Something huge is about to be announced

Oh, well, I don't know what to tell you. If that doesn't break your heart and make you sadder than you've ever been, I don't know what will. My friends, but we're not. It's— I have to tell you, Restream did a huge update. I haven't been in this thing in months and I forgot. I was like clicking around and making all these changes, and the one thing I forgot was to update the title of the dang livestream. So no, we are not live at Franklin Barbecue. I wish we were. It'd be a much better place than here at home. But I'm telling you, we got some better news than just Franklin Barbecue. We are announcing something we've been working on behind the scenes for quite some time. RejectionCon 2024. Y'all, I am so excited about this. I've got a bunch of things to talk about and introduce, but first of all, I want to bring up my good friend Jesse Miller. Jesse has agreed to join us here on this live stream. Jesse, what's going on, my brother?

I feel like I gotta scoot back here. There we go.

A little tight. That's okay, we'll make it work. We'll make it work.

Uh, no, I was so confused. I said Franklin Barbecue. What's going on here? It's, uh, new.

I'm like, I know there's something I've messed up here. This is all this new 2.0 features. Yeah, messed up like one of the most important parts.

Whatever. Well, I'm, I'm super excited for RejectionCon coming up this year. Uh, it feels like it's just amped up to 11. So, um, I can't wait for the talks. I mean, last year there was so many good ones, I basically didn't get anything done for 2 days because I was, uh, glued to the screen. And, uh, it looks to continue that way as we go forward.

Yes, 1,000%. Uh, we're really excited about this. There's a— so First of all, one of the big things about RejectionCon last year, we're going to talk about what it is. You've never even heard of it if you're just joining this. It is the event of the year. I mean, let's just call it what it is, at least for me and so many others. We'll talk about its genesis, but there's a ton of people behind the scenes that have been working to make this thing happen. Last year we did it and it pretty much broke me and it broke a few others that jumped in. And I was like, I told Alex, we're never doing this again, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. And Alex is like, "I'm so glad that you said that. That's really cute, Wes. Let's do it again." I'm like, "No, we're not." And here we are. But the reason that I think we can do it again is we get a lot of people behind the scenes that are helping out. Last time it was a very guerrilla group of folks, and I'll never remember everyone perfectly, but you had guys like Bob Miller, you had Eric Bowles, obviously my co-founders Alex and Kyle that jumped in. Dustin Bolander is sort of the brainchild of the whole thing. There's a lot of people involved, but this time there's even more. Um, I guess just to open it up, Jesse, from your perspective, what, what did you appreciate the most about RejectionCon 2023?

I mean, I think I appreciated the, the rawness of it, or the, the, the truth of it might be a better way to put it, is that there's literally no agenda. Um, if anything, you're getting talks that couldn't be accepted because they didn't kowtow to some vendor-specific item. And so I think that was, I think the rawness or the truth of it was probably the most important part for me.

Yeah, I agree. I would say the same for me too. Just, it's awesome having a conference that gives everyone a chance to talk and everyone a chance to have a platform, right? And so if you're not aware of what the heck RejectionCon is, the way the whole thing came out, this is over a year ago. I was talking to Dustin Bolander, a good friend of mine. He's like, Wes, He's like, everyone, this is like, you know, back in 20, I guess mid-2023. He's like, Wes, everyone's getting the rejection letters, especially from IT Nation. He's like, there's a lot of people excited. I mean, it's a big deal to speak at IT Nation, right? Like, let's brag on them for a minute. That's— it's hard to get in to come and speak. It's a huge event. There's thousands of people that come, and kudos to them for having a call for papers. A lot of conferences, the only way you get in is pay to speak. So kudos to them for that. But a lot of people got burned because they're like, man, I— my talk deserved a platform. It was going to be so good. I was working so hard on— I spent hours and hours building the talk track and all the things that I was going to talk about only to be rejected. And it stinks, right? Because I mean, put yourself, Jesse, in the shoes of a big conference. Like, well, who do you want to speak? The people that you know are good speakers, the people that have good reputations. Letting new people in to speak for the first time is risky business. Are they good? What are they going to have to say? It's difficult. And so, you know, that's really where the genesis of RejectionCon came about, right? How did you first hear about RejectionCon?

I don't know, I think we were shooting the ball at some point and it just came up in conversation and you said, hey, I know that's what it was actually, Wes, you messaged me and said, hey, we're doing this RejectionCon thing, do you have a talk that's been rejected? I said, you know what, I don't think I do, but let me go submit some and see if I can get rejected, which is so interesting that this year I was looking forward to a talk getting rejected so that I could be in RejectionCon.

That's true. There were unintended consequences that happened. And one of those, and you were the genesis of all of that, Jesse, when you told me, I'm like, wait a second. So like, is it possible that people will go and submit a talk that they've always had queued up of like, you know, there's one thing I'd love to say, but I know no conference in the land will ever allow this because it goes against the conference philosophy or it's too spicy or it's just something that's like anti mainstream zeitgeist, they'll never get in. Now you have a motivation.

Yeah. It removes the filter. It's like, the best thing is like, so I'm sometimes unnatural on video. It's hard for me to like, especially when I'm doing a course, when I did my course for Empath, it's like, I get this weird stage fright thing, right? So there's kind of that filter you have when you're submitting a talk or when you're creating a talk, like, what is everyone gonna think of this? Or I need to make it seem like some type of way to get accepted. Now it's more just, Hey, this is me, this is who I am, this is what I think, and I know I'm going to get a forum for it. So both barrels, you know.

So I, I'm curious, what was that talk that you submitted or wanted to submit that you just knew would never get in? You got to give me a little spice here. You got to drip me in, brother.

So it's, uh, I think now it's kind of like, it's people like, oh, D, people would take that. But it was, it was how to create a virtuous sales funnel with your VC sell program for your MSP. And. And so I'm kind of like, you know, this is last year and I'm kind of like, well, I'm getting this Power PSA thing started. I'm teaching MSPs how to build VCSO programs, but it's really not mainstream. VCSO really isn't mainstream. So that's gonna kind of be not on anyone's radar. So I'm, I'm gonna see if, uh, it didn't get accepted, of course, right? And this year we were able to make that happen and here we are.

I love it. I love it. So Virtuous, what does that mean?

So yeah, Virtuous Sales Funnel. Virtuous there's a dirty word that we as MSPs think with sales, right? When you think about being a salesperson, we hate salespeople, we don't like salespeople, right? But what I say is you need to flip that on its head. It's what I coach MSPs to do when they're thinking about talking to their clients is, okay, sales is an act of leadership, and right, what are we good at? We're good leaders. We pride ourselves in leading our people and being really passionate about success and wanting the best for our people, no matter if it's with us or with somebody else. Well, take that same approach and apply it to your customer relationships. Lead your customers, show them the things that they need. But yes, you should get paid fairly to do it. We're not giving things away for free here, right? So we want to create a virtuous cycle in where we recommend the things that only our clients need or that they only need, and we get paid fairly to do it. And it's a flywheel both directions.

That's huge because one thing I talk about often, Jesse, is just that conflict of interest that we have. Too often in just all things MSP. We've been told for a long time, this is the only way you can do this certain thing. And one of those that I think it happened innocently, there's no like evil or malice behind anyone that sort of taught, but the old school way of doing VCIO is, you know, some type of sales incentivized VCIOs or, and then now as security comes in, even a VCSO. And boy, that brings up a ton of conflicts of interest and it brings up a ton of, I think clients are smart enough to sniff out when you're just here to sell them something. And a lot of times we have, if we're honest, a lot of our folks that are in those roles feel like, you know, what is it, like emperor with no clothing or something like that. Like they know that they don't have the skill set. They're trying to be a chief information security officer and they feel like they came from Best Buy, you know, they're selling like Compaq Presarios in 1995 and they're trying to act like they're like a true CISO. And I'm not hating on anyone, dude. It's tough, right? You just feel like you're not— you don't have the authenticity to do it. Then you slap on a commission and now I got to go sell a bunch of stuff. People sniff that out, don't they?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think that's the wrong way to do it. And that's another piece that we talk about when we think about a flywheel, right, is that when we're charging appropriately, we can afford to pay our people better or even above industry norms. And that in turn gets us better people, allows us to pay for training, allows us to create those true professionals. In those chief roles. And then when they go to the client, we don't have to incentivize them to sell because it's that flywheel concept. As the client says, hey, I know this person is here for my benefit, for my good, and I'm going to take them at their word because you know what, last time they talked to me, they actually recommended something that saved me money, not cost me money. And so while they're asking me to spend something, it's like, okay, I get that this person's here and they know what they're talking about and they're seeking my good. It's that virtuous sales funnel.

I love that. I love that. And that's winning at work, right? That's truly building a partnership and a respect that goes both ways. And that's why I love what you're doing with Power Grid, by the way. If you guys aren't aware of what Jesse's doing, make sure you hunt him down on LinkedIn and check out Power Grid because really, I mean, I've seen it first with my own eyes how much you're helping MSPs succeed in this way. And it's crucial. It's vital. It's not something I think you just stumble into. It really takes some coaching and expertise and understanding of like how to get there. So I love that you're doing that. And so you are going to submit this as a talk into RejectionCon, I'm guessing?

Oh yeah.

Definitely. So let's talk about that for just a minute. And I don't know how much longer you're able to stay with me. You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like, of course. But I did want to give this out to folks so you can go and see this in action. So this right here is RejectionCon, and it's pretty awesome in the sense that I'm just going to walk you through a little bit of what it's all about. This is just the landing page. If you want to get there, it's just rejectioncon.com. So easy to, easy to find it, easy to get there. This, the event itself is, is December 11th through 13th. We'll get into the rejected talk here in a minute. But really excited, right? So this is just iteration 2 of RejectionCon 2023. Let's be honest. Let's call it what it was. RejectionCon 20-whatever-it-was was— it was literally just a— it was a— we were trying something, right? We were doing what we thought we could do. And it was this idea of like, hey, let's just give a voice to the voiceless. Let's give something. Let's get it out there. Let's just get something in motion. And then what it turned into is one thing led to another, led to another. And it's a great idea after great idea. It's turned into Let's turn this into a real virtual conference. And then I thought, you know what? I don't want this to be a money play, but let's get some money in the door. Like, money's great. Let's make it happen. And so what we decided to do is give everything over to Rural Tech Fund. And so I had this idea of like, you know, it'd be awesome if we get like 150 people to join us, maybe raise like $10,000, $15,000 for charity, something like that. And that's where it all came from. Well, fast forward and it just— the whole thing took off like wildfire. We had Jesse, I don't know if you remember, 500, all just shy of 500 people join. And just, uh, we broke, uh, I think it broke $25,000 raised for Rural Tech Fund, which was just absolutely incredible. And you come from a rural area, right? You're in Minnesota where I'm sure it's getting cold, right? Talk to me about how important it is, just Rural Tech Fund and their ability to just give and invest in STEM for school systems, is not just rural, they do inner city as well. But talk to me about just how important that is for school systems and as MSPs, what a privilege we have to be able to contribute and give to a great charity that really makes our world better.

Yeah, I think those are underserved communities, just like there are other communities like that. And so, you know, when you're out here and you see kids that in a lot of ways don't have the aptitude, but maybe you don't have the channels it's a really great way to get them upskilled and, you know, built for the 21st century, right? So especially with— I don't know how plugged in people are to this, this is the world I live in, right? But it's— I own a hobby farm, so I farm on the side in addition to other things. But agtech is a big deal, right? And so as we talk about sustainable methods of farming and sustainable methods of agriculture and getting clean food and clean water supply and all those things back into our, um, back into our supply chain, these kids are going to be instrumental because we need kids that understand the agricultural food chain supply and also are equipped to build the next level or the next generation of technology that supports that. And so I think this is super important because, one, you're helping kids get a chance to do something bigger and better for their lives and their families, and number two, you're helping create the next generation of agriculture workers that, you know, Feed Us All, by the way.

I love that. It's amazing. I mean, I used to live in Kentucky for decades, and I know just how sophisticated, uh, ag tech is these days. People would shock people the amount of work that a tractor can do in terms of not just like GPS and steering by itself, but even like reading out the right amount of soil and pH levels to know just what to plant, what fertilizer. It's, it's, it's mind-boggling, right? It's really amazing. Yeah. And so that's, you know, this one example. I love that example from you just being living in a rural area. I mean, look at this, guys. So Rural Tech Fund, 800 schools impacted, over 150,000 students, 50 states. You can just click right here and to see our impact. They actually produce a report that comes out. And what I want you guys— this is so important that you hear me on this— your giving directly into the Rural Tech Fund makes a difference. So you even have some international stuff over it. Well, I guess sort of with Puerto Rico, right? It's a territory, but it's pretty amazing. I mean, just look at the coverage, right? Look at what they've done. And so to me, what's so exciting and impactful is your money you gave, 100% of it went to Rural Tech Fund. It didn't go to some intermediary. It didn't go to some place that's going to siphon money away. 100% of what you gave as your conference fees to join went directly into impacting the lives of children who may have never had another experience with technology ever before. And those are the kind of moments that teach them, wait, I love this tech stuff. I had no idea how awesome this was. And so this is Rural Tech Fund. And guys, I'm just— I want you to know we are doing this all over again.

This is—

we're— they're again our charity sponsor. We're super, super excited about that and the ability of what it's going to do. And so I wanted to share with everyone just my goal. My goal this year, and this is going to sound insane, but my goal is no less than $50,000 raised for Rural Tech Fund. And I talked to Chris, their CEO, and Claire, their CFO, and I'm like, would that be What would that do? And they're like, guys, that's a game. There's so many schools that we can impact. Um, and so Jesse, I'm not going to spoil it yet. I'll share with you privately, but we have an idea of what we're going to do for it. And they kind of said, hey, what about if you guys could come up with this much money? There's one thing that we could do. And the only thing I'm going to tease out is it deals with space, which is super duper cool. So I'm— we'll tease out more later as we go through with RejectionCon and what the partnership with our at Rural Tech Fund's gonna— what it's gonna mean and do for them. But it's gonna deal with space, and it's gonna deal with kids and experiencing space in a really awesome way. That's all I'm gonna say. So let's go back to RejectionCon. I want to share this out. Jesse, any of these particular talks here that you've gotten a chance to see from last year that you would point out as one that was just a really amazing talk?

Where's the one, um, Oh, I like the one, like, all of them, unfortunately. Yeah, Life and Legacy Planning with, with, uh, Robert's always awesome, right? Um, uh, Risk Management, Risk Management, Average MSP's offering, only because I co-starred on that.

Just kidding.

No, Tim was kind enough to— he's like, he's like, hey, you want to jump in on this one? So I, you know, risk is partial to my heart. Um, the one— what was it when we were talking about, um Not the Cybersecurity Battle. Yeah, I don't think it's up here. There was one about how not to suck as a manager, and that was the one that like really, really stuck with me last year. And yeah, I don't think it's up here, but yeah, I really enjoyed it.

Yeah, it's not. We only loaded a few of the cards that are up here. We'll have to get the rest of them later. But yeah, so what's neat about this, what you're seeing, if you're watching this right now, what you're seeing is these are talks that somebody said, this is a talk I want to give. This is a topic that someone needs to hear. And for whatever reason, at whatever conferences, we're not picking on any particular conference, but for whatever reason, where they submitted said, no, you don't have a place here. You're a loser. Get out. Get off the bus. And RejectionCon is about saying, get in, loser. Let's do this thing. Let's share. Let's be a part of an awesome community and let's share something awesome. And so I want you to know, if you had a talk this year, the eligibility requirements it's got to be a talk that you submitted for this year, and you have to prove to us with some kind of receipt that it got rejected, you have a place with us. Now, the number one thing, Jesse, that I hear so often from people is like, yeah, but Wes, here's my question. If RejectionCon— can I get rejected from RejectionCon, right? Like, can I submit— I got rejected for my talk, can I get— so the answer to that is no. So last year what happened, it just balanced, it just worked out. So we had room for 24 talks. Wouldn't you know it, we had 24 submissions, which just happened that way. And I did do some work to like, okay, how can I make this work perfect this year? Because of how huge RejectionCon was last year, I don't think we're going to be able to fit— we're going to have more than 24 submissions. I just know we are. And so we have plans for that. What I want you to know is no one is rejected from RejectionCon.

We're—

I, I'll tell you this, one of the things we're working on is how do we get overages. So we're going to have a committee that comes in, it's an MSP committee that's going to do all the work of deciding who is eligible for RejectionCon. So we're going to have that fully kind of baked out and figured out who's eligible. And then once you submit, when you submit in, they're going to go and go through criteria, make sure they have some rubrics, like is it in good taste? We like spicy talks, like it's totally cool to say something a little spicy, but make sure it's in good taste. And then if you get through the committee, they're going to be the ones that will select the ones that will be presented on RejectionCon day. For those that don't make it through there, you're not rejected. You're still going to have a chance to speak. You're going to be able to have and present your talk. We're actually going to show it on something we're going to call RejectionCon TV. So we have a whole like TV channel that's in the works, and so it's going to be able to be broadcasted live. It's not going to be one of those like, well, you get a little 10-minute snippet and that's all that we're going to let— no, no, it's going to be the entire talk. So no matter what, you are presenting at RejectionCon. So I just want to throw that out there, everyone gets a spot.

I did hear from a little birdie that there is actually a spicy category that's being evaluated.

Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about the little birdie told you. I'm sure that little birdie was none other than Dean Trimpolis, who is quite an incredible person, actually quarterbacking for us RejectionCon. So if you click right here, submit a talk, this is right on the front of the website, just right here. So I want— this is probably the most important thing in the livestream. So if you're watching this and you're like, okay, cool, I'd never heard of RejectionCon. Or I did know about it last year and jump in. This right here is just a landing page. We're going to get the rest of it up later, but if you click on that, it's going to take you over to our JotForm. So first thing that's going to give you is Bob Miller's amazing face. I love me some Bob Miller. What an incredible human being he is. So he's the COO over at Global Data Systems in Lafayette, Louisiana. Yeah, what a great community supporter. So, so Bob is the chair of the RejectionCon selection committee, and so you have to watch the video before you can move forward. It's just a few minutes and Bob walks you through all the requirements, what we're looking for, all all that kind of stuff. And then as soon as you're through that, just hit Let's Go and we're going to walk you through everything. So you're going to put in your title. I'm just going to kind of put in title here. You'll give— you have to prove to us that it was rejected. I guess I can't go past this because I don't have anything to submit. If I'll put yes, been rejected. We do ask you to submit evidence. You have to grab that. So I can't move past that because of it. But anyway, one of the— it's going to give you some categories and we have different categories like leadership. We have one in cybersecurity. We have all of those. One of the things Dean was pretty adamant about is he's like, Wes, let's do one specifically on, um, on, uh, spicy. Let's have spicy talks. How often do spicy talks get dropped in a hot minute? Because you're gonna make people mad. Maybe someone's got a strong opinion on something. Well, look, we're about celebrating that, baby. Let's get them out there. I want spicy talks. If you got something spicy, go for it. Can you— Jesse, I'm curious, what's the spicy talk you'd want to hear something about?

Compliance isn't that important.

Coming from a guy who deals with compliance left and right, that sounds spicy.

It could be. So it isn't that important. I got a fly here. Let's say I really do live out in the country. It's not that important.

Flies like, I think it's important.

No, so I think it's necessary, not important. Hopefully that clarifies. But I think at the end of the day, Yeah, compliance, we have to do it, but it doesn't really move the barometer for us in any meaningful way as an organization other than keep punitive measures off our back. So, yep, maybe I should, maybe I should submit that talk.

Sounds like— oh, sorry, it hadn't been rejected yet, my friend. So, uh, unless you can find somewhere between now and December 11th, 12th, and 13th that will reject you. I had a friend who's like, I'm gonna set up my own conference just so I can automatically reject everyone so anyone can be eligible. And I'm like, okay, I guess we'll accept that. I don't know. So anyway, so I'm going to close the livestream down here in just a second. But wanted you all to know what's going on. Wanted you to be fully aware of what we have going on. And just, man, we're really, really excited about this, right? Wes Spencer finally called— I don't think I did that directly, but Wes Spencer finally calling out the rapid service offering. No, not everyone can become a CISO without the experience. I'm not naming vendors at this point. That's, that's for a spicy talk for someone else. But yes, it does take a little bit of experience in order to do what you got to do. It's got to be some bare minimum, right? I missed that comment earlier. So you ps whoever you are that said that. And then anyway, going back to all of this, I want you guys to be aware of this. So here's how you can help. There's going to be a lot of ways we're going to ask you to help. One of the ways that you can help that's easy is just this website, rejectioncon.com. If you'll just go back here and you'll just— you don't have to submit a talk. You may be like, I don't have a talk. You know what you can do to be awesome, though? Jump on LinkedIn, jump on Facebook, whatever, and be like, hey y'all, I don't know if you know about RejectionCon. I went last year, or I just heard about it and I'm excited about it. Submit, just, just submit a post. Just, just share it out. If you'll just do that, that means a lot. Tag me if you want. Just, just get it out. That's, that's the best thing you can do at the moment. As we move forward though, there are ways that you can help on top of that, right? Remember, this is a charity event. We're going to raise $50,000. We do this thing right, we're going to change the lives of kids and we're going to celebrate the opportunity for a bunch of people to have some talks. So I'm going to ask you to give at some point, even if it's $25 or $50. I'm going to ask your MSP to give. I'm going to ask you to be involved in— maybe there's some ways you can share your time and your talent as well, not just your treasure. So if you've got ways that you can— the things that you're really good at, you're like, hey, I can do this thing and be really helpful. I want to know.

Right?

There's a team of us that are doing this together. And I just, I can't wait to see the community come together. It's so neat. It's just, it's right around the holidays, you know, just during that time, that Christmas time of giving, just a couple weeks before that. And I'm telling you, Jesse, it's really becoming sort of the hallmark of the year. And it's just an awesome way for MSPs and vendors to get in together. And then the last thing I guess I'll say is if you're a vendor, stay tuned, we will have a prospectus coming out. We do need vendors to sponsor this. The cost of running this is pretty heavy. And so So having vendors jump in as sponsors also means a lot. So if you're listening to this and you're like, well, I'm a vendor and I want to support it, you had a favorite vendor. We had, I think, 25 vendors that supported last year. Would love to see that number even double. And so love to see you come and join us in that, that way as well. Jesse, as we close out, any other further thoughts around RejectionCon? Anything else you want to say?

Don't, don't bail your talks. Submit with both barrels because You get to come to RejectionCon then.

I love it. I love it. Awesome. So it's been super fun. Thank you guys for watching today. Really excited about it. RejectionCon.com. Make sure you go there. We do have the call for papers open right now, so get in as soon as possible. If you have friends, you want them to submit. We've already had a few roll in. Get in on it now and then the rest of the website will come up and flesh out really soon. Jesse, thanks for joining me today, brother. It's always good to have you on a livestream. Can't tell you how much I appreciate you.

Yeah, man, thank you, Wes Spencer. It's a great time.

All right, my friends, thank you all so very much. Y'all take care. See you guys.