Resources Mentioned

• The Tech Tribe
• Scalecon
• Reddit MSP

Transcript (unedited)

So I'm here today with Paul Green. What an absolute pleasure to have Paul on the podcast finally. Paul is the leader of the MSP Marketing Edge, if you're not already familiar. I would say the world's

best marketing community and Paul, may be quite modest about this, but I think runs the best podcast, at least until Harvest came along, that there is any MSP space. Out of the 120 that there are, I think that...

the MSP Marketing Edge podcast is definitely right out there. Paul, welcome to Harvest. How are you doing?

Paul Green (00:30)
I'm very good. Thank you, James. And it's so good to actually be here. I think you and I were just saying, we've known each other loosely for about seven years, seven, eight years. And this is the first time we've actually jumped on a call. So it's really cool to be here. And now I know to watch your podcast as it creeps up.

behind my podcast. Mine's been going just over five years. So you've got a few more episodes to go yet, but I look forward to us having a challenge off down the line. That'll be fun.

James Steel (00:54)
It will. I feel like I've got a way to go yet, but I appreciate that. I appreciate the vote of confidence. Listen, we have a tradition on this podcast and that is to start off our guests with a misconception. So what is it that people get wrong about you when they first meet you?

Paul Green (01:09)
That's a really interesting question. So I don't think anyone's ever asked me that before. I'll throw something out when I went to ScaleCon in Las Vegas in October last year. And I sat down with an MSP, a US MSP. And he said to me, said, do you know what? When I meet you in real life, you're actually a really nice guy. And he said on your videos and on your podcast, you come across as a bit of an ass. And I'm like, okay, I've never heard that one before. But yeah, so we'll go with that one. I like that.

James Steel (01:38)
Brilliant. I love that. I love that. I can't say I've seen that, you know, there's some confidence I would say in your delivery. I think that's probably maybe what they're picking up on. Listen, you're best known for advising on building really effective marketing machines and that's normally focused around new business. Well, obviously this show is all about generating business from within your existing customer base. I'm just really keen to know.

Paul Green (01:45)
Yes. Possibly. Yeah.

James Steel (02:01)
What do you think in terms of the marketing tactics that are applicable in that scenario? Is there anything that comes to mind in terms of a general approach there, would you say?

Paul Green (02:12)
Yeah, absolutely everything. think I adore marketing and just to set some context, I'm not an MSP. I've never been an MSP. I've worked within marketing for 20 years and within the channel since 2016. And what I love most about helping MSPs to market themselves is there's so much opportunity because most MSPs are so bad at marketing. And I'm going to take that through to not just bad at marketing to win clients, but marketing to retain clients as well. So we all know that most MSPs have really, really good retention.

And I think the vast majority of MSPs assume that's because they're doing a really good job for their clients. But actually, I believe, maybe controversially, that the reason most MSPs have great retention is because of something called inertia loyalty. So the thing that makes it so hard for you to win new clients in the first place is the thing, it's like a double-edged sword, it's the thing that keeps new clients. Inertia loyalty is what's kept me with my bank since I was 14. It's what kept me with my CPA or my accountant since, well, for about...

getting on for 15 years now. Both of these are services I'm not in love with, but they're okay. If something better came along, I would shift if I was desperately unhappy. But the inertia, the, I'll just stay there. It's okay. That's what keeps me there. And I think a lot of MSPs will be terrified how many of their clients would answer with, yeah, it's okay with these guys. We don't really know much about tech, so we wouldn't want to switch. But it may be something we'd think about down the line. And I think...

James Steel (03:12)
Yes.

Paul Green (03:37)
in terms of selling more to existing clients and proactively working on retention, there's like a thousand things that MSPs can do. this is why love what you're doing with this show, because it's all about proactive things that sell more things to your clients or do things that make them happier, extending that existing relationship. And actually, ironically, one of the things you can do

that will improve your relationship, and you know this, James, is sell more stuff to people, but not sell it to them in a hardcore, I'm going to sell you everything kind of way, which most MSPs can't sell anyway. But if you educate your clients about things that they could buy and things that they should buy and the benefits to them and how they can remove their fears and how it can meet their needs and their wants, then people, well, I think this is all summarized in one phrase, people hate to be sold to, but they love to buy.

People hate to be sold to, but they love to buy. And you see that the MSPs that have the most satisfactory, best bonded 20 year relationships with their clients are often the same ones that are constantly upping the bill, selling them more stuff and expanding what they do for them. And you you can, and I believe in you can authentically sell more by building that relationship with your clients. So to come back to your actual question about marketing, all of this is a marketing skill.

James Steel (04:32)
Okay.

Paul Green (04:57)
All of this is looking the core marketing skill for any MSP to master. it's not difficult is to look at the world through the eyes of that person. So if you're dealing with a manufacturer, for example, and you stop thinking like an MSP and you flip yourself around and you put yourself in their head and you're looking at stuff, what are they thinking about? They're thinking about, I hope that machine doesn't break down.

is that, is that order going to come in on time? and you start looking at things as, as the client and it's a complete, you get, get, you can really get in their head and look at, get a completely different view of the world.

And I think that once you've won the clients and you've got that relationship and you're supporting them, that's the key skill. The key marketing skill is to constantly put yourself in their shoes and ask what can make this person's life easier? What can help them sleep better at night? What do they want? What do they need? What are they scared of? And all of those things that happily, satisfactorily, the answer is selling them some more stuff, which is great.

James Steel (05:51)
How do you actually do that as an MSP perhaps that's more perhaps come from a technical background? What's the, what's the sort of the approach there for really getting inside and getting down to the understanding what is so important to these customers? Is there, is there anything you can recommend there in the way of sort of tactical tips for getting a better picture?

Paul Green (06:08)
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I can take a slightly more strategic overview and that's it's a really good question. It's the one every MSP should be asking. There are what should we call it? Let's call it the triangle. Let's call it the satisfaction triangle where there are three things that you do which satisfy your clients and get you more sales at the same time. And those two things have to be linked, by the way, your clients should never feel as though they have funded your Porsche.

James Steel (06:22)
Okay, sounds good.

Paul Green (06:37)
If they feel that they funded your Porsche, then you've made a mistake with that. So the three things are, and I'll tell you what the three things are, and then we'll go back and delve into them. The first of them is you need to have something called a profit matrix, which gives you a really clear overview of who's not buying what. The second thing is you need to commit yourself to strategic reviews. We'll talk about what those are in a second. And then the third thing you need to do is you need to get all of your clients on technology roadmaps.

James Steel (06:39)
You

Yes.

Paul Green (07:04)
So if we go back to the first one, and I know this is something actually that you help with, and I'm so excited to see what you guys do with this, but I love a profit matrix. So a profit matrix is where you take information that's hidden in your PSA and you put it in front of yourself in the simplest form possible. for example, one way of doing it is you have your clients down one side and your services, like clients down one axis, services on another axis, and you put little dots or something or...

Because you might do this on a board, you might do it on screen, you might do it right on your wall, you might put it on your ceiling above your bed, it doesn't matter where you put it. But the point is you take the information out and you can see at a glance, client A buys services one and two, client B buys services three, client C buys services one and three. And we don't really care about what they're buying. What we care about is the gaps. What are they not buying? And this is really cool if you have this in front of your technicians, for example,

If we can train the technician to tell someone, hey, did you know that this client is constantly having this problem, which this service fixes? Then that's half the battle. And we can go ahead and do that. Now, I like physical boards for that. And I dislike spreadsheets for that. But you've got an even better solution, a better way of doing this profit matrix.

James Steel (08:18)
Yeah, indeed. mean, it's part of Sales Builder. Obviously, that's sort of the background of the podcast. it's a live view that links to your PSA and links to your suppliers as well. So you can see exactly what it is you've provided on live basis. So it's based on this principle. And actually, when I joined Sales Builder, my first thought was, I'm sure I remember Paul talking about this on a podcast about eight years ago. was quite a while ago. So this has been around for a long time. It's a tried and tested methodology. But the beauty of it is it's providing structure, isn't it? That's the thing.

Paul Green (08:39)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, exactly that. as we both said, the information is there in the PSA, but you cannot access it. Well, the trick with this is being able to see it without having to think about it. And when it's, you know, I love what you've built there because it just makes it easier to solve people's problems. And that's the root of good selling is to solve people's problems. So once we take that profit matrix, whatever we call that, we've then got to do something with that. So we talked about like the tech.

telling someone there's an opportunity here or just passing the information on. Where that really comes into itself is not just picking up the phone and saying, hey, we can solve this problem, but actually making upselling and therefore retention a strategic thing. And this is where we come into the second part, which is strategic reviews. Now, you may know strategic reviews under their old name, which is quarterly business reviews. I don't know why and who ever decided they should be called quarterly business reviews, because I'll tell you the one thing they shouldn't be, which is quarterly.

In an ideal world, as an MSP, you would meet once a year with at the very least your top 20 % of your clients, if not...

all of your big clients. So not the tiny bottom tier ones, not the break fix ones if you still got some of those knocking around, but certainly the ones that you want to grow and you want to nurture and you sit down with them once a year and you set the context. This entire meeting is looking forward. It's looking ahead. I want you to tell me about your plans. I want you to tell me about your growth imperatives. What's the most important things for you? I want you to tell me about what's held you back.

Historically, I want to tell me about what you can't do right now that you want to be able to do. But really importantly, this is about the future. We're going to map out what's coming up for your business. Now, if you have issues and you've currently got some conflict with that client, because that happens and often that conflict seems to happen around the time you're due to have a strategic meeting, which is annoying, then obviously you deal with that. For example, the 65 day old ticket, right? That which just for whatever reason has never been

James Steel (10:35)
Yeah.

Paul Green (10:42)
resolved or the conflict of, last week this happened, that happened. You deal with that. And in fact, you deal with that while setting up the meeting. You say, look, we're not going to be talking about this issue. In fact, what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk, I'm going to call you tomorrow with a resolution to that issue. So that's not in this meeting, because if we sit in this meeting and we talk about that problem, we've wasted our meeting. So it's really important you keep that meeting about the future and the focus. And this is actually shifting you, your relationship with the client into

kind of into VCIO territory. And I say kind of because VCIO is a term that it's the new current buzzword to be abused within the channel of be a VCIO and actually being a VCIO, actually probably doing it is very different to what we're talking about here. But we are certainly talking about, I know, Reddit, Exactly, my name is going to be all over Reddit and RedInk and Reddit is the Wild West where everyone anonymously criticizes you, which is fine. I can live with that.

James Steel (11:25)
I can hear the murmurs already from the audience just going, what on earth? How can that possibly be? That's not true. Yeah.

guaranteed.

Paul Green (11:40)
But the, yeah, so the, are moving into a strategic role and even just sitting down with a client for an hour once a year, talking about their future plans. That's a strategic role. It's really important for an MSP to operate strategically because you already operate tactically. You already operate at the, my printer's broken. You know, this doesn't work. This is slow. But we all know that's kind of the bread and butter of

the support we do. And we all know the proactive stuff is important, but it's easy to forget or run out of time to be there strategically. But if you want the client for 20 years, you've got to move yourself into a strategic position. You have If you do in real life, go for lunch, right? When you go for lunch, you buy yourself 90 minutes for a meeting guaranteed. Take them to a nice local restaurant, something that's locally owned and operated to show you're investing in local businesses.

Arrange with the owner that you're going to, I'm going to bring in 20 people every year. I want to discount please. And also I want that table and the table you want is right at the back and it's at the back and you come in and you have the client positioned with their back to the restaurant. So you can see the clients and the restaurant, they can only see you. Obviously we want them focused on you and nothing else. I know, right? It's brilliant. And well, there's another step as well. Well.

James Steel (12:45)
love how carefully you've thought this through. This is brilliant. Yes. I'd feel manipulated and violated at this point.

Paul Green (12:53)
Think of it more as

we're optimizing the meeting. There's another step to it as well. Well, that's what it is. You both of you say, let's put our phones on, do not disturb. you put your phones on, don't disturb. And you turn it face down and you put it on the table, right? Because we all know the phone wouldn't interrupt the meeting, it will kill the meeting, just as them being able to see other guests coming in will kill it. You don't let them drink alcohol. Some people...

James Steel (12:56)
Optimizing, that's fine, yeah.

Paul Green (13:18)
go out to lunch and just have alcohol automatically. Not everyone, but some people do. So you set a context for it. This is a strategic meeting. Our phone's gone, do not disturb. Let's get two Pepsi's in. You know what I mean? You essentially, you take control of the experience, which is exactly what I recommend to salespeople or MSPs when they're selling. You take control of the experience because bad things only happen when there's a vacuum. So you've got to take control of it. Anyway, then the other thing is the meeting. This and MSPs, especially on Reddit are going to hate this.

James Steel (13:37)
Yeah, that's really good.

Paul Green (13:47)
You do it on paper. You do not do it on a computer, especially not a laptop. A laptop is a barrier between you and this person. This is a 60 to 90 minute connection with that person. The laptop is a barrier. If you must use an iPad, use an iPad or just make notes on a pad and type it up afterwards. This is a human to human interaction.

And actually you writing up the notes afterwards is an invaluable part of your brain summarizing what we've talked about and what should happen. So in terms of what you talk about, it's the same on Teams as it is in real life. It's big open questions.

James Steel (14:13)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Green (14:18)
Difference between open and closed questions. Closed questions is whether the answer is yes or no. Are you okay today, James? It's a yes or a no question like that. Whereas an open question is, how are you feeling today? The more open questions you can ask, the better. And there's another theory which you can use, which is called the five whys theory. Not five guys. Everybody's favorite burger chain is delicious. But the five whys. And the five whys are...

James Steel (14:41)
Easily

confused, yes.

Paul Green (14:42)
We're

very easily confused. you ask a question, say you said to them, so what would keep you up at night? And they say, you know, I'd be worried about us getting hacked. Why is that? Well, if we got hacked, you know, I I hear all these bad things could happen and it's just not something I want to happen. Why is that? And the theory is that you use why's to go to deeper levels of understanding. Because when a business owner says they don't want to be hacked, what they actually mean is...

I don't really understand what that means. I don't understand what it would happen. And I don't want the interruption. You know, we're on an edge of profitability as it is. If we lose three days, that in itself is going to be massively detrimental to the business. So people say things when you ask them a question, but you've got to use whys and explore down and go deeper. And I know this is out of the comfort zone of the average MSP, but go and learn this. and, you know, you can find a course on Udemy or anywhere that will just teach you

basic psychology of how to go deeper with questioning. that's where you really form the bonds with people, because you're asking them open questions and you're listening to what they say and taking notes of what they say. And of course, when you do this meeting next year, you're not asking the same questions again, you're building on what you previously knew. If they've previously told you that the most important thing is that they open three more offices this year, that's the starting point for next

James Steel (16:02)
I think that framework is exactly what I was hoping you were going to say. There's something there because I think that's a great starting point. I think yes, it can be intimidating to have those conversations, but I think if you've got that, it only takes a couple of times that you've asked the why and you realize that actually that's revealing more information and actually it's working. I think then that's going to be quite encouraging and that's going to get you to your triangle, right? Because what we started out here was we wanted the two points of interest to the customer and one that linked with our own priorities, I guess, and what we had to offer that could help that.

Paul Green (16:30)
Yes.

Yeah, exactly that. Exactly that. And actually, just as you saying that, a note on the five whys is you don't just say why. Because you sound like a five-year-old if you're doing that. But you take the why and you turn it into a question. How would that affect you? Why would that be so important? What would happen if that was the case? And these sound, as I'm saying them now, they sound like really false questions, but in an in-depth conversation,

It's incredibly authentic. I absolutely promise you. also, don't forget, these are clients. These are not prospects. They want to succeed and you want to succeed. There's no one here sitting, hoping that this will fail or that this won't work. Everyone wants the same outcome, which is beautiful. The third part of the triangle, and this is where you turn the five-year client into the 20-year client, is where you get them to commit to a technology roadmap.

A technology roadmap is a document where you log what the client is going to invest in in the next, let's say three years. So let's say you've done the strategic review and they say, well, in the next three years, we want to open three more offices.

and we want to take on 10 more staff. And you say, this is great. So to open the three more offices, you're going to need an expanded VoIP system. We're going to need to move your cloud thing. We're going to need to do this, this, and this. So why don't I type all of that up and put that in a three-year technology roadmap for you? And what that does is that shows you over the next three years, if your plans come to fruition, this is the investment you're to have to make in your technology. Because you're to have to spend this much on hardware, this much on software, and a big migration project is going to take

James Steel (17:32)
Okay, yeah.

Paul Green (17:58)
three months. So we don't want to be doing that the day before your final office opens. And essentially, this is the most strategic thing you can do. But you're laying out what the plan is. And then every year, when you sit down and have that strategic review, you update the technology roadmap. So what happens is they get to a point where they are so reliant upon you for what's happening with our tech that

The thought of them leaving you and going somewhere else would never happen. They simply couldn't do it because you are their strategic advisor. So those three things together, there's a lot of work in there, but the reward for that is a lot of extra monthly recurring revenue, which is beautiful.

James Steel (18:37)
Yeah, it certainly is. love that. That's a very nice framework. And also, I guess the other benefit of doing such a long-term view when it comes to that sort of technology roadmap is the fact that there aren't surprises in terms of investment. I'm interested to know, Paul. Now, I've definitely got a marketing background and I'm keen to know of the things that you work with in terms of sort of, you know,

Campaigns that you offer your customers and sort of the channels that you use in these days What is it that's working these days in terms of it's of I guess we'd call it internal marketing Is there a place for internal marketing,

But then is there a place for a sort of an at scale, whether it's content creation piece or whether it's webinars or tutorials on the content, sorry, the services that you can offer. Do you see some scope there for potential?

Paul Green (19:20)
That's a really good question. And I don't believe you should be focusing content webinars, education pieces on existing clients. And that's because content it's like a big one to many approach.

if I'm talking to a client, I think when you start then applying and saying, hey, we've got a webinar next week and it's about a new security service we're launching.

It's almost bordering on offensive to say and saying to a client, I'm going to try and sell you something. That's why I'm putting on a webinar for you and all of our customers. So I actually think you should go the other way. And when you are dealing with clients and looking after clients, you look for what's the what's the personal touch points I can build in. But you systemize these so you can deliver them at scale. So let me give you an example.

your top tier clients. So anyone that's over, let's say 15, 20 seats and once every, let's say six months, but not in a systematic, it happens every six months.

You say to them, hey, can we do like a fix it Friday? And they say, what's a fix it Friday? And you say, right, we're gonna come in, let's say 12 o'clock, we're gonna bring pizzas. How many people are gonna be in that day? Right, it's gonna be 10 of you in that day. We'll bring in five pizzas, whatever. We're gonna come in, we'll all sit and have a slice of pizza together, and then we're gonna do an intense 90 minute fix it. So all the stupid little things that are really bugging you. So we've logged some of them from some of the tickets, but I know printer four.

is a nightmare, right? So let's give printer four, let's actually give it some WD-40 and see what happens with that. I know that this is slow, I know that that's slow. Stacy in accounts is always saying about this isn't stable, right? And then just throw them at us. When we come in over the pizza, throw them at us and we'll do as much as we can in 90 minutes. After 90 minutes, we have to go because we've all got lives. But you get the idea.

seems like we're dealing with all the small things and it's the small things which annoy the staff the most. And as we know, the staff are influences on the decision.

So when the decision maker says, hey, guys, should I sign, should we sign another two year contract with our IT company? And people go, they cross their arms and they go, well, no, you've halfway to lost the contract at that point. Whereas when they go, yeah, we love it when they come in, you know, they come in once or twice a year and they do the fix it Fridays, which is deliberately random. So just something like that. Of course, it's not really random. It's you go and see client A this week and then two weeks time you see client B and two weeks time you see client C. So you strategically drop it, drop into your clients with it, with a pre-planned thing.

James Steel (21:42)
Yeah.

Paul Green (21:45)
Bid a lunch, bid a bonding time, fix some small things. It doesn't even matter what you fix or what you get done. It's the point is the technicians are meeting the staff. You're all having a bit of pizza together. You go away and they go into their weekend feeling really good. And of course, anything you pick up on that day, which is a bigger problem, it just becomes a ticket and it gets picked up on Monday morning. Simple as that. Now that's just one example, but I think, you need to go deeper into contacts, touch points. Here's another example.

If you if you have an account manager, not many MSPs have an account manager, but if you do account managers are always sort of targeted, boneless on selling more services. So what happens is they only pick up the phone to clients when they've got something to sell them. And guess what that teaches the clients? It teaches them that when the accounts guy or the account manager is on in on the phone, they're trying to sell them something. But actually, what if the account manager just phoned every client again, completely randomly?

Hey, it's Thursday morning. I haven't got long today. So I just thought, give you a call. How's it going with you guys? What are you working on right now? And what they really mean is what can we do to help?

And again, there's many, many other things that you could do, but that if I owned an MSP, that's what I would focus all of my time on. And I'd leave all the webinars and the content to the prospects that I don't really know yet.

James Steel (22:58)
That's That's really interesting to hear actually. And I really like the idea of going in and spending time with the team because the other thing that addresses is, okay, yes, there's this inertia and hopefully that will see you through in a lot of cases, but there's always employee churn. And if you lose the main contact, then of course that relationship's weakened. So by being there, being that face, you're really addressing that. Love Listen, Paul, we've come to the stage of our podcast chat now where we have a bit of a segment. And this one I think you're to like, it's called Industry Maneur.

Paul Green (23:26)
Okay.

James Steel (23:26)
So this segment is

all about what is the biggest crock of shit that you're hearing out there in the market that really grinds your gears.

Paul Green (23:33)
Do you know, I've already mentioned it, Reddit, the slash MSP thread on Reddit. What I don't like about Reddit is you've got

James Steel (23:38)
Okay.

Paul Green (23:42)
anonymous people. Okay, so if someone asks a question in the tech tribe, right, the tech tribe each there's your photo and there's your name, right, it's the same on the Facebook group, there's your photo and there's your name, it's not anonymous. So if someone asks a marketing question, and other people jump in with their answers, you know the context of who's answering. And context is a massive thing when it comes to taking advice. Some people will take advice from anyone, but I always say you've got to look at the context.

So for example, if you ask me about SEO, search engine optimization, I haven't got a clue about SEO because just like tech, marketing is a very, very big and broad thing. I'm a really good strategist on lots of different subjects. My specialty is lead generation for MSPs. I have a working knowledge of SEO. But if you said to me, oh, look at this page, is it SEO optimized? I haven't got a clue.

James Steel (24:18)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Green (24:29)
you go to someone like Tech Tribe, someone asks a marketing question, and people answer. And you can see if they're a vendor, you can see if they're another MSP, and you can see, they a big MSP? If it's a one-man band who's been running for six months, who's giving marketing advice, you have to take that within the context of that person giving that. The problem on Reddit is it's A, you don't know who's answering, B, you don't know the context, and C, it turns into a gunfight.

James Steel (24:47)
Yes.

Paul Green (24:53)
And it's like, guys, guys, it's like a bunch of toddlers having a squabble at nursery, but they've got knives and guns. And it's just awful. yeah, so anyone that gets their marketing or business growth advice from Reddit,

Beware. And I know there's a lot more tech stuff in that slash MSP thread, but yeah, it horrifies me. Just horrifies me. Now I'm definitely guaranteed to be mentioned in Reddit.

James Steel (25:21)
That's it, absolutely.

Yeah, and I think that's why the tech tribe is so popular. It sits somewhere, doesn't it, between the comments space on YouTube and Twitter comments, I think, in terms of the vitriol that comes through every time. It's not a nice place to

Paul Green (25:33)
Yeah. Yeah.

James Steel (25:36)
Our next segment, is called Pass the Pitchfork. Now this is where our previous guest asks the next guest a question, and I spoke to Brian Gillet last, a feel-good MSP, who I know you're familiar with, and he's got a question for you.

Paul Green (25:42)
yes. Yes. Okay.

James Steel (25:49)
In the next generation of business context where we're seeing work from anywhere, bring your own device, decentralize businesses, why does a business like that need an MSP?

Paul Green (25:58)
Hmm. Hmm. That's an interesting one. Did he know that was a question for me? Because that's a really hard question. He did. He's a stitch up. Thanks, Brian. Why doesn't that why well, do know what, if I knew the answer to this question, then I think I would I think I'd be setting myself up for the next generation of MSPs. I honestly don't know the answer to that. I'm going to I'm going to admit, I that's such a big question. I guess what Brian is really asking is

James Steel (26:05)
He did actually, yeah.

Paul Green (26:28)
How is this going to evolve? How is the industry going to evolve? When I get into the channel in 2016, cybersecurity was a thing, but it wasn't the thing. And now in 2025, cybersecurity is the thing, right? I think we've got to look at how is AI going to be a part of that in the years to come? mean, MSPs have reinvented themselves pretty much every seven years since 1989,

James Steel (26:45)
Definitely, yep.

Paul Green (26:52)
So, you know, what was once a break, was once tech repair and break fix and has become, can you help me with this? Has evolved into servers and networks and has evolved into 365 and then has become managed services and cyber security. I'm sure, well, we're all screwed, aren't we? If in 20 years time, there's nothing because we've got an entire, we're all pretty much dependent upon that channel. I think maybe the answer is the...

James Steel (27:18)
Hahaha.

Paul Green (27:21)
coming back to the strategic advice, maybe it's about the strategy and maybe it's about actually, you know, even if the AI, let's say in five years time, AI could deal with 80 % of first line tickets. And that's not an unreasonable thing to say, I think, if the AI tools actually keep developing,

Maybe we'll even see the commoditization of second line support. So what's left is actually the strategic stuff is the big picture thing. And sure, you can go into an AI and say, this is our business. This is what we do. What tech, you know, what's our tech strategy? What should it be? But

At moment, the AI has no way of actually validating whether or not that's the right thing to do. And our brains still are better at making some connections than AIs are. I'm saying this, I'm thinking about accountancy, which, in the last, my accountant is always bemoaning how what used to be his bread and butter 15 years ago, which was bookkeeping, is now all going offshore or being done by AI, or it's certainly being subsidized by AI. And so what increasingly he's left with is top level strategy, which

It's looking at all the laws, all the tax things, all the things you could do and plotting an individual path for each of his clients. And that's where he's taking his business. And I wonder if that's going to be the future of managed services.

James Steel (28:34)
I think there's so much to be learned from looking at other verticals, isn't there? It's fascinating when you start looking at other spaces, whether it's accounting or some of the sort of the digital and creative agencies, what they're doing in terms of their sort of packaging and pricing and where they're offering value. So yeah, I'm inclined to agree with you. think definitely, I think, and I think it will probably happen quicker than we care to realize.

Paul Green (28:45)
Mm.

James Steel (28:54)
Okay, Paul, so it's time for your question now for our next guest, if that's okay. So James Davis from Technology Solutions Partners Advisory, XPax8 is our next guest. Have you got a question for him? You can welcome to make it a tricky one if you like.

Paul Green (29:06)
have.

Well, I don't really know James particularly well. I've obviously aware of him. So I'm not going to be cruel with my question, unlike the way Brian was with me. I'm going to give James a nice, big, easy question that he can slot an answer in, which is, if you could persuade an MSP to do one thing, to invest all of their time and all of their attention in doing one thing that would guarantee that they grew their business, they double the size of their business in a year, what would that one thing be?

James Steel (29:33)
What a cracking question. I love that one. To finish our chat, Paul, thank you so much. It's been wonderful having you on and it's really, it's been kind of strange just enjoying the podcast and then realizing I'm actually part of this. it's been great chatting with you. Listen, our final segment is yell from the barn and that's your opportunity to let us know what you're up to and where you would like ears, eyeballs pointed in your direction.

Paul Green (29:55)
Amazing. Thank you. Well, James, I'm going to get you on my podcast. I know we've got an interview date sorted out, which is cool. So I'm looking forward to that. And that's, that's our entry level for most MSPs. It's called Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts, that's where you'll find it. It's on YouTube as well. The other thing to look up is I've written a book. It's called MSP Marketing Start Here.

James Steel (30:01)
Would like that.

Paul Green (30:15)
It's on Amazon. It's on it's a paperback. It's on Kindle. And in about eight days, the audible version will be approved. That's what the audible checklist is telling me. So just go and look for MSP Marketing Start here. And that's it's actually about lead generation is where you start if you've got no marketing right now. I'm also on LinkedIn, or you can just go and have a look at my website, which is mspmarketingedge.com.

James Steel (30:38)
Brilliant, thank you so much. And we'll make sure that both the link to the book and all the most common links and things are in the show notes so you can find them there. Paul, it's been absolutely wonderful chatting to you. Thank you so much and I hope we can get you on again sometime. I look forward to chatting to you on your podcast.

Paul Green (30:50)
Yeah, it'd a delight to come back on. Thanks for having me on.

James Steel (30:52)
All all the best, take care.

Paul Green (30:54)
Bye.

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