Episode 188: How to explain the cloud to prospects

Episode 188 • June 19, 2023 • 00:37:12
Episode 188: How to explain the cloud to prospects
Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast
Episode 188: How to explain the cloud to prospects

Jun 19 2023 | 00:37:12

/

Hosted By

Paul Green

Show Notes

Episode 188

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:

Featured guest:

Thank you to Nicky Billou, author, podcaster and Millionaire Maker, for joining me to talk about how business owners can achieve their goals by changing the way they think, and by investing in both professional and personal growth.

Nicky Billou, aka The Millionaire Maker, is the #1 International Best Selling Author of 8 books, including: Finish Line ThinkingTM: How to Think and Win Like a Champion, The Thought Leader’s Journey: A Fable of Life, The Power Of Connecting: How To Activate Profitable Relationships By Serving Your Network (with Kai Bjorn), and How To Create A Million Dollar A Year Income: The Priceless Guide For Insurance Agents, Professional Sale People, And Anyone With A Big Dream (with Perry Wong). He has read over 4000 books, in genres from biography, history, fictional literature, self-help, health and fitness, poetry business, sales, spirituality and religion. Nicky is the host of the #1 podcast in the world for thought leadership, The Thought Leader Revolution, featuring guests like Dr. Ken Blanchard, John Maxwell, and Jack Canfield.

He is an in-demand and highly inspirational speaker to corporate audiences such as RBC, Lululemon, Royal LePage, and TorStar Media. He is an advisor and confidante to some of the most successful and dynamic entrepreneurs in Canada. He is the founder of eCircle Academy (www.eCircleAcademy.com) where he runs a yearlong Mastermind & Educational program working with Coaches, Consultants, Corporate Trainers, Clinic Owners, Realtors, Mortgage Brokers and other service-based Entrepreneurs, positioning them as authorities in their niche. He is the creator of the Thought Leader/Heart LeaderTM Designation. He and his team have helped over 80 entrepreneurs add 6 to 8 figures to their annual income.

Connect with Nicky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickybillou/

Extra show notes:

Transcription:

Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world, this is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Paul Green: Hello my friend, and welcome back to the podcast. Here's what we've got in store for you this week. Nicky Billou: Hi, I'm Nicky Billou, and I'm going to be talking about how you can add one to two zeros to your annual income through a little known secret called thought leadership. Paul Green: And that really is a great interview with Nicky later on in the show. We're also going to be talking about making videos to promote your MSP and how you can overcome any fear you've got of being seen on camera. Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Paul Green: If I asked you how would you explain the cloud to a seven year old, how would you respond? What's the simplest way you could explain what is frankly, quite a difficult thing to explain to an adult, nevermind a child? Now the ability for you to break big, difficult concepts down into small, easily understood things is a fantastic marketing skill that you should be constantly developing. Really, marketing for you is about taking scary, complicated technology-driven subjects and finding ways to make them interesting and cool and sexy and, more important than anything else, relevant, relevant to the ordinary business owners and managers that you most want to reach. So I asked a load of MSPs in my MSP marketing Facebook group, how would they explain the cloud to a seven year old? And maybe in here there are some ideas that you can use to market your own MSP. So I will give credit where credit's due for some of the good ideas. Karen says, "The cloud is a silly name for a big computer that saves all of your video games." And she says she'd use the word computer rather than a server because a seven year old knows what a computer is. Tim says, "There's no cloud. It's just someone else's computer," which I thought had matrix vibe to it. I apparently saw that one on a television. Steven says, "How would you explain it to anybody? Good luck with that." That's not very helpful, Steven. Thank you very much. James says, "Your data, but on someone else's server or someone else's computer." Kamin's got a good one here. He says, "When a mommy and a daddy love each other... Oh no, hang on," he says, "that's a different explanation. There are computers all over the world connected together to store and share information. On diagrams, the internet was always visualized as a big cloud, and that's why the name stuck." I didn't know that. Did you know that, that's where the name the cloud came from? Absolutely brilliant. Adam says, "The cloud is where all the roadblocks games live. Let's see. Matt here says, "Millions of computers in massive warehouses all over the world that you can rent to do pretty much anything you need to do." Justin then says, "There are three types of cloud. They cause rain when they're down. I'm sad when they're down, and my job is to put the clouds back up. People like it when the cloud is back up." Can you see how many different ways there are of looking at this? And I know that some of those are silly and we're trying to explain it to a seven year old here, but the concept still stands. Take big scary technology things and break them down into simple concepts. In fact, we can do this for everything. What about cybersecurity? What about ransomware? What about the need for backups? What if we can make backups not just a case of you need to have a backup of your data in your office, and one out there in the cloud somewhere, and maybe a redundant second location thousands of miles away from your first version. That's the the technical details of it. How do you break that down into something very, very simple? Backups means that you never ever have to worry about losing your data ever. Or better still, backups mean that you will always sleep at night because no matter what happens, there's always a copy of the data that's most important to you. Now, that would be as applicable to a seven year old as it would to a 47 year old. But can you see how it would be more appealing for a business owner to buy into the need for multiple redundant backups and shell out the cash for that if they understand it at a very, very simple level? That's the challenge to you in all of your marketing. Take the very, very difficult concepts and break them down into tiny, tiny, simple things. Voiceover: Here's this week's clever idea. Paul Green: Now here's an interesting question: what is it that stops you from creating your own videos for YouTube with you on screen? And it could be that the answer to that is, "Nothing, Paul. I've got a YouTube channel, and it's great." In which case, you are in the very fortunate minority because the average MSP that I ask about this kind of thing about being on YouTube, their answer is, Well, we'd love to do YouTube. We know how important it is. I watch a ton of YouTube myself, but I am scared of being on camera." Now, I do a lot of video. In fact, you may be watching me on YouTube right now, and I'm not naturally talented at doing video. In fact, when I was a radio presenter back in the day, I failed quite a number of TV auditions to try and become a TV presenter. I was the guy that was a bit sweaty under the lights of the studio, and I wasn't very good with a teleprompter. But now I've got the ability filming here in my own house, in my spare room with my own kit on my own terms. I have the ability to be okay at video and certainly more than good enough to do a podcast and to do some YouTube videos. So I'm going to talk you through some of the things that may be stopping you, holding you back from doing your own YouTube videos and being on camera. Now, the first of those is to figure out what your if you like your fear is. So what is it that you most fear about being on camera? For some people, it's being judged. It's people seeing you and thinking things about you, either about your physical appearance or your presenting skills, or just generally having an opinion on you. And many people spend a great proportion of their life trying not to be judged by other people. Here's the thing: people don't judge you as much as they think you do. Perhaps one or two very close people or one or two haters, we all have haters, they may have judgments on you and they may be extreme judgments. But for the average everyday person that's going to watch you on YouTube, they're simply not going to judge you at all. They don't care that perhaps you've got two chins. They don't care that your hair is old and gray or that you're looking tired today or anything like that. And actually there are ways around all of this thing anyway. I have two LED lights here which just make me look... Well, I certainly feel better when I've got those LED lights on because they hide some of the age lines, and I've got them set to a color temperature which replicates daylight which just makes my skin look good, and it's one of the ways that I feel more comfortable because I've got that lighting that I'm most comfortable with. I know male YouTubers who use makeup, not excessive amounts, but just a little bit of makeup just to make them feel better doing YouTube videos. Personally, I would feel a little bit worse. Maybe another one of your fears is that you might forget the script. I sometimes use a teleprompter. In fact, I'm using one right now. I've got a little clicker in my hand, which allows me to move the teleprompter up or down. I don't always use it for these podcasts, but I do when I've got specific points that I want to make. And this teleprompter was about $100. And it's just like a mirror that goes in front of the camera and then you put your iPad underneath. And you can see the reflection of what's on the iPad, but the people watching at home, you can't see anything right now. Hopefully you can't anyway. So things like, "I'm going to forget my script," there are ways around that. I don't use script as such, but I have bullet points of things that I want to talk about, and I can see those right now while I'm looking at the camera. You see, you can take any fear that you've got about being on camera and if you name it, you acknowledge what it is, then there's something that you can do to take it away. If your fear is for getting a script, get a teleprompter. If your fear is how you look on camera, get better lighting or find clothes. Find things that you're comfortable in. I mean, that's another thing as well is what can you do to make yourself feel comfortable? I'm in my house in my spare room. My child is downstairs so that I know there's no noise. I've got plenty of time with no appointments or Zooms or anything coming up, so I'm not in a rush. I'm wearing clothes that I'm comfortable with. I've got no trousers on. No, I have really. I actually got trousers on. I have no way of proving this to you even on YouTube because the camera won't go down, but you get the idea. I am wearing my comfy trousers. They're not necessarily trousers that I would go out of the house in, but I'm really comfortable in them and all. I'm not even wearing any shoes right now because I'm more comfortable in my socks than I am wearing shoes. So you can do exactly the same thing, particularly if you are presenting as I am right now for those. If you're not watching on YouTube, I'm literally just standing in a blue shirt standing in front of a camera and staring at the camera, and you can see that on youtube.com/mspmarketing. So I pick the clothing that makes me comfortable. I've got an environment that makes me comfortable. Something else I do as well if I'm really struggling to just get this video content out, and I do have days where I'm struggling, is I'll go and just do some exercise. A little bit of exercise makes a surprising difference to the quality of the video that you can put together. Two other things I think that are important, the first is to prepare as much as you can. So this podcast takes me around about probably about 30, 40 minutes to actually film, but it takes me a lot more time to prep. I'm prepping the subject. I'm thinking about the subject. What do I want to talk about? How do I want to structure that? And I have discovered over the years, and it's not just with YouTube videos, but with when I was on the radio as well, the more you prepare, the better you perform, and I think that could apply exactly to you. That doesn't just have to be someone who does lots of stuff. Is it really any different to you doing a sales meeting? If you are doing a sales meeting with someone and you're very well prepared, don't you perform better? And the answer is probably yes. When you wing it and you may have the skill of winging it, but maybe you are just a better prepared salesperson if you've researched the prospect and researched their technology, and you walk in with that knowledge there in the back of your head. I think the final point I've got on this is just if you want to do videos and you've got that passion to do it, just be yourself and just try to enjoy it and accept that your first videos will be rubbish. And everyone gets afraid doing videos now and again. I guess there are TV presenters of 20, 30 years experience who now and again, still feel afraid because they're going live with millions of people watching them. And no matter how experienced you are and how good you are, there is always that level of fear there. So just be yourself. It's only YouTube. It's a YouTube video that what 100, 200 people are going to watch. If you accept the first few videos will be rubbish and just keep practicing and practicing and practicing, eventually you will get better like you do at any skill. And you know what? Filming videos for YouTube can actually be fun. Oh, it has a massive marketing advantage as well because the more that someone sees you on YouTube, when you sit down with them to sell them your managed services, they are literally 100 times more likely to buy because people prefer buying from experts. And these days, experts appear on YouTube. Voiceover: Paul's blatant plug. Paul Green: Back when I was talking about how you explained the cloud to a seven year old, a lot of the answers I gave in that bit came from our MSP marketing Facebook group. It is such a vibrant community, and it's completely free. It's for any MSP, including you, who is keen to grow their business through better marketing. Now, you must be an MSP to join. That's the only condition. So we don't have vendors. We don't have sales people. There's no one pitching in there. It is pure content challenging you to improve your MSP's marketing so you can generate more new revenue and ultimately get more new clients. So to join, grab your phone right now. Go onto the Facebook app, type in MSP marketing, but then go to groups. You don't want our page. You want to go to groups, and you'll see the MSP marketing Facebook group; tap to join, couple of questions to answer, and one of my team will let you in. I'm there every single day, and I look forward to speaking to you in that Facebook group. Voiceover: The big big interview. Nicky Billou: Hi, I'm Nicky Billou. I am the bestselling author of eight books, host of the number one podcast on thought leadership in the world, and known as the Millionaire Maker for helping over 80 people add six to nine figures to their income. Paul Green: And with a CV like that, a resume like that, why wouldn't we want to get you on this show? So welcome, Nicky. It's a delight to finally get you onto this podcast. I've heard so many good things about you. Now, one of the things that someone said to me was that you are almost like the 2023 version of Napoleon Hill. Now, for the benefit of our audience, let's not assume that everyone who's listening knows who Napoleon Hill was. Could you just briefly tell us who Napoleon Hill was and why you could be compared and be a modern day Napoleon Hill? Nicky Billou: Well, I'll tell you a story about Napoleon Hill that illustrates that really, really powerfully, and I think it's a story that everyone's going to love. Napoleon Hill is the author of the bestselling personal development book of all time, which is called Think And Grow Rich. And the story of how he came to be the author of this bestselling personal development book of all time is a fascinating one. When he was a very young man, he was a newspaper reporter, and he was assigned by his boss to interview the then richest man in the world, Andrew Carnegie of US Steel. So he went to see Mr. Carnegie and the two of them really hit it off. So at the end of their time together, Mr. Carnegie said, "Mr. Hill, how would you like to spend the weekend at my estate? I would like to talk to you further." And well, I don't know about you, but if the richest man in the world ever asked me if I'd like to spend the weekend at his estate because he wanted to talk to me further, I'd be in right away. And Napoleon Hill was as well. And so they spent the weekend together, and by the end of that weekend, he had really hit it off with Andrew Carnegie. And Andrew Carnegie said to him, "Mr. Hill, I have a proposition for you. How would you like to spend the next 20 years researching my philosophy of success? And what I will do is I will not pay you a stipend, but what I will do is I will give you letters of introduction to speak to the 500 most successful men and women in the United States." And of course, it took him 31 seconds to say, "Yes," and the rest is history. He got to interview the 500 most successful richest men and women in the United States, and that's how he became Napoleon Hill, and he wrote that book. One of the reasons some people call me the Napoleon Hill of the 21st century is because I've had the privilege of interviewing some of the most iconic business minds and success stories of the 21st century, people like Dr. John Maxwell, who's the number one leadership author in the world, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, who created and wrote the Chicken Soup for the series books, which have sold almost 600 million copies in total, and folks like that. So that's the long and the short of why I'm called the Napoleon Hill of the 21st century. Paul Green: So how did you get started? I mean, clearly, Elon Musk or whoever was the richest guy at the time, or richest person at the time when you started your career didn't invite you to come and spend a weekend learning from them. Or I'm guessing that's not quite how you got started, but what's your story? How did you get going and end up going down this route? Nicky Billou: Well, I'll tell you, it's a powerful story, but it actually starts in my childhood in Iran. I'm originally an immigrant from the Middle East, a Christian from Iran. And when I was 11 years old, the Islamic Revolution happened in Iran, and the benign dictatorship of the Shah was replaced by the absolute tyranny of the [foreign language 00:17:12]. And my late father, God rest his soul, he could see the writing on the wall. This was not going to be a great place for him to raise his Christian family. So what dad did was he made a plan and eventually got us out of Iran and we settled where I now live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And I thank God for my father's foresight and prescient. Because of him, the trajectory of my life changed for the better; the trajectory of my family's life and our legacy changed for the better. And we got to leave tyranny and live in freedom. And there's a lot of people these days who are born here especially who just don't appreciate how good we have it here. I'm not trying to pretend everything's perfect here, but compared to places like Iran, are you kidding me? We're the most tolerant societies in the history of the world, and I think everybody should be grateful for the freedom that we have here. My father was a man who was very grateful for freedom. He was also an uplifter of people. If you knew my dad and you were looking for work, he'd work the phones to get you a job. If you were looking to start a business, he would actually sit down with you and help you think it through. He'd bring other advisors to the table. He'd even help you raise capital. And if you were looking to buy a car or a house or an apartment and you didn't quite have enough money, he would top you up so you could buy that car, that house, that apartment. And you might be thinking to yourself, "Oh my God, Nicky, who does that? Is that even real?" Yeah, it is. The late great Napoleon Billou, that's who did that. Why would he do that, might be your next question. Well, first of all, he was a devout Christian. He believed he'd been blessed by God, and it was his duty to share those blessings with others. But secondly, he did it because he had the financial wherewithal to do it; he was successful, and I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to help people. And I got into the helping profession of entrepreneurship. And one of the things that my dad taught me was, "Son, life is about people. Business is about people. It's not about numbers or money or how much you sell. It's about people. Be interested in people. You become successful as a businessman when you focus on helping people, when you focus on the person in front of you. That person in front of you, that's someone's brother, someone's sister, someone's husband, someone's wife, someone's father, someone's mother, someone's son, someone's daughter, and it's your duty to see that. It's your duty to see. They've got hopes, dreams, fears. Maybe they've been disappointed a bit by life, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe they've even been somebody who has been disappointed by someone just like you. So your job is to make sure that they have a good experience interacting with you because you make money, son, when you solve problems for people for a profit." And that became like a Venn diagram for me: problems, people, profit, right? Nicky Billou's patented three piece seven figure success solution. And as a result of this, I decided to get into the business of helping people. I was initially a top level fitness coach. I worked with some of the top business people, Olympic gold medalists, those kinds of folks in the world. But then I transitioned from that to becoming an executive coach, a speaker, an author, someone who ran mastermind groups and workshops. And my interest and love for people had always attracted high level people to want to work with me. I worked with the great Robin Sharma when I was a fitness trainer, the author of the book, the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari; sold 20 million copies of his books. I've gotten to interview people like George Ross, who was Donald Trump's senior vice president, the man who took Donald Trump when he was broke in the '90s and made him worth billions again. That guy, I got to work with him. I got to work with Jack Canfield, with Mark Victor Hansen, John Maxwell. All of these came from having a desire to be of service to people. Podcasting is new to a lot of folks who are from that generation, so an opportunity to be on a high level podcast with something they all really appreciated and wanted to partake in. And for me, what has allowed me to be successful is I care about people. I want to see people win. And if someone's listening to this, if you're an MSP, an owner of an MSP, and you're thinking to yourself, "Well, how am I going to grow my business?" Well, first of all, start focusing on the people that you help. Stop focusing on how much money you're going to make or how much new number of clients, how many new clients I should say you're going to bring into your business and start focusing on how many individuals lives are you going to change because of what you do? And you might be thinking, "Well, I own MSP. I mean, I don't change people's lives. I fix their IT." Well, guess what? Fixing someone's IT is life-changing these days. If someone's company IT isn't working their life comes to a standstill. They can't do business. They can't make money. They can't feed their family. They can't feed the families or the people they work with. So what you're doing is you're not going in there and saying, "Oh, all I'm doing is I'm fixing their IT." You're allowing them to live life. You're allowing them to move forward and create magic for themselves, their families, for the families of their employees. You're a hero if you look at it that way, right? Look at it as people, not numbers, not profit, not money. Don't get me wrong, profit's important. That's why it's solving problems for people for profit, acute problems, for amazing people at an awesome profit. That's your job. You do that, you are rolling. Paul Green: Yeah. I love this. And I think your message, Nicky's going to go down very, very well with our audience listening and watching this on YouTube because most of the MSP owners that I've met are problem solvers. They want to solve problems. They want to make people happy whether that's proactively stopping things from happening or actually fixing the problem. You said about IT... I would argue that cybersecurity is an even bigger show stopper for businesses these days. And whereas the businesses know they need to spend some money on IT because that's been around for 30 odd, 30, 40 odd years. It's only really in the last few years that they're really realizing that proper cybersecurity is more than just antivirus and that there's so many threats out there. And I think this is where MSPs can really grow into their own protecting people and as you say, making good money along the way because cybersecurity can be profitable when it's done properly as well. Nicky Billou: Absolutely. Paul Green: Let's talk about mindset. So you've spent your career, you've spent much of your working life surrounded by great people, and I forget who said this now, who was it who said, "You are a sum total of the five people you spend the most time with?" Nicky Billou: Charlie Tremendous Jones. You're going to be the same person in five years based on the books you read and the people you hang around, and the five most people that you hang around the most will determine who you are the most. Paul Green: Exactly. Thank you. I knew you would have that more eloquently than I would. So you've obviously hung around with some very impressive people, and then you try and pass that on to the people that you are working with. As business owners and as parents, as just people trying to have good lives as well as create good businesses, how important is that mindset, that attitude, that openness to learn? And I'm expecting you to say it's incredibly important. But give me some examples if you can of how you've seen people's lives change by being open and actively working on their attitude and their mindset. Nicky Billou: It's interesting that you ask that question, and it's even interesting you mentioned cybersecurity. Back in 2000 and 2001 was a director of sales for Jaws Technology, which was a cybersecurity firm in Canada. And we sold attack and penetration tests. We sold antivirus products. We sold all kinds of things to help people out. So man, that just brings back memories for me. But when it comes to your success, Robin Sharma was a client of mine at one point; I was his fitness coach. And when we trained together, I would teach him how to get healthy and fit, but he would share his wisdom with me. And one day I told him, "Robin, you think it's possible for someone like me to double my income in a given year?" Back then I'd never doubled my income. I'd come 60%, 70% increase, but I wanted to double my income. He said, "Absolutely." I said, "Well, how do I do that?" He said, "It's really simple. What you need to do is you need to absolutely triple your investment in personal and professional development to bulletproof your mindset." I said, "Triple?" He said, "Yep." He said, "You've got to hire the coaches, you've got to join the peer groups, you've got to attend the conferences, you've got to buy the courses, and you've got to read the books. And all of that is going to take an investment of time, energy, and money. You've got to triple all three of those if you want to double your income." Because for Jim Rohn used to say, "Don't wish life were easier, wish you were better. Don't wish life were easier, wish you were better. Don't wish business were easier, wish you were better and to become better. Work on you, invest in you." Your mindset is everything. If you are an MSP business owner and you are sitting here going, "Well, what can I do? I'm busy. How am I going to do this mindset stuff, this soft stuff? I don't know if I really even believe in this or buy this." I'm here to tell you something. That's like saying, "You know oxygen? I don't know if I believe in it or buy it. I don't need oxygen. What are you talking about?" Are you out of your mind? You'll die in 10 minutes... 10 minutes, you'll die in three minutes without oxygen, three minutes, you're dead, brain dead, completely gone. Investing in yourself is like oxygen for your business. You must do it. You must. And if you're one of these people who's engineering in your outlook and you're thinking, "I'm not into all this soft stuff. I just want to do my thing. I want to fix problems." Well, I got news for you. If you really want to grow a business, it's got to be about more than the amazing problems you solve because nobody is buying your expertise. You know what they're buying? They're buying their way out of something that sucks. You understand what I'm saying? Business people don't buy their way into something. They buy their way out of something that sucks, that's causing them pain. The fact that it's you and your services is really not that relevant to them. They don't care. I'm sorry to tell you this. They don't care about you or your services. They care about can you help them? They care about are you a good caring human being who's going to make sure that you do everything to help solve their problem? And if they get that you are that, they're going to do business with you. And if they don't and they think you're primarily a person who's about numbers or the thing, they're not. People do business with people they know, like, and trust. All those things are important. And your mindset is only going to get better if you invest time in doing that. So I'm going to show you some of the books I've been reading lately. Martin Dugard, Farther Than Any Man: the Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook, who was the original great English explorer. The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, this is the story of one of history's greatest men and how he created out of nothing, an absolute empire for himself. Now, these are some books that I've written, and I'm reading right now. This is a book I wrote: How to Create a Million Dollar a Year Income. And as I wrote this, I've also been reading it so that I can teach it to people more effectively. Now, if you're listening to this, here's my question for you: in the last month, how many books have you read? If the answer is zero, shame on you. Pick up a book and read it. Read it. It'll make you smarter. It'll make you better. You got to do it. And here's my other question for you: do you have a coach? Do you have an advisor that you pay good money to advise you or coach you? And if the answer to that is no, oh, come on. I have six coaches that I currently work with. Six. I have a health and fitness coach. I have a nutrition coach. I have a relationship coach for my relationship with my better half. I have a relationship coach who's coaching me on working with my teenage sons and with business relationships. I have a business and sales coach, and I have a manifestation coach who coaches me on how to have positive energy and manifesting. So look that six coaches I'm currently paying. Six. I'm doing two business programs in addition to the ones I teach myself. I'm about to sign up for a third. Why? I'd be a hypocrite if I'm telling you to go invest in yourself and in programs to get you better, and I didn't do it myself. Do you know the story of Gandhi and the chocolate? Have you ever heard that story, Paul? Paul Green: I haven't, no. Do tell us. Nicky Billou: So back in the time of Gandhi, he would meet people that would bring him problems and he would give them advice on how to solve them. And there was a woman who came from far away with her young son to meet with Gandhi. And she stood in line for three hours and she finally got to see him. And she was beside herself. She said, "Gandhiji, my son, he eats chocolate. I don't know what to do. He won't stop. It's rotting his teeth. I'm beside myself. I've come here a long way. I'm wondering if you can help us give him some advice." Because Gandhi was a well regarded, highly regarded man, and people would listen to him. And he looked at the woman, he looked at the boy, and he said, "Okay, yes, come back in two weeks." She said, "What?" "Come back in two weeks." She says, "What?" He says, "Come back in two weeks." She says, "Okay, okay." So this woman had to go find lodging and pay for it and had to pay for food for herself and her son while they were there in this place. And then she had to come and line up again for three hours before she got to see Gandhi. And then when she got to him, she says, "Remember me, Ghandhiji? I was here two weeks ago. You said, 'Come back in two weeks.' My son, he was eating chocolate and it was rotting his teeth, and you said, 'Come back in...'" He goes, "Yes, yes, yes. I remember. I remember very well." And he looked at the boy intensely and he said, "Young man, stop eating chocolate." And the boy looked up at him and said, "Oh, okay." And the woman, she freaked. She completely... She says, "What? That's all you got. You made me wait for two weeks to come and tell my son, stop eating chocolate. Why would you do that? Why would you make us wait? I had to line up. I had to pay money. Why?" She was freaking out. And he said, "Madam, I am very sorry that you had to go through all that, but you need to understand something." She says, "What is it that I need to understand? What?" And he said, in that calm, serene way of his, "Two weeks ago, I was still eating chocolate." Paul Green: Very good. Very, very good. Nicky, I could keep you on this podcast for hours and hours. In fact, we may get you back on perhaps later this year or next year as we might do a special with you because I think you've got so much to share. But for now, just tell us a little bit about what you do to help business owners, and what's the best way for us to get in touch with you? Nicky Billou: There's a lot of people in business, and I'm sure there's a lot of folks that are MSP business owners that are really, really good at what they do. Do you know what I mean, Paul? They're good at delivering the service that they deliver. But when it comes to the actual running of their business, their skill set maybe isn't quite as high, you know what I mean, as it is for what they deliver. They're not as skilled at marketing, at sales, at understanding balance sheets, and income statements, and cash flow statements, and culture, and hiring, and firing, and all that good stuff, structures, processes. They may have some of that down, but they don't have it all down. And in particular, when it comes to marketing and selling, that's an area they don't necessarily always feel like they really, really got it down the way they got, how they do what they do down. So what we do is we work with those business owners, and we really assist them in A, understanding how to do marketing and sales, understanding how to be seen and sought after by the people they want to be working with and be helping, and how to sell from the heart sell in a way that's love-based, service-based. We teach them how to do that. And by doing that, we help people double, triple, quadruple, tenfold, even 100 fold their results. We love doing that. We're very excited to do that. If anyone is a business owner and they want to have a look at what we do, just go to my podcast and you can listen and watch if you go on YouTube to your heart's content. But if you are a serious individual who's actually looking to take a step to do something, then you go to my link and you book a time on my calendar, a free call, a free success coaching call, and it is ecircleacademy.com/appointment. Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast. This week's recommended book. Mark Wass: Hi, I'm Mark Wass of CloudBlue, and the book I recommend is The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. Generally, I think it's a great book to give you a framework in terms of putting your habits in order, in terms of what you are looking to achieve, but also being very reflective in terms of what you need to do in terms of achieving your goals and how you can set them out in your day-to-day life. I genuinely think it's a book that everyone who can benefit from no matter what your walk of life and what you do, and something that I thoroughly enjoy, and I think is a great read for everyone. Voiceover: Coming up next week. Scott Bywater: Hi, I'm Scott Bywater and I'm going to be talking about how to use AI in your copywriting, in your marketing, and particularly in your email marketing. Paul Green: Tell me, are you subscribed wherever you listen or watch this podcast? Because I'm going to make sure you never miss an episode. On top of that great interview next week, we're going to be talking about how to sell cybersecurity without using FUD. FUD is fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and it has very little place in the way that you should be marketing cybersecurity these days. We have a ton more content remember at youtube.com/mspmarketing. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast.
Previous Episode
Next Episode

Other Episodes

Episode 107

November 30, 2021 • 00:25:04
Episode Cover

Episode 107: The MSP business model makes cash flow easy

In this week’s episode Does cash flow keep you awake at night? If it does, this is definitely the episode for you. Paul explains...

Listen

Episode 220

January 30, 2024 • 00:38:12
Episode Cover

Episode 220: MSPs: This tool sells more to your clients

Episode 220 Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This...

Listen

Episode 3

November 19, 2019 • 00:23:27
Episode Cover

Episode 3: Fire a client for Christmas

In this week’s episode It may sound drastic, but getting rid of one of your worst clients could be transformational for your business. Paul’s...

Listen