RejectionCon Call for Papers: Who Is Ready to Speak?

And how about that music? Oh, it's awesome. I could just keep chilling with that forever. What's going on, my friends? Right up there, I want you to say hello. Let us know where you are connecting in from. All I got is a number of people that are on the stream. It's a whole bunch of you, but I don't know who it is. So if you guys will jump in and tell me who you are, where are you connecting in from, what's going on with your day, what you're planning on doing for the weekend, I want to know all that. Give me some comments right there in feedback, right there, right there. I want to know. Hey, man, I want to talk, my friends. I want to talk about RejectionCon. I want to talk about some of the cool things that are happening with it. I'm going to give you a sneak peek on some behind-the-scenes things that are happening. It's all getting ready to go live. But I just want to let you guys know, I want to give you some inside track information on what is happening and what's going on. So as we change the music over to some chill hops, so we can talk and think at the same time. Still waiting. See a bunch of you up there. Who's going to be the first to jump in and say hello? Who you are, where are you connecting in from, what's going on with your day? I want to know all of it. I don't want to be talking into a vacuum today, all right? I want to know who you are. I want to know who you're connecting in from. I want to know what's going on in your world. So we're talking RejectionCon, and you know what we're going to be doing today is, um, I want to share just a couple things. So first of all, Um, let's go over to the old iPad here, and, uh, please don't panic, I'm at 1% because I just recharged it. Uh, so don't panic, it's not about to die, it is charged up or in currently charging. But I wanted to show a couple things that are going on with RejectionCon. Um, first of all, let's get the screen set right. Man, no one— you guys are quiet today, what's going on? There's like no one saying hello. If you do say hello, I'll drop it back into chat. I don't know what's going on, but I do know what's going on right here with RejectionCon. So this is going to be pretty awesome. Uh, got a couple new updates for you. First of all, shout out to our premier sponsors. Now there's one, if not two more that are coming in, so I can't say who they are yet, but the ones that are confirmed and ready to go, the one and only BlackPoint. Thank you to the BlackPoint crew. What awesome folks over there. John Murchison, Cody, Mac Brown, All of you awesome people, uh, thank you. We also got Ninja— Ninja One. I've become such good friends with Jonathan Crowe, Sal, and team over there at Ninja One. Thank you for sponsoring this thing. Thank you for getting this off the ground. We can't do it without you. Can't wait to jump in with you all as well, the Ninja team. And then also Super Ops's brand new channel chief, the one, the only, the illustrious, the esteemed, and my friend Juan Fernandez. As soon as this thing came up, Juan was like, Wes, what's going on, man? I'm glad to see you in. I want to sponsor RejectionCon. My brother, you're like a week into, uh, Super Hops. You're still getting your feet wet. You want to jump into this now? I'd love to have you. So we got Juan Fernandez jumping in as well with a premium. And then also, just so I don't leave folks out, there are more and more folks that will be jumping in. I've got Huntress added in as one of our supporters, and there's a whole bunch of the rest of you that's coming in. Tim Golden, from ComplianceRisk.io and then a whole slew of others that are getting ready to jump in. I will be putting you up on the website as soon as we get a couple things done. So I just wanted to say shout out first of all before we touch anything, shout out to the vendors. Here's the thing, as a vendor myself, I know we can't get some of these awesome things we want to do in the channel without your help. And so vendors, make sure you jump in on this. It does help cover the costs of this thing. Here's the cool thing: 100% of all of the cost of your attendee pass goes to charity, but it still costs us money to go run RejectionCon. So the vendors are the ones that are standing in the gap, being like, we're gonna stand up here, we're gonna make sure that we sponsor this thing. So thank you to the vendors. I still have maybe 5, 6, 7 slots left. That's about it. So if you're interested in jumping in and you're a vendor, make sure you hit me up, make sure you let me know. All right, so if you've been hiding in a hole, what the heck is RejectionCon? It's, it's Awesome, Brandon, good to see you on. Wanted to shout you out and say thanks for jumping in and saying hello. Um, one of the things I wanted to talk about is what RejectionCon is all about. So if you're not aware, what we're all about is giving a platform for those that deserve it most. And you know why that's so important? It's so important to me because there's so many people out there that deserve this. I know what it's like having been someone who, who put, uh, you need a donation, like, hey, I got you. Actually, see that QR code right up there? Michael, you can use that right there, or I'm not sure if you mean on the vendor side. So just DM or let me know here in chat. Do you mean a donation link for to sponsor or to attend? It depends on which one you want, but I can hook you up with both, my friend. I can do that. Anyway, going back to this, I know what it's like to be rejected. It hurts. It's not easy for us. It kind of stinks. And you're kind of like, man, I had this awesome talk for Black Hat, for RSA. For an IT conference, for an MSP conference, for something that's local. I know what it's like to not get into something, and you know you deserve it, you know you should have gotten in, you know you wanted it. And so RejectionCon is that. We're going to become— no matter what happens, we are going to become an organization that is all about giving a voice to the voiceless. Now, that only happens if we all band together and get in on this. You may be somebody that's like, you know what, I've never had a talk that's ever been rejected, but absolutely celebrate giving a platform to people that need it most. I want to hear some awesome talks. This is for you. You may be somebody, it's like, man, I've had multiple talks or one talk that's rejected. I got you. Jump in right here. In RejectionCon is your chance to go share that message with the world. And you might just be a supporter of this whole thing and just be like, look, I'm not in it for any of that stuff, even though I know you are. I'm— you may be like, I'm just in this because you know what, I just want to give back. I want to do good for the community, and I want to do good for Rural Tech Fund. That— it's for you. So Michael, I hear you, uh, you wanted to donate for, uh, just Rural Tech Fund anytime. I got you. So you can just do that right through the website, and I won't stop you. But I will stop you because, um, only reason is for this: our goal is to raise $25,000 for charity. $25K for RejectionCon. That's our goal. It's ambitious, it's going to be hard, but I want it to all be tracked. So you could just go to ruraltechfund.org right now and donate, but hold for me because what I want is, is I want to make sure all donations are tracked through us so we can go brag on ourselves. We can say, you know what, the MSP community stood up for something, and when we stand up for something, watch what happens, world. So hold off, hold off on that for me, Michael, and I, I will have a link, and then we'll be, we'll be posting it all through RejectionCon. I'll be making sure people top up and donate in, all that kind of stuff. We're gonna do that too, all right? So all that being said, I wanna get back to one of the other things I wanted to talk about just a little bit here, and it's this. Let's go talk about what RejectionCon is all about. Not only is it about this sad little robot right here, I mean, this little guy, he's so sad. Like, he got rejected. We know what it's like. We know how that feels, right? But more than that, We're about a couple different things. This thing is community-driven, which just means what? Oh, my iPad did die. What's going on? I got it on a full big battery pack charger and it died. I'm out of like plugs in my studio, but I guess it can't handle the livestream and everything else we're doing. No worries, no worries, no worries. We're just going to go back to a website. We'll get this back up. Projectioncon.com. Let's reshare since it's going to be like that. It's going to be one of those days. Here we go. All right, so here's RejectionCon. We're back up. We're back in business. All right, so where was I? We were talking about this. Oh, yeah, it's community-driven, right? So one of the big things about this is we are truly all about making sure from this perspective of like, I don't want this to be the Wes Spencer show. I don't want this to be the Empath show. Not only is this sponsored by us and also sponsored by MSP Geek, but I want this to be about the community. And one of the ways that we do that is we get the community acting together. And you're gonna see this come out in a few different ways. One of those is, is I'm about to show you, we've had some awesome talks that have come in. I will not be the decider. The only thing I decide is I cut out riffraff. So far everyone's been awesome. There's not been any like bad, poor taste talks that have been submitted. That's the only gating I'll do. The only people that get rejected from RejectionCon are the ones that submit something in bad taste. And I just don't think that's going to often happen because you guys are, you guys are pretty awesome, right? So I don't think that's going to happen. But what I do think is I want the community to come together and say these are the talks we want to hear this year in December. And then if there's extra talks that don't make it through on the vote for like the 25 or so talks we're going to be having, no problem. You know what, here's what we're going to do instead. We're going to make sure that you get a chance to speak later in the year. That's going to happen later in 2024, probably early into it. So no one gets rejected from RejectionCon, my friends. That's what we mean by community-driven. Also, look, we're doing good for humanity. I already mentioned Rural Tech Fund, a 501. I personally vetted them. I know them. We're donating to them. We're going to be doing that. We're MSP-focused at every single section along the way, and we're just not leaving talks behind. As I mentioned, we're about this for everybody. And so if you're, you're going to get into this thing, if you submit, it just, you may have to be patient with us for a little bit. Okay, so I wanted to share that. And then the other thing I wanted to share is this registration is now open, my friends, right here. You can jump right in. Oh, you know what, I'm already logged in, so hold on, let me actually log out real quick, uh, so you can see what this is going to work. Okay, there we go. So, uh, let's go reshare again, and what I want to do is I want to show you what this thing looks like. There we go. Okay, so here it is. If you want to get in on this, you can scan the QR code or you can just go to crowdcast.io/c/rejectioncon or, or, or just go to rejectioncon.com and click on Register Now right at the very top. Okay. And here's how this thing works. This thing is kicking off in 46 days, so I know it's a ways away, but I really do want as many preregistrations as I can possibly get. So when you click into this, Here's what we're doing here, my friends. We're really doing this the right way. And what I mean by that is there are two ways that you get into RejectionCon. One of the ways is you do it— if you're an MSP, I expect you to pay. The reason I expect you to pay is because I don't get that money. Rural Tech Fund gets that money. Okay, so I expect you to jump in. I expect you to put some money in. My recommendation is just $50, right? If you're going to a premier MSP conference, you're going to spend $1,200. Well worth the price. We're asking $50. But what I am asking even more is if you're an MSP and you got the funds, don't do $50, do $100, do $500. Put in a number that makes a difference. Put in a number that you're like, I can stand behind that number. I can be proud of that number that I'm putting in. Okay, that's what I want you to do. But if you don't have the money, I just spoke to a bunch of college students yesterday and I told all of them, hey, you guys are invited too. And I know you're college kids, so you probably don't have any money. No problem. What you can do is this right here. You can go and when you jump in to register, put in $0. I will prove to you this works. All right. And hit enter. Off you go. Pop in your SSO, your email, whatever. And you are in, my friend. So I'm really not gating this for anybody. It's a pay what you can model. And I want to see that happen. The other model, though, that we have is an MSP Pass. And here's the way this thing works. I'm recommending $500 or more. If you're an MSP owner and you're like, you know what we're going to do? We're going to send our entire MSP to RejectionCon. That's what we're going to do. Jump in, use the MSP Pass. The only difference is you're just— it starts at $500. I'd like to see some of you go above that. Look, if you're like a $25 million MSP, don't, don't do $500, do $1,000, do $2,000, do a number that makes a difference in this world. All right. Put that in. It's all going to charity. And then you can— you're all just email all your people and be like, I bought you passes to RejectionCon. And here's the way this works. When they go in, they can just go in and they can just jump in for $0 knowing that you've, you've signed up for them and paid for them, or they can use the MSP Pass and they can just use promo code FREE MSP. So you do that same thing, it'll mark it down to zero. I don't care how you do it. All right. But my point is, I want to see you guys join. I want to see you jump in. Now, you may be asking, what the heck is Rural Tech Fund? Like, why is that a thing? Why do we choose that? I want to show you their website real quick. You can go here. It's just ruraltechfund.org. Here it is, Rural Technology Fund, and it's so cool what they're doing. What they're about is giving resources to underprivileged, left-behind school systems that need this, building STEM, building awareness in the world around us. Tell me that's not the coolest thing ever. Reducing the digital divide. Our mission is to help students recognize opportunities in technology careers, facilitate pathways to work in, in the computer industry, Provide equitable access to technology for students with disabilities. Tell me that's not awesome. Tell me that's not the coolest thing ever. That's what we're about. That's what I'm super excited about. Michael checking in, saying, okay, we'll hold. I'll have money ready for launch. Please do that. Yes, hold that. And I can't wait for you to be able to give on top because many of you are going to want to do that. You're going to say, I'm not just paying to get in. I want to give extra money on top because of who we are, because of who we're supporting. Because of what we're doing. So later in the— in here in a few weeks, I'm definitely going to be bringing Chris Sanders on, the CEO of Rural Tech Fund, who's a classmate of mine from Murray State and just a longtime friend. And he's going to be sharing the mission of why he created this awesome thing and what it's all about. But I want you to see this. This is not just your average, you know, 501. They've impacted 800 schools. They've impacted 150,000 students in all 50 states. Can I get an applause in chat? Can I get like a way to go Rural Tech Fund? That's awesome. To me, that's the coolest thing ever. And here's the neat thing. Chris has told us if we can do that $25K, if we can hit that goal for him, not only is that super impactful to students around the world, he said he'll jump on in a livestream with us in the future and he'll give a count to where every penny went. Tell me that's not awesome. Tell me that's not the coolest thing ever. How many times have you seen in your, in your life you give to a donation, you give to a charity, which is great. You don't know where it went. Chris is like, no, we're not about that. We're— if you can get to that $25K mark, we're going to give— we're going to give an account to you. I think that's awesome. All right. Anyone else? Give me some thoughts in chat. You guys a fan of Rural Tech Fund? A fan of what they're doing? I want to know. Give me some feedback in chat. I'll highlight it on the livestream and would love to know from you all about it and what you think about it. All right. So that is Rural Tech Fund. There's much more to it. But before we jump into anything else, one of the other things I wanted to do was I wanted to let you know, I want to give you a peek, just a peek at some of the submissions that are coming in. So if you didn't already know, what you can do is this right here. You can go to our website, rejectioncon.com, and you can do this. You can do /awesome right here. And in this, this brings up our Jotform and you could submit a talk. All right. So it's not too late. In fact, I need about double the submissions I have right now. We're sitting at about 15, maybe a few more. I want 30 minimum. All right. So I need some more submissions. I need to know from you who's going to submit a talk, who wants to jump in and be one of the first after this livestream saying, I'll put in a talk. I'm excited about this. Here's the thing. I was talking to Anne Westerheim. She's the CEO and president of Ikaru, and Anne made a great point. She said, you know, a lot of people they're, they're nervous to submit a talk, right? Especially in a virtual conference and everyone's going to be watching them. Please don't. This is the conference for you. This is literally— we've handcrafted it for people just like you. So if you're ready to submit something and you've been trying and you haven't got it through, here you go. So you just pop me in the title of whatever you're talking about. And then what you can do is you can give me all the information. And the way this is working is I do expect it to be a rejected talk somewhere. Somebody has to have rejected this talk and we're going either off— you can upload a copy of your rejection email or we'll just go on the honor system if you just don't have— if you don't have proof. Some people have told me, well, I've moved emails since then. I don't have access anymore. We'll go on the honor system. All right. But this is it. So if you want to submit a talk, rejectioncon.com/awesome. All right, so get it in now. You still have a few weeks to get it in, but we got to get it in as soon as possible. All right. So the other thing I wanted to talk to you about is this right here. I want to show you some of the talks that are coming through. And man, let me tell you, friends, some of these are just rock star. Actually, not some of them. They're all just rock star. Really, really good stuff. All right. So I'm going to just highlight just a couple of them. But very soon what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually give you this full link and I'm going to ask the community to go and vote. And remember, we said we're community driven at the beginning of this livestream. What that means is this, because it's community driven, all you've got to do is jump in and vote and tell us the ones that you want to see spoken about by giving an upvote. And the ones that get the most upvotes are the ones that get into RejectionCon to speak. All right. That's how this works. It's just as simple as that. So I'm gonna need you not just to, uh, to attend RejectionCon, but I need you to come in and vote for the talks you want to see come in. All right, so let me just show you some of these because they're really awesome. I'll show you how this is going to work. All right, so here's one. This one's from Matt Solomon. Everyone knows Matt Solomon. Lead Gen Mastery: Unleashing Explosive Growth for MSPs with Targeted Strategies. Now ignore my name— will be on all of these, me or Bob Miller, because we're just submitting but you'll know who submitted it because they'll all say by whoever the speaker is. And then you can read all about what they're talking about and why this is going to be awesome. All right. So there's Matt. We have more that are on here. We also have Tim Golden, Policies That Don't Suck. So literally on Cyber Call this week, talking in front of almost 200 MSPs, I'm like, how many of you need some time and attention to policies? And so many people, the vast majority, all wrote in like, me, me, me, me. My policies are not up to speed. They could use a refresher. I know that I need work on it. You got one of the experts in the entire industry on policies, and Tim has got a talk for us. Policies That Don't Suck: How to Write and Implement Effective Compliance by Tim Golden. Tell me that's not the coolest thing ever. So you better go and upvote that thing. You better make sure it gets in the door. All right. Who else do we want to talk about? There's a few others that I wanted to talk— oh, Megan. See, I wanted to make sure I talk about Megan's Ethical Marketing for Next Gen MSPs. How many times do we talk about this? The right way to do marketing. The correct way. Not that there's only one way to do it, but the, the, the, the, the way we do it, the mission ethos behind it. She talks about this in a rapidly evolving business landscape. How do we bridge the gap between authenticity, diversity, and commercial success? Join Megan Killian, a pioneering leader in the intersection of diversity and marketing. She elucidates the crucial balance. I mean, this is going to be awesome. I'm really excited about this talk. I want to see it come in. We've had 2 votes come in, but that's because the voting is closed. Uh, we haven't really opened it yet, but we will soon. So you can see all of these awesome talks. There's so many. The last one I'm going to highlight is Robert Chiaffi. Oh my goodness, Robert's become such a fan of— I've become such a fan of Robert. He's just incredible. Look what he's got: Life and Legacy Planning. Anyone want to deal? Anyone interested in that? I am interested in that. One of the things that Robert is famous for is helping MSP friends in his peer groups think through what does exit planning look like and what does your life look like. And he has a life plan and he shared how he and his wife and his family do a life plan. This is incredible, guys. Look at this. So he's going to share his personal experience and why these two plans are so critical, yet the two most overlooked by MSPs. Now, can I just say this? I understand why this didn't get through on a, like, a big MSP conference. Not hating on any MSP conferences, they're just limited in what they can talk about. They're limited because they want to make sure it ties back to revenue. They're limited because they want to make sure it ties back directly to big things MSPs are talking about. This is one of those that MSPs like, hello, we would love to have this, but it doesn't fly in the face of people in the way that, like, it probably does to you and me of how vital this actually is. So I'm not— I guess I'm not surprised that this one didn't get through. But you know what, Robert, we got you, brother. We're gonna have this in here. I can't wait for this to come through. It says this is based on his experiences as an Evolve member. And look at all the stuff he talks about: family and friends, fitness, finances, fun, faith, future, field, and service. He's got the alliteration on the F's going for sure. I love it. I can't wait to listen to this one. It's going to be so good. There are more that are on here, so I'm waiting. I don't want to open this up to everybody quite yet because I'm waiting until we get a few more submissions. All right. I need a few more from you guys. I've reached out to a few friends as well, but what you can do is reach out to friends. If you know someone, it costs nothing to submit a talk, it costs nothing to, to, to speak it. You can be a vendor, you can be an MSP, you can be a friendly in the industry. I don't care. As long as it's in good taste and it's been a rejected talk, I got a platform for you. All you got to do is jump in rejectioncon.com/awesome and get in on this bad boy. I can't wait to have you in. I can't wait to talk with you about it. I can't wait to share with you what RejectionCon is all about. And I can't wait until we open up the floodgates to allow people to start voting. That's going to be super, super exciting. So RejectionCon is coming. It is full speed ahead. Again, huge shoutouts to the vendors, the sponsors that are making this happen behind the scenes. You can go check them out, rejectioncon.com, to get there. We're giving money, we're giving our funds, we're standing up, we're proving how awesome the MSP industry is. We're donating to the Rural Tech Fund. It's dear to our hearts. We're making sure that we are giving back and investing in the future. I mentioned this on the last livestream. I love that Chinese proverb that says, "Blessed is the man who plants a tree under whose shade he will not sit under." That's kind of what we're doing here. We're giving $25K to Rural Tech Fund. How do we know it's going to come back to our MSP specifically? We don't. But how do we know that we're impacting the life of a child? Giving them exposure into technology and teaching them that they can do it, and we got a space and a role and a field for them, knowing that that can transform their lives and the lives of their family, getting a high-paying IT technology STEM-based job, getting their family out of factories, getting their family out of poverty. I've seen it happen. I know it works. I know it's something that is truly a thing that can and should happen. And we have the opportunity to stand up for those kids, stand into that gap and give back. And that's what I'm asking you to do. So I'm asking you to come together. I'm asking you to join with me and join with all of these amazing vendors and all of these incredible MSPs and say, you know what, RejectionCon, we're about that. We're about— we may be square pegs in round holes. We may be misfits, we may feel like we don't belong, but this right here is for you. RejectionCon. All right, I'm gonna hang for just a second. I would love to know— let me open chat back up. I don't know if anyone has any questions, any thoughts, anyone wants to ask anything about RejectionCon, anyone wants me to go back and highlight a talk. I'm going to hang with you for just a few more minutes, um, but I, I'm super excited about this. By the way, shout outs to the two people that are hosting this entire thing, Empath, which is our company, and then the incredible folks at MSP Geek. Boy, they're just the two best of the best in the world, right? I love MSP Geek, love what they stand for, and they're jumping in and they're standing behind this too, and they're going to help promote this. So I'm really excited about both of those. There you are, RejectionCon. Really, really excited about it. Let's change the music up while I wait. All right, let's change it. Here we go. Maybe I've noticed it gets buggy sometimes until you hit shuffle, and then you never know what you're going to get on the music. There we go. Yeah, I'm not feeling that one, but whatever, we're gonna let it roll. All right, so let me go back to chat. Um, again, if you guys have any questions, any things you want to know about, um, let me know right here. I'm gonna hang out for just a bit more, but I want to see you there. Also, let me know in chat too, is anyone already registered? We've already got registrations coming in, so that's been awesome to see that. Um, if you haven't gotten in, remember you can do that right here. Just right here is Register Now. Just jump right here on rejectioncon.com, jump into Register Now, and you are in. We'll see you there. It's, it's really that simple. All right, so make sure you get in. Um, so many good things. Q&A over here as well if you have more questions on it. All right, my friends, it doesn't look like we have any questions, which means then I'm gonna let you go home for the day. If you're an MSP owner, you're out. If you're not and you've been watching this live stream, just tell your folks at your MSP that Wes Spencer said you can take the rest of the day off because you listened in and you're committed. And I am so glad to hear that. This will be restreamed and broadcast out through LinkedIn and YouTube, so if you got any other questions, let me know. Fire them into the event itself, and I'm sure I'll go see them and I'll respond back. Make sure you share this out with your friends and go challenge your MSP and vendor friends to get involved in RejectionCon. I want to see you all there. I want to see MSPs, I want to see vendors. Let's band together. $50 a pass, easiest decision you ever made. Let's go raise money for charity. We can do it. All right, my friends, thank you all so very much. Wes Spencer signing right out.