Kaseya Connect 2023 part 1

Just arrived back after a very interesting #kaseyaconnect23 in sunny Vegas, when I landed in DTW it was 40 degrees and raining, talk about back to reality!

So many different sessions, meeting some old friends and learning key industry trends and developments. With so much information to bring back and share, I had to break it into two parts.

George Costanza

Taking center stage and a wildly popular speaker choice was the actor Jason Alexander. He shared some interesting insights into his professional success.

When you acknowledge success you are often left with the belief that somehow that person had the cards stacked in their own favor in some respect, they had a more affulent background, better school or more opportunities etc.

In Jason's case it could not be further from the truth, indeed the very series he is so well known for these days was a complete a utter flop when it hit the screens. What Jason shared on stage is something we can all take to heart, what it takes to succeed, the work, the effort and the failures required to become successful.

“Pilot performance: WEAK.”

That was the research report verdict on the 1989 pilot of new NBC sitcom?Stand Up, written by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. The episode had excited “lukewarm reactions among adults and teens and very low reactions among kids.” The audience found it annoying that the main character, a fictionalized version of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, “needed things to be explained to him.” The lead was too wimpy, the show was “too New York” (and therefore too Jewish) and worst of all, nothing happened in it. “You can’t get too excited about going to the Laundromat,” as one respondent put it. The report’s conclusion was stark: “No viewer was eager to watch the show again.”

Working in the MSP industry is hard work, it's tough and you experience many up's and downs in the business. Regardless, you have to keep moving forward to improve your business.

Security, security and more security

In my previous letter I had said there has never been more risk in your MSP than today, that was enforced and repeated numerous times during the different sessions of speakers. What was once provided as "options" for your clients really need to become a standard across the board.

Attacks will continue to arrive at your door, and for that matter your client's doorstep also. Items such as zero trust, managed SOC offerings etc. really need to become a staple of your offering. Going to each client one by one attempting to gain buy in is no longer practical or logical.

Security is no longer an "option" and we all have to do better at explaining this to our clients.

We Need To Do Better As MSP's

Not only do we need to improve the security of ourselves and our clients, we need to communicate our value much better.

This is something I have noticed for years now within the industry, we are very poor at presenting true deliverables to clients. We rely on ticket reports and other forms of reporting to "show our value".

Let's face it, if you do a great job for your client it is one of the very few businesses where they say - "Hey! We don't seem to call you as much these days. Why I am paying you all this money?"

Which leads me to my next George Constanza quote-

"Jerry, just remember, it's not a lie if you believe it."

We have sold proactive maintenance, proactive security within our industry for many years now - you would think we would have that down. Yet, I see the same mistakes all the time. What do I mean?

Responding to an alert is not "Proactive" - how can it be? Yet, it's often sold to the client as being exactly that.

If your car runs out of gas and leaves you stranded by the side of the road, is going to the gas station proactive? Come on.

With the MSP industry landscape changing in front of our very eyes you need to find your true value for current and future clients. Should your MSP be one that just dumps RMM and other tools on a machine and waits for the phone to ring you are not that valuable.

In part 2 I will drill down further in to my earlier comments on the cyber security landscape for your clients, taken from the session with the specialist agent from the FBI.