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Rob Rae - The Future of Managed Services · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: My name is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Chanext and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest, rob.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: How are you doing?
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Good, how are you?
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, slightly nervous, rob.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: It's the first podcast of a new year, so if I fumble my lines or forget what the hell the channel is, please forgive me.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I doubt that's going to happen, but yeah, we'll see.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: I hope not.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: It's not been that long off.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Maybe, for the uninitiated, you could give us a little bit of a rundown who you are, what you're responsible for.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Rob Ray ray.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I am the corporate vice president of communities and ecosystems for pax 8.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Pax 8 is one of the leading uh cloud marketplaces uh, on a journey actually to revolutionize the, the space and the way in which msps and small business tech actually purchase things.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: But, um, I've been in the msp industry, found it actually I was in hardware working for compact and HP computers way back in the day and then found the managed services space when MSPs were converting away from being resellers, focusing on more recurring revenue and services revenue rather than product revenue, and found the managed services space really early.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So you know I've worked for RMM companies and backup companies.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I've worked for a lot of different companies that serve exclusively the managed services space really early.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: So you know I've worked for RMM companies and backup companies.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I've worked for a lot of different companies that serve exclusively the managed services space.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: So been an MSP now for 20, 20 plus years.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: What I find really fascinating about your role in particular, apart from being wildly jealous because I wish I was in your position, I think you're in a unique position that you get to spend a lot of time evaluating brands right, Evaluating the value they provide to MSPs, to customers.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: What are the sort of criteria you prioritize when selecting new vendors?
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: When it comes to a Pax8 perspective, as far as who it is that we want to get onto the marketplace.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Now, you know, I think we have the distinct advantage that I think we have more MSP partners utilizing our technology, because we're exclusively focused on managed service providers.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: If there's a vendor that wants to get into the managed services space, I think Pax8 is probably one of the best routes to go, and I'm not just saying that because I work for the organization.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I felt that before joining Pax8 and one of the reasons why I joined Pax8 a couple of years ago.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: But I think for us there's a couple of different things, because we do have we have a plethora of vendors that do want to get onto the marketplace, and I think for us, when we're prioritizing or kind of taking a look at what vendors we want to bring on, it's innovative ones that are, you know, looking at newer technologies, maybe something a managed service provider can add to their stack, maybe some hotter technology that seems to be really catching on, if there's another vendor that's coming in and creating some level of disruption because they've got some new idea or some new technology that's actually taking the world by storm.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: And, of course, what we're looking for is vendors that are exclusively focused, or somewhat exclusively focused, or really really focused on the managed services space, because that's who we serve.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: We have 37,000 MSPs around the globe right now, and that's where we want to find technologies that serve those partners.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: As a result of sort of hosting.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: I think now 100 podcasts.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: I've seen that the best direct businesses listen to their customers to drive their sort of hosting.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: I think now a hundred podcasts.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Um, I've seen that the best direct businesses listen to their customers to drive their sort of product forward.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: I can imagine in your perspective, the best marketplace listened to their MSPs.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: I'd love to understand how you've got feedback from MSPs and how that's influenced some of your decision-making.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I mean my job.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: I'm literally on the road, uh, probably about 280 days a year globally, and you know, I spend most of my time talking to MSPs, whether it's on stage actually talking about what Pax8 is doing, but more importantly is actually spending time in the trenches and talking to managed service providers about what it is that they're finding out there and if there is, you know, technologies that are of interest, that are making their lives easier, that are helping them go to market, all those types of things, not only do I want to bring those technologies to PAX 8, but I also want to bring those ideas, those stories, ultimately to the rest of the world.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I kind of take I've never been an MSP, but I've talked to and I get to talk to tens of thousands of MSPs globally and I like to bring kind of all that together into a some type of value add for our channel and some type of value add for the managed service providers, because whatever's keeping you up at night, there's a chance that somebody on the other side of the globe has solved that problem, or there might be somebody in your backyard that solved that problem.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: The problem is, is this just trying to get everybody connected?
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: I, I, I, uh, I sometimes see the difference between senior executives and people who do pretty well in their career is literally the volume of customers or partners that they speak to, right, I?
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: So often I see people go well, I've spoken to a hundred and the answer is well, did you speak to 10,000?
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: And because the nuance difference between oh, we've now found the answer because I just went and spoke to more and more When's enough from your perspective, or are you literally just trying to maximize the amount that you can speak to?
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: It's never, it's, it's not even, it's not even so much about the maximum number of it, it's just trying to.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: It's trying to keep a pulse and you know it's really really hard when you do a, a focus group of 10 MSPs, and you know, and to try to find a pulse of what's going on globally in our industry.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: That's tough.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I also find like and you see this for any vendor that's tried to build an advisory council or an advisory board it's really hard because a lot of times people come into an advisory council meeting or will give you feedback based on what's going on within their own businesses and kind of what they're struggling with, as opposed to what the industry is looking like.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: So it's a little more difficult.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: It's forest and the trees.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: I want to get the trees, I want to get the trees feedback, but I also am looking for the forest kind of like pulse there as well, and I think it's important that you do kind of both.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: And there are people within these organizations especially if you have any type of event strategy within your vendor that you're out there talking to these people.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: You just need to make it part of the task of the individuals that are out there on a consistent basis of what's going on.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Tell us what's happening.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Tell us what MSPs are talking about.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: What are they happy about, what are they unhappy about?
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: And it's not.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: It shouldn't just be about your organization, it should be about the industry as a whole.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: What do they like about other technologies that are out there?
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Who else should we be talking to?
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: The idea of community in our space is actually it's a pretty specific term that I haven't really found in any other industry, and I think that's where, kind of leaning into that community aspect of everything we do in the managed services space specifically, or the SMB IT space, I think it's a critical part to success.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: A hundred percent.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: I, you know I outside of my best part of my job being I run a podcast.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: I am also a VP of revenue at Chanext and I spend my time evangelizing to both our customers and our partners, but also to our internal organization.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: We have a unique benefit that our customers work with our customers, and so what's amazing about that is the learnings that we take from one can be enforced and driven and educated into another.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: The thing that I found particularly challenging is sometimes vendors don't want to share that information as freely as I think MSPs do.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Maybe you can speak to our audience, both vendors and MSPs, about the benefit of that collaboration, some of the outcomes that you've seen of that collaboration.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: It's.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: It's an odd thing, and we've had this conversation before where we've talked about how msps and the amount of sharing that goes on within the managed service provider community globally is is absolutely insane.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: And it's it's not, you know, like hey, you're in a different state or a different province or a different country and therefore we can talk because we're never going to compete with each other.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: It's literally people in their own backyards that are sitting there having this conversation.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: I live in a very small town.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: I've been in the United States now for about 10 years.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: I live in a very small town in Connecticut.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: It's a very small state, not a very business savvy state.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I have three MSPs that live in my small town and all of them talk to each other and collaborate and share with each other.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: And it's incredible because you wouldn't think that there's just that amount of business that is out there that they would want to kind of keep what it is that they're doing, what technologies are using, what prices they're going at, what strategy they have.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: But they, they, they want to keep that private, but they don't.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: They actually do share quite a bit and I think it's.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: I do think it's very unique to the managed services space and I think it's just because I mean A, there's more than enough business that's out there.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: And the good news here and it's been a consistent trend for a number of years is that there is more and more business to be had.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Even during post-pandemic there's more business than ever before.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: So you know, I think that because there's so much business to be had that there's no fear of I need to protect what I've got or keep you away from what I've got.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: And it is amazing to me that when I talk to managed service providers, I'll introduce them to somebody that's from their same town or from their same state or province and immediately they're like I've never heard of you, they've never run into each other in a competitive situation.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Therefore they can actually talk.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: You know it's there's a lot of that.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: I think vendors you know we don't have that and we do to a certain extent.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: I mean I try to network myself as much as I possibly can.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: I share my playbook, even with competitors as much as I can, because we try to create.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: You know it's a legacy thing that you know back way back I'm talking like 20, 25 years ago there was this adversarial type relationship between the channel and its vendors.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: And I remember when I first started in IT and I got introduced to resellers it was do not trust them because they lie, cheat and steal.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: They will take your quote and take it to your competitor.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: They will try to undercut what it is that you're trying to do.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: So there is no level of trust and vice versa.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: The MSPs were told hey, here's the vendors you're going to work with.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Do not trust them.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: You know they will lie, cheat and steal.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: So when we both start off from that you know starting point, it's really really hard to develop that level of trust.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: So there is the managed service provider community that does really well with this, the vendor community amongst itself.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: I mean we're, we are larger organizations.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: You know, not all of us like I look at pax aid as an example.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: We're about 16, 1700 employees.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: You know my previous organization, dato.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Uh, we were publicly traded six billion dollar plus company like.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: We're not small businesses.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: So we don't and can't act the same way as a managed service provider can.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I think you can in early days and I think a lot of us do that.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: I think back to the early days of my level platforms days or my data days, there was a lot of collaboration and working with other vendors, but then there's a certain point where you become so big that you need to start choosing, picking and choosing kind of your enemies and start acting more like an enterprise organization.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: But still the key to it and the key to success is never forget that you're serving the SMB market and the SMB market.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: You need to think like an SMB, despite the fact that you've grown your organization.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Anyway, how do you find collaboration there?
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: I think it's just going to come through personal relationships and I think that's just the really the only way that we can do it formally.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: There's no real formal way of doing it.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: You used the term the MSPs.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Don't have any fear.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: To me that comes from a true confidence, right?
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: I know so many MSPs that can sell zero new dollars in 2025, and they're going to be great because their lifetime value, their customer retention, is through the roof, right.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: And so that allows you to then think in in a sort of abundance mindset, right, oh, I can share my knowledge and ask for new knowledge from my competitors because I know I'm I'm good, right, I know I'm safe and that, uh, that collaboration, I think, actually just adds to to the community, helps each other.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: And you know, I commented, rob, when I met you in Berlin, the PAX8 event, I was blown away by the level of collaboration and openness and kindness from MSPs.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Being inquisitive to who, we were inquisitive to each other.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: I just thought it was a wonderful example of that community coming together.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: I think it was fantastic.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Absolutely love that aspect of my job and it's what keeps me getting out of bed every single morning is working with these, and you're absolutely right, the collaboration is unbelievable unbelievable and for anybody that's worked in other industries, you know.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: I challenge you to see if there's anything else that you've ever seen like it.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: So I love it.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: I do love it, Maybe to then pivot into the future.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: I think we love the MSP community.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: We see the MSP community has huge upside, tremendous growth potential and maybe a few weak points.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: I'd love to see the top three things that you think the MSPs will need in the next few years.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: It's funny, I don't necessarily see them as weak.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: I mean we could talk about weak points.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: There are weak points, there's no doubt, but I don't necessarily see them as weak.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: I mean we could talk about weak points.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: There are weak points, there's no doubt, but I don't necessarily see them as weak points, more so as opportunities, meaning if we don't do these things, I think there's a certain point where, as technologists kind of people, look at us as you need to be kind of, thinking about the future.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: But we're also human beings and we resist change and we just hate change.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Right, and it doesn't matter whether you love technology or hate technology.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: A change to your routine, a change to a technology.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Anybody that's tried to change a tech in their stack, for an example.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: It's painful and nobody wants to go through it.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: It's learning new people, relationships, support, numbers, where to click on certain things.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Nobody likes doing that.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: So change is something that we all resist, but in essence, it's such a vital part of what we do in our industry.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: So I did put some thought to this and thinking about 2025, like what are some of the things that we need to be doing?
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Our market is constantly evolving in the managed services space and you know we have been leaning a lot into cybersecurity and we've been doing that now for six, seven, eight years.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Like, I started talking about ransomware when I first saw it back in 2016.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: In essence, it wasn't that long ago and now all of a sudden, cybersecurity has got like in 2016, all of a sudden had you know some potential dangers to it beyond just people messing around in databases?
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Now you know there's pretty significant damage that can be done between the dark web, ransomware, those kinds of things.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: So cybersecurity continues to be it.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: The great part about this is, you know it's almost 10 years later and we're still talking about it.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: This is still an evolution.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: So I also think that, as much as there's newer technologies that are coming to market, there's no urgency to necessarily adopt these technologies or offer these technologies.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Like, you can't just rip and replace everything that you've built, but there is stuff that you can be doing to start building on, and AI is going to be one of those things.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: I there is stuff that you can be doing to start building on, and AI is going to be one of those things.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: I think AI the journey with AI isn't going to be a 10-year journey like it was with cybersecurity.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I think it's going to be a five-year journey.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I think there's a massive opportunity for the managed services space to really lead the charge here because and we saw this coming out of post-pandemic the small medium business globally has kind of become a bigger thing.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: People are buying and because of the connectivity and because people are now shopping online and they're using marketplaces to purchase things and you look at Amazon, you look at Etsy, you look at all these types of things Now you can run a global business out of your basement.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: So you know, small business is definitely something that is going to continue to grow and continue to have, you know, a global, potentially global impact, and managed service providers are critical to the success of those SMBs.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: So this is where, if we can leverage newer technologies like AI, you know, I think there's a massive win opportunity there for the, for SMB IT.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: So this is where, you know, managed service providers, I think, can really thrive.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: So don't resist the change, lean into the AI piece, lean into the education, have the proper conversations.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of bad information out there, as there always is.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of fear out there, as there always is.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: You know, and I'm reminiscent.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: You know, we are sitting around a table of executives talking about AI a couple years ago, how we're all leveraging it, where it's going, and I started thinking, you know, there must have been a group of executives back in the 80s that were talking about the internet the same way we're talking about AI, and some of them are like, ah, this will never be a thing, why are we wasting our time?
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: And others are like, well, this is something we need to lean into and think about.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: You know, I think the other part of this is looking for newer markets.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: We've been very looking within our own borders, whether it's within your state, your province, wherever you've been working within your own borders.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: I think there is bigger global opportunities for MSPs.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of the different technologies out there will help with that expansion and that kind of reach.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I think there's collaboration happening, and you saw it in Berlin right, where we had Aussies and Americans and Germans and Brits and everybody together in the same room and really collaborating, because, as much as we're all in different markets, speaking different languages things we actually all have very like there's a commonality there, which is it?
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of global uh opportunity there as well for partnerships, for expansion, for looking for opportunities and, uh, you know, I think, start looking at maybe nationally, uh, and then expand maybe a little bit internationally.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Within the north american market, we're starting to see american partners hedging into Canada and vice versa, you know.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: So I see a lot of Canadians that are starting to move into the British market and vice versa.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: So, you know, there's a lot of opportunity there as we continue to see these brands and a lot of the SMB go global.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: And then, I think, probably the most important part, the third one is, you know, we need to change the way in which we approach this market.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: We've been solution providers right, and that's something that we've all taken great pride in, something we identify as solution providers.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: We're more than solution providers, and I'm talking about the MSPs as well as the vendors.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: We need to move and migrate away from being solution providers and more into strategic advisors, and migrate away from being solution providers and more into strategic advisors, so working with the actual SMB IT or the SMBs on their IT, on planning and organizing and budgeting, more so than just providing.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: So you know, I think the role of the MSP and that's already been changing.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I think that just needs to continue to evolve and to change and become more strategic in what's going on within the actual business.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: I completely agree.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: I think your one, two, three is perfect.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Maybe to add a fourth from my perspective, because I think it's one of my major frustrations.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: When we talk about the lack of collaboration at a vendor level and sort of how that disseminates then into the channel, is so much about vendor collaboration is the tech integration and exactly your point of solution provider.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: No one's buying a singular brand.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Right msps will attest that you, the first brand, might get you in the door, but they want everyone wants a holistic end-to-end solution.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Talk to me about your vision in terms of vendors collaborating with a unified marketing message and how that disseminates then from the MSP through to the customer or the unified sales message.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: What do you think that future should look like?
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: You know it's funny because it's constantly evolving and it's constantly changing as time goes on and it depends on where the MSP is from a diversification as far as their market goes.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: You know, if you think about the MSPs and you know one of the things that you know because I've been in the managed services space for so long one of the things I learned early, early days was that this transformation to becoming an MSP was about the MSPs brand, not about the actual vendors brands.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: And when you take a look at what the MSPs were doing when they were building stacks, they were building kind of what their program was and it was just kind of insert tool.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Here you know there's maybe 14 technologies 9, 10, 11, whatever technologies in the actual stack and the MSP you know originally was, you know, picking those particular vendors, going to the end user and saying, here's the technologies that I use in my stack.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Well, the technologies that you use in your stack are less important these days than the actual overall stack and the service that that MSP is providing.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: And I learned this, you know, a while ago that the most important part of this, especially in SMB, is more the MSP's brand and their reputation and and their clout within the actual communities that they serve.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: So you know, it's been less important about what our brand is and more important about what theirs is.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Therefore, the collaboration amongst these MSP vendors and the integrations between these technologies, that we actually work well together so the MSP's life is easier on these things.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: You know, and I think that's where you know, there's a massive opportunity for us at PAX 8 to kind of be that commonality vendor that can help kind of pull all that together.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: That being said, as much as we've moved away from the onesie, twosie, a la carte type I need this technology, but not the other 12 that you sell and moved into an all-in-one, complete 100, go up market, into the mid market, into the large market.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Now you know, that sounds like and feels like more of a traditional resale model that we dealt with probably decades ago.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: But there is a distinct difference is that we're not doing it on one time revenue, we're doing it on recurring, because a lot of these things are SaaS driven as opposed to product driven.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I think the other part of this, too, is it continues to be that the MSP brand is, is, is more important than the vendor that they actually provide.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Vendors have a tendency to be unstable, you know, uncommitted, you know there there tends to be, like these, odd vendors here or there.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: So the MSP's ability to swap out a tech without impacting their relationship with their end user is kind of critical throughout this.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: So, you know, there is kind of this whole idea of collaboration, working together and needing this, but also approaching it where the MSP needs to be the star in all of this.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: And the MSP needs the ability to utilize your technology working with others, but it also needs to be able to take your technology as a standalone product, almost in a traditional way, but give them the ability to have recurring revenue, leave enough meat on the bone for them to make money and have a proper go to market strategy in the upper part of the market with co managed opportunities.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: You know, I think there's, there's, there's a lot there as far as collaboration goes.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: I completely agree.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: I think where we see brands winning in the MSP space is they're focused on two pieces is how do we operationally make the MSPs life really easy, right, how do we integrate, how do we have a single pane of glass, how do we make sure there's no downtime, or all your operational elements.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: And then the second piece is how do we help you generate demand?
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: The old school version of that is stick your logo on a stick, our logo on your website, and I'm sure you'll win Right.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: And the new school is hey, we're going to provide thought leadership pieces, agnostic of our brand, but we know you sell our brand.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: And then those, ironically, are the brands that are winning, even if there's no technological product difference, just the fact that they're coming in with with the mindset our job is to help you grow and we are focused on that.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: They are causing that product differentiation with no product differentiation, which, to me, I love to see because it's putting the msp at the heart of the story it becomes about the service as opposed to the tools.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: It you think you know we use the.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: We use the auto mechanic um analogy, all the time.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Like you're going to take your car to an auto mechanic, do you care whether they're using dewalt tools, tools or Milwaukee tools?
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: You don't right, you just want your car fixed.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: But to extend that, if you're, if you're the DeWalt salesperson right and you're saying, please use our tools, and you're saying, hey, here's how we are going to help you bring more customers in, well, they're never choosing the competitor right, regardless of whether there's any differentiation in product.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: If you're helping me go to market, I use your tool right and I think that's the, that's the sort of marketing 3.0 that we're going to see flowing into the channel in the next few years, and I think that, reinforced by AI, that's the stuff that really sets me on fire, because he's putting the.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: MSP at the heart.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Right, that's where we want to get to.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: We always ask in terms of putting the customer at the heart of the story, the MSP at the heart of the story.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Our customer is our audience, Rob, and we always ask our current guests to recommend a great next guest.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: Who do you think we should have on next?
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Is that?
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: That's how I ended up here.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: You were in fact.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: I think referred by three different people but it did take me cornering you in Berlin to get there, which is my best salesman story of the year.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: So that's uh that, that that one's on me.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I'm taking credit.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Uh, I, um, I, I.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: There's a number of people that that kind of come to mind.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Um, you know who I would lean on and I, uh, I think it would be awesome to to see her more.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Um, is Mackenzie Brown over at Blackpoint, one of the smartest people globally when it comes to cybersecurity?
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: I absolutely love what she's doing over there.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: I love what that organization is doing and she's on a number of stages around the world doing her thing and she's impressive.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: But totally would talk to Mackenzie about cybersecurity in the in the SMB, msp space for sure.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Well, mckenzie, we're coming through me.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Rob, thank you so much for sharing your insights.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: It's been a it's been an awesome, awesome day.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Absolutely my pleasure.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Thanks for the opportunity.