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Powered Services Podcast
Hosted by Dan Tomaszewski, The Powered Services Pro podcast is your high-voltage source for all the cutting-edge trends and electrifying information you need to supercharge your MSP. Plug into vital industry strategies and insights while diving into the hottest topics shaping the channel—whether it's tapping into new markets, leveraging advanced tools, or adopting forward-thinking strategies. Tune in to power up your MSP!
Powered Services Podcast
You May Get Passed by a Focused MSP Because You're Distracted, With Nigel Moore of The Tech Tribe
This week Dan Tomaszewski has a conversation with Nigel Moore of The Tech Tribe.
Dan and Nigel talk about if social media marketing is worth it, what constitutes high priority, and customer experience.
Connect with Nigel:
Website: https://thetechtribe.com/
Twitter: @nigel_moore
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigelgmoore/
Hello, I'm Dan Thomas Shefsky and this is the connecting it podcast.
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Speaker 1:Welcome to the connecting it podcast. I'm your host, Dan Thomas Shefsky with me today is the founder of the tech tribe. Nigel Moore, Nigel. Thanks for being with me today.
Speaker 3:Get a, I always have to say good day to, to pinpoint that I'm a nosy. Hello, thank you for having me. Oh,
Speaker 1:We're really excited to have you on, um, you recently had an article. I was reading, uh, in the, the channel pro network and, uh, it really caught my attention and I thought it would be really cool to have a conversation with you about the biggest threat to your MSP in 2021. And the word was distraction. Yes. Want to set it up? Is that set up like this? What, what made you, you know, how you came about with this and then we'll kind of dive into what you said in there. I think it'd be a really cool conversation to have today.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So you would know all too well that when you're talking to MSPs out there in the marketplace, they're always especially MSPs that aren't doing too well. They're always looking for external sources to blame, and they're always saying there's the economy, there's a, COVID, there's Microsoft, they're coming in to steal my clients and all of these different things. And to me, all of that is distraction. And it's taking them completely away from just where the focus should be and that's on creating an awesome business and all of that stuff is going to exist wherever we are and in the timeline. So in five years time, there's going to be other distractions. There's going to be whether there's pandemics or economic turmoil or vendors coming in and doing crazy stuff or, or shifts in our business models or whatever it is it's always going to be there. And my encouragement to a lot of people is don't like stop getting caught up in it. I say to and myself included, I used to get caught up in this like crazy, um, and worrying about the economy going up or the economy going down or whatever. And, and my thing is now that I just focus, I just focus on being able to do what I do really, really, really, really well. And I keep a kind of side eye on, on the big picture, things that might affect me one day, but I just don't engage with them whatsoever. And to me it's this year is, is going to be one of the hottest to stop being distracted because there is so much important stuff going on. We've got an economy that's wobbling, we've got a pandemic. That's changing the world landscape like crazy. The, the MSP industry, cybersecurity stuff is all crazy. But to me, most of it, when you get stuck in the media side of it, most of it is pulling you away from actually doing the work and doing the work is where you get the results. And it's where you, you really build a business. And so I say this year, the MSPs that are going to be really successful this year are the ones that just don't get that distraction. They don't engage with that distraction. That's out there. It's just getting stronger and louder and noisier and popping up left, right. And center. Right.
Speaker 1:And that's, that's the thing, I'm a distraction. We all get, we all face it. Now we all try to go out through our day or like, I'm going to get this list done. Here's my, and next thing you know, you got fires, you got tickets, you got urgent things. And I know that's one of the things you put in there that I was reading is stop this and start that. And, uh, you know, I was reading through, and I just want to go through a couple of these points. Uh, one of the ones you put in there, it says smart MSPs are not doing. And then you put, they're not using social media or if they are, they're using it very rarely. What does that mean? Does that mean for marketing? Is that for, you know,
Speaker 3:The marketing, it's the market on social media because that's where all the eyeballs are. Right? And, uh, so social media platforms can be an incredible place to market on, uh, but don't hang out on there in, in places just, just mindlessly browsing. And I say tons and tons and tons of MSPs. And it's, if, when you're working with you would be the same day. And in the more MSPs that you work with, you start to see these patterns emerge amongst them all and start to see the patterns emerge amongst the MSPs that are really struggling and the ones that are really doing good work. And, and when you, you bounce around and you might jump into a Facebook group somewhere or whatever, and you see the ones that are struggling, that are going, I can never find new clients and I can't do this. You find them posting five to 10 to 15 times a day in social media about stuff. And it's just this correlates completely the ones that are spending all their time, bouncing around on social media and getting the really quick dopamine hits, which is what social media gives you are the ones that are struggling to try and find new clients and struggling to find new staff, because they're just not, they're putting all that their time and energy is getting sucked up on those platforms rather than going and leveraging those platforms to go and build a really good marketing funnel out there. They're not getting the time to go and do it. So you gotta use them. You can, you should use them, but use them with intention. Don't use them with that whole distraction focus. Don't let them suck you into the vortex. And again, I have been horribly sucked into the vortex of social media. I think we all have, right, but, um, we've got, uh, we really have to work hard to not get sucked into it. And I even now on my, I've got a new phone in the last couple of months, I have not put the social media apps on my phone. I've got my old phone around that still exists so that I use that when I want to get sucked into the vortex, because I still enjoy getting sucked into it from time to time. But I'm intentional about it. It might be Saturday mornings for 45 minutes. I'll go and grab my other phone, my old phone. And I'll just use that to get sucked into the vortex. That's not here. So I can't get distracted on my day to day phone. And, um, and I ha because the systems like Facebook and all of these platforms are so ridiculously good at getting you on there and keeping you on their neuroscientists to the nth degree, trying to figure out how to keep us on the platform, um, that it's hard to stay away from it. And so you've got to trick your environment. You've got to curate your environment. You've got to be very aware about where you're going with these things before they take too much of a hold. And you, you become one of those MSPs that is struggling and it's, and it's not because the opportunity is not there for you to go and take. It's just because you've been sucked into this vortex, it's just pulling you away from working on the right things. No, absolutely. That's a great
Speaker 1:Point. And I think we've, like you said, we've all been sucked into it. And as much as we all try and, you know, occasionally we still get pulled back into it, but I think you gave some really good advice of, you know, try to distance yourself, maybe remove that app from your phone and maybe just do it on your desktop or, you know, on an iPad or something at night. Um, a couple other things you put in there, uh, that I thought were kind of interesting. This one, I think I would love to hear your advice here because I'm probably guilty of this one. It says there aren't, they aren't checking email teams and Slack all day. They batch process a once or twice a day. Let's go through that for a minute, because I'll tell you why. Since this whole pandemic has started, teams is like the way everybody talks and everyone's seen ding, ding, ding, ding pass. You know, things are hitting. I need you for this. Help me with this. Can you be on with this emails are piling up to, uh, what, what's your advice right there for the MSP.
Speaker 3:And so I'm just as guilty as you Dan. And, uh, and it, it probably four or five years into the journey of my MSP. I started to realize how incredibly interrupt driven my life was. And, and email was one of the worst. I would just sit in my inbox all day, every day, and I'd just watch for new things coming through. I wouldn't reply to them. I just watch just to see what was coming through, because it gave me that quick dopamine hit and I had this horrible addiction or us as humans. We have these horrible addictions to dopamine. And so nowadays I, I work very, I work as hard as I can to be intentional about making sure that I batch process most things that I do. So if I need to go into my email, I will be, uh, I've got a task in my daily task system that says, go into email and batch process. I'll go in there and I'll spend half an hour and I'll go and manage all my emails. My team managed my inbox for me. So I don't touch my inbox. I've got a secret folder that they go and put stuff into that, um, that I need to touch. And then I'll just go into that one folder and I batch everything in one go, and then I'll get straight back out and I closed down outlook and I don't use it again until next time. Ready for me to go back in there. And the same goes with teams. Teams is a bit harder when you've got a direct team of people working for you. But again, I, I use the Pomodoro technique pretty regularly. Have you, you've heard of Pomodoro, have you though the time matching thing. So I use that pretty regularly where I, and my Pomodoro, my favorite Pomodoro time is 55 minutes. And so I'll set a timer for 55 minutes where I don't eat, I don't check teams either. I'm logged out of teams and so it's not open. And I'll be just focusing on going through either a high priority task or a batch of smaller tasks in there with zero break in between to go and check teams in between or outlook or whatever in between I go from the next task from the first task to the next, to the next, to the next, the whole way through this thing with zero interruptions in between, because I'm in a Pomodoro chunk and then I'll do a five minute chunk between my, that my next Pomodoro, uh, to go and check teams and go and battery plot and everything that I need to reply in there rather than letting it ding me when I was in the middle of that, that really deep work cycle. And, uh, and I get, I've been doing that for a while now. And, and I, my, my productivity is probably double what it was just by changing simple things that in there. Um, and it's hard because it's w it's not just changing a work habit. It's, it's breaking a dopamine addiction, and that's the real hard part. Is this the chemicals in our brain, a wiring to, to really get sucked into doing this stuff and just go and grab the quick win, because we really get that little feel, good chemical rushing through our brain, as we see a new email, or as you see a new chat thing. And it's hard to break that that addiction, or it's hard to reduce that addiction. I think as humans, we have the addiction forever. It's part of our biology, but we've just got to reduce it to the, from the level that most of us have got it at the moment, which is we need a dopamine hit every two, three, four minutes. And that's, that's horrible for trying to get any deep, proper, intentional work done.
Speaker 1:And I think that leads right into one of the other things you put in here is, uh, you know, smart MSPs. They're not letting urgent tasks get in the way of important task. And I think it kind of goes back into what you're saying is, is that you're, you're, it sounds like you're freeing up your time to get your important tasks done, but how are you working around those urgent tasks that all of a sudden it's that, uh, you know, five, five alarm fires going off and like your brain goes, and then the rest of your day is shot. So I'd love to hear your take on that.
Speaker 3:The MSP industry is got out the hardest out there, of course, because we've got clients that go down and it's not like you're an e-commerce store or whatever, like, uh, MSPs have a tough, and we had a tough in my MSP as well. But what I will say is that most people, when I see them say, Oh, I've got a, I've got an interruption. I've got to go and jump across to this because it's important 60 to probably 90% of the time. It's not as important as what they believe it is. And sure, there's, we're in an MSP, we've got our[inaudible] issues, we've got clients offline and whatever it is, and sure we boldly note need all hands on deck for that sort of stuff. But there is a lot more that people treat as P ones that shouldn't be treated as P ones. They can wait an hour, they can wait until you've finished your Pomodoro. They can wait until after lunch and get it done. But, um, and, and that takes, it's scary as you go through that in my MSP, I had to go through that process that even when I first started my MSP, I was treating new user requests as[inaudible] user requests would come through to me and, and I would go and stop doing it within 15 minutes. And, uh, and that's because that's how I thought I had to go. And I went through this journey over many years to, to change that to the point where only P ones could interrupt my day. And it would, when I got to the point when I had a team and whatnot, only P ones that had then been escalated through a certain level of escalation points in my business could interrupt me. And I had to build those systems over time. And, and to me, it's, it's all about making sure that we've got processed around how to deal with interruptions, not just, and knowing, making sure that our team understand what that process is and our clients understand what that process is. Because if you just let, let you become their bouncing bag for interruptions and your, your inbox becomes their, their to-do list. And, um, and your mobile phone becomes their everybody way of, of just getting work done. Then you're never going to get any real work done. You're never going to build a, an intentional marketing funnel. That's going to get results. You're never going to hire amazing staff because you're not putting proper effort into it. You're trying to do five minutes here and 10 minutes here and trying to, trying to do it, but not getting much done. So to me, it's, it's about changing the reassigning, the values that you assigned to priority work, and knowing that in the MSP space, we do have priority work. There's no two there's things that we have to do, but, um, but reassigning the rest of it to realize that it's nowhere near as high a priority as what we might think it is. And, uh, and it can wait until the end of when we work on, uh, an important task. And I think that that distinction between urgent and important is very, very important in itself. And, uh, some of your listening, or you Daniel, might've heard of Stephen Covey's quadrant, where, where you've got the, the, the urgent important, not urgent non-important things. And it's, it's all about like moving any business forward. The more time that we can get on, I'm sorry, that's an alarm going off. I shouldn't have had an alarm going off in the middle of a podcast. Um, the more time that we can get in the important quadrant and more time we get in the important quadrant, the better our business is going to be. And the more fulfilled we're going to be because we're creating a better business. And so, um, putting those systems in place to make sure that we get as much deep focus time and important tasks is just really important for, for any business to want to get out of struggle street.
Speaker 1:Well, let's switch it now. Cause I want to go into what you're saying. You know, here's what smart MSPs are doing in 2021. And you started to get into that a little bit about building that marketing funnel. And you said they're building a marketing engine and I liked one of your tips in there. It says, learn a hint, learning how to do good marketing is just acquiring another skill, just like learning how to set up Azure active directory. I think that's one area that, you know, I thought COVID when it hit, it really showed a lot of MSPs that they didn't have the right marketing engine or, or they had to pivot their marketing engine because some of the in-person stuff immediately went digital and then they had to make that change. So, uh, you know, any advice that you have for the MSPs that are listening, you know, what their marketing engine like, you know, some advice to setting up the correct marketing engine.
Speaker 3:Yeah. There is marketing in the MSP space is incredibly tough, but incredibly rewarding at the same time. And, um, and I say like most MSPs are typical. Once we were in the 1 million, 2 million range in that kind of tiny, or I called us nimble MSPs range. Most of our, our clients come from referrals from existing clients because we're able to deliver an amazing level of service and our clients talk to their friends about us at that point. But there comes a time when referrals tap out and, um, and as you're starting to grow your business up, uh, it happens more and more like a referral has become less and less of a thing in there. And what I, what happens is that most MSPs that I see that are struggling, they don't get past that, that reliance on referrals to any sort of marketing activity. It's a Google ad strategy, whether it's a social media strategy, whether it's a networking strategy, whether it's a vendor relationship strategy, which was one that worked well for us, they don't do it. And they don't take that next step. And one of the reasons that I say that happens, that happens all too often, is that they see marketing as this incredibly scary thing that they don't know anything about. And that was me as well for many years. I just, and I was very scared of marketing because I had no idea how it worked. I didn't want to market myself. I was scared of putting myself out in the marketplace. And, um, and so I defaulted back to tech. I default straight back to focusing on the tools and focusing on the technology and focusing on all the things that aren't going to move my needle. And, um, and so I had to let that was that important stuff in my business. I had to find the time or create the time to go and focus on how to learn. Like, how do I understand marketing? What, what are the metrics or what, what, how does marketing work? What are the metrics I need to understand? What's uh, what does CAC stand for and what the CTA stand for? What does CTC stand for? What do all these things stand for? And then, then I can understand how marketing kind of works. And then what, what marketing, um, strategies out there can I use? And you look at a lot of MSPs out there. I was talking to one just last week and he, he was, he was knowing that he had to mock it, but he didn't know what to do. And he hadn't done the research to go and figure out what was working for other MSPs. He just went with his gut feel and he's, he's got fear was that he had a daughter that was in a local dance school. And, um, and they offered him a contract deal where he would do their it for them. And in return, it was able to put a poster on their wall and in their trade magazine that they sent out to their, the moms and dads of all the dance, um, instructors, Oh, sorry. The dance students. And, and my response to him was, is that a, like, is that tactic, is that being tested well in the MSP marketplace? And, and he goes, I don't know, I, I would, wouldn't have a clue. And so my encouragement to him was don't go with an untested strategy that just because it's popped up in your world, that's that you'll, you've got no proof of whether that's worked for any other MSP in the world, go out and find the strategies that other MSPs are actually successfully using, like Google ad words, strategies, or LinkedIn prospecting or whatever it is that actually are working and go and double down on them. Don't go into a blind tactic that no one's got any experience on whether it works or not. It might work, but you're disadvantaging yourself from the get go, because you're not going into a niche. You've never been in the marketing space before as well. So you're going to have to try a new tactic and build a whole strategy around using that tactic, um, blind without any help from anyone else. And so to me, building a marketing engine, the first thing you gotta do as an MSP, if you don't have one already is understand the high level concepts in marketing, just get a feel for what CTC like cost to acquire a customer is, and, and all that kind of stuff. And then go and figure out and go and analyze and study and learn and ask what the other successful MSPs that are getting results are doing. And go and start to do that because that's working go and go and tweak it so that it for your MSP, but use those high-level strategies use LinkedIn prospecting because it's working incredibly well for many MSPs use, uh, Facebook, Google advertising, because it's working incredibly well for many MSPs use business networking events, because it's working incredibly well for many other MSPs use a vendor partnerships because it's working incredibly well and go in and work on them.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things we heard the most, and I heard it from MSPs, right. When COVID started and I still hear it today is that the referrals kind of drew, you know, dried up a little bit, you know, cause people when COVID hit, like they weren't seeing that referral because they weren't getting those business to business meetings with other business owners that really kind of dried up. So I love your strategy. And I think there's something about, you know, and I ask you this, if you have a really good marketing strategy and it's working, would you have said to the guy that wanted to put the poster up, maybe try some of these other new avenues of scent. You have a marketing plan that's working and it's established. I think it's one thing to go out and try something brand new. If you don't have a marketing plan, maybe like you said, not the best thing, but if you've got a well-oiled marketing plan, then it's okay to kind of go off and do some things and see if some new things work. But you got to have a core plan working
Speaker 3:With the caveat that your have, you have tapped out your current audience sizes with your current marketing, because if you've got a current strategy or tactic that's working, instead of trying to go and build something new, going throw fire on that current one, right. Don't use that kind of line, but then you'll look, all audiences have an audience size that you'll eventually get to when you've tapped out that audience. If you're at that point a hundred percent, go and test out something new, but don't go and test out something new that no one's ever done before. That's probably got a low chance of response as well. Like putting a poster on a wall, in a dance studio. It's probably got a pretty low chance of, of having higher conversions on it versus a trade magazine or something like that. Go and try. Once you've tapped out one audience with one tactic, then go across to another proven one and go and look for proven ones rather than new ones. Once you've then got some runs on the board and you've, you've known that you can go and get into a, an existing strategy and you can, you can get some, some results out of it. And you start to build up your marketing chops and your, you start to build up your intuition for what works and what doesn't, then go and try some new stuff, then go and try some new things. When you, when you've got that whole, you're kind of starting to build this internal gut feel about what's going to work and what doesn't, but don't, don't do new stuff until you've really got a gut feel. And you've built that intuition. You've got some results out of existing things first,
Speaker 1:Right? Well, one of the other things you put on here, I thought this was really cool. I actually have some, uh, some things that I was going to ask about this, but it says they're crafting a memorable, fun, personal experience for their clients that create conversation. Um, so it's an amazing customer experience is a differentiator. And I, I fully believe that, um, in my days of being an MSP, there was things I would do. Every one of my customers, I would every like around Christmas time for us, I'd go take a meal. And I cater a meal to all of them and they have a party. It was like a little party, but it was on the, it, it was a way for us to go in and be a part of the staff and like, make it feel like our team was a part of their team. Um, we would do things like little potlucks or occasionally we'd go in and do things and just making it fun. And I love that you put that in there because that was one of the things that I think actually opened the door for the referrals.
Speaker 3:That's what got you referrals. That's what gum is
Speaker 1:Or frozen because people thought we were a part of their team. They didn't think of us as a managed service provider. They thought we were on the staff of that organization because we weren't like we were creating that experience. That was fun. It was personable, but it felt like we were there and we were meant to be there. And I thought I loved that comment. That was the one out of the whole article that I read. I was like, that's the one thing I was like, I wish more people would think about that experience. When you look at some of the stores, the restaurants, different things, you go into those ones that you get in. You're like, wow, this was a great experience. They got it from top. That's what you're looking for. So, I mean, is that what you're talking about? When you,
Speaker 3:1000% you nailed it, your exact example, there is exactly what I'm talking about going and figuring out how you can put processes in your business and in your client experience and their client journey. Exactly like that. Uh, because it's it's, as you said, that is exactly what causes referrals. People. Aren't going to talk about you because you, you were fast at responding to an outlook issue. People are going to talk about you because of all the extra cool stuff that you put out around the outside of your process. And, and in my MSP, in my journey, I, for many, many, many years, or for, for at least the first couple of years, all we tried to do was just deliver support well and, and just roll out computers well and do all of this stuff. And, and it was all, all our processes were all in our head at that stage. We hadn't documented anything at that stage. And then, um, then we went on this big drive to document all our processes in our business. And so we got all our new computer installs and all, all that sort of stuff, documented and out of our heads. And what that did then was it then freed us up to them to start to think about what freedom mindspace up then to start to think about, well, now I've got all the kind of technical things that I have to do in here. What cool little things can I put inside that process now that are going to craft amazing customer experience. And now we're just just little things like tiny examples of every time a new client got a new computer. We had these little nice cards printed out that said, Hey, we from our company, Hey, we really hope you enjoy your new computer. We had a little chocolate box that went along with them. That was branded that, that went out with them that were just little customer experience things. And we started stacking all of those little things in amongst our entire customer process and customer journey. And that's what causes conversations, things like that. Cause conversations and conversations, lead to referrals. And, um, and you, you now, your, your potlucks and your dinners and your, you becoming partners with your clients or part of their team with your clients, is exactly what it's about. Like craft that intentional customer experience. Don't just try to be good at solving outlook issues. It's not the way I, the way I used to always say to my, my team when I had my MSP was we're not an it support company. We're a customer service company that just happens to know technology, and we need to focus on customer service. First, all the technology stuff just happens on a need. We need to focus on crafting an amazing experience for our clients. First. Everything else will flow behind that.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Spot on. I mean, that's the stuff I actually loved that thing about new computers, you know, get the bar chocolate or something like that, because just something simple. But you know, those things go a long way. I mean, when it comes time to when their computer's not working, they're not teeing off on you because they know you guys care and that your truck correct. Exactly
Speaker 3:Right. Changes the dynamic, it changes
Speaker 4:The dynamic of everything. And I think it's just, like you said, some of the small things, I mean, we used to give people like pads of paper as like mouse pads or, you know, a little poker chip things to have fun with. And it just it's that going that extra mile and just doing some of those small things, we think they're small. They actually are some of the biggest things you can do, uh, to helping you know, that your customer be the biggest referral source to you. Uh, and you kind of walked into, uh, I like, I loved this one part that you wrote on this next part, whereas either we'll have better business level conversations. I think this is actually what has happened over the last year that business conversations have gotten better. Um, you know, you're talking to clients about your risk, your ROI, your efficiency, where does your business need to go in the next year? How can I help you get there? You're not talking about, you know, technical stuff Back up in that, but you know what you could be talking about, where's my business, where's your business going? What are the risks? How can I help you get there? And guess what? It's the patching, the AAV, the backup, all the secure, all of that's going to come in because you had the high level discussion of where their business wants to go. And I love what you said there, because I think too many people get focused on the QBR that I got to go in and I got to print off every report from everyone.
Speaker 3:And I'm going to prove to them that I'm doing work. It's not about that.
Speaker 4:You go in and have like, COVID has really made people pivot, like, yeah. Does your business, are you planning on going back to working in the office or are you going to go hybrid? What is the risk? What is the reward? Like? You got to have those conversations and they're going to set that roadmap for you
Speaker 3:A hundred percent. And we totally all, everything that I teach and train you now in our community, all comes out of mistakes that I've made horribly in my MSP. So I did exactly that in my, my initial journey with our clients, I would always go out to our QPRs. We used to call them QPRs back then. I hate the term QBR because there's no MSP in the world that sticks to a quarterly cadence amongst all their clients. So we call them technology, business reviews. There's, there's other different types of names you've got out there. But, um, for a long time, I used to just go out and I used to just pump down a, a pile of paper that just had all these nice graphs of how fast we responded and what your Patrick Polaroids are and what your backups are like, and whatever needs to talk about that. And I'd see my client's eyes glaze over and I'd be going, what am I doing wrong here? Like, why are they eyes glazing over? And why don't they want to book in the next one when I'm up to the next one? And after some time I'm having a little bit slow sometimes, but after some time it finally clicked that they don't care about any of that stuff. They care about their business. And so I started shifting conversations into exactly what you were saying is like, where are you guys going? What are your plans for the next 12 months? What projects have you got happening in your business? Or what challenges do you think you're going to face? Not just from a technology perspective, but from a business perspective, to be able to roll out that new product that you've got, or bring on that new department or, or add that new team or whatever. And then, then we'd have deep conversations about how we can leverage technology to help them with that. And, um, and we'd sit down and we'd, we'd highlight their risks for them. And we'd, we'd, we'd have proper risk management conversations with them and that that highlighted gaps that they needed to work on. And, and the way we we teach. Um, we've got a little, uh, uh, what do you call it? A workshop inside our, um, tech tribe, which runs people through that whole technology business review framework with a sample agenda in there. And we say, it's okay to take that patch reports and all of that kind of stuff, but don't spend any more than one to five minutes on it, don't spend any longer than that. And, and, and if you can avoid it at all, avoid it, but sometimes some people, there's still a certain cohort of people that want to see them out there. So it's okay to take them, but it's a, it's a 1% of the conversation. The rest of the conversation is around risk and future plans and opportunities. And, and what's changing in the landscape and how you can help them better leverage what they've currently got to be a, a faster business or a more efficient business, or, uh, innovate faster or whatever it is that they need to do.
Speaker 4:We just had a coaching call, not too long ago with an MSP around that same stuff, just turning the topic, having them, they went from having a pipeline of like, almost nothing to a pipeline of close to like 60,000 in MRR, because they got to see where each of their businesses were going. And now they're forecasting Q2, Q3, Q4. This is where they're going. These are the things that we're going to take a part in. And all of a sudden they saw immediate growth within their MSP. And they were like, we're not sure what we're going to do doing sales this year. And I think it's really important though, like you said, and I think that's something that we all get wrapped, whether you call it a QBR or a technical business review, you should just, the, the main point is, is you should have constant communication, make it business level, and they're going to want to talk to you if it's business level, maybe take them to lunch, they'll have lunch. If we can that, you know, whenever we get back to that or have a virtual lunch or sediment send it to their office or whatever, but definitely I love that fact about going and having business level conversations, because that's where you're going to win. You shouldn't be going in selling that new shiny object you just bought. If you're having really good business level conversations, that shiny object or whatever it is that you needed will work its way in because you have the right conversation.
Speaker 3:Correct. And what happens is the clients then come back. I was talking to one of our members the other day, who, uh, he had been struggling for years to get it go out and run his TB or QPRs or whatever with these clients. And then they would never book in another one with him after that. And they'd been doing it for years. And I said, just trust me, take this approach. And he went and started using the approach that we're recommending, which is that business level conversations. And we've got a whole framework for how they should run through those, those parts of the conversation. And he came back and said, man, the client was eager to book in the next one with me. We finished the meeting and I don't even know when the next one will. Right. And that was coming from a client that had never wanted to sit with him and talk about these things ever, because he was always focusing on patching and Avi and backup reports and trying to sell to us. They don't care about it, but he switched the conversation. And the whole thing changed. The dynamic changed, and the clients are looking forward to sitting with him and spending money with him now.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And then you're that trusted advisor. You're that person that trusted and they feel confident that they can grow their business with you. So that's, that's a really cool thing. So look, you know, we've been talking just over 30 minutes about this things that I kind of like to wrap up as we get towards the end, you know, of just, uh, I love the fact that you went out and wrote this article about distraction. I think it's a really good reminder to not only the MSPs, but just everybody that's in business. Um, they can take something from this article about just trying to take that distraction out, whether it's one thing, two things, setting your focus up in outlook or taking your leadership skills, improving it, improving your business conversations. I think it's a great article that you wrote. Um, what would you want to, if there's one thing kind of ending kind of leaving our listeners? I always say what's your final note, your final thought, uh, I'd love to hear what you want to leave us with.
Speaker 3:Well, we talked about distraction a lot, which is the negative of the thing. The opposite of distraction is focus. And, um, and so my one thing that I'll leave everybody with is, is realize that even you go on this nanny of the people that have had a big impact in the world, like the bill Gates and the Warren buffets and all of these people, and they say that their number one superpower is just their ability to focus. And so my one thing I'll leave with everyone here is, is prioritize, focus in your world, prioritize, focus in your business, prioritize, focus in your, your life and your, your goals and everything prioritize, and just have that word focus bouncing around in your head as one of your primary things to work on because the more focused, the more you get good at being able to focus, it's actually, it's a skill that you've got to learn and you've got to work on. It's like a muscle you've got to put work into your focus, and I'm still continually training my focus muscle all the time. And the more I train my focus muscle, the more impact we have, the more clients we get, the more success stories we have and whatnot in there. And so distraction is the thing to avoid focus as a thing to run towards, learn how to be better at focusing and teach yourself and train and educate and learn and work out how you can be better at focusing because that's where you're really going to get the most rewards from.
Speaker 4:Couldn't agree more. That's some great advice, uh, you know, Nigel, how do people find you if they want to reach out or connect with you or take a look at what you have. I know you've got a lot of great things. How, how, how, how do our listeners find you?
Speaker 3:The easy way is just come and check out the tech tribe.com is our website, the tech tribe.com, or you can go and connect with me on LinkedIn. Uh, one of the things, so this is talking about the levels of focus that I have in my life is that I don't use my social media inboxes. And, um, or if I do on LinkedIn, I process my LinkedIn one about once every month or two. And so connect with me on LinkedIn, you'll be able to see what I do and what I follow and whatnot. But one of my focus decisions that I've made is to stay out of the inboxes on those platforms because they're incredibly distracting. Uh, just like my email inbox is incredibly distracting. I stay out of it. I have a bigger impact in the world and so come and you can find me there. Um, come and check out the tech tribe. If you'd like, um, follow me on LinkedIn. If you'd like, I hang out on there a tiny little bit Facebook, I do have that cheeky scroll on a weekend from Tom, Tom, and I would post about something on there. So you can, you can find me on there as well. Um, but I'm not on there too often. Nowadays it's gone to that, that intentional work on them now is just, I show up when I do need a I'm tired or something. I just want to do nothing else other than have a cheeky browse.
Speaker 4:Well, Nigel, I appreciate you appreciate the friendship you for you being on here. I always follow the list and see your stuff. I think it's great. How you're, you're making an impact on the channel. I love how we're both able to work with MSPs on a, on a daily basis and help them become better. So I really appreciate you and taking the time to be an on with us today. Thank you, Dan. It's been fun. All right, everyone. So that's it. For this episode of the connecting it podcast, you can find us on the iTunes store. If you would rate us five stars, leave us a comment we'd love to hear from you. Uh, this has been a great episode on talking about distraction and, uh, leaving you with how to go and start to focus. Uh, so thanks again to Nigel and have a great day, everyone.