Episode 130: Do MSPs get imposter syndrome?

Episode 130: Do MSPs get imposter syndrome?

Paul Green

Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast
Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast
Episode 130: Do MSPs get imposter syndrome?
Loading
/

Episode 130 includes:

  • To hell with imposter syndrome! Here’s how to become the truly confident MSP you really are
  • The importance of taking your team out for a walk
  • Plus this week, former MSP and number one LinkedIn expert Andrew Moon shares his advice on the platform

Featured guest

Andrew Moon is a featured guest on Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast

Thank you to Andrew Moon from Orange Nomad for joining Paul to share some great LinkedIn lead generation tips.

Andrew is serial entrepreneur who has launched and run several successful businesses since the age of 8! After running a successful MSP for 10 years, Andrew founded Orange Nomad to help MSPs, small businesses and entrepreneurs bridge the gap between strategy and execution. Andrew helps his clients to learn how to build a “calm company”.

Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmoonorangenomad

Show notes

Episode transcription

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

Paul Green:
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the show. Here’s what we got coming up for you this week.

Andrew Moon:
Yes, LinkedIn is favouring the algorithm of people who are creating that type of content. Every time I go live, my 14,600 and some followers on LinkedIn are notified. I don’t pay for that. It’s great marketing and nobody else is doing it.

Paul Green:
That’s Andrew Moon from Orange Nomad. He’s a former MSP owner and arguably one of the most knowledgeable people about LinkedIn in our world. He’s going to be joining me on the podcast later on. Plus, we’re going to be talking shortly about something called the walk and talk. If you want to have a chat with your team, why sit in a stuffy meeting room where you can get outside and go and have a walk and talk about it.

Voiceover:
Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Podcast.

Paul Green:
I don’t watch a huge amount of TV. I try and limit myself to no more than an hour a day. And that hour has to be filled with something pretty high quality. Just recently, I’ve been watching something on Disney Plus. It’s in their start section. It’s called The Dropout. And it’s the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos . I don’t know if you are up to speed with this story, but it was a tech startup, which a few years ago completely crashed because essentially the technology they said they were creating, they weren’t creating at all.

Paul Green:
And there was a big high profile trial in January this year. And this is a really good dramatisation of the whole situation. And it stars, can’t remember her name. Is it Amanda Seyfried? The one who’s in Mamma Mia. But yeah, she plays Elizabeth Holmes so brilliantly. Now the episode I was watching last night, Elizabeth Holmes, so the character was appearing at some technology show and she was being interviewed about something called the imposter syndrome. I’d completely forgotten about imposter syndrome.

Paul Green:
Now you yourself may have suffered from this syndrome without even knowing that it had a name because I have certainly suffered from it and most of the business owners I’ve ever met in my career have suffered from it at some point or another. What is the imposter syndrome? Well, it’s where essentially you start to doubt self. So you could have been in tech for 10, 15 years. You could be a highly experienced level three technician. You know exactly how to either solve every problem or where to go and find the information to solve every problem.

Paul Green:
You are as good as they get. And you know this because you started your MSP, you run it brilliantly and everything goes well most of the time because nothing’s ever brilliant all the time. Imposter syndrome is what happens when a little slither of doubt just comes into your mind. Actually it’s not really your mind, it’s more your emotions. Imposter syndrome is more an emotional thing. And you actually have that feeling. It’s almost a sick feeling that you are an imposter that you are making this up as you go along and that at some point, you’re going to get caught.

Paul Green:
In fact this is the exact conversation I have with MSP owners when we talk about imposter syndrome, the fear, but I might be caught one day. Someone might find out that I don’t know as much as I actually know. Now maybe that’s not such a thing when you’re talking to ordinary business owners and managers, maybe that’s more of a thing when you’re talking within our world, when you’re talking to other MSP owners or other people in the channel. This is a very, very, very friendly vertical.

Paul Green:
I’ve never known a sector so friendly and yet lots and lots of different opinions, especially if you go onto something like Reddit. If you’ve ever been onto the MSP subreddit, “Oh, that’s like the Wild West.” You can go on there with an opinion and there’ll be 20 anonymous people there with loaded guns ready to tell you that your opinion is completely wrong because of course that’s the worst thing about Reddit. You can hide behind an anonymous handle. Here’s the thing with imposter syndrome.

Paul Green:
Everyone has it and you’ve just got to get over it. And I’ve got no particular coping strategy to give to you other than you just got to believe yourself. You’ve got to trust yourself. In 2016, when I first got into the world of managed services, I had massive imposter syndrome because I knew my marketing stuff, my B2B marketing stuff inside out. And even in the six years since then, I would say I’ve doubled my knowledge and my capability. But six years ago, back in 2016, I definitely knew what I was talking about.

Paul Green:
And I knew a little bit about technology and a little bit IT, but in my first year or so, I had huge imposter syndrome. I was constantly asking myself, what am I doing here? How do I know that this stuff works? How can I set myself up as a marketing expert in this world when actually I’m just a general B2B marketing expert? And it was over a period of time that I discovered that 80 to 90% of what I brought into this world, this sector actually was particularly valid.

Paul Green:
And then I’ve learned that final 10, 15, 20% over the last few years just by putting in the hard work, working very closely with MSPs and seeing what exactly works and what exactly doesn’t work. But even I felt that imposture syndrome and it’s almost impossible to stop it. It’s almost impossible to stop that sick feeling that you might be caught. If ever you get yourself in this position, you have to just try and work your way out a bit, remind yourself that you’ve done the work, you’ve got the experience, you know what you are doing.

Paul Green:
If you are no good at the technical work, you wouldn’t keep the clients because even though they don’t know what they don’t know, they do know when someone really can’t do their job properly. They do know over a year or a couple of years if you as a business just can’t fix things and you can’t prevent things from going wrong in the first place. They will catch you if you are genuinely no good at what you do. Now I’m assuming that 99% of the people listening to this podcast are actually very good at what they do.

Paul Green:
And certainly if you are keeping clients past a couple of years, if they’re willingly, happily choosing to sign a new contract with you, really you’ve got no worry about imposter syndrome at all. I have a notice board that I keep up in front of my desk and I pin things on there that I think of interest. Now I’ve actually got my sitting standing desk in standing mode. So I can’t see it at the moment. So I’m just going to go and grab the board because there’s something on there I want to read to you. So hang on. Don’t go away. Don’t go anywhere. I’m just going to grab this board.

Paul Green:
I’ve got the board here and there’s a couple of things written on here. In fact, I really, really should read some of these out to you one day. This is the one I want to read to you and it’s a quote by Denzel Washington, the actor. This is such a great quote. This resonated with me so much that I printed out and put it on this board. Denzel Washington’s said, “You’ll never be criticised by someone who is doing more than you, you’ll always be criticised by someone doing less. Remember that.” Very sound words. Thank you very much, Denzel Washington.

Paul Green:
To me, that’s the thing that takes away imposter syndrome. If you are criticised by someone, chance aren’t they’re doing less than you and they’re not really someone whose opinion you should value. If you have that feeling yourself, you’ve got to find a way to get rid of it. If that feeling is put there by someone else or something like Reddit or some platform like that, just remember what the great Denzel Washington says, “The only people who criticise those who are doing less.” Imposter syndrome is not real, it’s a horrible, emotional feeling where we feel we are going to get caught and the reality is we are not. Why? Because you and I are actually very good at what we do.

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

Paul Green:
I started the last bit talking about Theranos and I’m going to start this bit talking about Steve Jobs at Apple. Get me being across Silicon Valley this episode. Now when Steve Jobs died, when was that? Alexa, when did Steve jobs die?

Alexa:
Hi, Paul, sadly Steve Jobs died on October 5th, 2011.

Paul Green:
Thank you, 2011. Okay, oh by the way, apologies if I’ve just tricked off your Alexa with that. So back in 2011, when Steve Jobs, I don’t know if you remember, but it was very unexpected and it happened very, very quickly. And I’m such an Apple fan. I immediately went and got a couple of the books about Steve Jobs. The one by, I think it’s Walter Isaacson, which is a very, very in depth biography about Steve Jobs. That’s one I’ve read two or three times over the years.

Paul Green:
And one of the things I loved about the way that Steve Jobs did business was that he liked to do something called a walk and talk. So if he had an important meeting with someone, he wouldn’t always want to sit inside a meeting room. Often they would just go for a walk. Admittedly, that’s probably easier in California where it is sunny every single day. Certainly here in the UK, there are some days you wouldn’t go for a walk and talk. But he used to take people out and they would have a chat while they were walking.

Paul Green:
And from a human physiology point of view, that’s a very, very smart thing to do because when you are walking and you’re exercising, your brain is actually functioning in a slightly different way. It’s better. It’s a better way of doing it. When we sit down in chairs, sitting around a meeting table, oh my goodness, it’s dull. It’s so not good for our bodies. Our postures are wrong. Our brains are sleepy. There’s not a lot of anaerobic exercise. Is it anaerobic or aerobic? I can’t remember.

Paul Green:
There’s just not a lot going on in our bodies in a very healthy way when we’re sat around a meeting room banging our heads repeatedly onto a meeting table. What we really want to be doing is doing some exercise. We are humans. We are designed to be either moving or not moving, moving nor sleeping. That’s the way we were built hundreds of thousands of years ago. So the walk and talk I think is a great way of talking to your team. And maybe this is a habit that you can form with your team. You want to chat to a technician about something, doesn’t always have to be in a meeting room or even in front of a computer screen. Why not go for a 10 minute walk around the block?

Paul Green:
In fact imagine if you did one-to-ones with your team on a regular basis just going for a walk. You are having a walk with them wandering around the streets where you are, assuming it’s safe to do that, in the streets where you are or you drive out to a green space somewhere and you just go for a walk. What a great way to do a one-to-one because you don’t need to sit in front of a computer screen to do something like that. Now what about if your team are remote? If they’re remote, it’s even easier.

Paul Green:
In fact what you could do is you could arrange for you to go for a walk at your location and then to go for a walk at their location. So you’re both walking at the same time on a phone call or on a video call. And yeah, there’ll be a bit of why not, getting out of breath, hovering and puffing. That doesn’t matter though, does it? Because you can still have a quality conversation and your brains are going to be firing off like anything. There’s going to be so much energy in that conversation.

Paul Green:
It’s going to be a much better conversation than if you were just sat on Zoom talking to each other. The walk and talk is such a simple thing to do. It gets us off our butts, it gets us outside. It gets fresh air, some vitamin D from the sunshine and we get some regular exercise. And the content of the meeting is better and we feel good when we get back. What’s not to like about the walk and talk?

Voiceover:
Paul’s blatant plug.

Paul Green:
Thousands of MSPs now have a free copy of my book called Updating Servers Doesn’t Grow Your Business. It’s a physical book which will post out to you if you’re based in the US or in the UK. Let me read you a little bit from page 35. This is chapter 10, why you need to take more holidays. “So when you systemise the business, it’s time to go skiing or book a cruise or a fortnight at Disney or whatever floats your boat. Just go on holiday. In fact do it at least two or three times a year.

Paul Green:
If you really can’t afford a nice foreign holiday, then stay at home and do some day trips, but make sure you have a proper break. A proper break is where there are no phone calls, no emails, nothing at all. From 5:00 PM on the Friday you finish to 9:00 AM on the Monday you start again, not a single interruption because, “Boss, sorry to bother you, but XYZ client is not happy with us. Can you sort it out?” We’ll interrupt the critical mental task you must undertake on your holiday, which is to not think about the business for a few days at least.

Paul Green:
You see, after a few quality days enjoying the sun, sipping cocktails, you’ll wake up one morning and you won’t be able to stop thinking about the business, but you’ll be thinking about the really important things and not the daily clutter.” So that’s on page 35. It’s a really quick read. There’s only what? Is a 48 pages in this. We’ve designed it as the quick guide to improving the marketing and the growth of your business. It’s called Updating Service Doesn’t Grow Your Business and you can get your free copy shipped to you from paulgreensmspmarketing.com.

Voiceover:
The big interview.

Andrew Moon:
I am Andrew Moon. I run a company called Orange Nomad. I turn hustling entrepreneurs into calm, unstoppable CEOs.

Paul Green:
That’s a really good intro. And Andrew, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I have a long list of people that I can’t quite believe haven’t yet been on the podcast. And your name is right up there at the top. It’s an absolute delight to get you on here. I’ve been following you for a couple of years. Now I want to talk particularly about LinkedIn today. I think LinkedIn has some huge, huge opportunities for MSPs throughout this year. Before we talk about LinkedIn, which I know is your absolute specialist subjects, do you want to just tell us a little bit about your story because I know you’ve been in the tech world since before Windows 95, haven’t you?

Andrew Moon:
I have. Yeah, I’ve been an entrepreneur since age eight. So I’ve been a diehard entrepreneur, run many businesses, but specifically the last 25, 30 years been in the tech space in one facet or another throughout the.com boom all the way up till I sold my MSP in 2014.

Paul Green:
So how long did you have that MSP for?

Andrew Moon:
We were a full fledged MSP for 10 solid years from 2004 when my son was six months old when I relaunched network logics as a full fledged MSP. So that was way in the early days where all of the tools, the MSP space was really in its infancy, but grew that to the point where I was able to sell that in 2014. And now I actually help other tech entrepreneurs with the things that I’ve learned, good, bad and ugly over running a business for 10 years.

Paul Green:
Yeah, I bet. And I imagine getting… Because I did a similar thing. I sold, it wasn’t a tech business, it was a marketing agency, but I sold that after 10 years of work. And I think that it’s almost the perfect amount of time, isn’t it? That you’ve got 10 years of energy to put into something. I don’t know if you felt when you sold yours, but I certainly felt as though I’d completed the circle, that the business was finished, it could operate without me and I wasn’t ready to put any more time into that business. Is that how you felt with your MSP?

Andrew Moon:
There was a lot of things came to the four in 2014. I hit 40 years old. It was time. My son was 10 years old. I was to the point where I took it to where I wanted to go. We were just about a million dollars and I didn’t know that I wanted to continue on for another five or 10 years. For me, I had that itch to get back into a startup. It was just that perfect culmination of timing, my body getting old, all that fun stuff, but yeah, it just made sense.

Paul Green:
You say your body getting old. If you turned 40 in 2014, that makes you and I pretty much the same age. So I’m 47 now turning 48 in the summer.

Andrew Moon:
Turn 48 in a couple weeks. So I know this podcast will go out after my birthday, but yeah, in two weeks, I turn 48.

Paul Green:
So clearly those few extra weeks that you’ve got on me must make such a difference to you. Right, let’s talk about LinkedIn. So as you just said, we are actually recording this in the middle of February and we record really far ahead with this podcast. Now the reason I state that is obviously this interview isn’t being played out till May, but we’re going to be talking about some stuff which LinkedIn is releasing.

Paul Green:
And I know that LinkedIn has been working on this for some time, but obviously we can’t guarantee 100% that everything will be in May exactly as we think it’s going to be when we are recording this in February. So we’ll talk about the new cool stuff in a second. Let’s just first of all talk about LinkedIn overall for MSPs because you are pretty much known, Andrew as the go-to guy for LinkedIn for MSPs.

Andrew Moon:
It came about by accident, the whole coaching and training on LinkedIn. I used LinkedIn extensively. I stumbled onto a methodology, a framework while I was running my MSP. Like everybody else, I tried every single piece of marketing or every tactic, marketing tactic known demand. Blew through tons of cash on coaching, training, wasted marketing efforts until I came upon… Again, I stumbled it upon it by accident really with LinkedIn.

Andrew Moon:
I’ve been on LinkedIn since 2006. Really didn’t… You start using it extensively until probably 2011, 2012, but I stumbled upon the power of LinkedIn when I was planning a lunch and learn. We did in-person events. That was really one of the things I enjoyed with running an MSP. But where I stumbled on LinkedIn is we were a couple weeks out from an event. I only had probably seven or eight people registered. So I decided I was going to get on LinkedIn and send personal invitations out to people that I had connected with over the last couple years prior to that.

Andrew Moon:
Didn’t think anything of it. Went home for the night. Came back in the next morning, I had 27 registrations and my LinkedIn inbox was full, full of messages and they read pretty similar, but I probably had 50 or 60 messages. People said, “Hey, thank you for inviting me to this event. I can’t come to this one, but unfortunately please invite me to the next one.” And it was just one after another after another. And you and I are in the marketing game. And you know that the hardest thing with marketing is getting a response of any kind.

Andrew Moon:
And that’s where the light bulb came on for me was maybe there is something to my LinkedIn network. Maybe there is something to this LinkedIn thing. So I started with LinkedIn on our next lunch and learn the next quarter. We put, I think, 55 people in a room for a lunch and learn event. And that was by far up to that time our most successful event strictly off of one thing. And that was my LinkedIn marketing. We didn’t do anything else. I wanted to see if there was something to this LinkedIn thing.

Andrew Moon:
So I started documenting everything we were doing with LinkedIn. I regularly did outreach, made connections and spent Thursday afternoons having coffee meetings with people and having coffee meetings with people who may not become clients. And it was just an enormous thing came of that. It’s just a momentum that we got. We got referrals, I got leads from everywhere all because of how I interacted with people on LinkedIn and went about it with the attitude of serving and creating connections and relationships first.

Paul Green:
And obviously that was… Well, you started doing that dramatically a number of years in the past. And since then, of course Microsoft has acquired LinkedIn and LinkedIn has definitely evolved in many ways. I’ve seen that it’s in parts, not copied, but been inspired by Facebook’s algorithms because LinkedIn works in very similar ways to Facebook sometimes, but it’s also gone off and done its own thing. As a usable tool, as a lead generation tool, do you think LinkedIn has more power today than when you first started using it or has it gone off in a completely different direction?

Andrew Moon:
Right. Yeah, it was 2012 when that light bulb came on for me. Here we are 10 years later and we’re still talking of about LinkedIn being a wide open platform and especially for our audience, which are IT providers. It is still a wide open platform. So I think given the things that LinkedIn has pulled in especially in the last two years since COVID, I’m excited about where they’re going with the platform, I’m excited about some of the things that they’re rolling out are usable tools that nobody else is doing, especially in the IT space. We’re going to talk about a couple of them today, but I think it’s exciting if I’m an MSP because here is a platform where I can stand out from everybody else because nobody’s doing it. Everybody’s afraid to get on there and create relationships and put themselves out there.

Paul Green:
Well, let me ask you about that. What’s the fear? What easy do you think that stops MSPs from fully embracing LinkedIn and throwing themselves into it? Is it a worry that I can’t do this, I don’t know what I’m talking about or is it just a case that they don’t really understand the platform or is it a fear that actually everyone’s already doing it even though that’s not the case?

Andrew Moon:
It’s a combination of the two. I think the fear comes in all of the noise and different approaches to LinkedIn. I mean, there’s LinkedIn gurus. You and I both know that there’s different methodologies with how to tackle LinkedIn. But one of the things that has stood the test of time is the ability to create and nurture relationships is time consuming. Everybody wants the easy button, especially when it comes to lead generation. So okay, I’m going to get on LinkedIn and that’s what I’m going to do.

Andrew Moon:
I’m going to hit the easy button and leads are going to start rolling in. But I think the fear is putting themselves out there and being authentic. And that’s one of the first things that I teach, especially IT providers with their personal LinkedIn profile is to make it personal. Tell us about why you got in business. Tell us what is it that you do that makes you different than every other IT professional and especially the folks that are running IT firms. A CEO wants to see another CEO, not a technician.

Andrew Moon:
And I think that that’s the fear is people don’t feel that they have a good enough story, but when you dig in, you find out how a lot of these ladies and gentlemen have started their IT practices and their reasons why. They’re incredibly interesting stories, but I think it’s fear that I got to get on there and I got to sell because that’s why I’m here. But when you take it from a different perspective that you’re there to create a relationship and add value, that’s when the platform completely changes for you.

Paul Green:
Yeah, so it becomes a way of reaching people and a way of starting that engagement with them rather than a selling platform. That makes complete sense. So let’s talk about these two big things that LinkedIn is launching this year and they both sit under something called creators. Can you tell us what the creators program is?

Andrew Moon:
It was one of the things, I think they launched it last August. They enabled creator mode. And I think there was a lot of ambiguousm as to what that was and what were benefits. They weren’t real clear when they launched it, but now it is becoming more clear and they’re being much more defined in the things that they’re rolling out. The two of the biggest benefits that they’ve just rolled out, which I have seen tremendous benefit for one of them is newsletters and the ability to put out newsletters, not only for your personal profile, but also your company pages, but LinkedIn live, live streaming.

Andrew Moon:
I think that they have finally figured out that there is some market share to live streaming. And I’ve been doing it since April Fool’s Day of 2020. I went live for the first time on a regular basis on LinkedIn. I’ve had LinkedIn live since 2019, but didn’t really start taking it seriously till 2020. But an amazing thing has come from that is the community that we’ve drawn from doing that on a regular basis. And I’ve also generated business from it. And I do absolutely zero selling at all on those live stream.

Andrew Moon:
But it’s building that no like and trust factor you and I both know it doesn’t get any better than video. I mean, people see you, they see how you interact, they get to know you as a person. And if that clicks, what are they going to do when they need what you have to offer? You are the first person that they think of. So I think that in itself has got me excited. I’ve been waiting for them to really take that seriously, the live streaming component.

Andrew Moon:
And I think the other fear with that on MSPs is what if nobody shows up or how do I do it? What are the technical aspects of doing live streaming? It’s really not any different than doing a webinar, it’s just you’re doing it live. And you do a webinar generally live. It’s the same thing, it’s just different mechanism, different tools. But I think that is, again, it is a Wild west on the LinkedIn if you’re an MSP to educate people.

Paul Green:
Yeah, Yeah-

Andrew Moon:
And I think that that’s what people want is that education on what they do.

Paul Green:
I completely agree. And live streaming is terrifying to many people because it’s live. I was a radio presenter for 10 years. And the funny thing is what you find when you record content is that it takes you longer because you can stop and go back and do it better. Whereas when you’re doing something live, you tend to perform at a higher level anyway. That’s certainly what I’ve found. And I think live streaming is a beautiful thing because you just need to be yourself. You don’t have to be a polished presenter, you can just be yourself.

Paul Green:
What’s interesting about LinkedIn live and it’s only really in the last couple of weeks that I’ve noticed as I’ve been in LinkedIn, it’s been popping up and saying, oh, this person, who’s your contact is live right now. And in the same way that this was brand new to Facebook back in 2014, 2015, I remember distinctly for the first time being on Facebook and seeing it come up and saying, one of your friends was live and being able to actually watch a live video stream with a friend. Obviously LinkedIn, it’s a more business orientated one.

Paul Green:
What’s really good about this and I know this is the same with newsletters as well is that algorithmically LinkedIn is putting a lot of attention on this. So when you go live on LinkedIn, its algorithm is notifying more people and its trying harder to get people to watch your live stream. When you publish a newsletter, and we’ve only just got into newsletters ourselves and got members of our MSP marketing edge service into it, when you publish a newsletter, it puts that content in front of more people.

Paul Green:
It emails out all of your connections. It wants you to have subscribers. So I guess, when you talk about the Wild West here, are you saying because linked wants these new creator mode features to work, that’s why it’s trying a lot harder to put eyeballs on the stuff that you create in creator mode?

Andrew Moon:
It is. And like I said, I’ve studied that where I’ve really been following our metrics as to what is the engagement on our live streams versus just again, like you said, that pre-recorded content. They see what’s going on YouTube land. I mean, they see that people going live on YouTube and how much engagement that brings. It’s just the excitement that you get from a live stream is completely different than a Zoom webinar.

Andrew Moon:
I mean, it is really hard to explain that dynamic, but yes, LinkedIn has figured out, okay, there’s something to this. I forget the name of the company they just bought in August as well, but they are some type of software for short form content. So those videos that are LinkedIn or YouTube shorts, something that’s a minute to a minute and a half, they went and bought a company to develop. That’s coming to LinkedIn this year.

Andrew Moon:
I’ve started to see some of those things. But yes, LinkedIn is favouring the algorithm of people who are creating that type of content. And like you said, every time I go live, my 14,600 and some followers on LinkedIn are notified, even on mobile. I don’t pay for that. It’s great marketing and nobody else is doing it.

Paul Green:
Yeah, it’s beautiful. You couldn’t… Well, I’m sure on one day that LinkedIn will find a way for us to pay for this. But yeah, I think you couldn’t pay for that. Getting in early on these things is incredible. Talking about LinkedIn shorts. I’ve had quite a few people ask me recently about TikTok. TikTok of course is a short video clips platform, which is primarily aimed at tweens, the preteen audience, although it is used by a surprisingly large range of people.

Paul Green:
I don’t see that as a particularly useful business tool right now, not for MSPs anyway because I don’t think it’s how you would reach proper decision makers. But I guess, if they’re going to put short videos onto LinkedIn and algorithmically give them that amount of attention, that could be an incredible tool in the future as well. Andrew, you and I are going to continue this conversation. There’s so many more things that I want to ask you about.

Paul Green:
I want to ask you about some of your early businesses, especially what you were doing aged eight as an entrepreneur. I’m going to ask you as well about your branding. So obviously for people listening on this podcast, they can’t see you, but you are just amazing at your branding and your company’s called Orange Nomad. And as I’m sitting here watching you on my screen as we’re recording our video interview, there’s orange everywhere. So I want to talk to you about branding.

Paul Green:
I know you coach MSPs and you do groups of MSPs. I want to get some insights from you on that, on what successful MSPs do. And also just a few more questions on LinkedIn and how you personally use LinkedIn. So we’re going to continue that interview on YouTube. If you want to watch the extended interview with myself and Andrew, you just go onto youtube.com/mspmarketing. But just to finish up here on the podcast, Andrew, just tell us a little bit more about what you do, how you can help MSPs and how someone can get in touch with you.

Andrew Moon:
One of the things I’m excited about this year is doing more cohort type coaching. We’re very small groups where we get in there, we challenge each other. It’s more of a competition based. That way I can do greater good. Those people that are left standing in the MSP space, especially this year, I want to be able to help them utilise the tools that are there so that they can be efficient, they can grow, they can scale and get the most out of their MSP. Orangenomad.com or you can find me on LinkedIn, in YouTube. We’re going to get back to our regularly scheduled probably Wednesday or Thursday afternoon live streams real soon.

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

Rob Jolliffe:
Hi, my name’s Rob Jolliffe. I’m President of MicroAge Kitchener and Sabre Limited. I’m recommending the book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. This book covers or explains why people make cognitive decisions emotionally instantaneously without even realising that they’re doing it. And it is a great read, especially to understand modern marketing.

Voiceover:
Coming up next week.

Max Kruger.:
Hey, everyone, it’s Max Kruger. I’m the General Manager of the Compliance Manager Business Unit here at [Casea 00:31:56]. And I’m looking forward to on next week, while I’ll talk about the new compliance as a service revenue opportunity that you can add to your MSP stack.

Paul Green:
We’ll also be asking the question, are you charging everyone properly for everything? It’s really easy to be flippant and say, “Yeah, of course we are charging our clients properly. No problem at all.” But the number of MSPs over the years that I’ve challenged to go in and actually check, go and check every single record and the number of times that they have found there are users that have joined that the client isn’t being charged for or even services added that a bill has never been sent.

Paul Green:
Our world is complex. The number of services that you supply, it’s complex. So we’ll be talking next week about just checking that going to make sure that you have charged for absolutely everything that you deliver. Put it this way. Imagine if you were undercharging your clients by 10%, just by getting the charging right, correctly charging them for stuff they’re already buying is potentially going to increase your revenue with no real pain for your clients. Certainly no additional pain of buying extra things.

Paul Green:
We’re also going to be talking about increasing your customer service levels and therefore your customer satisfaction levels. It’s about spotting problems before they become real issues and also just having a reputation for being the guys that really care about your clients. Don’t forget we’ve got tons of original content for you on our YouTube channel. The extended interview with Andrew Moon is there now. And on Thursday, we are going to put up another episode of another bite.

Paul Green:
It’s the show about the show where host Sophie Law interviews me and sometimes some of our guests as well about the big topics that we discuss in this podcast. You’ll find all of that at youtube.com/mspmarketing. In fact while you’re there on YouTube, please do subscribe to our channel and subscribe to wherever you listen to this podcast. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

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