638 Defining Your Ideal Client for Effective MSP Marketing

[Uncle Marv] (0:07 - 1:36)
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast powered by NetAlly. This is the show for managed service providers, IT solution providers, computer repair shops, solo techs, anybody that supports business. If you're looking to do it better, well, you've come to the right place because we help you do that better, smarter, and faster.

This is the Wednesday live show and we are streaming right now on multiple platforms. I am becoming a multimedia genius. Well, all that means is I've been able to tackle all my stuff and add it.

So we are streaming on, let's see, YouTube, Facebook, Stream, or X, whatever it's called, and LinkedIn. So we are all over the place. You can catch us if you subscribe and click follow and do all that stuff whenever we have a live show.

Of course, you can always go to the website, itbusinesspodcast.com, click on follow on your favorite pod catcher. And anytime we have an audio show released, you will get that as well. Tonight, I am being joined by someone who was here previously.

You first met him back on episode 618. Seems like a while ago. Tim Rialto, I'm sorry, Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing is here.

And let me bring him out of the green room now. Tim, how are you?

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (1:36 - 1:42)
I am great, Marv. Honored to be here a second time. So thank you for having me back.

[Uncle Marv] (1:42 - 2:17)
Well, thank you for coming back. So the last show was pretty much an introduction. We did the audio only.

And then I wanted to have you come back on and do a live show and kind of do some follow-up. And I'm on this series of podcasts about marketing. I used to call it No Marketing Marv Presents, but we now just do a focus on marketing.

And you did a good thing with us by talking a lot about strategy and helping us simplify our marketing.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (2:18 - 2:30)
Yeah, if I remember correctly, we covered a lot of ground on that initial episode. So people have got to find something to latch onto there of some value.

[Uncle Marv] (2:30 - 2:44)
Yeah, yeah. One of the things that you had mentioned that really stuck out was that there is this importance of having a strategic marketing plan before diving into marketing.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (2:46 - 2:46)
Yes.

[Uncle Marv] (2:46 - 3:01)
Which seemed a little counterintuitive because a lot of us, well, we don't really have a plan until we get started or until somebody tells us what the plan should be. So it was a little backwards thinking, but I think you explained it quite well.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (3:02 - 4:00)
Well, thank you for that. It's just most people get the sequencing out of whack, right? And when the sequencing is out of whack with marketing, it doesn't work, right?

And so what we talked about in that first episode was just what are the key elements of strategy when I think of strategy are that your target market and who your ideal clients are within that market. We have to have a really clear understanding of who we want to serve, who we intend to work with and attract. And once we understand that, then we can start to identify where are they and what are we going to say to them?

Those things are the fuel for the marketing tactics or vehicles, if you will, right? So strategies fuel, the tactics are the vehicles, right? And so when we think about it in that way, it makes a lot more sense, right?

None of us would jump into a vehicle without fuel. So why do we do that with our marketing?

[Uncle Marv] (4:02 - 4:13)
Well, and we wouldn't jump in without a destination, right? Unless we're with the wife and it's, hey, let's just go drive around on a Sunday afternoon, which doesn't work when it comes to marketing.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (4:14 - 4:22)
Yes. You always have a plan of what vehicle am I going to be in and where am I going? And marketing is the exact same way.

[Uncle Marv] (4:23 - 4:42)
Yeah. One of the things that we talked about in terms of identifying, I think the term you put in the last show was the most profitable and best fit clients, but I'm not sure we talked about a plan or the steps to take to actually do that.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (4:43 - 6:14)
Yeah. So again, I like to keep things as simple as possible. So for most MSPs, you don't need to reinvent the wheel, okay?

If you've been in business for a while, you've got current and past clients, the best place to start homing in on who your ideal clients are is that base, your existing and past client base. And what I always talk about is I talk about the three power questions, okay? So you want to ask yourself, who do you love working with?

And by the way, if you love working with them, usually they love working with you. Second, who are your most profitable clients? And when I say that I'm talking about gross profit, not top line revenue.

Clients that tend to generate the highest top line revenue are not always the most profitable clients. Sometimes they gouge you on price, they take a lot of time, right? We want to look at the most profitable clients.

And then the last thing we want to look at is which clients are we getting the best results and outcomes for? When you ask yourself those three questions, you end up with a group of clients that check all three of those boxes. You love working with them, they're profitable, and you're getting great results for them.

Now, this is a hypothetical question, right? Or a rhetorical question, I should say. How much better would all of our businesses be if we worked with clients like that every day?

Significantly.

[Uncle Marv] (6:15 - 6:17)
Well, life would be nice.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (6:18 - 10:11)
Life would be very nice. So why not focus our marketing efforts on attracting more of those types of people? So that's where you start, right?

You've got this group that checks all three of those boxes, then we can start to dig a little bit deeper. And we start to look at, look, who are these people? What are the demographics around them?

Are they in specific industries? Are my main points of contact certain types of people? Who am I dealing with?

Am I talking to the CEO, the owner, president? Am I dealing with the CFO or a CTO? Who am I talking to there?

And then we also want to look at the psychographics. The psychographics is where we start to get into their head and really understand them as a client. So with the psychographics, we're looking at their pain points, the common problems that they have, that they're struggling with, the roadblocks that they have, their aspirations, their goals, right?

What kind of results are they looking for? That's where when we start to dig into these details, what typically ends up happening, Marv, is these smaller subgroups start coming to the surface. And it's like, I've had conversations with MSPs going through this process where they're like, oh my gosh, half of my customers are architects or attorneys or small medical practices, whatever it may be.

These things start coming up to the surface and it's like, okay, why not focus our marketing efforts on attracting more of those people? Because when we focus, our marketing becomes much more effective. It becomes simpler.

And so that's the process that I typically recommend people go through. Ask yourself the three power questions, then dig into the demographics and the psychographics to see what starts to come to the surface. And then the last thing that you want to look for before you start going into next steps is, is this going to be a strong market to hitch my wagons to here?

Right? And there are five things that you want to look at with the market. One, are there enough of these types of people?

If it's too small of a market, you're not going to be able to grow, right? The reality is for the majority of MSPs, most markets you would focus on are probably going to be large enough. Most MSPs are not looking to add hundreds or thousands of clients a year.

If there's an association or a conference or a trade show geared towards that particular market, I'd say it's large enough, right? The second thing you want to look at is, do they have a pain, right? And is that pain great enough, right?

That pain that you can solve, do they have it? Once you understand it's big enough, they've got a pain I can help them solve. Do they have buying power, right?

Do they have money to actually pay you? They don't have money to pay you, not going to be a good fit. Fourth thing, are they easy to get in front of?

In other words, are they easy to target? If they are difficult to get in front of, you are going to be banging your head against a wall from a marketing and a sales standpoint. So you want to make sure that you can get in front of them.

And then the last thing you want to look at is, is the market growing, right? What we don't want to do is hitch our wagons to a market that's declining or stagnant. So those are the general steps that we work through when we look at homing in on your target market.

All right.

[Uncle Marv] (10:11 - 10:18)
So you've just triggered a whole bunch of memories. Some good, some not so good.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (10:19 - 10:19)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (10:20 - 11:19)
Awesome. Well, let's, let's relive them, right? Well, here's the thing.

So, you know, the first one is kind of easy. Is there enough in that market? So here in Florida, when I started, when I left my, my real job, because I was at a tech at a computer repair shop.

And when I went out on my own, I knew that there was a market for businesses that needed onsite service because the stores weren't providing it. Now I fell into an auto body industry, tons of body shops down here in Florida, tons of fender menders, you know, people that can't drive in the rain, elderly people that, you know, turn left when they should turn right, people stepping on gas paddles, running through stores, that sort of stuff. But that market started to dry up when the paint companies stopped subsidizing them, because that's how we would get paid.

We wouldn't get paid from the body shop. We got paid from the paint company.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (11:19 - 11:20)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (11:20 - 11:27)
And so once that kind of started happening where the paint companies were pulling back their money, the body shops, they weren't paying.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (11:28 - 11:28)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (11:28 - 11:31)
And I'm like, well, I can't help you if you don't pay.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (11:31 - 11:32)
I got to get out.

[Uncle Marv] (11:32 - 12:00)
Yeah. Then I fell into this legal market with law firms, one of those down here in Florida as well. Yeah.

And so growing all the time, a lot of people like to sue down here in Florida, home of Florida man. So we have stuff that happens. So, you know, all of that makes sense.

But I want to ask this question. I want to go back to what you talk about in terms of profitable.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (12:01 - 12:01)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (12:02 - 12:17)
Because I've got two questions. Let me ask this question first. When you sit down with an MSP at the very beginning of the stages, do you actually go through these exercises with them and have them go in and chart who their profitable clients are?

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (12:18 - 13:20)
Yes. Okay. Yeah.

So I ask them those questions. I don't have the data. Right.

But they do. Right. So I'm asking you questions and they're pulling the data that they have.

Right. What clients do I have? How much profit am I generating from those clients?

You got it. I mean, look, if you don't have that data, you like you need to have it. Right.

So but yeah, I'm asking those questions and we're working through them. Right. Typically, this is like I don't think you want to overcomplicate this.

You know, just most of the time when I actually ask these questions, most MSPs already have an idea, like they're already thinking of a handful of clients that they're already working with and they're like, oh, yeah. So, you know, it's just it's a matter of bringing. You know, these questions to the forefront and thinking, taking a little bit of time to think about them and get the data and then data, you can start to make decisions.

[Uncle Marv] (13:20 - 13:44)
All right. So then the second question from that is. Do you have people who are in a situation?

I'll be honest about my situation. So my top client, they've been a good client. I think I've had them 14 years.

Yeah. Are they profitable? Yes.

Do I love working with them? Yeah.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (13:45 - 13:45)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (13:45 - 13:55)
I mean, they're not a pain point, but they're not easy all the time. Do they price shop me from time to time? Yeah.

But they always end up coming back.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (13:55 - 13:55)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (13:56 - 14:11)
My number two client is fantastic. And if you were to do a percentage of profitability versus my larger client, they're actually percentage wise more profitable. Obviously, they're less.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (14:12 - 14:12)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (14:12 - 14:30)
But they're the client. And I'll give you an example. Yesterday, they had an issue where one of their emails got partially compromised and they were sitting on the fence with adding the advanced email threat protection.

I mean, they knew they needed to do it.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (14:30 - 14:30)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (14:30 - 14:52)
It's like, can we wait? As soon as that happened, they were like, well, we were going to do this anyway. So just do it.

I mean, not even a question. Just do it. And it's at a point where they're at they're at a time in their growth where they're like, Marvin, whatever you got to do to protect us, do it.

Do it. Yeah. That's my client.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (14:53 - 14:55)
Yeah. That's my client.

[Uncle Marv] (14:55 - 14:58)
But the other client, they bring in a lot of money.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (14:58 - 14:59)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (14:59 - 15:02)
So is there a differentiation?

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (15:03 - 19:13)
Well, there are nuances there, right? There's it's this is not always black and white. There is some gray here as you go through this process and you just got to look at the information you have and then make a decision and move forward with it.

Right. It's and here's the other thing. When we work through these things, like no decision that we make as business owners is set in stone.

Like, I mean, you can change a decision. Right. But we have to make decisions that we can then move forward with for now.

So I don't what I don't want to have happen is I don't want people to get stuck going, oh, my God, I've got to make this decision and I got to live with it forever, because that's not the case. Like your business is evolving. Your marketing is going to evolve with it.

We just need to make a choice for now. And with MSPs, I the simplest way to focus and to start to differentiate is by vertical. Right.

It's not absolutely required. There are other ways to differentiate, but differentiating by vertical is the simplest way to do it, in my opinion. Like I said, there are other ways to do it.

But if you can differentiate by vertical, it becomes just it's simple. And honestly, we can if you want, we can the next thing that I start to talk about once you home in on ideal client is what you do to get in front of them. And I think people see as I talk through that, why it becomes much simpler if you do it by vertical.

You know, so I'm going to focus on attorneys or frankly, you can go even more niche than that. Right. I work.

I'm the IT guy for personal injury attorneys. Yep. Right.

The narrower you can go, the more specific you can get with the message, which is more specific, you can get the more effective it's going to be. But once we know who our ideal clients are, one, we need to interview them. Right.

I want you to interview your ideal clients because they can articulate your value much easier than you can yourself, because we're not objective when we think about our businesses. Right. We're to where we can't see the forest through the trees.

Right. When we interview our clients, they can really tell like, hey, how did you find us? What process did you go through?

Why did you work with us? You know, why do you continue to work with us? You know, if you if you had to tell somebody what we do, how would you describe it?

Right. And you can hear it in their words. You will get gold from those conversations.

But once you interview clients, you know, you know, you know who your ideal client is that you're going to target with your marketing efforts, then you need to start working on where are they. Right. We don't want to cast a net out in the middle of the ocean hoping we're going to catch a fish.

We want to know that we're going after trout and we're sticking our line in the local trout pond. Like that's the only thing I'm catching when I'm there. Right.

We want to be targeted with our marketing efforts. So we need to create a list of where they are. And I call it an ideal client GPS.

This is a simple process. It is not easy. It takes a little bit of work.

It's much easier than it used to be. But what we want to ask ourselves is where do our ideal clients congregate? Like where do they get together online and offline?

So we need to look at things like websites they frequent, suppliers or vendors that they buy from, organizations they belong to, you know, associations, trade shows, conferences and events they go to, influencers they follow, YouTube channels they follow, podcasts they listen to, social media groups they're involved in, forums, online communities they belong to, email lists they subscribe to. Those are all places that they may congregate.

[Uncle Marv] (19:13 - 19:21)
All right. Well, these are things that you just can't come out and say, hey, what emails, what email do you subscribe to?

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (19:21 - 20:15)
Here's how you do it. Right. Well, one, you can't ask your ideal clients, hey, how do you, where do you get your info?

Where do you get information? Okay. Like when you started looking for a new IT provider, what did you do?

Tell me in detail what steps you took, right? You can ask them for that, but here's where Google and AI are your friend, right? What I would recommend people do, when we guide people through this process, this is exactly what we do.

Look, go into ChatGPT or whatever your favorite AI tool is. Perplexity is another good one. Somebody brought that up today.

If you're not familiar with perplexity, it's basically like an AI search engine. And so you can go in there, type in a question, it'll give you the answer, but it also gives you references to where they pulled the information from.

[Uncle Marv] (20:15 - 20:16)
The sources.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (20:16 - 23:24)
Yeah. So it gives you the sources. So really, really cool tool.

But you can, if you're going to target whatever, you talked about auto body shops, right? You could go into your favorite AI tool and go, are there any influencers in the auto body industry, right? What YouTube channels do auto body shop owners subscribe to?

You may have to tweak the questions a little bit, but see what answers come up. Oftentimes, you're going to get a really good starting list of things to check out. And so what we do is we put this in a Google doc or a Microsoft Word doc, whatever, but just start putting all that stuff in your list.

That is your base for your ideal client GPS. And once you've gone through, what I would recommend is you ask these questions in AI, see what they give you, put it on your list. Then what you can do is go back into search, whether Google, Bing, whatever you use and re-ask the questions and start doing a little bit of research just to see what else comes up in search.

But when you're done with this, you now have a list of all these places that your ideal clients frequent. Now, I hope people are starting to see like the answers you get are much more detailed when you say, what YouTube channels do attorneys subscribe to? If you go in and say, what YouTube channels do small business owners subscribe to?

It's too fricking broad. You're going to have hundreds of listings. It's too broad.

So the narrower we can get, the better the list. And it's that list. Look, when we do this for clients, 20, 30 pages worth of information, you're not going to go to all these places at the same time.

But what the list does for you is it gives you a targeted place, targeted places you can be to get in front of the ideal clients you want to work with. And then you can make choices. Hey, there's a local bar association or a county bar association or a state bar association.

I'm going to join that. And I'm going to spend some time getting to know people and building relationships within the bar association. Awesome.

You know people you're going to meet there are either going to be attorneys or they're going to be other providers in the legal space, which can be great strategic partners. So again, we're fishing where the fish are. We're not going to a local networking event, hoping there's an attorney there.

We're going to a bar association and we know that we're going to be talking to all kinds of attorneys. That's the value in creating that list. And it's that list that can then start to drive which marketing activities you choose to start using.

[Uncle Marv] (23:25 - 23:29)
Nice. So before I forget, I want to tell you, Perplexity?

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (23:30 - 23:30)
Yes.

[Uncle Marv] (23:31 - 23:32)
That's the engine I use.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (23:33 - 23:55)
It's the one I use. I use, if for people that are watching or listening, you got to check out Perplexity. I mean, it is so cool.

Look, they're one of the first. They're all going to come out with their own. But it is, it's super valuable.

So it's definitely worth checking out.

[Uncle Marv] (23:56 - 24:25)
Yeah. I use it for my business. I use it for my podcast prep.

Anytime I want to do research on a guest like you, just go in there, pop that in. It keeps a library of all your previous searches so you can go back and reference them. And it does, you know, it's like chat GPT.

You just keep asking it questions, refining, refining, refining, and it will actually offer up some questions. Maybe you might want to think about asking this.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (24:26 - 24:26)
Yeah. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (24:26 - 24:40)
Are you on the paid version of it or the free? I am not. I'm on the free.

Okay, cool. Yeah. But it's still powerful.

It's very powerful. For the free version. So that's why I didn't pay for the other.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (24:41 - 25:19)
Yeah. So it's, I mean, you can see like this process of creating an ideal client GPS with AI and all the tools that are available through Google search. This is a much easier process than it used to be.

Right. It's not difficult. You just got to take the time to do it and create the list.

And once you create that list, it's not set it and forget it. Like the more you start to infiltrate a specific market, the more things that continue to come to the surface. And you can just, it's a living, breathing document.

You just keep adding stuff to it as you come across new things to add to it.

[Uncle Marv] (25:20 - 27:06)
Very nice. So let's, you know, I want to keep going down this road to some degree and just kind of forget what we were going to talk about, but in, without throwing shade on all the other marketing people that I've had on the show. Yeah.

Of course, a lot of the processes are geared towards coming up with a consistent plan that is done on a regular basis. Yes. Whether it's daily, a couple of times a week, uh, simply getting your name and brand awareness out there and to some degree kind of splashing, like you said, just, you just keep, you know, keep flashing that light.

So people see that you're there, you're there, you're there. When we were right before the show, we got off on a tangent of another topic and website and SEO always seems to come up. And the reason I'm bringing this up is I just listened to two non-tech podcasts last week or within the last week that talked about marketing, talked about SEO, and they talked about, you know, you've got to have a landing page for every city, every service.

Uh, you've got to put, you know, you've got to be posting on social media five times a day, stuff like that. Yeah. Part of me is like, ugh, it just feels like too much.

I don't want to say busy work. Yeah. But it's like, like you had mentioned earlier, casting a net and hoping.

Yeah. Hope is not a marketing strategy. Right.

Um, but to some degree, there, there has to be, you have to have a good website, obviously.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (27:06 - 28:34)
Uh, I completely agree with you. Um, it's the way I look at your website is it is the hub of everything that you do from a marketing standpoint. So even like, look, most MSPs, um, generate a lot of business through referrals and networking.

Right. Um, even if you are in that place, your website is critically important because I don't know about you, but like, let's say that you get a referral to somebody, are you immediately jumping on the phone with those people? Like, or before you jump on a call with them, you're checking them out online.

They're going to your website. They're looking at what's there. If it looks like it was built in 1990 and you know, the message is just horrible and doesn't resonate with them.

They're not going to want to talk to you. So even if you have a hundred percent referral generated business, I believe your website is still absolutely critical to your success. But more importantly, as you start to expand into other marketing channels to build upon the referral business, you have everything leads back to your website.

So if that hub is broken, it is going to impact the effectiveness of all the other parts that you have in that system.

[Uncle Marv] (28:35 - 29:27)
So super important in my opinion. Okay. So the question I was going to try to drive us to is if you're going out and doing this targeted, you know, phishing where you're, you're, you're narrowing down your top clients, you're finding out where they are, where they hang out.

When you talk about what social medias they're on and stuff like that. Yeah. Obviously you've got to attract them somehow.

If you can't get in front of them at these networking events and you're going to put together, you know, some sort of campaign to them, how without, you know, going too much into the secret sauce, but how do you develop a plan that does that with your social media so that they will be drawn to you whether through SEO or through your email campaign or something like that? Yeah.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (29:27 - 32:23)
It's so, um, this is a little bit of a loaded question, Marv, um, because look, I'm of the opinion that there's no one size fits all plan, right? So when somebody says to you, you need to do exactly this. I don't agree with that because everybody's at a different place.

Okay. Everybody's at a different place. They have different goals.

They have different resources and capabilities. All of those impact what goes into your marketing plan, right? So for example, we're shooting video.

Like you love doing this podcast recording video. I love video too, because the content can be leveraged into other forms of content. But man, if I say to an MSP, like, dude, you need to start creating videos tomorrow and they're terrified to be on video, like that's never going to work there.

They may start to do it, but they're going to hate it. It's not going to come across well, and eventually they're just going to stop. So the marketing channels you use and the tactics you use within those channels need to one resonate with you, right?

And what you want to do either that, or you need to pay somebody else to do it up first and foremost. And then it also has to be in line with your target audience and your ideal clients. Is that how they get information, right?

Is that how they prefer to consume information? So we want to make sure that those things are in alignment. That's going to help dictate what you choose to do.

You know, I mean, we can make some general, I can make some generalizations here. I mean, in general, like I think every MSP should be doing email marketing. It's a low hanging fruit.

It's inexpensive. And a lot of the people that you get in front of with your marketing tactics are not going to be ready to buy. Five to 10% of your market is ready to buy at any given point in time.

So if the majority of people you're talking to are not ready to buy, and you don't have a way to stay in front of them and continue to build that relationship and nurture them, when they fall into that camp of, I'm ready to buy, how in the world are they going to remember you? They're not. So email marketing is a simple, inexpensive tool to help you accomplish that.

So if I'm going to make some generalizations, I'm going to say, look, you've got to have a website and it's got to be, the messaging has to be good. You've got to have those key elements that are going to make an effective website. I think you should be utilizing email marketing.

And then from there, there's a number of different things that you can do. But if I had to pick two that you must do, I would say website and email. Prior to strategy, you've got to have strategy first, right?

Then you're going to jump into those.

[Uncle Marv] (32:24 - 32:28)
All right. Well, Tim, that was not meant to be a loaded question. Sorry in the way that I asked it.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (32:29 - 32:50)
No, no, not at all. Not at all. I just, I'm never going to be one of those people that's like, oh yeah, everybody has to do this, right?

This is the way to do it. Because if it were that simple, everybody that followed these very prescriptive methods would be successful and they're not.

[Uncle Marv] (32:50 - 32:51)
All right.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (32:51 - 32:52)
Why is that?

[Uncle Marv] (32:53 - 35:26)
Well, let's do this. Let's disarm this a little bit. Sure.

Let's do a quick commercial break for our sponsors. We'll do Florida Man versus the world, and then we'll come back and finish up with some more marketing stuff here. Cool.

I love it. I'm going to talk about our sponsors and you get ready for Florida Man. Sweet.

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So I did have Tim prepare for Florida Man versus the world. And Tim, you were excited because you said you found a Florida Man story from your neck of the woods.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (35:26 - 36:22)
Yeah, this was fun. So before the show started, I told you, I was like, I live in Colorado now. I tried to do Colorado Man and it just wasn't cool.

So I went back to California where I'm originally from. I typed in California Man, here's what came up. Title said, 81-year-old man dubbed serial slingshot shooter is arrested in California.

So apparently there was an 81-year-old man in Southern California who had been victimizing his neighbors for about a decade with a slingshot. And he finally got caught. He was breaking windows in their houses and windshields in cars with his slingshot.

So there you go. Strange story. I mean, 81-year-old dude, I'm trying to picture my dad with a slingshot breaking windows and I just, I can't picture it.

[Uncle Marv] (36:23 - 36:42)
Yeah, my radio station actually brought that up on the Weird and Whatever News. And it was funny because the police kept receiving complaints about quality of life issues because of this slingshot. And the radio people are like, how bad can a slingshot be?

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (36:43 - 36:51)
Man, I don't know about you. I haven't used a slingshot since I was like 12. So I mean, I think I used it.

[Uncle Marv] (36:51 - 36:56)
I think I used it once and it was like, okay, this is stupid.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (36:57 - 37:05)
Yeah. I mean, it was fun when I was a kid. I kind of, I dropped the habit though.

So there you go. There's your California man story.

[Uncle Marv] (37:06 - 37:19)
Okay. I will have a link to that because that's a fairly recent story. So a good job of staying recent.

Actually, the gentleman, what was his name? His name is Prince King. Prince King.

Okay.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (37:20 - 37:21)
I didn't get that deep into the article.

[Uncle Marv] (37:23 - 37:41)
And he's actually, he was in court today actually. So I wonder, I'll have to see what happened there. Now for the Florida man story, I'm actually holding up three separate stories that I've marked one, two, and three, because I couldn't figure out which one to share.

So I figured I'd let you pick.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (37:41 - 37:42)
Okay.

[Uncle Marv] (37:42 - 37:45)
So if you want to pick number one, two, or three, that'll be the story that I read.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (37:45 - 37:48)
One, two, or three. Let's just go with one.

[Uncle Marv] (37:49 - 39:23)
Okay. Number one, it is. So here is the story.

A 20-year-old Florida woman named Alicia Razo and her 23-year-old companion, Zadok Westfield, were caught engaging in a public sexual act behind a locked gate of historic Naples Pier on Memorial Day around 4.30 p.m. When police officers arrived after receiving multiple reports, the disheveled couple attempted to dress themselves. In a bold attempt to evade arrest, the 20-year-old Razo jumped off the pier into the water and swam towards the beach, but she was eventually apprehended by beach patrol. And basically what had happened is the public reaction to the incident was just outlandish.

So a witness who was at the pier with her two children, age seven and 15, reported observing the couple's inappropriate behavior, which prompted questions from the minors, the children's curiosity about the explicit actions they witnessed highlights the public's dismay over such conduct during a family event in friendly public space. So that happened in Naples, not far from our computer's in the right place.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (39:24 - 39:25)
Okay, yeah, over the weekend.

[Uncle Marv] (39:26 - 39:46)
Yep. All right. Uh, and just to get people, because I know they always want to know what the other stories are, I'll read the first line.

So story number two, according to reports, a 32-year-old Florida mother was accused of offering a man sex with her 10-year-old daughter for five dollars.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (39:48 - 39:58)
You know, as you were telling that story, Marv, I'm thinking it's unfortunate that the 81-year-old California man wasn't there to, like, hit him with the slingshot to get him to stop, you know?

[Uncle Marv] (39:59 - 40:22)
That would have been awesome. And number three is actually one that people have probably heard already. It gained national attention.

A Port St. Lucie, Florida man named Tavares Williams went viral for his hilarious wrong answer on the game show Wheel of Fortune. Did you hear that?

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (40:22 - 40:23)
I did not.

[Uncle Marv] (40:24 - 41:21)
So the show had a toss-up puzzle. The very first one, the letters on the board were blank, blank, blank, blank, I, blank, T, blank, E, blank, B, blank, blank, T. Tavares rang in and confidently answered, right in the butt.

So, uh, which obviously was not the answer. Uh, what was he thinking about? I don't know, but he did apologize at least, and, uh, that was hilarious.

All right. So, Tim, let me at least go back and tell the people and remind them that, uh, your company, that I mispronounced at the very beginning is Rialto Marketing. And you started this, uh, let me see, 2013.

Is that right?

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (41:22 - 41:23)
Yeah, early 2013.

[Uncle Marv] (41:24 - 41:36)
All right. And, uh, you did that seeing that, uh, there were basically critical elements of effective marketing that many business struggled with, strategy, planning, and leadership. Some of which we talked about tonight.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (41:36 - 41:37)
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (41:37 - 42:13)
And, uh, your website, rialtomarketing.com. So if people are interested, it'll be in the show notes. You also have a guest profile on the page where they can contact you for more information and, uh, get themselves on track.

Let me first ask before I go any further, since we did not do a full recap of our first episode, do you think that there was anything that after we did the show that you thought, Ooh, should have talked about this? Or was there anything that you, you felt we, we did not cover?

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (42:14 - 42:47)
Uh, not really, not in particular to that episode. Like I said, we kind of covered, we covered a lot of ground. We, you know, we didn't go super deep, but we, we covered a lot of ground in that show.

So, um, I think it was a good, good place to start. Tonight we've, we dug a little bit deeper, especially with, with target market stuff and how to hone in on that. So hopefully, uh, folks find, we'll find that helpful.

Cause everything you do from a marketing standpoint is really driven by that target market and your ideal clients.

[Uncle Marv] (42:48 - 43:29)
So we talked a little bit about content marketing. Um, several people are really gung ho on doing the content marketing. I mentioned those other people that I listened to where they're, you know, you've got to put out stuff.

You even talked about the fact that if, you know, people were to follow this example and just get into doing videos and podcasts, and that's not their forte, uh, that maybe they shouldn't do it. But in this world of social media, the TikTok, you know, everybody trying to do shorts and reels and stuff like that. Uh, how important do you think that plays a role in what we should be considering as part of our marketing?

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (43:29 - 45:52)
If your ideal clients are there, then it becomes important, right? If they're not, then it's not important. Okay.

Right. And so, uh, look personally, I mean, I don't care for social media all that much. I mean, it can be a huge time suck, but I am very active on LinkedIn.

Because people I want to reach, right? MSPs, other IT folks, they're there, right? Are they all there?

No, but there's quite a few of them there. And so that's a good place for me to be. Um, when MSPs think about content, um, frankly, when you think about anything that you're going to do, it's important to first understand, like, why are you doing it?

Like, what's the goal? Um, because that helps drive what you choose to do within that particular channel. Um, but once you understand, you know, the reason why with content, you know, I think there are some important things to think about with content.

One, people do business with MSPs. Frankly, people do business with other people in general that they know, like, and trust. And content is a very powerful tool in helping people get to know, like, and trust you, right?

I, I've, this is the second episode I've done with you. People that watch or listen to both of these, they already kind of know some things about me, right? They, they've, they've heard my voice on video.

They've seen me, right? And so even though they've never met me, they, they can connect with me a little bit. Before that, that's really powerful, right?

And so content does a great job of helping people get to know, like, and trust you and build credibility. It can also be really powerful in search engine optimization, if that's an important thing that you're investing in. So there are big benefits to content.

Um, the other thing with content is if you're producing it consistently, it can help drive your email marketing activity. It can help drive your social activity, right? So there's really a very, a trickle-down effect with content, um, that you can leverage in other marketing channels, uh, which is why I think it's pretty powerful.

[Uncle Marv] (45:53 - 46:18)
All right. Well, uh, can we go back and talk about your history? Cause I don't know that we did that too much when we introduced you before.

We know that the company started in 2013. I know that before that you actually were co-owner of a company that got acquired. So I kind of want to ask how you transitioned into doing this marketing for MSPs.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (46:19 - 46:23)
Yeah. Um, I'll give you the cliff note version and then if you want to go deeper, we can.

[Uncle Marv] (46:24 - 46:24)
Okay.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (46:24 - 49:51)
So I, so when I graduated from college, I was a math major. I had no idea what the heck I wanted to do, Marv. And my dad had been, he was a manufacturer's rep.

So he's a middleman, um, in the consumer electronics industry. So he was selling car stereo equipment, home theater equipment, um, that kind of stuff. And he had started a distribution company with a partner about a year or so before I graduated.

It was related to his rep business. Um, and when I got out of college, I, he had no full-time people. The only people that were helping with distribution were also in his rep company.

And so I knew he needed help. And I was like, Hey, you know, let me help you for the summer while I figure out what the heck I'm going to do with the rest of my life here. And he said, sure.

And so I was the first full-time employee. And after three months, I was like, Oh my God, I love this. I'm freaking hooked.

Like, I don't want to do anything else. And so I talked to my dad about it and he was like, absolutely. You know, I would love to have you.

And so I continued to do that. I ran the distribution company while my dad was running his rep company. My dad was a mentor, a guide for me, but he also gave me a lot of freedom and a lot of autonomy.

And I learned more in six months doing that than I did in four years of college. Like it was, there was so much real world experience there. And yeah, we grew the business.

We averaged 60% a year growth for nine years. We sold it. I worked for the company for another three years and then I got laid off.

This was like 2009. So we got acquired in 2005, worked for the company for nine years. Then I moved with the company from where I was in Northern California to Denver.

And I got laid off in 2009. And so I was like, dude, what the, you know, this is all I know. What am I going to do next?

And I had always been interested in real estate. So I got involved in residential real estate. Most people are like, you got in residential real estate in 2009, 2010.

Like what are you thinking? But there's opportunities in every market. And in that market, it was foreclosures and it was short sale business.

It had to bounce back sometime, right? Yeah. And so I started door knocking on houses that were in foreclosure to help sell their homes before they went into foreclosure.

So I was doing short sales where people were trying to sell the house for less than what they owed, right? So we had to get bank approval. Marv, I hated it.

I started getting like the Sunday evening effect. Like, oh my God, I've got to work tomorrow, but I had it every day. It wasn't the Sunday evening effect.

It was every evening effect. And so I learned a ton doing that. And I put myself outside of my comfort zone all the time.

But I was like, what's the point in owning a business if you dread it? And so that's when I shifted gears and I got involved in marketing. I thought about what I love about business?

What am I good at? And that's when I got involved in marketing. My road in marketing has been winding as well.

It took me a while to really figure out what I love about it, what I'm great at and where I can really specialize. But that's where I am now. And that's how I got here.

[Uncle Marv] (49:52 - 50:03)
So interesting. So dad must have been a little proud that you came back around to the family business and he didn't have to twist your arm or threaten you or anything like that.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (50:03 - 51:14)
You know, I don't think he ever really thought much about it or was worried about it. It was an amazing experience for me because I got to see a different side of my dad than I did growing up. And frankly, it just made me respect him even more because he's a man of integrity and personally and professionally.

And I just realized how many people he had great relationships with and they were built on that integrity. And for me, it worked well for me because he wasn't all over me. He trusted me.

He knew that I was going to make some mistakes, but they weren't going to be catastrophic. And so he let me learn and he was there when I hit roadblocks and I got stuck. And that's why it worked really well for me.

But I mean, that's an experience that a lot of people don't get to share with a close family member. And I feel very fortunate that I was able to do that with him.

[Uncle Marv] (51:15 - 51:29)
All right. Well, very nice. Well, Tim, it's been fun having you here for these two shows.

So let me ask this. You're in Denver. Will you be attending the PAX 8 Beyond event that is coming up?

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (51:30 - 51:37)
That's a great question. I am not. I should be, but I'm not because I got some conflicts.

But next year, how's that?

[Uncle Marv] (51:38 - 51:38)
All right.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (51:38 - 51:40)
Are you going to the event?

[Uncle Marv] (51:41 - 51:57)
I am going to be there. You are. OK.

So we'll have to miss it. And we'll see if the godfather, Rob Ray, invites me back for a third year next year out there. Because I only travel past the Mississippi once a year.

That's a long flight.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (51:59 - 52:02)
That's your threshold there.

[Uncle Marv] (52:02 - 52:03)
Yeah, that's pretty much it.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (52:03 - 52:04)
OK.

[Uncle Marv] (52:04 - 52:21)
All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, there you have it there. Tim Fitzpatrick, Rialto Marketing.

And hope you got some very good marketing information there. And if I were in a position where I were going to be marketing anytime soon, I'd be following a lot of your advice.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (52:22 - 52:25)
I appreciate you having me, Marv. It's been great to reconnect, man.

[Uncle Marv] (52:26 - 53:22)
All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. If you watch the live show here or the video after the fact, thank you for tuning in.

Of course, as I mentioned at the top of the show, head over to itbusinesspodcast.com. Click on your favorite pod catcher or whatever it is that you can follow along. See when these episodes get released, both audio and visual.

And of course, check the show notes for any information that you want to check up on. Contact with our guests. Support the sponsors, folks.

They help me do a lot of stuff and keep these things going. And that's it. I'm going to be out on the road for the next couple of weeks.

We still will be doing live shows. So tune in here Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Eastern. And we've got the Pitch It!

Vendor Spotlight episodes coming up. So you'll want to pay attention to all of those. It's been a long show, Tim.

Thank you very much.

[Tim Fitzpatrick] (53:23 - 53:23)
Appreciate it.

[Uncle Marv] (53:23 - 53:39)
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll see you next time. And until then, Holla!