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[Music] what's up everybody Justin here host of the all things MSP podcast and I want to take a few seconds here to talk to you about Asus conference Asus conference is a business focused conference for msps with topics ranging from marketing to management human resources to business strategy and uh you know social media legal all of those things that help you grow your business now Asis conference is strictly content driven it is not sponsor driven yes we will have sponsors there you will learn about new vendors and things like that but it is not driven by them we want you to grow and elevate your MSP and that's what it's all about this year Asis conference is celebrating its 10th year and we're glad to be back in person May 15th and 16th in Salt Lake City Utah tickets are available now at asisc com.com that's AC nf.com and use the coupon code at MSP to get 10% off if you have questions find me on the all things MSP Facebook group that's facebook.com/ groupall things MSP glad to help you out in any way shape or form can't wait to see everybody live in person May 15th and 16th in Salt Lake City Utah come check it out asisc comp.com we'll see you [Music] there what's up everybody Welcome to the all things MSP podcast I'm your host Justin esgar and not with me today your pod producer extraordinaire Mr Eric Anthony unfortunately Eric is not here today so you get just me all alone uh today I want to talk a little bit about two things one I want to talk about the books that I'm currently reading to help increase my MSP like offerings and such going into 2024 and then I wanted to take a look at the Facebook group and see because there's been a poll going on I want to read some answers I want to talk about uh some of the potential solutions that you can start implementing and work on between let's say now and the end of the year which there isn't much more time if this comes out on time uh because you know we're heading into the holidays we're heading into New Year's but like let's think about what 2024 is going to look like right because part of being an entrepreneur part of being an MSP owner part of being a business owner in particular is to think about the future you can't always be in the here and now you can't always be dealing with the current fires now that being said I'm currently dealing with a fire right but you have to be always thinking about two things you have to be able to split that time you have to be able to look at both sides of the rainbow as I like to say the last couple days you have what's happening right now and you have what do I need to worry about in the future now granted a lot of the time as entrepreneurs we talk about you know the way future where do you want to be in a year where do you want to be in three years where do you want to be in five years how much what what multiplier Revenue do you want to come over and things like that but right now what I want to talk about today is specifically going to be you know let's talk about the next couple of months let's talk about the beginning of 2024 let's talk about plans let talk about other things so real quick I have a stack of books right here that I want to show you uh my number one book that I'm currently doing right this second is uh MSP Secrets Revealed episode two by Mark cotan uh we've talked about this on the podcast before 24 pages of solid gold advice so you don't have this check this out on Amazon what I like about this book real quick is that each page each page here is like written by somebody else and it's just like a piece of information about it right um there's there's vendors in here there are other MSP owners in here uh Mark has a great head on his shoulders and knew exactly who to get some pieces of information so check that out I like that one um another book that I'm reading and I picked this up actually at an event um it's level up by Bruce McCully uh the ultimate MSP road map for improving security operations and pro profitability the reason I picked this up what I really thought was interesting is that like especially as an apple consultant we don't do a lot of security stuff uh you know like I've joked around a lot of Apple clients are not that particular about their security though they should be and so there's a lot in here about let's say passwords and insurance policies doing tet exercises for security um things like that now granted this is written you know here's the whole thing about antivirus in active directory obviously I don't care about that but this is a pretty good solid book um I'm also currently reading uh $100 million leads by Alex heri now for those who don't know Alex shazi W you know I've said this before in the show I go through these phases of you know a top level entrepreneur somebody some some social media star that I like that I'm following along Ong with right it started with uh Gary Vayner Chuck and then I did Lewis how I was into James alair for a while and currently I'm on my Alex herzi kick um the dude is uh he's just a jack dude he's like a big dude cuz he his whole thing is he he made his money in gyms you know he sold gym programs and such for a long time and uh by age 32 ing to the back of this book Alex and his wife uh Leila net worth cross $100 million so if that's true and it's just not some uh BS or he's just making money on me buy his books lost my page there um that's where it is also notice I keep a pencil with my book for those who are watching on YouTube the reason is because I actually will like write notes in here um and like underline certain things that I want to that I want to get into um and then the last Business book that I'm currently going through is um this is an old one again is the entrepreneurs book of actions what I like about this book this is by uh Rhett power all of these found on Amazon um what I like about this is that every day it gives you another thing so here I am on week 15 which keep in mind it's not the day six you know successful people connect people and and here's the whole thing about making introductions to other people and things like that and you're supposed to just do one little thing a day right if you can make this part of your daily have obviously the number one thing was supposed to be you know read this book every day but I haven't done that uh but this is a really interesting look and again like if you learn the next technical thing if you learn how to do deal with entra conditional access you know or understanding the difference between a a a a E1 license versus an E3 versus an E5 and the Nuance of how to run Audits and stuff like that within your Microsoft tenant that's going to make you a better business owner it's not right it's not going to make you a better business owner because what's going to happen is you're not going to learn the tips and tricks you need to learn to actually run a business you're going to learn the tips and tricks you need to run technical stuff and and as we've talked about before you don't want to be in the business all the time you want to be working on the business and so take taking time out to read um and and learn is very much about on the business side of things right so don't just read books about MSP stuff read other books um one book when we hire a new employee every new employee gets a virtual hoodie and gets a copy of the Phoenix project which is a great book um granted it's about devops but you can you can extract the lessons from that book uh and and put it into your own company and then of course you always need a book for fun um I really like following this guy on Tik Tok his name is Anton Warman he's um Norwegian I think and um he wrote a book called free houses in Japan cuz his whole thing is that he renovates like rundown apparently there's a lot of abandoned houses in Japan and he buys them and renovates them so I'm I'm excited to read his book as well so those are my uh those are my current books that I am four books um so what are you reading tell me what you're reading drop us a line in the uh Facebook group facebook.com uh facebook.com groups all things sorry groups all things or drop a comment on the YouTube youtube.com All Things M speak hey folks producer editor Eric here I wanted to interrupt Justin I mean I really wanted to interrupt Justin while I edit this week's podcast to remind you about our Premier sponsors super ops. a is an AI powered psa-specific . a if you aren't looking I still recommend you check out their new community full of information about this industry from some really awesome industry leaders use our link atms. linkup Ops to find out more and check out that Community move bot is an onboarding tool that many msps are missing from their tool chest moving client files and email can be tedious timec consuming and a little dangerous move bot helps you prepare execute and monitor a wide variety of migrations from a growing list of data sources use our link atms. linkbot to find out how to minimize migration stress and elevate your client onboarding experience thank you so much to these sponsors for their support and commitment to the all things MSP Community you can find links to their websites in the description of this podcast back to you Justin all right so I want to talk about uh I'm in the I'm in the Facebook group this is why I'm looking off to the side for those who watching watching YouTube and uh our good friend Eric miss you man uh put out a poll last week and the poll was what is your plan for Revenue growth in 2024 and 47% of you said add more clients 22% of you said increase prices 12% of you said add new Services 6% of you said package services for specific verticals and 2% of you said uh ad Security Services and then the rest were you know all of the above or or whatever somebody wrote organized crime that's a good one good good job Dave clerk um and so you know there's a lot to be said here because everybody thinks that you can grow your business or you should grow your business by adding more clients but what we're not taking into consideration is the exponential time a new client will take right when you get a new client or even a new if you have a new employee at a client the amount of time that that client is going to take is not going to go up by 1 X or 2x it's going to go up by the power of two because the exponential there there's exponential more problems here you don't know who this user is you don't know you know their skill level or whatever it is you don't know uh whether or not they're a chatter box and the second they get a problem they tell someone else and there on everybody in the office has that problem that kind of thing right and it's the same thing when you add new clients if you add a whole new organization to your book of business you're going to run into that same problem what are the nuances that need to be dealt with here maybe they're more needy than you know your older clients or maybe they have different security needs that don't go with your current known Tech stack and you got to learn a whole new thing which yes learning is good as we said but like if you have all of your clients on moroi fire walls and these and this client needs to use a fortigate for whatever reason you know your ability to help them has diminished because you're like I'm 100% skilled with moroi I know everything there is to go I can reboot all them I can do everything I need to do I can do updates I can blah blah blah whatever and now you're like oh but what do I have to do to get this fortigate to work right um so there's there you have to take that into consideration when you think about adding more clients this is why I think the other two largest one of increase prices and add new Services makes more sense and even combined that's only 34% right so we're less than adding more clients for the people who responded and the reason I like those two answers is it's easier to make more money from the clients you currently have and yes I also know the expression it's like squeezing blood from a stone however if you increase your offerings if you increase your Tech stack if you increase your toolbox and you offer new things to clients that will do things for them not just put money in your pocket remember you're selling them a service that's something to do for them you're going to have a much easier time making that sale because again they should already know you and trust you as the trusted you know it person and you can roll that out to everybody it's a lot easier to add a new product like for example avenon which is a product that we've been looking at rolling out and we're slowly doing it for some clients I think it's great but it's a lot easier to roll that one product out to our 500 end points than it is to go pick up another 30 person office plus the amount of training that needs to be done I have to train my team about one new product and granted it works for all 500 end points problem solved then picking up this new client and worrying about all of the intricate details that need to be involved with them right you understand what I'm saying here it's easier to sell to the people who already know you this is why when you go buy a car they try to sell you all the other packages on top of it they've already got you they know you want the car right now we're going to sell the the the the bells and whistles and that's what you should be doing also because it's a lot easier to sell bells and whistles and new products and new services to existing clients like I said um the other thing is increased pricing which look I'm not I'll be frank the world's a mess right now right like you know that Meme of the dog like this is fine liquid death hash not a sponsor still um the everybody's hurting and we can feel bad for our clients and understand stuff but they also have to understand that we're just we're hurting just as much this is why you should have in your contracts with your clients a percentage increase year-over-year for um uh what's the term now I'm going to go look this up and I apologize because this makes really good content when I'm like supposed to know what I'm talking about right the term is cost of living that's it cost of living I'm sorry folks it's it's late and um I'm doing this one solo otherwise Eric would have jumped in and told me what the word I was looking for yeah you should have a you should have a cost of living percentage increase already in your contract and to make sure you don't forget about it you should have it on the calendar that if they sign on the 12th a year from now minus 30 days so if it's December 12th when this uh when you're hearing this November 12th of 2024 is when you tell them by the way your contract is going up by 5% in 30 days they don't have a choice it's in their contract and you you increase their cost their 5% on your services not on the not on the retail stuff not on the stuff you're pushing through so if you're pushing you know Office 365 licenses through you keep that price the way it is because that's not under your control but your services so if you're charging 180 per device and you're going to increase by 5% you're now 189 you're adding n bucks per machine right you got a you got a 20 person office you had $9 per machine you just increased the total amount by one whole device right so it's not like we're talking about a lot of money here but like if you were able to do that you just added an extra $2,000 over the course of the Year 5% it's not that much now some people in different areas might think 5% is a lot or less you know I wouldn't go less than three and I probably wouldn't go higher than seven um because you know I don't know who's listening you know if you're in the if you're in New York City 5 to 7% if you're in La 5 to if you're in you know Luxembourg I don't know what the rules are 3% you know probably cost of living is cheaper there or wherever so think about that think about your audience that way you do if you increase your pricing that's a much easier way to grow your Revenue if you increase your offerings and you sell a new product let's go back to the aanon example for a second right aanon complete protect full price is $10.20 a seat right let's just call it $10 the the re the uh wholesale price that you can get from PX 8 is somewhere between 5 and S 7even so let's talk about that same office 20 people 20 licenses you've already upped them by by 5% so you're making an extra $180 a month now you have 20 times let's say $3 in uh margin so that's another $60 so now you're up to now you're up 210 a month and you've increased their security you've increased their protections because aanon is anti- fishing anti-er aanon has uh Shadow it so you can see if there's anything else hey look oh I see you got an email from Zoom you guys don't use zoom can we talk about Zoom maybe you take over their Zoom accounts and you put it through one of your technology Brokers like Tores or S Partners right um you do things like that and then of course you increase all the stuff that goes with it oh you want conditional access you know you got to get that from entra that's an extra $7 for MSRP but the margin on it is another dollar or two so now we're going to go up now we've gone up instead of $9 we've gone up almost 122 to $15 so now you've just picked up an extra $300 a month and you haven't added any more clients or more work yet really you may have added a new product you got to learn it but like that's what I'm talking about it's a lot easier to take these smaller steps um to increase your Revenue than it is to go and say I'm going to land a new 50 person client at $180 well yeah 50 person client at $180 will net you $9,000 a month significantly more than $300 extra for that one client we talked about but if you have let's say I don't know 150 clients and you've increased 150 M Points sorry 150 points and you increase each one by $15 that's $2,250 that you didn't just have 4 seconds ago per month right you just added almost $225,000 to your Topline Revenue by adding a new product and like adjusting and adding the cost of living five you know 5% so don't always think that adding more clients and yes you do need to add more clients but that's only to I would say make up for churn if you lose clients you want to add more clients um and for another level of growth cuz I think what's that the problem here is that the order is wrong I think you should make sure that you are adding new services and increasing your prices of your current clients first and then whenever you have a new client they get the new pricing plus the added those new Services also so that new client instead of 180 is coming in now at 200 make sense if you can increase your stack and build it up and have it ready to go this way when that new client comes in boom now you've made even more money on them and they're still going to get hit with 5% you know down the road so take these things into consideration think about how can you get more from what you have take a look at every client I know a lot of us talk about like you know doing business reviews whether they're quarterly or annual or whatever it is just do it internally don't even share with the client if you need to just do it internally and look at your top five clients and say okay what do they all have what are they all missing what do I know that is the hot new thing that needs to be installed whether it's you know the the sexy new firewall or the more robust you know Hulk like anti virus and anti-malware and anti- fishing an anti- this anti that whatever like do it internally and then figure out what your plan is because if you do it now you can send them an email before the end of the year and say hey come the new year I want to talk to you about what we're going to do in 2024 and you come to them you say we're going to increase your security we're going to increase your compliance we're going to increase this we're going to increase that we're going to increase that and a lot of them are going to say like whoa you're increasing a lot and you're going to say I'm protecting your business I'm protecting you and I'm protecting your data and I'm protecting your business because otherwise by 2025 you might not exist a little bit of a scare tactic but you you get what I'm saying so I think about that the next time you jump in and say I'm going to add more clients because there's it's a lot harder to buy new than it is to get from what you already have everybody knows this it's like the Golden Rule so I want to know what you're doing uh for the next couple of weeks tell us your plans you know you don't have to share all the details but like what's your plan here do you have a plan if you don't have a plan tell us you don't have a plan so we can work on a plan check us out uh on the Facebook group and ask questions DM Eric DM me like I'm here for all of you that's that's why I'm here that's why hello that's why I'm here doing this show I'm not here just to hear myself speak I'm here to help you we bring on guests that can bring information to help you we talked Eric and I talk about stuff that's going on to help you we are here for you our plan for 2024 is to do better for you I know I said I think I've said this every episode like we'll try to do better next next time like 2024 for our plan is going to be to do better for you so ask questions tag us if you want us to talk about it on the show for sure tag us facebook.com groupall things MSP is where you're at drop us a line leave a review check out the YouTube leave a comment there rate US I don't know somewhere along the line we'll get monetized I'm not really worried about that though but do hit us up because that's that's what we want to do we want to be able to help you we want to be able to take actions to get you leads to help you level up by giving you secrets you see what I did there for those who aren't watching go to the YouTube see what I just did there cuz that was little I think that was awesome it's like I can't end this in a better way check us out on all the socials uh on your favorite podcast apps you know the drill also um hit up Liquid death and tell them that we drink their stuff on the show all the time I want to see how well we can do with that that's it for us that wasn't Eric I'm Justin hope you all have a good day [Music] bye from your host Justin escar and myself thank you for listening to the all things MSP podcast join the All Things MSP Facebook group or follow us on LinkedIn Instagram and YouTube the all things MSP podcast is a bis poow LLC production and even though we drink a lot of it this podcast is still not sponsored by liquid death and now that you've watched that mess of a podcast don't forget to watch one of these and go ahead and click that subscribe button so you get to watch more yeah just go ahead and do it click the button and then watch one of the other videos I'm watching