MSPs: Never Use This Social Platform

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Righty ho. Off we go. This is what's coming up for you today. Which social media platforms your MSP should be using? The comparison trap. By watching other MSPs success can actually sabotage your own success. And my special guest today is going to tell you how to exit and sell your MSP for more money and with fewer headaches. Welcome to episode 364 [00:00:24] Speaker B: powered by mspmarketingedge.com Paul Greens MSP Marketing Podcast [00:00:30] Speaker A: there are more social media platforms than ever and it's easy to feel a pressure for your MSP to be on all of them. But my view on this is that you should resist that pressure. Because I believe it's far better to do really well on one or two platforms than to be average across several. In fact, a half hearted presence everywhere is worse than a very strong presence on a very specific platform. So right now I want to give you my platform by platform verdict for for msps. And we'll start with LinkedIn. In fact, with LinkedIn, you should go all in. If you're only going to be active on one platform, make it LinkedIn, because this is where the decision makers are, the business owners, the operations directors, finance managers, IT directors. If you're doing co managed it, they're on LinkedIn every single day. And the platform is actively rewarding consistent human non AI generated content right now. So the kind of stuff that you should be doing because it's good for the humans is what the platform is rewarding. So I believe that every day on LinkedIn you should be making connection requests to the kind of people that you would like as clients and then post at least every 24 hours. And that includes a LinkedIn newsletter once a week. And of course that newsletter counts as a piece of content within a 24 hour period. So LinkedIn is where you build audiences and grow relationships and of course some of those relationships will eventually turn into clients. Now I've been recommending LinkedIn to MSPS for about seven or eight years out of the 10 odd years that I've been running the MSP Marketing Edge. And I'm still completely convinced that right now, as we're heading towards the start of 2027, LinkedIn is the single best organic marketing channel available to an msp. So if you haven't got that much time and you know you need to do some marketing, LinkedIn is absolutely the place to throw yourself in. Please don't spread yourself too thin across other platforms. In fact, I wouldn't even look at other platforms until LinkedIn is working well for you because most MSPs never get to a point of doing LinkedIn really well just because they don't stick at it long enough or put enough resources into it, be that time or cash. Right, next platform to look at. Once you've got LinkedIn mastered, have a look at YouTube. Because YouTube is the world's most used platform for watching video and that alone makes it worth you having a presence on. Now, I'm going to be honest with you, building a big YouTube audience as an MSP is genuinely hard and we've certainly found this hard. We've put significant time and effort into our own YouTube channel. And if you're watching this on YouTube right now, you can have a look at our Facebook followers, our subscribers, and see that our audience is still relatively small. But that's partly because we're targeting a very specific niche. But you. And rather than chasing, you know, random subscribers for the sake of it, I only really want MSPs subscribing to this content. And you would be doing the same kind of thing. I don't mean in terms of getting MSPs to subscribe, but you would want business owners in your area or within your. Your vertical or your niche. Your niche or of course IT directors if you're doing co managed it. So I wouldn't worry too much about building subscribers. That's what all of the professional YouTubers are doing because they make money from having big audiences. The value of YouTube for an MSP is not a huge subscriber count. It's the fact that your videos are there permanently. They're searchable, you can put them on your website. A prospect who wants to check you out before getting in touch can watch you talking for a few minutes and decide whether they like you before they even speak to you. And that's a very powerful thing to do. And by the way, just as a, as a reminder for our MSP Marketing Edge members, we of course give you a new video every week featuring one of our professional presenters. You can take that presenter out and put yourself in that video if you wanted to do that. So basically you've got all the content and all the background and the music and everything's prepared for you. You don't really have to do much other than do a bit of filming. But whether you produce your own version or just use our version with our professional human presenters, you can put those videos on YouTube. It's a really easy way to get a pres on YouTube quickly. Right, next platform Instagram. And the golden rule with Instagram is. You only bother with Instagram if your clients are already there, because Instagram is not a natural fit for most MSPs. But the exception to the rule is if you're targeting businesses that use Instagram for their own marketing. So retail, hospitality, restaurants, any sector really that's aimed at consumers and uses Instagram to reach their own customers, then Instagram is the place to go. So if, if the business owners or the people, the decision makers are doing their own marketing on Instagram, then you should go and connect to them on Instagram as well. That makes sense, right? If they're spending an hour a day on Instagram, then they're more likely to see your stuff there. So for most MSPs who are targeting professional services, B2B businesses, then Instagram probably isn't worth your time investment. But if your icp, your ideal client profile is those businesses that are chasing consumers, then Instagram might be worth a look for you. Next up is Facebook and it's useful because it's the universal platform and I put that in speech marks. But almost every business owner that you want to reach is on Facebook and that makes it a genuinely useful place to have a presence, just not quite as useful as LinkedIn. The best approach for most MSPs is to find and join local business owner groups and participate in those. So don't be some kind of sleazy salesperson, just be visible, be helpful. You know, look for local business communities on Facebook because they can be surprisingly active and if you can become a familiar and trusted face in those groups, then it puts you front of mind when someone mentions it or technology and you can genuinely add some value to the conversation. It's also worth considering Facebook ads or meta ads, particularly for retargeting people who've already visited your your website these days, thanks to the Andromeda update, which meta released, I think it was the end of 2024. Your targeting options are excellent because it learns the audience that you want to reach based on the content of your advert. And the cost per click can be a lot lower than Google. So if you are thinking of running any kind of social paid ads at any point, meta Facebook is definitely the place to start with that. Next up, Reddit. Now, Reddit I think could be useful for a vertical or a niche. A niche, I'm not so sure if it's useful when you're trying to reach local business owners and managers. Reddit is a really strange platform because Reddit has actually got a ton of useful content. It's the most useful place to go to research things. You may be on the MSP subreddit, which is a good place. You see a lot of people talking about vendors there and contracts and just asking for general advice. The problem is that people hide behind anonymous accounts. And certainly if you go into the MSP subreddit or any other subreddit, you'll see that I always summarize Reddit as a lot of angry people throwing hand grenades at each other. And I think that's because it's very anonymous, so almost what makes it highly valuable also, you know, holds it back in some way. So, as I say, if you're in a very specific vertical, you can go and see what the business owners in that vertical are discussing openly. You can go and join the subreddit, which is very, very useful. But for general business owners, I'm not convinced of its, of its value. Unless, of course, you find a subreddit for business owners in your town or something like that. So at the most, it can be an amazing research platform for you. It can show you what actually matters to the people you're trying to reach. I'm not convinced that it's the right kind of platform for you to go on and try to add value to conversations. And I say this as someone who I check out the MSP subreddit every day and I'm looking for opportunities to add value. But I'm also conscious that the second I put my head above the parapet, someone is going to throw a hand grenade at me. Right, next platform, it's X, AKA what used to be Twitter. And if I'm honest, I don't really think this is worth your time for marketing your msp, unless you are an X fan and you're using X every day for your own interests and stuff. Because of course, what's happened to that platform under its current ownership has driven away a significant proportion of the professional audience, which made Twitter Useful. For B2B. I haven't used Twitter for years, years and years, in fact, long before Elon owned it. And every now and again, you know, I go and go into X, you click a link, don't you? And it's something that comes up in a feed and it takes you to X. And I look at what's trending and I'm like, oh, this isn't for me. So if you're an X fan, obviously you know anything that you're already using, if you've got a passion for it and you think your audience is on X, then of course it makes sense for you to do that. But I think for the vast majority of msps, X is not a place to go. Right, let's have a look at all of the other sort of, I'm going to call them the minor social platforms. I mean, some of these have a billion users or more, but I think it's just worth having a look at them together. TikTok, for example, threads and everything else I haven't yet mentioned. So TikTok has produced some remarkable business success stories. I know business owning friends in their mid-50s who are on TikTok every night, right. And they're, they're looking at business advice videos. I do know some people as well have built some genuinely impressive audiences on there, but these tend to be people that are reaching large verticals or very large audiences. Like all business owners, I think for most MSPs, TikTok is potentially more of a distraction for you rather than it is an opportunity. And the same on Threads and Blue sky and Mastodon and all of those. The content format in all of these can be demanding, especially TikTok where you're looking for, you know, quite, quite highly polished short form videos. The, the audience on TikTok does skew younger and, you know, you need to do specific content for these specific platforms and that's very hard to justify when LinkedIn has all of the people that you could ever want to reach there on one place. So I would say, you know, that all of these platforms and any new platforms that come up in the next six months, and there's bound to be some, obviously there is a good audience there, but the opportunity cost is very high for you. And every hour that you spend building an audience somewhere new is an hour that you're not spending making your presence deeper on places like LinkedIn and YouTube and other places. So my summary for this for most msps is focused just on LinkedIn. Every hour that you've got to spend on social, please consider spending that on LinkedIn. Just get better and better at LinkedIn at building those connections, you know, posting every 24 hours and of course commenting on other people's posts as well. Those are the three core tasks to do on LinkedIn. And then you might look at YouTube and then you might look at some of the other platforms that we've just discussed here, but only if you have capacity and if you've already invested heavily in LinkedIn, which is where your audience is, most MSPs never need go further than LinkedIn and maybe one other platform. [00:11:52] Speaker B: Paul Greens MSP Marketing Podcast. [00:11:55] Speaker A: So we just talked about resisting the pressure to try to be everywhere at once, instead going deep on one or two platforms. And that same principle applies to your entire entire marketing, not just social media. Trying to do everything at once is exactly what burns out MSPs and it leads to nothing really ever getting finished. I can help with this. I have a marketing map which is in the form of a giant wall planner that goes. It's a physical thing, it goes on your wall and it gives you 36 marketing actions that you really should do and lays them out in the order that you should do them. So instead of trying to do everything simultaneously, instead you know exactly which tasks to focus on next. As I say, it's a large physical wall planner and I post it out to you completely free at my own expense. There's no catch of any kind. To get one, just go to mspwallplanner.com or if you're watching this on YouTube, scan the QR code that's on screen right now. Let's you and I have an honest conversation about something that holds back business owners like us. And I'll be honest, it is something that I have experience myself at various times over my 20 year business owning career. And that's the moment that you look at a competitor. So for you it would be another msp. Or maybe you watch someone on stage at a conference or you look at what someone's posted on LinkedIn and you kind of have a sick feeling and that feeling leads to a thought in your brain which is you think, that person is doing so much better than I am. They're a direct competitor, they do what I do and they are beating me. And that makes you feel just awful inside. Let's talk right now about why that feeling is almost always based on something false and what you can actually do about it to stop you having those thoughts and that feeling. So let's start by talking about what we actually see versus what's really happening behind the scenes. And the truth is that almost everything you see from anybody who puts something on LinkedIn or says something on a stage is. It's curated, right? It's the polished version. Because nobody or very few people post a thing on LinkedIn saying, I was up at 4am and I couldn't get back to sleep because I was worrying about cash flow, right? Nobody stands on the stage to say, yeah, I've got this key member of staff and the whole business is reliant on them and I'd be screwed if they leave. And they just texted me to say they've handed in their notice, right? Or nobody does an update on, does a LinkedIn newsletter to say that last month we lost our biggest clients or we have, we have a massive invoice that's got us on our knees because we haven't got any cash and it hasn't been paid in 90 days. These are all real problems that affect real businesses. But we don't post this stuff in the same way that on like Instagram, you know, people do those beautiful shots of themselves, don't they? With, with the sunset in the background and they're beautiful looking children and their gorgeous partner and they do those shots but what they don't do is photos of what they look like when they wake at 5 in the morning, you know, pre, pre shower, pre feeling like death. No one does that. So we're only ever seeing the polished version. We see the wins, the new offices, the awards, the big clients, the fact they've hit a revenue milestone, all of that stuff. But we don't see the real stuff, all the bad things that happen along the journey that get to the good things. Because we all have bad things that happen on the journey. Even the most successful people you know, and if you picture someone in your head now might be someone you know within the channel, might be someone on LinkedIn, it might be someone you know, like a business owner in your town. The most successful people you know have had all of the bad things happen to them on the journey. I promise you. In fact, even while they're putting up the post saying, oh, we've just hit a major, you know, milestone, we've got our 500th client or whatever, I promise you there's something going wrong in the background. I promise you this, and I tell you that from personal experience, as I say, I've been doing this for 20 years and, and when I started my first business in 2005, which was a marketing business, it evolved into a marketing business for health care businesses like dentists and veterinarians and optometrists, opticians. You know, the first few years it was a nightmare. It was a real struggle and I was very committed to being a business owner. But I would lie awake at four in the morning because I couldn't pay my staff. I'd replay my mind about a client that I'd lost or this year, and this is worse, I'd be worrying about a client leaving us or I'd be thinking about a team member who had just resigned or something like that. But you know, when I presented myself at a networking meeting at six in the morning or seven in the morning, or just generally how I presented myself, I put a front on, right? And that front has gone now. This is the real me that you're seeing. But that front was me being brave. And now, you know, even now, 20 years into business, I do catch myself now and again looking at competitors or people in the channel and just, just having that. It's almost like a feeling that suddenly makes me go, they're doing better than we are, you know, or we really need to catch up on that. Or I can't believe that's happening. This is normal, this is human, right? If you don't have these, then, then I don't know is that, is that maybe there are people out there who never have that, who just go through their entire business owning and growing careers without ever having that. But the vast majority of people that I've met actually have that. And you have it because you're seeing their polished version, you're seeing their illusion. You're comparing your messy, complicated, behind the scenes reality to someone else's highlight reel. And of course, if you compare apples and oranges in that way, you're always going to feel that there's a big difference between them. So I believe the real danger from this is not just having that feeling and feeling a bit sick for a while because that does go eventually. I believe the danger is allowing that feeling to influence your actions because it can lead you to make some genuinely poor decisions. The most common one is copying someone else. In fact, I see MSPs copying other MSPs marketing because they perceive that that other MSP has marketing that's working for them. But the problem with that is that actually you have no idea what's actually happening in that other business. You don't know their numbers, you don't know why they're doing that tactic. You don't know whether that tactic is actually generating leads or whether it's actually just generating likes. Likes don't turn into clients. Leads turn into clients. You can't, you can't feed your family on likes. You don't know if they're burning cash. You don't know if perhaps they've got some VC money or private equity money and they're spending it, but spending it badly. You don't know if they're as unsure about their marketing as you are. You don't know if they just got some marketing out and they're not really tracking it. You don't know these things. So copying someone else's marketing based purely on how it appears to you you might be copying something that doesn't work. And if they don't know that it doesn't work, then you won't know either. Does that make sense? It could be they're just putting on a brave face like the rest of us. Building your marketing strategy on an assumption about someone else's success is pretty shaky foundations. So let's talk about a mindset shift, and that is not to compete with other people that you see, but only ever to compete with yourself. I think the healthiest thing that I've ever done for my own mental state in business, and it is really important that as business owners, we look after our own mental state. I stopped comparing myself to other people and instead started comparing myself to where I used to be, if that makes sense. So I tried to just stop comparing myself to other people and that was impossible. I needed to replace that behavior with something. So actually now I look back at my own performance, how I used to be. You know, am I doing better this month than I did last month? Is my business further along this year or this point this year than it was at this point last year? And really, that's the only comparison that really matters because it's the only one that's built on complete information. You know, your own struggles, your own context, your own reasons for where you are right now. And you'll never, ever have that same complete picture of anyone else's business, no matter how much of it they share. Now, I must address the fact that we talk a lot on this podcast about MSPs who have done remarkably well. They're often people who've grown significant businesses, they've got huge annual recurring revenue, or they've sold their msp, sometimes for a life changing amount. They've built something they're genuinely proud of. And in fact, our guest coming up in just a few minutes is someone who's built an MSP and sold it and now helps other MSPs to do the same. Now, there's a reason that I put those people on this podcast and it's because I want you to do healthy comparisons between you and them, not unhealthy comparisons. So I don't want you to listen to those stories and think, you know, in an unhealthy way. They're so much further ahead of me. They're not designed for you to measure yourself against and feel inadequate, far from it. They're there to remind you that whatever you're stuck on right now, wherever you are on your journey, someone else has Been there. They got stuck in exactly the same thing as you, and they found their way through it. So if you're struggling with cash flow, then listening to someone in a past episode of this podcast who has previously struggled with cash flow and fixed it and came out the other side, and, you know, they then went on to do amazing things with their business. I've designed that for you as inspiration not to make you feel bad. If you're struggling to win another big client, someone else has been there, too. You know, if you're. Whatever you're struggling with, I promise you someone else has been there. And that's why if you listen back to those interviews, I always ask people what went wrong along the way? What are the lessons you've learned? And they all say, I've learned more things from getting stuff wrong than I have from getting stuff right. All of them. Every single one of them. I don't think I've ever had a guest who've achieved something who says it was plain sailing, because that's not how it is. That's not how business owning is. So I want you to use those kind of interviews, those stories or any success stories that you see as proof that whatever problem you have, it is solvable. Those stories are not evidence that you are behind. So the next time you catch yourself looking at another MSP and you get that sick feeling that you're falling behind, remember you are only ever seeing a fraction of their reality. Stop measuring yourself against a highlight reel. Start measuring yourself against where you were last month or last year, because that's the only competition that's fair and it's the only one that you can genuinely win. [00:22:32] Speaker B: The Ms. MSP Marketing Edge Member Update. [00:22:37] Speaker A: So if you're an MSP Marketing Edge member, loads of our members tell us that their favorite part of what we do is our unlimited support. So over the last few years, I've restructured my team to help you with any aspect of your marketing or business growth. So not just the stuff that we do in the membership, but all aspects of your marketing and business growth. And there are a number of different ways that you can access it. Of course, you can just email us. We use a ticketing system. We've got a, like a thing, like a live chat bubble on the portal. It's not actually live chat, it just sends an email to us, but we can reply to you there. I have a dedicated team to answer all of your questions, and they're structured the same way that you structure your help desk. So we've got first line, second line and muggins here is third line. You can also jump into our members only Facebook group. I'm in that every single day or the absolute favorite thing that all of our members or most of our members love and they use a lot is to book a one on one call with a member of my team. It's just a 15 minute call but the reality is there is no other marketing membership at our price level that offers you unlimited no catch one to one calls with marketing experts and we do have members that book a couple of calls a month and they'll do that regularly. You are more than welcome to do that to see all of these support options go into your portal and head over to support in the navigation. And if you're not yet a member we have two different memberships. We've got B2B which helps you to win more business owners as clients and then we've got co managed which helps you to win it directors as clients and each of those is only available to one MSP per area. Check if your area is available at MSP marketingedge.com/membership [00:24:19] Speaker B: Paul Greens MSP Marketing Podcast [00:24:23] Speaker A: so how long do you reckon it's going to be before you sell your msp? For some people they have a rough idea of when they're going to get out, when they're going to exit. For others it's just an open ended thing. I guess any business is for sale if the right person turns up and offers the right price. But if you've looked seriously into exiting at any point, you'll realize that it's the kind of thing that you need to prepare for you years and years before you actually get out. My guest today is a former MSP owner who did sell up and now advises other MSPs how to do the same thing and she has a ton of advice on the most common questions when thinking of selling your msp. [00:25:02] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Amy Babinchak, I am owner of Third Tier and company called Sell My MSP which we're going to talk about today. [00:25:09] Speaker A: Yes we are and it's great to finally get you on the podcast. We were just saying just before the recording I I've kind of known you and known of you through Carl Palachuk and we met through Carl a couple of years ago and he was doing some promotional work for a whole bunch of people within the channel. But it's the first time we've ever been on a call and it's so cool to actually have you on the show Amy so thank you very much for joining me. The thing we're talking about today is so important to MSPs because although no one or very few people get into business with the end in mind, the end being one day I'm going to sell this. I think once you've got a few years in the business and you realize you can pay your mortgage with it and you can pay your bills and you can actually grow something, there comes a point, a realization for every business owner where you think one day I'd like to sell this. Or maybe you hear about someone selling their business and you know, obviously this is something that you have been helping MSPS to do for I think it's more than a decade now. So did you want to just give us a sort of a brief potted history of your story and how you got to the position of being where you are today? [00:26:10] Speaker C: Well, Yeah, I mean 10 years ago Rayan and I, who's my co owner with the company, we were sitting in a conference together and we heard somebody from the stage tell MSPs that their businesses were worthless because they were too small. So he was specifically addressing the 5 million and up marketplace. And if you don't hit that number, don't even bother, you're too small, your business isn't worth anything. And we looked at each other and said that is so not true. And so we said we have to do something about that. So we started a company called sell my MSP together. And then 10 years in I actually sold my own MSP which I had been running for 23 years. And even though I was helping other firms for that long, doing it yourself opens up a whole new world largely I understand now all of the fear feelings that are involved with all the steps and all the emotional bits and all those decision moments and how stressful those can be. And I tried to address a lot of that aspect in the book that I just wrote as well as just the nuts and bolts, you know, bits as well. [00:27:20] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And we'll come on to the book in a second. I sold a business in 2016 which is how I first entered the channel because I had a non compete for the sectors I used to be in. And I would say, I mean they say that the most stressful events in life are what is it? Marriage, divorce, funerals. I would say put all of those together and that's, that's how stressful it is to sell a business. And of course it's not a full gone conclusion at all, is it? You Know, as much as every business has some value, you, you're, you're. Well, let me ask you this as a question. In your experience, is every MSP sellable in some way or are some businesses just so far away from, from being ready to sell that they can't be helped? [00:27:59] Speaker C: You know, I want to say that every MSP can be sold, but I did just encounter one that a bunch of businesses were interested in and then they all walked away. And the reason was this weird mix between home users and business users. And there are buyers for both of those things, but together it closes the market off. So there's potentially a non sellable MSP out there. But I, I can fix it for you. I can help you fix it. [00:28:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So I guess in a scenario like that, you have to split them off into two, two separate entities. I guess [00:28:34] Speaker C: I split them off into two entities, raise that value like you said. Right. You realize you can pay your mortgage with it. You realize you can fund your retirement with it. This is the biggest asset probably that every person has. Right. So we need to address that exit plan with, with care. Right. Don't just make decision on a whim from a cold call you got. [00:28:57] Speaker A: Absolutely. So you wrote a book a couple of months ago or you released it a couple of months ago. Tell us about that book and what your intentions are. So how are you intending for that to help people? [00:29:09] Speaker C: So I picked like the top 20 questions or really the top 19. And then my first chapter isn't a question, it's about me talking about the emotions of selling your business and just a chance for MSPs to open a chapter in any order. Look at, look at those questions and say, oh, this is something that I've been thinking about or this is something that I know I need to work on and fix. Be able to open that up, read through my comments and explanations of why this is important and where you need to be. And then after that there's a little composite MSP, if you will, about Skyler, who is not me. I get that question a lot. I am not Skyler. It just how that person went through it. So you can sort of see how another MSP addressed that issue without having to go out and join a group or talk to people. You can sort of see how that is. And then at the end, some questions for thoughts to help you work through that process. So a little bit education, a little bit story, a little bit work group, that's how I, how I kind of formatted that, that book to try to Be the most helpful it can be depending how you best learn that material. [00:30:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. So give us a flavor of some of the questions. Perhaps pick two or three out at random and give us, give us the short potted answers to the questions. [00:30:33] Speaker C: Well, you know the, the obvious question is when's the best time to sell your msp? I get that question constantly. And the, the best time is when you're ready to sell it. Right? That is the best time. So I don't want people to be thinking doesn't about the marketplace, right? Is this is the economy the best time to celebrate? Should I wait for a better economy? Should I wait for a hotter M and a market? No, you shouldn't. Every business that is a good business will always have a market available to it. So when you're, when your business is in good order and when you are emotionally ready and know what you're going to do for your next after that business. That's a really important key as well that I address in there too. Let me tell you another one. Another one is what happens to my personal guarantees after I sell the business. Right? You may have forgotten how many things that you signed over the last however many years, probably 20 plus by the time you get around to selling this great asset that you built, how many things you've signed over the years, all those contracts and all those contracts in there saying oh, if something goes really sour, we're going to keep you on the hook for that. Well, what happens to all that stuff? That's one of the questions that I address is people really don't think about. There's a ton of work that you're going to do after you sell your company. And part of that is unwinding you personally from all those contracts that you signed, all those personal guarantees that you made and getting the new owner of the company set up to take take that stuff over in whatever way that's going to be either, you know, if it's another MSP they'll get it from, you know, maybe roll it into to their company's contracts. If it's an institutional buyer, they probably have systems in place for that as well. But you have to unwind yourself from that. I always tell people you are going to be so busy, probably the busiest you've ever been in your business for those 90 days after you signed that contract and get that check because there's all that kinds of stuff to do to back yourself out of actually being involved with that business. And then that leads me to the another question that's in the book and that is how long should I stick around after the company is sold. There's different ways to think about that. I knew for me personally I didn't want to be around after. So I did not write myself into the contract because I have been self employed for 23 years and actually self employed for most of my life. So the idea of going to work for somebody else, that was going to be a bad idea and I didn't want that to happen. Now, when you make that decision, that does decrease the value of your business a little bit because it increases the risk to the buyer. If you decide to stick around, they're going to offer you a little bit more money for your business because you've reduced the risk to them. So these are decision points that have to be made and great chapter in the book where I sort of go through that and the impacts of the different decisions you might make there. [00:33:49] Speaker A: Cool. Cool. Well, we'll talk about where the book's available in a second. Although, spoiler alert, Amazon isn't everything on Amazon these days. Let's just finish up with Amy with. I'd like your advice for two MSPs at different points or different stages of their development. So let's take an msp. Who is that person we were talking about earlier? They're five, six years in. They've kind of had this realization of, oh, I can actually do this. You know, I know how to run a business. I know how to win clients, albeit slowly. I know how to run a couple of texts. And so, so what advice would you give to that person who's maybe 10 to 15 years away from selling that business? But what, what should they be thinking about now and then? What advice would you give to someone who's woken up this morning and thought, I'm done, I want out, I want to get, I'm, I'm just can't do this anymore. And you know, I know we all have days like that where we all wake up and feel like that, but someone who genuinely is, is at the, at the end it's like, right, I want to start that process. Of course you'd get different advice to those people. I'm just curious what you would say to each of them. [00:34:51] Speaker C: Somebody is five years in and intends to, you know, stay for another 10, 15 years. What you should be doing is trying to continue to grow, to build a brand because brands are definitely sellable, to definitely know what your unique selling proposition is. Because as your business goes forward, that is something in the long run. That's going to make you more valuable, right. If you can well define what it is that you do and stick with it over a longer period of time, then they know that your clients have bought into that same vision and that makes the clients stickier and more attractive to the, to the buyer as well. So try to systematize those things, right? Get standards in place, do grow a really well run business. You don't never want to run it like you're going to sell it, but you want it to run under consistent standards and process and have that growth period over long time. It's going to be best for you, best for your employees, and in the end, it's going to make a business that's going to be valuable for you for your next phase of life. And then the folks that wake up one day and say, I'm out of here, I quit. I'm so sick of this business, I have to leave today. You're not going to get as much for your company as if you had actually planned to do that. So when you have that first inkling of I'm going to get out of here, right? And it usually happens to people in their 50s, sometimes 60s, they're going to stick around till summer, some government official retirement age, about two to three years before that. You need to start seriously looking at your business and making it neater and tighter. Right? You need to also cycle yourself out of that business. So you need to have leadership in place that makes all the day to day decisions. It takes responsibility that clients know and like and trust me, that's what's going to make your business be runnable for the new owner. Right? They're going to be able to go forward because they've got a leadership team in place that the clients trust. The clients aren't going to bolt. You're also going to want to see continued growth. Big problem for business. Business owners that are looking to get out, they start to think, oh, I got to get rid of my really annoying clients, I can't stand those guys anymore. They're fired. And their business gets a little smaller and a little smaller and a little smaller till pretty soon they have only their favorite clients left. And that's kind of a strategy, but it's not maximizing your asset. Right? This is a really important, really valuable asset. It's almost always worth more than the house that you live in, which is a lot of people's major asset that they own. Right? This thing is a big deal and you need to treat it with that level of Respect. [00:37:52] Speaker A: That's amazing advice. Thank you so much. So the book, 20 questions every owner asks before selling their MSP. Tell us where you can get that book and also what do you actually do to help MSPs? Tell us a little bit about your program or what advisory services you offer and how we can get in touch with you. [00:38:08] Speaker C: Yeah. So over at the website, sellmymsp.com is where you can get the book from. You can also get it off of Amazon. So if you're US based, you can get it direct from the publisher off my website. If you're not US based, Amazon's the best way to go. Anybody can use Amazon, they're everywhere today. What we do over at sellmymsp is match up buyers with sellers. But we're not brokers, we're consultants. So we're going to help you. We're going to be on your side of the table walking you through that wholesales process from beginning to end. The other people on the other side of the table from you, they're going to have a team. You need a team and so we need to be part of that team. Right. You've probably never sold your business before. Everybody sells their MSP once. You got to get it right. We've seen this over and over and over again and we'll help you get it right. We're also introducing a program to help business owners that might be selling their company three, four, five years down the line and they just want to start to tighten things up, become more independent from their company. We've got a monthly ongoing work group for that. And then if you do end up selling your business through us, we just comp you back all that money that you spent along the way. So it's kind of a no brainer to get in that program and just start running a better MSP. And that website again is sellmymsp.com I hope to engage with you guys pretty soon. [00:39:34] Speaker B: Coming up, coming up next week. [00:39:36] Speaker A: Thanks so much for listening or watching this week. Next week we're going to do one of our famous deep dives. In fact, we're going to be looking at the construction industry and also real estate or just property as we call it here in the uk. How can you win more clients based around property and construction? Well, I'll tell you next week. See you then [00:39:56] Speaker B: for MSPs around the world. Around the world, the MSP Marketing podcast with Paul Green.