692 Vendor Booth Interviews - ASCII Boston 2024

All right, I am here in the vendor hall, first stop, sock solder, our man, Eric Pinto, with the little throwback R&B booth here. Pinto, how are you? What's going on? So, our first interview at the booth here, Pinto, man, first thing I saw when I came in yesterday, I saw you walking around and I said, oh, must be a big event, Pinto's here, so what brings you up to ASCII Boston? Well, I went to school here in Boston, at Boston College, so good to get back up to the area, I'm going to get to see a couple of friends from college, and also here for the show, so it's fantastic. Nice, nice, nice, so anything new with sock solder since we last spoke? Yeah, we actually just launched a new reporting platform that allows us to bring in data from all types of different sources, preparing you for your audits and compliance, and making sure that you're able to provide evidence of the services that you provide out to your customer.

I think a lot of time as an MSP, it's, hey, we do this, we do that, but now the auditor wants evidence, they want to see the log data, they want to understand exactly what your workflow looks like, and if you are providing that 24-7 coverage that you stated that you had for the customer. All right, sounds like something we should be looking into, so what I've noticed here is you've got the music playing, but no dance floor. I mean, it's always a dance floor when you're in the room, right? And you brought one of the young guns with you, is this his first ASCII event? Yes, this is Keller, Keller, come on over, this is Keller, this is his first event here with us, so we should ask Keller, what do you think of channel events in general, because this is the first time you've been out? The networking is fantastic, there's tons of people here, everybody's getting to know one another and talk about their company, so it's a good opportunity for a lot of people.

Sound like that was a scripted read, how do you think? I think that we may have talked about this before, and then he just said a little bit of what I said and a little bit of what he said, and put it together into a nice little package, and that's okay. Alright, folks, I'm going to move along here, Pinto, good to see you, and Keller, nice to meet you. Yes, sir, nice to meet you.

Alright. Thanks, man, thanks. 

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Alright, here we are at another vendor booth, and Dave Cava, co-author of the Pumpkin Plan for Managed Services.

Dave, how's it going today? It's going great, good afternoon. Alright, so first I need to say thank you, you guys got me a nice little autographed copy of the book, and how's it been going since we last talked? It's been going great, doing a lot of events, meeting a lot of people, and we love giving out books, but we love even more when people come up to us and say, I read it and it helped me so much, we just want to see these businesses succeed, that's what we get off on. Yeah, I saw your presentation this morning, and very good on helping MSPs understand pricing and how to approach customers and stuff, any feedback from that yet? Yes, I mean, I've had a couple of different MSPs come up to me today and basically say that case study you gave on the $200,000 MSP, that's me, you've shown me the roadmap of what I need to do, and asking for help, what kind of peer groups should they join, it's just exciting.

All right, so everything looks good, you had a steady flow in, even the babies at the booth, that's a nice touch. Yeah, well, people were bringing their dogs, and we're like, how can we possibly one up a puppy, so we brought the twin babies, and we've got our entire staff here, we've got recruiters, we've got our admin in from Aruba, we've got our sales lady, we are psyched to have the full team on board, it's a family vibe going on to the show. Very nice, very nice.

Well, I'm going to move along, but thank you for the quick moment here, and continued success. Thanks for swinging by, sir. There you go, that's it.

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How's the food? It's great. 

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All right, folks, back with another vendor booth interview, and I am here with my buddy Nick, who likes to stir up controversy on a LinkedIn post. Nick Wolf with Cork, how are we doing today? Doing great, thanks for being here, always a pleasure to chat with you, Marvin.

All right, so you guys have been busy, I've been trying to get over here for a while, so a lot of people interested in what Cork's got going on, how's it going? Yeah, yeah, it's been going really great, as you know, we offer a cyber warranty for MSPs, which acts as gap coverage to cyber insurance, and a couple weeks ago, we actually announced a partnership with DataStream, which is a cyber insurance broker that can now offer cyber insurance quotes to MSPs instantly through the Cork dashboard. So I did not see a press release, or I would have announced that. How did you guys release that information? Yeah, we did a press release, and we're actually doing a webinar with them in August.

Yeah, so August, we're going to do a live webinar with the good folks over at DataStream. All right, we've got to get on your PR people and get me on the list, I need to get that information. We always have to give Marvin the insider scoop, the exclusive, so Rebecca, make a note of that.

All right, so are you guys on the full ASCII circuit this year? We are. This is actually our first ASCII event that we did a presentation for, we were on the stage yesterday, and we'll be going to the next two events for the remainder of the year. We absolutely love the ASCII community.

So you'll be here for the ASCII Cup? In St. Petersburg, Florida, right in your backyard. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, it's going to be fun in the sun.

All right, and there's a rumor that there's going to have to be some dressing up. Are you ready for that? Oh boy, suit and tie? Are we talking top hat? Are we talking monocles? What do we need? We're talking going back to the future. Back to the future, great Scott.

All right, a DeLorean is actually my dream car, so if I ever hit it big, that's definitely on my bucket list, I want a DeLorean. All right, so that'll be it. I think they're going to accept any 80s gear, so if you have any Michael Jackson jackets or gloves or Devo hats, that might work.

Or I want to be that guy tattoo from the old, the old, the plane, the plane, Treasure Island. Yeah. All right, Nick, thank you for taking a couple minutes.

I'll let you get back to it because it looks like people have walked up behind me and want to chat, so have fun. All righty, thank you Marvin, always a pleasure. 

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All right, here at another vendor booth, but not really a vendor booth, a friend of the channel, our man, the, I don't know, did we call you the- The mayor.

The mayor of the channel, Joel Zaidspiner, JZ of Channel Pro, across from the disco floor of SocSoter. How are you doing today, Joel? I had my speaker out before, but I put it away because he brought out two, and I'm like, you know what, I don't need to battle the speakers. Those days are over for me.

Well, the question is, what music were you playing? I was playing Florida. Oh, so yeah, Pinto's there stuck in the 70s, it sounds like. Yeah, that's Pinto, we all love him, but he's always stuck in the 70s.

I was playing my son's music that he wrote and played his album as Mama's Boy, and he released that about two months ago. I remember that release, how's it going? Noah Jesse, he's doing great. He's trying to make it in the music field, so hopefully he'll find some new people to work with.

He writes, records, produces, and he's doing great. So, he released the album, was that under a label? Yeah, Look Within Music, he has his own label. Nice, so how's it going here at the booth? I know that most everybody knows you already, so you probably have people walk by, say hello, move along, but every now and then there's got to be somebody new, right? There always is.

We find new MSPs that pop in and stop by the booth, and they go, who are you, what do you do, and we show them that we're the voice of the MSPs for the channel, and we write best business practices for MSPs and help them grow their business. They are all in, and they grab our product, they grab our magazines, and they sign up for our websites, and then they sign up to come to our shows around the country. We have one coming up soon.

Yep, I made the show in Orlando earlier this year, very nice event. Where's the next one? That was our Channel Pro Live event in Orlando, which was very successful for us and for the attendees and the vendors. Our next one is our Channel Pro Defend event.

It's a cybersecurity-driven show. It'll be in New Jersey out in Island over by Woodbridge Mall at the Delta. It's August 7th and 8th, and those that are not signed up yet, please go and sign up now because there's not much space left.

We are sold out of booths for vendors. We are sold out of almost all the hotel rooms. I think there might be one or two left for those that grab them, and if they want to, they can go to events.channelpronetwork.com and use the code JZVIP, JZVIP, all in capital, and sign up for that show.

Or they can go to any of our shows around the country because we have a show there next month in August, 7th and 8th. Then we have Charlotte, September 9th, 10th, Dallas, October 9th and 10th. Then actually, Dallas is going to be our AI-driven show, and then LA is going to be our final show of the year in November, which is right after IT Nation, a week after.

It's November 12th and 13th, and that's going to be in Newport Beach. We moved this year to a new hotel. Again, it's going to be a two-day cyber show in LA.

It's going to be our West Coast event. We're having East and West Coast, and we're going to have our central AI show. We renamed our shows.

We brought in new content, new people, new speakers, new everything, and redeveloped a lot of things, and have two days of show floor. It's going to be great, and we're looking forward to a really successful event. If they're not signed up yet, go to our website, as I mentioned, and sign in with JZVIP, all caps, and they can get in for free.

If there's rooms available, we're going to be giving out MSPs. If you qualify, you get a free room. There you go, folks.

A quick, easy interview. I didn't have to do a thing. All right, JZ.

Well, that was great. Marv, you're the best out there. We love you.

We love hearing your podcast, so thanks for stopping by and meeting with us. Not a problem, sir. Take care.

Cheers.