RejectionCon 2025 -- Calling all Rejects!

Man, what's going on, friends? Had about a panic moment just a second ago. I lost the tab that Restream was on. With like 15 seconds to go. I'm like, oh no, this is about to go live and I can't find myself. Where am I? I was constantly going through browsers. Yeah, I have too many browsers and too many tabs. It's a problem I have, I'll fully admit it. I do need some help. Anyway, man, hope you all are doing great. If you're watching this on record after we've gone live, no worries. Glad you're with us today. We're going to talk about RejectionCon. It is coming up and most people don't know about that. So it's time to get the word out. Today we're going to be talking about some awesome stuff. If you're a vendor, listen in, there's some opportunity for you. If you are an MSP, listen in, there is an opportunity for you too. Everything is out in front of you, uh, but the time is drawing near that we both announce some things and show you where we're going with this whole thing. So RejectionCon is here. If you were not part of it last year in 2024, I guess it was actually at the end of 2023, but let's call it 2024. It was an awesome event. How many times have people in our industry come up and told us, vendors and MSPs alike, dude, Wes, I had this talk I wanted to give, I submitted it at some conference, maybe it's a big industry conference, maybe it's a local one, maybe it's a regional, whatever it is, and I got rejected. Remember, dude, I really wanted to give the talk, like, I know it was going to be great. And you feel bad, right, because you don't have necessarily the clout, Maybe the name recognition, maybe the talk was too spicy, maybe it wasn't spicy enough. Maybe it was a favorite or pet project of yours, just doesn't relate to the conference. No hate on conferences for rejecting talks. I get it. I've had to reject talks and I've had my own talks rejected left and right. But something hit me, we should do something about that. I was talking to my good friend Dustin Bolander about this and Dustin said years ago, he's like, Wes, then do something about it. He's like, spin up a conference for rejected talks. And he and I started talking about it and we were like, you know what would be cool is call it RejectionCon. And of course Dustin does what Dustin always does, he just pushes me off the cliff and is like, you should do it, Wes, jump in, make it happen. And so I did. And we out of nowhere created a grassroots conference called RejectionCon, which was awesome. And as we started thinking about what we wanted it to be, we realized, I don't want this to be a moneymaker event. I don't want this to be about me. I don't want this to even necessarily be about Empath. I want this to be about the community. I want this to be an event where we all come together, where we celebrate talks that didn't get through to the mainstream, and we also do good for the world around us. And so that is what JectionCon is all about. This right here is what RejectionCon is all about. And you know, it's really awesome. Like, we're super excited about what this is and what it's gonna bring to the channel because it's one of those things that I just think everyone needs to— it's— let me switch these two there. It's one of those things that I think everyone needs to be part of. So if you wanna see more about it, it's rejectioncon.com. That's how you get to the website. And man, there's so much great stuff that y'all should know. First of all, this thing is March 12th 13th and 14th, all virtual. So you don't have to like carve out your calendars, no travel days. And it's all in the afternoons, or if you're Pacific time, it's gonna be a little bit of your lunchtime and into the early afternoon. So it's not gonna take up all day, it's not gonna take up days of travel, none of that. It's gonna be an awesome event. I've already seen the content that's coming in for this, and I'm not gonna, I can't spoil it yet,, but I can talk a little bit about it and it's really good. There's talks across the board, like I wanna listen to that one, I want this one. So-and-so presented or submitted a talk, dude, I want to hear this, this is great. We have some people that have submitted that are long time, everyone knows them. We have some people that I promise you don't know their name yet. It's gonna be good. So really excited about that. And so on the website later, when you go down to speakers, they're all going to come up as we start populating through this and we get the agenda up. All of that good stuff. But at the moment, we just wanna let you know it's out. And the first thing I wanna let you know is, I guess I'm looking mad, I don't know what the deal is here, but my marketing team did this and they did an awesome job. First thing I want you to know, you can submit your talk and you need to. If you have a talk that you would like to submit that you are passionate about, that you're like, dude, I would love to have my voice spoken on something that needs to be heard, I got you right here. I got you. So rejectioncon.com, click into the submit a talk and here you go. You can submit a talk here. Just a few of the talks from last year. This is not all of them, but this is a bunch of them. If you look, there's some killer ones. Ethical marketing was really good. Adam, man, Adam's talk, Adam Evans on we're losing the cybersecurity battle and it's our fault. He's not wrong. Not wrong at all. Tiffany Ricks talking about building a great SAP framework, security and awareness training. Dude, Rob Chaffee. Y'all, this was a great one. Life and legacy planning. This is something that Rob is— he's an MSP owner. He's passionate about. You should be thinking about not just where I'm at today, but where I'm going. You should be thinking about what does the future look for, for me so it doesn't just happen, but I'm prepared for it. I'm getting ready for it. So last year, stellar talks. This year going to be stellar talks again. So you can submit. So probably brings up a couple of questions that you may have in your mind. One is, Well, who's eligible to submit? Here's the rule. The rule is basically this: I just need you to know that it's on a trust relationship, trust basis. So if you have had a talk somewhere that's been rejected, submit it. I'd like for you to provide evidence of the talk rejection, but sometimes you don't have it and people are like, Wes Spencer, I can't find the rejected— like, I didn't get a formal reject. No problem. We'll just take you on a trust relationship. It's fine. But you're going to get in. I guarantee you're going to get in as long as the talk is in good taste. It can be spicy, but it's got to be in good taste. You're welcome in. We have a spot for you. Okay, so come submit your talk. That's really the only eligibility requirement is sometime in the past this talk was rejected somewhere. Please don't abuse this. Like, we're the— I guess the other thing I'll say is we're going to kick it out if it's clearly just a sales talk. And we have a basically a one-strike policy at Empath— or I'm sorry, at RejectionCon— is if you submit a talk and it's like super salesy and/or it's just in really poor taste and poor form, you're not invited back ever again. We've not had that happen yet because I think people understand the mission of what we're doing is a community event. So why would you do something like that? It's just going to do damage to you. So I've never, never had it happen before. I don't think it's going to happen this year, but as long as it's in good form and it's not a sales pitch, bring your talk in, we got a spot for you. I'm excited about— we have a selection committee run by MSPs that are in charge of reviewing and, and picking these things out. So this brings up the second big question that people are going to have, no question, is this: they're going to say, well, Wes, what happens if I get rejected from RejectionCon, right? What happens if all of a sudden, out of nowhere, uh, I'm, I'm not accepted? What, what do I do about that? What Well, let me just tell you, no one gets rejected from RejectionCon. All right, I've said this over and over and over, and I'm going to say it again. No one gets rejected from RejectionCon. So yes, if you look at the agenda we're building, we only have room for about 30, roughly about 30 talks for the event itself. For those 3 days, we have over 30 submissions. So what does that mean? Everybody is accepted at RejectionCon. We're doing something really cool this year leading up to the event and after the event. We're starting something called RejectionCon TV. It's brand new this year and it's going to be 24/7 MTV style. No matter what you click, you're watching a music video late at night, early in the morning, at lunchtime, whatever. You've got talks rolling nonstop. So if you don't get slotted by the committee into the RejectionCon major lineup of speakers, guarantee you got RejectionCon TV. Your talk is going to be submitted. It's going to be on the page. It's going to go live. People are going to watch it. It's going to be stored forever on the YouTube channels, all that good stuff. So no, let me say it again. Nobody gets rejected from RejectionCon. All right. Literally nobody. All right. If anyone has any chat, any questions in chat, let me know. I'm watching this. Happy to bring anything up if someone has a question. All right. So that's the first thing I wanted to talk about is you're going to love that. That perspective is RejectionCon is a community event for everybody. So second thing I wanted to talk about is why do people like Kyle announce this? Like, yo, what's going on? We did some Kyle inception. Kyle was advertising for it, and then Kyle, we made him holding this thing for it, and then we made him holding the sign, holding this thing, holding himself. Kyleception. We'll have to do another one of these here in a minute. But even Kyle's into this. Why? Because it's just straight awesome. It's the coolest event ever. So here's the neat thing about RejectionCon. It's not just MSP-focused talks that have been rejected, never heard before. It's also a couple of things. You're going to be able to connect with like-minded people. You're going to be able to sync up with people just like you. It's going to be an event because we're doing this in Airmeet. It's a really great platform for you to talk with others. You're going to get to know others. We have some really cool things built out through the days that you're going to get to chat and get to know people in a really special, awesome way. It's going to be great. Secondly, and this is super duper important, doing good. Doing good is really important. I didn't just want this to be some conference that I charge $50,000 to a vendor to come sponsor this thing. And then, you know, I just make a ton of money. I don't need money. This is not about money. This is about doing good. And so did you know when you go register for this event, 100% of your proceeds, all of it, not a single penny flows to us. All of it goes right here to the Rural Tech Fund. And y'all, we're super excited about that. Here's what's so neat about the Rural Tech Fund. They are a 501. I personally know the CEO. He and I went to school together at Murray State. And what he's all about and what their charity is all about is giving back to school systems those that don't have the money, the resources, and the budget for STEM— science, technology, engineering, math. Tell me that's not awesome. Tell me that's not the coolest thing ever. And so last year we did this and we raised— y'all ready for this? $25,000 for the Rural Tech Fund. And he came and he gave a keynote, and I had MSPs and vendors alike literally texting me during his keynote, Chris's keynote, like, Wes, I'm tearing up. What Chris is talking about is legit my background. People like kids that have grown up in a meth-infested background, kids have grown up in an inner city school and dealing with gangs, all this kind of stuff. And then they find technology and through their school, they learn how awesome this is and that they love it and they're good at it. And they had no idea 'cause no one ever told them. They had no idea there's a career field like this 'cause they just didn't know. And this kicks off the beginning of a great career for these kids. And you know what? How many times have we come out of those same backgrounds? How many times do we hire kids out of those same backgrounds as MSPs? I'm telling y'all the MSP space and the Rural Tech Fund are connected together. So if you wanna know more about them, we're gonna talk about that at RejectionCon. Once again, Chris will have another keynote. He's the only person that gets a keynote that didn't have a rejected talk 'cause he's the creator of this thing. But I just want y'all to know what they're doing is absolutely incredible. You can check their Impact Map. I mean, look at this. I mean, they have funded all over, even Alaska and Hawaii. I mean, all over, just go pick your spot. I guarantee you, home for you. So it's really cool what they've been doing and how much money they've helped. 205,000 students helped. Let's make that 500,000, right? Let's go do that. So going back to RejectionCon, 100% of all of your proceeds when you sign up go to them. We're not even a pass-through. We literally hooked up their Stripe integration. And so when you pay for your ticket, right to them. Also, vendors, hear me. Those that sponsor— here are some of our, just a few of our sponsors from last year. Those that sponsor, and already getting a ton of sponsorship requests coming in, you are going to be on the list. And half of what you sponsor goes to RejectionCon, which is super cool. I'm sorry, goes to— not RejectionCon, goes to Rural Tech Fund. Half. So my goal this year is to raise— let's raise $50,000. It's a lofty goal, it's going to be hard, but we can do it. Okay. And then lastly, I just want to share the challenge. We also have the RejectionCon Challenge. Last year, in the middle of the event, all of a sudden, I know where this guy right here— everyone knows Degli Mendez. He's just an awesome human being and a very dear friend of mine. Out of nowhere, I'm watching the RejectionCon donations as talks are coming through, and boom, $2,000 just came in, and it was from Degli. I'm like, are you kidding, Degli? That's too much. Why did— he's like, this resonates with me, Wes, and I want to be a giver. And so we sent out the RejectionCon Challenge, and we said, who else wants to do this? Who else wants to be involved. And I want to show y'all, look at the people last year that stepped up. Ian Richardson— I mean, Ian is an awesome human being. Uh, Bob Miller, Dustin Bolander, Sean Torres, Jason Slagle, Rob Chiaffi, Dave Bellini, Adam Sletzkin, my good friends at Cyberfox, Tom Wyant, Marissa Maldonado, Jesse Miller, Megan Killian, Maureen Golden, Ray Orsini, Jerway Todd, Jason Rory, James Carroll, Mike Eastep, Kevin Tegeler, Somebody beardless from Empath is all I'll say. And maybe beardless from Pax8 is all I'll say. Darren Cirillo and Westerheim, Dave Kava and Connor and the team at Fan. Y'all, this was so cool to see all of these people come in and commit at least $1,000 as a— in giving. And let me tell you, that is some of what drew— drove the 20— that was the majority of what drove so much of the $25K, that and your attendance. Your, your sponsor passes. So man, let's do it again. We're gonna do the challenge again. The vendors, I want you to come sponsor this thing, and I need you as an MSP to come join and register. So how do you register? Let me show you. Just go over to rejectioncon.com. Let's go back to the main website, and here's how you do it. You're literally just going to go to the top and you're going to go to registration, and it's going to take you over to an Airmeet page, which is right here. And this is the website itself, so you can actually buy your ticket right here. It's going to show you— we don't have the speakers listed. We have just room for the sessions, but you won't see them up yet. All 3 days, you've got the sections of what we're going through: Cybersecurity and Compliance Track, Leadership and Strategy Track, Operations and Automation Track, Sales, Marketing, and Culture Track. All right, so tons of good tracks, keynote sessions throughout, some lounges, all this good stuff. So it's all here. You're all going to see this come out, and when you're ready to book your ticket, you're just going to hit Book Ticket, and then watch this. Here's something that's super cool. General admission right now is $25. It's gonna go up to $50 as we go a little bit further, but for the next few days up until February 3rd, early bird general admission gets you access to everything, is just $25. Now let me just say this last thing because this is also pretty important. What happens if you're listening today and you're like, I don't have $25, I don't have $50? Just let us know. We're going to create a pay what you can. Unfortunately, Airmeet doesn't support that true feature. So I'm, I guess I'm just gonna make some coupon codes and I'm even gonna make a $0 ticket. And the only difference between $0 and $50 ticket is this: $50 goes to rejection or to Rural Tech Fund, $0 doesn't. So if you don't have the money to get in, that's fine. Just come join us. Happy to have you. But if you can give, please give. And if you're like, 50 is a little much for me, 25, fine. If you're an MSP owner, give for your people. Just come in and email us or just buy— we'll make an MSP pass if we have to or whatever. Give $500 and just say, I bought it for my entire MSP. That's super cool. I'm not about the money other than I'm about the money going to Rural Tech Fund. So you do what you think is fair. The quality of the submissions, the quality of the talks is far in excess of $50. Y'all, you know this. You might pay $1,000 or more to go to a major conference. So pay what you can. We're suggesting $50 a person. I'd love for you to give more, and you can do that through the RejectionCon Challenge or just directly giving to Rural Tech Fund, however you want to do it. All right, but this is it, and that's how you do this whole thing. That's where the tickets are right here. General admission, $25 right now, coming up to $50. So please go ahead and sponsor. And as we close, Really, I just want you to know one thing, just one thing. The way you can help is share this out. Take this livestream, share it out. Go to rejectioncon.com, grab the link, share it out on Facebook, share it out on YouTube, share it out on LinkedIn. Let your friends know. If you're in peer groups, share with them, hey, this RejectionCon thing that's coming up, like, y'all should come join this. It's going to be awesome. It's a charity event. We're all going to give back to— we're going to pay it forward for the kids in front of us. That's literally what we're doing. And we're going to celebrate some awesome talks, have a great time. And then lastly, if you're in any groups, share this out to your Discord and Slack groups. Get, get awareness out. If you're a vendor listening to this today, would you reach out to us? You can just reach out to me, Wes Spencer at empathmsp.com, or just DM me on LinkedIn, whatever, and come sponsor. Come promote this. I would love it if you promoted this event to your email list, to your own communities. Let's band together and get RejectionCon to be the explosive, awesome, unforgettable virtual event of the year. Why? Because we're going to do it for the kids, because we're going to do it for the voiceless, because we're going to do it for our industry and make the world a better place. So it's only going to happen if you make that happen. All right. So I'm going to sign off. I don't see any questions coming in on chat, so I'm going to close that out. But if y'all have questions, let me know. RejectionCon.com. It is coming up before you know it. It is going to be March 12th, 13th, 14th. RejectionCon.com to sign up. If you want to sponsor as a vendor, let me know. Please get the word out to everybody that this thing is happening. I can't wait to see y'all there. Thank you so very much.