680 Unlock Hidden Revenue Opportunities with MyITspend

(0:36 - 1:01)
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast powered by NetAlly, the show for IT professionals and managed service providers, where we help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. And today we are doing a very special presentation. Even though this is released as an audio podcast, there is an accompanying video that you'll be able to see.

(1:01 - 1:22)
So if you head over to the website, the show notes at itbusinesspodcast.com, click on video, you'll be able to follow along with us and watch what we're doing, because we may do a little screen share here. And when I say we, I'm joined by Kevin Lancaster and Matt Solomon from the channel program. Guys, how are you? Great.

(1:22 - 1:40)
How are you? Doing amazing. Are you laughing that we were waiting for who was going to speak first? Yes. I was, I was focused on the fact that I clearly need to take a selfie with you at an event so I can get into the intro of the show.

(1:40 - 1:42)
That's true. That's true. It's impressive.

(1:44 - 2:02)
Yeah. So guys, you guys have introduced something called MyITSpend. And I see that as a client management tool designed to help MSPs optimize their client relationship and boost revenue.

(2:03 - 2:20)
So of course, a lot of questions come along with that, but why don't we start with first one of you telling us what that is and why you came up with it? I'll take a stab at that. So first thing, and thanks for having us on the show again. Appreciate it.

(2:20 - 2:46)
So the idea behind MyITSpend, it grew out of the fact that I've scaled an MSP. I've also been on the other side of the table as a vendor, scaling ID agent and running go-to-market globally at Kaseya. And as we looked at, how can we start to solve big problems in this industry and just make things more efficient? This is one of the areas that we chose.

(2:46 - 3:22)
So we started with the NaviStack concept where you come in and start to just basically visualize your stack and figure out the gaps. And that opens portals to vendors that are in the platform and it's creating a lot of, really streamlining a lot of the interaction between the vendor and the MSP. But that next big challenge was how do we help MSPs differentiate, grow revenue in a marketplace that's getting increasingly crowded where there is stack parity? And that's what a lot of the data that we see is, a lot of these stacks are the same and MSPs are having a hard time differentiate.

(3:22 - 3:35)
So how could we build something that allowed the MSP to go into a customer or a prospect and say, all right, look, I'm going to manage your network. I'm going to manage your email. I'm going to keep you secure.

(3:35 - 3:48)
I'm going to run the backup. But yeah, every other MSP in this marketplace is going to say the same thing. So I'm going to come in and I'm actually going to work with you on your entire technology spend, not just this core MSP services.

(3:48 - 4:10)
We want to get in there and we want to understand what are you spending on connectivity? What are you spending on project management tools? What are you spending on your HubSpot platform? We want to make sure that we provide, we get much greater visibility as the dog barks in the background. Apologies for that. But sorry.

(4:12 - 4:30)
Yeah. So, I mean, Kevin was talking about the differentiation and Kevin, I guess when your dog stops barking, you can feel free to join back. But yeah, I was looking at opportunities to, for an MSP to get greater visibility into all the different technologies.

(4:31 - 4:54)
One that they're spending on internally. So managing their own contracts and subscriptions. And then on the flip side, our early adopters of the internal license said to us, Hey, we'd love to provide this to our customers because there's tons of subscriptions and things that they're signing up for that we're not actually fully aware of.

(4:55 - 5:12)
We want to have these conversations and kind of our VCIO type of services and or quarterly business reviews. And so it's maturing the conversation that an MSPs can have with one of their customers. There's unlocking shadow IT.

(5:12 - 5:43)
Again, there's areas that they don't even know that one of their customers is spending money on. And it could be right in that sense, it could be a revenue opportunity because they may uncover that a client of theirs is going directly to vendor XYZ when they could be purchasing it through them at a discount at a lesser rate. Let me let me let me step back and see if I heard this correctly, because part of me heard that this was something for the MSP to look at their own spending across their stack.

(5:44 - 6:17)
But you now adopted this so that we can take it to our customers and use it to show what they're spending. So was that the initial intent was to do both or did it just start out for MSPs and we're shifting it into that VCIO area? So the initial intent was to and again, apologies, nothing like a dog barking on a live broadcast. But so the initial intent was really focused around helping MSPs start to mature their operations.

(6:18 - 6:32)
Right. We looked across the board again. You know, my personal example, as I was scaling our organization in D.C., we had seventy five, seventy six different vendors that we were working with and we were managing everything in Excel.

(6:33 - 6:52)
And I feel pretty confident in saying that 95 percent of your audience is doing the same thing. They're managing the vendor relationships in Excel and they're doing it very poorly. And that's one of the big things that you see out on Reddit is complaints about contracts and missed renewals and I'm stuck into this.

(6:52 - 7:12)
And so that was the first step. Right. Let's help the MSP get a grasp on what their stack is, help them understand where the gaps are, then start helping them understand what their expenses are, help them figure out when their contracts are coming up for renewal, when they have to flag it for the notice period, because that's one of the big issues.

(7:12 - 8:00)
Right. You know, you've got all these vendor agreements, not managing them effectively. You realize you had a 60 day notice period on your RMM and you missed it and, you know, you got renewed. 

Now, if you're if you're migrating away from RMMs, God bless you. But you get to kind of get the point. Right. 

But so we started with the idea of really helping the MSP and as they started to use the tool, they're like, how do we use this for our customers? Right. How do we get our customer? Not only how do we get our customer data in here, but how do we basically co-manage this with our customers? And so I think the trick in all this is that, you know, and I can say this because I've been in the industry for the last 20 years. Most MSPs are just operationally immature.

(8:00 - 8:06)
Right. They're not managing their stack, their vendors, their expenses properly. So the hard part was getting them to really understand this.

(8:06 - 8:52)
Once they had that aha moment, they said, shoot, I need to take this to my customer because, again, I can see, you know, I can see what I'm providing the customer. But there's all these blind spots that you have now a lot of trusted advisors that are coming into the MSP marketplace because they're looking for that recurring revenue model, but they're getting their foot in the door by selling connectivity, right, by selling one off or selling hardware. Right. 

And that creates a blind spot for the MSPs. And so a lot of the feedback that we got early on is that how do we use this to help better support our customers? So understand what providing each customers, what the gaps might be at each customer so we can upsell them. But then how do we make this a team sport and see more broadly what they're spending money on? And there have been some really amazing byproducts of this.

(8:53 - 9:21)
We've had one MSP that, you know, they've got something like 12 or 13 of their customers are using HubSpot. They didn't know that their HubSpot certified. Now they're moving all the HubSpot licensing underneath of their, you know, their certification. 

Right. So as one, you know, it's kind of maybe off to the side or off to the left to center as far as a new revenue opportunity. But we've seen quite a few of these really interesting additive revenue opportunities.

(9:21 - 9:53)
And then similarly, it's showing them what the gaps are, what are the other things that they could potentially sell to these customers? So there's quite a few things that we're trying to tackle with this. But again, the first thing was just getting the MSPs to a point where they're mature enough and then they can start talking about this and really differentiate. Because going back to that, you know, what I started off with, the stacks, stacks are stacks. 

Right. And 90 percent of what an MSP says down the street is probably copied and pasted from your website. Everybody sounds the same.

(9:53 - 10:00)
And so if an MSP has got the ability to go in and say, yeah, you know, we are different. Right. We're going to help you manage your entire technology spend.

(10:00 - 10:31)
We're help you see, you know, around the corner with all of your expense and your renewals and help you become more efficient as a business. That's where this marketplace is going, because the ones that are not doing that, they're going to get stuck in this vortex of margin erosion. And you're seeing that with a lot of the platforms coming out with bundled pricing, you know, pushing margins down the barrier of entry into these marketplaces is ridiculously low now. 

And if you're not differentiating, moving your services upstream, you know, then you're going to be you're going to have a tough time moving forward. Yeah. Sorry, I'm getting fired up.

(10:31 - 11:06)
That's all right. So a couple of questions that I had based on that is because I'm looking at my own business and I'm like, OK, I'm doing that. I've got, you know, all of my customer licensing, you know, in my documentation product. 

I've asked them, you know, what are you spending in other areas that we need to keep track on? You know, whether it's their Internet, their phones, all of that stuff. I have a quote unquote lifecycle management product that I'm using to capture those contracts. So it sounds like this is another tool that is, what, consolidating all of those into one thing.

(11:07 - 11:16)
Yeah. Well, first, congratulations, because you are in rarefied air relative to most MSPs. Again, we spent a lot of time studying this, you know, this challenge.

(11:16 - 11:35)
And there are folks that are using some lifecycle tools. There's some folks that are trying to hijack some of their documentation or even trying to put some of the stuff in the in the PSAs, which don't get me started on that. But yeah, I mean, I think this part of this is partly is to consolidate it and then turn this into a team sport.

(11:35 - 11:51)
Right. You know, if you have that buy in from your customer, if they can see what their expenses, you can co-manage that with them. That's where this is. 

That's where this is going. That's building a relationship with your customer. When you're going in and having that QBR, they have the visibility.

(11:51 - 11:57)
You have something to say, look, you know, we're looking in the stack. You guys haven't updated. You guys haven't held your end of the bargain.

(11:57 - 12:52)
Right. You guys haven't updated, you know, your licensing. You haven't. 

You know, it gives you another talking point to really come in as the authority and help them get their business organized. And that's a lot of the early feedback from the early adopters is that it's changing the conversation. It's turning it into a proactive conversation where, you know, most MSPs, they go in and they have their QBR. 

It might be a quick checklist or might even just be a quick phone call check in if they're lucky quarterly. This gives you a reason to sit down with them and have more of a meaningful conversation and find these additional opportunities that are out there. And it's also, you know, built around an entire ecosystem designed for MSPs to manage, you know, their vendors and research vendors.

(12:52 - 13:09)
Right. We've got over 5,000 product reviews in the platform. So it's that's that in itself makes it just a unique thing is that the entire ecosystem that's built around my IT spend is all related to the MSPs and the technologies that they're integrating with and purchasing and partnering with.

(13:10 - 13:31)
And then the other piece that Kevin didn't really get into, you know, he was talking about rolling it out to the to their MSPs customers, but there's actually a lead generation opportunity within this as well. And it comes down to keeping things simple and how we simplify licensing. And we did the exact same thing at IDAgent.

(13:31 - 13:44)
We simplified licensing to make the MSPs lives easier. And so what we've done is we've come out with a flat rate and at least for our early adopters, we're allowing unlimited licensing. And so by allowing unlimited licensing.

(13:45 - 14:01)
It opens up the door to way beyond just your customers. So now you can actually offer this type of service to prospects. And, you know, one of the examples that we've given is, you know, doing a webinar on maturing to small business prospects.

(14:02 - 14:20)
You know, we're doing this webinar on maturing your business operations as a small business. And for attending the event, kind of the hook would be we're also going to give you a free one year license to start managing all your subscriptions and contracts. And, you know, imagine, I like to imagine a world where a prospect.

(14:22 - 15:05)
Basically gives out their, you know, they put in their their their their IT spend and you now, as the MSP, have visibility into a prospect's IT spend. So, I mean, Kevin can give different examples, but to me, the possibilities are endless when it comes to the lead gen side of it as well. All right. 

So first thing, I guess we need to make sure the listeners and the viewers understand. So this is something that is going to be a subscription that it's not, you know, free like, you know, some other pieces that you guys have over at the channel program. The license is for the MSP and for a limited time, we can use it for our unlimited number of customers.

(15:05 - 15:11)
I assume that will stop at some point. No. So you'll have the early adopters will have it for life.

(15:11 - 15:16)
That's OK. That's the message, Kevin. You can keep me honest about that, but that's what you've said, too.

(15:16 - 16:57)
So that that unlimited licensing model is for the early adopters. We're not going to take that away from them. All right. 

And there will be a link in the show notes. And of course, you can just do a search channel program, my IT spend. So we'll have that in there and you can go and book your demo and transform your client management. 

All right. So we've talked about I'm sorry, Kevin, go ahead. No, no, please. 

I was going to say. So we've talked about this, you know, gaining insight in the customers. We've talked about the ability to track everything, have that possibly turn into lead generation. 

You know, if they are using other products that we didn't know about and stuff, converting them into our platform, managing contracts. So now the idea of. You know, how do we track that, is there a way to see what that ROI is, you know, by using the product? Yeah, you can certainly see, in fact, we were just I was just on a call with a customer just before this for this podcast, but you'd see ROI in a couple of different ways. 

You see it in the improved operational efficiency, right? You see it in, you know, hey, we're not missing our contract renewals and I did not get renewed for another 20 or 30 thousand dollars right on this specific subscription. Again, we've got a whole bunch of just even in the last couple of months that the core products been out, we're seeing we've probably seen that that scenario or that compliment maybe a dozen, two dozen times. So I think there's a very direct operational efficiency.

(16:58 - 17:27)
You know, once you get it up and running and you're managing it proactively, you're getting the reminders. I mean, that that creates that level of efficiency on the on the ROI, on the tool itself, when you're using it as a prospect, as Matt mentioned, we don't care if you send it out to one or ten thousand prospects, right? You don't care if you use it for one or, you know, 200 customers. We've got an ROI calculator up on the site that you can start at nine.

(17:27 - 17:44)
Maybe you're offering it for nine dollars a month, right, as a standalone subscription or maybe you're providing this as part of a technology spend management service at two ninety nine a month or four ninety nine, depending on the size of the customer. So the ROI, I think, is can be pretty significant both sides. It's the operational efficiency.

(17:44 - 17:58)
It's the cost savings. It's kind of the peace of mind, right? Knowing that you're on top of your stack, but then it's also the revenue opportunities on the other side of the house are really unlimited. So we.

(17:59 - 18:28)
Well, I'd say one of the things that's exciting about it, Marv, is that. Most small businesses and midsize organizations suck at managing their contracts and subscriptions, so you're like you're hitting such a major pain point that everybody has, by the way, not even just as business owners, we all suck at this on personal levels. So it's a pain point that everybody can understand who hasn't had either personal life or in their work life, a renewal come up and they missed it.

(18:28 - 18:39)
And it's as a small business, you know, I mean, look, we probably all have examples. I guarantee you have an example for yourself. But yeah, I forgot to I've got to change my Hulu subscription the other day.

(18:39 - 18:49)
So exactly. But like at an MSP, you know, they had zoom info. Ten thousand dollar contract that renewed that they did not want to renew.

(18:49 - 19:02)
And that's just that's like such a gut punch. And, you know, we're talking like about a ninety nine dollar product here. We're not talking about like, you know, like I don't know how any MSP cannot afford to be doing this at this point.

(19:02 - 19:14)
And again, the opportunity, because all their customers and all the prospects out there are not good at this either. Right. So let me ask this, because we've talked about what the product is.

(19:14 - 19:51)
And now the idea in my head, I'm trying to think, OK, how does this look? Is this something that, you know, is it a multi-tenant dashboard? Is it something that I have to do for each client individually? And, you know, obviously, you know, I can sign up to book my demo. But, you know, can you show a little bit of what it actually looks like to give us an idea since we're on video? Can we do that? Now, I'm happy to do that. And if you don't mind, I'll start with Navistat because just that's where it started. 

And I think I just think for the evolution of where the product's gone, I think it's good. Good to show people. Are you able to see my screen? We can see it.

(19:52 - 20:02)
All right. So, again, this is the Navistat tool that Kevin initially talked about where we started. And this is this component as actually free to the MSP.

(20:02 - 20:14)
It allows you to visualize your technology stack. So all the different vendors you're working with, you're able to add them in here. You can start identifying gaps in your stack, potentially overlap.

(20:15 - 20:28)
You know, maybe you have multiple vendors offering three sixty five backup. And it really, you know, there's no other place where you can go where you're like, gosh, I really need vulnerability assessment. I just don't even know who offers that.

(20:29 - 20:50)
And the accessibility that this tool gives you, you can actually simply click into a product category and you'll see the different offerings that are given throughout the industry. And what's neat about it is you can then go farther and research all of these companies and see what other MSPs are saying. Like I mentioned, we have over five thousand product reviews in the platform.

(20:50 - 21:55)
And then what it also starts to unlock is this customized experience. So here on the right hand side, this is a customized widget based on upcoming events from your product stack. So these are the you know, these are the vendors you're paying a lot of money to and a lot of time. 

You know, you need to stay on top of their of their thought leadership or their product updates. So it's really important to be able to have that bird's eye view into the upcoming events. The other piece, and this is a major pain point for a lot of MSPs, I've talked to thousands probably per year, is that every time an MSP signs up with a vendor, the vendor expects that MSP to log into their partner portal for their enablement materials. 

And what we've done is we've gone outside to the vendor community and say, why make it so difficult? Why not put it all in one place? And so that's what we've been. One of our core missions is getting all of these vendors to put their materials to make it simply easier for the MSPs to get those enablement materials. So we're talking white labeled documents, you know, training videos and whatnot.

(21:55 - 22:14)
And they can actually communicate with all the different vendors in one place. So having that, you know, that chat functionality so I can reach out to Jeremy Young at Blumira right away if I have a problem. So, you know, again, it's just that consolidation of all of these different things from different places into one place, finally, for the MSPs.

(22:14 - 22:42)
So everything, Marv, I just showed you has been completely free and remains to be remains completely free to the MSPs. The evolution that we talked about with MyITSpend, that's when we start getting into the contract and vendor subscription management. So it's, you know, looking at obviously, you know, your total monthly costs and annual costs, you know, having these upcoming renewal reminders just easily accessible to you.

(22:42 - 22:57)
You can kind of scroll down here. I'll show you examples of; you know, these are obviously fake licensing, but, you know, giving you that bird's eye view of every license that you're signing up for. And by the way, it's not just about the vendors you're seeing at DattoCon.

(22:57 - 23:02)
It's all the ancillary subscriptions. It's the Zooms. It's the, you know, Canva licensing.

(23:03 - 23:15)
All that stuff adds up. And so, you know, you don't want to continue paying these subscriptions if it doesn't make sense, or maybe you have duplicate type of offerings that you didn't even realize that you're paying for. So it really starts uncovering it.

(23:15 - 23:26)
But in its simplest form, this is really about never missing a renewal date ever again. And I alluded to this. It's not about the expiration date of the contract.

(23:26 - 23:42)
As many of you know, it is about the renewal notification date. That is the key date that you need to be aware of and set up reminders. So that if you have to give 60 days’ notice, you probably need a reminder 60 days before that, because you need to evaluate whether it's going to be something you renew.

(23:42 - 24:14)
You don't want to have to be making these decisions on the last day of notification. So that's where this is the internal licensing. And then Marty did ask about what the view looks like if you're offering it to the customers. 

And that's the next evolution of it, which is offering it to your customers and having that multi-tenant view. So, you know, Third Gate Hotel, this is an example of all my customers who have filled out their contract subscriptions. Again, this is my view.

(24:15 - 24:44)
So one, I'd be able to and this is an MSP only view, this part of it is based on the stack I have of offerings, I'm able to identify what they currently have in my stack within theirs. So again, being able to identify and I'll show you exactly how this will work, but it'll let me know, OK, for some reason they don't have my MFA product that I'm offering. So you start to identify, you know, areas that they are not being invested in from the tools.

(24:45 - 24:52)
The other piece is the contract management. Now, it's the same view. Now, the difference is this would be co-managed.

(24:53 - 25:09)
So the customer would have this view only, but you would now have that same view. So you'll be able to see all the contracts, the subscriptions, the renewal dates, the price points. So you would have that bird's eye view into every one of your customers that's filled out this information.

(25:10 - 25:41)
And let me let me ask a quick question in terms of how the information gets in there. Is this something that we can pull through API integration with our existing products? Or is this something that either we or the customer has to go in and put manually that information in the dashboard? Yeah, so go ahead, go ahead, Gavin. Yeah, I mean, so most vendors don't let you pull in their contract start date and end date terms from an API.

(25:41 - 26:23)
They'll let you pull customer licensing counts and maybe some cost information. So the core of it is that you have to at least put the contract in here. We've got integrations forthcoming with ConnectWise and all the PSAs, who, by the way, they do as one of the jumping off points here is that the PSAs just do such a horrible job. 

And I love them all, don't get me wrong, but they do a horrible job of helping you visualize stuff with your customers, especially some of the legacy PSAs that are out there. You know who I'm talking about. But yeah, so I think the core of this is that vendors aren't necessarily and this is a line that we have to walk, right? Vendors aren't going to necessarily say, hey, here's an API to let you know when to cancel my contract.

(26:24 - 26:38)
Right. So at the highest level, putting in the vendor information and that's still you can pull that stuff out of your PSA and you can upload it. And again, we've got these APIs firing here shortly.

(26:38 - 26:51)
But the next part of this was, yeah, we want to help automate some of that license count downstream for customers. And so you get even better visibility. OK, first step is to get the contracts in there.

(26:52 - 27:15)
Yeah. And not just automate through potentially the integrations that Kevin alluded to, but I think in two weeks we're unleashing the ability to upload through an Excel spreadsheet. So as we said, a lot of these MSPs already have this stuff in Excel and they'll with basically a click of a button be able to upload these contracts information into this through an Excel upload.

(27:15 - 27:31)
It also knows based on your stack that you've put together, you know, who you at least have some level of contracts with. So it does make it very intuitive to add. And then as your customers continue to add the data, I'm kind of going back to the NaviStack screen here.

(27:33 - 27:55)
I'll switch it over to the list view. You'll actually be able to see on your own NaviStack if it will go here. Yep. 

So right. So I can see that, you know, Kaseya VSA is only in one of my 11 clients right now. So you start to see that that opportunity that you can unlock with this knowledge.

(27:56 - 28:33)
So nice. Yeah. You know, if you let me real quick, I think one of the really interesting things and we didn't necessarily touch on this is that, again, part of this is maturing MSPs operationally and then getting more integrated with their customer and finding revenue opportunities. 

But one of the really interesting things we've done here lately, we've done a series of M&A roadshows. Right. And the rationale behind that is that you think of some of the monolith type of MSPs, the large MSPs, like the Logically’ s and the Antiva’s and the Thrives.

(28:34 - 29:00)
You know, Thrives case in particular, right, they've acquired what, 21, 22 different MSPs. Can you imagine from a, you know, looking down and saying, all right, I've got 21 MSPs that I've acquired that have 21 different stacks with licensing that's all over the place. So part of what we've built into this as well is the ability to manage other MSPs within there.

(29:01 - 29:17)
Maybe you're acquiring, maybe you've already acquired them and you want to see their stacks because you want to start to normalize your licensing. And, you know, and I've got, you know, nine ID agent licenses at nine different price points. And I've got to put those contracts in alignment.

(29:17 - 29:34)
So that has the ability to do that with this tool as well. And so, again, that goes back to, you know, if these MSPs are looking to be acquired, one of the first things that you do in due diligence is, all right, let's understand your expenses. Let's look at your stack.

(29:37 - 29:53)
So I think this could have a material impact on MSP's ability to be prepared for those conversations if they're looking for investment or to be acquired as well. So I don't want to touch on that for a second. All right, so all that looks pretty nice, pretty nice.

(29:54 - 30:06)
Of course, the question is going to be. I don't know if you slipped when you said 99 bucks, Matt, but that sounds like a low price. Is it going to go up? So that's for the internal.

(30:07 - 30:14)
Okay. And we do offer discounts for upfront annual commitments. So you can actually get it down to as low as 79.

(30:15 - 30:34)
And the license for the customers, so to be able to roll it out to your customers and your prospects. Gavin, I know what price point are we at today? I think we're at $249 a month right now. And if they do an annual agreement, I think it's down to $199 a month.

(30:34 - 31:04)
So we want to, you know, we're sensitive to pricing, right, because obviously we understand the stacks and pricing and layering in. But yeah, we want to make this just ridiculously affordable for MSP's. They want to get into the M&A and kind of the roll up capabilities with the multi stack manager. 

I think that's at $499 right now. So these aren't these aren't breaking the bank type of prices. This shouldn't be a barrier.

(31:04 - 31:38)
Getting your house in order should be, you know, it shouldn’t be an arm and leg. And that's the way we've structured the pricing this way. All right. 

So I want to go back and just ask this question. The idea of coming up with this, obviously. I'm assuming presented by some MSP's, did they identify with you some of the challenges beyond contract management and revenue management and things like that? Because this does look like a tool that.

(31:40 - 32:23)
Is TBR based, I guess, to some degree, or like I mentioned earlier, VCIO based but is there still a challenge with getting customers to give us that information and what we can do with it? I think the challenge, well, I think, yeah, anytime you're dealing with, you know, human behavior and getting to do things, there's always a challenge, right? And that's, you know, see that challenge directly with MSP's just getting, you know, their own house in order. But to me, it always comes down to, you know, the positioning and having a conversation. In fact, we saw that same, surprisingly, right? We saw the same challenge with ID agents, dark web ID, right? We had MSP saying, all right, here's my customer's password.

(32:24 - 32:34)
How do I have a conversation with them? Right. Go show them that fact that their passwords out there 19 times. And this is why they need all the technology and all the security that you've been trying to sell them for the last three or four years.

(32:35 - 32:52)
Right. So fundamentally, I think was a little different because customers are like, oh, you hacked my password. You know, what's to what's how do we know that you didn't just go out and find that and do that? Whereas this is a little different because it's it can be looked at.

(32:52 - 33:06)
Look, if you let us know what you're doing, we can probably help save you money. We can help you cancel contracts that, you know, you don't want those subscriptions out there. But then they're going to turn around and say, well, but you're going to want us to spend more money with you.

(33:07 - 33:17)
Of course, I'm my answer to that's always, well, of course. I know. So but I think it's also not just about, you know, obviously, yeah, it's the MSP is getting incredible data.

(33:18 - 33:39)
But at the end of the day, the customer is getting a tool to manage their own. Even if the MSP sold them no additional services, they are now being able to manage all of their subscriptions and contracts and they're avoiding that ten thousand dollar renewal. So, I mean, you're doing them a service just by providing it just as a service because they don't have access to this type of stuff.

(33:39 - 33:54)
Typically, so it's a co-managed platform. So if they log in, they can see the upcoming renewals and stuff. Do they get alerts? Like, do they get an email reminder that, hey, by the way, in 30 days, this is kicking in.

(33:54 - 34:25)
Do you want to keep it? Yeah. And the alerts are all customizable. So, again, when I talked about the renewal notification date being 60 days out, well, I want to customize thing that tells me 120 days out because I can't make a decision on the last day. 

So it has that customizable. And the other and what you brought up is like a totally I mean, it's an objection we know we're going to hear from people. But I think partly partially I almost want to flip the script on that.

(34:25 - 35:06)
It's like, well, what if your customers do fill it out? Just like instead of focusing on the 20 percent that may not fill out that information, what about the 80 percent that will? I mean, it's the amount of information you're getting is just unprecedented and it allows you to have different kind of conversations than you would ever have been able to have before, certainly with prospects and definitely with even with customers as well. That's where I was going. Right. 

I mean, to me, everything is about positioning. Right. It's yeah, it's a different use case with Dark web, but MSPs had to get that level of comfort. 

And even in a lot of MSPs, they would come to say, I don't know how to have this conversation with my customer. Right. Because just it's a lack of sales maturity.

(35:06 - 35:16)
Right. I think a lot of cases and for us, it's for this. It's like your customers hiring you to watch out for them.

(35:16 - 35:29)
Right. Your customers hiring you to keep them secure. Right. 

Keep them up to date. Keep them, you know, keep their business running. So this should be a very natural extension of what you do as a core business.

(35:29 - 35:57)
So sitting down at a QBR or, you know, as Matt mentioned, you know, doing webinars to prospects and saying, look, you know, first up running a business is understanding, you know, your business, understanding your expenses. We're doing our part as an MSP to keep you keep your email flowing, keep your backups going and keep your, you know, keep your business secure. The next step is we want to help you mature your business operationally so we can co-manage this with you or you can use this tool for free.

(35:57 - 36:53)
All right. You know whether it's, you know, you're doing it as a webinar or you're doing it a lunch and learn, you can use this for free for a year or, you know, maybe again, then maybe the MSP only charges twenty nine ninety nine a month and that's all they sell of that prospect. But to Matt's point, you know, the prospect bought that and you have the ability now to look into their stack and start having meaningful conversations along the way. 

So they may not be a prospect, you know, might be a customer today, but you're providing that value. They're using this tool. Then you have the ability to go in there and say, hey, I see you guys are working with this. 

Right. Let's talk about how we can optimize your business even further. Right. 

So I think that's I think a lot of the value of this is that it's giving you the insights, giving you the data that, you know, to help you sell to those prospects and help you better manage your customers. Right. And that's just these are kind of the very few MSPs do this today.

(36:53 - 37:03)
Right. We knew we'd have an uphill battle because we're dealing with a lack of maturity for a lot of this marketplace. Right. 

It's like anything. Right. That's why we started with NaviStack and making it free.

(37:03 - 37:22)
You know, get, you know, get your house store, figure out what you know what's going on in your business. Right. Then start this maturity process of understanding your costs and your contracts, renewals, take that same mentality to your customers, because they're probably as bad as MSPs can be managing their business.

(37:22 - 37:35)
And, you know, they are staying on top of their stack. Customers are probably three or four times worse. Right. 

So I think it's all about it's all about behavior change. And that's hard thing to do. And we realize coming into this marketplace.

(37:35 - 37:52)
But at the end of the day, the success stories and the conversations that we're having with MSPs that are using this to influence, you know, influence their business practices, that's a rewarding part. And that's why we're going to we're going to run like hell, try to evangelize this to everybody. All right.

(37:52 - 38:49)
Let me ask one more platform question here, because I just thought about this. Will the customer, if it's, you know, truly a co-managed thing, will they be able to see this as kind of like a marketplace where they can see, you know, which products are not in use? And they have a little contact me button there to reach out and say, hey, can you help us manage this subscription or lower the price or anything like that? Is that built in? We like where your head is. That's a lost guy. 

Like where are you going with this? All right. Yeah, no, look, yeah, we're extremely blessed that we have an incredible development team. And, you know, oftentimes, especially with our advisory council and so the early adopters, they're saying, hey, we'd like to see this and we don't promise next day, but we're on two week sprint cycles and we're moving pretty quick.

(38:49 - 39:11)
And there's some really cool elements downstream that, you know, much like what you're talking about. And then, you know, I don't want to allude to too much, but, you know, one of the other big friction points. All right, is that, you know, a lot of the MSPs and going to go into that trust advisor space, they're sourcing products from.

(39:13 - 39:32)
Avant, Telarus, Sandler, Intellisys, Pax8, you know, you know, a lot of those big groups and managing those contracts and commissions and renewals, that's another just whole quagmire. I mean, probably do three hours show just on that alone. But there you go.

(39:32 - 39:52)
Right. I mean, so that's that that's another element of friction that, you know. It's impacting the entirety of this space, right, because you look at it from MSPs that have done exceptionally well over the last four or five years, you know, because of, you know, COVID and explosion of endpoints.

(39:53 - 40:12)
And, you know, MSPs are now maturing their businesses and they're going after enterprise, mid-market and enterprise opportunities. And now you have, as I mentioned early on, you've got all these trusted advisors that, you know, we're in this bar space that are saying, all right, this is great. We've got these big hits every so often, but now we want to get into recurring revenue and we want to be like the MSPs.

(40:12 - 40:37)
So this whole market is coming to the center, whether we like it or not. Right. And so that's where I think, you know, we're perfectly positioned at the kind of the midpoint to help, you know, make this more efficient for the entire marketplace. 

And so that's a long winded way of saying that there's some really cool things coming out. All right. And Marvin, I know because I know you're about to wrap up, but, you know, Kevin didn't let me speak very much.

(40:37 - 41:16)
I have one last thing I want to say. So, by the way, that's a tradition of me throwing Kevin under the bus in every podcast that we do. That's what I said. 

It's every show, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So look, I understand like this is something new and there's always skeptics. 

And what I would say to a skeptic is have a conversation with us because I 100 percent believe it's worth it. And if you go back to the ID agent days, when we first introduced dark web monitoring to the channel, we were the first company that that introduced it. 30 percent of MSPs did not get it.

(41:17 - 41:47)
They said, I'll pass. Our small businesses are not going to care about this stuff. And so that means 30 percent of the industry waited two to three years to purchase dark web monitoring. 

And by that point, it was commoditized. So they missed out on that two or three year run of having a differentiating product that most, you know, lots of MSPs didn't have. And I honestly believe in my core that this is the same type of opportunity.

(41:48 - 41:59)
And they don't come around that often to be able to completely differentiate yourself. And, you know, especially the ones who really adopt early. You know, I used to make the joke like you could be the first dark web monitoring company in Wyoming offering this.

(42:00 - 42:11)
But that's the type of thing that MSPs could be doing right now. And the opportunity exists right now to be that massive differentiator. So that was my last day.

(42:11 - 42:25)
All right. Well, you know, I did mention this is this looks like a tool that could really turn the tables when it comes to client management. Of course, it can identify, you know, the revenue contract, all that stuff.

(42:25 - 42:37)
But everybody can find it. Channel program dot com slash my I.T. spent. And it will address a lot of these common challenges that we talked about today.

(42:37 - 42:42)
Guys, thank you very much for hopping on the show. Thank you. Thank you very much for having us.

(42:42 - 42:43)
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Marvin.

(42:44 - 42:50)
We always appreciate you and everything you do for the MSP community. All right. I'm going to I've got the page up here.

(42:50 - 42:57)
I think I may. Do I have to book the demo to get in here? We got you. We got you.

(42:59 - 43:10)
All right, guys, thank you very much. And for those of you listening or watching, thank you very much for listening to the show. Go out and check everything that the channel program is doing.

(43:10 - 43:15)
Some good stuff out in our channel. That's going to do it. And we'll see you out there.

(43:15 - 43:17)
And until next time, Holla!