Business Speak

Neither rain nor darkness or sniffles/colds (going around here) kept the loyal and dedicated group of geeks from our 2nd Annual Geek Holiday Party on December 4th!

So just a short shoutout via the pic below recognize the geeks on the loose at the gathering...a few hours of chatting and good food.

So why bother? For a couple reasons.

At the recent IT Nation Connect 2024 event – I spotted a rarity – a young MSP. Tye Fowler is a real go-getter from Tampa, FL and he proactively walked up to me after a keynote as he saw my legacy Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 golf shirt and thought I worked for Microsoft LOL. We bumped into each other a few times and I invited him to the ProofPoint reception that early evening before he hopped on a flight to Atlanta.

Let’s GOOOO!

Harry Brelsford, wrapping up his podcast cycle from the IT Nation 2024 event in Orlando, interviews Tye Fowler, an MSP partner from Tampa, Florida. Tye's company, SGD Communications, started in 2003 and specializes in low-voltage services and network infrastructure. This is Tye's first IT Nation Connect conference, having previously attended IT Nation Secure. He appreciated the creativity and the opportunity to meet people from around the globe. Harry plans to feature Tye in his podcast and emphasizes the importance of young talent like Tye in the aging IT industry. They discuss future ConnectWise events, and Harry wishes Tye safe travels to Atlanta.

In the final analysis, it’s about personal preferences and I look forward to your feedback as an SMB Nation member. When it comes to urban vs rural lifestyle and business models, both answers are right.

At a high-level – my AI-based Google research returned to following “ urban areas being more populated and having more amenities, while rural areas offer more privacy and lower costs of living:”  True that!

Rural

My experience has been that many rural MSPs run lifestyle businesses. Nothing like going fishing on Fridays with (perhaps with a client).It tends to be more relaxing than urban living.

Dramatic improvements in remote work/support

 At IT Connect 2024 in Orlando, AUVIK, a network and SaaS management company founded in 2011, discussed their focus on "frictionless IT." AUVIK's president oversees customer acquisition, onboarding, and success, while Joe Barnes, based in Scottsdale, focuses on growing indirect partnerships and expanding resale business. AUVIK plans to launch endpoint network monitoring and enhance SaaS management automation in 2025. They emphasize their strong partnership with ConnectWise and the integration of their tools into ConnectWise's ASIO platform. AUVIK sees a resurgence in MSP growth post-COVID and is exploring additional events and lunch-and-learns to engage their community.

Action Items

• [ ] Explore doing additional lunch and learn events.
• [ ] Continue developing partnerships and exploring new channel opportunities.
• [ ] Enhance Auvik's SaaS management platform with more automation for customer onboarding and offboarding.
• [ ] Expand Auvik's network monitoring capabilities to include endpoint monitoring.

Peter Kujawa, VP for Service Leadership at ConnectWise, discussed the latest data on MSPs and VARs, highlighting that organic revenue growth for MSPs has slowed to 10.8% from a peak of 25% post-COVID. Despite this, profitability has improved to 13% due to better gross margins. Kujawa emphasized the importance of MSPs not panicking and continuing to invest in sales and marketing. He also noted the influx of private equity into the MSP space, offering MSP owners more options for selling their businesses. Kujawa advised MSP owners to engage with multiple buyers and plan well in advance for a successful sale.

ConnectWise Service Leadership and Branding Decisions

I have an interesting industry observation I’d like to share with you. Why is that the most successful MSPs in our space attend the fewest events? Conversely, less successful MSPs attend too many events. Let me assert my argument.

Successful MSPs

I won’t name names but here we go.

Mid-west MSP: This gentleman goes back to the start of SBS. We met on the partner advisory council in 1998. We were all young and dumb but several elevated in our community. He used to attend the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) (which then became Inspire) as his annual event.