Tell us a little about your MSP…

Network Management Solutions is located in Santa Cruz, California. We serve Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Jose and the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The business was established in 1984 by Greg and Robin Sirakides under the name ‘ComputerLand of Capitola.’ I began working for them in 1998 and offered to purchase the business from them in 2006. I renamed the business in 2009 and began migrating my clients to an all-you-can-eat monthly support model. We enjoy serving our clients and giving back to the community that we live in!

How long have you been a member of The 20?

I believe we’re close to 3 years!

Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?

We wanted to augment our support staff with a 24/7 service desk that was US-based. Additionally, we were already operating a managed IT department and liked the idea of partnering with like-minded MSPs to extend our breadth and depth of skill and location.

Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.

Joining The 20 caused me to focus on the type of deals that were win-wins for both us and the client. This meant that I needed to start saying ‘no’ to opportunities, which was one of the best things I could have ever done. Not all deal are the right deals.

What do you like most about being a member of The 20?

The community. I have been a part of other networking groups, but everyone in this group is conducting business essentially the same way — and it helps when getting and giving advice.

What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?

Having a growth mindset. All businesses make mistakes, including myself, including the service desk — it’s what we learn from those mistakes and how we grow from them that make us better and creates a better offering for our clients.

What are your biggest business challenges?

I have had 2 significant challenges to face in the last 4 years. First: finding and keeping good talent. This business is often a platform for younger people to launch there careers. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just that the churn is hard.
The second issue is that in the course of a 2-year period, I lost my 2 biggest clients to circumstances out of my control. It made my business feel stagnant for several years even though we were still growing; the problem was replacing what we once had.

What are your areas of focus for 2019?

We are making sure to discuss with each of our clients what the current cybersecurity landscape is and ensure that they are as protected as possible.

What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?

Make sure to start working on process now. Document the way you do business. Scaling is hard when you’re attempting to reinvent the wheel each time.

What book are you currently reading?

I am currently re-reading Traction and implementing more items. I plan on reading The Checklist Manifesto next.

Favorite blogs / podcasts

Seth Godin
The Hustle

Interested in becoming a Partner? Click here for more information!

by Joseph Landes

As The 20 MSPs continue to evolve and build successful cloud practices in Microsoft Azure, one of the more frequent questions we receive at Nerdio is “How do I make money selling Azure?” MSPs should always be on the lookout for how Azure can improve their own business needs—namely decreased costs and higher gross profit margins. One of the best ways to do this is familiarizing yourself and deploying Azure Reserved Instances. Let’s talk about how that works.

The cost of Virtual Machines in Azure is the single biggest component of a typical MSP’s IT environment. Therefore, focusing on reducing this large consumption component is a great place to start. The savings are significant but carry a bit of complexity and need some up-front planning to take advantage of them.

Microsoft’s hyper-scale data center strategy has allowed the company to deploy many global regions at great cost to the company. As Azure adoption continues to rapidly grow, Microsoft needs to forecast demand in the various regions, which is far from trivial since public cloud is primarily advertised as a pay-as-you-go utility where you could run a VM one day and turn it off the next. To help with this forecasting challenge and to reward customers who are willing to commit to a certain amount of compute capacity in a specific region for an extended period, Microsoft introduced Reserved Instances (RIs). These RIs can save you from 20% to 57% relative to the list Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) price.

RIs are reservations of a specific type of compute capacity (i.e., VM family/series) in a specific geographic location (i.e., Azure region) for a predefined period (12 or 36 months). Depending on the VM family, duration of the reservation, and region, these RIs can save you from 20% to 57% relative to the list Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) price. The trade-off is that you have to pre-pay for the reservation in advance. This is great news for MSPs because typical IT workloads they deploy in Azure on behalf of their customers are persistent and customers are generally open to making one or three-year commitments.

Let’s explore how these RIs work.

When you provision a VM in Azure, two billing meters start running: base compute and Windows Server license. The published PAYG rate includes both components and every plain, vanilla VM you power on will bill you for both. RIs stop the base compute meter.

RIs are purchased with a lump sum payment via the CSP program and are applied to your tenant or subscription. Any VM running inside of that subscription that “matches” the RI will have its base compute rate zeroed out on the next invoice. Remember that RIs are purchased on a per-VM-family, per-region basis. This means that it will only match to a VM or set of VMs if they are of the same family and in the same region as the RI.

With Instance Size Flexibility, Microsoft will automatically apply any reservations in the most advantageous way to reduce the bill – if the VMs are running in the same region and have the same family as the RI. Keep in mind that RIs are a billing concept. There is nothing that needs to be done on the VM itself to stop its base compute meter and utilize the reservation. Azure does that automatically upon issuance of the invoice.

What if you need to change your reservation from one VM family to another or move your VMs to another Azure region?

No problem! RIs can be exchanged without any fees or penalties. Any unused portion of an RI will be applied as a credit towards the purchase of a new RI for a different family, in a different region, or both.

What if you need to cancel a reservation?

This is also possible, but there is a cancellation fee. The cancellation fee is 12% of your purchase price. The unused portion of your reservation will be refunded to you minus the 12% cancellation fee. There are some limitations to this on an annual basis. For example, your cancellations cannot exceed $50,000 in a year.

Let’s stop and think about this for a minute from the perspective of an MSP. The worst-case scenario is a 12% cancellation fee on a reserved instance of a VM they may no longer need in the future. However, the savings is anywhere from 20% to 57%. Therefore, cash flow considerations aside it makes sense to reserve all VMs even if they may need to be exchanged (no fee) or cancelled later (12% fee).

What if your customer cancels your managed service agreement? You have three options:

1. If you have no other customers who can make use of Azure VMs you will be forced to cancel the reservations and pay the 12% early termination fee. However, remember that your savings should more than pay for the early termination fee even in this worst-case scenario.

2. If you have other customers or are bringing in new customers who can make use of reserved Azure VMs, but who need different types of VMs or need to be in a different region, then you would exchange your reservations – at no charge – and extend them to 12 or 36 months.

3. If you have other customers or are bringing in new customers who can make use of the reserved instances in the same region and same VM family, then there is nothing else for you to do. By setting the RIs to shared scope and having all your customers under one tenant with individual subscriptions, the RIs will just keep working for you and stopping the base compute meter on VMs.

What about cashflow?

You may be concerned that having to come up with 36 or even 12 months’ worth of Azure VM fees is a burden on your company. There are financing companies specializing in working with MSPs who will finance the purchase of Reserved Instances. This way you’ll get the benefit of the RI discount but keep the cash outlay monthly. There is obviously going to be a financing fee associated with this, but with savings of up to 57% it’s still worthwhile.

In summary, RIs or reservations are a significant lever to save up to 57% of compute costs, which is the single biggest cost component of an Azure IT environment, and dramatically increase your margins. They do require some advance planning, budgeting, and structuring of your Azure account the right way, but can significantly increase the profitability of your Azure practice. On top of the inherent savings you get with reservations, you may also get anywhere from a 2%-5% discount as a CSP Direct or CSP Reseller. As you can see, discounts start to stack up and free up margin to be used in better ways.

Interested in learning more? Don’t miss Nerdio at The 20’s upcoming VISION Conference!

Joseph Landes is the Chief Revenue Officer at Nerdio—a cloud company whose mission is to enable MSPs to build successful cloud practices in Microsoft Azure.  He previous worked at Microsoft for 23 years leading high performing international sales and marketing teams.  When not visiting MSPs you can find him trying to visit every country in the world or reading great literary fiction.

by Sage Driskell

MSPs large and small are systematically being targeted over and over in the news. It’s almost weekly a new article comes out about a given large provider being targeted. Many of these attacks come from API weaknesses. You can’t control the provider or service, but you can minimize the chance of these attacks impacting you and your customers.

Leaky APIs

Leaky APIs are APIs which allow easy exfiltration of data from a service. These exploits often stem from deprecated APIs or privilege escalations. Many deprecated APIs exist in products for backwards compatibility, but they often come with caveats and holes.

Privilege escalations can happen on APIs due to loose queries which can return data from outside of their scope. Other escalations rely on multiple APIs which accidentally return data outside the scope a user can see normally due to their interactions. A deprecated API may help break another API when glued together with the wrong product.

These types of attacks are often used to harvest credentials or information for attacks later. Stolen passwords can be used on any similar account on multiple platforms to see what is shared. Hackers glean data which makes their later attacks easier either for traditional attacks or for things like phishing attacks.

Weaponizing APIs

With the creation of things like fileless malware and easy, privileged access via RMM tools, weaponizing an API has never been easier. Other products like Webroot have been had similar incidents from adding the feature to run commands remotely. This feature creep combined with API access makes these tools further targets.

Most products rely on various SQL products for databases. Many APIs where the developers are not security conscious will be a thin layer between the user and raw SQL queries. These can be weaponized to poison the data allowing greater access or to exfiltrate useful data. Depending on the product, it may be possible to insert hostile, arbitrary code which gets run by something within the API. Some RMMs even store scripts as blobs in the database.

How Do These Attacks Happen?

These attacks happen because of lax security policies on both sides of the equation. Many vendors do not take into account the ramifications of the access their API can provide. Vendors which integrate their products may ask for more permissions than they should need to function. A lot of permission sets are too permissive in general because its easier for the developer and the user to set up.

Clients of these products often fail to limit users enough. API users floating around provide an easy in to a company if they are compromised. Sometimes, the way multiple APIs talk to one another may be targeted as well. A simple return status from a query in a limited API may provide information that the other API would not normally have given. A simple boolean reply may provide a necessary bit of information for a malicious actor to work off of.

What Can You Do?

Removing unnecessary API users or users which may have API access is one of the easiest steps to protecting yourself, even from APIs outside of your control. Turning obsolete or unnecessary API versions, or even entire APIs off, is another great step. Use it or lose it. Trim off enough of the fat, and the hunter will target easier, more profitable prey.

Shrink your attack surface to shrink what you have to keep safe. Besides just trimming off the obsolete, scope your API users. An API user which only reports from a product doesn’t need write access. Your users need Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) everywhere possible. Do not share credentials between API users and do not recycle user names if you can help it. These basic steps have headed off many attacks before they even have the chance to become a threat with very little imposition on our technicians.

If you run products in house which have an API you use, try blocking traffic based on IP for whatever is using it. This isn’t always possible, but can often be used to limit certain service APIs to specific, known entities which limits the impact of a leaky or broken API. Rate limiting connections is another great step. If your average client hits 5 requests per hour, why not set a limit of 10 requests per hour so that brute force attempts take significantly longer? Alerting on these thresholds is another great step, especially if you control something in the stack which can see this.

Researching Products

No product is going to be perfect, but you can shop around to minimize damage. How does your current product handle exploitation? Are they quick to report it or do they take their time? A vendor which reacts fast, may still get hit, but at least you’ll know before your clients do and be able to protect yourself.

A vendor which tells you about an exploit quickly is also a vendor which works on fixing it quickly. Look at the vendor’s response history and how long it takes them to clear out serious CVEs to know how big a threat they are to your business. If they can’t keep up with serious vulnerabilities which are reported, what else are the missing that’s not reported yet?

Always be on the lookout to how a vendor impacts you and your clients. A vendor which never has real access is easier to trust than one which can make system level changes. Look out for how they handle older APIs too. A vendor which leaves deprecated features in too long runs the risk of being exploited down the line.

Ask your vendor what they do about older versions and whether or not they rate limit requests and accounts. See what the scope of their API access is. The irony is that those proudest of their APIs open access will usually be the first to tell you about it. Weigh this with your other options and the impact on your client before signing.

Our Strategy

We minimize unnecessary API interaction and work to maintain best practices to prevent exploits. When an API becomes obsolete, it is removed from our system where possible. API access is also further limited for fixed entities to prevent more wholesale access from being available off premise. Users need 2FA to get into basically anything. These patterns heavily minimize the attack surface with very little maintenance. Our large community contributes to helping make sure every potential exploit is known as soon as possible.

Our Security Focus

We focus on a holistic approach to security, and try to stay ahead of exploits and reduce the risk of any given component. Your security is only as strong as its weakest link, so you must be vigilant. Prevent unauthorized API access by preventing any access unless necessary. We want to know about an exploit as soon as it is public, if not before and be able to react to it.

Cutting off your finger is better than losing your arm, but not having to lose either is best. Prioritization of exploits is extremely important to surviving in the modern security landscape. We’re well past the days of “perfect security” even being a pipe dream, let alone realistic. We work to hedge our bets and make our platform the least ideal for hackers without sacrificing functionality. An ounce of prevention, even if it’s bitter, is a lot better than a pound of cure.

Going Forward

Stay ahead of hackers by locking down every aspect of your security. APIs are one of the most often overlooked, easily exploited part of many products. Almost every major software product is going to have an API of some kind too. Know what you’re dealing with and limit the damage where you can. MSPs have become low hanging fruit to many hackers, elevate your security and elevate yourself from being next.

Our very own Sage Driskell is a Core Services Engineer at The 20. Interested in working for us? We’re hiring!

by Joseph Landes

Managed service providers (MSPs) in The 20 play a very important role in the adoption of cloud IT environments and the evolution of technology for the small and medium-size businesses they serve. This is particularly true with a powerful, yet complex, cloud environment like Microsoft Azure. SMBs look to MSPs in The 20 to expertly optimize itto fit their needs. But MSPs should also be on the lookout for how Azure can improve their own business needs—namely decreased costs and higher gross profit margins.

Here are five tips from Nerdio for The 20 members to optimize Azure costs and infrastructure to increase margins and make more money offering and reselling Azure.

1. Become a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) Reseller

Becoming a CSP reseller makes it easier for MSPs to transact Azure. In addition, CSP resellers receive a discount off Azure list prices via a CSP distributor—typically large providers—and thereby increase margins. CSP resellers are also eligible for various incentives that Microsoft makes available to its CSPs based on growth objectives. These incentives are incremental to the discount received on Azure consumption and can be in the 10% range or more when added up. Reach out to an IT distributor and ask how to become a CSP reseller or visit Microsoft’s website for more detailed information.

2. Leverage Azure Reserved Instances

The cost of virtual machines (VMs) in Azure is the single most expensive component of a typical MSP’s IT environment. Reserved instances (RIs) are reservations of a specific type of compute capacity (i.e., VM family/series) in a specific geographic location (i.e., Azure region) for a predefined period of time (12 or 36 months). Depending on the above specifics, using RIs and reserving compute capacity ahead of time can save you from 20% to 57% relative to the list pay-as-you-go price. They do require some advance planning, budgeting, and structuring of your Azure account the right way, but can significantly increase the profitability of your Azure practice.

3. Capitalize on Azure Hybrid Usage

Microsoft has created a special entitlement called Azure Hybrid Usage (AHU) that allows MSPs to pay for Windows Server via another licensing program and not through Azure. Essentially, you can bring the Windows Server licenses you already paid for to the cloud for free. As a result, the Windows Server OS meter stops spinning. AHU is a benefit unique to Azure; you can’t bring your own Windows server license to other major cloud providers. Combining RIs with AHU and CSP software subscriptions can reduce the cost of VMs by up to 80%. It goes without saying that the margin impact to an MSP from such significant cost reductions cannot be overlooked.

4. Auto-scaling for Cost Optimization

The value proposition of Azure as a public cloud is its utility-like consumption billing model: Pay only for what you use. To do this, MSPs need a mechanism to know what compute is needed and when, and a system that automatically resizes workloads to fit the demand at any given time. This means that if a VM doesn’t need to be on, a system

needs to be in place to know it and act on it by shutting down the VM at the appropriate time and then turning it back on when it’s needed again.

Azure automation platforms do exactly this, as MSPs can set business hours for each VM and tell the system what to do with the VM outside of those hours: leave it alone, shut it down, or change it to something smaller. The system will then automatically execute these instructions, resizing the VM after the end of business hours and then prior to the start of the next business day.

5. Burstable VM Instances

B-series Azure VMs are known as “burstable” VMs. They are used for non-CPU-intensive workloads (for example, domain controllers and file servers) and cost about 50% of an equivalently sized D-series VM. Burstable VMs are cheaper because Azure imposes a quota on how much of the total CPU cores can be used. Every second that the VM is using less than its quota it is “banking credits” that can be used to burst up to the total available CPUs when needed. While bursting, the VM is consuming its banked credits. Once the credits run out, the VM’s CPU utilization is throttled down to a lower utilization quota.

As you can see, these tips provide multiple ways for MSPs in The 20 to optimize their Azure consumption and increase their profitability. Understanding these tips will help you reconfigure their Azure architecture, determine how much margin they can achieve, and recognize how to build a successful and profitable cloud practice in Azure. Nerdio’s automation platform allows the members of The 20 to achieve all of this and much more. Check us out at the upcoming VISION event or on our website at www.getnerdio.com.

Interested in learning more? Don’t miss Nerdio at The 20’s upcoming VISION Conference!

Joseph Landes is the Chief Revenue Officer at Nerdio—a cloud company whose mission is to enable MSPs to build successful cloud practices in Microsoft Azure.  He previous worked at Microsoft for 23 years leading high performing international sales and marketing teams.  When not visiting MSPs you can find him trying to visit every country in the world or reading great literary fiction.

by Tom Darnall

Managing one print environment can be hard enough. Managing several at the same time can seem downright daunting. And for MSPs whose cost structures are highly sensitive to extra investment of time and resources, every second spent struggling with a print management issue can weigh heavily on the bottom line.

MSPs have another fundamental concern: customer satisfaction. Unlike an organization where print infrastructure is managed in-house, an MSP’s end users can decide to contract with another provider. That puts particular importance on retaining existing customers, which means that quality of service has to remain uncompromisingly high. Ongoing printing problems, even minor ones that might be tolerated elsewhere, can put an MSP out of business.

The catch is that, in addition to those challenges, MSPs also have a unique set of print-management requirements. Ideally, they want a single, uniform solution that allows them to deliver a core suite of services to customers while also providing a consistent management experience. Yet MSPs’ customers can have very different environments and a wide variety of printing needs, so any solution also has to be versatile enough to accommodate these disparities.

With that in mind, a print-management solution optimized for MSPs should meet the following criteria:

Powerful: Admins have access to a comprehensive suite of printer- and driver-management tools, including advanced features.

Intuitive: Profile settings as well as automated deployments and installations are easy to configure with granular precision.

Versatile: The solution integrates seamlessly with any environment without sacrificing reliability, functionality or ease of use.

Robust: Single points of failure and WAN dependencies are either reduced or eliminated completely, ensuring maximum uptime and uninterrupted printing.

Centralized: The MSP is able to fully manage the print environment for every customer, no matter how distributed, from a single pane of glass.

Consistent: The administrative experience is the same across the entire customer pool, regardless of differences in printer fleets or printing habits.

Streamlined: Administrative tasks are as efficient as possible and don’t require multiple interactions when one will do.

Scalable: The print-management solution effortlessly adapts as the customer’s print environment shrinks, expands or evolves over time.

Another consideration is that any print-management solution truly geared toward MSPs should also offer opportunities to add value. For example, one customer might want secure printing capabilities, whereas another wants to implement cross-platform mobile and BYOD printing. An MSP who’s able to provide this kind of added value with minimal physical infrastructure and low administrative overhead is going to be much more attractive to those customers.

PrinterLogic meets these demanding MSP criteria

Although traditional print-management solutions like print servers can’t fulfill all those demanding criteria, PrinterLogic’s enterprise print-management solutions are able to meet them without reservation.

PrinterLogic’s next-generation software uniquely combines the simplicity and reliability of direct-IP printing with the power of centralized management, enabling MSPs to manage the print environments of their entire customer pool from a single web-based console. This also gives PrinterLogic core capabilities like eliminating print servers, advanced printer deployments without the need for GPOs or scripts, self-service printer installations, and seamless integration alongside virtual solutions.

That’s not just theoretical. MSPs like Helion Automotive Technologies and Strata Information Technology have implemented PrinterLogic’s low-footprint, on-premises software solution for their customers in very different sectors. Helion, focuses on the automotive industry, supplying 650 car dealerships and their 28,000 employees with core IT services. Strata IT draws some of its largest customers from the healthcare industry.

Both MSPs saw a massive reduction in the time spent on print management after implementing PrinterLogic. Strata IT immediately experienced an estimated 50% drop in print-related support tickets, whereas Helion has leveraged PrinterLogic to cut 20 hours off each of its regular print-server migrations. The two MSPs also cited increased customer satisfaction as a result of their increased responsiveness, the reduced number of routine printing problems and the improved visibility into new areas of the print environment, such as consumable costs.

The next-gen features you expect from a next-gen solution

PrinterLogic also offers a SaaS counterpart. This zero-footprint, cloud-based solution offers feature parity with PrinterLogic’s proven on-premises software, giving MSPs and their customers the option of a flexible, enterprise-grade print-management solution that is infinitely scalable and incredibly cost-effective. Pioneer Technology is just one MSP that is using PrinterLogic’s SaaS solution to further its “cloud-first” philosophy and retain a competitive edge among peers in the banking, healthcare and retail industries.

And when it comes to adding value, PrinterLogic is able to provide native pull printing and mobile printing capabilities along with comprehensive print auditing tools. This kind of advanced functionality is increasingly sought after by organizations that are looking to harden their print security, provide tightly controlled but full-featured printing to their BYOD users, or gain insight into printing habits for the sake of cost-cutting and efficiency.

Tom Darnall recently joined the product team at PrinterLogic. He moved to Utah four years ago from Portland, where he held executive, product management and marketing positions at HP, Symantec, and other software firms. Tom received a B.A. in Communications from Brigham Young University and completed a summer executive MBA program at Stanford. Off the clock, Tom loves to explore the desert southwest, do landscape photography, and see live jazz in Las Vegas.

To learn more about The 20 and how we can help your business, be sure to check us out here.

Happy World Entrepreneurs’ Day!

On August 21 of each year, we like to take a moment and reflect on the day that’s been coined to celebrate innovation and empowerment of entrepreneurship and leadership throughout the world. Entrepreneurship is vital not just for job creation, but a very essential and integral part of our economic growth and problem-solving. Today we’re celebrating the 30.2 million entrepreneurs who are running and operating small businesses in this country! So to do so, we wanted to hear some of our partners’ advice on running an MSP. We asked the question: What do you wish you’d known when you started your MSP that you know now?

This is what a few of them said…

I wish I had known about recurring revenues and what products to sell and how to sell them to get this MRR.

– George Monroy, President/CEO of Monroy IT Services

I wish I had fully understood the idea that ‘if you aren’t growing, you’re shrinking.’ Going from full tech to many hats that include sales, it’s easy to forget to fill the sales funnel when business is ‘just right.’

– Patrick Hoerter, Owner of Your Network Security

A few things: Hire for culture fit, know what numbers are important to track, seek outside counsel and mentorship, and standards and processes are your friend.

– Kevin Peterson, Owner of Peterson Technology Group

None of us is as smart as ‘all of us.’ The early days were ‘lone wolf.’ I believed you ask no one; figure it out by yourself. I learned, however, that that’s wrong, and to trust other IT people; ask for help when needed. And give help freely in return. The more you give, the more your get.

– John Rutkowski, CEO of Bolder Designs

Two things: 1) Real marketing! Referral marketing is good but direct mail, telemarketing and others are what keep growth going and profits increasing. 2) Read and FOLLOW ‘The E-Myth,’ which is to understand that YOU are the business owner and MUST transition from technician to owner for a real business. 3) Yes, I said two things, but I thought I’d give a bonus: Continue to learn from your peers. They have a wealth of history to share that you later can share with the new guys as they come along.

– Bill Wright, Owner of WCI Technology Solutions

I wish I’d known about The 20 because no one tells you that you’ll be working 80 hour weeks and not getting vacations.

– Rodney Sees, CEO of Accurate Computer Solutions

Borrowing money for expansion — don’t do it. Worse than drugs. Also, there are a million apps, tools, etc. out there to “support and grow your business.” Then, there are the basic tools — RMM, AV, Backup, Billing. Don’t confuse the things you NEED with the things vendors promise will make life awesome. Some of them will, and most of them won’t, but regardless, they will cost you a lot of money. Beware of metered storage and metered throughput. NEVER agree to a long-term contract for a product you “will grow into.” If you’re staring at $300/month for 50 licenses of something you only need 5 of, then it isn’t $6/month per device, it’s $60.

– Jim Bachaud, CEO of Stratocent Technologies

So there you have it! Hopefully this sheds a little a light onto what you can expect from running your own business as entrepreneurs. We think it’s important to listen to those who have tried it — if for nothing else, it brings attention to things you may have not yet considered.

Are you interested in becoming a Partner with The 20? Click here for more information!

Tell us a little about your MSP…

Since 2002, VM Squared has been a leading provider of IT support and consulting, focusing on small and medium-sized businesses in the North Mississippi area. We have helped hundreds of businesses increase productivity and profitability by making IT a streamlined part of operations. We equip our clients with customized technology solutions for greater operational value and to reduce risk.

How long have you been a member of The 20?

Since April of 2019.

Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?

I was at a crossroads. My Marketing Director resigned with no notice for medical reasons and our marketing/sales machine was just gaining traction. I really didn’t need help desk support but badly needed the marketing piece. I talked with Matt King to see how we could make this thing work. I discovered that I could deliver the help desk for much less than it was costing me for my team of 2, and I’d get the whole help desk. I moved forward thinking I’d transition my on-site team to field engineers. I ended up removing 1 and the other is my field engineer.

We will be starting with marketing next month.

Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.

Re-aligning my business to work well with The 20 is the biggest change. I not only changed roles around but I also changed our sales process and size of client to seek out (larger).

What do you like most about being a member of The 20?

I enjoy the community and the staff of The 20. They are my extended team and are there to bounce ideas off of — then help you run with them.

What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?

Process, Process, Process. You cannot scale without well-documented processes.

What are your biggest business challenges?

Sales. I have been doing all the sales and have just not been getting in front of the right people. It goes back to marketing, but I am growing my sales team.

What are your areas of focus for 2019?

Adding prospects with 500-plus endpoints. Becoming the MID for these companies. With sales, the other problems can be dealt with. We are also opening a BCDR Failover facility for enterprise clients. This will give them a physical place to conduct business when their primary facility is disrupted.

What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?

Get the right people in the right seat on the right bus. Then, get your processes documented and stick to them. Get in front of prospects that match your core values and mirror your best clients.

What book are you currently reading?

I’m always reading or listening to books on Audible. My current books are The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick, Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz, and Social Engineering by Paul Wilson.

Favorite blogs / podcasts

I listen to Leo Laporte and read Brian Krebs.

Interested in becoming a Partner? Click here for more information!

by Rudy Lucas

 

Do you remember the time you’d go shopping for something and it took you all day to purchase it because you’d store jump and compare prices? How about the time you needed a plumber and you opened up what seemed to be endless listings inside the Yellow Pages? It wasn’t that long ago, huh?

Here’s a fun fact for you: SEO, or optimization, has been around since the late 60s. The idea was to collect a large amount of data and then organize it by category or industry. This directory would contain commercial and non-commercial listings for consumers. However, the concept of “saving time,” customer experience and advertising, dates back to the earliest civilizations known to man. Businesses in the 70s would purposely call their business “A Plumber,” or “AA Plumbing,” or my favorite, “AAA Plumbing” because business owners realized that if they can be amongst the first listings in the directory (which at this time was in alphabetical order), they can capture more business. Customers cycling through the Yellow Pages for services that they need or think they need, is what we marketers call “intentional buyers.” They are ready to make a purchase now, and all that is left to do is decide who to buy from.

Fast forward to present day, the digital era. Buyers ready to buy now, will conduct organic searches to find specifically what it is they want to buy. Search Engine Optimization has evolved immensely since its birth 25 years ago. Google, Bing and other search engine platforms share one commonality, and that is that they are built for users, not for businesses. So, it begs the question, “Why is SEO important for MSPs?”

Here’s the obvious: SEO will improve your website’s overall searchability and visibility. Many brands and businesses, regardless of the industry, know (or maybe don’t know) that you need SEO for your digital properties. That’s it, the end — right? Unfortunately, I wish it was that easy to sell to an MSP on the importance of SEO for their business.

Fact: I know MSPs right now that are eager to grow and scale, but their SEO is blank; thus, resulting in being a ghost online. Title tags, meta descriptions, keyword phrases — all absent on the back end of their website! I’ll even be a little more aggressive here and make this statement, “If you don’t take SEO seriously, your MSP will drown in the abyss.” The consensus is that most MSPs, if not all MSPs, struggle with lead generation and sales. I wonder why that is? Allow me to admonish in kind — your marketing efforts suck! Now, this isn’t entirely your fault. I can’t hold it against those that are simply uninformed about SEO and how it works. So, to the population of MSPs that are just foreign to the importance of SEO, you’re forgiven. To those that do know, however, and flat out ignore it — you know who you are — I want to help you and all MSPs have a “renewal of the mind” about SEO. Outside of the obvious reasons as to why SEO is necessary for your MSP, here are a few more to bring it all home:

1. Organic Search Is the Primary Source of Website Traffic

With Google owning about 75% of the search market, it matters whether you’re fully optimized or not. Google now has over 200 ranking factors to determine whether you are found on an organic search or not. This includes: the speed of your website, whether or not you’re mobile friendly, accuracy of keywords to your web pages and images, and many more! Think of it like this: let’s say you’re on a sales call and your prospect is listening to your pitch. They say to themselves, “Wow, this is exactly what I need!” As you’re pitching away, your prospect attempts to find you online while actively listening to how you plan to resolve their issues. You can’t blame them for digging a little deeper about who you are, right? If we can be honest with ourselves, do you think they are going to buy services from a tech company that has little to no information online about themselves — no website or LinkedIn page? Can you imagine the gravitas associated with a prospect asking you how to find you online?! Being highly visible as a trusted resource by Google and other search engines is always going to work in your MSP’s favor. A high-quality website and quality SEO build trust and credibility.

3. Local SEO Means More Engagement, Traffic and Conversions

In 2014, mobile search surpassed desktop search for the first time in history and it hasn’t looked back. Local search has become a fundamental part of small and medium-sized businesses. It aims to optimize your digital presence within a specific geographic location, so that people can find you quickly and get them closer to a sale. To promote this, you should optimize your brand’s Knowledge Graph panel, your Google My Business listing, and your social media profile. Another key component to the success of your local SEO is the importance of Google reviews and the like. Globalization matters! There’s an old Jewish proverb that says, “Do not boast about yourself. Instead, let others boast about you.” Good reviews for the services you provide helps you immensely on acquiring new business. It also holds you accountable for the services you are promising to deliver.

4. SEO Brings New Opportunities

by Dan Astin

The statistics are daunting. A great percentage of SMBs and, in particular, MSPs and other tech services firms will never reach $5,000,000 in gross revenue. As such, growth through careful acquisition of other SMBs or their assets is a great way for MSPs to increase lead gen, sales and scale.

Here are 5 fundamentals — practical keys — to increasing the likelihood of success in pursuing acquisitions:

1) Assets v. Stock

Consider buying assets only. Acquiring assets without assuming liabilities may provide the greatest ROI at the most competitive price. Many times the seller just wants out, and the tribulations that led to the decision to sell are often better left behind.

2) Acquisition Entity

The decision whether to acquire through your existing entity or a NEWCO will depend on a variety of factors, including newly-enacted tax laws. Consult with your financial, legal and tax advisors to be sure you make the most beneficial decision.

3) Due Diligence

The “opportunity inspiration” of the deal often results in a rush to get the deal done. There is no substitute for caution through due diligence in an acquisition. First up, on every deal pursuit, there should be financial and other diligence depending on the nature of the deal. Consult your professionals to assist. Even basic diligence through review of financials and tax returns can help avoid wasted time and acquisition costs when the numbers don’t measure up.

4) Term Sheet

Assuming you get past the diligence stage, work with your professionals to draft a term sheet with the core deal components. Many times, once the parties have term sheet in front of them, one of the parties determines they are not on the same page after all and at the very least disconnects may be easier to work out. Going straight to an APA may be less cost-effective if the deal is not consummated. At the contract stage, parties often become intractable when their deal term expectations are not met.

5) Just Business

Remember that it’s a business deal. Becoming emotionally attached to the thrill of the “great” deal will color judgement and lead to disappointment if the deal does not close — or, worse yet, buyer’s remorse when unbridled enthusiasm wanes after closing and it becomes clear it wasn’t such a great deal.

Dan Astin is a business attorney and consultant with offices in Philadelphia, Wilmington and San Diego. He’s a Managing Partner of Ciardi Ciardi & Astin.

Tell us a little about your MSP…

Carefree Technology was started in California in 2001. In 2014 we moved to Utah to be closer to family, so we now have offices in California and Utah, and thanks to The 20, we have clients in Washington, Oregon, California, Utah and Colorado!

How long have you been a member of The 20?

We joined The 20 in November of 2018.

Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?

We joined The 20 because it was time to grow our business. In 2001, when I quit the best job I ever had, it was so I could reclaim my time and be an active, present influence in raising our 4 kids. As our company grew, I noticed that the more employees we had, the less time I could spend with my family. Somewhere along the way, I made a conscious decision to have a “lifestyle business” so I could maintain my desired quality of life.

In a space of 4 months in 2018, 2 of our kids got married and another left for college. Now that our kids are leaving, it is time to change our focus from maintaining a lifestyle, to preparing for retirement by building a strong, profitable business and The 20 was perfectly positioned to provide the leverage we desired so we wouldn’t have to build and manage our own internal support desk.

Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.

Our biggest change since joining The 20 is largely psychological and emotional. We no longer look at a large opportunity and think, “That’s too big for us.” Now we look at those larger environments with a hopeful expectation that we can provide what others cannot.

What do you like most about being a member of The 20?

It’s a toss-up between the Support Desk and the community. I love reviewing ticket notes and activities provided by the Support Desk that I didn’t have to be involved with. However, The 20’s partner community is really unique. I have developed many close relationships over the years with “friendly competitors,” but the level of camaraderie in The 20’s partner community is truly special.

What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?

To be successful, you need to know what has lasting value and importance to you and your family and then work towards that goal every day. As long as you are working towards a meaningful end, you are successful regardless of how long it takes. The moment you identify what is important and move in that direction, you are a success.

What are your biggest business challenges?

With all the demands on our time, our largest challenge is always maintaining a consistent focus on sales and marketing activities.

What are your areas of focus for 2019?

Working with The 20 has opened the door to much larger clients. Our focus for 2019 is learning how to work with these larger, more complex environments so we can continue to add more of them.

What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?

Be honest about your shortcomings and find people or organizations who are strong where you need help. For us, that was joining The 20. It has been an absolute game-changer!

What book are you currently reading?

My ADD makes reading quite a challenge; too many shiny things around. However, I love audiobooks on 2x or even 3x speed. This month I have listened to the following titles: The Road Less Stupid: Advice from the Chairman of the Board by Keith J. Cunningham, The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey and Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World by Max Lucado.

Favorite blogs / podcasts

If I’m not listening to audiobooks, I enjoy listening to comedians like Jim Gaffigan or watching Good Mythical Morning with my daughter.

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