623 Mastering Marketing for MSP Growth: Strategies, Challenges, and Metrics with Dave Scott

[Uncle Marv] (0:08 - 5:19)
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for managed service providers and IT professionals, where we share product stories and tips, trying to help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. This is the Wednesday live show presented by NetAlly, and my guest tonight, Dave Scott, with Scott Growth Strategies, will be joining us in just a minute. We are going to be talking about mastering marketing for MSPs.

And yes, I am known as “No Marketing Marv”, and I don't really market, but that doesn't stop me from talking to people that do. So that is going to be our topic for tonight. I do want to start with a quick little tech tip.

It's not really a tip, it's more of a story that you all know that NetAlly, I use the tools, I use them religiously. So this afternoon, I'm at a client's place because we have a fiber connection at a client that for some reason, every now and then, goes on the fritz. And what I mean on the fritz, meaning that it doesn't drop packets, it doesn't go away, it just stops working for some reason, latency gets high, we're talking 700, 800, 1500 milliseconds, jitter is high, so people, of course, can't browse, they can't download stuff.

And Bluestream is the name of the provider. Yes, I'm calling them out because it's been happening since December. And I have called them many times, of course, sometimes it mysteriously clears up.

So there was a tech out today. And of course, the first thing he asked me is, what kind of tests do you run? And I'm like, dude, I run all the tests you guys ask.

You want me to do ping tests, you want me to do trace routes. Oh, can I see the machine that you're running it from? So I pulled out my NetAlly EtherScope, and he looked a little befuddled because he was expecting me to go to either a workstation or pull up a laptop, but no, I pulled out my EtherScope.

And I actually had done earlier today, before he arrived, I already had some ping tests, I already had some trace routes. And so I just simply had screenshots to show him. And then I ran through those tests while he was there, showing him the high latency and jitter, and he's like, okay, yeah, we're good.

And he got on the phone with his main office, went to an engineer and they, I don't know, figured some stuff out. But all of a sudden, now it's working. And he just looked at me and said, man, that's a good tool.

I want one of those. And I said, well, here's a link, go get one. We'll see if he actually does.

So I just wanted to give a shout out to my sponsor, NetAlly, because the tools really do work. Now, some of you are thinking, you know, Marv, we can do those tests on our phone or on our laptops or whatever. Yeah, you can.

But one of the things that I did that I don't think he was prepared for was to be able to take my cable from our switch and go directly to their modem. I've already had the static IPs in there and I could run the test directly from their modem using their static IP addresses. I think he was kind of thinking that most people don't do that.

I do. So being able to take the handheld tool from switch to modem to router, he wanted to do something over Wi-Fi. And I'm like, why?

That has nothing to do with what your circuit is doing. And he's like, oh, I just want to see. So of course, I connected to the Wi-Fi, ran the...

He was like, oh, okay, I guess you know what you're doing. And I said, yeah, thanks, buddy. So if you can get your hands on some tools, and it doesn't have to be the NetAlly tools, although I think they're pretty cool, but something that when a technician or somebody is going to question you, even a client is going to question you as to whether or not what you're saying is actually the truth, having a tool that is an industry standard, a leader in those types of specialty tests really goes a long, long way. So that's what I wanted to say about that. I will mention other sponsors a little later in the show.

But right now, let's go ahead and get to our guest. We're going to talk about marketing. We're going to have another quick break.

We've got some great Florida Man stories. And I believe he's actually going to have a story to challenge Florida Man. So we'll see how that goes.

But right now, let me bring up Dave Scott, the president of Scott Growth Strategies, a company that specializes in helping technology businesses avoid wasting money on ineffective marketing and growth strategies. He's been at this for over 20 years. He's a friend of mine.

He was back on the show. It's been a couple of years, but we've had him on. We love having him on.

Dave, how are you, sir?

[David Scott] (5:19 - 5:22)
Hey, thanks for having me, Marvin. I'm so good. Thanks for having me.

[Uncle Marv] (5:22 - 5:27)
All right. So what is that, a long-sleeve shirt?

[David Scott] (5:28 - 5:35)
It is. It is. It's chilly here in Fargo, no matter what time of day it is and what season.

So it's a little bit long-sleeve.

[Uncle Marv] (5:35 - 5:37)
From Fargo to Fort Lauderdale.

[David Scott] (5:38 - 5:38)
Exactly.

[Uncle Marv] (5:39 - 5:40)
This is me, man. This was me all day.

[David Scott] (5:41 - 5:44)
I know. I know. It's got to be in the 80s there today?

[Uncle Marv] (5:44 - 5:45)
Yeah.

[David Scott] (5:46 - 5:47)
I wish it was that here.

[Uncle Marv] (5:47 - 5:53)
Although it is a little chilling now. It's down to 73. I may have to wear it.

[David Scott] (5:53 - 6:12)
It's a 60 Fort Lauderdale. I was chatting with a friend last night, and she was like, hey, I wanted to go for a walk with my neighbor's dog and my neighbor, but it was in the late 40s, early 50s. And I'm like, oof, 49, 40, 49, 50 degrees?

No, no way. You've got to get at least 60-plus degrees to go walking at 10 at night.

[Uncle Marv] (6:12 - 6:47)
Mm-hmm. All right. So Dave, we're talking marketing.

Every now and then, I like to do a little, I call it a series on MSP marketing, branding, blah, blah, blah. Even though I don't do it, the industry still needs it. Everybody needs to do it at some point.

So I would be irresponsible not to talk about it on the show here. But let me kind of pose the question to you that I threw on our live stream post. And the question, I can't bring it up now because we're live.

[David Scott] (6:48 - 6:51)
Well, where did you post it and when? And can I find it?

[Uncle Marv] (6:52 - 6:53)
Is it on the LinkedIn maybe?

[David Scott] (6:54 - 6:57)
Okay. Let me just double check. LinkedIn or Facebook?

[Uncle Marv] (6:58 - 7:00)
Either or. I probably posted it on both.

[David Scott] (7:01 - 7:04)
Okay. Got it. And under your profile or the business profile?

[Uncle Marv] (7:05 - 7:08)
Under the business profile, under the show, the heading for tonight. But it was...

[David Scott] (7:10 - 7:16)
Got it. Let's see if we can hunt it down in 30 seconds or less. Cue the cheesy inspirational video.

[Uncle Marv] (7:17 - 7:22)
Yeah. I did put the tagline, stop wasting money on ineffective marketing.

[David Scott] (7:23 - 7:30)
There you go. Boom. That's a great tagline, isn't it?

Okay. Posts, MB Systems Inc.

[Uncle Marv] (7:32 - 7:35)
Oh, it's not going to be under the systems. Come on now.

[David Scott] (7:36 - 7:39)
Got it. Is it going to be under... So it's probably got shared under yours.

[Uncle Marv] (7:39 - 7:40)
Yeah. Probably under mine.

[David Scott] (7:41 - 7:41)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (7:42 - 7:53)
I don't know. Maybe a listener can help us because I can't get to them right now because I'm live. So every time I go to my page, it shows the video screen.

So it's kind of goofy there. But either way...

[David Scott] (7:53 - 7:53)
I found it.

[Uncle Marv] (7:53 - 7:54)
You found it? Okay.

[David Scott] (7:55 - 7:55)
Yeah. What am I looking for?

[Uncle Marv] (7:56 - 8:02)
I thought I posed a question in there on some inspirational thought you would give us when it comes to marketing.

[David Scott] (8:03 - 8:19)
Okay. There's nothing I'm seeing. Let me grab the next one in.

We can come up with one. All right. So Dave can help equip.

Okay. I'm not seeing it, but let's just keep going. We're good.

[Uncle Marv] (8:19 - 8:20)
Don't worry about it.

[David Scott] (8:20 - 8:20)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (8:20 - 8:30)
So why don't we start with... So one of the things that I've noticed over... I'm going to say the years.

[David Scott] (8:31 - 8:31)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (8:31 - 8:54)
As I've listened to other people talk about trying to figure out marketing and they're going from program to program, they're looking for the easy button to marketing. That's just going to start pulling in clients and stuff like that. And it seems as though there's this frustration that's happening in our industry.

[David Scott] (8:54 - 8:55)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (8:55 - 9:21)
That every now and then, yes, there is that 1% that it works for. Sure. And they are champions and they are evangelists for it.

But for 99%, it doesn't seem to quite work. So I want to ask all the people out there, is there something going on as to why it's not working or is it just that MSPs are lazy?

[David Scott] (9:22 - 13:49)
Yeah. I wouldn't say they're lazy. That's a big problem.

And I have a lot of empathy for anybody who spends money on working with marketers or working with growth strategy people who don't get them the result that they want. I think the biggest problem is just consistency, Marvin. And that's what I've seen.

And when you say 20 years, oh my God, I've earned every gray hair and this freaking beard. I feel so old when you say 20 years. But at 46, I've led multiple startups.

I was the former head of marketing and CMO at Connect Booster during some of their highest growth periods for about four years before they sold to the big, bad Kaseya. But we tried everything. We tried the Robin Robbins events.

We tried the Marketopia’s. We tried all those things. And then we just eventually went in-house and we hired our own set of copywriters and designers.

And we just approached it that way. There was a lot more than that. It was more than just, it's not that simplistic.

I don't want to paint a disingenuous picture for anybody because I don't think that's okay to do. And I think a lot of people do it. But we tried all the programs.

We tried all the clubs. We tried all the things. We tried all the tribes.

We tried all that stuff. And it didn't work. And it didn't work because we weren't consistent at it.

We were our own worst self-fulfilling prophecy. And the same goes for tech owners. And I feel like if you're not going to be consistent at it for years and years and years and don't do it, and if you can't do it yourself and you don't know how, and I would argue most IT guys don't know how to write really good copy, then don't do it because you're going to look foolish doing it.

Outsource it. Find somebody to do it for you. And what's that it?

Well, it depends. Like we talked about before we hopped out from the break room or the back room, what might work for an MSP in Washington state that's $3 million in gross annual revenue might not work for one in Connecticut who's $12 million a year MSP. What might work for a $12 million MSP in Detroit, Michigan might not work for one, a $2 million MSP in San Diego, California.

And so it depends, but it's really not about marketing. It's about sales, right? And so every tech company wants to hire a marketing firm to help them grow their sales.

And that's not the way it should be. It's the wrong way to approach it. Marketing is just the air cover.

Marketing is getting your messaging right. Marketing is clarifying what you're actually selling so that your sales team knows what you're selling and your buyer is very clear about what they're buying, right? And usually there's a huge chasm or disconnect between those two.

And so if you don't get that right by doing a little bit of strategy work and a little bit of forethought, a little bit of planning, marketing's never, ever going to work. And sales, your sales is never going to work either. And eventually you're just going to be a roller coaster of highs and lows.

You've got a lot of recurring revenue this month and you lose a couple of customers in the next six months. And then you go back to it and then you go down, then you go up and then you go down. And so I think the biggest frustration for me as somebody who spends a lot of time with tech guys, tech owners, MSP, SaaS owners too, is that they don't focus on consistency.

They'll do it for six months or 12 months or eight months or nine months or 10 months. And then they are like, oh, the cost is just, you know, it's expensive. And yeah, it is expensive, but it's an investment, right?

And so I think the frustrating part I get for business owners is, hey, it doesn't work. Well, it's not that it doesn't work. It's that you have to do the right tactics and you have to figure those out.

And that can be hard. And you have to really focus on clarifying your message and then being a consistent effort at that going forward. Some of the best brands that I know are the ones who do it the most.

And some of their social media posts might be lame, lame as all get out, but they do it consistently, right? And they have prospects that see these things and they have customers that see these things and then they call these IT firms and they say, hey, I want to do a one-time Microsoft dynamic project. How much?

50 grand. Okay. Or I want to switch from my IT provider.

We got popped. We got a cyber security hack and we didn't have a BDR plan in place. Can you guys help me with that?

Yep. Okay. How much?

It's 200 bucks a seed, 200 bucks a user. Okay, great. Let's onboard you and get you started, right?

So in order to get there, consistency is really the biggest challenge and the guys who don't stick with it. And there's also no DIY. You can't DIY marketing.

You have to hire somebody or have a leader that's going to lead it and do a consistent part-time, full-time effort day in and day out, week in and week out, year in, year out.

[Uncle Marv] (13:50 - 14:30)
So you mentioned two things. So let me first talk about consistency. We equate marketing with advertising in a sense.

So there are times where we will hear or we will see the same commercial over and over and over. And I mean, sometimes you're like, okay, cheese and crackers. Can you come up with another commercial to some degree?

But that's part of that reputation. That's part of that brand awareness that, you know what, at some point you're going to need what they're selling and that's who you're going to think of.

[David Scott] (14:32 - 16:01)
Yeah. Yeah. There's really two types of advertising marketing, lead gen and brand awareness.

Brand awareness is like when you're in a plane and you pull up the flap in front of you, there's the catalog or the magazine and they got sponsored ads all over the magazine or it's like a billboard, right? And I live in Fargo, but I'll be moving to Minneapolis here shortly. And so when I go to Minneapolis, there's billboards all over 494.

It's the biggest stretch of road in the twin cities and Minneapolis and St. Paul, there's like three or 4 million people, you know, in the grand Minneapolis, St. Paul market, twin cities market. And so if you see billboards for Gander Mountain or for Tesla or whatever, right? When you need a car, next time you need a car, what are you going to think of?

Tesla. When I need gear to go camping with my kids or my family or my friends or my girlfriend or whoever, what am I going to think of? Where am I going to go?

Gander Mountain, right? Because I saw that advertisement. So brand awareness is really important.

But brand awareness, there's no ROI with brand awareness. It's simply just putting your name out there in the right places where you know your ideal buyer is. So when they have a trigger point or an issue, they know who to call.

Legion is Legion. Legion is an SDR banging out 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 calls a day. They're trying to get you appointments that are going to get you to a discovery call with a potential prospect, who's then going to get you a proposal and get you a sale.

That's Legion, right? And so marketing is a combination. Certain marketing tactics are a combination of branding, brand awareness, and Legion.

And you have to be just aware of what that looks like.

[Uncle Marv] (16:02 - 16:37)
All right. So that leads to the second question I had, where it was going to be about the distinction between marketing and sales. We always tie them together.

And one of the things that I've learned this time around that I didn't learn the last time I had a bunch of marketing people on is that your marketing, as you said, with Legion should lead to sales. And I found that one of the big problems is some of us don't know what to do when we get those leads. We don't have the sales process all set up after the marketing process.

[David Scott] (16:38 - 20:15)
Yep. Yep. That's so critical.

One of the very first things we go through is talk to me about your sales funnel process. So we're going to spend all this time on a website. We're going to spend all this time and inertia and energy and effort on the email campaign, 10 parts.

It's going to go out to this big list that we purchased, wherever that your existing customer list or whatever, wherever that comes from. Now, what if they fill out a form, if they take some sort of action, if they're a marketing qualified lead, that turns into a sales qualified lead after you have a sales conversation with them. Now, what, what does your proposal look like?

If it looks like garbage, they're not going to buy from you. It's confusing. They're not going to buy from you.

You could have the most sweetest offer in the world. But if you don't have a clear message and you don't have a way for people to understand what you're buying and you don't have a really clear way to lay it out, it's just, it's not going to work. Right.

So then you do all this effort for what just stops processes. Documenting process is really, really, really important. I know it guys don't like to hear this and I really don't care.

What I care about is your business. I care about the health of your company. And I am a straight shooter.

I have been my whole life. If you don't have, you're asking your customers to document their cyber security strategy, right? You're asking your customers to document all of their servers and their inventory and their hardware inventory and their, um, their software licenses, whether it's Microsoft or whoever you're asking them to document these things, but you're not doing it on your end, right?

Shame on you. And I think there's got to be accountability. Like 80% of IT owners shouldn't even be, they shouldn't even be in business today.

They really shouldn't. Gary Vaynerchuk did this great, um, keynote a couple of years ago at DattoCon and like within two minutes he was like under the skin of every IT guy there. And he's like 80% of you guys shouldn't even be in business today.

You got in business for the wrong reasons. You're killing your marriages. You're killing your faith foundations.

You're not spending time on the right things. It's killing your health. You're not sleeping.

Your kids are miserable. You're miserable and you shouldn't be in business, right? There's a difference between good IT guys and good IT guys who are good business guys.

And so most of them aren't good business guys. Most of them are good IT guys, but they're not good business guys. So if you can figure out, are these things learnable?

A thousand percent. Yes. Anybody can do it.

I can do it. Anybody can do it. So you got to be, you got to practice the right disciplines that make you a good businessperson, right?

And part of that is understanding where you spend your time and effort in order to grow. And a lot of its process development. And the book Scaling Up is one of my favorite books of all time.

I've got like, it's pointing to my closet. That's right there. And I've got a huge library in my closet in my office here.

I've got like five or six copies of it. The book talks about, Vern Harnish is an old crusty business guy. He's like Patrick Lencioni.

He's been doing this for eons, right? Like listen to the guy. When he says you're not going to be able to grow unless you can scale and scalability starts with project management and processes.

You got to focus on that. So help me God, if another person calls me and says, Hey, this lady or this guy told me to pump $5,000 in AdWords every single month, I'm going to get their name and phone number. I'm going to go to their thing and I'm going to beat them with a chair, not to hurt them, but just to prove a point, right?

Like we're so focused on tactics. We're focused on executing stupid things we hear in peer groups that we don't pay attention to the right things, right? Which is you have to get your sales funnel process defined and you have to document it and everybody's got to be in alignment with it.

Everybody's got to be on board and on the same page. And if you're not, you're wasting time on all of your sales efforts and all your marketing efforts. And so process development as a part of the sales funnel process is really, really important.

[Uncle Marv] (20:17 - 20:53)
Now you've been perfecting this little pitch of yours for a few years. I remember when you were the digital marketing guy. And now you're the growth strategy guy.

And I noticed that a lot of people are starting now to talk about strategy. You've got to have a strategy before you start doing these processes and tactics and stuff like that. So why don't we start with the talk about strategy?

What are some of the key things that we need to know about a marketing strategy?

[David Scott] (20:54 - 24:08)
Yeah, that's such a good question. And yeah, STS has evolved. We started out as Scott Digital Marketing when I left BNG back in 2017.

And I had a couple of clients. It was me as a solopreneur, and that was fine for then. Now it's much different.

What I realized was that copywriting can't get clients in the door and keep them. It just can't. I could write the most compelling subject lines that'll get a 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90% open rate on the email campaign and 100% click-through rate.

It doesn't matter if these things are documented or processes. These processes aren't documented and followed, right? And so there's a big part of it.

And if you talk to, like, go and talk to the most successful MSPs who've grown and then sold their MSPs. They will absolutely tell you we had processes to follow. We had offboarding processes.

We had onboarding processes. We had execution processes. We had cybersecurity processes.

We had managed services. We had IT. Everything is documented, right?

And whether you use a PSA like Autotask or ConnectWise or Microsoft or whatever, all these things are stored there. They're easy to find. So yeah, we've definitely evolved over the years.

And we're very much focused on growing through good pragmatic sales marketing. But it's more than that, right? It's absolutely about a scalable process.

So the first thing you've got to figure out is actually what you're selling. Nine times out of 10. And I've only had one instance in the line.

We've been at this for almost eight years now. It's almost seven years now. And there's only been one instance where we've actually onboarded and worked with an IT firm who actually had all of that, those initial puzzle pieces figured out.

Like, you know, what happens? What does that look like? So the first thing is, you know, you have to identify what you're selling.

So your sales team, whether you're a selling CEO, there's usually a selling CEO, or he has a maybe a business development director, an SDR who's feeding them leads or an account manager, whatever. You got to know what you're selling. So sales knows they're selling and your buyer knows you're buying.

And then your onboarding team knows that they should be onboarding, right? And as a part of that process, you have to know who you're selling to, right? And if you don't have a target, how can you hit it?

And that's a big misnomer is if you don't understand what verticals you're targeting, who they are, what struggles they have, it's going to be really, really hard to go after certain verticals. I can't sell IT services to law firms the same way I could manufacturing or healthcare, because they have completely different dynamics, they have completely different issues, they have completely different cybersecurity regulations, they're completely different regulated industries, right? So you can't apply.

Not every problem is a nail, not every solution is a hammer, right? And so I feel like if you don't understand that, and if you don't apply that to who you're going to try to target, again, your marketing is just going to fail. And so the next question is, okay, we identify our target market, Dave, and we document and write it down, great, everybody follows it.

Well, what should we be saying to them? That's a great question. Short answers, I don't know, right?

In short answers, it depends. Like for law firms, they use a bazillion tools every day, a line of business applications. So maybe talk about how to better optimize them for remote team members.

If you have a partner, a law firm who's got an office in, you know, the Philippines or Scotland or England or whatever, right? Or you have just remote team members in general, how can they optimize them and use them better, right? How can they make them more secure and push out automatic updates, which not a lot of law firms do, believe it or not.

I know.

[Uncle Marv] (24:09 - 24:14)
A lot of law firms and yeah, they are, they are slow.

[David Scott] (24:15 - 24:44)
They're the worst offenders. Like sometimes they keep more sensitive information than healthcare. Like healthcare has got, law firms got the dirty, like they got the dirty.

They got like, especially like divorce law, family law, like they got, you know, criminal records and they got evidence that they use in evidentiary part of hearings. They got interrogatory questions, which you use in court, like ugly questions, like divorce questions, like divorce court, especially high profile cases for people who a little bit are more affluent. Like the questions they ask.

[Uncle Marv] (24:44 - 24:47)
Financial affidavits of people. Yes.

[David Scott] (24:47 - 25:07)
Yes. You know where they're spending their money. Like if they're blowing it on booze and hookers and Only Fans, like lawyers know this stuff.

Like they have it in servers and in Dropbox. It's crazy. And I know it because I just finished up a nine month stint and we'll just leave it at that.

My point is, because I can't really talk about it.

[Uncle Marv] (25:07 - 25:09)
I was going to say, don't get me in trouble.

[David Scott] (25:09 - 26:40)
No, I'm not going to, no. But family law attorneys have the dirty, they have like dirty, dirty shit. They got; they know where the bodies are buried.

Right. And they should. And so long story short, you have to hyper-personalize content.

So if you are an IT firm and you say, great, Dave, we get your passionate plea to write everything down. No problem. We'll be digital pack rats.

We'll document everything like we should. We'll do the right thing. No problem.

We identify our target markets, our law firm, manufacturing, and you know, small healthcare. Great. Now what?

Personalized content, hyper-personalized content for each of those groups. So you have to have content that talks about healthcare issues, manufacturing issues, issues that law firms struggle with. And so how do you find that out?

You ask them. We have a saying here at SGS, grandmom always said, grandmom always said, grandmom always said, you never find out unless you ask. So ask, like call up some of your best customers, open a word doc, start typing.

Hey, Carl, Bob, Jeannie, Tammy, Tim, like what applications do you guys use that are a pain in the ass today? Oh, it's this court monitoring system that we use to send court files back and forth or for healthcare. It's Epic, Epic, or, you know, our EMR system or ERP system, Epic, you know, Epic or whatever.

We struggle to manage it. It's really slow and we need to optimize it better. Okay, great.

So then you start to write content based on what your customers are telling you that they struggle with. And that's where the hook comes in. And then hopefully you have your sales funnel process documented.

And if you do, you just follow it and away you go.

[Uncle Marv] (26:42 - 26:57)
So you just went a few steps down the road and I want to ask how many of us that you've run into where we can't even answer that first question, what are you selling? Because most of us, we just, we sell IT services.

[David Scott] (26:58 - 26:58)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (26:58 - 27:05)
You know, we support your business so that you can do your business or whatever, whatever phrase we're using at the time.

[David Scott] (27:05 - 30:01)
Yeah. So we have a process, it's a five-step process that we take MSPs and IT owners through and SaaS owners through. And we will spend a couple months, sometimes a couple weeks, sometimes a couple months, sometimes a few months, depending on the size of your firm.

And we'll walk them through that and we identify it. It's painful. Like I have to pull stuff out of people, but we're just really good at asking the right questions and getting the right answers.

And so we document that. We pull all of that out of you. We document it.

And sometimes it's like, you know, it's tough. You know, we have a client out in California and they had to let go of one of their sales guys because their salesperson, there were a handful of them, but they had to let go of two or three of them because they weren't on board. And what we uncovered that the ownership group wanted to start selling wasn't something that some of these more tenured salespeople wanted to sell.

They wanted to do it their way. And they wanted to go rogue and be mavericks, right? And that's not what the market was demanding and what the owners were telling them.

And so a lot of what I do is I'm a coach. I feel like a therapist, a lot of calls too. So I said, they said, what would you do if I was you?

I said, fire him. And like, this one person has been here for three years. The other lady has been here for 11.

I said, I know. Come up with a severance package and let them go. And I said, every day that you wait, it's getting more expensive to make that decision.

And I said, if you want to get to your growth goals, you don't get to it by belaboring or by paralysis by analysis. You get there by making fast, decisive decision makers. And if you want to get to four or five, six mil in annual revenue, it's got to be quick decisions, higher, slow, fire, fast.

If they're not on board, if they don't follow the EOS methodology, which is GWC, get it, want it, have capacity to do it, right? That's the People Analyzer. If they don't get it, if they're not on board, if they don't want it and have the capacity, either the talent, skillset or the mindset to do it, then they got to go.

And I know it sounds hard. And I'm not saying you should go around firing everybody. It's not what I'm saying at all.

Like, be thoughtful and intentional about it. But if you're not getting to your growth goals, then be decisive and make those decisions quickly. So you're not, because you're hurting them, and you're hurting you.

So as a part of that process, we identify all those things. We weed out; do you really have the right person in the right role? Are you selling the right services?

Should there be other ones that you should be offering? Other ones you should be cutting, right? If you're selling cybersecurity separate from managed services, I think that's a mistake.

If you're selling BDR separate from managed services, I think you can do some of that like a co-managed, but I think it's a mistake. Business owners, business leaders, whether you run a truck stop, whether you run a car dealership, an accounting firm, a law firm, manufacturing firm, plastic surgery center, whatever it is, they just want to do what they do best. And they want to make money.

They want to operate their business, run their business. They want somebody to handle it for them. So selling it individually, I just don't think is a good idea.

So my point is, we identify that through our five-step process. We document it, get clarity around it, and execute.

[Uncle Marv] (30:02 - 30:17)
So I want to go back real quick. So one of the things you said about the senior, tenured salespeople, obviously, they were still selling enough for ownership to keep them, right?

[David Scott] (30:18 - 30:21)
Sure. Yeah, could be.

[Uncle Marv] (30:21 - 30:55)
I mean, or I guess I'm trying to understand what the metrics are when you look at situations like that. Because obviously, if people are not selling, then you know, you know, you got to go. But if they're there, and they're selling something, obviously, stuff's coming in.

And I know the trend is moving away from the any business is good business model. So, you know, the right business is good business. So obviously, those people were selling something, but apparently, it wasn't the right something, right?

[David Scott] (30:56 - 33:53)
Correct. Yeah, we call it AFAB. And that's a term that I coined from Reed Warren at IT Evaluations.

And if you haven't had him on your show, you need to. He's phenomenal. But Reed, Reed was one of my, I hired Reed when I was at the previous firm way back when, like 12 or 13 years ago.

And so I've known him ever since. And IT Evaluations is a former client of ours, too. But the acronym he uses AFAB, A-F-A-B, anything for a buck.

You don't want to sell anything for a buck. Like to put on your website, we'll fix anything with a plug. You don't want to be a one man trunk guy.

Nobody, nobody's going to buy from you. I mean, maybe cheap cost customers will, but you're not going to grow a business that way. You might be an independent consultant.

So with the salespeople, like, in order to grow from like 1 mil to 3 mil, and 3 mil to 5 mil, and 5 mil to 10 mil, you got to do different things. And that's where the growth strategies come into place. You have to have an acquisitive strategy.

You never know MSP is going to get to 5 mil organically. It is impossible. I've never seen it.

I've been in this space since I worked for former Barracuda reseller since like the late mid-2000s, late 2000s. I've never seen an MSP grow organically, meaning they sell their way to 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, $10 million in annual revenue. Like the 5 or 6 mark?

Yes. But anything close to 10? Nope.

You need to absolutely have an acquisitive strategy. So what does that mean? It means you got to have a stomach to go through a merger and acquisition, which is really effing hard.

And I dropped the F-bomb, but I'm trying to like clean up my language lately. Yeah, it's insanely hard. It's stressful.

And you get caught up on things like $500 car payments, and, you know, healthcare reimbursement costs and all kinds of just really yucky things. But if you want to get there, and you want to have those, those are part of your growth goals, then you have to be able to make tough decisions. And they got to be decisive.

And so there's three enemies to success to success that we talked about. There's the comfort zone, being stuck in your comfort zone, meaning being stuck by what you don't know. There's learned helplessness, which is, Oh, I can't do it.

Or I, I don't know how to do that. Therefore, I'm not going to. And there's a path of least resistance, which is hard work over a long period of time.

And if you don't understand what those enemies are, and if you're not willing to get out of your comfort zone, and let other people carry the vine and carry and carry the torch, and if you're not willing to get past your limiting self-beliefs, which is learned helplessness, Oh, I can never do that, or I can't do that. And if you're not willing to go beyond the path of least resistance, then you're never going to grow. And I would say just don't invest in sales marketing at all.

Like keep doing the minimal, the basics, but don't do anything above that. So going back to original question, you know, you really have to have those puzzle pieces put together. And about the salespeople, you're not going to get to a certain dollar amount, if you keep the same people in the same role doing the same thing, you have to make changes in your IT business is going to have to evolve over time.

So you have to be good at handling conflict and making tough choices very decisively and very quickly.

[Uncle Marv] (33:55 - 34:10)
So it sounds like when you're talking about the pillars of growth that you put in place for your business, you know, what are the metrics that you establish growth, it's almost like you have to tie those to your marketing and sales as well, right?

[David Scott] (34:12 - 34:13)
Yep, 100%.

[Uncle Marv] (34:13 - 34:24)
All right. So I don't know, can you tell us some of those metrics? I mean, what are the things we have to look at to know that our marketing is working, our sales are working, then growth will come?

[David Scott] (34:25 - 36:58)
Yeah, absolutely. I did my homework before I got on the call today. So there's really there's three things you have to three sort of metrics are three things you have to really do in order to have successful sales and marketing.

Again, sales and marketing. Yes, the discipline of copywriting and email campaigns is more marketing, I get it. And you should never have your salesperson writing marketing copy, it's just a bad idea.

And conversely, you shouldn't have like a marketing person who's a designer go out on sales calls unless they're going to shadow your salesperson, which I think is a great exercise for people to do because it just shows collaboration and that you love and care about each other. But the first metric of the first metric based activity to be doing is you need to define your sales funnel. And that sales funnel should be marked with goals and activities.

You never want to manage the end result. You don't you manage the activity that gets you to the result. To hear somebody say, well, we didn't get any leads or get any ROI from a marketing I call bullshit.

Because you did you just you measured in different ways. Like setting up your SharePoint instance and giving you a crap ton of email marketing content and giving you a plan and a roadmap. There's ROI behind that, right?

There's value behind that. And if you paid a dollar amount for it, then you should be using it in executing it right. So as a part of that whole process, you have to first create your sales funnel.

You have to document it. Everything from soup to nuts beginning to end. What happens when you get a lead in?

Who do they interface with? Who are they talking to? What form do they fill out on our website?

What are we putting in front of them? What do we ask them on the discovery call? When do we send them a proposal or not?

Do we send them a proposal? Do we send it from Quote Works or Quosal? Do we create it in a Word document or PDF?

And everything is a part of that process. And it takes time. And again, if you're not patient enough to do that, then don't waste my time or waste anybody else's time.

Just keep going doing what you're doing. Right. But at the end of the day, the first metric based thing that you need to do is grabbing your sales funnel and creating and then documenting it.

Now the part of that you want to define your goals, right? So say you want to grow half a million dollars in MRR next year or $2 million in MRR next year. Great.

Then what activities do you need to do to do that? You need to reverse engineer. You start with the end in mind.

It's like writing a good blog piece or really great piece of content. The best authors in the world always write with the end in mind, meaning what do you want the reader to do with this copy that they read in a blog or a book or whatever? So same thing.

You have to define your sales goals. So how many new customers do you have to get in? How many touches do you have to make?

How many email campaigns do you have to send out? What's your cost per acquisition? And so on and so forth.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is consistency.

[Uncle Marv] (36:58 - 37:28)
Before we get to the second thing, let me ask this question because you talked about, you almost kind of reversed what you said. You said don't measure by the end result, meaning if you didn't get any leads, don't use that as your metric. But then you said start with the end in mind.

Let me now go to what about those programs that say if you follow these steps, I will get you 10 leads a week or 10, you know, whatever. That's how a lot of these things are marketed.

[David Scott] (37:29 - 39:06)
Yeah, I would say that's hogwash. You can't put a number on leads. And I get a million emails every day from SEO people, from even channel marketers.

We think we're an MSP. I don't know why. But I see them all the day, all the time.

There's no way you can guarantee that you will get 10 leads a week or 100 leads a week or 100 appointments a week. It is categorically and statistically impossible. And if you buy from somebody like that, call me and I will talk about getting you a refund.

I will sic my business attorney Kip on them and he will get you your money back. If somebody promised you a certain number. I've never said that.

I never will. And I just think it's wrong because it gives people false expectation. You have to do the work too, right?

We have to do our job and you have to do your job. There's accountability and culpability on both parts. There's no such thing as like taking your hands off the wheel.

There's collaboration, there's homework items you have to do. You have to follow up on the sales leads that we give you from email marketing campaigns. You have to put them into a sales funnel campaign and drip on them.

You have to follow up with people that fill out forms on your website. What are you doing with them? What are you following with them?

What are you saying to them? Are you looking professional? Or do you have a dirty polo shirt on?

Are you clean shaven? Are you, you know, my point is, are you doing the basics to show enthusiasm that you care about this prospect's business? Because that's what they care about.

They want you to show that you love them and care about them, and that you're going to help them by handling all of their, their IT and their managed services. And if you can't do that, then, you know, why are you even in business? So I would say, you know, back to your point, it's definitely a collaborative effort.

And there's got to be accountability on both sides.

[Uncle Marv] (39:06 - 39:13)
All right. Didn't mean to abruptly stop you there. But all right.

So the number two metric.

[David Scott] (39:14 - 43:25)
Yeah, consistency. So you have to have metrics around publishing content. And so content creation is a double edged sword.

Is it, can it, can it spiral out of control and be expensive? Yes. But what you need to do is just find the tactics and execute consistently.

So for example, at that same DattoCon conference that I referenced earlier, where Gary Vaynerchuk got up in front of the crowd and said the majority of you guys shouldn't even be in business today, which I think was like, you know, a little bit, a little bit kind of a jerk statement. But he, you know, he wasn't wrong. He wasn't right.

But he wasn't wrong. I also believe that after that conference, there's a video and I, I've struggled to find it. I know what happened.

But it's on YouTube. He was talking to one of the vendors there. And the vendor was there, the vendors marketing director with Gary Vaynerchuk.

And the story goes, and it was on YouTube and on Facebook. She was asking him, how often should we post on social media? And he said, well, you tell me how often are you posting today?

And she, she couldn't, she didn't answer the question directly because she was scared. And she was fearful because the both of the owners of that vendor were standing like close by her. And he's like, how often are you publishing?

And she's like, well, we just switched creative agencies. Well, he's like, he's like, look, I'm not going to yell at you or beat you up. I know I'm Gary Vaynerchuk.

I drop the F-bomb every five minutes, you know, every five sentences or five words. I'm not going to yell at you. I'm not going to be mad at you.

Nobody behind me is going to judge you. Just tell me how much, how many times you're publishing to LinkedIn, to Instagram, to Facebook every day. Well, we just, you know, we're crafting.

He's like, I, at this point, he's getting visibly irritated, like he does. Right. And she couldn't answer the question.

So finally, the owners came around her and they're like, hey, what's the conversation about? And he's like, you guys the owners? Yeah, we're two of the investors and one of the owners.

Okay. What are you guys doing to publish? And what are you doing to get, you know, Sharon or Karen or whatever name was the support that she needs?

They're like, oh, well, she's blah, blah, blah. And he's like, tell me again, how much you're publishing. She's a couple times a week.

He's like, not enough. You are going to fail at your social media marketing if you expect to get an ROI from your, from your marketing. And then people wonder why social media marketing doesn't work because you don't publish enough.

So with the consistency piece as a metric, what you need to do is you need to be publishing a certain amount of content every single day, every single week. So a content calendar might say on the first of the month, you're publishing two articles on LinkedIn, and on Facebook and on Instagram on the second of the month. So May 2, you should publish four articles, four things.

It might be an about us, it might be a cool article from TechTarget, it might be a cool article from Datto or a security based article, whatever it is. If you're not publishing every single day, and you don't have a number of how often you're publishing and when you're, you know, your marketing and sales is going to fail. So you need to have metrics around activity, right?

Not metrics around the result, but there should be result and then activity. And as a part of it, spend a little bit of time going over the analytics tools inside of LinkedIn, or on Twitter, or on not Twitter, I would not, well, sorry, formerly known as Twitter, now X, on Instagram or Facebook or Tick Tock, right? And so really be looking at the analytics tools.

Are you seeing good engagement? Because those platforms are built for one thing and one thing only money. Like there's a reason that Google generates $20 billion, well between 15 and $20 billion a quarter in ad revenue, because that's how they make money.

All of these people just want money, right? So you have to be a little bit savvy and suave and smart and shrewd in terms of how you leverage your cash on these platforms. That's why I would never do paid ads unless you have a good content, organic content creation strategy, and your messaging is really clear about what you do, and you have a top notch website.

If you don't have those two or three things, and putting money on paid ads on LinkedIn is already expensive enough, you're just going to blow through a bunch of cash and not get any ROI. So consistency is the second thing. Don't start and stop.

If you start and stop, don't stop. Just keep going. And if you bingo your marketing vendor, fine.

Then find a new one quickly and get them engaged and get the activity train going and get that content calendar engaged so you're publishing a certain number of pieces of content on a regular basis. So that was the second one. And there's a third one I got too, if we've got enough time.

[Uncle Marv] (43:25 - 43:38)
We do. I'm just sitting here thinking, obviously I don't do enough because I get told all the time I don't market myself, I don't market my podcast, and I should do this. I'm like, I'm doing fine.

[David Scott] (43:39 - 43:56)
I work for a firm where I have access to a myriad of copywriters, both channel driven and not. And I could be publishing a blog every single day. It's just expensive, right?

And it's time consuming. So I totally get it. It's like I want to have a life.

I've been single for almost a year, actually over a year. I want to have a dating life eventually. I want to go and have fun.

[Uncle Marv] (43:57 - 43:58)
You've been up all that free time, man.

[David Scott] (43:59 - 44:00)
Yes, exactly.

[Uncle Marv] (44:01 - 44:07)
All right. So we don't need to talk about my woes, but let's go ahead and talk about that third metric.

[David Scott] (44:07 - 46:10)
Yeah. So again, just looking at things like email open rates, engagement rates. We mentioned before we started the show today about LinkedIn.

I'm a huge fan of LinkedIn Sales Navigator because it's an automated tool that can help you find prospects. You can actually build a buying persona, or as Gary Pika calls it, your TCP, Target Client Profile, or ICP, Ideal Buyer Profile, whatever you want to call it, whatever acronym you want to use. But they talk about really focusing on identifying your ideal persona, who they are, where they live, where they go, what watering holes they hang out at.

And you can identify a lot of these things in LinkedIn by using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. And it's cheap. It's like 100 bucks a month.

I mean, I know IT guys who spend $1,200 a month on a Range Rover SVT payment, but they won't cough up $100 for LinkedIn Sales Navigator. And how foolish is that, right? And so it's about being penny wise and pound foolish.

You should flip that around. Instead of focusing on $100 expense when you're spending 100 grand on something or pissing away that MRR that we so love to talk about and love to hate, you should really be focusing on spending the money and investing in the tools that are going to get you ROI and activity. And so as a part of that, LinkedIn Sales Navigator has really great metrics.

LinkedIn's backend, they have a really great analytics tool. And you need to be paying attention to your email open rates. If you're not getting a 20, 30, 40, 50% open rate in your email campaigns, they're no good.

Find a new copywriter, find somebody else who's got better email marketing subject lines, and who writes really compelling email marketing copy edgy stuff that's going to get people's attention. Not disingenuous, not lies. We have to be willing to understand that human buying psychology will dictate when and how people buy.

And so we have to understand the words that buyers use. And we have to put those words in our email subject lines to get them to take some sort of action. So email engagement rates, open rates, and just engagement rates in the analytics platforms and social channels is a really big one.

[Uncle Marv] (46:10 - 46:14)
Alright, so using social media, still effective, huh?

[David Scott] (46:15 - 46:58)
Yeah, I mean, it depends. I mean, I'm not a, yeah, I mean, it depends. It depends on who you talk to.

I mean, obviously, if you talk to a social media marketer on the IT channel, they're going to be like, hey, you should invest and spend money on this paid ad platform. Again, I would never do paid ads until you have a amazing, stellar 10 out of 10 website or close to it and you have really clear messaging and you've understood your sales funnel process. And you have a really good organic content creation strategy.

You can't buy buyers. You can't buy leads. You can buy lists, but you can't buy buyers.

You can't make somebody buy something. You can't brainwash somebody. You can't bribe them.

You can't bribe them in certain countries. Not here in the US. We have trade laws against that.

But you get my point.

[Uncle Marv] (46:58 - 47:36)
Right. All right. Let me ask you a question out of left field.

Didn't prep you for this. But what about all of the AI that is being used in our marketing right now? And I'm going to say LinkedIn.

You brought in LinkedIn Sales Navigator. But just in regular LinkedIn posts, there has been a huge uptick in thought leaders posting these articles, which we know they're AI generated. I mean, people just don't sit down every day and write this stuff when they're running a business and doing all the things that we know they're doing.

[David Scott] (47:37 - 47:46)
Yeah. So let me ask you this. When you see these posts on LinkedIn and on Facebook, and they're really long, and they look like they're written by AI, how does it make you feel?

[Uncle Marv] (47:49 - 47:50)
Me personally?

[David Scott] (47:51 - 47:52)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (47:52 - 48:07)
So sometimes I'm like, hmm. And it's more of a... All right, I'll say it.

Personally, I want to scroll right by. Yeah. I'll just say that.

[David Scott] (48:07 - 48:09)
It turns you off, doesn't it?

[Uncle Marv] (48:09 - 48:23)
It does. And you know what it does is it makes me rethink what I'm posting. Because I want to know, are people looking at my post and having that same eye roll?

That's where I'm at.

[David Scott] (48:24 - 51:50)
Yep. And I would say that's the majority of consumers and people who read that content are going to say the exact same thing. They're going to say, I can tell when it's written by a robot.

And I can tell when it's written by a human being. And I can tell when it's meant and it's meaningful and when it's not. I forget the quote.

I think it was Maya Angelou. And she said, I've learned that people will forget what you said, people forget what you did, but they never forget how you make them feel at the end of a conversation. So words matter.

You know, words are really important. They have the power to build up your brand or discourage your buyers from buying your services. It doesn't matter what you wear, how much money you make, it doesn't matter what you do for a living, where you're at on the socioeconomic scale, it doesn't matter the size of your car, your bank account, the gross annual revenue, your MRR, it doesn't matter.

The ability, the number one ability to influence and impact others starts with our words. It goes against every second, third, fourth grade teacher that anybody's ever had that said sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me because words do hurt. They also help.

Right. And so as we're looking at AI, AI is limited in its knowledge. AI is only going back to a certain period of time.

And now it's like back 2019, 2020. So ChatGPT and other tools like that. Now is AI going to be great for automating certain tasks?

Yes, 100% use it as much as you can. But just understand that if you start crafting a bunch of shitty blog pieces from ChatGPT and posting them on your website, your traffic value, your domain authority, which are huge SEO metrics, are just going to go in the, it's, it's going to be bad. You're not going to get ranked for the words you want anymore.

You're not going to get found for the words you want anymore. Your quality of your copy is going to be really bad. And it's more importantly, what your end user is seeing, right?

Like, do you want to really publish website copy that comes from a robot that turns off your ideal prospects? I don't. Like I don't, I don't get up and put my feet on the floor every single day and hop on client calls to lose clients, I, I want to serve them.

And I want to make sure they're happy and satisfied. And, and they're content, they're living their best lives. And if they're not, then they're doing the things that get them to the best versions of themselves, right?

So as a part of that, I want to produce high quality content, not low quality content. And so tools like Jasper is actually an AI writing tool, I'd absolutely recommend Jasper, it's a great tool. And you can edit it.

And you can tailor it. And you can tell it to do things. And you can tell it to write content.

The caveat there is you have to spend a lot of time editing it. So it doesn't sound like a flipping robot, right? So do that and understand the expectation that in your peer groups, if they're like, Oh, I wrote this big guide on ChatGPT, like slap that peer group member in the face.

I mean, don't do it, get arrested. But tell them Dave Scott said it's okay to like, challenge them and tell them that's a stupid idea. It's foolish.

It just is. You should never use ChatGPT. Don't listen to your peer group members.

It's like the blind leading the blind. What you should be doing is trying and experimenting it for yourself. And there's a fair bit of creativity and science that goes into sales marketing.

So as a part of that, Jasper is a really great tool. ai. Seo is a pretty good one. That's one that I talked with today with one of our clients.

They're seeing good results with that. But to create like good organic, you know, guerrilla based content, like email marketing content, website content that should all be produced by you are written by an actual human being copywriter.

[Uncle Marv] (51:50 - 51:57)
All right. I will not engage the robots to do my posting for me.

[David Scott] (51:57 - 52:55)
Yeah, well, you can you can you're just going to have to edit it a whole lot. That's all. Yeah, well, they'll have they'll help you craft really cool subject lines.

Like another one is subject line.com subject line.com. I got to see the CEO of subject line.com speak at inbound. That's HubSpot's big annual conference three years ago.

And that guy had a line a mile out his breakout session. And he did an amazing job. They have an AI tool that's built into it.

So you pay a subscription fee to them and you can craft really cool subject lines from everything like headers on landing pages on your website to email sub marketing subject lines, blog titles, like anything that needs a subject line or a lead and led not le 80 like a hook. And so their tool is great. And they use AI to craft some of the subject lines.

So it's okay to use it in those situations. Just don't craft, you know, a ton of content on a regular basis from ChatGPT, put it on your website, and expect to get a result because it's just not going to happen.

[Uncle Marv] (52:56 - 53:01)
Alright, so Jasper AI. Seo and subject line.com. Right?

[David Scott] (53:01 - 53:06)
Yeah, those are some really great tools that you could start implementing today that will help you.

[Uncle Marv] (53:06 - 54:58)
All right, I will look those up and put links in the show notes. And Scott, we went a little longer than I thought we were going to I had a couple more thoughts, but I want to make sure that we get a couple of other things in before the end of the show. So we're going to do a couple of those things.

And then we'll come back. I'll ask you for some final thoughts around marketing. But I want to make sure I thank our partners and sponsors.

I want to make sure we get to Florida man. And I want to do a shout out to a member of the channel that had a nice long conversation with me yesterday. So first thing I'm going to do is I said at the beginning of the show, this is presented by NetAlly.

Are you tired of dealing with network performance issues? Look no further than NetAlly. They are your partner in network testing solutions.

They help you plan, install, validate and troubleshoot vitally important wired and wireless networks more effectively. Our live stream tonight is sponsored by Computers Done Right. Are you looking for reliable IT services to streamline your business operations?

Look no further than ComputersDoneRight.com. They offer a comprehensive suite of managed IT services, computer repair and customized solutions backed by experienced technicians, all aimed at helping businesses run their IT operations more efficiently and effectively. If you are watching the live stream, you've seen me drinking from a mug.

Our mug sponsor is Super Ops, the all AI powered PSA RMM platform that streamlines your IT management. Super Ops helps you work smarter, not harder. Experience the future of IT operations today.

Another sip from the cup there.

[David Scott] (54:58 - 55:00)
I'm jealous, Marv. I want one of those mugs.

[Uncle Marv] (55:01 - 56:11)
Got to be a sponsor. And you didn't hear me mention sponsor websites because I want you to go to the IT Business Podcast website. There is a tab for sponsors.

You can see these partners and others on the page there. So be sure to link there. Yes, it does help me out a little bit.

But listen, doing podcasts is expensive. So I'm trying to get all the expenses paid for. So help us out by supporting all of the podcast partners that I have.

ITBusinessPodcast.com slash sponsors. And that is our Florida Man song that we have for the show. And Florida Man is also presented by Super Ops.

They're all over the place. So, Dave, I know that you prepped for this. I didn't have to tell you too much.

Usually I have to explain that it's a story to challenge Florida Man or a random question. You already let me know you've got a story from your area that you want to talk about.

[David Scott] (56:11 - 57:02)
Yeah, as I said earlier, the Florida Man stories, you never know which percentage of them are tall tales versus real. If you've ever seen the movie with Francis McDermott, Fargo, made in the mid-90s, it won a couple of Academy Awards. It's still a phenomenal movie.

And there's a scene in the movie, I won't give it away too much, but there's a scene in the movie where the bad guy is putting bodies in woodchippers. And all you see is the cop walking up to them from afar. And they got their huge floodlight on them.

And there's white snow everywhere, like typical Midwest, no trees, just white snow. And there's red stuff everywhere. And you know that it came from the woodchipper, from putting a body in a wood chipper.

So that woodchipper actually sits outside of the Visitor Center here in Fargo, along the freeway in 94. And it's like the staple of fame for tropical Fargo.

[Uncle Marv] (57:02 - 57:04)
So the actual woodchipper from the show.

[David Scott] (57:05 - 57:20)
Yep. Oh, and then Microsoft's second largest campus in North America is based here in Fargo. Used to be Great Plains Accounting Software.

It used to be owned by our now governor, Doug Burgum, when he sold it to Microsoft for like a billion dollars back in the early 2000s. So little known fact, I walk by it every night.

[Uncle Marv] (57:20 - 57:21)
Nobody cares about that, though, do they?

[David Scott] (57:22 - 57:25)
Yeah, probably not. The Fargo woodchipper is way cooler.

[Uncle Marv] (57:25 - 57:25)
That's cool.

[David Scott] (57:26 - 57:28)
That is cool. It is cool.

[Uncle Marv] (57:28 - 59:53)
Alright, so I'm actually going to share two Florida man stories because they are in similar vein. The first one doesn't really sound so dramatic. But the title Florida man saves neighbor from jaws of 11 foot gator by hitting it with his car.

This happened in Tampa, Florida. Both of them happened this week. So verifiable.

A man in Collier County, nearly escaped a potentially deadly encounter with an 11 foot gator on Friday. Rick Fingerett was walking his two Labradors near a pond near the quarry off Immokalee Road. And folks, if you ever have seen overhead pictures of Immokalee, yeah, you shouldn't be walking around there.

They were attacked by the massive gator. He tried to fight off the reptile by kicking it and poking it in the eyes and nose as you're supposed to. Fortunately, his neighbor, Walter Rudder, happened to be driving by, saw the man trapped.

And in his words, he says, I was driving and we saw a man lying on the ground, waving his arm. We pulled over. I got out of the car and saw that an alligator had him by the leg.

With not much time to think, got back in the car, ran over the gator, which released Fingerett from its mouth. So that was the first Florida Man story. And the second one, I actually will have a link to a video because it is just like the Florida Man games.

An alligator was tackled in true Florida Man style. Mike Dragich, known as the blue collar brawler, was seen removing the eight foot long alligator that was wandering the streets of downtown Jacksonville. He's a veteran, an M.A. fighter and a licensed alligator trapper. He was actually watching a hockey game with his family when he got a call from the sheriff's office. He did not have any equipment with him and was not wearing shoes when he grabbed the gator. But it was no problem.

He got the job done. Ladies and gentlemen, and there is a video of him grabbing this gator, throwing it over his shoulder, walking down the street. So you think these are all tall tales.

They are not.

[David Scott] (59:53 - 1:00:00)
So why do I feel like every Florida Man story has something to do with an alligator or an animal that's trying to kill you?

[Uncle Marv] (1:00:00 - 1:00:03)
They're not always alligators. We've got iguanas and toilets.

[David Scott] (1:00:07 - 1:00:22)
I love it, which is why I live in the Midwest. There's no rampant overpopulation, no animals that are trying to bite you or kill you. There's nothing coming up inside of your toilet.

There's no seismic activity. There's no hurricanes. There's no tornadoes.

It's pretty safe.

[Uncle Marv] (1:00:22 - 1:00:31)
We got all. Well, we don't have the tornadoes, but we got hurricanes. We got 15 foot pythons in the Everglades.

[David Scott] (1:00:31 - 1:00:32)
In the Everglades. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (1:00:33 - 1:00:42)
Yeah, we got it all. And all, you know, from and I've got client offices in Tampa. I was I would be there.

I had a client office in Jacksonville. So I got ties to all these places.

[David Scott] (1:00:42 - 1:00:43)
I love it.

[Uncle Marv] (1:00:43 - 1:02:28)
So follow those links, folks, in the show notes to your Florida Man stories. And I do want to give a shout out. This is something I probably should do more of.

But to talk about other people in the channel that are very good, very consistent at helping others out. Even I sometimes have questions and sometimes I'll just make a call. And so yesterday I made a call to the great state of Tennessee and I made a phone call to Unbound Digital thinking I was going to pick up an operator who I was going to have to explain who I was.

And I want to talk to Jason, the channel champion for Techcon. But no, Diva. Rachel picked up because she saw my name on the caller ID.

She picked up, got me in touch with Jason immediately. Jason and I, I don't know, we had probably about a half hour long talk about stacks because, folks, you know that I don't change my stack very often. I might be making a change this year.

So Jason and I had a nice long chat. And I also wanted to go ahead and give him a shout out because we are in negotiations that Unbound Digital will be an upcoming sponsor of the IT Business Podcast. So give a quick little shout out there, Jason.

And just so you folks coming to Techcon this year, Jason is intent on winning his belt back for a back-to-back-to-back as the channel champ. So if any of you guys want to knock him off, you may want to give me a call and start getting the stories going. I'll help you out.

[David Scott] (1:02:28 - 1:02:32)
The competition starts now.

[Uncle Marv] (1:02:34 - 1:03:01)
All right. So, Scott, I know that, like I said, we went long and we had a great conversation there. You answered those questions actually a lot better than I thought you were.

I thought you might give me those little quick qubits and make me dig for them, but you didn't. But let me go ahead and just give you an opportunity. And I don't know if you got all your thoughts out.

So let me say, is there any lasting thoughts that you want to put in the minds of people out there when it comes to their marketing?

[David Scott] (1:03:01 - 1:03:20)
Yeah, just be patient. Be patient. Choose to work with a marketing vendor who's going to do a really good job, is focused on your brand, is going to help you grow, is going to put the processes in place, and just be patient.

I feel like a lot of people just lose patience with things they don't see a result from right away. But just be patient and be kind.

[Uncle Marv] (1:03:21 - 1:03:27)
Well, that usually stems from the fact that we need clients now because we lost one, right?

[David Scott] (1:03:28 - 1:03:45)
Which is a bad reason to get into sales and marketing. That's like saying, I'm lonely there, so I'm going to go get married. Well, I don't think that's a good idea.

I think you should do the work first and become the best version of yourself and then find out what criteria you want to use when you're finding a future life partner and then focus on getting that done.

[Uncle Marv] (1:03:46 - 1:03:55)
I do want to say thank you to the watchers and listeners here. I don't know if I'm going to say thank you to Corey Clark who threw this ridiculous comment in the chat.

[David Scott] (1:03:55 - 1:03:56)
Yeah, I saw that. That's great.

[Uncle Marv] (1:03:57 - 1:04:05)
Can you just repeat everything? The answer is no. Can you not pour so heavy on the bourbon at ASCII, Corey?

[David Scott] (1:04:09 - 1:04:19)
We'll just give them the quick rundown. This is like when – who was the kid, the star of the Transformers movies, the first couple of them? Shia LaBeouf.

Do it. Do it. Just do it.

That's the recap, Corey.

[Uncle Marv] (1:04:20 - 1:04:21)
And be patient.

[David Scott] (1:04:22 - 1:04:23)
Yeah, be patient. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (1:04:23 - 1:05:11)
All right. Well, Scott, thanks a lot for coming on. That's all the time we have for today's show, folks.

Thank you for tuning in and joining us. Remember to subscribe to the podcast if you have not already so you never miss an episode whether they're the video that we do here on Wednesday nights or the audio shows that are popping up all over the place now. You can find those on just about all the podcast platforms.

But the easiest thing is to head over to ITBusinessPodcast.com. There's a link for follow. Find your favorite catcher there and you'll be alerted.

So, again, that's going to do it. On behalf of my friend, Dave Scott, thank you for tuning in. This is David Scott signing off.

We'll see you next time. And until then, Holla!