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Paul, welcome to the Evolved Radio podcast. Thank you for having me back on. It's

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a pleasure to be here. Absolutely. Always great to chat with you. We'll

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dive straight into things. I read through your book,

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MSP Marketing Start Here, which is fantastic. It's a quick, easy

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read, with, like, lots of dense topics and,

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actionable things for people to get started. So I think this is perfect for,

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the attention and time starved audience in the MSP ecosystem.

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One of the things I think that's great about your approach here is

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is really focusing on simplicity and boiling things down

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to here are the nuts and bolts to really get you started and moving in

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the right direction. And I'm a huge fan of this being a huge,

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lean practitioner and looking for efficiency and everything. I'm a

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bit of a nut about it. So I think that's a great place to start

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is let's talk about the complexity and actually

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the simplicity of marketing. Yeah. So the problem with marketing

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and I've I've been in the channel for nine years now. That's the quickest nine

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years of my life. I swear it is. And and if you look at

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the the the marketing, the MSPs or the that's being banded around

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in lots of different places, it's more complex in 2025 than it was

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in 2016 when I first arrived. And it's gonna get more and more complex. And

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there's more new things. You know, we've got AI has come into the fray in

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the last couple of years. And AI is a great tool for marketing. It's not

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the the wonder tool. It's not the wonder drug that everyone hoped it would be,

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but it still has its uses. And there's there's all new tools coming in. There's

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new shiny things. There's there's new new new more things. Let's do this. Let's

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try this strategy. LinkedIn this, LinkedIn that. And just

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like you, I know you talk to MSPs all the time. I talk to MSPs

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all the time. And what what you notice quite quickly is that everyone gets

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excited by a new shiny thing. Oh, I should try this. Should, you know, should

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I go off on there? But when it boils down to it, the vast majority

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of MSPs let's let's make them a figure. Let's say 80% of MSPs. The

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vast majority of them, they're not doing the basics. Right?

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Their website really bad, really too technical, doesn't

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really connect with anyone at emotional level. Their LinkedIn, they're just

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they're doing the basics if that. They're they're doing couple of things a week and

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just doing really boring posts. Their profile isn't right. Their photo's out of

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date. And then their actual marketing, they're not doing they're not building audiences.

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They're not, you know, building relationships with people. They're not doing any of this stuff.

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So when I sat down to write this book and I, this book took

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me eight hours to write. I actually did it on a flight. I did it

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on a flight from London to Vegas last year. It took eight

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hours to write, but it it took sort of five years of before

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thinking, and then it it took about four months of editing afterwards. So,

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the book is is it's like I've got it here in in front of me.

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How many pages is it? 51 50 52 pages. Right? And

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and it's big big text. In fact, I read the whole thing. I've just finished

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recording it for Audible, and it was, like, forty six minutes. That's that's that's how

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long it's supposed to be. And that was by design. I wanted a book that

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any any technical focused person could could read. I actually

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set myself the brief, Todd, you'll love this, that someone could read it on the

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John in two in two sessions. Right? Over two nights. That

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was genuinely my brief to myself. And and

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actually getting cutting marketing down to being super

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simple, and here are 11 things that you should do. And if you do these

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11 things, your marketing will be better than 80, you know, than

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80% of your competition. That was actually really hard because

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you have to ignore AI. You have to ignore new shiny things. You have to

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ignore this strategy and that strategy and this thing that's popped up there.

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But the reality is, you you you take any marketplace and you've

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got 50 MSPs and they all look the same. To to the prospect, to the

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decision maker, or the the the the business owner or manager, you you got

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50 MSPs. They all look the same. All the websites look the same. They say

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the same things. Everyone talks about, oh, cybersecurity. They talk about

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productivity. They're all talking about the same things. And, in in that

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and and yet none of them are doing any proactive marketing. They'll go out to

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the old networking meeting. They'll do a bit of email marketing, but there's no consistent

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and persistent effort to do marketing. For you

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to win in that marketplace, right, if we if we exclude a couple of big

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MSPs that will just rise above because they've got sales structure, they've

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got marketing resources, all of that. Ignore all of that. You you assume you've got

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40 left. All you gotta do to rise above all of those other

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MSPs, you put in place a marketing sys And a marketing

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system is where you have a small number that happen on a regular

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basis. As with any other system, it's it's like to happen on this

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day, this to happen on this day, this to happen. And then you keep every

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day, every week, every month for the next ten years until you sell the

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business or you die or whatever happens to you. And the MSPs that

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do that, they always rise up to near the top, and they always

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win more new clients. And and, you know, the goal for most MSPs would be

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something like to win a new client a month. One new client a month, which

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would really change the lives of most MSPs. So that

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that's why I wrote such a short book. I simplified everything

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down. I've got another 10 books in my head. In fact, almost half of what

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we took out of this book is gonna go into few books. But but do

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you do you see how making it simple and making it as small as

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possible for MSPs is is is the right thing to do.

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A %. I agree because, you know, your your point about systems

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is very close to my heart as an operations person. Because if you want something

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to happen and produce predictable results, you need to build a system around it. Right?

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To just do things ad hoc and just constantly throwing spaghetti at the

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wall and trying and tinkering. Like, that's that's not a system, and it

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won't produce results. Like, you may get a a winner every once in a while,

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but it's not reliable. It's not consistent, and you're probably not gonna show up and

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do those things. And interestingly, the other part of

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this, we'll get into is I I like the approach that you took

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around this of being social selling. Right? So, like, let let's talk a bit about

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that, and then we'll come back to sort of my experience around the simplicity of

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this. But what was your thinking around focusing around social selling? Yeah.

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Yeah. Well, it's it's it's even smaller than social selling. It's just LinkedIn. We've we've

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gone all in on on LinkedIn. And the the reason that that

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the, I'll I'll I'll very quickly talk about the system we built. It's a it's

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a it's a it's a six word strategy. There's three steps in a in a

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lead generation system. I recommend six words. You build audiences, you

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grow relationships, and you convert relationships. That's it. Those six words.

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And the the first, the first of those build audiences

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is you go and find people to listen to you and you systematically

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grow those audiences. So I say to most MSPs and and it's in the book

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is is go build up your LinkedIn connections and build up your

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email database. And that's it. Now there are there's about 26 other

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audiences you could build. And there's there's other social media platforms, there's offline

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audiences, there's podcasts, there's YouTube, all of that kind of stuff. But

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again, for most MSPs, it's overwhelm, it's too much. Let's just bring it down.

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And if if you were to build up, imagine this, if you were to have

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10,000 connections on LinkedIn, say, which could take you five years to

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get there, but let's say you had 10,000 connections on LinkedIn. Every

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and if you're trying to win one new client a month max, and actually for

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most MSPs that could be a little overwhelmed. Right? Nine, ten new

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clients a month, that's it. That's all I need. If you if you're connected to

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10,000 people and they're all business owners or business managers or, you

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know, they they work within the kind of clients that you'd like to do business

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with, All of all of the prospects you ever need are there on LinkedIn.

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And and, you know, assuming that Microsoft keeps LinkedIn going in the trajectory

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it's going, I would say LinkedIn is one of their most successful products. They've managed

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not to ruin it yet and let's not tempt fate by, by saying that. And

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I say this is it took me twenty seven minutes to get Word to be

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stable today. Twenty seven minutes and four reboots of my Mac for Word.

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Word? Word's like five hundred years old. It should be as stable as anything

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anyway. But if you got 10,000 connections on

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LinkedIn, that's all you need. And then then other steps in my system, I

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recommend that you then get those get those connections and you get them into your

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CRM so you can email them. You then build a relationship with them. You

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put content in front of them. There's a number of different ways of doing that

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on LinkedIn. You can put posts, you can put PDFs up which are called carousel

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PDFs which are really good. You can send LinkedIn newsletters which is where

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you send articles and you get people to subscribe to your LinkedIn newsletters. You can

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do videos. On LinkedIn, you can do technology stuff, you can do productivity

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stuff, you can do personal stuff. You can do a video of you saying, hey,

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I'm having a great weekend. We're having a barbecue with some friends, a couple of

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business owning friends. What are you doing this weekend? Which by the way would be

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will become your highest rated post of the year because it's got nothing to do

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with tech and business. Yeah. That's just the way it goes. But you have to

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have all all of that balance. And so everything you need is there within

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LinkedIn. And and that's why I went all in on that system. And and

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that's not based off me sort of making this up or just

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thinking, oh, let's just go in on LinkedIn. It's based on working with 700

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MSPs and looking at the people who are working a system and doing

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really well. What are they doing? They're not doing it on Facebook. They're not doing

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it on they're definitely not doing it on Instagram. They're not doing it on TikTok.

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They're not doing it on BeReal or any of these other platforms. They're doing it

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on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn has its faults, but Link LinkedIn

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and social media is it's just the reflection of where people

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are. If you look at a core strategy that that build audiences, grow

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relationships, convert relationships, What that that could work in

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a hundred years time. It's just in a hundred years time, I mean, you and

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I won't be here to to know whether this is correct or not. But in

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a hundred years time, it will be hologram somethings. Right? We'll all be hanging out

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in holograms, in chips, in in, you know, Elon

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Musk will just be a brain in a in a in a jar by then.

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And he'll still he'll be running the world still. So we'll just be holograms in

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Elon Musk's brain. Where am I going with that? But you get the idea. The

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concept is still the same of where do people hang out? Go and find that

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those people and and and then then build relationships with them. In fact, you could

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use that same marketing strategy in the nineteen sixties. It's just that in the

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nineteen sixties, you had to physically go into buildings and go to meetings and go

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to associations and clubs or advertising newspapers or whatever

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because that was how you reach people. So the core concept doesn't change, but I

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believe that LinkedIn and I and I see this not changing for the next five

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to ten years. LinkedIn is just absolutely the best place to go.

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I agree. And I've I've, sort of painfully come to this real

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realization. I've been on LinkedIn for a long time. I've I've used it sort

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of as a an outreach and and a connection strategy in the past.

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But this year, I am absolutely going all in because I've spent the

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last two years, I think, in sort of traditional marketing hell where I was

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trying to build lead magnets and drive traffic and looking

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at paid ads and all of these strategies. And the first thing I felt

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like I realized is most of the marketing advice that you see on the Internet

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is directly tuned to b to c marketing. Like, most of those

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strategies don't tend to work in a b to b world. So I think that

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was sort of my first frustration. And then recognizing, like, how hard all

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of that stuff was, like, the the number of systems, the number of

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tools, the number of, you know, people and horsepower it takes to develop

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all those assets. And the result that you get from it is pretty weak. You

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know, like, you spend a few hours building up some content

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and and building a landing page, and you get four people that sign up for

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it. It's like, well, great. I mean, that didn't really move the needle. That that's

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not helpful for me. Whereas, you know, you can have a banger post on

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LinkedIn that brings a ton of attention. It actually leads to

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conversations. And I think that this like, the distinction for me is that

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that is the place where b to b conversations happen. Right? Like, as

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much as we've somewhat deride the fact that LinkedIn is

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becoming a more traditional social media platform, as you

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said, like, the non business related, posts sometimes

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are your highest engagers, but there's still a lot of gold in the data

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that you get in who engages with you, who's in those ecosystems. Right? Like,

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there's a ton of information, I think, in LinkedIn that people are not really

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aware of how to leverage. Right? Yeah. A %. And and there's so

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many things that you can plug into LinkedIn. So we're we're just migrating as a

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business from, Keep, which is our CRM. It used to be called Infusionsoft.

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We're migrating to HubSpot. So expensive. I have to send them my

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kidneys every month. But it's worth it because there's all sorts of integrations to

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LinkedIn. There's there's plugins for Chrome. I can do this with it. I can do

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that with it. It's it's it's insane. And and, you know, there's just a growing

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number of of e growing ecosystem around LinkedIn. Let me tell

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you the the the big mistake that most MSPs make with LinkedIn.

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Well, the two mistakes really. Number one is they're they're connected to

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more MSPs than they are people they wanna do business with. So that's that's the

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first mistake. So they'll put a post out, and they'll get three other MSPs

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liking it and commenting it. And they'll say, oh, well, we we we're just not

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reaching normal business owners. And it's like, well, you've got to connect with normal business

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owners. You know, if you've if you've got a LinkedIn that you've had for fifteen

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years and you're connected to everyone you met at IT nation, then then but

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but not the local business owners, of course, you're not gonna reach those people. And

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in that instance, you might have two LinkedIns. You might have your professional one that's

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your network, and then you have a second one which is your prospecting LinkedIn. And

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that's and that's okay. You know, you have you have different photos, different logins.

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There's a couple of things to be aware of from from a LinkedIn point of

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view just so the algorithm doesn't trip you up. But that's the first mistake. It's

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it's been connected to more MSPs than, than real people. And the second

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mistake is just not having the numbers. You know, if you're connected to 50 people

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and and you put a a a post out, you could have the best post

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on the planet, but if you're connected to 50 people then no more than a

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hundred people are gonna see it. And I and I say more because LinkedIn shows

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the best performing content to more people, but it's gotta be really good performing

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content. It's the same amount of work to create a post for 50 people as

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it is for 50,000 people if you got 50,000 followers. You can only be

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connected to 10,000 people on LinkedIn, which very few MSPs ever get near, but

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you can have an unlimited number of followers who are seeing your content. You can

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have an unlimited number of subscribers to your LinkedIn newsletter. So, yeah. I

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I agree with you. And and, I'm sure at some point in the

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next few years, LinkedIn will go on a it'll take a right

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turn. It'll it'll go the wrong direction. But as we speak, right now in

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2025, it's a good place to go. So take advantage while you

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can, basically, at this point. Exactly. Alright. So, a couple of, like,

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maybe some tactical suggestions here. You know, the first things that I

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I started getting into was, like, understanding how to do targeted searches. Right? Like, even

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without getting sales navigator, which is maybe a a sort of a separate piece of

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this again, like, that's not attached to tools or get more fancy than we need

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to be. But there are there are some basic searches that you can do to

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start to find some connections. And I think for MSPs, like, looking at

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even if you're not a niche MSP, there's probably some,

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like, ideal client profiles that you really like, like companies that you work with

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already. If you could find peers of those, fantastic. Right? Like, you can snoop around

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on who they're connected with in their ecosystem. You can use some of those targeted

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searches. What's your suggestion on the person that's like, okay. Great

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idea. I'm gonna start leveraging LinkedIn. You know, how do I go and

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find those clients that are not in the MSP ecosystem to start

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with? Yeah. That's a really good question. There's there's two two different ways to do

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it. So well, actually three if I think about it. The the the first way

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is to do it within LinkedIn. I'll tell you about that in a second. The

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second way is to do it within Google, and the third way is to cheat.

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So let me tell you about the first way, which is to use it within

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LinkedIn. You you mentioned ideal clients and, in

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marketing terms, you'll have heard of this, Todd, but not many of other people may

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have done. But in pure marketing terms, the very first job you're supposed to do

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is put together something called a buyer persona, where you figure out who do

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I most want to reach. And most MSPs know this in their head or their

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heart. They just have never actually written it down. So for example, you you

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you probably want, the business owner or the business manager. You want them to

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have at least five staff, but ideally, they'd have 10 or 20 staff. Right?

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Ideally, they would it would be a business where technology is mission critical.

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So, legal legal firms are great. CPAs are great. You

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know, financial services are great. Some some MSPs like manufacturers

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because they like the complexity of of the XP machine that's never

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been switched off for forty years and is still running the most critical machine that

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£10,000,000 million dollars a year of revenue comes from. That's fine. Whatever it is that

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you're into to some MSPs before. It is. It does feel like that, doesn't it?

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Perhaps you should put an uninterruptible power supply on that at

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some point. But it doesn't matter what you want. The point is you've gotta know

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what you what you want. Right? And and the and marketing

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agencies will charge you $10,000 to figure that out for you, or you can just

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spend five minutes talking with your business partner or your life partner or your staff

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and say, what what don't we want? Right? Well, we don't want one man bands.

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We don't want lawyers. We don't want this. We don't want that. So that that

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leaves this. So that's the first thing is just being aware of what you want.

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And then just kind of like, let's say CPAs. Let's say you want CPAs but

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you want you want CPAs where there's they've got infrastructure. So it's not just the

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CPA one one person band. They've got a practice manager. They've got a couple of

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other CPAs. They've got some some some people there. Because where there's people, there's

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infrastructure. There's there's seats. There's licenses. So it's like, right. Well, let's

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say we're in I don't know. I I'm in Milton Keynes, which is a city

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in The UK. So it's a small city. And, so so just go

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into LinkedIn and I just type in accountants. We we don't say CPA here in

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The UK. We say accountants. Accountants Milton Keynes and what comes up. And there's

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some filters at the top and, and and I can just sort of

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plow through those. So that's the first way is just doing that on LinkedIn. So

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I don't have to go and look for the names, I search for accountants. But

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I'll quickly run out because the LinkedIn search functionality is just

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awful. So that's when you go to number two which is Google. Now on Google

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they already have a list of all the accountants in your city and it's in

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Google Maps or it's in show me a list of or or you go to

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chat g p t or or or your AI of choice. You bet you maybe

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do it on both because you're gonna get different results on on Google as you

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will on on an AI. But you'd go on to both of those. Tell tell

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me about all the accountants in this city. Show all of them.

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Google Maps, accountants in this city, widen that out, see them on the map. You

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could even go on to, if you wanted to, you could go on to like

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Fiverr or Upwork and pay a guy offshore to scrape

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to illegally scrape Google Maps for you just to give you a list. Just, you

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know, it's it's gonna cost you $20. You're not gonna do anything with it, so

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it's fine. You're just using it to find people in LinkedIn. And

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and that's the the sort of second method is where you're

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directly going for the people. So you say, here's Smith

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Jenkins accountants in Milton Keynes. It's mister

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Smith is the partner. Mister Jenkins is the senior partner. Cheryl

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is the practice manager. Let's go in now and connect to those people on or

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attempt to connect to those people on LinkedIn. Which reminds me, by the way, you

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don't just want the decision makers. There's two groups of people to connect to. There's

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decision makers and there's influencers. So, like, if you're trying to sell to me,

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I'm the decision maker in my business. I own the business, but I've got a

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staff of 12. You need to influence A and Christelle. Because Amy and

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Christelle are my most trusted influencers. And if I'm about to buy anything, I'll

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just pick up the phone to them and say, I've been talking to this, this

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and this and this. What do you think? And if they say, oh, actually, yeah.

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I know all about Todd. We we, you know, we've seen his stuff. We

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think you should go with that. Then I'm much more likely to go with the

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decision because the people I trust have have, you know, are also aware. So you

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need to connect to decision makers and influencers as well. So those are the first

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two methods. Do it on LinkedIn, and then secondly do it on Google and and

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going back into LinkedIn. And it occurs to me the other thing you could could

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do on Google is you could type in accountants your city LinkedIn, and

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it will actually show you results on LinkedIn as well. There's sort of two or

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three different ways of doing it, but you're using essentially think of it as

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using two or three different databases to find the people you want within

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LinkedIn. The third way, the cheat way, this is the coolest thing

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ever. You find someone who's already connected

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to all the people that you want to be connected with,

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and then you borrow their connections. So I'll give you an

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example. Here in my home city, there's a guy called Mark

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Orr. I'm hoping he's never gonna listen to this podcast

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or watch this because I've met him a few times and he's not a pleasant

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guy. But he is the most connected human being to other

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business owners in in this city. Right? And and I'll give him that. He's connected

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to thousands and thousands of people. Now I only work with MSPs, but if

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I set up another business and I wanted to reach local business owners to me,

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I would connect to Mark on LinkedIn, and then he's got like

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8,000 connections, and they're all local business owners or or important

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people locally. I would then just every day just go in and start connecting to

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some of his connections. Now there is a setting in LinkedIn where you can turn

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that off so people cannot see your connections. So don't don't no,

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Todd, you wouldn't do this, but for anyone else, consuming this podcast, don't

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think you can do that to my LinkedIn connections because I've stopped you. I've blocked

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you from doing that. But most people don't know about that setting. So there's so

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you know, who are the Uber connected people in your city? And the way to

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find those people is go go networking. Go for a month's networking, go to all

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the different events. Who's the one person that turns up to like three

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quarters of the events? Get to know that person, connect to them on LinkedIn, have

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a look at their connections. If you if you wouldn't sleep at night doing

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this, then obviously don't do that. But it it it is the shortcut method of

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doing it. Yep. Okay. That's fantastic.

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So, now we've connected. We've built up some, some people

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to connect with. Another sort of tactical piece on this, I've gone back and

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forth on this. So anyone who's maybe received some messages

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from me on LinkedIn, don't hate me. What

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about connecting with a message versus an open connection? Because

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there's this thing in the industry called a pitch slap where, you know, you get

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connected with someone and then they immediately pounce all over you trying to sell you

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something. Yeah. And, you know, as a as a person, I find

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maybe you like, you're probably a good person to to sort of ask this of

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because, I don't know about you, but I find MSP

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ecosystem is highly allergic to what they sense as marketing.

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And maybe you've seen this, but, like, what what's your feeling

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on, you know, either you send a message in the connection

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request saying like, kind of outlining why you'd like to connect and maybe

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potentially how you could help. But maybe, you know, the part of me feels like

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then if they don't read that, they're not interested, then they ignore that, and you

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never get connected. Versus, like, you can connect with them and then send

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them the message, and maybe that pisses them off because they feel like now that

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I just got pitch slapped, and and now I've deleted this connection,

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or they just leave that connection open. And now at least they're in their your

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ecosystem, and now they might see some of your posts. What your Yeah. What's your

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feeling on this? Such a great question. Before I directly answer the question, I

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wanna just go back a step and and and address a couple of things which

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are important context. So first of all, you mentioned

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earlier sales navigator, and we mentioned about connecting with people. First of all,

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if you assume for every 10 connection requests that you make, two

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people are gonna actually accept. Right? Just just set the bar that low because

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it is that low. And that's not you that's not down to you. That's down

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to the fact that, we might be on LinkedIn two, three times a week. For

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me, it's five days a week. Right? But but a lot of other people have

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a better, more balanced life than us. And they they take their dogs to

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walk and stuff. Their businesses to run now. So especially especially

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lawyers, accountants, those kind of professional services, they just don't go on LinkedIn

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as often as they do. And then when they do, there's they've got a 3,000

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connection requests and it's like, oh, ignore. It's the same as like the there's no

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one in the MSP world that has 60,000 unread emails. Right? That

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just doesn't because that's that's us. My girlfriend has she showed me the other

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night. She has 60,000 unread emails. And, obviously, she's a consumer. She's not a a

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business owner. I know. That was exactly the reaction I had was how can you

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operate your life? See screenshots like that. Exactly. Yeah. I'll I'll have to

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I'll have to screenshot on her phone. It's hilarious to see. I don't have anxiety.

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Yeah. I know. I know. Right? And if I don't end the day clearing down

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my inbox, I don't I don't sleep well at night. Anyway, so that that's the

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context. We mentioned Sales Navigator that link LinkedIn has been reducing

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the number of free connections you can make. It it depends

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on how active you are, how many connections you already have, how much content

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you post. There's there's all of that's become algorithmic. If you're

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going up after making LinkedIn connections seriously, and we talked earlier about making

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it a system, which means doing it daily. I recommend to MSPs and it's in

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the book, MSP Marketing Start Here. You go every day, you

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attempt 10 connections. Because if you're only gonna get two of those to be successful

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and we, you know, we wanna add 10 connections a week, we've gotta attempt,

402
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what's that, 50 connections a week. Right? So, you will quickly run out of

403
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free connection requests. So you are going to need to give LinkedIn money for this.

404
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I'm afraid. I'm that wasn't the case a year or so ago, but it is

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the case now. So that's some some context with that. The the second bit

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of context is, the answer I'm about to give is every you

407
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will find different answers to this online. So every single person

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on the planet who's a LinkedIn expert, and I put that in in speech

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marks, I'm not a LinkedIn expert, but I use it every day. I work with

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MSPs that use it every day. So I found a pattern of things that work.

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There are probably other things that work better. There are definitely other ways of looking

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at it. The way I see it is whenever you're sent a connection request to

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someone, you well, first of all, you you must put a

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message in because the message sets context. So at the

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connection request stage, you you explain why you want to be connected. Do

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you remember back in the day, by default, it would say, I want to add

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you to my network. And then they they got rid of that a couple of

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years ago. And now, you can send it as blank. Whenever I get a blank

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one, I don't I don't bother. I don't even bother looking at it. Well, actually,

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I'll tell a lie. I'll look at the headline of the person that's trying to

421
00:24:57,135 --> 00:25:00,095
connect to me. So the headline is when you when you have a connection request,

422
00:25:00,095 --> 00:25:03,390
you've got, here here is Todd came and then it says and I don't know

423
00:25:03,390 --> 00:25:07,230
what your headline is, Todd, but it's it's that is that sets the context, but

424
00:25:07,230 --> 00:25:10,910
then you can also put a message in. And I I highly recommend you put

425
00:25:10,910 --> 00:25:13,870
a message in for both. And what you've got to do, and this is this

426
00:25:13,870 --> 00:25:17,394
is marketing one zero one, is you've got to look at this from the point

427
00:25:17,394 --> 00:25:20,595
of view of the person you're trying to connect to and say, why would this

428
00:25:20,595 --> 00:25:23,634
person want to connect to me? You know, if if you leave it blank, you

429
00:25:23,634 --> 00:25:26,835
might as well write, I want to add you to my network so I can

430
00:25:26,835 --> 00:25:29,490
spam you, so I can try and sell you my stuff, you know, so I

431
00:25:29,490 --> 00:25:33,330
can so I can be generally annoying to you. Versus, you

432
00:25:33,330 --> 00:25:36,850
know, hi Dave. I work with other

433
00:25:36,850 --> 00:25:40,450
accountants in in this area like you and I thought it'd be worth us

434
00:25:40,450 --> 00:25:43,945
connecting, worth us connecting. Or or, I've I've

435
00:25:43,945 --> 00:25:47,705
recently solved a massive Sage server problem for

436
00:25:47,705 --> 00:25:51,304
an accountant that I'm working with. I thought it'd be worth us connecting in case

437
00:25:51,304 --> 00:25:54,985
you have a similar problem. Right? Some something as simple as that. So an accountant

438
00:25:54,985 --> 00:25:58,220
who's looking at that would and and I assume Sage service is still a thing

439
00:25:58,220 --> 00:26:01,580
somewhere because otherwise, Sage would have gone out of business much, you know, years ago.

440
00:26:01,580 --> 00:26:04,460
So an accountant who's got Sage would look at that and say, well, we haven't

441
00:26:04,460 --> 00:26:08,220
got a problem right now, but here's here's someone who deals with issues

442
00:26:08,220 --> 00:26:11,485
that I might have a problem with. I'll I'll connect with them. No. But no

443
00:26:11,485 --> 00:26:14,924
one overthinks a connection request in in in the way that we think they do.

444
00:26:14,924 --> 00:26:18,525
But something like that is basically, can you make it relevant to that

445
00:26:18,525 --> 00:26:22,365
person? The the the I I give my MSP marketing edge members, we've got

446
00:26:22,365 --> 00:26:25,620
about seven different connection requests. And off the top of my head, I can't remember

447
00:26:25,620 --> 00:26:28,820
what they are because I wrote them like two years ago. But, I know that

448
00:26:28,820 --> 00:26:32,260
the last one is jokes, and they're they're vertical based

449
00:26:32,260 --> 00:26:36,020
jokes. So, for example, if you were an accountant and

450
00:26:36,020 --> 00:26:39,655
you had a connection request that said, hi hi hi Dave. How many

451
00:26:39,655 --> 00:26:43,335
how many accountants or how many how many what is it? Something about counting

452
00:26:43,335 --> 00:26:46,695
sheep. How many sheep did the accountant need to to count before he went to

453
00:26:46,695 --> 00:26:49,815
sleep or something like that. And you put you put something like that in a

454
00:26:49,815 --> 00:26:53,559
connection request and all being well, you're the only person who ever

455
00:26:53,559 --> 00:26:57,160
told a joke, an accountancy based joke to an

456
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:01,000
accountant in a connection request. So in terms of stand out ability, you you you

457
00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:04,040
kind of ticked that box. And this is this is the goal with all of

458
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:07,315
it is is actually just standing out of it and and and appearing to be

459
00:27:07,315 --> 00:27:11,075
relevant, and that's it. Now just on your final point, which you said about some

460
00:27:11,075 --> 00:27:13,795
people connect, and then they message, and then they do this and this, and that

461
00:27:13,795 --> 00:27:17,555
is annoying. We've got to remember that selling managed services is

462
00:27:17,555 --> 00:27:21,010
the hardest, most complex, longest sale

463
00:27:21,010 --> 00:27:24,610
ever. It is unbelievably difficult to sell managed

464
00:27:24,610 --> 00:27:28,450
services. It is unbelievably long. It's unbelievably difficult. The payoff

465
00:27:28,450 --> 00:27:32,210
for that is you keep the client for five years, all monthly recurring

466
00:27:32,210 --> 00:27:35,715
revenue. There is no other sector in the world that benefits from clients

467
00:27:35,835 --> 00:27:39,275
that that keeps clients that long, that has recurring revenue for that long. You can

468
00:27:39,275 --> 00:27:42,875
sell someone today, it takes you six months to sell them and you're almost guaranteed

469
00:27:42,875 --> 00:27:46,715
a hundred thousand dollars of lifetime revenue. That does not happen and and

470
00:27:46,715 --> 00:27:50,475
and, you know, with routine sales, that does not happen in any other sector in

471
00:27:50,475 --> 00:27:54,070
the world. But if if managed services is a very long, very

472
00:27:54,070 --> 00:27:57,670
complex sale, why would we want to be stupid and spam someone and send them

473
00:27:57,670 --> 00:28:01,430
messages and try and set up meetings today before we've built a relationship with

474
00:28:01,430 --> 00:28:04,070
them? So if you think back to that strategy I was talking about earlier, my

475
00:28:04,070 --> 00:28:07,775
three step system is, build, build connection, build

476
00:28:07,775 --> 00:28:11,535
audiences, grow relationships, and then convert relationships. That grow

477
00:28:11,535 --> 00:28:15,375
relationships, that's the big job. That's the thing you're doing every day,

478
00:28:15,375 --> 00:28:18,995
every week, every month for ten years. And it is all about content.

479
00:28:19,055 --> 00:28:22,880
Using content to build trust. It's putting posts on LinkedIn, sending out LinkedIn

480
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:26,560
newsletters. I I do recommend emails as well. I do recommend physical

481
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:29,920
things in the mail, like sending a a newsletter once a month. You pick and

482
00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:33,360
choose the the things that work best for you, but it's all about content. And

483
00:28:33,360 --> 00:28:36,975
what you're looking for is every business owner or manager

484
00:28:37,355 --> 00:28:40,975
comes to a a small window of time where they are ready,

485
00:28:41,035 --> 00:28:44,815
willing, and able to talk to another MSP about switching.

486
00:28:45,035 --> 00:28:48,740
So people stay with their incumbent years past the point they're meant

487
00:28:48,740 --> 00:28:52,340
to leave. Right? Years and years. We call this inertia loyalty. It's actually what's kept

488
00:28:52,340 --> 00:28:56,179
me with my accountant for fifteen years. It's I've had the same bank account

489
00:28:56,179 --> 00:28:59,799
since I was 14, which is nuts. Right? That's thirty six years

490
00:28:59,914 --> 00:29:03,595
with the same bank and I have no particular loyalty to them. It just seems

491
00:29:03,595 --> 00:29:07,115
easier to stay than to move somewhere else. And that's what keeps people with their

492
00:29:07,115 --> 00:29:10,794
MSP. So there's a tiny window of two or three months where someone

493
00:29:10,794 --> 00:29:14,220
wakes up one morning and they're like, right I've had it. The the the call

494
00:29:14,220 --> 00:29:18,060
I had yesterday with the 12 year old technician, was awful. The

495
00:29:18,060 --> 00:29:20,940
guy that sold me the contract, I haven't spoken to him for five years. In

496
00:29:20,940 --> 00:29:23,900
fact, I don't even know if he owns the business anymore. You know, it's I'm

497
00:29:23,900 --> 00:29:27,420
fed up with with slow response times. Nothing ever seems to happen. The prices keep

498
00:29:27,420 --> 00:29:31,225
going up. The service is getting worse. I'm done. I'm not signing another contract, but

499
00:29:31,225 --> 00:29:34,265
I know it's up in three months, I need to do some work. And and

500
00:29:34,265 --> 00:29:37,385
the goal of all of the marketing is to get you in front of that

501
00:29:37,385 --> 00:29:41,225
person at that time. And if actually they can be like, oh, here's here's

502
00:29:41,225 --> 00:29:44,440
this Todd guy, I've been connected to him for, or you know, I've I've seen

503
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:47,080
a couple of his things. I've I've seen a couple of his posts on LinkedIn.

504
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:50,700
I've opened a couple of his LinkedIn newsletters. I've seen a few of his emails.

505
00:29:50,840 --> 00:29:54,120
I've had a brief chat with with that lady in his office who phoned me

506
00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:57,559
a couple of times. You know, I've I remember he sent me a physical thing,

507
00:29:57,559 --> 00:30:01,375
and I've read that. I've got his book. I've whatever it is. If if you've

508
00:30:01,535 --> 00:30:05,295
we use a phrase calling touch points. If you had all these touch points to

509
00:30:05,295 --> 00:30:09,135
this person over the two or three or four years that he wasn't ready to

510
00:30:09,135 --> 00:30:12,815
buy from you, the day that he is ready to think about buying from

511
00:30:12,815 --> 00:30:16,350
you, the chances of you getting that sale have just gone up dramatically. So essentially,

512
00:30:16,350 --> 00:30:19,390
I'm saying you've got to be patient. You've got to see LinkedIn as one of

513
00:30:19,390 --> 00:30:23,150
the tools for the it's a long game. And you put in place a very

514
00:30:23,150 --> 00:30:26,515
simple system, tiny number of things that happen really

515
00:30:26,515 --> 00:30:30,115
often, that's the system. So you're there on the day that they're ready to have

516
00:30:30,115 --> 00:30:33,955
a conversation. Alright. Excellent. So the next you you kinda

517
00:30:33,955 --> 00:30:37,795
keyed up the the next stages is the content matters. Right? And the

518
00:30:37,795 --> 00:30:41,460
thing that drives me crazy, like, the content that I see from MSPs

519
00:30:41,460 --> 00:30:44,820
on LinkedIn is so generic and

520
00:30:44,820 --> 00:30:48,580
uninteresting to their customers. And a lot of this, like, I'll maybe knock

521
00:30:48,580 --> 00:30:52,340
on, Lenovo, because I see a lot of people

522
00:30:52,340 --> 00:30:56,034
just reposting sort of this this this content trash from from

523
00:30:56,034 --> 00:30:59,715
vendors like Lenovo where it's like, you know, here's this super

524
00:30:59,715 --> 00:31:03,394
awesome new, new laptop. It

525
00:31:03,394 --> 00:31:07,169
does all of these things. And it's like, I don't know. Like like, who

526
00:31:07,169 --> 00:31:10,690
edit let's say an accounting firm really cares about the brand new

527
00:31:10,690 --> 00:31:14,529
laptop. Right? Like, I just don't see that as appealing content. So I think

528
00:31:14,529 --> 00:31:18,130
people need to be a lot more thoughtful of, like, just putting

529
00:31:18,130 --> 00:31:21,945
stuff out there on LinkedIn is not a strategy because you have

530
00:31:21,945 --> 00:31:25,544
to be thoughtful about what is actually going to appeal to your

531
00:31:25,544 --> 00:31:29,225
buyer persona. And I think this probably, wedges

532
00:31:29,225 --> 00:31:33,000
well against AI too. Like, a lot of people are just, like, have the

533
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:36,760
AI feed a ton of garbage into the machine and, there are

534
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:40,380
now I have a content strategy on LinkedIn. I should be winning. Right?

535
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:45,080
Yeah. Exactly. And, AI has its place, but content generation is

536
00:31:45,080 --> 00:31:48,775
not is not its place. In fact, if you use AI to

537
00:31:48,775 --> 00:31:52,055
generate content, you need you need a human at the beginning to come up with

538
00:31:52,055 --> 00:31:55,335
a really good idea and something that makes it unusual, and then you need a

539
00:31:55,335 --> 00:31:58,395
human at the other end to to fix it and to make it less generic.

540
00:31:58,660 --> 00:32:02,180
You're absolutely right. No one cares about Lenovo. Do you know what? Outside the channel,

541
00:32:02,180 --> 00:32:05,860
no one knows what Lenovo is. They really don't. You know, it's it's,

542
00:32:06,100 --> 00:32:08,420
I I would actually see an MSP writing about the other day. It was a

543
00:32:08,420 --> 00:32:12,260
Datto product. And I thought, but but no normal person has ever heard of

544
00:32:12,260 --> 00:32:15,895
Datto. They don't they don't know what's, they they don't know the names

545
00:32:15,895 --> 00:32:19,415
of, you know, apart from Microsoft. They've heard of Microsoft and they swear at it.

546
00:32:19,415 --> 00:32:22,294
Just as I was swearing at it, you know, twenty minutes ago because word isn't

547
00:32:22,294 --> 00:32:25,940
stable. It it's it's nuts. You're

548
00:32:25,940 --> 00:32:29,300
absolutely right. And again, it's that putting yourself in the point of view of of

549
00:32:29,300 --> 00:32:32,740
the ordinary business owner or manager that you're trying to reach. What do they really

550
00:32:32,740 --> 00:32:36,100
care about? Let me tell you what they care about. They care about, does my

551
00:32:36,100 --> 00:32:39,605
technology just work? They care about, can myself be productive?

552
00:32:39,745 --> 00:32:43,585
They care about, why are my team just moaning

553
00:32:43,585 --> 00:32:47,425
and whinging about the computers? They care about, the

554
00:32:47,425 --> 00:32:51,120
court they do care about data security and care about not losing data. And they

555
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:54,879
do care about cyber security, but at a fraction of the level that MSPs care

556
00:32:54,879 --> 00:32:58,419
about it. MSPs care about it. It's like it's it's all consuming

557
00:32:58,639 --> 00:33:02,399
because the whole channel is cyber security. That's what it seems like these days,

558
00:33:02,399 --> 00:33:05,885
isn't it? It's and and quite rightly so. I wouldn't want to be an MSP

559
00:33:05,885 --> 00:33:09,565
these days. It's terrifying and I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for other people.

560
00:33:09,565 --> 00:33:13,405
So I understand why cybersecurity is so big. To business owners, it's a

561
00:33:13,405 --> 00:33:17,230
small thing. It's it's like them locking the door at night of of

562
00:33:17,230 --> 00:33:19,870
the factory or locking the door of the offices. It's like I mustn't forget to

563
00:33:19,870 --> 00:33:23,230
lock the door and put the alarm. But but you know it's it's not like

564
00:33:23,230 --> 00:33:27,010
they're spending all night sitting up thinking oh I hope we're not being burglarized.

565
00:33:27,149 --> 00:33:30,350
You know? That's that's not how they they didn't sit there thinking oh I hope

566
00:33:30,350 --> 00:33:33,845
we haven't got any ransomware. It just simply doesn't occur to them. MSPs know this

567
00:33:33,845 --> 00:33:36,965
because you see the stupid things that people do. I often tell MSPs that your

568
00:33:36,965 --> 00:33:40,565
job is to protect business owners from themselves when it comes to cyber

569
00:33:40,565 --> 00:33:44,325
security. And actually, get them on board, build a trust relationship with them,

570
00:33:44,325 --> 00:33:47,605
and then educate them and upsell and upsell and upsell them onto the better and

571
00:33:47,605 --> 00:33:51,120
better and better cyber security stuff. But no, the the the best content pieces I've

572
00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:54,880
seen have nothing to do with technology. They're they're in the context of

573
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:58,720
technology. They're about productivity, they're about business, they're about,

574
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:02,565
you know, when when two business owners meet at a networking meeting, it doesn't

575
00:34:02,565 --> 00:34:05,524
matter what they do. What do they talk about? They don't talk about the specifics

576
00:34:05,524 --> 00:34:09,125
of their job. You don't get accountants saying, oh, yes. I was reviewing the

577
00:34:09,125 --> 00:34:12,645
latest tax laws today and I noticed that section 31

578
00:34:12,645 --> 00:34:16,319
c under paragraph 42, is very interesting that

579
00:34:16,319 --> 00:34:20,000
they've changed the meaning of the word cheese. They don't they don't do

580
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:23,599
that because they know that the well, actually some accountants do do that at network

581
00:34:23,599 --> 00:34:27,279
meetings and you see people glaze over and slip into a coma. But the the

582
00:34:27,279 --> 00:34:30,525
successful ones don't do it because they know they gotta go and talk about what

583
00:34:30,525 --> 00:34:33,964
all business owners like talking about. What are we not talking about? Ourselves? Our

584
00:34:33,964 --> 00:34:37,405
business? How's business? What's happening for you? What kind of goals have you got? What

585
00:34:37,405 --> 00:34:40,125
are your what are your what are your staff doing that's annoying you right now?

586
00:34:40,125 --> 00:34:43,860
So we have as business owners, we have things in common with other business owners,

587
00:34:43,860 --> 00:34:47,060
and that's the stuff we should be talking about. We should be talking about how

588
00:34:47,060 --> 00:34:50,660
awesome it is that we're in business. Right? We're in business. This is amazing. Because

589
00:34:50,660 --> 00:34:54,260
actually there's a whole load of other people who started businesses and and

590
00:34:54,260 --> 00:34:58,035
they've never got as far as we did. Let's talk about what's

591
00:34:58,035 --> 00:35:01,795
cool in tech. A Lenovo is not cool. What's cool in tech is

592
00:35:01,795 --> 00:35:05,474
AI and all MSPs are so far ahead of the curve on AI compared to

593
00:35:05,474 --> 00:35:09,234
ordinary business owners. You know, they do not know what ChatGPT can do.

594
00:35:09,234 --> 00:35:12,680
ChatGPT launched deep research a few months back. Right? I don't know if you've had

595
00:35:12,680 --> 00:35:14,960
a play with it. I've had a play with it. Anyone that's got a $20

596
00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:17,400
a month subscription has had a play with it and then never used it, which

597
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:21,160
is pretty much how it goes with ChatGPT. So use that as a

598
00:35:21,160 --> 00:35:24,280
thing of not in terms of, oh, here's a tool, but what can you do

599
00:35:24,280 --> 00:35:27,955
with it? Deep research. It's a it's a brand new concept. You know,

600
00:35:27,955 --> 00:35:31,075
let that's the kind of stuff that we can talk about. It's interesting you mentioned

601
00:35:31,075 --> 00:35:34,215
about laptops. I'll tell you what is cool with with hardware, unboxing.

602
00:35:34,675 --> 00:35:38,195
Right? My daughter will sit and watch unboxing videos. I sit and watch

603
00:35:38,195 --> 00:35:41,760
videos when I'm really tired of of of a guy

604
00:35:42,059 --> 00:35:45,740
who buys returns from Amazon here in The UK and fixes

605
00:35:45,740 --> 00:35:48,619
them. And I'll sit and watch and I'm not a technical person, but I'll sit

606
00:35:48,619 --> 00:35:52,059
and watch a thirty minute video of a guy fault finding a

607
00:35:52,059 --> 00:35:55,865
fan and then fixing the fan so he can sell it on eBay. Right? Because

608
00:35:55,865 --> 00:35:58,985
he makes it interesting because of the way he talks and he explains it and

609
00:35:58,985 --> 00:36:02,425
whatsoever. So unbox, do an unboxing video of hard if you've got to do hardware

610
00:36:02,425 --> 00:36:05,965
do an unboxing or take a do a video of you on a site

611
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:09,680
saying, right, it's the final plug. You know, imagine this is a joke. You could

612
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:12,560
do a joke of it. I've got the final plug here. We spent twelve days

613
00:36:12,560 --> 00:36:16,400
wiring up this office. We've got $360,000 worth of kit. Let's plug

614
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:19,285
it in, and someone switches the lights off just as you plug it in. And

615
00:36:19,285 --> 00:36:22,405
you say, obviously, that was a gag, that was a gag. That would get more

616
00:36:22,405 --> 00:36:25,685
attention than anything else. That's not the best piece of content I've ever thought of.

617
00:36:25,685 --> 00:36:29,365
But you you get the idea. It's it be you, be interesting,

618
00:36:29,365 --> 00:36:33,205
but do talk to other business owners about the stuff that all business owners find

619
00:36:33,205 --> 00:36:36,930
interesting. Yeah. I think that's bang on. And I I I think the

620
00:36:37,010 --> 00:36:40,690
maybe the point to underline here is video performs really well in

621
00:36:40,690 --> 00:36:44,530
general and particularly on LinkedIn. I've heard this recently from a bunch of

622
00:36:44,530 --> 00:36:47,745
people that, like, LinkedIn is absolutely where it's gonna be at,

623
00:36:48,625 --> 00:36:51,605
or a video on LinkedIn because they're moving to having,

624
00:36:52,305 --> 00:36:55,665
more sort of real style. Right? So video is gonna be very

625
00:36:55,665 --> 00:36:59,185
early. Yeah. Yeah. So that's starting to show up in a lot more places, and

626
00:36:59,185 --> 00:37:02,710
that that's just sort of how people consume the stuff. Love or hate

627
00:37:02,710 --> 00:37:06,550
TikTok, it has absolutely changed kind of the video ecosystem. And I I

628
00:37:06,550 --> 00:37:10,150
think to your point, like, making it sort of unique and interesting and adding some

629
00:37:10,150 --> 00:37:13,990
personality to those things, like, if you just do some text posts, that's fine.

630
00:37:13,990 --> 00:37:17,545
Like, again, figure out your system. You know, like, two text posts a week, a

631
00:37:17,545 --> 00:37:20,825
witty a video a week, that kind of stuff. And, like, some fun things, like,

632
00:37:20,825 --> 00:37:24,585
you can actually use, like, use case cases and case studies with your

633
00:37:24,585 --> 00:37:28,265
clients of, you know, here's how we do, you know, maybe not

634
00:37:28,425 --> 00:37:31,725
it's sort of related to unboxing, but, like, here's how we do desktop

635
00:37:31,900 --> 00:37:35,740
deployments at, at x y z computer company. And we use

636
00:37:35,740 --> 00:37:39,420
the system called autopilot that makes all of this super seamless and

637
00:37:39,420 --> 00:37:43,260
simple. Right? Like like, it's engaging and actually sort of shows,

638
00:37:43,260 --> 00:37:46,860
like, we're doing something different that makes the lives of our customers so much

639
00:37:46,860 --> 00:37:50,535
easier. Right? I think that that's great stuff of of just figuring out some quick

640
00:37:50,535 --> 00:37:54,375
ways to do simple videos that show you inaction producing

641
00:37:54,375 --> 00:37:57,975
good value. Well, let let me tell you the easiest video for for

642
00:37:57,975 --> 00:38:01,035
anybody, and that is a video of you being yourself.

643
00:38:01,530 --> 00:38:05,370
So I I know because I've had so many conversations with MSPs who are

644
00:38:05,370 --> 00:38:09,210
terrified of doing videos because without them realizing it,

645
00:38:09,210 --> 00:38:12,970
they're trying to be like Todd, trying to be like Paul, trying to be

646
00:38:12,970 --> 00:38:16,815
like this guy, that guy, whatever they've seen. And you know, me

647
00:38:16,815 --> 00:38:19,215
being here with you now, this is me. This is the real me. If we

648
00:38:19,215 --> 00:38:22,175
were in real life, I'd be this animated. I'd I'd in fact, I'd I'd be

649
00:38:22,175 --> 00:38:25,875
more animated. Right? I'm I'm calming it down for the for the video.

650
00:38:26,335 --> 00:38:29,055
But this is the real me, and I know I'm talking to the real you

651
00:38:29,055 --> 00:38:32,630
because we chatted before this and you're exactly the same before as you as you

652
00:38:32,630 --> 00:38:36,069
are now. But that's because you've been doing videos for like two hundred years. So

653
00:38:36,069 --> 00:38:39,829
so you've got comfortable and familiar with you with with you doing

654
00:38:39,829 --> 00:38:43,670
it. For an MSP getting started, they're they're overthinking it. They're overthinking the

655
00:38:43,670 --> 00:38:47,515
tech, the camera, the lighting, the the audio, the content,

656
00:38:47,815 --> 00:38:51,575
and the actual answer is just be you. And some people will see your

657
00:38:51,575 --> 00:38:55,415
videos and they'll be turned off by those videos. Some people will see

658
00:38:55,415 --> 00:38:58,900
them and they'll be, I won't say turned on, but they'll they'll like Engaged. They'll

659
00:38:58,900 --> 00:39:01,860
like what they engage. Yeah. That's a much better way of putting it. In in

660
00:39:01,860 --> 00:39:05,220
The UK, we call that Marmite marketing. So we have, we have a

661
00:39:05,220 --> 00:39:09,060
a a spread. It's, it's known as Vegemite in the in the,

662
00:39:09,300 --> 00:39:11,860
in Australia. I can't remember what it's called in The US. It's not huge in

663
00:39:11,860 --> 00:39:15,675
The US, and and in Canada. But but Marmite had a has had an advertising

664
00:39:15,675 --> 00:39:19,515
campaign for twenty years. It's like a beef extract. And their advertising

665
00:39:19,515 --> 00:39:22,954
campaign is you either love it or you hate it. I love it so much

666
00:39:22,954 --> 00:39:26,470
that just the mention of me saying Marmite, it's it's dinner time here. I'm gonna

667
00:39:26,470 --> 00:39:29,830
go have Marmite with my dinner tonight because that's all I can think about now.

668
00:39:30,070 --> 00:39:32,950
But but it's that's what you want to be. You want to be a Marmite

669
00:39:32,950 --> 00:39:36,410
figure. You want people to not like you

670
00:39:37,110 --> 00:39:40,595
by being you. Right? And and that terrifies us as

671
00:39:40,595 --> 00:39:44,435
humans because we're we're programmed to have everyone

672
00:39:44,435 --> 00:39:48,115
like us. But the reality is not everyone can like you. So the more

673
00:39:48,115 --> 00:39:51,875
you're you, the more you it's almost like the the more real you are, the

674
00:39:51,875 --> 00:39:55,339
more authentic to yourself, the more you polarize and you become

675
00:39:55,640 --> 00:39:59,079
more attractive to to the to the people that will be your fans and less

676
00:39:59,079 --> 00:40:02,359
attractive to the people that that won't. And it's a tiny percentage of people that

677
00:40:02,359 --> 00:40:05,799
that don't like you. Our brains get obsessed with those people and we we forget

678
00:40:05,799 --> 00:40:09,165
the 90% of people that love us. But being you, being

679
00:40:09,165 --> 00:40:13,005
authentic, and never ever trying to be someone else, that that's the

680
00:40:13,005 --> 00:40:16,765
hardest, hardest thing. And yet, if you can crack that, videos are easy. And

681
00:40:16,765 --> 00:40:19,965
it can be and should be a simple case of you're in your car, you're

682
00:40:19,965 --> 00:40:23,559
about to go in and see a a 20 user business, it's a sales

683
00:40:23,559 --> 00:40:27,319
pitch, you get your phone, and it's like, hey, good morning LinkedIn. So I'm

684
00:40:27,319 --> 00:40:29,640
here out and so and so. I'm not gonna tell you where I am because

685
00:40:29,640 --> 00:40:32,119
I'm about to go in and see someone that should become a new client of

686
00:40:32,119 --> 00:40:35,880
ours, and and they've got twenty twenty staff, and what here are the

687
00:40:35,880 --> 00:40:38,844
three things I'm gonna talk to them about today. We're gonna talk about this problem,

688
00:40:38,844 --> 00:40:42,645
we're gonna talk about that problem we're gonna talk about, this opportunity. And that

689
00:40:42,645 --> 00:40:46,244
that would be a great video. Right? Sixty seconds, it'll end up in the real

690
00:40:46,244 --> 00:40:50,005
section of LinkedIn, and and as we know link as you just said, LinkedIn is

691
00:40:50,005 --> 00:40:53,820
pushing short form video. The algorithm is all over that right now.

692
00:40:54,380 --> 00:40:57,500
The TikTok effect, we can call it, and that would be it. If you if

693
00:40:57,500 --> 00:41:00,720
you be yourself, that would be it. Do two of those a week. Perfect.

694
00:41:01,580 --> 00:41:05,180
What's the expression, if you're everything to everyone, you're

695
00:41:05,180 --> 00:41:08,540
nothing to everybody? Like, something like that? Exactly that. Yeah. Yeah.

696
00:41:08,540 --> 00:41:11,915
Yeah. Alright. So the other piece here I'm curious to get your input on

697
00:41:11,915 --> 00:41:15,755
is, you know, LinkedIn, you can have your personal profile, and you

698
00:41:15,755 --> 00:41:19,595
can also have a business profile. And they're usually kinda linked to a

699
00:41:19,595 --> 00:41:23,435
particular, a particular account, and you can kinda flip back back

700
00:41:23,435 --> 00:41:27,190
between them. Now with this being kind of social selling

701
00:41:27,410 --> 00:41:31,089
and that you're, you know, people buy things from

702
00:41:31,089 --> 00:41:34,770
people, obviously, you should be leveraging your personal profile, I think,

703
00:41:34,770 --> 00:41:38,130
primarily. What is the role of a business profile on LinkedIn

704
00:41:38,130 --> 00:41:41,745
then? That's a really good question. And, for most MSPs, I

705
00:41:41,745 --> 00:41:45,265
recommend just ignore your business profile. So set it up. Maybe

706
00:41:45,265 --> 00:41:48,545
maybe make a note to go and put a couple of pieces of content a

707
00:41:48,545 --> 00:41:52,385
month on. But it's it's all about the the the person. You

708
00:41:52,385 --> 00:41:56,110
know, people buy from people. When do you know

709
00:41:56,110 --> 00:41:58,750
the real answer to this, Todd, is go and grab your grab your link grab

710
00:41:58,750 --> 00:42:02,590
your phone, pull up your LinkedIn app, and scroll through 20

711
00:42:02,590 --> 00:42:05,890
pieces of content. How many pieces of content do you see coming from a page?

712
00:42:06,030 --> 00:42:09,485
And the reality is you're gonna see person update, person update,

713
00:42:09,485 --> 00:42:13,245
advert, person update, person update, advert, person update, person update, advert.

714
00:42:13,245 --> 00:42:16,765
That you you just don't see Adverts come from the company profiles,

715
00:42:16,765 --> 00:42:20,605
basically. Yeah. But who who reads the adverts? Right? Link LinkedIn anyone that's

716
00:42:20,605 --> 00:42:24,410
ever tried LinkedIn advertising will know it's it's really ineffective. Yeah.

717
00:42:24,470 --> 00:42:28,150
They've done that. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, we're running a campaign at the

718
00:42:28,150 --> 00:42:31,990
moment to to promote the book. And the the the one big trick that

719
00:42:31,990 --> 00:42:35,530
LinkedIn is missing is you cannot, you cannot

720
00:42:35,615 --> 00:42:39,454
target an advert at your own connections. You can target it at, people who've liked

721
00:42:39,454 --> 00:42:42,895
your page, but actually people liking your page is is of no value to you

722
00:42:42,895 --> 00:42:46,335
on LinkedIn. I've got like eight eight eight thousand five hundred

723
00:42:46,335 --> 00:42:50,130
connections, maybe more. And, I would love to just put my

724
00:42:50,130 --> 00:42:53,570
advert for the book in front because I haven't sold 8,000 books yet. Right? So,

725
00:42:53,970 --> 00:42:57,650
but I can't do that. Anyway, we by the by. I I would say just

726
00:42:57,650 --> 00:43:00,210
ignore the page. Get it set up. Put a bit of content on once a

727
00:43:00,210 --> 00:43:03,734
month if if you must, if you want to. There are actually two audiences you

728
00:43:03,734 --> 00:43:07,275
should be building on LinkedIn. Number one is your connections and and there's

729
00:43:07,335 --> 00:43:11,015
there's a there's a difference between connections and followers. So a connection is where you

730
00:43:11,015 --> 00:43:14,694
are actually connected to someone and then the other thing is they

731
00:43:14,694 --> 00:43:18,310
can follow you. I recommend to MSPs go for connections rather than

732
00:43:18,310 --> 00:43:22,150
followers. So if you're a massive celebrity, do

733
00:43:22,150 --> 00:43:25,530
you remember I said earlier, you can only be connected to 10,000 people on LinkedIn.

734
00:43:25,990 --> 00:43:29,744
If you're a massive celebrity and you're you're a big deal, you want followers. Right?

735
00:43:29,744 --> 00:43:33,585
Because you can get 50,000, a hundred thousand followers. Like Bill Gates has millions,

736
00:43:33,585 --> 00:43:37,265
millions and millions of followers, but I'd he's probably only connected to a few thousand

737
00:43:37,265 --> 00:43:40,865
people. But for the average MSP connections, just focus on the

738
00:43:40,865 --> 00:43:44,630
connections because, that that's more valuable to you. And you're

739
00:43:44,630 --> 00:43:48,309
never gonna get or if if you ever get 10,000 connections, hey, that's a nice

740
00:43:48,309 --> 00:43:51,849
problem to have. Right? Yeah. Yeah. The the second audience to build on LinkedIn

741
00:43:51,990 --> 00:43:55,815
is your LinkedIn newsletter subscribers. So I have

742
00:43:55,815 --> 00:43:59,255
I have eight and a half thousand connections. I think I've got about just under

743
00:43:59,255 --> 00:44:02,935
4,000 LinkedIn newsletter subscribers. There's gonna be a crossover between those

744
00:44:02,935 --> 00:44:06,714
two audiences. But a LinkedIn newsletter, which surprisingly

745
00:44:06,935 --> 00:44:10,474
still carries a lot of algorithmic weight, it's been around for three years,

746
00:44:10,990 --> 00:44:14,750
but it but it's still today is important. People think of a

747
00:44:14,750 --> 00:44:18,190
newsletter as a collection of things. It's not. LinkedIn's version of a

748
00:44:18,190 --> 00:44:21,870
newsletter is you write an article. And when you send the article, it

749
00:44:21,870 --> 00:44:25,655
sits within an umbrella of a newsletter. So I've just done my third

750
00:44:25,734 --> 00:44:28,935
I've just had my third year anniversary of doing a LinkedIn at,

751
00:44:29,175 --> 00:44:33,015
newsletter every single Thursday. So every Thursday for what's that? Fifty two

752
00:44:33,015 --> 00:44:36,775
hundred and hundred hundred and fifty four six, hundred and fifty six

753
00:44:36,775 --> 00:44:40,609
weeks in a row including like at Christmas, including on vacations,

754
00:44:40,609 --> 00:44:44,289
my staff post it. I've done a brand new piece of content on LinkedIn, and

755
00:44:44,289 --> 00:44:48,049
that's why I've got so many subscribers. Because I've not put promoted it, but LinkedIn

756
00:44:48,049 --> 00:44:51,410
has promoted it for me. So when you send out a a an art an

757
00:44:51,410 --> 00:44:54,955
article, it's really cool. It goes into your feed,

758
00:44:55,255 --> 00:44:58,535
it gets shown to all of your subscribers, and this is the thing that makes

759
00:44:58,535 --> 00:45:02,375
it really cool. LinkedIn emails your article out to all of

760
00:45:02,375 --> 00:45:06,055
your subscribers as well. So LinkedIn is doing the emailing, so it's like you're

761
00:45:06,055 --> 00:45:09,230
hitting them two or three different ways. And I I look at the views I

762
00:45:09,230 --> 00:45:12,990
get. So we're recording this on a Thursday. I sent my newsletter out today. And

763
00:45:12,990 --> 00:45:15,870
in a week's time, I'll look at that, and I'll see that I've had, let's

764
00:45:15,870 --> 00:45:19,365
say, 2,000 views of it or 2,000 whatsoever, and I'll have five or six

765
00:45:19,365 --> 00:45:22,805
comments and a whole load of interactions. And that's great because that's an engaged

766
00:45:22,805 --> 00:45:26,405
audience. And some of those will have come from they've got an email from

767
00:45:26,405 --> 00:45:30,245
LinkedIn. And the reason the LinkedIn does this is they

768
00:45:30,245 --> 00:45:33,765
will click on the button to go and see the article in LinkedIn. So there's

769
00:45:33,765 --> 00:45:36,860
like a preview of of a I don't know what the limit is, but there's

770
00:45:36,860 --> 00:45:39,500
a certain amount of content in the in the email, and then they have to

771
00:45:39,500 --> 00:45:43,100
click the button. So they're using my content to get people back onto their

772
00:45:43,100 --> 00:45:46,700
platform. To me, that's a symbiotic relationship. That's a that's a beautiful

773
00:45:46,700 --> 00:45:50,435
symbiotic relationship, and I hope they don't screw it up, because it works really

774
00:45:50,435 --> 00:45:53,975
well. But those are the two audiences that MSP should be should be focusing on.

775
00:45:54,275 --> 00:45:58,035
Okay. Great. One other piece, or run a little long here, but

776
00:45:58,035 --> 00:46:01,875
this this is really helpful content, I think. What about

777
00:46:01,875 --> 00:46:05,470
analytics? Because, like, I've really struggled to you to find useful

778
00:46:05,690 --> 00:46:09,369
analytics in any like, without doing a lot of sort of,

779
00:46:09,369 --> 00:46:13,130
like, research and digging on old posts and things like that, it's really

780
00:46:13,130 --> 00:46:16,730
difficult to pull this stuff up. You noted, like, newsletters, I think, have probably some

781
00:46:16,730 --> 00:46:20,515
pretty good analytics because at least it's contained, around a specific piece

782
00:46:20,515 --> 00:46:24,355
of content. But is there any way that we can better leverage some of the

783
00:46:24,355 --> 00:46:28,115
the analytics that LinkedIn must have but don't readily really share with

784
00:46:28,115 --> 00:46:31,580
us, it seems? Yeah. I'm not really an analytics

785
00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:36,120
kind of person. I'm in fact, even as you said the word, my

786
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:39,480
eyes glazed over. That's just I'm a dick. I

787
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:43,020
know. I know. You you are, and I'm not. I'm just being authentic.

788
00:46:43,240 --> 00:46:45,654
I I have I have people in my team that worry about stuff like that

789
00:46:45,654 --> 00:46:49,095
for me, so I don't have to. You're right. In newsletters, there's actually good

790
00:46:49,095 --> 00:46:52,615
analytics. You can literally see, you can see who's who's

791
00:46:52,615 --> 00:46:55,734
subscribed. You can see it's been a while since I've looked at it, but I

792
00:46:55,734 --> 00:46:58,859
think you can see, like, who's looked at this newsletter. You can see all sorts

793
00:46:58,859 --> 00:47:02,460
of analytics. In in LinkedIn, there's some analytics. I found a really

794
00:47:02,460 --> 00:47:06,140
cool, third party plugin couple of about, four months

795
00:47:06,140 --> 00:47:09,259
ago. I can't remember what it's called, but I plugged it into my LinkedIn and

796
00:47:09,259 --> 00:47:12,460
I spent half an hour geeking out over, oh, wow. This is my best performing

797
00:47:12,460 --> 00:47:14,805
post ever. And And this was my this, and this was that. And then I

798
00:47:14,805 --> 00:47:17,605
got it, and then I disconnected it from my Chrome because I don't like to

799
00:47:17,605 --> 00:47:20,825
have lots too many plug too many third party plugins I don't know in Chrome.

800
00:47:21,285 --> 00:47:24,565
Because I talked to MSPs, and they tell me that's not a good thing. So,

801
00:47:24,565 --> 00:47:28,165
you know, I think sometimes analytics get in the

802
00:47:28,165 --> 00:47:32,000
way of just us doing the stuff that authentic?

803
00:47:32,060 --> 00:47:35,820
Yeah. Being authentic. And, you know, I I've just chucked out, oh,

804
00:47:35,820 --> 00:47:39,020
look at my numbers, Todd. I got this. This is great. That's that's like nine

805
00:47:39,020 --> 00:47:42,220
years hard work. So, you know, nine years ago, I had I was there was

806
00:47:42,220 --> 00:47:45,085
probably you. I was connected to you, and that was it. And and then, you

807
00:47:45,085 --> 00:47:48,445
know, I I I I've just built that up the hard way and and the

808
00:47:48,445 --> 00:47:52,045
slow way and the long way. But then there's an authentic database of people that

809
00:47:52,045 --> 00:47:55,405
I've walked you know, I've I've connected with one by one by one. The the

810
00:47:55,405 --> 00:47:59,210
subscribers to the LinkedIn newsletter that we had 50 subscribers in week one.

811
00:47:59,210 --> 00:48:02,330
You know, we had 52 on week two. We had 54 on week three. But

812
00:48:02,330 --> 00:48:05,369
I just kept going because I know that over a period of time, I'm building

813
00:48:05,369 --> 00:48:08,330
up an audio another authentic audience that no one else is gonna be able to

814
00:48:08,330 --> 00:48:11,905
beat me on that. Someone could have a hundred thousand subscribers because they've used some

815
00:48:11,905 --> 00:48:15,505
clever little trick to build it up quickly, but that's not a truly engaged

816
00:48:15,505 --> 00:48:18,625
authentic audience. So no, no, I don't. I do you know what? I don't even

817
00:48:18,625 --> 00:48:22,224
look at analytics on my website. I I barely look at my email

818
00:48:22,224 --> 00:48:25,790
stats. I'll look at it if I think there's a problem or now and again,

819
00:48:25,790 --> 00:48:29,550
I'll have a bit of a deep dive, but I think and especially data

820
00:48:29,550 --> 00:48:33,170
driven people, you can overthink what you're trying to do.

821
00:48:33,870 --> 00:48:36,910
Do do you know that there's, there's one big thing to this whole system that

822
00:48:36,910 --> 00:48:40,635
we've not talked about? All all these tasks which were in my book, it's on

823
00:48:40,635 --> 00:48:43,595
Amazon, MSP marketing start here. Just go and get it. It's like $8. It's not

824
00:48:43,595 --> 00:48:46,555
a huge amount of money. The the big thing in there is there's a whole

825
00:48:46,555 --> 00:48:49,835
series of these tasks that we're talking about. My big thing is you don't do

826
00:48:49,835 --> 00:48:53,609
them yourself. Right? As the MSP owner, you do them once or twice so

827
00:48:53,609 --> 00:48:56,090
you can figure out exactly how you want them to be done Build your what

828
00:48:56,090 --> 00:48:59,930
your preferences are, build your SOPs, hand it on someone else. Someone on your team

829
00:48:59,930 --> 00:49:03,770
or a virtual assistant. Right? None of the tasks are so difficult that only you

830
00:49:03,770 --> 00:49:07,475
can do them. In fact, I live my life and and I think all MSPs

831
00:49:07,475 --> 00:49:11,255
should live their lives by this sentence. Write this one down in sharpie

832
00:49:11,315 --> 00:49:14,995
on your head or get it tattooed on your head. You should only

833
00:49:14,995 --> 00:49:18,835
do what only you can do. You should only do what

834
00:49:18,835 --> 00:49:22,589
only you can do. And and believe me, creating content

835
00:49:22,589 --> 00:49:26,349
on link creating content for LinkedIn is something only you can do, but posting

836
00:49:26,349 --> 00:49:29,869
it is not something only you can do. I don't load my I don't actually

837
00:49:29,869 --> 00:49:33,549
physically load my LinkedIn newsletter. One of my team does that. But I don't even

838
00:49:33,549 --> 00:49:37,025
I don't even chat to most people on LinkedIn myself now. My VA, Christelle, she

839
00:49:37,025 --> 00:49:40,785
does that. And she because 80% of the conversations on LinkedIn are the same

840
00:49:40,785 --> 00:49:44,145
conversations. Right? It's the same things. People asking basic stuff. So I answer the

841
00:49:44,145 --> 00:49:47,585
20% of stuff that she can't answer because it needs a poll answer. But for

842
00:49:47,585 --> 00:49:50,160
all the rest of it, there's an SOP. She she knows exactly how to do

843
00:49:50,160 --> 00:49:52,480
all of that. And that that's a little secret. If you've ever chatted to be

844
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:56,080
on LinkedIn, it may not have been me. If that say, hi, Christelle. If you

845
00:49:56,080 --> 00:49:58,960
know me on LinkedIn, go on to LinkedIn and say, hi, Christelle in a message

846
00:49:58,960 --> 00:50:02,365
because it freaks her out when that happens. That's always fun. But

847
00:50:02,365 --> 00:50:06,045
yeah. So if you get too obsessed about the data, and

848
00:50:06,045 --> 00:50:09,005
you've got other people doing this for you, it it gets in the way. It's

849
00:50:09,005 --> 00:50:11,885
just like, right, here's a task. It's it's a small number of it's a couple

850
00:50:11,885 --> 00:50:14,285
of hours a week. Someone else does this for me. I'm just gonna get that

851
00:50:14,285 --> 00:50:17,680
out of my head. I'm building audiences. I'm growing relationships. I'm gonna convert those

852
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:21,359
relationships into prospects and clients down the line. Let's go and find other

853
00:50:21,359 --> 00:50:25,200
audiences we can build now. Let's find other new content. Let's let's let's

854
00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:28,480
take this system and make it bigger and just have have more more things involved

855
00:50:28,480 --> 00:50:32,185
in it. Yeah. Delegation is absolutely a superpower, especially if you're

856
00:50:32,185 --> 00:50:36,025
looking to scale something that you've built into a reliable system. So

857
00:50:36,025 --> 00:50:39,705
going full circle, unless you build a system, you cannot scale this

858
00:50:39,705 --> 00:50:43,440
and make it effective in the long term. So really good advice. So,

859
00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:47,440
Paul, you've graciously offered to, send out some some of

860
00:50:47,440 --> 00:50:51,140
the some books to to some listeners for free. So,

861
00:50:51,920 --> 00:50:55,760
we I think we're gonna say first ten people that take you up on this

862
00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:58,895
offer get a free copy of the book. What is the best way that they

863
00:50:58,895 --> 00:51:02,175
could do that? Do should they email me, or is there a a page that

864
00:51:02,175 --> 00:51:05,555
they should hit? What's the best method for the for the first ten lucky

865
00:51:05,615 --> 00:51:09,375
listeners to grab a free copy? Let's keep it super simple. Email Todd. If

866
00:51:09,375 --> 00:51:11,930
you if you give us the email address, Todd, and then you you know the

867
00:51:11,930 --> 00:51:15,210
first ten people. And all you need to do is just email Todd your your,

868
00:51:15,529 --> 00:51:19,369
your mailing address with your country. Doesn't matter where you are. It's on every Amazon

869
00:51:19,369 --> 00:51:22,410
on the planet, we we will send one out to you. And Todd will pass

870
00:51:22,410 --> 00:51:25,265
the addresses to us. We won't use your address for anything else, by the way.

871
00:51:25,265 --> 00:51:28,625
We're not gonna we're gonna not gonna spam you with with may direct mails and

872
00:51:28,625 --> 00:51:31,744
stuff. We'll literally we'll send you a copy of this. You'll get it within about

873
00:51:31,744 --> 00:51:35,265
ten days, and that's it. So what's the what's the email address to send to,

874
00:51:35,265 --> 00:51:38,990
Todd? Maybe this should be part of the

875
00:51:38,990 --> 00:51:42,690
challenge. You can also DM me on LinkedIn. So find me on LinkedIn. Cool.

876
00:51:42,830 --> 00:51:46,530
Maybe that's let's do that. First people to 10 people to DM you on LinkedIn.

877
00:51:46,590 --> 00:51:49,255
There we go. That's a better idea. There we go. Yeah. I like that. Okay.

878
00:51:49,255 --> 00:51:52,775
So, yeah, like, we're practicing what we're preaching. Get on LinkedIn. Find me. If you're

879
00:51:52,775 --> 00:51:56,395
not not already connected, connect and send me a message, and Paul will

880
00:51:56,535 --> 00:52:00,215
will graciously send you a free copy of the book. I won't. Christelle will do

881
00:52:00,215 --> 00:52:03,750
it because because because you should only do what you can only do. Right?

882
00:52:03,830 --> 00:52:07,350
There you go. K. Excellent. Well, this has been great, Paul. Really appreciate your

883
00:52:07,350 --> 00:52:11,110
input and, all the work that you're doing to skill up and scale up

884
00:52:11,110 --> 00:52:14,490
MSPs. You're welcome. And thanks so much for having me on the show again.