Beyond the Founder: Building a Trusted MSP Brand in the Age of AI with Vivienne Winborne

Welcome to MSP Mastery: Ctrl Alt Deliver Podcast, the podcast for MSP owners and leaders who want to build a better MSP, one that actually works for them.

I am Jeni Clift, joined by my husband and long time business partner, Nick Clift. Together, we unpack what is really working in thriving MSPs, including insights from the trusted partners who support them.

In this episode, we are joined by Vivienne Winborne from One Little Seed. Vivienne is a respected marketing voice in the Australian MSP channel, helping technology businesses grow through practical, senior level strategy that connects with local clients.

Vivienne joins us for her second conversation on MSP Mastery, and this time we explore the changing world of MSP marketing, the impact of artificial intelligence on search and content, and the challenge of building a brand that can grow beyond its founder.

Many MSPs begin with the founder’s personal reputation, relationships and personality. But as the business grows, the brand needs to become something that the whole team and client base can connect with. We discuss how MSP owners can preserve their authenticity while creating a scalable brand that can stand on its own two feet.

We also explore why the way people find information may be changing, but the foundations of successful marketing remain the same: clear communication, useful content, brand trust and genuine authority.

Here is what we covered together:

✅ Growing Beyond the Founder: Why an MSP brand personality needs to evolve beyond the founder, while still preserving the authenticity and qualities that made the business successful.

✅ Letting Go Without Losing the Brand: The challenge founders face when they begin to step back, and how their personality and values can become part of a stronger organisational identity.

✅ Turning Values into Behaviours: Why words such as honesty and integrity are not enough on their own, and how businesses can define the behaviours that demonstrate those values every day.

✅ Marketing in an Artificial Intelligence World: How artificial intelligence is changing the way people search for information, while the need for trust, authority and well structured content remains the same.

✅ Writing for People and Artificial Intelligence: Why clear, simple and accessible language matters across websites, frequently asked questions, marketing content and client communication.

✅ Using Artificial Intelligence as a Tool: How MSPs can use artificial intelligence to support content creation and consistency without handing over their strategy, judgement and brand voice.

✅ Avoiding Artificial Intelligence Slop: Why generic content fails to build trust, and the importance of adding human experience, context and genuine insight to everything your business publishes.

✅ Stop Selling the Rolls Royce First: Why MSPs should consider meeting clients at their current level of maturity instead of trying to sell the complete solution from the very first conversation.

✅ Building Trust Through Education: How helping clients understand their technology risks and opportunities creates stronger relationships than relying on fear based selling.

✅ Becoming a Strategic Technology Partner: Why MSPs need to understand their clients’ broader business goals and help them use technology as an accelerator for growth.

✅ Making Invisible Value Visible: How MSPs can communicate the work they do to reduce risk, improve resilience and keep their clients’ businesses running smoothly.

✅ Building Authority Through Focus: Why understanding a specific industry or client group can help an MSP become a trusted specialist instead of trying to appeal to everyone.

✅ Using Existing Clients to Create Growth: How case studies, referrals and client success stories can help MSPs build credibility with similar organisations.

✅ Marketing as a Complete Client Experience: Why marketing is not limited to social media and websites, but includes client reporting, proposals, conversations, service delivery and every interaction with the business.

We created this podcast to share the real conversations and lessons we wish we had more of while running our own MSP, with practical insights from people who understand the challenges of this industry.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I do think that the brand personality has to evolve above and beyond the founder at some point. And I think it's very difficult to do because often the founder is figuring out how to let go. The mechanics of how people are finding information might be changing, the foundations around the structure of your content and the need for developing brand trust and authority in IT and MSPs, that remains the same.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Welcome to MSP Mastery, 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 and life partner Nick, we unpack what's really working in thriving MSPs, including insights from the trusted partners who support them. With 60 plus years of combined experience, we've seen it all, from the first break fix calls to the sophisticated MSP tools of today. We've been early adopters of the tech and the strategies that shifted our industry toward recurring revenue and long-term success. Our goal with this podcast is to share the real stories and hard-won lessons that inspire and add genuine value to our industry, helping you build a business that is both profitable and fulfilling. This is MSP Mastery. Here's Nick, myself, and today's special guest. And today we're welcoming back a familiar face to the podcast, Vivian Winbourne from One Little Seed. Viv is one of the most respected marketing voices in the Australian MSP channel, helping tech businesses grow through practical, senior level strategy that actually lands with local clients. Thank you so much for having me back.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

It's a real pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

It's good to see you again, Viv.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

I even got to see Nick in person at Catalyst a couple of weeks ago.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

A delight.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Oh, I'm glad I wasn't too annoying.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

No, never.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Unlike my son.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Unlike your son.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Ah, he's not annoying. He's pretty good these days.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

He's alright. He's alright.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

We won't mention any names, but those who know him know who our son is, so we'll keep him nameless in this situation. Okay, so Viv, you're with one little siege. You've been around the industry for quite a while. So perhaps we'll just jump straight into sharing your personal and professional best since last time we caught up on episode 24, and today's episode 50. Wow, there you go.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Doubling the episodes. Yeah, I'm very happy to jump right in. So professional best for me since I spoke to you last. I'm going to be a bit cheeky and choose two professional bests in that I've just been to some really fantastic industry events of recent times. So Catalyst, of course, being one of them in Sydney around two weeks ago recently. And I had the real pleasure of being a moderator for a session with Anita from Biden talking about fixing the sales and marketing divide. And that was just a really great conversation. In the IT channel, marketing has somewhat been a bit of a dirty word. You know, people think of it as this money pit, just the pretty pictures, but sucks all of your time and energy and doesn't do you any good. So it was nice to be able to get up and have that chat. It was also a real pleasure as well to be two of a number of female presenters at that event. You know, it's that's typically a male-dominated industry, but there were some fantastic other female speakers on the day. So that was really fantastic too. And then alongside that, a couple of months ago, I went to Pipeline conference in Hamilton Island. And again, just you met some really fantastic people, had great conversations. You know, you always re-invigorated by these kinds of on-site events, you know, gets the the creative juices flowing in terms of thinking about different ideas of what you can do. That has to be my professional best, I think.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

And w worst destinations to have a conference, too.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

I mean, look, terrible, terrible. The weather was great. And I felt like I was probably one of the only people at the conference who was taking advantage of every opportunity to throw myself into the water, have swims, you know, before breakfast, between sessions, you know. So I had a great time. It was really nice.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah, I've been to a few events at Hamilton Island. It's it's not too bad at all. It's a funny hotel. I don't know if they stayed at the Ocean View or whatever it was, but uh it's like a retro, I think it was built in the 70s or 80s, and then it kind of went out of fashion, but now it's back in fashion and the bars, all these cool gold, circular kind of retro art deco stuff, and it was really cool. Yeah, I liked it.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

And I I think they'd just done a refresh. I can't actually off the top of my head, can't recall the the name of the place, but they'd just done a refresh on all of the rooms and things. So it was certainly where we I have zero complaints about staying nuts. And then my personal best, oh, it's been a really busy and social time in the last couple of months. But I think my personal best probably has to be I have two beautiful children, a 10-year-old and an eight-year-old. And the eight-year-old has just started doing competitive gymnastics. And so we just went off to Tamworth as a family to see her first gymnastics competition and watch her compete at the Tamworth Entertainment Center. And she just did so well. I was so proud of her. Just the confidence and the skill level required to get up there in front of a large audience and do a handstand on a balance beam and do a floor routine and all of those things. So I think that would be my personal best.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Great life skills getting up in front of an audience, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Well, this is it. This is it. I mean, even I think she was feeling a bit nervous, and I had the catalyst engagement coming up, and she had the gymnastics thing coming up, and I was like, look, it's it's normal, even though mummy's done these kinds of things before, you still do get those nerves in the lead up, right? I think it's quite healthy to have the butterflies in the stomach, and it shows that you're still you're not dated, you're emotionally invested. I think it's quite normal. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

And just wanted to touch on what you said about the male domination of the IT conferences. I always kind of joke that one of the best things about going to an IT conference is there's never a cue at the ladies' toilets.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

So true. It is incredibly true. And look, we could have a 10 episodes and I could talk your ear off about this because it's something I'm quite passionate about. I do think that it's something that is gradually changing, but there still is a bit of a problem in the industry. I remember being in an event a couple of years ago now and chatting to a guy, and yes, there was no line at the ladies' toilets, but I was impressed to see that there were quite a number of ladies in the room. And I was saying that to somebody who I'd just met, and he said, Oh, it's, you know, it's interesting because you seem to get more women in marketing and in the creative side, which is what I do, and more men in the technical side. It must be just about the way that men's brains are more technical. And I was like, I just read a study, and you know, from kindergarten age, boys overestimate their mathematics skills and they have this confidence and they will say they're much better at maths than girls who may actually perform better but have a lower confidence level. So from a young age, society is telling women that they are less technical. And this gentleman was trying to tell me that it was because of the less technical women's brains.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

And hopefully he hasn't made a comment like that again, but I certainly have words to say. Oh, it's just astonishing that there's still people around like that who think that way. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

And I I think you know, go into the rabbit hole on that topic, but Lynn, I've seen it too. There's definitely the male people will overestimate and are not afraid to be bullshitting their way into a role. Whereas most of the female people want to prove they can do the role before they put their hands up, and that is not good or bad. It's just a it's been a fact in the past. Hopefully it's changing. So we have to back ourselves and say, I can do this, I can do 80% of the role, I'm putting my hand up to do this role. And then you get in, you get cracking, then you do it because that's just like I say, everyone's males are much more resilient or have been more resilient to failure, I suppose.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Yes, I think it is just that confidence to have the conversation from a from a job perspective. I was chatting to my business mentor the other day, and she was talking about the fact that she will often get males book a meeting with her to put themselves forward and put themselves out there for any roles that might be coming up, not even roles that are being advertised, in a far greater way than she she sees females doing that. So just an interesting observation. And she's an extremely senior woman in the tech industry doing amazing things. So she certainly has managed to navigate her way through that. It's it's possible, but I think we do need to be conscious of it so that we're mindful of putting ourselves forward in those situations and and having a confidence to do that.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Like Thomas Edison, 10,000 uh failures before we got it right the first time. Didn't stop you from going for the next one and the next one and the next one and the next one. Just got to put yourself out there.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Okay, let's chat some more about Catalyst. So you were there, One Little Seed was a sponsor of the event. So for those who missed it, Catalyst is a new peer-led conference specifically for MSPs. And the focus is really on people in the industry's real stories rather than vendor sales pitches, which is always Nick and I went to the world's most boring conference. I won't name it, but the four keynote speakers were from the big vendors, and it would have been more interesting to read their sales brochures. It was oh my god, it was just horrendous. So I'll get off my soapbox now. So I like the concept of catalyst. I couldn't make it, but Nick was there with you. So from the conversations you had there and your current work, what are you seeing that's I guess kind of expired in 2026 that's just not working anymore? And I guess on the flip side of that, what marketing tactics have become kind of background noise and just not working?

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Such an interesting question because we know how many changes there have been in the industry, right? And I think we've made it 10 minutes without talking about AI, but I am going to bring the topic into the room. Certainly it's changing the mechanics of the way that marketing is being, I mean, a lot of different areas, but specifically to my subject area. It is changing the mechanics of the way that we are developing marketing materials, the way that we're delivering them. And I think that a lot of people are assuming that it means that certain things have expired and that that there are these whole new ways of doing things. But in fact, what I'm finding is that the foundations are exactly the same. I do a lot of reading every day on what's happening in the industry and what's what's going on. And it's the foundations that still exist and they're even more important than ever. And this is not an area where I spend a lot of time, but it's something, of course, that we always need to be aware of. If we look at, say, SEO and LLM optimization, so optimizing for AI agents, we know, for example, that less people are clicking through from a Google search result to a website. So that's fundamentally changing the way that people are searching for information. Now, in the B2B industry, we know that the buying journey is not linear. We know that there are a very large number of touch points, and depending on the article you read, some people say 23, some people say 67, you know, a large number of touch points occur. People do independent research before they're happy to talk to you. It's no longer a linear journey of we like to think that, okay, we feed them this information and then they become a marketing qualified lead, and then we send them these emails and then they become a sales qualified lead. But in fact, and Gartner has a fantastic diagram that they shared a year or two ago, which looks at how we used to view the buying journey as this linear journey, and now people are going forward as and backwards and jumping in because they're doing their own independent research. Now, coming back to that, what that means from a search perspective is that if you were relying on something like Google AdWords or something like that to get eyeballs on a page, and you know, maybe you're paying the most fantastic agency in the world to get eyeballs on the page, and you'd optimize that one landing page to be really brilliant. That's not a strategy that works as well as it once did, because number one, people are clicking less. Number two, there's actually an expectation, not just on that one page on your website, but across your entire website and all of the things you're talking about, that you are demonstrating authority, that you are offering a really great user experience to people. And that you're presenting content that is structured, that's easy to digest, not just for an AI agent, but also for the reader. And those are things that have been around for as long as marketing and websites have existed in terms of of course you need to show your expertise. That's how you show people that you know what you're talking about. Of course, you want to give a great user experience. Those things are not new, they've just become even more important than ever before. So while those mechanics of how people are finding information might be changing, the foundations around the structure of your content and the need for developing brand trust and authority in whatever your area is, and obviously we're talking about IT and MSPs, that remains the same.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah, it's it's interesting because um you say about AI, because I read some stat yesterday that it's now officially 56% of the internet traffic is generated by AI and AI agents. So only 44% are humans clicking on things. And it came up in the discussion yesterday about security on websites and how you know this thing pops up and proves you're a human. Well, you don't want those blockers on your website anymore because the AI agent can't go past that blocker and therefore it can't access your information, therefore, it won't recommend you in the answers it gives. So, with a bit of a change in strategy on how you do your website and what the website's for, you're not writing necessarily 100% for human eyeballs, you're also writing for the LLMs, and you need to have that exactly what you said, Viv, you need to have that proof that you're able to solve the problem that the person's asking Claude or Chat GPT for, and you need that evidence that you're doing it. And ultimately you give a person a proposal or something, their first thing they're going to do is drop that into an LLM and say, tell me all about this guy. Should I choose this guy? Give me the backstory, what have they done wrong? And the research tools are amazing now. Like you go back and find out stuff that companies done 25 years ago. So we have to make sure that I agree that web page at the front end needs to be super relevant to the problem you're solving today, and you need to make sure you're not blocking TL things prove you're a human. Like, that's such a dumb thing. Like, the humans are not the people using the internet the majority of the time now. So that to me is a big change I've seen recently. And I just came back from AI Singapore, which was a two-day conference on AI, and a bit of an Asian tint on it because it's based in Singapore, but that was one of the things across there. Don't treat AI as a human, it's a tool to be used, and we need to feed the tool the information we want to get the result we want. So your website needs to be written so that an AI agent can consume it and make the decision you want it to make. I don't know how to do that, but that's the new opportunity I see.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Yes, absolutely. Well, and as I said, it does to a certain extent. Doing that, it's not an either-all conversation. You know, it's not an optimized for for AI or optimized for human. What it actually is, and I was chatting to Oscar yesterday about this, and there's a big shift back to some of the things that we've moved away from over the years. For example, frequently asked questions on web pages. That's something that for a while the industry moved away from. And now that kind of structured data, which of course is also easy for you and I to consume, that data is coming back. And then there are a lot of the technical bits and pieces like your schema and which is how the website knows that you're talking about an Apple computer and not a smith apple. There are all those logistics, but again, they're best practice pieces, they're foundational pieces. And if you're doing all of those foundational pieces really well and in a really solid way, then you perhaps have already started to optimize the AI agents without even being conscious that that's what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

AI agents are literally a three to five-year-old human. So that's what you have to write. That's the target you're writing to. You can't use complicated, sophisticated human language constraints in your topic. It's got to be really clear and simple so that it's pattern matching, right? That's all AI does is patent match. So the users ask this question, I'm gonna go search the web to find the answer that matches this question. So if your FAQs have the answer to that question, bingo, you're at the top of the list, and it's such a good point. If people get too excited about AI and oh, it's all sophisticated. Yeah, no, it's just pattern matching. That's all it is, you know.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Even the simple language is a really great point, and I feel like that is a lesson that in the technology industry we continue to have to remind ourselves about on a regular basis. We are absolutely in the thick of it in terms of the jargon and terminology and everything like that. And while the audience is more technical than ever before, you know, they're digital natives, definitely the way they're talking about these concepts is still not going to be filled with jargon and technical terminology. Even though they're relatively savvy when it comes to these things, they still want a simple language explanation about what you're suggesting or recommending as an MSP. So from a customer service perspective, if you go in there and bamboozle them with all of these terms and acronyms and different things that they don't understand, then you are doing yourself a disservice. And it's the same with your website or your marketing copy or your emails or any kind of content on any kind of platform. It needs to be accessible from a language perspective as well as just for that human audience with that variety of knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

So I have a question for you, because I'm I'm kind of a consumer of the marketing of marketing people, if that makes sense. And a lot of the MSPs I work with, sales and marketing is definitely a focus, and we're all aware of it. And one of the most effective marketing tools is LinkedIn and YouTube, and then we're constantly getting barraged with digital agencies and AI tools, etc., to say, well, you don't need a marketing agency, you just we can do the stuff, and we can do this for you. And here's a free prompt, put that into Claude, and it'll generate you a full marketing strategy with LinkedIn copy and talk ads and all this kind of stuff. And it gets really, really confusing. So, how do the listeners out there, what's the strategy they can use to make the right decision for them? Because I do believe AI can help you with some routine content generation. It can't do it on your behalf, but it can help you with the structure. Because I I know for me personally, I'm really bad at if I've got to write three LinkedIn articles a week, I'll maybe you do one every fortnight and I'll forget. But if my agent prompts me every morning and says, hey, we're gonna do a LinkedIn article today, what's the topic today? Right, prompts me, that that helps me. From my perspective, I see where the human element is is the strategy, understanding the brand and your target market, your ICP, and then having a strategy rolled out, and then you can use some form of AI tool or just your own agent to help you do the delivery of the routine content and bits and pieces. So I just like interesting to get your perspective on how we help the listeners out there make that decision because they're getting barraged by a hundred people on LinkedIn every day about I can do all your marketing for you, this kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

So many points I want to make on that. And what I would start with saying is that no matter what your field is, I think you need to think about could I just get the AI agent to do my job? And chances are the answer is not completely. And I think that that it's the same answer for marketing. Of course, it can help you with content generation. But as we all know, there is way too much AI slot out there that is absolutely boring and isn't saying anything particularly important and is just kind of regurgitating the same bland sentences. Now, we work in IT. We know that you can create an agent and you can train that agent and you can input your tone of voice and you can give them some. Great examples of work you've done before. Say you've written 100 LinkedIn articles previously, you feed those to the AI agent and you teach them, no, don't use M dashes, don't use these turns of phrases. If you do all of that work and you train that agent and you continue to give it feedback on what is correct and what is accurate and what works, then from a content creation perspective, it can be really helpful and it can save you a whole lot of time. I think where people can go wrong is number one, expecting that they can take all of the marketing strategy or any kind of strategy and just say, I'll just ask AI to do it. Because without the knowledge and the expertise to review that and say, look, that makes sense and that's really helpful, but that bit is absolute total garbage. And so, you know, I'll take this bit and this bit, I'll overlay my knowledge of what's happening in the market and my knowledge of my TCP, you know, my tablet customer profile is particularly concerned about this, or yes, cybersecurity is important, but they actually don't have the level of maturity to really understand it. Unless you can overlay all of that knowledge and context and then take the bits that are useful and discard the rest, then you're going to end up with a somewhat shoddy strategy. And that's where it's a tool, but it doesn't have the context and the background and the years of knowledge that somebody else is able to bring to the table on that yet.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

And I think that you're dead right. It's I've tried it. Um, oh, that's that sounds good. And you know, then you start to read it and you think, hang on, that's and you go, oh, hang on. No, I'd reckon about 40, 30 to 40% of this is not relevant for me. So and I get to the point where I go, oh my God, this is just the reason I ask for help is I don't know how to do this. And so now I'm worse off than I was at the start because I've just got confusion, and I go back and go, oh, which it's like, I know, I'll try another LOM, get a different perspective. And then you go backwards and forwards, and you have two or three different chats going, and and all of a sudden you come up with something and it's even more confusing. Yeah, and that's where we turn to someone like yourselves and go, help. But it's funny because I I see it's like the MSPs out there, we all get told by the big companies and the peer groups and that kind of stuff, have your standard stack, you know, you're all in 150, 200 bucks a seat, and go sell that. But not everyone wants to buy that. And it's so freaking hard to sell the Rolls-Royce when the guys just got off their L plates, right? They normally they buy a Hyundai, then two years later they'll upgrade to something else, and then they'll upgrade to something else, and they'll learn a new skill, and then eventually. And I said, Why are we trying in the MSP industry, why do we try to sell the Rolls-Royce solution on day one to a cold client? But I've just come to that realization recently. I think we're doing it all wrong because I think back to my great clients, we started off solving a problem for them, and then we started off with the really basic, okay, you can log a ticket with us, and it's gonna cost you an hourly rate for us to come fix it. Then we did a bit of management, a bit of monitoring, and then ultimately got them to the Rolls-Royce service, but that was like a three-year journey. But there are so many MSPs out there now that are marketing to try and sell the Rolls-Royce on day one. And I just interested in your feedback on what you've seen work and not work, because I'm now starting to think we need to identify a problem, solve that problem, prove we're a good company to deal with, prove we've got skills, we're reliable, we're honest, and then we can have a conversation about taking you on a second date and going out for dinner and then booking a holiday for a weekend, and maybe we even get married down the track, you know.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

So I think that one of the root causes of that problem, because 100% I see that all the time, Nick. And one of the root causes is that a lot of the vendors traditionally, and they are getting better and they are evolving all the time, but traditionally their approaches and their strategies are designed for big business. And you know, maybe if you are in the US and there are just a lot more people, and there are a lot more companies out there that you can sell the Rolls of Royce to in Australia. And now I'm gonna butcher this number, but it's something like 95% of the companies are SMEs. You know, they're small to medium-sized businesses, and they don't necessarily have the maturity or the understanding or just the simple need for that Rolls of Royce straight off the bat. I actually I have various clients in the industry, and I have one client who works with enterprise level customers. And so they're working with people who are really mature and who have a very in-depth understanding of cybersecurity and AI and all those things, much more in-depth than many small businesses. But then I work with regional clients who are dealing with maybe it's a retail store, a local retail store. Maybe it is the local chemist. And those people, their area of expertise is retail or pharmacy or whatever that is. And from their perspective, they just want the technology to enable their day-to-day. And so, of course, they don't necessarily right off the bat understand or see why they would need to invest X number of dollars per month in this strategy. Maybe they're starting to understand that actually, hopefully they understand it's an enabler and that it's going to get them to meet their business objectives over time that can use technology in a really useful way. But often it is an educational journey. And I think we chatted about this last time about the fact that the best marketing is adding value and is educating that end customer. You can't go in there and just say to them, you need to be spending $5,000 a month with me on the full cybersecurity package because otherwise you might get hacked. I mean, number one, it's very easy to say, well, I haven't gotten hacked yet. So, you know, well, well, I'm good. It's not going to happen too many. When it happens, I'll ring you and you can fix it then. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

It's like a conversation yesterday, someone said, it's like selling insurance. No one wants insurance until they've had a problem where they needed to have insurance. So we are trying, we are effectively at the high level selling insurance in IT. We're trying to prevent an outage, a cost, an inconvenience to a business. And if you haven't experienced it yet, you don't. There's no true value of that yet. And I remember a story of my clients when we had we looked after government agencies and all that kind of stuff. And and the IT managers were always quite happy to have an outage because it raised their profile in the organization that we're actually important. So when we come to the table and ask for budget to do something, we're not just forgotten about. So he says, I'm quite. I said, I can probably get it fixed in an hour. She goes, No, don't worry about it. Leave it down till tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

So the hell into me in it is.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Yeah, and it's about but it's about getting airtime when all businesses are super busy. And to your point, like the pharmacy is not concerned about conditional access policy, someone logging in from Brazil to their email account. They just want to make sure the machine prints out receipts and dispatches medicine. They have a different problem profile. So yes, we want to take them on a long-term journey, but that's I think that's what to me, marketing is not just selling the initial sale, it's taking the client on the journey all the way through as well.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

And I think touching on the difference between the US and Australia, particularly, or probably the Australian-New Zealand culture, and I always think of when in Australia you hop on a bus and when you get off, you thank the driver. And it's just become this thing that we all do it, tram driver, bus driver, whatever it is, you know, thanks very much. We even think ticket booths now as we go out and pay our thing and it says, you know, have a good day. It's like, thank you very much. And here in Itz Bali, we always say Terra McCarthy as we to the booth. Where I think marketing has to be around building that, helping us to build that relationship and bring us to life and give us a personality. Where in the US, if you did that in New York, thank the bus driver, they'd probably think you're about to mug them or something. You know, it's just a very, very different culture around, and particularly our business was all regional, regional Vic New South Wales, just such a different need in our marketing to give our business personality.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Well, and I think that leads really nicely, actually, and I know that you're running this show and not me, but one of the areas I know we were keen to talk about was around founder-led organizations, of which so many. Why don't you talk a little bit about that, Jenny? And then we can delve into that a bit further because that's an area that I think is super relevant to the audience.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Absolutely. So I wanted to touch on one of the keeping with the catalyst theme, Louis Cavellas was interviewed by Aaron Smith around stepping out of the founder shadow. So both Morphability and Nick and I work with Louis businesses, Discover IT and Infocom Services. And like so many in our industry, MSPs have grown out of the owner, their personal network, their reputation. And Louis, a couple of years ago, started working with Morphability and really had to figure out how to transition from Louie into a scalable marketing engine. But he really wanted to keep that authentic connection and keep it as, you know, we're still that sort of family-owned business, I'm still here. So, how do you do that with marketing and how is it scalable to keep that connection?

SPEAKER_02 31:59

It is a challenge so many businesses face in the Australian MSP industry. And I don't think it's easy because I think that when businesses start out, when they are a founder-led organization, they start out and we talk about brand personality in marketing. The brand personality of that organization is the person's personality to a certain extent. You know, that's that's how it starts. And it's very natural, you know, the tone of voice and the personality is very closely aligned with that founder. They are the person that's been out there shouting from the rooftops about IT and about their business and explaining what they do and explaining how they do it. I do think that the brand personality has to evolve above and beyond the founder at some point. And I think it's very difficult to do because often the founder is figuring out how to let go. And I'm definitely not saying that it's going to, when I say evolve, we're not talking about taking, for example, a very down-to-earth, friendly, personable founder and brand and then making it extremely formal. And we're not going to fundamentally change that, but it needs to be something that can stand on its own two feet and not just rely purely on that person's connections and that person's personality. And it also needs to be something that the whole team and the clients can resonate with. And so that's where we start to look at, and even at the moment, one of my rocks for one of my clients at the moment is looking at taking their mission vision values that have been developed and that they've been using for a number of years now and reevaluating those. Not that the values are different, but in fact, the wording of them doesn't resonate with the team. While the leadership team are all like, yeah, those are our values, they're written in a way which is a bit too corporate and not quite straight-shooting enough for the techs and the different people within that organization to have any connection to. And so I think that's where I mean, it's something that you need to keep evaluating and that is always going to keep evolving over time. It's something that becomes not just something that the owner can stand behind. It's something that is meaningful to the company and is meaningful to the client base. And we all hope that, of course, if you are a really outspoken, straight shooting, down to it person who, you know, swears a lot, then your clients are going to be very comfortable and not too far off alignment with that.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

I can think of a few people like that. I was thinking along those lines, and I thought, how would you do that? Because I always I struggle with that as well. Like, how do you take that bound? And I, you know, I have a theory in my head that an MSP, as what we call an MSP in Australia, founder led, can only be at a certain size. And then you become something different to an MSP because you're not dealing owner to owner anymore. We're dealing business to business, which is slightly different, but we don't want we don't want to be the Telstra where it's like cold and all that kind of stuff. So there's got to be a middle ground. And I was just thinking one of the most powerful things for me was when we started our EOS journey way back in 2017 or whenever it was, is there's a a workshop that the implementers run called the Core Values Workshop. And it's not what you've got written on the wall, it's it's DNA built into your business. And there's a process, a very specific strategic process to go through to extract that out of people. And the awakening people have when we go through that process is amazing. And it is the true DNA of that business. And then that becomes the brand and voice of the business and what we care about. And those words like we're honest and got integrity, that's all BS. That's not who you are. That's just you know, that's what we call that just permission to play. So there, so yeah, when you you you're dead right. That's why I would have started exactly there. What is the purpose of the company? What are our core values? And then that's what we work on as a brand for the company. Hopefully, it's aligned with the founder and all the people that work there. Because that'd be really cool if it all aligned. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

And as you're saying, I think and the way that we look at that and talk about that is what are the behaviors associated with some of those maybe corporate wanky words, like honesty and I mean, of course, we all want honesty integrity from ourselves, from our team members, from our clients. Who is going to hand on heart say, oh, that's that's not relevant to me? The words might not resonate with you, but you still want honesty and integrity. But you know, maybe you need to instead of putting those words up on the wall, be like, what are the behaviors that I haven't exactly? And and how am I bringing that to the table and modeling that for the team? How am I showing that to the clients? And I think as well that it links back in a really interesting way to what we were talking about, the fact that we are to a certain extent selling insurance or where the sign of a job well done for an MSP is that nothing happens and that you don't notice. If you don't have to call your IT people, you can just do your job and you don't have to think about it. I mean, your IT provider is doing a really great job and you're not thinking about them. And it's the blessing and the curse because if nobody's thinking about you and no problems arise, then they don't even consider that you're doing a good job, you know, because you are actually not even background noise. You don't even exist in their mind in any way, shape, or form. And so I think then if we look at values and behaviors, how can we, even in our, and this comes down to customer service, to client reporting, and you could argue about whether it's marketing or not, but I think client relationships is an integral part. You know, how are you presenting back to your clients and communicating in an honest and valuable way? You know, maybe it is uh we've patched this many vulnerabilities, we've done this, we've done that, but giving them that transparency without fear-mongering and without heading into that selling through fear, but showing them how you're managing their risk or helping them to manage their risk, because of course it's always a shared responsibility model. But how are you doing that in a way? How are your behaviors reflecting that work you're doing while you're hopefully not even in the back of their mind, not in their mind at all because their systems are running so smoothly?

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Yeah, it's like the old sales pitches we used to use back in 20 years ago. That you want to move from the utility expense line into the value line where the uh lawyers and accountants are, not where the plumbing and toilet supplies are. And how do you add value back into the business? Where service providers now, and it's like it's a topic that happens all the time, is we need to be showing our clients how to make their business run better, not just fix IT problems because that job's going away. Like the machines that, you know, three, four years from now, though every machine's gonna be self-fixing. You're not gonna have a Microsoft tech because the Microsoft AI is gonna fix the machine before it has its own problem. So it's not about making, keeping the lights on and the machines working, it's about how do you use the technology to help your clients' business go better.

SPEAKER_02 39:23

Well, and that pipeline, apologies to this speaker, I can't remember who it was who was talking about it up on stage, but they were talking, they were asking how many of the audience members were sitting in on the annual and quarterly planning sessions with their clients as an MSP, were they part of that strategic planning sessions? And the majority of the audience were no. And that's where, as you say, the the laptops and the cybersecurity, you know, all of those things are starting to become self-service or, you know, they're they're happening automatically. So if you're not speaking to your and your clients are probably playing around with AI, they might be playing around with power apps and power automate, they might be doing all of those things. And if you're not saying to them, oh, hey, I know that you have been doing this, that, and the other, have you considered this approach? Have you talked to your team about that? Let's work together to take what you're doing in your own time or the things that you're playing around to solve your day-to-day problems. And how can we work alongside you as a strategic partnership to really make technology an accelerator for your business? And if you're not doing that, then eventually that relationship might be at risk because you'll become irrelevant. Yes, exactly. And somebody else might step in and offer that service. Absolutely. Yeah. Which is tricky, of course, because the technology is evolving so fast that and people are busy with their day-to-day that how do you say on top of that? But it's a different podcast conversation.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

So let's finish up with some tangible tips, if you like. Let's look at the next next six months. So we're now June. Between now and December, you're an MSP owner, you're sitting in that level 10 or your leadership strategy meeting planning out for the rest of the year, and we're going to be setting some big rocks or priorities for the marketing strategy for the next two quarters. What's going to be at the top of the list? So we've talked about AI content, we've talked about LinkedIn, you can do videos, you can go to networking events, you can host events, but what's if you if it was you, if you're the MSP owner, what would you be putting as those rocks?

SPEAKER_02 41:48

Well, if my brand foundations were in order, if they were not in order, I would start with that. I would start with saying, are we, you know, that conversation we had early on around structured content building online authority and brand trust. I think that that's an essential piece because even if you're not doing Google AdWords or you're not, at some point, people are going to do their own independent research into your organization and they are going to be making judgment calls about your organization without you in the room, you know, without sales rep being able to give them that message. And that's where that brand foundational piece is absolutely crucial because if they look at your website or your brochure or your market materials or any things like that, and they're like, oh, these people seem pretty dodgy, or oh, they they're not giving me anything that can help me make a decision about whether they know what they're doing, then subconsciously, if somebody else is doing that, they're going to have a bias towards that other company. So brand foundations 100%, if you haven't sorted that piece, that is number one every single day of the week. If you've got your foundation sorted, pat on the back, well done, you would, I think that analyzing your current client base really is where most of the people, most of the organizations I see can get a lot of big wins. Do you understand where the gaps are and where the opportunities are within current clients? It's much easier to maintain a current client and grow their month monthly recurring revenue than it is to bring on board a new client. So if you're not analyzing and in if your L10 scorecards don't include monthly recurring revenue and you're not considering in your rocks how you can move the needle on that monthly recurring revenue to be like, okay, you know, there is a lot of opportunity in cybersecurity AI and whatever that that is. You know, maybe you're looking at the the number of core products that 56% of our clients have three or more core products. How can we move the needle and set ourselves a goal to move that to 65%? That is going to have a huge impact. Your business. And then the third piece, because I know everyone always wants net new logos. You know, how can I get those net new logos? We all want the net new logos.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

We know, let's be honest, all we want to do is pay our marketing company $1,000 for a new client. And it's probably more like $15,000. The cost of acquisition, probably about $15,000 for a new client now.

SPEAKER_02 44:21

So but can I just say, and this is a huge bugbear, and we probably don't have enough. And we'll be in the third episode. But if you are thinking you're going to pay your marketing company $15,000 and you're going to just go along to a meeting with them once a fortnight and say, oh, yes, yes, yes. And then you're not going to take any of their recommendations on board and you're not going to do any of the things they're suggesting to you to do. Your salespeople aren't going to engage with it. Nobody, and you're just expecting the marketing people to go off and do their little marketing thing and come back and deliver you said leave into your lap, you are setting yourself up for failure. And that will not happen.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

Yeah, I agree. So back to your point three. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

You can tell I'm fascinated about that one. Back to point three. I would say if you have a really great understanding of your TCP and you know you're really strong in a particular area. So you're really strong in health, then that is where you can start to take your understanding of that area. Don't try and boil the ocean. Don't try and go out there and get every client under the sun. But start to look at health events. Start to look at whether you have any prospects in your in your marketing database who are health focused and how you can be communicating with them and using your understanding of the current pain points to really speak their language and demonstrate you that you're a subject matter expert in that area. Consider webinars and email campaign, all the different communication strategies to get out there in front of that audience. Consider whether you do need to, if you're running an event, how are you going to reach people? Maybe you do need to be looking at putting together an ideal customer list, you know, your dream list, your wish list. I'd love to have these 25 health customers on my books. Okay, how can I use the tools that are available? Whether that's, you know, an online database tool like Illusha or something like that to get details, whether that is a LinkedIn, we use a tool called Drupify, which allows you to do LinkedIn automation, reaching out to CTOs and CEOs and CIOs of health organizations as an example. You know, how can you be connecting with those people to invite them along to a value add style event or to read a value add piece of content where you are sharing some of your learnings, your knowledge and your insights on how they can solve problems, whatever method you're sharing that via, get their eyeballs on it in order to start building that relationship and don't expect it to happen overnight. Expect that you're going to have those 20 to 60 touch points before you can get them in a room. I like that.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

And it is, it is about being that expert in a particular field. I know, Nick, you share this story often that many years ago, Nick and our BDM were driving from our office in Echuka out almost to the South Australian border to go and visit a council and drove through, was it seven regional councils, of which we looked after two, one on the journey and one on the destination. And you said to Michael, our BDM, over time, we ended up with, was it all but two of those councils we worked with within about a two-year period?

SPEAKER_00 47:43

No, all of them. That was just a mindset thing.

SPEAKER_02 47:46

And also that depth of understanding of that area, because you already knew how to get the best for those local councils. And so therefore you're already, you're already on that pathway that allows you to demonstrate that expertise.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

Yeah, and we had the credibility with the other existing clients. And it's it's just I know we're at time, but it's just just so frustrating when MSPs have a really great customer, but they don't leverage that and ask them for referrals or do a case study on that customer and then go market that to their peers in exactly the same industry because you've already got the credibility here. Like you are doing a really good job here. So just leverage that. It's I know it's hard, I struggle with it myself, but eventually customers said, Well, we really love working with you, Nick. How can we help you? I go, Oh, I don't know, I'll find out.

SPEAKER_02 48:38

Yeah, here, write this. If you're doing a case study, don't let it sit in a drawer and get dusty. You know, make sure you're putting the what if you're doing a proposal for a healthcare client and you've got this great healthcare client that this great local government client that is happy to shout about you and say nice things, put that quote on your proposal when you're sending it out to those people. Have a look at that case study and find 20, 30 ways that you can use the content in there in various different communication materials and pieces so that you are really reinforcing that expertise.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

On that note, I think we need to wrap. And it just came to me while you were chatting then, Viv, that I think we talked last time about doing a podcast on what not to do's in marketing.

SPEAKER_02 49:35

There are so many.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

So maybe that'll be episode three for us because there's just so much more. I think we can, you know, the the time that we have together goes so fast. But thank you so much again. Really enjoyed the conversation and I always learn from you. So thank you. And thanks, Nick.

SPEAKER_00 49:50

No worries. Yeah, it's good. I got lots of more questions too.

SPEAKER_02 49:53

Well, let's write them down so that our bird chat together, we can make sure we cover them off because I think we always find new tangents to explore. I really appreciate you having me. Baffian, it's been a real pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

Great. Thanks. It was lovely to chat. 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 wisdom from the peers and partners who are shaping the future of our industry. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. We've got plenty more great guests and stories coming your way. Until next time, this is MSP Mastery.