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Evolved Radio Podcast: Interviews with technology experts, industry thought leaders, business leaders and other interesting minds. Exploring the evolution of business and technology.
Todd Kane: Look at your MSP website,
then look at your competitors.
Same stack, same certs, same promises.
My guest says, "If clients can't
tell you apart, you're not a
partner, you're a line item," and
all the line items get replaced.
Eric Bowles is here to fix that.
Evolve or evaporate.
Eric, welcome to the
Evolved Radio podcast.
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Todd, my brother, how are you, man?
Thanks for, thanks for having me on
Todd Kane: absolutely.
No, I, I'm excited for this.
You're, uh, an excellent storyteller
and love to tell, to tell it how it
is, so, uh, my favorite kind of guest
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Yeah, the, the second
part is certainly true.
It, uhâ¦
I have actually turnedâ¦
Todd Kane: held.
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
I have, uh, yeah, I have, uh, turned
down speaking events, paid speaking
events, because they've said, "You- the
only rule is you can't swear on stage."
I'm like, "It won't come off right."
Like, I don't do it on purpose.
Like, it just, it's just part of
the way I speak, and, like, you're
not gonna have a good delivery from
me, and it's just not who I am.
So yeah, I definitely tell it like it is.
But I appreciate the good
storyteller com- compliment, though.
Todd Kane: Yeah,
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
I-
Todd Kane: uh, on, on brand.
So yeah, uh, and, and brand is
certainly something you know a lot.
That's, that's what we're
gonna be talking about here.
So, I guess the, th- this seems to be kind
of like your real, uh, sort of charge in
the industry is the anti-commoditization.
And I have ⦠Like, I
think this is really true.
I wanna hear sort of
your position on this.
Um, but I have some, some things I wanna,
I wanna pick at as well, um, because
I'm a big fan of standardization, which
I get is different than sort of the
commoditization race that we're seeing,
but helping sort of run up the middle.
So, um, maybe start, give
us a bit of your background.
You got pretty awesome brand background,
the people, the, the brands that
you've worked with and helped build.
You wanna give people a bit of sense
of, uh, so your background there?
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Yeah.
So, um, uh, starting way back in the
'90s, um, a buddy of mine introduced
me to the internet and I was like,
"Oh, this is cool, whatever."
And I built a web design company
'cause anybody could be a web designer
'cause all websites looked horrible.
Um, so it didn't matter what they, you
know, what, what your skill level was.
And, um, sold that company, built a
second company, sold that, third company.
As we evolved through that, um,
this is way back in the day when,
uh, John Street, the founder of
Pax8 and MX Logic, owned USA.net.
He started USA.net,
which was the first out-of-platform, like
AOL, Prodigy, whatever, CompuServe email.
Like you could take your USA.net
email address with you anywhere, as to
where before that it was like, you know,
if I had an AOL address, I was married
to AOL 'cause I couldn't like move to
Prodigy and keep my AOL, AOL address.
Um, I brought him his first really,
really big deal of about 130,000 seats
of email, and, um, that's where I met
him and Scott Chasin in the late '90s.
And then, uh, went to work for a media
company, which is, you know, um, I
guess that's one of those stories
about I'm a recovering, you know,
worked for a media company person.
Um, and, and during that
time I, I was an engineer.
Like, like I've, I've worked
inside the tech space.
We were a, a VAR before MSPs were really
a thing and, and managing IT and all that.
And, and, um, uh, I, I was deep into, into
Sun Microsystems infrastructure security.
I was an MCSE, I was a CCIE for
Cisco router and switch and security.
Um, and then during the MX Logic days,
John called me and he said, "Come in
and, and kinda rebuild not only my
sales engineering team and, and how
we're approaching things from a sales
perspective, but we need to figure
out like how we position us to exit."
So we did that.
And, um, it was th- th- literally
our CMO at the time like pulled me
into his office and he was like, "So
everybody on the sales floor is saying
that when they get you on a call, you
don't ever, ever show our product."
I was like, "No."
And he's like, "And your
close rate's like 98%."
I was like, "Right."
And he's like, "Why?"
And I was like, "It's just
not about the product.
They don't care about the product.
They could give a crap about
the cool interface we built.
They could give a crap about anything
except for does it catch spam and keep
us protected and keep us more efficient?"
I was like, "It's all they care about."
So we actually had somebody pull, one
of the engineers, one of the product
engineers, pull stats of everybody
that ever signed up for MX Logic.
It was like 71% of them had
never logged into the console.
They just pointed their MX
records at it and it just ran.
They never once logged in.
I was like, "There's
your proof right there.
Like it's not about the product.
It, they, they, they don't care.
Um, you have to talk their language and,
and talk about what their outcomes are."
And he was like, "You
should be in marketing."
So my approach has always been, I don't
think I've ever opened a marketing book.
I think I may have written part
of a Seth Go- written, read
part of a Seth Godin book once.
But everything I approach from
is from behavioral psychology.
Put down all the marketing books,
put down all the sales books and
all the business books, understand
people, you'll sell all day long
Todd Kane: And is that something that you
got some level of formal training in, or
is it just something that you picked up?
Like, what is your background
in behavioral psychology?
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
So, um St- you know, way back when
I was a kid, I was just fascinated
with, like, some of the stuff we
learned in, like, junior high when you
go through psychology and all that.
Then when you go to be a paramedic,
so before all the tech stuff in the,
in the '90s I was a paramedic with
the fire department, um, you have
to go through some psych classes
there to learn how to deal with
people that are distressed, whatever.
And I was like, "Ooh,
this is cool," right?
So,
Todd Kane: Yeah
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
I got excited about that, and then I just
continued to learn and learn and learn,
and then later I was like, "You know, I
should probably, like, formalize this a
little bit and actually go get a degree."
So I went and got my degree in behavioral
psychology and filled in the holes and,
and learned a, you know, more about
the neuroscience component of it and
how our brain works and, and all that.
And, and soâ¦
And I'm probably gonna go back
here very shortly for my master's.
Todd Kane: Very
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
So yeah.
So it's at, it, it's at the intersection
of, of, you know, business and I guess
somewhat marketing and, and behavioral
psychology and, and storytelling, and
really communication and how we show
up and that's kinda what, you know, in
the mxLogic days we had a lot of people
that, um, senior executives and stuff,
that we were starting to get invited to
events as this small little spam company.
So I worked with a lot of our senior
leaders on how you present on stage,
how you deliver stage presence, how
you build your vocal image and your
physical image and tie all that
together and story tell and, you
know, we get that confused, right?
We're like, "Oh, I tell great stories."
You might.
And telling stories is not storytelling.
Storytelling builds lore.
There's a big difference there.
Todd Kane: Hmm.
Okay
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
you know.
And, and, and so everybody looks at,
you know, is this corporate brand?
Is this personal brand?
I don't think either one
of those things exist.
I think those are results.
Brand is a result of what you do.
Um, y- you know, uh, probably the,
the, the best way that I could frame
it is with what you do, Todd, right?
Like, you have a course on, um, uh,
MSP service manager training, right?
You don't come out asâ¦
The, the, the service manager is not a
thing, the service manager is a result.
What you do is, you know, how do you
embody a service first ap- first approach?
How do you manage the business?
Um, what does the role look like?
You know?
Um, you know, how do you build culture?
How do you manage people?
You know, how do you measure metrics?
After all of that, what comes out the
other side is being a service manager.
It's a result of, of the work that you
put in from the training that you give.
Brand, personal brand or otherwise,
is, you know, when you find clarity
in who you are, that builds onâ¦
Once you know that, 'cause we're
not who we are, we're who everybody
else made us to be, bosses, coaches,
teachers, parents, religious
leaders, peers, customers, whatever.
We're not who we are.
Once we figure that out, then we can
move into our confidence component
and say, "Okay, yeah, I'm, I, I'm more
comfortable with who I am now 'cause I'm
not what somebody else said I should be.
I'm now more confident.
I have the clarity, I have the confidence.
Now I can start to build
a communication style."
Once you build a communication style,
you start to build storytelling,
you start to show up with presence
and, and, and command the room, and
that is what builds personal brand.
And now personal brand folds
up into corporate brand, right?
We're like, "Oh, this is our brand."
I'm like, "Brand is made up of people."
I had this argument with a, a,
a fairly well-established CMO
in the channel, and they were
like, you know, um, "No, no, no."
The, they're like, "People
don't matter about our brand."
And I was like, "What
goes into your brand?"
Like, "Well, for starters,
our mission statement."
I was like, "Read me
your mission statement."
And she was like, "So weâ¦"
And she started down the road,
and I was like, "Stop right there.
We who?
We the logo, we the servers, we
the racks, or we the human beings?"
I was like, "Without human
beings, your brand is hollow."
But there's a lot of
brand as a result, right?
It's how I get treated.
It's, you know, in, in the very, very
early days, there was just five of
us at Pax8, and I was like, "What's
the one thing that sets us apart?
And it can't be anything technical
'cause anybody else can reproduce that.
Single pane of glass, single, you know,
single license ordering, whatever."
Um, and we spent a day on that,
probably a day and a half, and, uh,
Ryan Walsh said, "It's the experience
you get when you work with us."
I was like, "That's defensible.
That is the one thing."
And that was our guiding
light for years, right?
It was, you get a better
experience with Pax8.
Well, how do you get a better experience?
Yeah, part of that is the way we show up.
Part of that is academy and how they
teach and make you a better MSP.
Part of that is, um, you
know, service uptime.
A lot of that is the people behind it.
How do I get treated when
I answer the phone, right?
When I call in, somebody answers
the phone, how do they treat me?
Todd Kane: I love that idea of
sort of, uh, brand and lore.
I, I don't know if I'm stealing this
from somebody else, but, like, the
thing that came to mind for me around
that is, uh, brand is not what you
tell people you are, it's what other
people tell other people what you are.
I think that's a much better
description of it, right?
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Absolutely.
So, um, kind of the, the, the godfather
of brand overall is a guy by the name
of, um, Marty Neumeier, and he's written
tons and tons of books, and, and he has
this really great graphic and, and, uh,
it's, it's six different stages, and
this first one is like, you know, um,
it's this guy and he's shouting to a
group of people like, "I'm a great lover,
I'm a great lover, I'm a great lover."
And it's like, this is
advertising, this is marketing.
And then on the phone it's like, this
is telemarketing and all this stuff.
And at the very, very end
it's, uh, uh, what is it?
It's, it'sâ¦
The very last panel is, it's a girl
walking up to the guy and she says, "I
understand that you're a great lover."
And he's like, "That's brand."
That is brand.
And I was like, that's like
the easiest description ever.
Todd Kane: That's great.
I love that.
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Yeah.
Todd Kane: So let's, let's, uh,
push this back onto the, the
MSPs, and I, I, think they'reâ¦
You know, marketing is not something
that MSPs come to naturally.
M- I would say there's sort of 70/30
split in the industry of, like, 70% of the
industry is technical-led founders, and
there's some sort of marketing-focused,
but primarily account manager and
sales-focused, uh, MSP f- founders.
So this is not an inherent skill
for a lot of people, and I think
they really struggle with this.
And what I think you end up with
that lends towards sort of your call
against commoditization is most of the
marketing they have around brown b-
m- brand building, website building,
even their marketing engine, is
basically borrowed, um, catalogs, right?
Like my, uh, my template for
my website was sold to me.
It's kind of off the shelf.
All of my marketing material
is either borrowed from the
vendors or from, you know, a, a
marketing catalog that I pay for.
So, like, none of this is really, is
enabled by their, their brand identity.
It's just sort of borrowed, uh, shelf
stuff that they sort of stuff onto
their, their, their own image, and
obviously that's a problem, right?
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
I agree, man.
It's, it's, you know, it's when, whenâ¦
And, and to your point, like, right,
we have to have standards, right?
Like, everything is standardized.
We all have to kinda offer the same
thing with some variations in there.
But, you know, as, as we start at the,
at, at the, what we would traditionally
call the top of the stack and say we
offer, you know, endpoint and backup
and disaster recovery and M365 and Azure
and all this stuff, as we go further
down, where we start to differentiate
ourselves is, um, now we say upfront,
you know, "Oh, we have great support."
Great.
Everybody says they have
great support, right?
Um, I don't know that until I become
a customer, and then after that I go,
"Oh, this isn't as great a support as
I thought it was," or, "Service desk
isn't as strong as I thought it was."
Or you go, "Wow," like, "compared
to my last MSP or, or whatever,
like, this is remarkable," right?
So building that service desk is
critically important, but how do
they know that before they get there?
So, um, the, you know, it took us, what,
like a year and a half after AI became
really prevalent for all of us to look
at stuff and go, "Ah, I think that's AI.
I think thatâ¦"
Like, our brain just picked up on it.
We're like, "That's AI, that's AI."
So the brain has, um, a, a thing called
superior pattern processing and superior
pattern recognition, and there's six
domains within that, and it's like
sum of all parts, top-down, bottom-up.
There's heuristics,
there's all this stuff.
We, um, w- when, when you think about
the way that the brain brings information
in, um We bring in about 50-- 40 to 50
million bits of information at one time.
We can process between 25 and 50 bits
of information, so most of that stuff
just gets completely disregarded.
Like, the example I always use is
when I'm giving a talk publicly is,
as you're sitting there watching this
podcast or sitting in the audience,
notice that when your mouth is closed,
your tongue rests on the roof of your
mouth, not on the bottom of your mouth.
Now that you're thinking about it,
you're like, "That's messed up.
That screws up my head."
Butâ¦
And you'll think about it the rest of
the day, but we don't think about it
because our brain filters that out.
The same reason that when you
move offices, you go to the old
office for the first three days in
a row, walk through the door and
go, "We don't live here anymore."
And you turn around, get in your
car, and go to the old office
because all that stuff is mapped.
We are now so good at understanding
what a templated ad looks like, what
templated marketing looks like, that
we see it and, you know, and I know
these template companies and these,
you know, all these different marketing
playbooks and toolkits and all this
other stuff, and they're like, "No, no,
no, you change your logo and your colors
and this and that and the wording."
It's all laid out the same.
It's all formatted the same,
and that's what we pick up
is, is the sum of all parts.
We look at that and go, "Nope,
I'm gonna disregard that.
I, I know that that's an ad."
Um, one of the challenges I always
give everybody is grab a piece
of paper or, or raise your hand
if you're in a live audience and
say, tell me three brands that you
remember their marketing from today.
What did you see?
Who are they?
And what do they do?
You usually can't name any
more than one, maybe two.
We see thousands, like, like we see
like 2,500 to 5,000 ads a day, and
we don't remember any of them because
our brain just ignores them, right?
It's, it's, it's what it does.
It's there to keep us alive.
It's not there to, like,
process everything.
If you did, you know, the
brain's super, super lazy, super
lazy, and it's an energy hog.
It weighsâ¦
It takes up about 2% of your total body
mass and takes up 20% to 25% of all your
base calories that you burn in a day.
So, you know, the, the more
efficient we can make that machine.
So templated ads just simply don't
work, and I've had this discussion
with people, and they're like, "No,
it does work," just like outbound
cold calling works and whatever.
And I'm like, "Look, I'm not
arguing based on opinion.
I'm arguing based on neuroscience
that is thousands of years
old of how the brain works."
So you can pretend that
it does, but it doesn't.
Um-
Todd Kane: But wouldn't people argue
that, like, I need to have something?
Like, I, I need to have
a presence on LinkedIn.
I need to have, you know, s-
obviously a website, right?
And if, uh, you know, if I don't know
how to build it, then I should have
some generic thing that I bought from
somebody else or got from a, from a
marketing pack, and at least now my
profile has some information on it.
Isn't that better than not
having any information?
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Oh, absolutely.
100%.
You've gotta have that.
But to your point, right?
It's like we're not very good at this.
What we do is we, as, as geeks,
love to talk about how smart we are.
We love to talk about the, the
acronyms and the nerdy stuff
and, and, and all of that.
So we go in and we talk aboutâ¦
So people buy into stories that
they can see themselves in.
They don't see themselves in a breach.
They don't see themselves in a ransomware
attack because it's never happened
to them, and it's never happened
to anybody that they know, right?
So think about if you were to go
into your auto mechanic and say,
"Hey, I think my brakes are bad."
And you'd be like, "Yeah, great."
They change the brakes, they call you
back, and they're like, "Hey, by the
way, we took it out and we test drove it.
And during the test drive, what we
noticed was at WOT, the TPS collapses,
and everything goes haywire."
And you're like, "I don't know what you
just said or what that means," or Iâ¦
Like none of that makes any
sense, and this is the way
that we talk to our customers.
If your doctor were to say, "You know, we
need to talk about heart calcification,"
you'd be like, "Okay, I'm game.
Let's talk about that.
I don't know what that means."
But your doctor says, you know
Do you wanna see your kids graduate?
Like, stuff like that, right?
Real-world stuff.
So the mechanic wouldn't say that.
He would say, "Hey,
there's a little sensor.
It's called a throttle positioning sensor.
When you mash the gas, that thing kind
of stops doing what it's supposed to
do, which is deliver fuel to the engine.
So if you had to get out of a sticky
situation on the freeway going 65, your
engine's gonna die, and your brakes,
your power brakes are not gonna work.
We probably should change it."
Now that makes sense.
You're like, "Oh, okay.
I get it.
Got it."
Throttle positioning sensor, TPS.
Wide open throttle, WOT.
If you just said that in the first
place, which is what they do,
'cause they know you don't do that.
We don't do that.
We love to talk about all the geeky and
the nerdy stuff, versus just going in
and saying, "Let's zoom out 30,000 feet
and tell me about your business, not
the technical side of your business.
I wanna know where yourâ¦
I wanna know about your business.
Why did you start this?
Why didn't you just go
work for somebody else?
Like, what's the purpose here?
Like, you could have a whole lot more time
back if you just went to work for somebody
else, so there's gotta be an underlying,
like, emotional meaning, right?
So what is that?
Where do you see yourself in
six, 12, 18, and 36 months?
Now, what's in the way?"
Not from a technical perspective,
from a business perspective.
You don't hire a CFO to come
in and go, "I don't know.
There's money in the bank.
I guess we can spend it."
Like, that's not his job.
His job is to look at the entire business
and go, "We can be more efficient.
We can lower headcount.
We can do it here, here, and here, and
make us a more profitable business."
You should be the exact same thing.
You've gotta go up a layer.
And so back to the, you
know, how, how do we show up?
I, I'm not professing thatâ¦
I, I'm obviously going to say
that everybody should be creating
video content, and there's some
Gemini AEO reasons beyond that
as well that relate to YouTube.
But even if you're not gonna create
video Don't talk about the product,
talk about how you got there.
Make a post every day or t-two or three
times a week on LinkedIn that just talks
about a problem that you're solving.
Don't think of it as creating
content, think of it as documenting.
Um, a buddy of mine that owns a company
called VaynerMedia, they're a huge
digital agency, he kinda coined that,
where he said, "Document, don't create."
Um, uh, I worked with REI, and we
were trying to get on, on building
social presence, and we were trying
to get people to do product reviews,
and everybody was like, "No, I c-
I'm not, I'm not skilled enough.
I'm not enough, good enough
skier, mountain biker, whatever,
to do a review on this.
Like, I'm just not
qualified to do a review."
And I was like, "That's great."
I was like, "Can you tell me what
your experience with it was?"
And they're like, "Oh, absolutely.
Here's my experience.
This backpack is great.
It's got side zippers,
it's got this, it's gotâ¦"
And I was like, "You just gave a review.
I just changed the word to experience."
So you're still creating content,
you're just documenting your day.
And do it throughâ¦
So what I always tell everybody
to do is we talk about ICP, and
we're like, okay, ICP is we work
in the HVAC industry, right?
Our mo- majority of our customers
are HVAC, plumbing, et cetera.
Great.
Then we talk about buyer personas, and
we're like, our buyers are companies
between this size and this size.
And I'm like, it's not a buyer persona.
What I wanna see is somebody
that works inside the business.
This is Sally.
She's married.
She has two kids.
She does soccer practice on Thursdays,
she does tennis practice on Tuesdays for
her daughter, and she loves craft beer.
They have a dog.
They love to go hiking.
They like to do this,
they like to do this.
And at work, here's
what Sally does at work.
Now, every time that you're gonna create
content, stop and go, "Would Sally give
a shit about what I'm about to say?"
'Cause if not, who cares?
That's who you're trying to reach
Todd Kane: Yeah, that's,
I think, huge advice.
And I, I think part of this is just
simply being more comfortable with,
like, the uniqueness that makes you
you, and that that's, like, where you
come upon your brand identity, right?
Like, the way I kind of fla- frame this
is like fl- uh, fly the freak flag, right?
And people feel like,
"Well, I'm a little weird.
Like, I, I have to be super polished,
and I need all this equipment,
and I need to build a studio."
And, like, all, all of these things
I think they are, uh, sort of forms
of procrastination that people get
in their own way with before being
able to produce something, uh, for
marketing, and especially for video,
is they, they think it has to be
perfect, and it really doesn't.
And in a lot of ways, I think the
more modern approach to this is
that it should look unpolished
so it feels more genuine, right?
So you- you've gotâ¦
You've grabbed a, for people on audio,
uh, Eric has pulled out, probably from his
litany of stuff in the background there,
got a, a camera and a light stand you're
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
It's, yeah, so th- this is a camera
with a full monitor on the top.
Um, I own three of these setups.
This is a $7,000 rig.
$7,000.
Um-
I'm not making this up.
I don't know when the last
time I turned that on is
' Cause I've got another tripod just
like that that's got this little
mount on it, and that little circle
mount right there is a magnet
Todd Kane: your phone on
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
To put your phone right on it.
Yeah.
And I use a, I use a $60 shotgun
mic that is beat to death 'cause
it's in my pocket all the time.
That little microphone just plugs in.
Plugs into the camera,
you've got a shotgun mic.
And those little magnet mounts
I've got them everywhere.
Todd Kane: You just
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
That's on a, that's on a s- on a swing
arm, drops down from the ceiling.
I've got them everywhere.
There's never a reason
to not, you know, sayâ¦
I mean, you have a better camera
in your pocket than Hollywood
was using seven years ago.
Hollywood wasn't shooting
in 4K seven years ago.
You've got a 4K camera.
And to your point, once you under- I, Iâ¦
Once you understand and uncover that
clarity about who I am, and, and,
and this is what we do, is we go
through identity and purpose and,
and who my customer is, and then
who I am and what lane I travel in.
Make no mistake, at the core, I'm a geek.
I would love nothing more than to
jump into a conversation between
Matt Lee and John Hammond online
and talk about cybersecurity.
I'm grossly unqualified now
to have that conversation.
Doesn't matter that I used to be a geek.
I used to be an all-conference
offensive lineman in high school.
The Denver Broncos are not
calling me for advice, right?
It's not what I do anymore.
So figure out what your lane is, what
you talk about, what you don't talk
about, what you avoid, and then, you
know, from there, go through how you
communicate, how you build your vocal
presence, what your, you know, how, when
to talk louder, when to talk faster,
when to talk slower, when to pause.
We- we're reallyâ¦
There's another MSP in the channel,
and he does really, really well.
Like channel, CRN will grab
him at an event and say, "Hey,
listen, let's get your thoughts."
And he's very calculated.
He's a lot like Barack
Obama when he would speak.
He's very slow.
He takes time.
He thinks through things, and he's
like, "I gotta stop doing that."
And I was like, "More
people need to do that."
When you have an idea that you
want to really set, give a pause
And that pause is super uncomfortable
for you, so you think it must
be uncomfortable for them.
It's not.
They're processing what you just said.
Give them time to process what you said.
So yeah, build those communication skills,
what your physical presence looks like.
You know, we all had Zoom
burnout, what they called Zoom
fatigue back in the COVID days.
Um, when you look at the neuroscience
behind it, it's not because of
how much time we were looking at
screens and looking at cameras.
It actually had nothing to do with that.
Well, it had something to do with that.
The majority of it was, think about
going to a dinner party and, um,
somebody walks up to you, and they're
six inches from you, and they're
like, "Hey man, how have you been?"
You're like, "You gotta back the hell up.
I don't know what's going on."
Like that is clear boundary violation.
That is personal space, right?
That is intimate space.
So they back up, you know, 12, 18 inches.
You're still in my personal space,
like one arm reach away, right?
But the way that we all do Zoom calls
is we do Zoom calls exactly like this,
and you're like, "I spent all day long
with people in my personal space."
Our brain doesn't know the difference
of whether they're here or on a screen.
More importantly than that, much of what
we say and how we deliver it and how it's
received is hand motions, and what we do
with our hands and our facial expression
and whether we're legato or staccato,
the staccato being more smooth and, or
staccato being more chopped up like I'm
reading from a teleprompter kind of a
thing, and legato is that smooth delivery
of knowing your, knowing your topic
and knowing what you're going to say.
And so, you know, it'd be the same as
if somebody went up on stage and stood
there with their hands in their pockets.
It's not gonna be a great delivery.
If you go back and look at the
keynotes from PAX East Beyond that
just happened, anybody that's ever
stepped on stage, they move around.
They have their hands up.
They, they, they're animated.
We watch their body language.
That'sâ¦
Your, your visual presence is just
as equally as important as your
vocal presence when we're trying to
understand the meaning behind a message.
So all those things are super important,
and once we do that, like you nail
clarity and communication, confidence
and communication, storytelling
will just kind of flow naturally.
And once you do that,
you'll have presence.
So we look at, like, the Scott Chasens
and the Libby McElhinneys and, um, you
know, the, the Nick Heddys and people
like that that are on stage, and you're
like, "God, they're just so good at that."
They weren't always good at that.
That's trained, you know?
Todd Kane: I think that's a really
important aspect too of just getting
the reps in and, and building
a practice around these things.
And one of the things that I
found really freeing, like I, I
was a drama nerd in high school,
computers and drama nerd, like the
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
You totally get this
Todd Kane: But yeah, but like, so I,
I, I have never been concerned with
public speaking or speaking on camera.
I'm s- I'm too, uh, in my head, so I'm
self-judgmental about the work and that,
that's why I procrastinated forever on
being on video and things like that.
So that was a
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Mm-hmm
Todd Kane: But one of the things I found
really freeing lately that I think I, I
wish pe- more people sort of recognized
and internalized is it's actually really
freeing to know that if you do a lot of
work on video and post it online, the
algorithms are actually helping you.
'Cause if it's not that great,
no one will see it, right?
It's not like all of your friends are
judging, "Oh, that's a trash video.
I don't know why that
person posted that," right?
'Cause it just won't get the reach because
it doesn't have that level of engagement.
So great, like you get the reps
in, you can post those things.
The people that actually really like
you and support you will see it, and
the people that don't will never see it.
So just keep
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Yeah
Todd Kane: right?
They say like if you're not, if you're
not, uh, i- if you're not ashamed of
the first few videos you post online,
you waited way too long, right?
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Yeah, and, and to the point you
made earlier, which is, which should
not be overlooked, is that we're
no longer looking for polished.
We're looking for real and authentic.
So, you know, old, old people that
are listening or watching this,
go ask your kids about YAP videos.
Young people, you already
know what they are.
And it's just people that just
get on the mic and get on the
camera and just flow, right?
Um, if nothing else, like we're
not buying rolls of film anymore.
Pull this thing out, figure out a
tripod, somewhere to put it in, inâ¦
at your desk, and when you jump on
a call with a client, either record
the call or just set your camera
up and record that part of it.
If it's terrible, delete it.
But it may not be, right?
It might be okay.
There might be, out of that hour-long
call with a client, there might
be 47 seconds in there where you
said something super profound.
We've all been there, right?
Where it's like we say something super
profound and you're like, "Son of a bitch,
I wish I'd have been recording that."
Like, it happens allâ¦
Todd Kane: client coaching calls.
They're like,
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Yeah
Todd Kane: can you say that again?"
You know, I'm like, "Uh, not exactly
sure what I just said," right?
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Right.
Todd Kane: know
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Right.
And if you'veâ¦
Yeah, if you have that recorded,
you know, this is why I have
these magnet mounts everywhere.
Like, I record a ungodly amount
of video footage for, for this
exact reason, is that, you know,
and as you said, put in the reps.
Imagine you're moving, y- y- it's your
first day at an MSP, you're coming
in as an engineer, you have your, you
know, your CCNA, and you understand
route switch a little bit, and they're
like, "Hey, we need to log into
this client site and set up a VLAN."
And you're like, "Pfft,
piece of cake, man.
I can do that."
But they come back to you and they're
like, "Oh, so they've got three sites.
We wanna set up OSPF between all of 'em.
We wanna set 'em up in a BGP ring."
Like, they lay out this complicated
route switch thing, and you're
like, "I, uh, I, I'm not sure
that I am qualified to do that."
Now fast-forward a year and
they say that same thing.
You're like, "Yeah, of
course I can do that.
I've done that a dozen times,
20 times, 30 times, 50 times."
But on day one, you're
not expected to be a CCIE.
You're expected to be a CCNA,
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Todd Kane: So let's slip back a
bit to, uh, the, the brand and
commoditization, 'cause I, I think a
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Yes
Todd Kane: people struggle
with here is, uhâ¦
And I hear this from a lot of people.
You know, there's the classic case of
like, "What makes you guys a great MSP?"
"Oh, it's the people.
We've got the best people."
It's like, well, you know, bullshit.
Like, that's probably not true.
And again, like, how do you
convince someone of that, right?
'Cause like you said, I joke, we,
we live under the sins of previous
MSP providers with the client.
Like, they're judging us based on
the relationship they had with the
previous provider, which was, you know,
in a lot of cases, not that great.
So that's how they're judging us.
And, you know, we're selling trust in
selling MSAs, which is really hard because
as you noted, you can tell them how
great you are, but they don't know that
that's true until they experience it.
But this, this is where it becomes
really difficult for MSPs to
differentiate themselves, right?
Um, and I wanna sort of tease in here
is like you, you note sort of our stack
being the same, so we can't point to
our stack, we can't point to our people.
How do people differentiate in an
industry where everyone has the same
business model, everyone generally
has the same tools and the same
outcomes, and we can't convince
them like, "I've got great people"?
Okay, well, like, it feels
like you're kind of, you're,
you're painted into a corner.
How do you fight back from that?
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Right.
So, so th-th-this is a beautiful
example of that, right?
Is that when, um, when, when information
comes into the brain, it, it, it
hits, um, our limbic system, which
is our, you know, our amygdala, our
hippocampus, hypothalamus, all that,
and our prefrontal cortex, which
is the executive decision-making
center, at the exact same time.
Actually, it hits the limbic system
just a little bit before that.
What's interesting is we can look at
all of the facts in the prefrontal
cortex, the executive decision.
We always look at it and go, "This
is not an emotional decision."
Every single decision is an
emotional decision because when we
look at that and we go, okay, on
paper, they're almost identical.
In fact, this one's probably a little
bit weaker, but the way that guy or
that gal that was in our office that
talked to us made me feel, it felt like
they were invested in the business.
It felt like they cared.
It felt like they mattered to
us or like we mattered to them.
It felt like they were in the same
camp, in the same boat we are,
and we're hiking the same mission.
So, um, this is, uh, uh, known as, uh, uh,
primacy effect in, in modern psychology.
And, and basically what
that says is we alsoâ¦
Let me back up a little bit.
We also know that, um, before it was
about 70% in the buyer's journey,
by the time that we even knew a
customer was in market, they had
already made up 70% of their decision.
We knew exactly what product we were
gonna look at, what companies we
were gonna look at, what MSPs we're
gonna look at, what vendors we want.
We know all that stuff.
One small thing, so the, the only
reason we go online is, you know, nobody
goes online and says, "Hey, I wonder
what great ads are running today."
Right?
Nobodyâ¦
You-- When you're watching a YouTube
video and it says you can skip this
ad in five, four, three, like nobody
like stops and goes, "You know what?
I wanna see how this thing pans out."
Like we're, like we're
gamifying the skip button.
Like we're, we're trying to like click
that button right as the minute that
it shows up just to get it to save
ourselves a fraction of a second.
So- We go online to escape,
to search, to discover.
Um, and that search one, that's a
big one because we don't go online to
search anymore, we go online to ask.
So I did a little test,
and I was like, all right.
You'll remember, Todd, back in the early
IT days when they were outsourcing all
the help desk stuff to India, right?
And all of us help desk people were
like, "This is a horrible idea.
This is not going to work."
And they're laying off help
desk people, tier one, tier two.
And I was like, "You're right.
It's not gonna work, and it's gonna
take them a year contract to figure
that out and another six months to
change the, to, to change the tide.
So you can sit on your couch
at home for 18 months without a
paycheck and go, 'I told you.'
You're still broke, and
you're still unemployed."
Like, this is the reality of where this
is going unless you can change their
mind before they make that decision.
So I went out and said, "Hey."
I asked Gemini.
I was like, "I am a
company of 17 employees.
We're hiring four more.
We're gonna be 21.
Um, I don't really wannaâ¦
I don't have the budget
for an in-house IT guy.
Do I bite the bullet and hire an in-house
IT guy, or do I go outsource it to a IT
provider company that, that can do the
IT for me remotely, or is there some way
that I can automate almost all of this?"
And it came back and said,
um, uh, Auvik, Automox.
Um, it gave me, like, four or five
different solutions, and it was
like, "Add all these together.
Here's what you're gonna pay per month.
Per user, it's gonna be, like, $37
a month, and this will manage all of
your IT for you, the onboarding, the HR
stuff, the network healing automatically.
All the things you need on a day-to-day
basis, AI will fully automate for you."
Is that true?
Absolutely not.
Absolutely not it's not true.
Do I know that as a business owner?
Absolutely not I don't know that.
But the smart AI person told me it
would, so damn it, we're gonna give
it a shot And so until the time--
And AI is only getting better.
So what we need is, we need, as I come
up upon that decision time and say, "Now
it's time for me to make a decision,"
but for the last six months, I've been
watching this podcast with this Todd
Kane guy, and I believe in a lot of
stuff that he says, and he doesn't really
try to pitch me or sell me on anything.
He just adds value.
So just the, what, what's known
as the mere exposure effect and
authority bias, we're basically
building a parasocial relationship.
I don't know you.
No different than, you know, back in the
day when you'd drive to the office every
morning and on the radio, the morning
talk show, the guy would tell one, one
radio host would tell the other guy,
"Dude, I just bought a Kia Sophia, and
I'm telling you, it is like one of the
best cars I've ever had in my life."
Bullshit.
No, it's not.
They paid you to say that.
We just didn't have laws that said you
had to disclose that they told you that.
But because you listen to this
guy every morning, you have this
parasocial relationship, and you're
like, "You know, if John Jay from
John Jay and Rich thinks that's a
great car, maybe it is a great car.
Maybe I should look at the Kia Sophia."
Right?
We've never met them.
We've never had coffee with them.
We've never even seen their face.
We just hear their voice.
But, and that's where it comes
back to this ability to story
tell, communicate effectively.
Um, we have something
called mirror neurons.
There's a real fascinating experiment
where they, um, uh, they, they took,
um, blockers and blocked somebody's
entire arm and, um, then they took
somebody else facing them, and
with all those nerves blockedâ¦
So when you see somebody reach out
and scratch their arm, you think,
"Oh, maybe my arm itches," but your
nerves go, "No, your arm doesn't itch."
You go, "Okay, don't, don't
do anything about it."
They block all these nerves, and this
guy scratches his arm, and the guy with
the blocked arm reaches up and scratches
his arm 'cause his brain no longer
knows that it's not my arm that itches.
So he scratches his arm 'cause
we've blocked that away.
So these mirror neurons,
we mirror what people say.
So when you walk in and you're like,
"Yeah, we provide IT stuff, and,
um, you know, we can set up M365
and manage your Outlook, and you
guys won't get viruses or ransomware
'cause we do," you know, whatever.
Like, it's a very monotone, dead delivery.
You walk in or on video months and
months in advance and talk about this
stuff, and you're dynamic, and you're
talking about things they care about,
where you're like, you know, we just
talked to a customer that, that, that,
that is just caught in this quagmire
of they're working in their business.
They're not working on their business
because of all these things that
are going wrong, and it's just
like I just don't understand why
people do that because there's so
much more opportunity out there.
Like, didn't you build this business
so that you can go and be successful
and spend more time with your family,
retire early and all that stuff?
Like, I wouldn't try
to do my own plumbing.
That's a lie.
I would try to do my own
plumbing, but it would end poorly.
But I wouldn't try to do my own
plumbing, so why are you trying to manage
your own technology infrastructure?
Like, that just doesn't make sense.
Like, free up your time.
Focus onâ¦
I mean, you know, you
know this firsthand, Todd.
This is exactly what you do, right?
Like, let's streamline the operations
side of the business and so that
you can actually work on growing
your business instead of being an
operator inside of your business.
Todd Kane: Yeah, I think the dynamic
nature of how you speak, um, I think
the, the parasocial relationship I
think is a really thing, uh, of just
if you're visible, if you're kind
of like positioning your brand over
and over again, and people are like,
"Oh," like, "That person's familiar."
So like, I got quotes from
three MSPs, but, uh, like
I've seen these people before.
I've seen their cars.
I've seen their, uh, the
videos of these people.
Like that, that, that is m- has
a meaningful effect on their
decision-making, and I think that's
a, a really massive part of this.
And then just like the quick
example of like how you're pitching
to a potential prospect of like,
uh, say like even you are dynamic
and excited about the technology,
like it's still gonna land flat.
Like they don't really care.
I, I joke about this all the time with
people is like you're in the room because
they don't care about technology, so don't
try and educate them about technology.
That is not gonna help you.
But if you talk about their business
and get them excited about how
you can help them with that and
take some of the load off, right?
Like we had the, at, when, uh, when I
was at Fully Managed, we had this, this
term, um, peace of mind for IT, right?
Creating peace of mind was,
was like a company tagline.
and that got so popular that like
we had to create trademarks and
stuff like that because it just
kept on being what people described
as what we, what they did for IT.
We're like, "No, no, we've
got that trademark now.
You guys can figure out a
better way to describe this."
But that was really powerful from
a, a discussions with prospects is
like, "We're not talking about tech.
We're talking about how we can
create peace of mind for you."
And that really resonated with people,
I think, for the same reasons, right?
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Yeah.
I mean, you think about where
we're at today, you know, weâ¦
And again, we're talking a lot about
video, but this could be, this could
be faceless video, it could be audio,
it could be written on Substack,
it could be written on LinkedIn.
Like you could do long form on Substack.
There's so many things you can do.
You can do, you know, carousels of images
and stuff on, on, um, Instagram and,
and TikTok and, and everywhere else.
And, and it, it's interesting now whereâ¦
This is kind of a, a fun experiment
actually, is that if you go out to
YouTube and just, just think of something
that you really have no interest in.
This is gonna screw up your algorithm,
and I apologize for that, but go
out and find something that you're
really not that interested in.
Like, how do I do concrete countertops?
I mean, everybody says it
looks really easy, right?
Like, oh, you build a form, you put
silicone in it, you spray it with some
kind of stuff, a, a release agent,
and you put concrete in there, and you
smooth it out, and you vibrate it with
a sander, and then you break the boards
off, and you sand it down a little bit.
I've, I've actually done concrete
countertops on a buddy of mine's thing,
and it's really not as easy as it sounds.
But just go out and find something that
you have no interest in and search for it
on YouTube, and go watch 75% of the video.
Now come back and refresh your,
your, your homepage on YouTube.
You will start to see more
videos on that exact topic.
It used to be about follower count,
subscribers, likes, shares, average
view duration, how m- how long
somebody viewed your videos, right?
Now, it's about, it doesn't push for the
creator, so it doesn't matter if you have
a million subscribers or 23 subscribers.
And matter of fact, as you look
through the videos that it recommends,
start looking through some of them.
You'll find somebody's who's only got
131 subscribers, yet they're recommending
your video 'cause it no longer pushes
for the creator, it pulls for the viewer.
It goes out and finds that information
that all bleeds into the, uh, AI,
uh, search engine optimization stuff,
where it's actually contextualizing
these videos, and it's pulling for you.
So you have somebody who normally
doesn't care anything at all
about technology, you know.
Um, he's into, you know, golf and whatever
else, and he goes out to YouTube 'cause
he wants to see a video on, you know,
what's the best way to implement, you
know, um, Wi-Fi throughout the building.
Yeah, better Wi-Fi throughout theâ¦
Like, do I go with Ubiquiti?
Do I not go u- with Ubiquiti
and Unifi access points?
And goes out and watches a video, and now
all of a sudden YouTube says, "Wow, this
guy's usually into golf, but he's dabbling
a little bit into this whole Unifi thing.
Maybe he's setting up a home
network or a business network.
Let's show him Scott's video," because
Scott, or you know, Tom Lawrence from
Lawrence Systems is a great example.
He generates, and I won't give the exact
number, well north of $2 million a year in
revenue strictly sourced from his YouTube
videos Strictly sourced from YouTube,
just from creating content, and he never
wants pitches, and he never wants offers,
and he never says, "This is what we do."
He just adds value, and people reach
out to him and go, "Hey, man, do you
like-- do you guys do, like, cabling
and access points and all that?"
You know, you think about Matt Lee,
a guy that worked for an MSP, um, in,
in the Midwest, and fast-forward to
today and the brand that Matt Lee is.
If Matt Lee were to put on LinkedIn today,
"I'm leaving Pax8," blah, blah, blah,
"Don't know what's next, but I'll let you
know," he would have 25 job offers in his
inbox by the end of the day because people
would actively go out and recruit him.
And in a world where all of us are like,
just as human beings, not even necessarily
as an MSP owner, but the people working
inside an MSP, with, with us not being
able to predict how fast AI is moving
right now, with us not being able to
predict what the future looks like, do you
not wanna make yourself more marketable?
Uh, sounds crazy to me.
Todd Kane: uh, that's, that's maybe
an interesting question as well,
'cause like I, I struggle with
this personally to some degree.
I'd love your, your perspective
on this, and I think it applies
for the MSPs as well, is how much
should we focus on personal brand
versus business brand, right?
Like, should we be promoting ourselves
to create that per- parasocial
relationship, and then the opportunities
come as a r- as, as sort of, uh,
an effect of us being visible?
Or, or how much should we be pushing, uh,
like, uh, MSP ABC company and, and having
that as a brand of, uh, for the company?
I imagine it's both, but like
what, what's sort of the calculus
here on personal versus, uh,
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
So right now, I would say
like 95 personal, 5% brand.
When we go through the buyer's
journey, we look at, you know,
again, why do I go online?
To search, to escape, to discover.
Um, you know, I know something and
I wa- I wanna find the, the answer.
And then the very next level
we go to is, it used to be
like, what company does this?
We don't do that anymore.
Now we say, "Who do I know?
What value have they added?
They haveâ¦
Have they created emotions,
memories, and trust?"
And once I know all that, so I'm looking
and I'm like, "I don't know, I consume
this, this Todd guy's stuff all the time.
He seems to know a thing about
management and all that, and he
seems to add value to my life."
Now I'm gonna go look him up on LinkedIn,
and I'm gonna go to his website,
and now that's the final piece where
it's like, what they do is a fit for
what we do, but that's come second.
It used to come first, right?
It used to be like, oh man, you definitely
wanna go to Bell Ford in Phoenix.
That's the only place to go.
Now, if Dave, the mechanic at Bell
Ford, leaves and goes to a different
Ford dealership, guess who else is
going to a different Ford dealership?
This guy, 'cause I know Dave.
Dave's a great mechanic.
I don't know how many other great
mechanics they have there, but Dave
has always worked on my stuff, or
the service writer, or whatever.
We follow human beings.
They will discover your company
once you've added enough value.
But that's the other thing is we're like,
"Well, we need to make sales tomorrow."
Well, you know, the old adage
is, you know, when's the
best time to plant a tree?
It was 20 years ago.
Second-best time is now.
So it's gonna take time.
And we're, we don't live in a
transactional world anymore.
We live in a relational world where we
have to build relationships with people.
And so, you know, if you're up
against the wall and you're like, "I
gotta generate revenue right now,"
yeah, I would start cold calling,
like, because you need money.
Like, I would start cold calling, but I
would also at the same time, you know,
we're like, "Well, I don't have time
to, you know, write a blog post, or
create content, or shoot a quick video."
You seem to have eight hours
in a day to make 100 cold calls
that aren't going anywhere.
Like, carve off 15 minutes and
now do 745 of cold calls and do 15
minutes of creating a video once
a day, or writing a blog post, or
a quick little whatever, you know?
And, you know, whether it's writing,
whether it's creating video, whether
it's doing whatever, no different than,
you know, being in drama club when
you're in school, whatever, right?
Is it gonna suck?
Of course it's gonna suck.
You're brand new at it.
The concrete countertops we
did in my buddy's front yard,
sorry David, um, they sucked.
We had to go through it and finish
them again and again and again.
Like, yeah, they sucked.
We got better at it, right?
Todd Kane: Yep.
Go out there, get some reps,
and ultimately people buy from
people, I suppose, uh, like the
big takeaway I'm taking from this
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Yeah.
Human, we buy from human beings.
We always have.
It's, it's, you know, brand
has always been personal.
When you go back to like the '20s, '30s,
'40s, '50s, it's like, um, extra bagel,
um, extra pork chop, um, sweeping out
your floors at, at the gas station, um,
wiping down your windshield, all that.
Those are all personal experiences.
Madison Avenue spent 80 years convincing
us that we could trust a logo, 'cause
it was the only way they could get us
to go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs globally.
They had to convince us that
we were, that we were there.
And then, you know, we've, we've, you
and I have been in this long enough,
we've been through, you know, product-led
marketing or product-led sales, and
then engineering-led sales, and then
all the other adaptations of that.
When we hit COVID and we were just
inundated with ads and ads and ads,
we moved into human-led, and we are
now in human-led, and this is, this
is where we're at for the foreseeable
future, is that we trust people,
and AI's not helping that, right?
Like there's so much AI-generated
junk out there that this
When you're looking at that and you're
like, there's so much AI-generated stuff.
Yes.
When you're at a, at, at, at a conference
or an event and you're around your
competitors who are also MSPs, convince
them heavily that generating content
via AI is the way to go, because every
single platform is down rank- down
ranking that, and you'd be the only
one left who's not doing AI slop and
doing genuine content, and you'll win.
So yeah, be thankful that
all your competitors are
using AI to create content.
It makes you stand out
Todd Kane: This has been awesome, Eric.
Any, sort of or two calls to action people
if, if they wanna know a little more,
hear, hear some more stories from you?
Where should they
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Just, just, yeah, I, I'm,
I'm @ericbolz everywhere, um,
LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever.
Um, yeah, by, by all means.
If you go to vosa.co/erik,
E-R-I-K, you'll see all my
links to socials and all that
kind of stuff and whatever.
If there's anything I can do to
help, I think I'm ⦠So obviously,
you know, I run VOSA, but it's
a membership-only community.
It's an invite-only community, and that
doesn't mean, like, you know, you have
to be some exe- big executive leader.
We have brand-new MSPs in there
that are starting from day one.
But it's very, very much
membership invite only.
Like, it's not come one, come all.
So I'm not here to sell you anything.
I'm just ⦠I wanna see you be better.
I wanna see you succeed.
And if you have questions about that,
shoot me a message, shoot me an email,
get ahold of Todd, he can get ahold of
me, and I'm more than happy to jump on
a call for 30 minutes or whatever and
just kinda, you know, walk you down
the path of, like, how, how you start.
But it's like anything else, right?
It's like, um, when you stand at the edge
of the pool wondering whether or not you
should jump in, the water's not getting
any warmer the longer you stare at it.
So just do it, right?
As you said, fly your freak flag.
Um, you know, one of my favorite lines
from the TV show Yellowstone is when
they're talking about herding cattle
and he's like, "You know, have you guys
figured out a plan how to get those cattle
down this hill without everybody dying?"
And, uh, one guy looks up, he
says, "Well, the best we came
up with, sir, is, um, fuck it."
He's like, "Fuck it?
That's your plan?"
He's like, "That's my plan.
Fuck it."
He's like, "We're just gonna
go up there and just do it."
So yeah, fuck it.
Just do it.
You know?
Keep in mind that, that
you're gonna get hate online.
No matter what you do, no matter how
great it is, no matter how bad it is, you
are going to find people that hate it,
that, that, that hate what you're doing.
And the reason is because haters
seeing you, what's missing in them.
They see you doing it, and
they're like, "I need to do that.
I want to do that.
I want to be out there.
I want to build a brand, but I just
don't have what it takes to do it.
So I'm gonna tear down everything around
me so that I look like I'm better."
So ignore them.
Feel empathy for them.
God, what a horrible life.
Can you imagine, like, spending
all your life just being online,
just, like, dragging people down?
Todd Kane: Yeah.
It's
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
sounds exhausting.
Yeah.
Dude, this has been super fun, man.
Todd Kane: Yeah, no, I really appreciate
all the, all the knowledge, Eric.
This has been great.
I'll, uh, I'll link to you and, and
Tovosau on the, uh, on the show notes.
I, I like the approach of, uh, kind
of invite only or like my sense of
that is you only want people that are
actually willing to invest the time
and the effort to do something, right?
Like, I, I'm not gonna give you, I'm
not gonna give you a golden goose
that just shits money and opportunity,
but if you're willing to put in some
effort, you can absolutely do it, right?
So
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Yeah.
Todd Kane: that approach.
That's great
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
Yeah, we're not building
the largest room in tech.
We're building the most
powerful one, you know?
Todd Kane: Yeah.
Awesome.
Appreciate it, Eric
Erik Boles | Vosa.co:
All right, guys.
Thanks.
Take care