Three Secrets To Building A Profitable MSP From A Marketing Angle

We had a guy in the room that said, I struggle with growing my tech team because they'll never be a tech better than me. And that is like the biggest barrier. So you gotta say, I gotta pull myself out of that and I gotta market. So what we're gonna do today is talk about what do seven figure MSPs do to make them successful. What's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of building a profitable MSP podcast. My name is Chris Wiser, your host. Really excited to have my own personal head marketing coach, Lindsay Badeo me today. What's up, Lindsay?

What's up? I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me here. I am excited about our podcast and today's episode. I think we have some real gems to share with the community. So thanks for having me.

So Lindsay and I work together every single day. Kind of our whole thing is we're actively driving our client base, which in seven figure MSP land is all single person MSPs all the way up to, I think, I think our largest MSP Lindsay, is probably about 20 employees, give or take, teaching them how to grow their businesses. We have a whole sales coaching side and then Lindsay runs the whole marketing coaching side. So what we're going to do today is talk about, we got about 20, 25 minutes here that we're going to go through. What do seven figure msps, no pun intended, I guess, but what do seven figure MSPS do to make them successful? Or what, you know, kind of what, what three secrets do they do to make them successful? So really quick, Lindsay, could you give us a little background on yourself?

Yeah.

Just so everybody kind of gets to know you a little bit.

Yep. So I am Lindsay. Hello. I am currently in Florida, so just moved to Florida about three months ago. Built a really cool house here in Florida. Florida. I moved from Georgia actually. You will probably hear that in the accent, which I catch a lot of crap from.

From me. Mostly from me.

Yeah, from Chris. But yeah, we just moved here a few months back before coming into seven figure MSP, which was last year, about 18 months ago now. Feels like a lifetime. Just joking. It's about 18 months ago. Yeah. Ran my own consulting and coaching business and actually before that was in teaching. So really I have this, this, this background in creating curriculum and in coaching and in teaching and really breaking down complex topics like marketing, which as we all know can really be this huge gray space for a lot of people. It's, it's a lot of nuance and a lot of just, you know, like arbitrary Kind of like messy things that aren't always like easy to measure or easy to quantify. So my superpower is in making that simple. It's in making that easier for MSPs and business owners like you all listening today, you know, to, to enact and act on those things and make businesses. So I'm excited to be here and.

Yeah, super pumped, super so. And I think a thing that's really key about marketing is it's something that most MSP owners which are more analytical, engineering focused, very few are came from sales background, very few came from marketing background. So it's uncomfortable to do. So it's just kind of like we oftentimes gravit away from stuff that we don't want to do. So we have to be very purposeful about doing it. So I'm super excited about this episode and all the different things that we get to do. So. Okay, so let's just jump right into this. We had three secrets to building a profitable msp obviously that we talked about here. But from a marketing angle, what makes, so what makes a seven figure MSP or a strong revenue cash flow MSP possible? So secret number one, Lindsay, would you say to getting going on that?

Yeah, yeah. So secret number one I think. Okay, first let's talk about really quick what it is the MSPS struggle with. And like you said. Yeah, it's like quantifying and it's, it's, it's actually getting the leads to come in. In fact we did our webinar on Monday. So Chris and I do a monthly webinar third Monday of the month. Go check it out. In fact we can probably link the in the show notes. So check that out. It'll be in the description or in the show notes. But we talked about how in with msps it's really hard to get the leads to come in the door. And when we get them in the door, what do we do with them and how do we create this structured process to actually move them through to the end goal which is assigned client, of course assigned contract. So I think we have to create some type of system. Right? Like we have to be able to get into this, what I call the offense of your marketing. You have to get on the offensive line and you got to find a way to make it controllable. And I know that it's really, it seems like it's difficult to do whenever we have all of these like social media platforms and all like so much.

Stuff all over the place. Like so what do we choose? Question.

Yeah, it's like, so much stuff, and so it feels overwhelming. It's like, where do I start? What do I focus on? Is this stuff even leading to a sale, or is it all, like vanity metrics? And a lot of it, unfortunately, is. I think a lot of it is. It does contribute to the shiny object syndrome. So I think the biggest struggle, number one, we just have to realize that, like, we have to get to the offense. We got to find a way to quantify it. We got to find a way to systematize it. Okay? So first secret is, number one, we have to be building out an outbound, controllable system for bringing in new leads. Okay, so. And that sounds like, oh, well, that's easy. I can do that. There's a lot of moving pieces to it. But I think the more that you simplify, the better. So, Chris, I know that you did this in your msp, if you want to share a little bit about that. But first, I'm curious. I've always actually wondered this. I've never asked you, did you always have that marketing mindset to, like, build outbound lists? Like, did that come natural to you, or is this something that you also had to learn?

Yeah, it's a good question. A couple things with that. First of all, almost. I'm just going to say this. Almost every. Every MSP grows by accident. And I kind of call it the growth by accident bug. They just think referrals are going to be enough to get down. So you have to be. You have to be massively purposeful to do it the other way of, like, I'm going to control my inbound and outbound when I. And we'll kind of define some of those in a minute here, but I think that's really important. Back to your question. I was always very outgoing, so I've been good at sales my whole life. I actually, if I go back all the way to like, middle school and some of those other things, I was like, in forensic. I mean, you're. You're a child, so I don't know if you remember what is, but it's like basically stand up in front of a room and recite a story. And that's kind of. You know, I was in a cop, so I was in competitions and did all that kind of stuff. And I always did really well at it. So I was very outgoing. But I also on the side really, like, technology was very good at computers. So I just had an opportunity kind of present itself with doing back fresh. I never went to college, so fresh out of high school, I went to work at a. This is funny, a dial up ISP Internet service provider. It was dial up.

Yeah.

Lindsay's like 19, so. But it kind of allowed me and I. And I've always also been a natural leader. Now those kind of things go together pretty well with running a business and entrepreneurship. But the marketing piece, I really had to learn. Now I identified very early that I didn't want to be the guy in the trenches, which is, I think, a big battle that many, many MSPs focus, that control I have. There's no text. In fact, remember you and I did a road show in Vancouver. That's right. You didn't come to Vancouver. Lindsay couldn't come to Vancouver because she's scared of hurricanes. But we had a guy in the room that said, I struggle with growing my tech team because they'll never be a tech better than me. And that is like the biggest barrier. So you got to say, I got to pull myself out of that and I gotta market. And that's kind of what, in my head, what I was like, hey, I have. And I kind of identified that early. I actively looked at coaches early. I looked at mentors early. I was in Robin Robbins group very early. Like in 2005. I started my MSP in 2004 and I was in her. I was. I went to a live event in Chicago that she was like a lunch and learn event that she was having. Because I identified. I wanted to grow my business and I want to be wealthy. That was like my things versus I just want to work for myself. So marketing came along with that.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool.

So.

So you realize that we cannot be in the trenches and that we cannot do this by ourselves, which is actually going to come to like ourselves. Secret number three when we get there. Okay, so we know that secret number one, we have to be getting into offense our marketing. We've got to go out and do some of these things now, realistically, and like, what this really looks like. And I think that you all listening and watch this, you're going to get a ton out of their webinar replay where we go into way more in like detail on this. We just don't have the time for it today in this episode.

It's tough on a podcast.

I know, I know it is tough. But realistically, what this looks like is you building an actual leads list and you creating a campaign to then go out and. And have these multiple touch points on multiple channels of connecting with these business owners, connecting with These decision makers on your list and moving them through your sales process. Okay, so I'm not going to go into too much detail there. Go and watch the webinar replay and webinar replays.

Like, Lindsay talked for a full two hours.

Yeah, basically, pretty much.

It was really, it's really good because we're giving you kind of the why behind why you need to change how you present in cybersecurity. That was my part. And then Lindsey goes into getting 10 leads right now for your MSP. So it kind of goes into the trenches. But I think back, back to that secret and I think where it's so important and you just hit a nail on the head for me, which is it all starts with a list of leads and most people don't think of it this way. And I want you guys just to, as you're listening to this or watching this, I want you to think of it this way. If you ultimately, if we had the opportunity to stand in front of every prospect and give our 30 second elevator pitch, we would do that. But we only have so much time and we only have so much scale. So that's the thing that marketing does, is it gives you the ability to hit all these people with an opera like your messaging. But the key is you have to utilize all the channels that we have available, and we have more available now than we've ever had. And you also have to say something that actually speaks to their problem and solving. So something that they care about. And where I see msps really screwing up is they go immediately to a tool or immediately to here's how I'm going to do it. Like nobody cares about that.

Yeah.

And I think that's really important stuff to think about along with that first secret.

Yep, yep, I agree. And that actually comes into our second secret, which is, and you said this perfectly. You said you only have so much time in a day. If we could attend networking meetings all day, sure. But we can't do that. Right. So second secret is we have to build with scale in mind. And this is something that Chris, like, I think one of the biggest thing things that I've learned from you and like even internally, like being a part of this team, is that every single decision that we make, every department that we build, like when we built marketing machine, it was always with scale in mind. How do we scale this? How. How is this going to look three years, five years from now? How is this going to look? We have triple or quadruple the number of members inside of this container. And so you guys have to be thinking about the same thing. How is this going to look whenever I have double the number of endpoints that I now have to take care of? How is this going to look whenever I want to triple my mrr? Okay, so we have to be building with scale in mind. Knowing that I can't show up to 20 first time appointments a day or 20 meetings with prospects a day. I cannot be in 10 networking meetings a day. If I want to go talk to 100 people today, I don't have time to go knock on 100 doors. So how am I going to scale that time? How am I going to make the most of the time that I have? So I think, I think that's huge. And a lot of, a lot of us, like you said, get in the trenches and we're not thinking with scale.

And one of the things that's also really important for everyone listening is picking your battles becomes a more important choice down the road than taking everyone we can get. And what happens, I kind of, I call this thing the MSP wheel of death. Because what happens in the early stages of an MSP if you kind of allow it to, and most MSPs have allowed it to, I'm going to say like 95 of MSPs, they start small as their single person shop, they get as many clients as they can. But the problem is they're not charging the right way out of the box because they're so desperate for deals, they're taking anything they can get. And then they get to the point where like, okay, I'm overwhelmed with work, I need to hire somebody. Oh, but crap, I don't have enough money because I never charged the right way. And then instead of revamping how you sell or learning how to sell the right way, which most MSPs are just selling based on what they read on the Internet now. And they're just like kind of pulling in stuff from places. This is why our coaching program has been so successful, because we're teaching guys how to sell the right way, getting the right margins so then they can afford to hire. They can also afford to put the right tools in that help them scale like Lindsay just talked about. So instead of it just being this giant wheel where you're a hamster, just going around in circles and going around circles and going around circles, literally working yourself to the bone. And how many times have we heard this? This? Lindsay didn't come from MSP land, she came from digital marketing education land. And the stories that you hear about MSPs hitting burnout, and just.

Or I work until midnight every night.

Every night. I met my dad. I fall asleep at my dad. We just heard that one a couple weeks ago. I fall asleep at my desk every. And I wake myself up at three in the morning and I go to bed, and then I get back up. But that's not a. That's not a. That's a crappy job is what that is.

Yeah. So, yeah, Yeah, I agree. And I think that you're right. That's what makes. And not to like. I mean, I guess it is too. Dar Horn. But what makes our community so cool is that we teach you guys a structure and we teach you a process to follow so that you don't die at your desk.

And I know we only got, like, five minutes left on this.

I know. See, this is Chris.

So fast. But here's what I will tell you guys that are listening. Lindsay's gonna get into secret number three. We're gonna drop our webinar that we did. This was like, two days ago. In real. In real podcast time here.

Real life.

But we do our live events. Lindsay and I do our road shows live in person together. So you can kind of see how we vibe and all this other stuff that goes together. So please watch some of that. Come see us when we're in your city. Come to our quarterly lives. So, Lindsay, let's get into secret number three.

Yeah. Secret number three. All right. If. If you are new to this world, this one may sound a little. Woo. Okay, so. So stick with us here. But this is so important. It's so important is you have to be willing to grow, and you have to have this. You can't come in and say, my way is the only way, and what I'm doing is going to get me to where I want to be, because it's not okay. And so this really comes down to having a growth mindset and just being in this place of I cannot do this by myself. I have to be willing to have peers that I trust, mentors that I trust, people in my corner that I can go to when I need help figuring out a tool or figuring out something. You know, especially in cyber security, things change, literally. Daily. Tools change.

Product hourly now.

Yeah, hourly, exactly. So, like, you cannot do this by yourself. And so you have to have this mindset, and you got to be ready for it. Like, you just got to be ready to grow. Because I think that strategy and campaigns only get you so far. If you're not willing to bend a Little and you're not willing to grow and change and learn, then you're, then you're not, you're not going to grow. You're going to stay stuck where you are.

So you know that we're doing this like seven figure MSP is. We're growing a lot and we're actively working on this all the time. And one of the things that I, we had a team meeting yesterday and one of the things that I actively say is, you know, what got us here is not going to get us to our, to my next goals. And so I am personally, you know, eight figure company, but actively working with mentors, actively just brought in a fractional CRO to come run our team to get us to the next level. And everybody in the whole team is having to like reset and redo and sometimes it's uncomfortable. I, I get it. But you know what, guys? That discomfort is where growth happens. And it's really important to embrace it. It's very, it's even more important to say, I need. I almost thrive that like Lindsay, you've been around me for almost two years now. I thrive in world of unknown. Like, I don't know if you notice that, but it's like something that I push myself constantly to do that's like my big battle now is how do I get uncomfortable and if I get comfortable, I'm like, ah, this is too easy.

Yeah, yeah. And you're going to trigger people in that process. You know, whether it's friends, family, like partners, sometimes business partners. We've seen literally like companies that are working with us, they will break away from one another inside of the program because one's ready to change and one's not, or one has a certain vision for the company and one's on a different page. And we've literally seen that happen. So just know that you will trigger people and sometimes you will outgrow people and situations in that journey and that's okay. That means that you're doing something right.

Yeah, I agree with that. And you know, it's, it's funny, you and I were talking about this the last couple days and monotony and how people get stuck in this. And so many of our, you know, we watch our members come in and they've been doing the same thing for a year, the same thing for two years. And sometimes they're like, well, I don't know if this program is going to work. Okay guys, but like, what you've been doing hasn't been working. We want you to double in A year. That's our goal for you. We want you to hit your ROI on our coaching program in 30 days and double within a year. And they're like, oh, I don't know if I can handle that growth. Okay, well, pick your heart. Like, one of these is hard, but one of them is a way better.

Yeah, I think that that hard is better. Like, wow, I have too many leads. What am I going to do?

And, yeah, so I think it's really cool stuff. So I know we are out of time because Lindsay actually has an onboarding call she has to go to. And we know we came in this. We're like, we're just going to talk up something. These are supposed to be 15 minute episodes and it just. We're already at almost 20 minutes, so it kind of goes how it goes. But Lindsay's going to be back with us soon because we just have so much content and so much stuff that we can talk about. But Lindsay, want to really thank you for being here on building a profitable MSP podcast. We have so many cool things that we're going to talk about in this program. Got a couple different ways. First of all, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, you can connect with Lindsay on LinkedIn. You can hit us on Facebook. We have the IT and MSP Business Owners Group. We're going to attach our latest webinar that Lindsay and I did, that was like two days ago. We'll attach that on. On the bottom of this podcast and in some of the notes. Lindsay, any parting words from you. Really appreciate you today.

Yeah, thank you. I think this was. This was a good start, and this is a good start to what's to come. I will say if there's something that you guys want to hear specifically, like if you have certain questions or you want us to cover things on here or takeaways that come up for you, leave us a review in the podcast or in the notes or the comment section here and let us know. What do you want to hear? What was your takeaway? Like, give us your light bulb moments that helps us give you all, like, really solid, like, valuable content going forward. So thank you so much for having me here and I look forward to the next one.

Absolutely. Good to see you, Lindsey. Thanks, everybody for watching and tuning in on building your profitable MSP podcast. My name is Chris Weiser. We'll see you on the next episode. Bye. Bye.