Building Personal Brand To Win at Marketing - ERP139

This file was generated by Descript Todd Kane: Look at your MSP website, then look at your competitors. Same stack, same certs, same promises. My guest says, "If clients can't tell you apart, you're not a partner, you're a line item," and all the line items get replaced. Eric Boles is here to fix that. Evolve or evaporate. Eric, welcome to the Evolved Radio podcast. Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Todd, my brother, how are you, man? Thanks for, thanks for having me on Todd Kane: absolutely. No, I, I'm excited for this. You're, uh, an excellent storyteller and love to tell, to tell it how it is, so, uh, my favorite kind of guest Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Yeah, the, the second part is certainly true. It, uh… I have actually turned… Todd Kane: held. Erik Boles | Vosa.co: I have, uh, yeah, I have, uh, turned down speaking events, paid speaking events, because they've said, "You- the only rule is you can't swear on stage." I'm like, "It won't come off right." Like, I don't do it on purpose. Like, it just, it's just part of the way I speak, and, like, you're not gonna have a good delivery from me, and it's just not who I am. So yeah, I definitely tell it like it is. But I appreciate the good storyteller com- compliment, though. Todd Kane: Yeah, Erik Boles | Vosa.co: I- Todd Kane: uh, on, on brand. So yeah, uh, and, and brand is certainly something you know a lot. That's, that's what we're gonna be talking about here. So, I guess the, th- this seems to be kind of like your real, uh, sort of charge in the industry is the anti-commoditization. And I have … Like, I think this is really true. I wanna hear sort of your position on this. Um, but I have some, some things I wanna, I wanna pick at as well, um, because I'm a big fan of standardization, which I get is different than sort of the commoditization race that we're seeing, but helping sort of run up the middle. So, um, maybe start, give us a bit of your background. You got pretty awesome brand background, the people, the, the brands that you've worked with and helped build. You wanna give people a bit of sense of, uh, so your background there? Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Yeah. So, um, uh, starting way back in the '90s, um, a buddy of mine introduced me to the internet and I was like, "Oh, this is cool, whatever." And I built a web design company 'cause anybody could be a web designer 'cause all websites looked horrible. Um, so it didn't matter what they, you know, what, what your skill level was. And, um, sold that company, built a second company, sold that, third company. As we evolved through that, um, this is way back in the day when, uh, John Street, the founder of Pax8 and MX Logic, owned USA.net. He started USA.net, which was the first out-of-platform, like AOL, Prodigy, whatever, CompuServe email. Like you could take your USA.net email address with you anywhere, as to where before that it was like, you know, if I had an AOL address, I was married to AOL 'cause I couldn't like move to Prodigy and keep my AOL, AOL address. Um, I brought him his first really, really big deal of about 130,000 seats of email, and, um, that's where I met him and Scott Chasin in the late '90s. And then, uh, went to work for a media company, which is, you know, um, I guess that's one of those stories about I'm a recovering, you know, worked for a media company person. Um, and, and during that time I, I was an engineer. Like, like I've, I've worked inside the tech space. We were a, a VAR before MSPs were really a thing and, and managing IT and all that. And, and, um, uh, I, I was deep into, into Sun Microsystems infrastructure security. I was an MCSE, I was a CCIE for Cisco router and switch and security. Um, and then during the MX Logic days, John called me and he said, "Come in and, and kinda rebuild not only my sales engineering team and, and how we're approaching things from a sales perspective, but we need to figure out like how we position us to exit." So we did that. And, um, it was th- th- literally our CMO at the time like pulled me into his office and he was like, "So everybody on the sales floor is saying that when they get you on a call, you don't ever, ever show our product." I was like, "No." And he's like, "And your close rate's like 98%." I was like, "Right." And he's like, "Why?" And I was like, "It's just not about the product. They don't care about the product. They could give a crap about the cool interface we built. They could give a crap about anything except for does it catch spam and keep us protected and keep us more efficient?" I was like, "It's all they care about." So we actually had somebody pull, one of the engineers, one of the product engineers, pull stats of everybody that ever signed up for MX Logic. It was like 71% of them had never logged into the console. They just pointed their MX records at it and it just ran. They never once logged in. I was like, "There's your proof right there. Like it's not about the product. It, they, they, they don't care. Um, you have to talk their language and, and talk about what their outcomes are." And he was like, "You should be in marketing." So my approach has always been, I don't think I've ever opened a marketing book. I think I may have written part of a Seth Go- written, read part of a Seth Godin book once. But everything I approach from is from behavioral psychology. Put down all the marketing books, put down all the sales books and all the business books, understand people, you'll sell all day long Todd Kane: And is that something that you got some level of formal training in, or is it just something that you picked up? Like, what is your background in behavioral psychology? Erik Boles | Vosa.co: So, um St- you know, way back when I was a kid, I was just fascinated with, like, some of the stuff we learned in, like, junior high when you go through psychology and all that. Then when you go to be a paramedic, so before all the tech stuff in the, in the '90s I was a paramedic with the fire department, um, you have to go through some psych classes there to learn how to deal with people that are distressed, whatever. And I was like, "Ooh, this is cool," right? So, Todd Kane: Yeah Erik Boles | Vosa.co: I got excited about that, and then I just continued to learn and learn and learn, and then later I was like, "You know, I should probably, like, formalize this a little bit and actually go get a degree." So I went and got my degree in behavioral psychology and filled in the holes and, and learned a, you know, more about the neuroscience component of it and how our brain works and, and all that. And, and so… And I'm probably gonna go back here very shortly for my master's. Todd Kane: Very Erik Boles | Vosa.co: So yeah. So it's at, it, it's at the intersection of, of, you know, business and I guess somewhat marketing and, and behavioral psychology and, and storytelling, and really communication and how we show up and that's kinda what, you know, in the mxLogic days we had a lot of people that, um, senior executives and stuff, that we were starting to get invited to events as this small little spam company. So I worked with a lot of our senior leaders on how you present on stage, how you deliver stage presence, how you build your vocal image and your physical image and tie all that together and story tell and, you know, we get that confused, right? We're like, "Oh, I tell great stories." You might. And telling stories is not storytelling. Storytelling builds lore. There's a big difference there. Todd Kane: Hmm. Okay Erik Boles | Vosa.co: you know. And, and, and so everybody looks at, you know, is this corporate brand? Is this personal brand? I don't think either one of those things exist. I think those are results. Brand is a result of what you do. Um, y- you know, uh, probably the, the, the best way that I could frame it is with what you do, Todd, right? Like, you have a course on, um, uh, MSP service manager training, right? You don't come out as… The, the, the service manager is not a thing, the service manager is a result. What you do is, you know, how do you embody a service first ap- first approach? How do you manage the business? Um, what does the role look like? You know? Um, you know, how do you build culture? How do you manage people? You know, how do you measure metrics? After all of that, what comes out the other side is being a service manager. It's a result of, of the work that you put in from the training that you give. Brand, personal brand or otherwise, is, you know, when you find clarity in who you are, that builds on… Once you know that, 'cause we're not who we are, we're who everybody else made us to be, bosses, coaches, teachers, parents, religious leaders, peers, customers, whatever. We're not who we are. Once we figure that out, then we can move into our confidence component and say, "Okay, yeah, I'm, I, I'm more comfortable with who I am now 'cause I'm not what somebody else said I should be. I'm now more confident. I have the clarity, I have the confidence. Now I can start to build a communication style." Once you build a communication style, you start to build storytelling, you start to show up with presence and, and, and command the room, and that is what builds personal brand. And now personal brand folds up into corporate brand, right? We're like, "Oh, this is our brand." I'm like, "Brand is made up of people." I had this argument with a, a, a fairly well-established CMO in the channel, and they were like, you know, um, "No, no, no." The, they're like, "People don't matter about our brand." And I was like, "What goes into your brand?" Like, "Well, for starters, our mission statement." I was like, "Read me your mission statement." And she was like, "So we…" And she started down the road, and I was like, "Stop right there. We who? We the logo, we the servers, we the racks, or we the human beings?" I was like, "Without human beings, your brand is hollow." But there's a lot of brand as a result, right? It's how I get treated. It's, you know, in, in the very, very early days, there was just five of us at Pax8, and I was like, "What's the one thing that sets us apart? And it can't be anything technical 'cause anybody else can reproduce that. Single pane of glass, single, you know, single license ordering, whatever." Um, and we spent a day on that, probably a day and a half, and, uh, Ryan Walsh said, "It's the experience you get when you work with us." I was like, "That's defensible. That is the one thing." And that was our guiding light for years, right? It was, you get a better experience with Pax8. Well, how do you get a better experience? Yeah, part of that is the way we show up. Part of that is academy and how they teach and make you a better MSP. Part of that is, um, you know, service uptime. A lot of that is the people behind it. How do I get treated when I answer the phone, right? When I call in, somebody answers the phone, how do they treat me? Todd Kane: I love that idea of sort of, uh, brand and lore. I, I don't know if I'm stealing this from somebody else, but, like, the thing that came to mind for me around that is, uh, brand is not what you tell people you are, it's what other people tell other people what you are. I think that's a much better description of it, right? Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Absolutely. So, um, kind of the, the, the godfather of brand overall is a guy by the name of, um, Marty Neumeier, and he's written tons and tons of books, and, and he has this really great graphic and, and, uh, it's, it's six different stages, and this first one is like, you know, um, it's this guy and he's shouting to a group of people like, "I'm a great lover, I'm a great lover, I'm a great lover." And it's like, this is advertising, this is marketing. And then on the phone it's like, this is telemarketing and all this stuff. And at the very, very end it's, uh, uh, what is it? It's, it's… The very last panel is, it's a girl walking up to the guy and she says, "I understand that you're a great lover." And he's like, "That's brand." That is brand. And I was like, that's like the easiest description ever. Todd Kane: That's great. I love that. Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Yeah. Todd Kane: So let's, let's, uh, push this back onto the, the MSPs, and I, I, think they're… You know, marketing is not something that MSPs come to naturally. M- I would say there's sort of 70/30 split in the industry of, like, 70% of the industry is technical-led founders, and there's some sort of marketing-focused, but primarily account manager and sales-focused, uh, MSP f- founders. So this is not an inherent skill for a lot of people, and I think they really struggle with this. And what I think you end up with that lends towards sort of your call against commoditization is most of the marketing they have around brown b- m- brand building, website building, even their marketing engine, is basically borrowed, um, catalogs, right? Like my, uh, my template for my website was sold to me. It's kind of off the shelf. All of my marketing material is either borrowed from the vendors or from, you know, a, a marketing catalog that I pay for. So, like, none of this is really, is enabled by their, their brand identity. It's just sort of borrowed, uh, shelf stuff that they sort of stuff onto their, their, their own image, and obviously that's a problem, right? Erik Boles | Vosa.co: I agree, man. It's, it's, you know, it's when, when… And, and to your point, like, right, we have to have standards, right? Like, everything is standardized. We all have to kinda offer the same thing with some variations in there. But, you know, as, as we start at the, at, at the, what we would traditionally call the top of the stack and say we offer, you know, endpoint and backup and disaster recovery and M365 and Azure and all this stuff, as we go further down, where we start to differentiate ourselves is, um, now we say upfront, you know, "Oh, we have great support." Great. Everybody says they have great support, right? Um, I don't know that until I become a customer, and then after that I go, "Oh, this isn't as great a support as I thought it was," or, "Service desk isn't as strong as I thought it was." Or you go, "Wow," like, "compared to my last MSP or, or whatever, like, this is remarkable," right? So building that service desk is critically important, but how do they know that before they get there? So, um, the, you know, it took us, what, like a year and a half after AI became really prevalent for all of us to look at stuff and go, "Ah, I think that's AI. I think that…" Like, our brain just picked up on it. We're like, "That's AI, that's AI." So the brain has, um, a, a thing called superior pattern processing and superior pattern recognition, and there's six domains within that, and it's like sum of all parts, top-down, bottom-up. There's heuristics, there's all this stuff. We, um, w- when, when you think about the way that the brain brings information in, um We bring in about 50-- 40 to 50 million bits of information at one time. We can process between 25 and 50 bits of information, so most of that stuff just gets completely disregarded. Like, the example I always use is when I'm giving a talk publicly is, as you're sitting there watching this podcast or sitting in the audience, notice that when your mouth is closed, your tongue rests on the roof of your mouth, not on the bottom of your mouth. Now that you're thinking about it, you're like, "That's messed up. That screws up my head." But… And you'll think about it the rest of the day, but we don't think about it because our brain filters that out. The same reason that when you move offices, you go to the old office for the first three days in a row, walk through the door and go, "We don't live here anymore." And you turn around, get in your car, and go to the old office because all that stuff is mapped. We are now so good at understanding what a templated ad looks like, what templated marketing looks like, that we see it and, you know, and I know these template companies and these, you know, all these different marketing playbooks and toolkits and all this other stuff, and they're like, "No, no, no, you change your logo and your colors and this and that and the wording." It's all laid out the same. It's all formatted the same, and that's what we pick up is, is the sum of all parts. We look at that and go, "Nope, I'm gonna disregard that. I, I know that that's an ad." Um, one of the challenges I always give everybody is grab a piece of paper or, or raise your hand if you're in a live audience and say, tell me three brands that you remember their marketing from today. What did you see? Who are they? And what do they do? You usually can't name any more than one, maybe two. We see thousands, like, like we see like 2,500 to 5,000 ads a day, and we don't remember any of them because our brain just ignores them, right? It's, it's, it's what it does. It's there to keep us alive. It's not there to, like, process everything. If you did, you know, the brain's super, super lazy, super lazy, and it's an energy hog. It weighs… It takes up about 2% of your total body mass and takes up 20% to 25% of all your base calories that you burn in a day. So, you know, the, the more efficient we can make that machine. So templated ads just simply don't work, and I've had this discussion with people, and they're like, "No, it does work," just like outbound cold calling works and whatever. And I'm like, "Look, I'm not arguing based on opinion. I'm arguing based on neuroscience that is thousands of years old of how the brain works." So you can pretend that it does, but it doesn't. Um- Todd Kane: But wouldn't people argue that, like, I need to have something? Like, I, I need to have a presence on LinkedIn. I need to have, you know, s- obviously a website, right? And if, uh, you know, if I don't know how to build it, then I should have some generic thing that I bought from somebody else or got from a, from a marketing pack, and at least now my profile has some information on it. Isn't that better than not having any information? Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Oh, absolutely. 100%. You've gotta have that. But to your point, right? It's like we're not very good at this. What we do is we, as, as geeks, love to talk about how smart we are. We love to talk about the, the acronyms and the nerdy stuff and, and, and all of that. So we go in and we talk about… So people buy into stories that they can see themselves in. They don't see themselves in a breach. They don't see themselves in a ransomware attack because it's never happened to them, and it's never happened to anybody that they know, right? So think about if you were to go into your auto mechanic and say, "Hey, I think my brakes are bad." And you'd be like, "Yeah, great." They change the brakes, they call you back, and they're like, "Hey, by the way, we took it out and we test drove it. And during the test drive, what we noticed was at WOT, the TPS collapses, and everything goes haywire." And you're like, "I don't know what you just said or what that means," or I… Like none of that makes any sense, and this is the way that we talk to our customers. If your doctor were to say, "You know, we need to talk about heart calcification," you'd be like, "Okay, I'm game. Let's talk about that. I don't know what that means." But your doctor says, you know Do you wanna see your kids graduate? Like, stuff like that, right? Real-world stuff. So the mechanic wouldn't say that. He would say, "Hey, there's a little sensor. It's called a throttle positioning sensor. When you mash the gas, that thing kind of stops doing what it's supposed to do, which is deliver fuel to the engine. So if you had to get out of a sticky situation on the freeway going 65, your engine's gonna die, and your brakes, your power brakes are not gonna work. We probably should change it." Now that makes sense. You're like, "Oh, okay. I get it. Got it." Throttle positioning sensor, TPS. Wide open throttle, WOT. If you just said that in the first place, which is what they do, 'cause they know you don't do that. We don't do that. We love to talk about all the geeky and the nerdy stuff, versus just going in and saying, "Let's zoom out 30,000 feet and tell me about your business, not the technical side of your business. I wanna know where your… I wanna know about your business. Why did you start this? Why didn't you just go work for somebody else? Like, what's the purpose here? Like, you could have a whole lot more time back if you just went to work for somebody else, so there's gotta be an underlying, like, emotional meaning, right? So what is that? Where do you see yourself in six, 12, 18, and 36 months? Now, what's in the way?" Not from a technical perspective, from a business perspective. You don't hire a CFO to come in and go, "I don't know. There's money in the bank. I guess we can spend it." Like, that's not his job. His job is to look at the entire business and go, "We can be more efficient. We can lower headcount. We can do it here, here, and here, and make us a more profitable business." You should be the exact same thing. You've gotta go up a layer. And so back to the, you know, how, how do we show up? I, I'm not professing that… I, I'm obviously going to say that everybody should be creating video content, and there's some Gemini AEO reasons beyond that as well that relate to YouTube. But even if you're not gonna create video Don't talk about the product, talk about how you got there. Make a post every day or t-two or three times a week on LinkedIn that just talks about a problem that you're solving. Don't think of it as creating content, think of it as documenting. Um, a buddy of mine that owns a company called VaynerMedia, they're a huge digital agency, he kinda coined that, where he said, "Document, don't create." Um, uh, I worked with REI, and we were trying to get on, on building social presence, and we were trying to get people to do product reviews, and everybody was like, "No, I c- I'm not, I'm not skilled enough. I'm not enough, good enough skier, mountain biker, whatever, to do a review on this. Like, I'm just not qualified to do a review." And I was like, "That's great." I was like, "Can you tell me what your experience with it was?" And they're like, "Oh, absolutely. Here's my experience. This backpack is great. It's got side zippers, it's got this, it's got…" And I was like, "You just gave a review. I just changed the word to experience." So you're still creating content, you're just documenting your day. And do it through… So what I always tell everybody to do is we talk about ICP, and we're like, okay, ICP is we work in the HVAC industry, right? Our mo- majority of our customers are HVAC, plumbing, et cetera. Great. Then we talk about buyer personas, and we're like, our buyers are companies between this size and this size. And I'm like, it's not a buyer persona. What I wanna see is somebody that works inside the business. This is Sally. She's married. She has two kids. She does soccer practice on Thursdays, she does tennis practice on Tuesdays for her daughter, and she loves craft beer. They have a dog. They love to go hiking. They like to do this, they like to do this. And at work, here's what Sally does at work. Now, every time that you're gonna create content, stop and go, "Would Sally give a shit about what I'm about to say?" 'Cause if not, who cares? That's who you're trying to reach Todd Kane: Yeah, that's, I think, huge advice. And I, I think part of this is just simply being more comfortable with, like, the uniqueness that makes you you, and that that's, like, where you come upon your brand identity, right? Like, the way I kind of fla- frame this is like fl- uh, fly the freak flag, right? And people feel like, "Well, I'm a little weird. Like, I, I have to be super polished, and I need all this equipment, and I need to build a studio." And, like, all, all of these things I think they are, uh, sort of forms of procrastination that people get in their own way with before being able to produce something, uh, for marketing, and especially for video, is they, they think it has to be perfect, and it really doesn't. And in a lot of ways, I think the more modern approach to this is that it should look unpolished so it feels more genuine, right? So you- you've got… You've grabbed a, for people on audio, uh, Eric has pulled out, probably from his litany of stuff in the background there, got a, a camera and a light stand you're Erik Boles | Vosa.co: It's, yeah, so th- this is a camera with a full monitor on the top. Um, I own three of these setups. This is a $7,000 rig. $7,000. Um- I'm not making this up. I don't know when the last time I turned that on is ' Cause I've got another tripod just like that that's got this little mount on it, and that little circle mount right there is a magnet Todd Kane: your phone on Erik Boles | Vosa.co: To put your phone right on it. Yeah. And I use a, I use a $60 shotgun mic that is beat to death 'cause it's in my pocket all the time. That little microphone just plugs in. Plugs into the camera, you've got a shotgun mic. And those little magnet mounts I've got them everywhere. Todd Kane: You just Erik Boles | Vosa.co: That's on a, that's on a s- on a swing arm, drops down from the ceiling. I've got them everywhere. There's never a reason to not, you know, say… I mean, you have a better camera in your pocket than Hollywood was using seven years ago. Hollywood wasn't shooting in 4K seven years ago. You've got a 4K camera. And to your point, once you under- I, I… Once you understand and uncover that clarity about who I am, and, and, and this is what we do, is we go through identity and purpose and, and who my customer is, and then who I am and what lane I travel in. Make no mistake, at the core, I'm a geek. I would love nothing more than to jump into a conversation between Matt Lee and John Hammond online and talk about cybersecurity. I'm grossly unqualified now to have that conversation. Doesn't matter that I used to be a geek. I used to be an all-conference offensive lineman in high school. The Denver Broncos are not calling me for advice, right? It's not what I do anymore. So figure out what your lane is, what you talk about, what you don't talk about, what you avoid, and then, you know, from there, go through how you communicate, how you build your vocal presence, what your, you know, how, when to talk louder, when to talk faster, when to talk slower, when to pause. We- we're really… There's another MSP in the channel, and he does really, really well. Like channel, CRN will grab him at an event and say, "Hey, listen, let's get your thoughts." And he's very calculated. He's a lot like Barack Obama when he would speak. He's very slow. He takes time. He thinks through things, and he's like, "I gotta stop doing that." And I was like, "More people need to do that." When you have an idea that you want to really set, give a pause And that pause is super uncomfortable for you, so you think it must be uncomfortable for them. It's not. They're processing what you just said. Give them time to process what you said. So yeah, build those communication skills, what your physical presence looks like. You know, we all had Zoom burnout, what they called Zoom fatigue back in the COVID days. Um, when you look at the neuroscience behind it, it's not because of how much time we were looking at screens and looking at cameras. It actually had nothing to do with that. Well, it had something to do with that. The majority of it was, think about going to a dinner party and, um, somebody walks up to you, and they're six inches from you, and they're like, "Hey man, how have you been?" You're like, "You gotta back the hell up. I don't know what's going on." Like that is clear boundary violation. That is personal space, right? That is intimate space. So they back up, you know, 12, 18 inches. You're still in my personal space, like one arm reach away, right? But the way that we all do Zoom calls is we do Zoom calls exactly like this, and you're like, "I spent all day long with people in my personal space." Our brain doesn't know the difference of whether they're here or on a screen. More importantly than that, much of what we say and how we deliver it and how it's received is hand motions, and what we do with our hands and our facial expression and whether we're legato or staccato, the staccato being more smooth and, or staccato being more chopped up like I'm reading from a teleprompter kind of a thing, and legato is that smooth delivery of knowing your, knowing your topic and knowing what you're going to say. And so, you know, it'd be the same as if somebody went up on stage and stood there with their hands in their pockets. It's not gonna be a great delivery. If you go back and look at the keynotes from PAX East Beyond that just happened, anybody that's ever stepped on stage, they move around. They have their hands up. They, they, they're animated. We watch their body language. That's… Your, your visual presence is just as equally as important as your vocal presence when we're trying to understand the meaning behind a message. So all those things are super important, and once we do that, like you nail clarity and communication, confidence and communication, storytelling will just kind of flow naturally. And once you do that, you'll have presence. So we look at, like, the Scott Chasens and the Libby McElhinneys and, um, you know, the, the Nick Heddys and people like that that are on stage, and you're like, "God, they're just so good at that." They weren't always good at that. That's trained, you know? Todd Kane: I think that's a really important aspect too of just getting the reps in and, and building a practice around these things. And one of the things that I found really freeing, like I, I was a drama nerd in high school, computers and drama nerd, like the Erik Boles | Vosa.co: You totally get this Todd Kane: But yeah, but like, so I, I, I have never been concerned with public speaking or speaking on camera. I'm s- I'm too, uh, in my head, so I'm self-judgmental about the work and that, that's why I procrastinated forever on being on video and things like that. So that was a Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Mm-hmm Todd Kane: But one of the things I found really freeing lately that I think I, I wish pe- more people sort of recognized and internalized is it's actually really freeing to know that if you do a lot of work on video and post it online, the algorithms are actually helping you. 'Cause if it's not that great, no one will see it, right? It's not like all of your friends are judging, "Oh, that's a trash video. I don't know why that person posted that," right? 'Cause it just won't get the reach because it doesn't have that level of engagement. So great, like you get the reps in, you can post those things. The people that actually really like you and support you will see it, and the people that don't will never see it. So just keep Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Yeah Todd Kane: right? They say like if you're not, if you're not, uh, i- if you're not ashamed of the first few videos you post online, you waited way too long, right? Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Yeah, and, and to the point you made earlier, which is, which should not be overlooked, is that we're no longer looking for polished. We're looking for real and authentic. So, you know, old, old people that are listening or watching this, go ask your kids about YAP videos. Young people, you already know what they are. And it's just people that just get on the mic and get on the camera and just flow, right? Um, if nothing else, like we're not buying rolls of film anymore. Pull this thing out, figure out a tripod, somewhere to put it in, in… at your desk, and when you jump on a call with a client, either record the call or just set your camera up and record that part of it. If it's terrible, delete it. But it may not be, right? It might be okay. There might be, out of that hour-long call with a client, there might be 47 seconds in there where you said something super profound. We've all been there, right? Where it's like we say something super profound and you're like, "Son of a bitch, I wish I'd have been recording that." Like, it happens all… Todd Kane: client coaching calls. They're like, Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Yeah Todd Kane: can you say that again?" You know, I'm like, "Uh, not exactly sure what I just said," right? Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Right. Todd Kane: know Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Right. And if you've… Yeah, if you have that recorded, you know, this is why I have these magnet mounts everywhere. Like, I record a ungodly amount of video footage for, for this exact reason, is that, you know, and as you said, put in the reps. Imagine you're moving, y- y- it's your first day at an MSP, you're coming in as an engineer, you have your, you know, your CCNA, and you understand route switch a little bit, and they're like, "Hey, we need to log into this client site and set up a VLAN." And you're like, "Pfft, piece of cake, man. I can do that." But they come back to you and they're like, "Oh, so they've got three sites. We wanna set up OSPF between all of 'em. We wanna set 'em up in a BGP ring." Like, they lay out this complicated route switch thing, and you're like, "I, uh, I, I'm not sure that I am qualified to do that." Now fast-forward a year and they say that same thing. You're like, "Yeah, of course I can do that. I've done that a dozen times, 20 times, 30 times, 50 times." But on day one, you're not expected to be a CCIE. You're expected to be a CCNA, Speaker: Tired of fighting the MSP fires alone? The Opsleader Pro group connects service delivery professionals who understand your daily challenges. From KPIs and workflows to career planning and team management, Opsleader Pro has systems for you to use. Join operations leaders from successful MSPs who are sharing real solutions for managing client expectations, optimizing service delivery, and making your service delivery team as effective as possible. Opsleader Pro, 'cause your service desk deserves more than just survival mode. Visit opsleader.co. That's O-P-S leader dot C-O to apply to join the public community. Todd Kane: So let's slip back a bit to, uh, the, the brand and commoditization, 'cause I, I think a Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Yes Todd Kane: people struggle with here is, uh… And I hear this from a lot of people. You know, there's the classic case of like, "What makes you guys a great MSP?" "Oh, it's the people. We've got the best people." It's like, well, you know, bullshit. Like, that's probably not true. And again, like, how do you convince someone of that, right? 'Cause like you said, I joke, we, we live under the sins of previous MSP providers with the client. Like, they're judging us based on the relationship they had with the previous provider, which was, you know, in a lot of cases, not that great. So that's how they're judging us. And, you know, we're selling trust in selling MSAs, which is really hard because as you noted, you can tell them how great you are, but they don't know that that's true until they experience it. But this, this is where it becomes really difficult for MSPs to differentiate themselves, right? Um, and I wanna sort of tease in here is like you, you note sort of our stack being the same, so we can't point to our stack, we can't point to our people. How do people differentiate in an industry where everyone has the same business model, everyone generally has the same tools and the same outcomes, and we can't convince them like, "I've got great people"? Okay, well, like, it feels like you're kind of, you're, you're painted into a corner. How do you fight back from that? Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Right. So, so th-th-this is a beautiful example of that, right? Is that when, um, when, when information comes into the brain, it, it, it hits, um, our limbic system, which is our, you know, our amygdala, our hippocampus, hypothalamus, all that, and our prefrontal cortex, which is the executive decision-making center, at the exact same time. Actually, it hits the limbic system just a little bit before that. What's interesting is we can look at all of the facts in the prefrontal cortex, the executive decision. We always look at it and go, "This is not an emotional decision." Every single decision is an emotional decision because when we look at that and we go, okay, on paper, they're almost identical. In fact, this one's probably a little bit weaker, but the way that guy or that gal that was in our office that talked to us made me feel, it felt like they were invested in the business. It felt like they cared. It felt like they mattered to us or like we mattered to them. It felt like they were in the same camp, in the same boat we are, and we're hiking the same mission. So, um, this is, uh, uh, known as, uh, uh, primacy effect in, in modern psychology. And, and basically what that says is we also… Let me back up a little bit. We also know that, um, before it was about 70% in the buyer's journey, by the time that we even knew a customer was in market, they had already made up 70% of their decision. We knew exactly what product we were gonna look at, what companies we were gonna look at, what MSPs we're gonna look at, what vendors we want. We know all that stuff. One small thing, so the, the only reason we go online is, you know, nobody goes online and says, "Hey, I wonder what great ads are running today." Right? Nobody… You-- When you're watching a YouTube video and it says you can skip this ad in five, four, three, like nobody like stops and goes, "You know what? I wanna see how this thing pans out." Like we're, like we're gamifying the skip button. Like we're, we're trying to like click that button right as the minute that it shows up just to get it to save ourselves a fraction of a second. So- We go online to escape, to search, to discover. Um, and that search one, that's a big one because we don't go online to search anymore, we go online to ask. So I did a little test, and I was like, all right. You'll remember, Todd, back in the early IT days when they were outsourcing all the help desk stuff to India, right? And all of us help desk people were like, "This is a horrible idea. This is not going to work." And they're laying off help desk people, tier one, tier two. And I was like, "You're right. It's not gonna work, and it's gonna take them a year contract to figure that out and another six months to change the, to, to change the tide. So you can sit on your couch at home for 18 months without a paycheck and go, 'I told you.' You're still broke, and you're still unemployed." Like, this is the reality of where this is going unless you can change their mind before they make that decision. So I went out and said, "Hey." I asked Gemini. I was like, "I am a company of 17 employees. We're hiring four more. We're gonna be 21. Um, I don't really wanna… I don't have the budget for an in-house IT guy. Do I bite the bullet and hire an in-house IT guy, or do I go outsource it to a IT provider company that, that can do the IT for me remotely, or is there some way that I can automate almost all of this?" And it came back and said, um, uh, Auvik, Automox. Um, it gave me, like, four or five different solutions, and it was like, "Add all these together. Here's what you're gonna pay per month. Per user, it's gonna be, like, $37 a month, and this will manage all of your IT for you, the onboarding, the HR stuff, the network healing automatically. All the things you need on a day-to-day basis, AI will fully automate for you." Is that true? Absolutely not. Absolutely not it's not true. Do I know that as a business owner? Absolutely not I don't know that. But the smart AI person told me it would, so damn it, we're gonna give it a shot And so until the time-- And AI is only getting better. So what we need is, we need, as I come up upon that decision time and say, "Now it's time for me to make a decision," but for the last six months, I've been watching this podcast with this Todd Kane guy, and I believe in a lot of stuff that he says, and he doesn't really try to pitch me or sell me on anything. He just adds value. So just the, what, what's known as the mere exposure effect and authority bias, we're basically building a parasocial relationship. I don't know you. No different than, you know, back in the day when you'd drive to the office every morning and on the radio, the morning talk show, the guy would tell one, one radio host would tell the other guy, "Dude, I just bought a Kia Sophia, and I'm telling you, it is like one of the best cars I've ever had in my life." Bullshit. No, it's not. They paid you to say that. We just didn't have laws that said you had to disclose that they told you that. But because you listen to this guy every morning, you have this parasocial relationship, and you're like, "You know, if John Jay from John Jay and Rich thinks that's a great car, maybe it is a great car. Maybe I should look at the Kia Sophia." Right? We've never met them. We've never had coffee with them. We've never even seen their face. We just hear their voice. But, and that's where it comes back to this ability to story tell, communicate effectively. Um, we have something called mirror neurons. There's a real fascinating experiment where they, um, uh, they, they took, um, blockers and blocked somebody's entire arm and, um, then they took somebody else facing them, and with all those nerves blocked… So when you see somebody reach out and scratch their arm, you think, "Oh, maybe my arm itches," but your nerves go, "No, your arm doesn't itch." You go, "Okay, don't, don't do anything about it." They block all these nerves, and this guy scratches his arm, and the guy with the blocked arm reaches up and scratches his arm 'cause his brain no longer knows that it's not my arm that itches. So he scratches his arm 'cause we've blocked that away. So these mirror neurons, we mirror what people say. So when you walk in and you're like, "Yeah, we provide IT stuff, and, um, you know, we can set up M365 and manage your Outlook, and you guys won't get viruses or ransomware 'cause we do," you know, whatever. Like, it's a very monotone, dead delivery. You walk in or on video months and months in advance and talk about this stuff, and you're dynamic, and you're talking about things they care about, where you're like, you know, we just talked to a customer that, that, that, that is just caught in this quagmire of they're working in their business. They're not working on their business because of all these things that are going wrong, and it's just like I just don't understand why people do that because there's so much more opportunity out there. Like, didn't you build this business so that you can go and be successful and spend more time with your family, retire early and all that stuff? Like, I wouldn't try to do my own plumbing. That's a lie. I would try to do my own plumbing, but it would end poorly. But I wouldn't try to do my own plumbing, so why are you trying to manage your own technology infrastructure? Like, that just doesn't make sense. Like, free up your time. Focus on… I mean, you know, you know this firsthand, Todd. This is exactly what you do, right? Like, let's streamline the operations side of the business and so that you can actually work on growing your business instead of being an operator inside of your business. Todd Kane: Yeah, I think the dynamic nature of how you speak, um, I think the, the parasocial relationship I think is a really thing, uh, of just if you're visible, if you're kind of like positioning your brand over and over again, and people are like, "Oh," like, "That person's familiar." So like, I got quotes from three MSPs, but, uh, like I've seen these people before. I've seen their cars. I've seen their, uh, the videos of these people. Like that, that, that is m- has a meaningful effect on their decision-making, and I think that's a, a really massive part of this. And then just like the quick example of like how you're pitching to a potential prospect of like, uh, say like even you are dynamic and excited about the technology, like it's still gonna land flat. Like they don't really care. I, I joke about this all the time with people is like you're in the room because they don't care about technology, so don't try and educate them about technology. That is not gonna help you. But if you talk about their business and get them excited about how you can help them with that and take some of the load off, right? Like we had the, at, when, uh, when I was at Fully Managed, we had this, this term, um, peace of mind for IT, right? Creating peace of mind was, was like a company tagline. and that got so popular that like we had to create trademarks and stuff like that because it just kept on being what people described as what we, what they did for IT. We're like, "No, no, we've got that trademark now. You guys can figure out a better way to describe this." But that was really powerful from a, a discussions with prospects is like, "We're not talking about tech. We're talking about how we can create peace of mind for you." And that really resonated with people, I think, for the same reasons, right? Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Yeah. I mean, you think about where we're at today, you know, we… And again, we're talking a lot about video, but this could be, this could be faceless video, it could be audio, it could be written on Substack, it could be written on LinkedIn. Like you could do long form on Substack. There's so many things you can do. You can do, you know, carousels of images and stuff on, on, um, Instagram and, and TikTok and, and everywhere else. And, and it, it's interesting now where… This is kind of a, a fun experiment actually, is that if you go out to YouTube and just, just think of something that you really have no interest in. This is gonna screw up your algorithm, and I apologize for that, but go out and find something that you're really not that interested in. Like, how do I do concrete countertops? I mean, everybody says it looks really easy, right? Like, oh, you build a form, you put silicone in it, you spray it with some kind of stuff, a, a release agent, and you put concrete in there, and you smooth it out, and you vibrate it with a sander, and then you break the boards off, and you sand it down a little bit. I've, I've actually done concrete countertops on a buddy of mine's thing, and it's really not as easy as it sounds. But just go out and find something that you have no interest in and search for it on YouTube, and go watch 75% of the video. Now come back and refresh your, your, your homepage on YouTube. You will start to see more videos on that exact topic. It used to be about follower count, subscribers, likes, shares, average view duration, how m- how long somebody viewed your videos, right? Now, it's about, it doesn't push for the creator, so it doesn't matter if you have a million subscribers or 23 subscribers. And matter of fact, as you look through the videos that it recommends, start looking through some of them. You'll find somebody's who's only got 131 subscribers, yet they're recommending your video 'cause it no longer pushes for the creator, it pulls for the viewer. It goes out and finds that information that all bleeds into the, uh, AI, uh, search engine optimization stuff, where it's actually contextualizing these videos, and it's pulling for you. So you have somebody who normally doesn't care anything at all about technology, you know. Um, he's into, you know, golf and whatever else, and he goes out to YouTube 'cause he wants to see a video on, you know, what's the best way to implement, you know, um, Wi-Fi throughout the building. Yeah, better Wi-Fi throughout the… Like, do I go with Ubiquiti? Do I not go u- with Ubiquiti and Unifi access points? And goes out and watches a video, and now all of a sudden YouTube says, "Wow, this guy's usually into golf, but he's dabbling a little bit into this whole Unifi thing. Maybe he's setting up a home network or a business network. Let's show him Scott's video," because Scott, or you know, Tom Lawrence from Lawrence Systems is a great example. He generates, and I won't give the exact number, well north of $2 million a year in revenue strictly sourced from his YouTube videos Strictly sourced from YouTube, just from creating content, and he never wants pitches, and he never wants offers, and he never says, "This is what we do." He just adds value, and people reach out to him and go, "Hey, man, do you like-- do you guys do, like, cabling and access points and all that?" You know, you think about Matt Lee, a guy that worked for an MSP, um, in, in the Midwest, and fast-forward to today and the brand that Matt Lee is. If Matt Lee were to put on LinkedIn today, "I'm leaving Pax8," blah, blah, blah, "Don't know what's next, but I'll let you know," he would have 25 job offers in his inbox by the end of the day because people would actively go out and recruit him. And in a world where all of us are like, just as human beings, not even necessarily as an MSP owner, but the people working inside an MSP, with, with us not being able to predict how fast AI is moving right now, with us not being able to predict what the future looks like, do you not wanna make yourself more marketable? Uh, sounds crazy to me. Todd Kane: uh, that's, that's maybe an interesting question as well, 'cause like I, I struggle with this personally to some degree. I'd love your, your perspective on this, and I think it applies for the MSPs as well, is how much should we focus on personal brand versus business brand, right? Like, should we be promoting ourselves to create that per- parasocial relationship, and then the opportunities come as a r- as, as sort of, uh, an effect of us being visible? Or, or how much should we be pushing, uh, like, uh, MSP ABC company and, and having that as a brand of, uh, for the company? I imagine it's both, but like what, what's sort of the calculus here on personal versus, uh, Erik Boles | Vosa.co: So right now, I would say like 95 personal, 5% brand. When we go through the buyer's journey, we look at, you know, again, why do I go online? To search, to escape, to discover. Um, you know, I know something and I wa- I wanna find the, the answer. And then the very next level we go to is, it used to be like, what company does this? We don't do that anymore. Now we say, "Who do I know? What value have they added? They have… Have they created emotions, memories, and trust?" And once I know all that, so I'm looking and I'm like, "I don't know, I consume this, this Todd guy's stuff all the time. He seems to know a thing about management and all that, and he seems to add value to my life." Now I'm gonna go look him up on LinkedIn, and I'm gonna go to his website, and now that's the final piece where it's like, what they do is a fit for what we do, but that's come second. It used to come first, right? It used to be like, oh man, you definitely wanna go to Bell Ford in Phoenix. That's the only place to go. Now, if Dave, the mechanic at Bell Ford, leaves and goes to a different Ford dealership, guess who else is going to a different Ford dealership? This guy, 'cause I know Dave. Dave's a great mechanic. I don't know how many other great mechanics they have there, but Dave has always worked on my stuff, or the service writer, or whatever. We follow human beings. They will discover your company once you've added enough value. But that's the other thing is we're like, "Well, we need to make sales tomorrow." Well, you know, the old adage is, you know, when's the best time to plant a tree? It was 20 years ago. Second-best time is now. So it's gonna take time. And we're, we don't live in a transactional world anymore. We live in a relational world where we have to build relationships with people. And so, you know, if you're up against the wall and you're like, "I gotta generate revenue right now," yeah, I would start cold calling, like, because you need money. Like, I would start cold calling, but I would also at the same time, you know, we're like, "Well, I don't have time to, you know, write a blog post, or create content, or shoot a quick video." You seem to have eight hours in a day to make 100 cold calls that aren't going anywhere. Like, carve off 15 minutes and now do 745 of cold calls and do 15 minutes of creating a video once a day, or writing a blog post, or a quick little whatever, you know? And, you know, whether it's writing, whether it's creating video, whether it's doing whatever, no different than, you know, being in drama club when you're in school, whatever, right? Is it gonna suck? Of course it's gonna suck. You're brand new at it. The concrete countertops we did in my buddy's front yard, sorry David, um, they sucked. We had to go through it and finish them again and again and again. Like, yeah, they sucked. We got better at it, right? Todd Kane: Yep. Go out there, get some reps, and ultimately people buy from people, I suppose, uh, like the big takeaway I'm taking from this Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Yeah. Human, we buy from human beings. We always have. It's, it's, you know, brand has always been personal. When you go back to like the '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s, it's like, um, extra bagel, um, extra pork chop, um, sweeping out your floors at, at the gas station, um, wiping down your windshield, all that. Those are all personal experiences. Madison Avenue spent 80 years convincing us that we could trust a logo, 'cause it was the only way they could get us to go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs globally. They had to convince us that we were, that we were there. And then, you know, we've, we've, you and I have been in this long enough, we've been through, you know, product-led marketing or product-led sales, and then engineering-led sales, and then all the other adaptations of that. When we hit COVID and we were just inundated with ads and ads and ads, we moved into human-led, and we are now in human-led, and this is, this is where we're at for the foreseeable future, is that we trust people, and AI's not helping that, right? Like there's so much AI-generated junk out there that this When you're looking at that and you're like, there's so much AI-generated stuff. Yes. When you're at a, at, at, at a conference or an event and you're around your competitors who are also MSPs, convince them heavily that generating content via AI is the way to go, because every single platform is down rank- down ranking that, and you'd be the only one left who's not doing AI slop and doing genuine content, and you'll win. So yeah, be thankful that all your competitors are using AI to create content. It makes you stand out Todd Kane: This has been awesome, Eric. Any, sort of or two calls to action people if, if they wanna know a little more, hear, hear some more stories from you? Where should they Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Just, just, yeah, I, I'm, I'm @ericbolz everywhere, um, LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever. Um, yeah, by, by all means. If you go to vosa.co/erik, E-R-I-K, you'll see all my links to socials and all that kind of stuff and whatever. If there's anything I can do to help, I think I'm … So obviously, you know, I run VOSA, but it's a membership-only community. It's an invite-only community, and that doesn't mean, like, you know, you have to be some exe- big executive leader. We have brand-new MSPs in there that are starting from day one. But it's very, very much membership invite only. Like, it's not come one, come all. So I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm just … I wanna see you be better. I wanna see you succeed. And if you have questions about that, shoot me a message, shoot me an email, get ahold of Todd, he can get ahold of me, and I'm more than happy to jump on a call for 30 minutes or whatever and just kinda, you know, walk you down the path of, like, how, how you start. But it's like anything else, right? It's like, um, when you stand at the edge of the pool wondering whether or not you should jump in, the water's not getting any warmer the longer you stare at it. So just do it, right? As you said, fly your freak flag. Um, you know, one of my favorite lines from the TV show Yellowstone is when they're talking about herding cattle and he's like, "You know, have you guys figured out a plan how to get those cattle down this hill without everybody dying?" And, uh, one guy looks up, he says, "Well, the best we came up with, sir, is, um, fuck it." He's like, "Fuck it? That's your plan?" He's like, "That's my plan. Fuck it." He's like, "We're just gonna go up there and just do it." So yeah, fuck it. Just do it. You know? Keep in mind that, that you're gonna get hate online. No matter what you do, no matter how great it is, no matter how bad it is, you are going to find people that hate it, that, that, that hate what you're doing. And the reason is because haters seeing you, what's missing in them. They see you doing it, and they're like, "I need to do that. I want to do that. I want to be out there. I want to build a brand, but I just don't have what it takes to do it. So I'm gonna tear down everything around me so that I look like I'm better." So ignore them. Feel empathy for them. God, what a horrible life. Can you imagine, like, spending all your life just being online, just, like, dragging people down? Todd Kane: Yeah. It's Erik Boles | Vosa.co: sounds exhausting. Yeah. Dude, this has been super fun, man. Todd Kane: Yeah, no, I really appreciate all the, all the knowledge, Eric. This has been great. I'll, uh, I'll link to you and, and Tovosau on the, uh, on the show notes. I, I like the approach of, uh, kind of invite only or like my sense of that is you only want people that are actually willing to invest the time and the effort to do something, right? Like, I, I'm not gonna give you, I'm not gonna give you a golden goose that just shits money and opportunity, but if you're willing to put in some effort, you can absolutely do it, right? So Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Yeah. Todd Kane: that approach. That's great Erik Boles | Vosa.co: Yeah, we're not building the largest room in tech. We're building the most powerful one, you know? Todd Kane: Yeah. Awesome. Appreciate it, Eric Erik Boles | Vosa.co: All right, guys. Thanks. Take care