what gets bandied about, like manifestation and all of this stuff. But I I believe in that to an extent that if you make things happen, you can't you have to it doesn't just happen out of nowhere, you have to go and make it happen. But I did I said, okay, I'm gonna start saying no to things, and almost immediately I started getting more people coming to me with clients, and it doesn't last forever, right? You get that little bump, and then you have then the grind starts, and you lose a couple of clients, and you have to keep building things up, and and still to this day, still grinding every single day. But once I decided that right, I'm gonna focus on one thing and it's gonna be podcasts, things changed, and the business developed from there and it slowly changed and became what it is now 7 million bikes podcasts. We've now worked with over a hundred podcasts, helped with thousands of episodes, millions of downloads, which is insane. And we have helped many podcasts get to the top of the charts as well. So that's kind of the the short short answer for that whole journey.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

So, as I said in the intro, a lot of our guests have mentioned that they'd like to start a podcast. Um, you know, it's been in the back of their mind, they've always thought about it, that sort of thing, which is why we invited you to join us. So, for somebody thinking about starting a podcast, what do they really need to get going? So, from equipment to software, what's realistic and I guess good enough without overinvesting up front?

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's just having a microphone, right? Is the the very basics of it, or at least a headset, which is a decent-ish microphone. For software, people use Riverside. I would avoid using Zoom because Zoom is a meeting software, it's just used for meetings and then you can record the meetings. It's one of my biggest frustrations when people record on Zoom because the quality of the video and the quality of the audio is not very good. Or like we use a descript is the one that we recommend where you can do these online recordings that we're doing right now. And the basic, you need just a decent microphone. Don't use your laptop microphone because that's the worst quality that you can use. A quiet spot and some sort of recording software. I started out with just one microphone. It still blows me away right now. Like I'm sitting in the studio, I've got two cameras on me, I've got lighting, I've got a good microphone in front of me. But I didn't start with this at all. I started with one shitty blue Yeti condenser microphone, sat between two of us in a room. I was putting up pillows and dovies or dunas or comforters, whichever country you're from, whichever you want to call them, all around the room to try and absorb the sound. And it's crazy. The biggest thing is just get started and then you can build from there and just try and get better every time.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Yeah, like I I just got like, yeah, this is a$400 good headset and my Mac, and that's it. It it works perfectly. Yeah, I think the secret is to have a good microphone and don't use the built-in audio on the and some of our guests have we have to do that because they they just don't have anything. And you can definitely notice the audio quality difference. That's for sure. I would say, Jen, on uh on uh other than the technology to start a podcast, you've gotta have a passion for something. And I would argue that it's to educate people on something. Yeah, I I don't know. Neil, your your feedback would be good here because it's it's it can be a grind, and you know, like we're up to our 30 something episode at the moment, and I I just I find this absolutely energizing. The conversations we have with people are amazing. I get great ideas out of all this stuff as well. And we're not necessarily talking about something we're proactively in right now, like we don't run an MSP today, so we've got it outside of you looking in, and the people we talk to are working in there, so we're it's good is it good the way that that dynamic works. I don't know that we Jenny and I would be as effective at doing as if we were still running our own MSP ourselves. But I'm really interested in your side of that because obviously you've got clients that are in our situation trying to give back, or you've got clients that are inside a business trying to build a brand. So, yeah, what what how does that work? What do you need from a personal psychological point of view to get going?

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Well, I think it needed you've got to be passionate about what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Goods without seeing. But I think the other thing you said there, and what I would call it is you need to have a niche, you need to have something that you want to talk about. And I think I'll give you a good example of like a bad example, right? So there's a podcast I've just started listening to recently. And I I was listening to it this morning and I've unfollowed it and have given up on it because it's awful. And it was awful from the beginning, but I gave it a chance. It's not one that we produce, it's one I wanted I'd love to I'll try and maybe reach out to, but I don't think they would do change anything. So there are these really funny well, they're they were two actors who were in this really funny comedy show and they've basically never done anything since. They're semi-interesting people to listen to, and they created a podcast like many famous people do, like many people do, oh, we want to create a podcast. And even from the first episode, they said they literally said, Oh, we just wanted to do a podcast where we talk to each other. But you know, they said you need to have a niche, so we we we need to choose something. So they've chosen some random thread for the show, and again, I'm not gonna give anything away, and they basically pay lip service to it, they do exactly what they wanted to do, they just talk to each other, and then maybe I mean the one of the last episodes they talked for like 20 minutes and then like, oh, should we do that thing that we said we would do? And they pay lip service to this thing that they said they would do, and they talk over each other, and they the what but the one I listened to today where I decided I'm unfollowing this because the only reason I would listen was because I'd followed it and it would kind of come up and I'd be like, Oh, check it out, or press play. They talk and they talk, and it honestly was just the dumbest conversation I've ever heard in my life. They were talking about like time and space and speed of light, but they didn't know what they were talking about. They were in it was just literally like listening to your two mates having a beer. Like, I think it's this, and it happens when this happens, and maybe that. And I was like, This is maybe the dumbest conversation I've ever heard. There's no value in it, they're not teaching you anything. I'm unlearning stuff as I'm listening to this. And the sh the name of the show and what they decided was the niche of this show. It's gone like 15 minutes now, and they've not even gotten into it. And at one point, the guy was like, I think it's this, oh no, but it's that. And I was like, You guys are the honestly the two of the dumbest people I've ever heard with a podcast. So that would be a bad example of what you shouldn't do. What you should do is what you guys are doing. Is you state what you're gonna do, you give value in every episode, you're experts in your field, and you stick to that niche. So, in terms of what you should do, do what you guys do, do what other podcasts do don't do what they do.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Yeah, don't don't just talk to each other about random shit.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Basically, yeah. It seems so simple, but yeah, I can't believe in 2026-25 people are still making stupid podcasts like these who have money.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

I'm suspecting that the podcast you're talking about is dumb and dumber.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

It sounds like it, honestly. That was what went through my head today. I'll tell you, I'll tell you afterwards the name of it because I don't want to I don't want to bag them out. No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

And if anybody's interested, they can reach out to us and we'll let them know. Outside of the podcast. Yeah. So along that vein, how does so we're niched into providing value to MSP owners? We talked about it, you know, going beyond sort of bit into just general business, but that's really our niche. So Nick and I, with a guest, and then in between we'll do our sort of a deep dive into those previous conversations. If a an owner of an MSP is wanting to start a podcast and they're aiming that at lead gen or or their current clients, do they get guests in and talk about different topics? Do they just have a conversation? Do they talk about stuff? What works and what doesn't work in that vein?

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Well, what you need to make sure is that you come across as the expert. So yeah, and there's some people say that 60 to 80% of the content should be just you. So whether that means during an episode that you make sure that you're interjecting and you're putting your you're talking, because again, bad examples. I've heard some podcasts where the the host will just ask two or three questions and let the guest just talk ad hominem, and you're like, you've just given this whole episode to the guest, or you mix it up with some solo episodes as well. But it should be that if you look at the per month, the total output, about 60 to 80 percent of it should be your voices because you're putting yourself forward as the expert. Because at the end of the day, you're the one that's putting the time and the energy and it and the money into creating this podcast. And this is what some people I try and tell them is you're doing all of that. Don't give free advertising to your guests, they're there to help prop you up and to show you as the expert. If you want to use this podcast for lead gen or to build your own brand or to get clients eventually, or turn it into sales, you need to be the expert, you need to be the one that's sending people back to your business. So you need to have one call to action as well, and that call to action is to contact you. So ideally, I would say you would have, and I know you guys don't do this, most people don't do it, but I think ideally you would have like a lead magnet, so a free lead magnet at the end of each episode. Because it with a podcast, you're not going to directly turn somebody into a customer sometimes, but it's more of a lead gen. So you would say, you know, if you want to build up your MSP, if you want advice, if you want to hire us as consultants, you guys aren't really doing that, so that's maybe not the best example. Yeah, that's a good point. Maybe we should.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

That's it. I'm changing my my close statement.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Yeah, it was it was definitely not the intent at the start, but we have had some feedback from people saying, actually, that episode was awesome. How do we find out more about that? So we're doing a lot of work internally on how to help our listeners. That's why we kind of rebranded the the site MSPmastery.blog. Simpler to say than control alt deliver.blog and spell it in a browser. And we're going to be putting a lot more information on that. But we'll do a we'll do a recording about that. Um because we have had a lot of requests, and I think it it's not that it's uh but yeah, and it's also teaching people how to use a podcast. And I I watch a lot of podcasts. You talked about having video and YouTube. Uh at the moment we're in audio, but we want to move to the uh and there's that's my my question to you is if someone is doing an audio podcast and they want to go to video, yeah. What is the minimum for that? Because you you can definitely do a podcast, an audio one with a good microphone sitting in the your meeting room in your office. But if you want to have video, like I'm in a different room with a different background today, there's a whole lot of other things that go through your head if you want video. So sorry that hijacked the conversation there a bit.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Well, let me just finish on the the lead magnet and then I'll answer that because I think what the ideal one is you have like a free, I mean, literally just go to ChatGPT and give me like my top 10 tips for creating an MSP, right? And then that that's just a free lead magnet, it's a PDF. And what you say is if you want to get our top 10 tips on how to run an MSP, go to our website and put in your email address. And so it's just the start of that marketing, right? Then you get that email address, and then then from then on, it's your marketing team if you have one or up to you to nurture that client. And so that for me would be the ideal. You have a lead magnet, they go to your website, you're sending them to your asset. The last thing you want to do is send them to the guest's LinkedIn or website. And I this was an example I heard on a podcast, I can't remember which one it was. But they did what everyone does, which I completely recommend not to do, with the guest at the end, hey, tell everyone where they can find you, what's your website, blah, blah, blah. And then this guest was in the same kind of field as the host. This wasn't a podcast we worked with, but I remember hearing about this situation and I can imagine it happening. And what then happened was people were contacting the host of the podcast saying, Hey, can you put me in touch with that guest? I didn't get the LinkedIn or what's our email or blah blah blah. But the guest was in the exact same field as the host. So they were basically literally giving away clients to the guest because they'd positioned them like that. So what I say to everyone is you have one call to action, it's to go to your website or your LinkedIn or contact you. Do not say go to the guests LinkedIn. And it can seem awkward at first for me. It was awkward when I started doing it on my podcast. But if you don't tell the guests that you're gonna do that, they don't know. Don't that's the thing, just don't say to the guests, hey, come on, because we'll give you uh we'll shout, give you a shout out, or we'll put a link. You can put a link in the show notes, that's fine. But don't tell people you're gonna do that because if you don't tell them, they don't know. And you're already giving them a free hour of promotion that they can post on their LinkedIn and they can share on their email newsletter, like, check me out on this podcast. You've already done the work for them. Don't give them that extra bit.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

And my experience in you know, 30 episodes in now is people actually really want to talk on a podcast. I don't think I've ever had anybody who said, hell no. Number of people have been really nervous, particularly if it's their first one. But most people jump at the chance.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

And I and I think the the thing that's made this one relatively successful and and feels really good is that Jenny comes up with some really good questions. And you can't just rock up and say hi and literally have a conversation over a beer because the that's not adding a huge amount of value. You know, there's a very structured yeah, we we we pick our guests based on a topic that we know is kind of trending in our industry or is a challenge that we've run into between our clients. We we pick the topic properly and we ask structured questions to get to a story to add some value to our listeners. And I think that's there's there's a lot of work, guys, that goes into the background. It's not just yeah, literally, you know, I don't do a lot of work, I just turn up and answer questions and engage in the conversation. But Jenny spends an enormous amount of time preparing for these, and uh I really appreciate your work on that, Jen. And it makes a huge difference to to the audience and the guests.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

And it is, you know, like you said, Nick, I do spend quite a bit of time on using AI, but also just you know, making sure that I've got that intro right and that it sort of fits in with our niche and and the the I guess the tone that we've set for ours and the questions sort of flow in our sort of language. I feel that spending the time has worked for us. Now, one thing, Neil, we talked about this when we recorded a podcast with you last year, and I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same way. I'll edit my own podcast to save money, which we tried that, and I highly recommend you do not do that because it doesn't work, or unless you're super techie and you've got a lot of time. So, why is that often a false economy? And what does professional editing achieve?

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? Because it's podcasting is one of those weird fields at the moment where people do think they can do themselves, and it happens all the time. I had a big client meeting a couple of years ago now, and I thought they were all into it, and then at the at the end they were like, Well, this is our marketing guy, and he has a microphone, so we think we're just gonna do it in-house. And I'm just like, fine, just do it in-house. And it he doesn't know any, he has a microphone at that like you've already mentioned, right? There's so much work that goes into a podcast, not even just the editing. It's just not that simple. And you there's so many examples you could use, right? If you had a leaky tap, you probably I mean, maybe you would, but most people would just hire a plumber, right? Instead of spending all this time figuring it out. So it's just the same thing. You can do it yourself if you want for sure. But is that your in is that your field? Is that your passion? Is that what you're interested in? It's easy enough to edit, but you're gonna spend a huge amount of time figuring out how to do it, then doing it yourself. And then just as a ballpark figure, for a one-hour episode, it's gonna take at least three hours of editing, and that's for us who know what we're doing, if because it's triple when you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, exactly. And all those little things that we've learned along the way, all these little tricks or when something goes wrong. You guys know an MSP, right? I mean, how many times is it you just kind of turn that off and on again, right? But you might not know that, you might spend an hour, you might spend an hour figgling. I I see people post things on the descript group, which because we use descript to edit, and I'm just like if you just refresh it, it will work. Sometimes even it's just those little fiddly things where you just yeah, turn the off and on again, fiddle about with it, move it, do something, and suddenly it starts working again.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

And I think it's even goes a more basic fundamental human issue with editing your own podcast is generally people hate the sound of their own voice. And if you're trying to pick how to edit and cut bits out and move things around, and you are subconscious of your own voice, you will never ever ever be able to get it right. And it's way, way easier to get someone else to it and then listen to it and go, actually, that sounds pretty good. Yeah, because I I just know that trying to edit your own voice is like listening to yourself is bad enough. Trying to edit your own voice would be like a that'd do my explode my head.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

And I think it comes down to we talked about it as well, and I've heard this many, many times as well. How much is your time worth, right? So we're dealing with people who work in professional jobs, not meaning to sound bad. They're not working minimum wage, most of the podcasts that we're working on, these are professional people. If you're a lawyer, doctor, MSP professional, your time is worth hundreds of dollars per hour. You would charge somebody to hire you hundreds of dollars per hour. So if you're gonna spend four to eight hours editing a podcast, how much of your time is that taking? And if you're not doing it during the day, you're doing it at night when you could be spending time with your family, you're doing it on the weekend when you could be doing something different, just hire somebody else for a little bit of money that's gonna free up all of your time. And at the end of the day, your podcast over the long term should be making you money eventually. If you want to bring in clients and think about, you know, we try and say to people, you bet one client from your podcast could be worth thousands of dollars to your business. Think of it as an investment you're in time.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

And one thing we talked about when we first started talking to you was around the consistency and the frequency of episodes. And we were thinking, you know, once every two weeks, and you said eh-mm, it's gotta be every week, which kind of horrified me at the time. I'm thinking, oh my god, how much is this gonna you know? It really it really made me, I guess, kind of nervous. But you're absolutely right, that consistency. But the other thing for us was we have a full-time marketing assistant here in Bali. Now I know the uh the investment of somebody in Indonesia is very different to having somebody say on tour in Australia or New Zealand. But Bagose, our marketing guide, does all of the legwork. So our schedule is Thursday, the teaser goes out on LinkedIn, that sort of happens over the weekend, and then Monday the new episode drops. And I think we've had one in the I think 26 or 27 episodes have gone live now. We had one a delay by a couple of days that instead of get dropping on the Monday, it went on the Wednesday, maybe. But that consistency, and and we track the numbers of of downloads just to make sure that we're on track and see what's trending and what's not, you know, what episodes have landed with people so that we can do more in that space. But consistency, you were dead right, consistency of that weekly episode, and I think my fear and insecurity of putting my own self out there and my voice, which I also hate listening to myself, when somebody else does that, it just takes all of that noise out of your head.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

And you just get to join join cool people, have a really good discussion, keep on topic and add some value to the listeners, and that's what I love about it.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

The biggest question is how often I should post, and it is every week, 100%. It's just you're gonna get the best benefit. Every two weeks is okay. If anyone says once a month, I'm like, you're it's just almost pointless. You say what's the point? Once a month is just too just think it should just be once a week. Yeah, and yeah, you said it's consistency of the same time, the same day, the same cadence, and the episode should be about the same length as well. Everything should be consistent. And I remember the best example I heard is you know, like your TV shows, whether it's Neighbours, Coronation Street, whatever, they're on the same day, the same time. You know when they're on, you know when they're out. And even recently, there's a podcast I came across called Shmosh We've Reddit, and I got talking to a friend and she listens to it, and it comes out every Saturday. And for her, every Sunday morning, her and her husband will sit and they watch it on YouTube. That's part of their ritual. And you know, for me, I love the rest is football. I know when their podcasts are coming out. I'm like, right, I'm listening to a new episode, I can't wait for it. You know when it's coming out, you get the notification. Like, I turned on notifications, it's actually really important. I realize personally I never used to turn on notifications for podcasts. Now you really should encourage your listeners to do that because you will get the push notification on your phone and you're like, oh, new episode, perfect, and remind you to do it.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Okay. So one last question to wrap up. For someone listening who's thinking, I'm too busy or I've got nothing to say. What's the real cost of not starting a podcast?

SPEAKER_00 39:24

Well, it just depends what your goal is, right? So if you I think that's like I gave that bad example earlier. These two guys I was talking about with the terrible podcast, they obviously have a bit of money, they just want to do a podcast for fun, and that's fine. And it really depressed me when they're like, we're in the top 10 of comedy podcasts, and I was like, Yeah, of course you are, because people know who you are and they listen to it, and it's mildly entertaining, and I can see certain people find it interesting. But if you want to make a podcast in 2026, you have to choose your niche. Why are you doing it? What are your goals? What do you want out of it? We want to work with podcasts who want to help their business, they want to build their business, who have an end goal. And it's funny as well, people thinking I don't have anything to say, because I often get that when I ask people to be on my podcast about Vietnam, they'll say, I don't have anything interesting to say. And I'm like, Are you kidding me? On I've never met anyone who doesn't have anything interesting to say. Everybody has a story. So if you're thinking of starting your own podcast, and I assume then you're thinking about, I want to talk about this, then of course you have something interesting to say. But also that's why you have guests on as well, because they have something interesting to say, and you balance that out between the solo episodes and between your own content. So everything has something interesting to say. And if you the the cost of not starting one now, eventually everybody's gonna have a podcast. Everyone with a business anyway. I liken it to the fact that not every business would have had a website in the beginning and you would have put it off and put it off, and the cost keeps going up and the barriers keep going up. Same with social media, businesses didn't used to have social media, they're like, oh, we don't want to do Facebook, we don't want to do TikTok. Now every business has Facebook and TikTok and same with the podcast. Eventually, every business is gonna have a podcast because the way marketing works, especially now, people want to put a face and voice to the brand. They want to know who's behind it. Even if you go to my website, 7 Million Bikes Podcasts, you'll see bloody my face plastered all over it. And that was by design, and I did not want to do that. And most websites, most of our competitors, most other websites, because I was looking at some just yesterday, you don't know who you're talking to. They and to be honest, um a lot of people do like to know that they're working with a native English speaker. Some of these websites, you could just be dealing with some team in a foreign country that you're never going to hear from them. They might I've heard prop I've heard stories like this before. There's problems with the edits, they don't get solved quick enough. And not even just foreign countries. That there was a weird one of our podcasts we're working with now. They were originally working with a company in Brisbane and they were just non-communicative, didn't know who they were talking to, didn't know who it was, and then suddenly they started working with us, and they're like, wow, this is amazing. We have clear communications, we know who we're talking to. So the cost of not starting is that the costs are gonna go up and eventually everyone's gonna have one.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

I think on that note, one of our guests recently was talking about the reality of an MSP is everybody's the same. They all do the same thing. And I remember being on stage at an event and asking, and I was talking about people and said, you know, what what's the difference in your business? And if you know, five people put their hand up and said, My difference is my people. Well, you're not different because there's four, you know, five of you who said the same thing and everybody else is thinking the same thing. So I guess from my perspective as an MSP, it's potentially if you're getting in now, it's a point of difference. You know, there's how many thousand MSPs in Australia, for example, and if there's a handful of those doing a podcast, then it sets you apart.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

Makes you stand out a hundred percent. To the point that I don't know if I've told you this story about there was a guy that faked being on Joel Rogan. Did I tell you this story before? No. So this is how valuable podcasts are and how valuable the little video clips are as well. Because I mean, even I have it to this day, people who say to me, Oh, I love your podcast. I'm like, oh, what episode did you listen to? And they'll be like, Oh no, I just saw your little video clip. But I love that because they know who I am, they know I have a podcast, they know what it's about, and they enjoy it. And this is what I say to people this is why even when you create a podcast, you create one asset, you create the video, you create the audio, and then those videos that video gets split up into five to ten different small clips, and then you post them in five to ten different places, you post the blog on your website, so you go from this one video, suddenly becomes tens of assets reaching hundreds of thousands, even maybe millions of people. And so that's the that's why you should have a podcast, but that's why some people will fake podcasts. Because they know the value of being on a podcast, for example. So there's this one guy who's called the V Shred guy. I can't remember his name. He had one of those programs you're like, You've been working out the wrong way. Do my program and you'll look like this, and it'll be shredded. And I'm sure his program's great. I have no idea. Sure, you will look like him and he looks great and all of that stuff. But what he did was he had one of his videos where it was all these little clips of him talking on podcast to the camera, blah blah blah. So it builds up his legitimacy. And one of the clips was him speaking into the microphone that Joe Rogan uses with the same red curtain behind and the same headphones. And that that equipment is standard equipment. You can see, I think Joe Rogan uses a sure MV7 microphone. I can't remember what headphones he uses. You can see exactly what he's using. They're not super expensive. If this guy who's got a bit of money wants to go buy that equipment, super, super easy to do. He can be set up like I am right now, and you just put a red curtain behind. He never once said he was on Joe Rogan at all. But you watch that little clip and you know what the Joe Rogan show looks like, you're like, oh, I remember when I saw it the first time, I was like, oh wow, he was on Joe Rogan. And there's don't get me started, there's debates to be whether that makes you a legitimate expert or not. But it does in many eyes, you have been invited onto the Joe Rogan show and you have been sharing your expertise. So it was then, you know, not found out, revealed, whatever it was. It was like he was never on the Joe Rogan show. He just led you to think that. But to me, at the end of the day, that shows the power of podcasting and how important it is that he was using these little clips and would go to the lengths to make you think that he was on the Joe Rogan show.

SPEAKER_02 45:42

Wow, that's crazy. Well, you know, he he was probably using the same microphone as Elon Musk was, so you know, it would that would make him famous, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_01 45:52

As always, we've run out of time before we've run out of conversation. Neil, I'm sure we'll get you back on at some point to continue talking about this. But thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your time. Appreciate everything you've done for us in our podcasting journey so far.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

You are very, very welcome. And I've just been a pleasure working with you guys. And to get to episode 30 is amazing because most podcasts don't even make it to episode 10. One of the podcasts we've just worked we've been working with for a couple of years now just hit episode 100. And that's really when you get the value. Like you guys are already seeing the value after 30 episodes, and we try and say to people, it's you just can't start a podcast for a couple of episodes. It has to be the long term, and that you will really start to see the benefits. And I'm so excited to see where you guys are gonna go. And it sounds like maybe video next, honestly, you you start you'll start to see the benefits.

SPEAKER_02 46:44

I've only got two cameras going today, mate. So I know you have three, so you've one up one upping me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

And just to go back and answer your question, if you're gonna start video, you obviously need a camera. Ideally, 4K YouTube prioritizes 4K. There's a couple of hacks with that when we do with some podcasts, we can export it in 4K, so it might not be shot in 4K, but the file is 4K, and then you upload it to YouTube in 4K. But it's like the same way I was saying with Zoom. I was work talking with one podcaster. I do audit and I audited his podcast, and I was just kind of like, your video is awful, and your audio is awful. And I was like, and you were on Zoom, right? And he's like, Yep. And I was like, you just you can't record on Zoom. Use the script if you're not going to do it in person. Make sure you've got a good camera, and then export in 4K and upload in 4K, because you know, the the standards in podcasting and in YouTube have just risen every year. Equipment's gotten cheaper, easier to to buy. You know, 10 years ago you couldn't really get a decent camera for without spending a lot of money. Use your iPhone. I connect to I'm right now, I'm not, but I connect to my Mac with my iPhone, and you can use the 4K camera on your iPhone, which is incredible. We have this technology already. Use your phone as a camera, make sure you have a decent microphone, have a decent background. If you're gonna use grainy footage, rubbish audio, and a terrible background, and they go, Oh, well, why is nobody watching my video? And I'm like, because people watch like I can't the stats now are nuts. It's like 60% of people consume YouTube on TVs these days. So you think of a 70-inch TV and people press the YouTube buddy YouTube button, and then your podcast comes up, it's gonna look even grainier, it's gonna sound even worse. You need to have a high resolution, good quality on your podcast, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:27

Yeah, thinking we might need to go and hire that studio around the corner for us, Nick.

SPEAKER_00 48:31

So it's I'm waiting on that. I'm waiting on that, or come to Vietnam. Um honestly, we have a client in Hong Kong who flies to Vietnam to use our studio because it's cheaper to record it here and have a holiday in Vietnam than record it in Hong Kong.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

That doesn't surprise me. That doesn't surprise me. Yeah. So let's wrap on that note. If this conversation hit home for you or got you thinking, head to mspmastery.blog and keep the conversation going. You'll find all our episodes there and more insights from people who've been in the trenches. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. We've got plenty more great guests and stories coming your way. And until next time, this is control all to deliver.