Episode 233: The MSP that's unstoppable

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast

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Episode 233

Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week’s show includes:

00:00 Why you need Big Mo in your business
08:01 Systemize your ability to under-promise and over-deliver
15:41 This expert can help you grow your MSP business

Featured guest:

Thank you to MSP Coach Brian Hoppe, for joining me to talk about his experience of scaling MSP businesses, and how he uses that experience to coach other MSPs in how to scale their own businesses.

Brian has been part of the Managed Services industry since the early 2000s. He earned both his Bachelor’s and MBA from Baylor University. For over 20 years, Brian has worked in multiple MSPs and has bought and sold multiple MSPs. He’s been everything from a technician to Ops Manager to CFO to CEO. He has grown multiple MSPs to over $5 million in revenue and managed MSPs in excess of $15 million in revenue. Brian has a thorough understanding of all the ins and outs of running a highly successful MSP. But more importantly, he understands how to help MSP leaders get the most from their business. His expertise in leadership and coaching can help any MSP owner or CEO achieve the results they want in both business and life. He is passionate about finding the right clients for his coaching practice to help take their business and leadership to the next level.

Connect with Brian on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianhoppe/

Extra show notes:

Listen or watch every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform, hosted by me, Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/
- http://mspmarketingedge.com/about/
Connect with me on LinkedIn:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/
Find out about my MSP Marketing Edge service:
- https://www.mspmarketingedge.com
Subscribe to my YouTube channel:
- https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing
You can join me in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook:
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/
Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:
I mentioned the book The Compound Effect, if you’re interested in reading more you can find it here:
- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Compound-Effect-Darren-Hardy-LLC/dp/1399805789/
Grab yourself a copy of this week’s recommended book, The Obstacle is the Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage:
- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Obstacle-Way-Ancient-Adversity-Advantage/dp/1781251495/

Transcription:

NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

Speaker 1 (00:00): Fresh every Tuesday

Speaker 2 (00:02): For MSPs around the world, around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast. Podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:09): Hi there and welcome back to the show. Here’s what I’ve got in store for you this week.

Speaker 3 (00:14): Hi, I’m Brian Hoppe. I have built an MSP up to 45 staff and also built and sold a second MSP. Join me on Paul’s podcast where we talk about how to scale your MSP.

Speaker 1 (00:25): We’re also going to talk about how to guarantee that you delight every single one of your clients by systemizing how to underpromise and over deliver

Speaker 2 (00:35): Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:39): Let’s talk about a key member of your team who might actually be missing. You haven’t got him yet, but you do need him if you’re ever going to get anywhere with your marketing. In fact, his very appearance within your MSP shows that you are getting it right. His name is Big Mo, and he brings with himself big momentum. Now, I first heard the concept of big, big momentum, whatever you call it, reading a book called The Compound Effect. It’s an amazing book. If you haven’t read it or listen to it because it is on audible, please go and get it. Obviously, it’s not about MSPs, but it could be because it’s talking about productivity and talking about getting into a flow and repeat things. In fact, one of the other key phrases I remember from that is the secret of success is not about doing 5,000 things really well, it’s about finding a tiny number of things and doing them 5,000 times.

(01:35) And that is so the case with marketing because marketing your MSP, it’s a long game and it’s like rolling a stone down a hill. In fact, it’s not really a stone. It’s a massive rock. Think of a rock that’s bigger than you and you’ve got to get that started and get it going down the hill. So first of all, you’ve got to put your shoulder into it. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of work to start to push that stone, and you’re rocking back and forth and the stone’s rocking back and forth, and then eventually the stone reaches that tipping point and it starts to go down the hill, but it’s a shallow hill and it’s a very, very slow roll of the stone. In fact, you have to keep pushing it and keep pushing it to keep it going. But what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to get it to that point where it reaches big momentum or achieves big momentum and the hill gets steeper and the stone, the rock starts to turn and turn and turn.

(02:26) It gets faster and faster. And believe me, at that point, no one is stopping it. Now, obviously, I’m not really talking there about a rock down a mountain. I’m talking about your MSP’s marketing. It takes a lot of effort to get things going. You’ve got to really put your shoulder into it and push and push and you won’t see results at first, but eventually you reach the tipping point where you start to see some momentum, you start to see some things happening, and then you have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing and making sure the marketing continues. The rock continues because eventually it builds up big, big momentum. The problem is that too many MSPs, they give up way too soon. They start doing some marketing, they’ll throw themselves into LinkedIn and then two minutes later they’ll stop. Perhaps they’ll take a vacation or a break or something, or maybe they’ll just skip a week because they’ve just got out of the habit of it and the momentum goes because then that week becomes two weeks, three weeks, and suddenly LinkedIn didn’t work for me or insert this marketing tactic here, didn’t work for me.

(03:28) Whenever someone says to me, oh, I tried that. It didn’t work for me with one or two minor exceptions like paid ads for example, pay-per-click ads, there are in many instances times where that’s not right for you. The same with SEO search engine optimization. It’s not right for every MSP in every marketplace, but other marketing tactics, they do work if you do them long enough. I mean, look at this podcast. We are about four and a half years into this podcast, so we have put this podcast out every single week since November, 2019, and I know that no one listened for the first year they have now, because what happens is people discover the podcast and then they go back and they start at the beginning. Some people do not. Everyone does. So now we have lots of views on our first five 10 episodes, but when we first put them out in 2019, no one was listening.

(04:17) There was zero feedback, no one cared. But you know what? Me and my production team, it was just a guy called James at the beginning, and now it’s James and Simon and Laura, and there’s a whole team of us working on this podcast and we all turn up every single week and we’ve systemized doing this podcast. I record it ahead of time. I record guests ahead of time, and we’re talking weeks ahead of time. We’ve got a great production process, we’ve got a marketing process, and we’ve got Big Mo on the big momentum on the podcast, and that’s deliberate because it’s a really important marketing channel for us, and we don’t ever want to trip up and get it wrong. But that first year there was literally tumbleweed. There was no one out there. We’re having a similar thing right now with YouTube. So we have put an massive amount of effort.

(04:58) It’s the same team. We work on podcasters, work on YouTube, and at the moment we will put out a video that perhaps takes two hours of filming time for me and either James or Simon who direct me remotely. I hear in my studio, I’ll put on props. We’ll write scripts. We spend, I’d say it’s two hours of filming. It must be at least three to four hours of scripting and probably another four hours or so of editing. So we’re investing 10, maybe 12 hours into a YouTube video that’s getting 60 views and we’ve got like 800 subscribers. These are tiny, tiny little figures. But here’s the thing, I’m not worried about it because I know if we keep putting out a video and we’re working up to doing it every single week, we will grow that channel. That 800 subscribers will become thousands of subscribers, all MSPs.

(05:45) Those 60 views per video will become 600 views per video, 6,000 views. Eventually it will grow because we will get big mo on it. LinkedIn, I’m very active on LinkedIn just as I recommend that you should be. And right now I’ve got 9,000 followers on LinkedIn and those are people who are, some of them are connected to me as well, and some of them will be getting my LinkedIn newsletter, but some of them are just following me. So on LinkedIn, if you’re a content creator, so you’ve switched on content creator in the settings, then people can just follow you and see the content that you put out there. 9,000 MSPs, that’s pretty impressive, right? But that comes from Big Mo because we’ve been working on that since roundabout 2017. We’ve got big momentum on it. So what I suggest to you within your SP, if you set the right marketing strategy, you then commit to it for years and years and years, and let me give you the right marketing strategy to make it really simple.

(06:42) It’s a super simple three-step marketing strategy we’ve built as service. The MSP marketing edge around this very simple step. Number one is to build multiple audiences, typically LinkedIn and your email database. Step number two is then to build a relationship with those audiences, and you do that through content marketing. So putting out social media daily, sending out an email once a week and sending out a printed newsletter once a month. And then the third step is you then convert those relationships into clients, and that’s done by phoning those people up and just seeing how they’re going well, is now the right time for you to have a chat with them? That is a great marketing strategy, but only if you commit yourself to it for the next five years. And once you get big mo, by the way, be very, very careful not to accidentally show in the door, as I said to you with our podcast, with YouTube, with our LinkedIn, not with YouTube yet, but with those things we’ve got Big Mo and we work very, very hard to make sure that we never, ever accidentally kill that momentum. For us, that means working ahead. Well, it means resourcing it well, it means communicating well. If I’m going around on holiday, someone is going to do the jobs that I normally do and vice versa. When my team are away, we work very, very hard to make sure that once Big Mo is in the building, we never let him out of the door. And you need to do exactly the same thing.

Speaker 4 (08:02): Here’s this week’s clever

Speaker 1 (08:03): Idea. One of the smartest ways to always make sure your clients are always happy is to underpromise and over deliver, but you need to build that into a system because if you’re kind of hoping that it happens or constantly having to chase your technicians to make sure it happens, well it’s not going to happen. Whereas if you’ve built it into a system, then it just happens. So what are some examples of how you would underpromise and overdeliver? Let’s take for example, a project. Let’s say you’re doing a migration project. Well, let’s go with that. We’re going with a migration project. So for example, it takes, let’s say eight days, eight working days to do this. So you would tell your client, this takes 10 working days, and you would give them a project map or whatever it is that you give them that shows them 10 days.

(08:53) Now, there’s two benefits for you of working those extra two days into that schedule. The first benefit is that if something goes wrong, I’m not a technical person, but I’m sure that things go wrong all the time In migrations when you stumble across things you didn’t know that you were going to be involved in migrating, well, you’ve just bought yourself two extra days so you can actually deliver on schedule, but still take an extra two days because it’s eight days, the client thinks it’s 10 days, there’s two day spare. It’s good. But the other thing, and what we really want to do here is for you to be able to go back to the client after eight days and say, good news, we had spare resource within the business, so we threw them onto your migration at no cost to you. The upside of this is we’ve delivered it a day early or we’ve delivered it two days early.

(09:38) And imagine if you are able to do that with every single project that you scheduled. That’s really cool, right? Isn’t it? Another thing that you could do to under promise and over deliver is to give your clients more than you promised. So just as an example, let’s say you bought them a new laptop or they’ve asked you to buy them some new laptops. What you do at the same time is you buy them some monitors and you find a way to subsidize those external monitors. So it might be that you say to or, well, no, I’m just thinking that’s probably a big cost. Let’s say they buy laptops and they buy some external monitors. You go and buy some laptop docks. I dunno how much those cost. Let’s say that’s like a hundred dollars or a hundred pounds per laptop dock. So obviously you are losing a bit of margin, but you just build it in and for you to turn up and say to them, right, here’s your new laptop, it’s all set up for you.

(10:26) Here’s your external monitor. Hey, we just wanted to make your lives easy, so I hope you don’t mind, we are not charging you for this. It’s a free gift from us. We’ve got some laptop docs for you. Look, you just slide it in Bing and it comes up on the monitor, right? That would be really cool. I mean, I know I would as an end user, as a client, I will be delighted with that. And you know, don’t even have to go out of your way spending hundreds on kit for them. You can just find very simple ways to surprise your clients, and this is another way to underpromise and over-deliver. For example, what if a Friday afternoon you just dropped in to a client with cakes, right? With donuts or with cakes, nice fresh ones, not cheap, nasty shop bought ones, but lovely fresh cakes, fresh cupcakes, fresh donuts that you’ve just picked up from somewhere.

(11:15) What if someone has been put in a ticket yesterday to say their mouse was a bit sticky, they spilt something on it, their mouse is sticking and you just turn up or or someone turns up at the office and you make a big thing of, hi everyone, sorry to bother you. Obviously you go with this. If this is your personality to do this, sorry to bother you, but Dave, do you know that Dave’s spelled some Dr. Pepper on his mouse this week? I’ve got a new one. And you hold the new one up and you say, Dave, here we go. It’s on us because there’s nothing worse than a sticky mass, right? Something like that. And imagine, in fact, could you imagine systemizing every Friday you go round one of your clients and they don’t know that you do this every Friday. They think you’ve just dropped in on your way home with cakes or pizza or whatever it is that you’re just dropping.

(11:59) Is cakes probably better than pizza? Can you see how really cool this would be? I tell you something else that you could do to under promise. I know you said under-deliver and over promise, there under promise and overdeliver is to deal with small tickets really, really quickly. My doctor surgery did this here in the uk we have a thing called the NHS, the National Health Service, which is both amazing and terrible at the same time because basically the demand on it has grown so fast and the funding hasn’t grown as fast. So the whole system is creaking and we have long delays. It’s great. It costs us nothing. We pay a little tax for it, but it costs us nothing. Anybody can just turn up for any level of healthcare in theory. But the downside is you wait a long time and typically the smaller the item, the longer it takes.

(12:46) My local doctors has hired a paramedic. So a paramedic obviously is not a doctor, but he’s someone who’s quite experienced, and this is an experienced paramedic, and his job is to be that kind of first line, what’s the word I’m looking for? Triaging. He’s triaging people and dealing with small queries first, and they’re getting through a ton of patients really quickly because now instead of a doctor, a qualified general practitioner, having to see everyone as triage, they’ve put in a triage before the triage really smart. And this paramedic, I’m guessing they’ve got safeguards in place to make sure he doesn’t muck up. So they’re now able to deal with quick things. Like my daughter had a clicky knee. When you click, you bend your knee and it goes click, click, click, click. And we went in and we saw the paramedic and it was all dealt with very quickly.

(13:29) And he said, well, we could do this, we could do this, or I could feed you to the doctor, or you wait X number of months and come back to us. It’s brilliant. And now the customer satisfaction with that doctor has gone up because they’re just dealing with small things really fast. So whether you do that or whether you, and of course by the way, the MSP equivalent of that is hiring, I can’t remember what it’s called now, but hiring someone who’s not a technician to answer the phones a dispatcher. You hire a dispatcher to answer the phones and to deal with all of those small queries. Anybody can be trained to do password resets, add new users, basic stuff. So this is actually how you build capacity into your technicians by having a non technician dealing with the small stuff that’s the paramedic equivalent.

(14:13) So whether you do that or you drop off cakes on a Friday or whatever you do, you have to systemize it. And when you systemize it, it takes the stress out of it. If you’ve got a dispatcher sitting there, that’s the system. The dispatcher answers the phone, the dispatcher triages it, that’s the system. If you take cakes to clients every Friday, I go to a different client or every other Friday or something like that until you run out of clients and then you maybe go and see prospects and do something like that, it becomes a system. You don’t have to think about it. It just automatically happens. This, by the way, is why the word system is actually an acronym and it stands for saves you stress, time, energy and money. Let the system take the strain for you.

Speaker 4 (14:57): Paul’s blatant plug. Blatant

Speaker 1 (14:59): Plug. I mentioned LinkedIn earlier and the fact that I’ve got around about 9,000 followers on LinkedIn, if you are not one of them and you’d like to connect to me or just follow me or get my LinkedIn newsletter, then you can easily find me. Just go into LinkedIn, type in Paul Green, MSP marketing, because sadly there are lots of Paul Greens in the world. In fact, there’s a Paul Green shoes. Did you know that? It’s like a shoe designer. There’s a famous musician as well called Paul Green. In fact, I think School of Rock that Jack Black film, I think it is. The original one is called the Paul Green School of Rock. Anyway, regardless, you don’t want to connect with those people on LinkedIn. Type into search Paul Green, MSP marketing. You’ll find me. Let’s connect on LinkedIn,

Speaker 4 (15:42): The big, big, big interview.

Speaker 3 (15:44): Hi, I’m Brian Hoppe, and I am a CEO coach for MSPs.

Speaker 1 (15:49): And thank you so much for joining me on the show, Brian. So you are really one of those people who has been there and done that, and now you are taking that experience and helping other MSP owners to go where you went with your business. Tell us about your story. So how did you get into the tech world in the first place and what have you done over the last, I guess it must be a couple of decades for you now. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (16:10): Absolutely. Yes. So I’m one of the rare people who actually went to school for it. So I got a business degree in IT concentration, so I knew what I wanted to do and one of the rare people it seems that actually used their education. So I got started in the early two thousands in just like a two man shop, and we were pretty quickly after that acquired by a family office, Forbes billionaire who wanted to grow an IT company. So we grew that IT company for a number of years up until about 2015 up to around 45 employees. And then it kind of became like, Hey, I’d like to maybe do this for myself as opposed to for somebody else. So I’ve bought a small company, grew that for a little while, purchased another company, MSPs, specifically targeted towards banking and credit union industry. So built kind of a financial services MSP, and then sold that back in 2021. I had planned to do that for a longer period of time, but circumstances were just right at that point. And so decided to make the sale, worked for the buyer for a little bit over a year after that, and now have been just working one-on-one with MSP CEOs for the last about a year.

Speaker 1 (17:28): Fantastic. I mean, that’s a heck of a journey. Now, the time that you spent running or working in an MSP for someone else, when you actually came out of that and you thought, right, I’d like to do this myself, talk us through why you bought a company as opposed to just starting your own place.

Speaker 3 (17:44): Oh, that’s a great question. Yeah, I think I decided I just didn’t want to start from scratch. I consider on the StrengthsFinder, I’m a maximizer, so starting from scratch is not necessarily in my strength. And so I decided, hey, I’m going to buy something that’s in place. It’s pretty small. It was about five techs or so at the time. And so I’ve just felt like that was the right path for me as I kind of embarked on my journey on my own.

Speaker 1 (18:14): And when you bought the other MSPs, did you sort of merge them all into one entity?

Speaker 3 (18:18): We did, yes. We took the best of both worlds and merged them together, got on all the same systems, processes and all of that, and really use that for some cost savings and that kind of a thing as you do. And yeah, merge the operations together.

Speaker 1 (18:37): Okay. So in a second, you and I are going to talk about scaling up any MSP, and I know you have an absolute ton of advice and information and structure that you would add to that. Before we do, let me ask you one last question about your own MSP that you owned. What would you say, well, let me ask you two. What would you say is was your biggest mistake that you made while you were growing that business, and B, what was the thing that you think you got, which most other MSPs get wrong?

Speaker 3 (19:04): So starting with the biggest mistake, I think one of the things that, especially after purchasing the second company, we did not do a good job of cultivating the relationships with the customers on the front end of the company that we acquired. And so we had some issues in there with customer retention. I definitely take responsibility for that, but learned the lesson in that process that the customer relationship is absolutely the most important thing. And then the second part of that being a success, I think one of the big things that we did is that we really focused in on an industry and we made that kind of the center of what we did. So for me, that was the financial services, and that really enables you to know your customer and the software they use, all of their needs, all of those kinds of things really, really well. And it really simplifies marketing. Also, I know most MSPs are very broad. They’re not industry specific, and that can be okay too, but it did simplify a lot of things and really helped us grow and scale very well.

Speaker 1 (20:27): Yeah, no, I can imagine, and you’re right, a lot of MSPs, they’ll talk about having a vertical, and often it’s the same verticals, isn’t it? It’s CPAs or accountants, lawyers, manufacturers, everyone seems to be going after the same verticals, but very often it’s a toe dipped into the water and someone will look at their business and say, Hey, I’ve got three lawyers already, so we’ve got a vertical, let’s go after that vertical. And they do a page on their website and put it in the navigation, and that makes it a vertical. And the reality is when you go all in on something, it’s a completely different thing. And I’ve actually pulled this trick off myself. Obviously I only work with MSPs, and I only do a very small narrow piece of the marketing puzzle for MSPs, but I had a previous business, which I sold in 2016 where we worked with veterinarians and opticians or optometrists and dentists here in the uk.

(21:17) And that was really cool because the actual work we were doing was identical for each of them, but we had three separate websites, we had three separate teams, we had three separate ways of talking to these people, but then all the work was flowing into one delivery team, and that was a really cool, that was a great lesson in how to get verticals. I would love to see more MSPs really, really marry a market. And I know of a few that have, and those that know me well, who are doing this, who are listening to this right now, they know who I’m talking about, but it’s very much the exception rather than the rule. Right. Let’s talk about scaling an MSP. So you’ve gone, as you say, I think you said you’ve got about 20, 24, 23 years experience building someone else’s business for them, building your own business, and now you are coaching MSPs.

(22:04) And I think that does give you such a broad depth of, or what’s the phrase I’m trying to say here, Brian, A broad overview of what MSPs do and also allows you to go deep into specific subjects. So what do you think are the most critical things that, let’s say if you’re an average MSP owner and you’re at the sort of two, three tech stage right now, but you’re ambitious and you really want to go for it and you really want to get up there to 5, 10, 15 techs, create a business that runs without you, that thrives without you and free yourself just to be leading that business and working on that business, what would you say are the critical things to put in place along the way?

Speaker 3 (22:49): Yeah, there’s so many. There’s so many, and it is really unique for each MSP. So I’ll start by talking about, one of the things that I go through with my clients a lot is figuring out what is in your unique ability. So as the owner, are you spending the time on the things that you’re best at and the things that are going to push your business forward the most? We know most everybody kind of starts as a technical person, right? A technician. And it’s that process of moving from doing work that other people can also do to doing the things that only you can do. And I talk to so many owners who are really stuck in the day-to-day, putting out fires, all of those kinds of things. And it takes stepping back a little bit and saying, okay, what am I uniquely suited for as the owner? What’s my highest and best use inside the company? And how do I free up my time, generally speaking, by finding good people to help in key areas in order to do those things that are the most important. I think that’s a big piece.

Speaker 1 (24:00): Yeah, no, I think it’s a huge piece, but do you sometimes find that a, the MSP owner is, even though they acknowledge they’ve got to change, they’re really reluctant to actually make that change happen when they’re caught up doing everything, and B, do you sometimes find that the MSP owner actually realizes what they’re best at is third line support and they’re going to have to find someone else to essentially help them grow the business?

Speaker 3 (24:21): Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the big thing. It’s as owners, we see certain things and we also have a lot of blind spots, and most of the time it is the fact that it’s a blind spot as the owner, I don’t know what really should I be doing or what’s really sucking up my time to keep me from doing the strategic things that I need to do to grow the company. And so absolutely, I think part of it is having some help with that, right? Having somebody to be like, Hey, let’s reflect on where the time is going, what you’re doing and where you need to bring in that help to really get you on track.

Speaker 1 (24:59): Yeah, I think it’s one of the hardest things for any business owner. I remember doing it in my first business. It was so hard. It was easy in the second business because I’d already done it, just as I’m sure you found when you were growing your own MSP as you hit situations that you’d already dealt with in the previous MSP, you’re like, oh, I know what to do. Well, it’s not in knowing what to do. I know what to do. I’ve done it and I know what the pitfalls are and I know what success looks like, so it’s so much easier. So what are some of the other critical success factors do you think make a big difference?

Speaker 3 (25:30): You’d be surprised to hear how many MSP owners I talk to that have no idea where they want to go. They’re like, I want to grow my business. And that’s about it. So I start with vision. Where do we want to go? Let’s look at a big hairy, audacious goal. Let’s look 10 years out, the BHAG, what do you want things to look like in 10 years? How do we crystallize that vision and really help you as the owner have a really crystal clear picture of what that looks like? So starting off with vision, and we also even look at things like, Hey, what do you want your personal wealth to look like? What do you want your business valuation to look like in that 10 year or so period? And then that gives us a starting point that gives us the north star for, Hey, here is where I want to go. And it just changes things going from, yeah, I want to grow the business to, I’m really crystal clear about here’s where we’re going to be 10 years from now, and then that gives us the ability to say, okay, great, so now we can put together the strategy to actually get there. I think that’s a big piece of the puzzle and something that a lot of people don’t do.

Speaker 1 (26:46): No, I agree completely. It’s just struck me, Brian, as we’re talking there that you and I are talking about really basic stuff here. We talking, well, lemme give a caveat. We’re talking about really basic stuff that most people find it really hard to do. Something as simple as knowing where you want to go. If you’ve got a destination, you can plan a route to the destination, right? Yes. And freeing yourself so that you do what only you can do. These are actually really basic things, and yet, and it’s not just MSPs, all business owners, the world over really struggle with these things and you go and read books like the E Myth Revisited and Built to Sell, both of which are exceptionally good books on this very subject. They’re slightly different takes of the same potential solution to the problem. And this is a massive, massive thing. Let’s talk about what you do to help MSPs then. So you obviously have this incredible expansive experience. What do you do when you are working with MSP owners? Now, coaching is a very big word. It can involve lots of different things. So how do you typically help people?

Speaker 3 (27:50): Certainly, yes. So typically it’s one-on-one with the owner of the MSP. And what’s a little bit unique is that when you hear about coaches in the MSP ecosystem, most everybody has, they’re maybe an ops coach or a sales coach or those kinds of things, and they have a program for you to follow. And mine is much more bespoke. I work exactly with the owner on what they need right now. I dive deep with them into not only the business, but also how does your business affect your personal life? Are you working to live or living to work? And a lot more of those kinds of things. And so it’s really tailored for exactly what you as the owner need right now. Where do you need to grow in your leadership? Where do you need to grow or what do you need to do in your company in order to set that vision Then?

(28:48) So we look at vision, we look at strategy to get there, and then we look at execution day in, day out. What I find a lot is that as you’re moving from that 3, 5, 7 employees up to 10 or 10, 12, 15, is that you move from technologist to leader. And if you want to scale your company, you have to make that transition from being the guru, the tech guru, to being an amazing recruiter and an amazing leader and amazing vision caster and somebody who can get people on the same page as you and where your company is going and somebody who can inspire and all those kinds of things. So I help owners also make that transition as well into really what they need in order to be able to scale their business. So those are just some of the high level things that we go through.

Speaker 1 (29:43): That’s really cool. Thank you. So tell us about the resource that you’ve got available and what’s the best way for MSPs to get in touch with you?

Speaker 3 (29:49): Yeah, absolutely. So I have a free resource. It’s the MSP Momentum Quick Start Guide, and really it actually starts by talking a lot about what we’ve been talking about here. So thinking through your vision strategy execution, and goes into some more details, kind of a framework that I’ve picked up over the years. So if you want to download that, you can just go to discovery dot brian hoppe.com and that’s available there. And then I’m also very active on LinkedIn, so if you look me up on LinkedIn, just search Brian Hoppe should show up right there in the front. And also Brian hoppe.com if people can reach me there as well.

Speaker 2 (30:31): Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast, this week’s recommended

Speaker 5 (30:36): Book. I’m Chad Lauterbach, founder and CEO of B structured technology group. The book I would recommend is The Obstacles The Way by my favorite author Ryan Holiday. It’s been used by NFL teams, all sorts of sports athletes and businesses around the world. It is not a business book. I’m an amateur philosopher and he is a philosopher as well. Stoic philosophy has really helped me manage the stress of business, but specifically as it relates to marketing and the obstacles, the way we had a lot of failed opportunities and viewing those failures and obstacles as opportunities as the way forward, not a block, was really a key for me to open up finding the right thing that worked for me in marketing.

Speaker 2 (31:20): Coming up next

Speaker 6 (31:21): Week. Hi, I’m Dr. Kevin Gazzara and I have found a way quantitatively to identify how to keep your people, how to retain them, and it won’t cost you a dime. Listen to Paul’s podcast to figure out how to do that.

Speaker 1 (31:37): On top of that interview with Kevin, we are going to talk about the best way that you can market to a vertical. I’ll tell you exactly what you need and exactly how to implement it. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP made

Speaker 2 (31:52): In the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green’s.

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