Episode 105: Fun productivity notepads for MSPs

In this week’s episode

• There’s a 99.74% chance that if you run an MSP, you love a good gadget. This week, Paul takes a look at some productivity toys, aimed at helping you take better notes
• Also on the show this week, do you and your team have a ‘growth mindset’? If you have one, you’re more likely to do what you want to do with your life. Paul takes a look at what a growth mindset is, and how you can introduce it to your staff.
• Plus, how do you truly run your business, rather than your business running you? Paul’s featured guest this week is an expert with unmissable advice

Featured guest

Thank you to Todd Kane from Evolve Management Consulting for joining Paul to talk about how to run your business instead of your business running you.

Connect with Todd on LinkedIn.

Show notes

• Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform
• Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert
• Here’s a link to the book Paul mentioned Mindset by Carol Dweck
• In discussing interesting notepad solutions, Paul mentioned ReMarkable 2, Rocketbook and Desk Board Buddy
• Thank you to Jonno White from Clarity for recommending the book The Advantage by Patrick Lencione
• In the next show on November 23rd Paul will be joined by inspirational storyteller Roger Jones, talking about how to turn difficult sales conversations into effective stories
• Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com

Episode transcription

Voiceover:
Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:
Hello, and you are very welcome to episode 105 of the podcast. Here’s what we got coming up for you this week.

Todd Kane:
If you’re struggling to get a handle in your business and you feel like it’s running you instead of you running your business, then we’re going to dig in to some aspects that might be able to help you grow more profitably and reduce your stress.

Paul Green:
We’re also going to be talking about some cool toys, productivity toys, and notepads in particular, which are worth you having a look at because they’re not just good for productivity, they’re good fun to have around as well. We need a bit of fun in the office sometimes, don’t we? And we’ve got a new competition for you. Next week, we’ve got a really cool prize. I’ll be telling you later on in the show what you could be winning in next week’s podcast.

Voiceover:
Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

Paul Green:
I know we normally do a book suggestion at the end of the podcast, but I wanted to start this week with a book suggestion for you as well, and it’s one from me. And the book is called Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck. Now I was actually introduced to this by my daughter’s primary school, which in the UK that’s kind of like your first proper school you go to up to the age of often around about 11. And about four years ago, they decided to become a growth mindset school. And they got all the teachers and the parents together into a great big assembly in the hall, and the head teacher explained to us what growth mindset was. And I loved it. I instantly loved it. And in fact, most of the parents thought, “Oh, this is such a good idea.”

Paul Green:
So growth mindset in a nutshell is a way of thinking about the world which allows your brain and your mind and your attitude to be very open to change. So a growth mindset is the complete opposite of a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset says you are born with all the skills you’re ever going to have. You are fixed. You can learn some stuff, sure, but you can’t really grow. You’re either born with a skill set or you’re not and that’s it. And actually, a surprising number of people are walking around with that fixed mindset in their mind. Perhaps not the sort of millennial generation onwards, I think they have grown up with this growth mindset and they have completely different ways of thinking. But I’m 47, and quite a few of my generation and older and perhaps even a little bit younger are stuck with that fixed mindset that they cannot. In fact, I would call it the cannot mindset. If I’d written that book, I’d have called it that, the cannot fixed mindset. I can’t do that because.

Paul Green:
I’ve had very good friends of mine that I’ve known for nearly 20 years say that they can’t start a business because that’s just not what they do. Well you and I know that’s ridiculous, don’t we? We started a business. We know that, yeah, it’s hard work and there’s an awful lot to learn and it’s the worst and best thing at the same time. But we’ve done it and we know that anyone can do it and anyone can learn to do it. And that is the growth mindset. The growth mindset is whatever it is that you want to achieve, you can learn to do it. You can change your mind or as they were getting those kids to do in that school, you can grow your brain. You can grow your mind.

Paul Green:
I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think 7, 8, 9 year olds really understood what that meant, but it was really interesting to see the school decide to adopt that as a mentality. In everything we do, we’re going to tell these kids that they can achieve anything they want to do because they really can grow their mind. We live in an age where a guy can start a bookshop, an online bookshop in his garage and 25 years later, he can put Captain Kirk in space. I’m talking about Jeff Bezos of Amazon, of course. Now okay, Jeff Bezos is an incredible thinker. He couldn’t have achieved what he has achieved with Amazon if he wasn’t a growth mindset thinker. And that’s an extreme example, sure. But we, all of us, know people that have dragged themselves out of situations, built incredible businesses. Maybe you’ve done it. Maybe you’ve achieved some incredible things, and it’s come from having that growth mindset.

Paul Green:
Now I recommend that you don’t just buy a copy of this book for yourself, if you haven’t read it. Get a copy for your staff as well. Give a copy to every single member of your staff. What a great investment you could make in them by giving them a copy Growth Mindset. And the only thing you need to be aware of is when growth mindset is used in the wrong way, there’s a great program on Netflix called Formula One Drive to Survive. And I forget who it was, but one of the drivers had a crash, and he was okay. But afterwards the fans were coming up to him and there was some obnoxious little kid who came up to him and said, “Mr. Racing driver, how could you reframe this crash in a positive way to help you continue to grow your mind?” And the racing driver kind of gave him a look which was along the lines of, kid, you don’t know what you’re talking about. So you’ve got to be careful that it isn’t used as some kind of buzz thing.

Paul Green:
But there are going to be members of your team who read this book and realise, “Oh my goodness, I’ve got a fixed mindset and I can do something about it.” And can you imagine what that’s going to do to them? That’s going to be like unlocking their brain. It’s literally like you’ve put a key in their ear and you have unlocked their brain. They’re going to be so grateful to you for doing this. And yet you’ll have done nothing other than give them a book.

Paul Green:
Now, there may be members of your team already who have a growth mindset. There may be members of your team who have a fixed mindset, and just reading a book isn’t going to change some of their mindsets. But even if you just change one person’s mindset or just help them unlock it, get that key and unlock it, what an incredible life you are setting them up for. What a stunning, stunning future you are setting them up for. And that doesn’t mean that they’re going to leave you. It means that their attitude is going to change. In fact, it’s going to be just positive, a very, very positive attitude. Their attitude towards learning and personal development and growth is going to change. This can only bring positive things for you and your business as benefits to helping someone unlock their growth mindset. So go on, go and get copies of that book Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck. I’ll be honest, it’s not the easiest read in the world, but you can flick through it, maybe even buy a summary of it. It’s a great book regardless, and it can make a big difference to some of your team’s lives.

Voiceover:
Here’s this week’s clever idea.

Paul Green:
I’m a bit of a nerd, a bit of a geek when it comes to productivity. Actually, I’m a bit of a nerd and a geek in everything. Marvel Cinematic Universe, Dr. Who? Yes, please. But I’m a particular nerd and geek about productivity stuff. I love a good conversation about different productivity things and things you can do and different software you can try. And over the last few months or years or so really I’ve been trying out different notepads. I know that sounds like a weird thing to say. I’ve still got a lovely leather bound notepad. It was an expensive one. It’s kind of A4 size, which is the UK equivalent of letter size in the US. And it’s not that expensive. It was about 20, $30, something like that, 20, 30 pounds. But I keep that by my computer. And that’s great for if I’m doing proper meetings. I want to write out proper meeting notes.

Paul Green:
But over the last couple of years, I’ve been experimenting with other books. So I bought a Remarkable Two, some time ago. I may have talked about this on the podcast. Because at the time, oh, I was such a fan. What’s a Remarkable Two? Well, it’s a tablet that you write on as if it is paper. And it does, it really does feel like you’re writing on paper. And the first time you get it and you try it out, you realise that this is a tablet which is internet connected, but it’s like an E ink reader, so more like a Kindle than an iPad and it doesn’t really run other apps. So you can’t be distracted by the internet and email and notifications. It’s an E ink notepad, albeit a very, very, very, very expensive one. It is about 400 pounds, which I guess is what about $450, $460. If it was 200 pounds, I’d be telling everyone to go and get one. I’d buy one for my daughter and for friends and stuff. But it’s just too expensive around about 400 pounds. By the time you’ve got the nice folio case and the special writey pen thing and all of that kind of stuff.

Paul Green:
So I had that for a few months and I really tried with it. And it doesn’t clever stuff like every single note you make, you can put it into notepads and you can sync it up with Google drive and Dropbox and other stuff like that. Ultimately, I just didn’t feel like I was getting 400 pounds worth of value out of it, so I sold it on eBay and got my money back, which is just great.

Paul Green:
And then I got myself a RocketBook. Let me get my RocketBook. Hang on, it’s just over here. Got it over my desk. So my RocketBook, ah, is beautiful. So the RocketBook is, I forget how much this cost me, $10, $20. I got it off Amazon. And the RocketBook is a reusable notebook. So actually there are a couple of versions around. This version I’ve got, you write on it with a special pen and the pages are quite thick and almost a little bit they’re sort of like plasticy. And it takes the ink a couple of seconds to dry, which is the only downside. But then once it’s dried, it’s fixed.

Paul Green:
But here’s the thing when you are done with it at the end of the day, and I just use this for kind of notes as I’m going through the day or just quickly grabbing actions, things I must do. When you’re done with it at the end of the day, you just wipe it clean. Literally you have a special cloth. You dampen the cloth and you wipe it down and it’s beautiful. And you can take photos of it. There’s a little QR code at the bottom of the Rocket Book and you can sync it up with various services. So if you’ve got a page of notes that you really want to keep, you just take a photo with your camera or use the app or something like that. I don’t actually use that. And you can send it off again to your Google drive or Dropbox or whatever service you use. I think it supports Evernote and other stuff like that.

Paul Green:
There is a different version that you can microwave. I think that’s dangerous myself, having a version you can microwave. There’s big letters at the beginning of this one saying, “Do not microwave this book.” But this one is just a wipe clean one. So this is quite cool. And it’s a fairly cheap thing to do. I got one for my daughter as well because it’s just an easy way for her to not quite get through so many papery pads. She seems to get through three or four a week somehow.

Paul Green:
The other productivity thing that I’ve been looking at in terms of notepads, and I got to get myself one of these. I haven’t got one yet, but it’s called the Desk Board Buddy. And this isn’t even really a notepad. This is something which sits on your desk. In fact, you can go to find it at DeskBoardBuddy.com. So it sits on your desk and it’s kind of like a little organiser. So you’ve got, you can open up the top, like a flip top desk, just a little one. And you can put in there your pens and your drawing pins and paper clips and stuff like that, and then you close it down. And on top, it’s got some stands. So you can put your tablet in there and your phone and all that sort of stuff.

Paul Green:
But the real power of it is it’s got a writeable surface. So you get a special marker with it. And let’s say you’re on the phone to someone, and they’re saying something, you just want to quickly jot something down. You just write it on the Desk Board Buddy. And of course you can wipe it clean at the end of the day. I think that’s a very, very smart thing to do. In fact, you could put it just next to your keyboard or just in front of your laptop. Or if you’re like most MSPs and you’ve got about seven monitors on your desk, you can just have it sort of sat in between your monitor stack. It’s really beautiful. I like it. Do you know what? I’ve talked myself into getting it. How much is it? Let’s have a look. Oh, here we go. So at time of recording, it’s on pre-order for 49 pounds, which is, what’s that about $60, something like that, 60 US dollars. And there’s a bit of a discount if you buy it more than one.

Paul Green:
What’s interesting is, just looking through their navigation, they’ve got the wall board buddy, and that’s a way of saying organised. It’s something you put on the wall. It’s the same thing. It’s that kind of wipe clean thing. And then they’ve got the Board Buddy as well. The Board Buddy is a foldable dry erase glass board. Ooh, toys, toys, toys. Because as much as digital stuff is cool, because I know you can do all of this stuff with digital, but as much as digital stuff is cool, there’s something about having physical stuff, especially when you’re taking notes or doing task lists or anything like that. I do think having something physical far outweighs doing it on your computer. So go and have a look at some of these. And if you like them, will you let me know? Give me your review and let me know what you think. You can email me anytime, hello@PaulGreensMSPmarketing.com.

Voiceover:
Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.

James:
Hey, this is producer James with news of another really, really good prize. And hopefully by now you understand the value of video in terms of your MSPs marketing, be either on social media platforms or on your website. And if you or somebody in your team fancies getting hands dirty and doing more video editing, one of the best video editors that we recommend for many reasons is Camtasia by TechSmith. Not only is it packed full of really high-end powerful features, you can do things like green screen, chroma key replacing and layering and titles and so much more. But also it’s simple to use and intuitive. And it’s one of those pieces of software that if you were to buy it, you buy it once and it’s yours forever, rather than renting it every single month. But why am I telling you this? Because you can win a latest copy of Camtasia just by listening to this podcast. Next week, episode 106, out November 23rd.

Voiceover:
The big interview.

Todd Kane:
Hi, I’m Todd Kane with Evolved Management Consulting and I help IT service providers operate with higher profit and lower stress.

Paul Green:
And I’m delighted to have you on the podcast, Todd, because you’ve actually been on my hit list, my guest hit list for two years since we started this back in, I think it was November, 2019. So thanks for jumping on the podcast this week. I want to talk about growth. Most of the MSPs that I speak to, of course they want growth. They’re desperate for growth because growth leads to more resources, it leads to hopefully increased net profit. Everyone wants a business where they have the choice to get involved in the business rather than the necessity, the having to do it day to day. But many MSPs find growth difficult. Why do you think that is?

Todd Kane:
It’s something that you’ve spoken to a number of times is that people come into this business not with a business in mind, but really focusing on delivering technology solutions for people. And inevitably, they find themselves having a great degree of success, which isn’t necessarily what they planned for or even were prepared for. When it stops becoming organic, I think is when people really start to struggle is you can provide great solutions for people and be really helpful, get lots of referrals, but if that is the only source of your growth in your business, then there’s a law of diminishing returns as to how many referrals you can potentially get in that first few years.

Paul Green:
And yet referrals are the easy way to get growth. Aren’t they? Because you don’t really have to do anything. You just have to do a good job. At what point do you think most MSPs realise that referrals alone just isn’t going to cut it anymore?

Todd Kane:
I find the there’s sort of this law that I have that I describe as the law of doubling. So a sole provider, a single man IT shop usually hires one or two people, and that’s sort of the MSP level one, I guess. And then once they get to kind of that five to eight people, the business starts to look very different and growth may start to slow down, the challenges of the business become much greater. And then certainly once you get to that 10 people, it’s like you’re fundamentally restarting the business. And I describe it as what got you here won’t get you to where you want to go. And I think that’s where things really start to change is the owner or the founder of that business really needs to focus more on the business fundamentals or delegating that responsibility to someone else in the business. Some people will choose to focus on the technology, and that’s okay. But someone in the business needs to start to focus on the operations and the marketing and sales side of the business as well.

Paul Green:
Now I’m going to guess that most owners really struggle with that. They struggle to either hand the reins over to someone else or they struggle to get enough of their attention focused on growing the business and not actually working in the business.

Todd Kane:
I think the part also that people really miss is that there’s a ton of opportunity to increase the profitability of the business without growing. A lot of organisations if they want more revenue, they tend to just look externally and say, “Well, if I want more money, I need more business.” And that’s not necessarily true. I think there’s a lot of aspects of the business that can be improved and optimised so that you’re actually building a stronger foundation so that when you do grow your business, you’re in a much better position and the business tends to hum a little better than if you’re adding compounding on top of what is already broken fundamentals of the business.

Todd Kane:
So really focusing on the operational piece is what I tend to help people with. And from a sales and marketing standpoint, I’m not necessarily a marketing expert. I know enough to be dangerous in that department. But one of the aspects that I really help people focus on is growing the existing businesses. So they have clients that you can sell to already, and that’s a hell of a lot easier than working with a prospect for two or three months to convert them to a new client, when you can work with an existing client and increase the all in seat price, provide more services, sell more projects or product, and that’s a much easier way to grow your business.

Paul Green:
Yeah, I like that. And in fact, let’s take that and let’s run with that. So let’s do a bit of role play, Todd. I think we can do some role play. We’ve not done this on the podcast before. So imagine I’m the MSP owner. I’ve got the 10 staff I’ve really to level of frustration where I know I want to grow more because I’ve done it in the past, but I don’t understand why I’ve hit this brick wall of growth. Obviously this is a completely fictitious scenario, but what are the kinds of questions that you would ask me? What are the kind of areas that you would want to explore with me and delve into?

Todd Kane:
I think one of the first ones you want to focus on is what is your seat price? Especially people early on in their business and their IT services journey, especially if they’re new converting to the MSP side of the world, they tend to undervalue themselves and really not understand the competitive landscape. A lot of organisations will simply look over their shoulder and say, “Well, I’ve heard so and so is charging 60 or $70 per seat. So I guess that’s what I should charge.” And that’s not the way that you should be building your pricing. You should be looking at what the benchmark pricing is, justifying the priced based on your costs, what’s included in your stack and a lot of those aspects. So the cost I think of what you’re selling needs to be the first thing that you would want to look at.

Paul Green:
And what would you look at next?

Todd Kane:
The operational efficiency, and there’s sort of multiple levers. I’m very data driven in the work that I do with organisations, so looking at the time per ticket, the volume of tickets, any clients that have an out sized number of tickets relative to the rest of your client base, all of those things are going to be indications of looking for opportunities to lean out your operation. What are the things that you can improve? What are the things that you can reduce the volume on from a service standpoint? And then that’s a great way to be able to do more with less.

Todd Kane:
And I think a lot of organisations tend to overwork themselves with a lot of things that serve them at some time, but really don’t do a lot of service to them or their clients in the current operation. And there’s a lot of things that can be cleared out or just left at the wayside and to be able to focus on the higher value activities.

Todd Kane:
And then finally, what type of interface do you have with the existing client base? How much do you talk to them? Do you position yourself actually as someone who provides value or are you just viewed as the IT guy and they don’t tend to think of you unless something is broken?

Paul Green:
Because there is a big difference, isn’t there, between a true partnership where you are working with someone on technology roadmaps, you’re doing strategic reviews or quarterly business reviews. There’s a big difference between that and being, as you say, the IT guy who just gets a call when it’s broken. But do you find that that’s more of a mindset shift? Because we’re talking here about almost a fundamental re imagining of the business and you mentioned that earlier. But this sounds like a completely different kind of business going forward, and I guess some owners really struggle with that.

Todd Kane:
A hundred percent they do, yeah, because you go so long through your business where you have to do everything. You do the financial management. You do the sales. You do the technology. And that becomes really difficult to give up at some point and just sort of trust that other people will do it, especially if the people that you are handing off those responsibilities really don’t have sort of the training or the skillset to draw upon to be good at those things, so it definitely takes some time. But without a focused effort, you’re either going to be responsible for everything in your business, which isn’t sustainable or you’re just going to be frustrated by the fact that you can’t hand off these things with confidence to your staff.

Todd Kane:
And that’s again, a big thing that I like to focus on in this growth aspect of the businesses, I find especially once people get to that eight or 10 staff clip point, that’s when you need to start to build the next generation of leaders in your organisation, because that is what is going to allow you to step back and either focus less on the business in general or at the very least focus on the areas of the business that either need your attention from a strategic standpoint or quite frankly the parts of the business that you enjoy doing. And the other parts that aren’t as the loved side of the work that you do, if you can confidently delegate it, then fantastic. Otherwise some of those other things that you can start to focus on like spending more time with the clients and understanding their business and being able to find ways to provide value.

Paul Green:
Okay, so in a second, Todd, I’m going to ask you to say what you do to help MSPs in this exact situation. Before we do, let’s turn you into Dr. Todd and give me some symptoms. So there’ll be people listening to this kind of nodding along thinking, “This sounds like it could be us. I could be in this exact moment right now.” Give us some typical symptoms that an MSP owner should look for within their business to know that actually, yes, they’re at this point where they need to do this transition.

Todd Kane:
I think one of the biggest ones potentially, if you’re struggling financially and that you’re lacking the capability to cover cash flow and there are maybe some months that are a little tight. And if you’re operating an MSP correctly, you should be paying the bills on the first of the month and not have a lot of operational overhead costs that really kind of slow you down or limit your ability to cover the costs of the business. So profitability and cash flow kind of being number one.

Todd Kane:
Number two would be, do you find that you’re working 80, 90 hours a week or even 60? Everyone in your business, yourself included, should be targeting towards that 40 to 50 hours, in general. There’s going to be some horrible weeks every once in a while, stuff in IT happens. But if you feel overworked, then something isn’t operating correctly in your business. There’s either too much work for how much resources you have to apply for it, or there’s not enough cash to able to supply the resources to be able to do the work that is required out of your business.

Todd Kane:
The third one that I see time and time again, one of the questions that people ask me the most is how do I get my team to be more accountable? Accountability is a very tricky thing. The cheeky answer to this is that you can’t make anyone accountable to anything. You have to provide the right framework and the right systems and tools that you can actually hold them to some level of accountability and make that more of an intrinsic drive. So supporting your team and giving them the tools and capabilities necessary to be successful will drive accountability. And if they feel supported and they enjoy what they do, they’re going to be a hell of a lot more responsive and provide the things that you need done to get done.

Paul Green:
This is just great. Thank you, Dr. Todd. You can use that as part of your branding if you want to. That’s that’s a freebie from me. You don’t have to. You probably won’t. So Todd, tell us what you do to help MSPs at all stages of growth and how can we get in touch with you?

Todd Kane:
Yeah, so I act in a way as a bit of an outsourced COO or a fractional COO, really helping organisations top to bottom. So helping with the design of their offering and their pricing, design of their service desk, helping out with cleaning up some data, making their tools operate more efficiently, setting up some dash boarding and business intelligence, really just to give them a better understanding of their business. Compare them against industry standards, so what works well, what doesn’t and how do we get you towards where you want to go? This is where I’m a bit different than some consultants out there. I act much more in a consultative fashion to really understand you and your business and get you to where you want to go. And that usually involves sort of all aspects of the business, and I roll up my sleeves and work with you as a partner to help you to improve your business in all aspects. If you want to get hold of me, the best place to kind of look for me, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn or a quick URL to find me as ITisabusiness.com.

Voiceover:
Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast. This week’s recommended book.

John O’White:
Hi, I’m John O’white, founder and principal consultant of Clarity. My book recommendation is The Advantage by Patrick Lencione, because The Advantage talks about the one advantage you can have over every other business in the world, and that is to have a healthy organisation. Anyone can have a smart organisation, get smart people in a room, work on your marketing, work on your strategy, get smarter in your finances. But the real differentiate, the advantage as Patrick Lencione calls it, is to have a truly healthy organisation where you get rid of confusion, get rid of politics and create a healthy team culture where everyone is rowing in the same direction.

Voiceover:
Coming up next week.

Roger Jones:
I’m Roger Jones and next week I’ll be talking to Paul about the power of storytelling for tech firms, how to bring your MSP firm to life. I’m going to be giving you tips and insights, how you can storify your business and accelerate sales growth.

Paul Green:
We’re also going to be talking about the attitude of your business towards your clients. You’ve probably got a great attitude towards helping them solve their problems and make their technology better. But what about making their life easy? What if the attitude of you as the leader and the whole business was about how can we constantly add value? How can we do that by making their life easier every single day? MSPs have great retention and benefit from great retention, but what if we could make it even better just by adding that constant value and making their life easy? So we’ll be looking at that next week, and I’ve got for you three quick wins to increase your revenue. If you need an urgent increase in revenue, that is what we are going to talk about in next week’s show. Have a great week in business. I’ll see you then.

Voiceover:
Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast.