Speaker 0 | 00:09.627
Yeah, so what were you saying?
Speaker 1 | 00:11.889
One thing IT directors need to get straight is going with an MSP may save you money, but it’s going to cause you freaking headaches. Why? Why? Because when you go with the MSP, Joe Schmoe’s MSP or Light Network MSP or whatever MSP,
Speaker 0 | 00:28.903
you’re getting…
Speaker 1 | 00:29.820
They’re cheap. They’re the cheaper guys, the cheaper option. You’re not getting true 24-7 support. You’re not really getting the real technical support. Why? That individual that’s going to be your attack isn’t going to be on you 24-7. His ethos, his personal liability will not be on you. It’s going to be on the MSP. So he’s not going to care if it’s 2 a.m. in the morning and you’re getting an emergency request. He doesn’t care because he’s getting double billed because he’s going to bill you at an emergency rate. Now, if it’s an internal employee, he’s going to care because… He believes in the company. He has stake in the company as an employee, as a stakeholder in a financial aspect. So he knows that I’m going to play devil’s advocate.
Speaker 0 | 01:07.511
I got to play devil’s advocate because they’re going to say, you’re a single point of failure. They’re going to say, you’re the guy that can get, can go rogue. You’re the guy that can take all the passwords and run away. Well,
Speaker 1 | 01:16.695
that’s why when you build your internal team, you have to manage it correctly. It all comes down to management and leadership from the IT director.
Speaker 0 | 01:24.599
And I think from a mid market space. I think using an MSP in the mid-market space, though. Bill, Bill,
Speaker 1 | 01:30.201
Bill. Yes, I get that. But aspect comes down to your C-suite within the organization when they hire the director. They’re doing the right vetting. They’re not just hiring from experience. They’re talking to his references. Not professional, but personal. That is the biggest issue is how personally connected is the IT manager, IT director of the company to then building out his team. Because remember, it’s about family and culture. which goes into the other aspect I mentioned in my many blogs I’ve written, is when a company is built, you have to avoid shadow culture outside of shadow IT.
Speaker 0 | 02:01.774
Yeah, so I’m thinking you would use an MSP in a mid-market space for a very specific problem or application, like database management or something.
Speaker 1 | 02:12.102
Database management or a NOC. Great.
Speaker 0 | 02:15.224
Oh, a NOC, you want to outsource the ticket management system or help? Correct.
Speaker 1 | 02:20.588
Country level, basic level, but all the major aspects you do need on an internal team. If your company is within a security industry, then yes, you don’t really need a NOC. You need to build your own internal NOC.
Speaker 0 | 02:34.774
I was thinking more in general for the small business MSPs. There’s an MSP on every street corner. It’s a guy that’s just like, you know, I know something about computers, so it’s very easy for me to see.
Speaker 1 | 02:43.519
You have to be careful with those small MSPs.
Speaker 0 | 02:45.540
Yeah, because you could sell any small business, dude, and how do they even know who’s good and who’s not? How can they differentiate who’s talented or who knows what the heck they’re talking about?
Speaker 1 | 02:55.045
Outside the aspect of getting references with other companies they work with, it’s by creating a cheat sheet. And I refer to this as the 12 questions that you want to ask any MSP.
Speaker 0 | 03:04.310
Oh, that’s cool.
Speaker 1 | 03:05.731
And these questions come into what’s your standard response time, what’s your availability coming into, what’s your current workload, how many employees do you have? coming into what’s your internet connection? How quick are your responses? If I have an emergency, how quick can you get to my site in Boston? How about my site up in Portsmouth, Maine? Or how about down here in Florida? How soon can you get here if I had an emergency that I need someone on site?
Speaker 0 | 03:32.232
How do we know your MSP is full of crap? Can we ask them, what kind of systems does the MSP use? Like what kind of ticketing systems do they use?
Speaker 1 | 03:38.959
They use auto… Okay, they use Autotask, they use
Speaker 0 | 03:42.681
Autoconnect. What should the customer be asking?
Speaker 1 | 03:47.243
What’s the exact ticketing system that they’re using? What integrations under their CRM are they using? Okay, now what’s their VoIP system? What’s their internet connection? These are those type of questions. And Phil, I’ll draft them to you and I’ll send them to you. You can post them so other individuals who listen to this can figure that out.
Speaker 0 | 04:05.216
It’s so funny because I watch these forums and I sit in some of these MSP forums and I see the questions that they ask each other. Like, hey, what kind of firewall should I use? I’m like, what? What are you talking about? Like, hey, you know, 3CX is like kind of crap in the bed here. What are you talking about? 3CX is awesome. Just turn it up in Amazon and like do this. And I’m like, oh, my gosh. And I’m watching and I’m like, just, you know, Nextiva is the best or whatever company is the best. And I’m looking at my head.
Speaker 1 | 04:30.783
I’m going to say this. We all have our preferences depending on what. aspect we grew up. It’s like when I come up to a car guy, do you want a Lamborghini or do you want a Ferrari? Or do you want a Corvette? It’s that aspect that comes down to what everybody likes. Like me, if you were to tell me, Felix, what’s your favorite MSP tool. Well, right off the bat, I’m going to say I love Sophos. Why? Well, it’s backed by these individuals who are hackers, X, Y, and Z. They have the best heartbeat technology. They’ve stopped more threats. They’ve been on the market, X, Y, and Z. And on top of that, they have all these certifications. I’m not saying this is a market.
Speaker 0 | 05:03.055
You didn’t say one thing, though. You didn’t say one thing. Are they forward thinking? Are they ahead of the game?
Speaker 1 | 05:06.097
They are forward thinking. They were one of the first organizations to release heartbeat. Outside of what we had with Snowden and all of this, they used heartbeat in the aspect for ransomware, which was actually revolutionized. Norton wasn’t doing that. McAfee wasn’t doing that. But then they started doing into the network aspects by creating network devices for smart networking, which helped out with the heartbeat, but then web filtering outside of just AV. They started going to multiple sectors within the IT industry. So now creating that, what we stated earlier, a one-stop shop. Here’s a crazy question.
Speaker 0 | 05:37.031
That does everything. Here’s a crazy question. I get all that. Okay, technical nerd stuff, great. Because, you know, first of all, technology is good. I heard someone say this today. In general. Technology is pretty darn good. But here’s the question. How do you know, and this is it, how do you know the IT guy, since we’re on the topic of MSPs, how do we know the MSP that you hire your staff is going to like?
Speaker 1 | 06:02.326
That goes into the personal questions of the company’s culture.
Speaker 0 | 06:05.587
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 06:07.068
Now, have you ever taken the buyer’s make personality test or the PI test?
Speaker 0 | 06:12.090
Probably, probably.
Speaker 1 | 06:13.631
So many employers require you to take that PI test. And even today, I’ve, even myself as a freelance IT, who’s been trying to get back into the market at the moment.
Speaker 0 | 06:22.534
You came out in A plus on the, on like the A whole scale.
Speaker 1 | 06:27.837
Thanks. I love you too.
Speaker 0 | 06:29.197
I’m not saying that to you. I’m not saying that to you. I’m saying in general, I’m saying like, like they get the test results back. Like you came back high on the mass whole scale.
Speaker 1 | 06:38.782
If you were going to hire an MSP, The number one thing outside of personality and culture, I would ask them is that, do you do a briar megs or a PI indexing on all your employees? If so, can I please receive a copy of that?
Speaker 0 | 06:54.509
Wow, that’s crazy.
Speaker 1 | 06:56.349
Why? Because they’ll tell me about the personality of the people in their care and how well they care for their employer, their company, and what their personal…
Speaker 0 | 07:04.853
It’s crazy what you just said. If any MSP is listening to this show, that is a separation factor. They could walk right in there and say, hey, let me tell you something right now. Technology is pretty much good. But the problem is most IT guys are kind of fairly lobotomized to individuals that think that they’re, well, they know that they’re smarter than you from a technology aspect. But the most important thing is what technology is right for the personal culture of your business and how are they going to interact with your people. We, as XYZ Superstar MSB, we give psychological evaluations to all of our people, and here’s the score, and here’s how they’re all rated, and here’s why that’s so important.
Speaker 1 | 07:44.955
Phil, for our listeners, I imagine all of them have watched Big Bang Theory. We don’t want a Sheldon Cooper who is very direct on the technical.
Speaker 0 | 07:56.464
Just so you know, I killed the TV in my house years ago, so I don’t even know what that means. Everyone’s going to laugh at me now. They’re going to be like, Phil Howard’s out of date. I mean,
Speaker 1 | 08:06.389
I know the show, but I don’t watch it. So you know from the show, Sheldon Cooper.
Speaker 0 | 08:11.913
I don’t know the show. I’m just telling you right now. I don’t know. I know the show, but I don’t watch the show. I know the show because I know it’s like on the top, whatever list of most popular, whatever. But I only know that there’s kind of like this, you know. The character that I just mentioned, like lobotomized kind of engineering minded, maybe like smarter than everybody else. Yes.
Speaker 1 | 08:31.202
So that is that is who I refer to as Sheldon, the very technical, very direct, but has no people skills.
Speaker 0 | 08:36.145
Yes.
Speaker 1 | 08:37.266
And when Leonard, the other co-star, he has the people skills. He starts learning and adapting properly how to talk to people and has the technical skills. What we need to do in the world of MSP is be both. And we need to build that personal rapport. It’s all about personal connection now, not the technical.
Speaker 0 | 08:53.014
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 08:53.354
If. A small, medium-sized business wants to work with an MSP. The MSP will have the right technical people 95% of the time. You need to be more direct on what the personal memento is. Those employees, how well are they treating and talking to each other? I got fired. I’ll be direct and I’ll be honest. I got fired from an MSP because I cared too much for my clients. I got into a fight with my director or the CEO because he told me to pull the trigger on a data migration at 3 p.m. on a Friday for a real estate firm. As you know, real estate firms are most busiest on the weekend. This kind of stuff needs to be done during the week when they’re not as busy.
Speaker 0 | 09:48.094
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 | 09:48.714
Because they have showings, they have viewings, X, Y, and Z.
Speaker 0 | 09:51.156
That’s so smart. That’s like me asking, like,
Speaker 1 | 09:53.778
why is the Whole Foods,
Speaker 0 | 09:55.479
why is the local Whole Foods store closed at 6 o’clock? Why is the coffee shop not open till 7? People go to work. They need coffee early. People get out of work. They want to go shopping for specialty Whole Foods and whatever, you know, I don’t know, tofu and stuff. Why do you think? They want after work.
Speaker 1 | 10:18.595
Why do you think Dunkin’Donuts or Starbucks has employees at their location at 4 a.m. in the morning? Look,
Speaker 0 | 10:24.158
I’m talking to a guy that’s managed a Starbucks for four years.
Speaker 1 | 10:28.501
You know why you have most of the staff in at 4.30 until 7 a.m., and then you have most of them midday. You have most of them until 2 o’clock in the afternoon. After that, you only have a staff of one or two because they’re the busiest at breakfast and at lunchtime.
Speaker 0 | 10:43.266
I can tell you about coffee. Oh, I can tell you about coffee. But why do we have the 10-minute rule?
Speaker 1 | 10:47.607
But I’m not talking about the coffee. I’m talking about the people management. You have to know the business.
Speaker 0 | 10:52.569
You have to know the needs.
Speaker 1 | 10:54.430
And outside that.
Speaker 0 | 10:55.551
I’m saying the personal, psychological attachment to coffee. We had the 10-minute rule. You had to be opened up. You had to be opened 10 minutes after close. And you had to be opened 10 minutes before open. Correct. So anytime I go to a Starbucks at 10 o’clock and those doors are locked, you better believe I’m looking through the door glaring like you know. I know the 10-minute rule. I know the just say yes rule as well. So just open the door. Yeah. So you can see where I’m coming from the MSP side on the technical side.
Speaker 1 | 11:23.402
We have to, A, you have to have the right questions when you’re vetting an MSP from both the technical aspect and the personal aspect. Because any MSP may have all the knowledge, but they don’t have the interpersonal skills. Or B, they have all the interpersonal skills, but they lack the technology. And the last thing you want to do is get the right personal skill who will BS your business and not have the technical skills to back it up.
Speaker 0 | 11:46.992
It’s a good point. Anytime I’m talking with a good MSP and I’m talking with the president, the owner of the MSP, and we start going over technical stuff, he’s like, hold on a second. Let me conference in whoever, right? Because he doesn’t necessarily know everything, but he definitely has the personality that everyone loves. He’s able to connect. He’s able to bring technology, like the personality of technology in, right? He doesn’t know, like maybe even some like, kind of like things that would seem basic to me. And I’m no networking nerd. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1 | 12:22.317
Phil, here’s, I’ll make the statement because, so I don’t lose the train of thought. Aspect here is, if we want to, you know how many businesses you get calls like this? So does every other IT director, IT manager out there. You get a cold call from an account manager or a BDR.
Speaker 0 | 12:40.868
What’s that?
Speaker 1 | 12:41.388
And the business development rep.
Speaker 0 | 12:43.850
So the sales guys.
Speaker 1 | 12:45.811
You get calls from these guys who are reading from a script. If you look at their background and look at their knowledge through LinkedIn, because we’re all curious, they have no technical knowledge, but they’re trying to sell something technical. If you had a technician who decided to say, I’m done with doing Trump. bushing, repairing, and became an account manager, they would be 30 times more successful than a regular account manager or a business rep. Why? They understand the technology and they understand the adaptation. So when they make the phone call, they know the pain points to hit on correctly.
Speaker 0 | 13:18.193
If they throw away the script and they connect with people on a personal level,
Speaker 1 | 13:24.238
but the aspect is you just mentioned it a second ago. When you talk to the big dog of an MSP, he has this, let me conference someone in. He has to go get a specialist. Now, if that specialist was the director and the owner of the business, he would be able to answer your questions. He would feel more confident saying, this guy knows what he’s doing. And he brought on an additional resource to help back him up, or he brought on a resource that will better soothe the analogies that I’m using. So it’s a double win. It’s a double-sided sword that we said all the way at the beginning of this call, or the podcast. When it comes down to looking for an MSA…
Speaker 0 | 13:59.225
Well, let’s be real. This is a… A phone call that I hit record on and then we’re going to go turn it into a podcast. A leaked call. We’re going to call it a leaked call. That’s what we’re calling it. Leaked MSP venting call. 100%. Yeah, man. That was great. That was great. Okay, what else you got? What else do we hate? How did we get onto this? It was like what I hate about MSPs.
Speaker 1 | 14:24.778
I think that’s what came on. I said, just start recording because this is golden content that you will not be able to recreate.
Speaker 0 | 14:31.562
I need the list of the 10, what was this list? Five things?
Speaker 1 | 14:35.244
The 12 questions to ask. I’ll draft it up and I’ll send it over to you. But again, these are several questions about the technologies, the services they’re doing, their clients, what is their major framework that they’re using. Every business has a path to winning a client, but they also have a framework to saying, this is how we deal with all the clients. And they just copy and paste it, but it’s identical for any industry. If it’s financing, law firms, dental, medical, if it’s manufacturing, construction, all depending on what their clients are, they’re copying and pasting the same framework, which does not work. If you…
Speaker 0 | 15:16.424
No, you’ve got to segment your marketplace.
Speaker 1 | 15:19.586
And the issue is a lot of MSPs don’t probably segment. They just mash them all together.
Speaker 0 | 15:25.551
They’re going to have to start doing it or they’re going to lose their shirt. If you don’t segment, you’re going to lose out. And a lot of times, you know, because things are getting so complicated now, especially in logistics and stuff where you’ve got, and when you start to get into Azure and Amazon and how people are connecting and VPNing into Amazon and stuff like that with very specific applications. And with the application world becoming so diverse and each industry using different applications, if you can’t pick one or two and really specialize in that, you might as well just quit now.
Speaker 1 | 15:56.774
Correct. And the thing is, I’m seeing way too many small mom and pop MSPs saying, yes, we support Amazon, Azure, Oracle, and Google, which it’s so hard to specialize in. Even some of the top five firms like Deloitte, PwC, and Amazon are saying, Doi, PwC, Ertz & Young, some of the top five firms who I’m referring to, they’ve now kind of started saying, oh, we only deal with AWS and Google G Suite. Some of them say, yes, we deal with all five of them. And some of them say, no, we’re just Azure for our clients that we consult with. And the issue is they’re now trying to say, okay, we support all of them. And they’re running into the issue of resources and talent. Now they can’t,
Speaker 0 | 16:44.500
they don’t have the right cost. It’s back to the, it’s back to really, really a piss poor support and calling 1-800-GO-POUND-SAND because you have that one guy that you know, that knows your stuff. And then that guy quits and he moves on to another company and now you’re calling support.
Speaker 1 | 16:59.206
Or that guy gets too hard to get to. They start adding layers and layers and layers.
Speaker 0 | 17:03.648
Yeah. It’s like a good project manager. Everyone wants a good project manager. When I worked at Broadview years ago, there was a… I’m going to give a shout out to Jen Lessig. I’m going to tag her on this. She’s going to be surprised. But we had this one, you know, a couple of project managers, right? And one, I can just remember I was talking to her, I was like, Jen Lessig, on every deal you sold, you’re like, I want, Jen Lessig has to be on this deal. This is such an important deal. This client has to be taken care of correctly. It’s got to be white glove. It’s got to go in seamless. I need her on this. And I’m like, no, she’s overloaded. Like, we’re killing her. I’m like, pay her more. Put her in charge. Make her train everybody, you know? And, uh. Anyways, that’s what happens. And these,
Speaker 1 | 17:43.309
uh, what happens is you get one great manager, uh, one great project manager, or you get a team of them and everybody wants them. And the aspect is they don’t, they have, they would give two bunnies and a Turkey just to get some freedom to spend time with their family.
Speaker 0 | 18:01.199
Oh man.
Speaker 1 | 18:03.012
And when they’re even with their family, they end up spending working night if I’ve spent time. And then they have the worst family life because work pulls them everywhere. And you know one thing from working overseas, they respect family time. They tell you, go take your time. Why is it the one things I loved working in Asia was I got 30 plus holidays a year for the organization I worked for previously. I love that work. Here in the States, you only get 14 holidays and your vacation time. It doesn’t add up. where I was over there, I was getting 30 days of vacation holiday all together, which was awesome. I got to spend time with my significant other at the time. I got to spend time with my friends and family and I was able to decompress sort of right way.
Speaker 0 | 18:43.327
Yeah. There’s certain things like that, you know, like some companies have, I mean, companies, countries, you know, like siestas or midday nap. It’s built into the culture. Everyone understands it.
Speaker 1 | 18:54.030
So I’m going to bring back to Phil. I’m going to bring back the statement. Children don’t need naps. Adults need naps. kids go to bed sometimes but we adults do like a 72 hour or a 96 hour bender just to get through the work day oh it’s terrible i went to bed at 120 last night i woke up yeah i hit around midnight I hit about mid-night last night.
Speaker 0 | 19:21.192
5.45. And I’ll go days, and for some reason, I think I can catch up on sleep in one day, and it’s really not healthy.
Speaker 1 | 19:29.254
No, it’s not possible, because you think you catch up, then you realize, I got things to do. I got people to call. I got places to be. Even with COVID, I don’t got to be places to be. I got to be on Zoom calls.
Speaker 0 | 19:39.158
You waste so much crap time, too. And then you’re watching, like, what did Trump say on Twitter? And again, I’m not a political guy, so I’m not.
Speaker 1 | 19:47.602
Don’t even start with the politics.
Speaker 0 | 19:49.223
Yeah, yeah. You know,
Speaker 1 | 19:51.045
as a Russian-American, the only thing I can say for my family that they’ve been writing, welcome to the Soviet states of America.
Speaker 0 | 20:02.254
I love all my Russian friends. Most of them are, most of them are either wrestling or doing some sort of judo with.
Speaker 1 | 20:09.239
One thing, one thing I want to tell to all our callers, if you get spam phone calls, You know what the number one way to get removed from that list was making two statements? In your most deep Russian accent, thank you for calling the Kremlin. We’re listening. Or you call the Russian embassy. How can I help you?
Speaker 0 | 20:30.613
I still can’t pronounce the number 19. What is it? Like, or something.
Speaker 1 | 20:35.896
I can’t say it.
Speaker 0 | 20:38.338
My friends try to keep their laugh every time I try to say it.
Speaker 1 | 20:42.036
I have a TikTok video of my dad doing that on a scammer with his very heavy English accent. And all of a sudden, the phone’s dead. And since then, he has not received another scam phone call. So remember, guys, ladies and gents listening to this.
Speaker 0 | 21:00.180
Thank you for calling the Kremlin. Thank you for calling the Kremlin.
Speaker 1 | 21:05.942
Thank you for calling the Kremlin. Would you like to speak to Vladimir Putin or the Bershkov party? Sorry.
Speaker 0 | 21:17.838
Yes. Well, sorry. It’s been great catching up. Really. Likewise. I’m super awesome. We’re going to take this phone call and I’m just going to put it out there as, you know, daily venting on MSPs and the questions that you should ask them to see how full of crap they are. That’s what we call this, you know? So.
Speaker 1 | 21:40.976
I’ll get that drafted and sent over to you sometime by the end of day today.
