MSPAA & MSP Visibility with David Jooste: EP 768

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals and managed service providers, where we try to help you run your business better, smarter and faster. And yes, we are here at a little different time because I wanted to get a special show in and talk to you guys about an experience I had last week at the IT Expo. And I've got a guest coming up that actually was responsible for getting me on stage.

And we're going to talk to him and about his organization, the MSPAA. And for those of you that do not know or haven't kept up with the show or anything. So the IT Expo is really a combination of a bunch of things.

It's the IT Expo, the MSP Expo, 5G Expo, whatever, blah, blah, blah. It's a big old conference that happens every year down here in Fort Lauderdale that goes under the umbrella of the Tech Super Summit, multiple conferences at our convention center. It's not at a hotel because it's that big, too many people to be involved in a hotel, but it's huge.

It's great. The MSP part of that conference has been growing over the years and they have a whole separate track. A lot of people there, a lot of the vendors that you know in our space were there.

One of the key sponsors, I believe they were the top diamond or whatever it was, of course, our friends at Kaseya were there. So it was a big event. So next year, around February, and if you're cold up in those northern states and you want to get down to Fort Lauderdale where it is nice and sunny, come on down.

You can get free tickets. It's not that expensive if you can't, but I know that we can. But let's do this.

Let's go ahead and bring in my friend here, as I mentioned, David Jooste of the MSPAA. This is an organization started back in 2023 and he is doing lots in our community. He is a speaker and an advocate.

Dave, welcome to the show.

[David Jooste]
Thanks, Marvin. Thanks for having me.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So you were down here last week at the Expo. Let me just start with that.

What were your thoughts? What were your key takeaways?

[David Jooste]
Yeah. So this event, like you said a few minutes ago, is a big event and it has changed over the years. We work very, very closely with the event organizers and one of the key things that we said to the event organizers when we partnered with them is that we want more MSPs to get recognition.

I'm sure you've been to a lot of events. You know a lot of the events, there's a lot of vendors speaking, there's a lot of people trying to sell you stuff. We're not about that.

We want to hear from you, the MSP. Like, you know, Marvin, we had you on stage with a number of other MSPs, as a matter of fact, and after the panel session that we had, I had people coming up to me and saying, thank you so much. They were looking for the MSP perspective.

So that is just one of the philosophies of the association is that we want MSPs to get recognized and that is exactly what happened at that event. Yes, there were a lot of vendors there and there will always be re-inventors, right? That's just part and parcel with any event you go to.

This event over the last couple of years we worked with them, they are very, very helpful and we have a very good relationship with them and they give us a number of free access passes. So, you know, you said it a few minutes ago that if someone wants to attend this event, we have a lot of free access codes just to give out to the community. Just reach out to us.

And you don't have to be an MSPA member. If you're an MSP, just reach out to us and we're more than happy to give it to you. It's not about us, it's about, you know, you guys wanting to get there and be there.

And that's one of our driving forces is how do we give back to the MSPA community. You were there with, what, three other MSPs on stage?

[Uncle Marv]
Yes.

[David Jooste]
And we had some sensitive discussions there. There were some questions from the audience that, you know, when I moderate a lot of these panels, I like asking those sensitive questions. I like, when we get questions from the audience, I like throwing those questions back at them and saying, well, what do you mean?

And then getting the MSPs involved because it gives you guys this recognition. So that event, very, very popular, it is growing rapidly. At that event, we actually had a new team member, his name is Michael, he came down from Canada.

He's a podcaster like yourself and he, whether you're an MSPA member or not, if you want to get on live air, we'll put you on live air. We have a media partner that was there with us as well and we had a lot of MSPs that we throw in with this media partner to get their brand recognized through the media channel. So there's a lot of options for MSPs at this event and not just this event, a lot of the events that we go to, to do this.

And that's what this event was about. Now the other part of it is, it was fun. We had a really good time, right?

[Uncle Marv]
Well, aside from a couple of those questions that got thrown at us, yeah, it was pretty good.

[David Jooste]
Yeah. Well, you can't have a good panel if there's no good questions, right? And all of these events we go to, one of the things that we do here at the association is we make a very, very difficult effort to get MSPs into dinners.

And there's no cost to this, there's absolutely no cost to this. And again, you were with us at that dinner and one of the MSPs that you were speaking to, I'm not going to mention his name, but he actually emailed me the other day and he said, thank you, because of the relationships that he built, one with you and some of the other MSPs there, said is going to change the face of his business completely. And that's what it's about, right?

It's not all about, I just need to get this client, I just need to get that client. And in our panel session, one thing that we said is, this is a relationship industry. We know each other and there's a lot of talk and sometimes people talk bad, you and I spoke about as well, and there's a lot of times we support each other and that is what this is about.

And that's exactly what happened at that dinner. It was fun and we had a really good time. It was long days.

It was long days, but it was a good time.

[Uncle Marv]
It was. So I should probably put a disclaimer here, just so that everybody knows, because I'm not a member of the MSPAA, but you invited me to be on the panel. You invited me to the dinner and I did have actually several discussions with people.

Some that came from my appearance on the panel, there was, felt kind of weird coming off stage and having people waiting for me in a line to ask questions and follow up. But we did more discussions at the dinner. I've already got a couple of connections that will be doing stuff together and not necessarily MSP clients, not necessarily vendors, but just other people in the industry that we're just going to share notes and talk and collaborate.

So that was good. And I appreciate that. The other thing, I will say this, and we didn't prep folks for this, so I'm going to catch Dave with a couple of things out of left field.

I mentioned that I'm not a member and I've known about you guys for at least a year. This was started back in January, 2023. And one of the things that I'll say, Dave, is I didn't feel any pressure to join.

So I'm going to start with that. This is an organization where we talk about growing and collaborating within the industry, but yet you didn't push me to join or do anything. Why is that?

[David Jooste]
Yeah. Good question. So you've got to look at what the mission is of the association, right?

Now, like you as an MSP, I am also an MSP. I think most people know that our mission of the association is to create advocacy for the MSPs. So we have a lot of different funnels and vectors that go out to the business community to give those MSPs recognition.

Now, that's not to say whether you're a member or not, that it's just going to come to you because it doesn't work that way. There's a relationship there. It's come to events, come to the dinners, just come speak to people.

And there's no cost to any of that. So we're not saying, like you said, Marv, we're saying, oh, no, it's not about cost. It's about the relationship.

And one of the things about you specifically is that I watch your podcast and I see a lot of the things you do. But one of the things I have not seen is I have not seen anyone do that for you. And that is why we invited you to the panel.

You do so much for the community, and we know this. A lot of MSPs know about you, and we wanted to give something back to you. And that's why I wanted you on the panel, because I wanted you to have the recognition.

And that's just one thing we do for the association. So no, there's no pressure. We had a lot of MSPs come up to us and ask a bunch of questions of how they can get involved, what they can do.

And it's very simple. Do it, don't do it. It's like anything.

I mean, this is about a collaboration in the community, and we will support you as best we can. But it's your choice, and we understand that. And I am an MSP as well.

So I know the feeling. I see both sides of it. My team, both Adam, Charlene, and Amy, and Michael, this is not our full-time job.

We do this voluntarily. So my full-time job is my MSP, and I'm sure like you, when you got back from the event, you had all these emails you had to follow up with, right? I had like 40 emails from people I had to follow up with, including MSPs, and it's just our way of giving back.

So we don't get paid to do this. This is something we want to do to give back to the community. Do we get sponsors to pay for things?

Yes, absolutely. Like the dinner that we had, we had two, yeah, three sponsors, two sponsors that paid for that dinner. So there is that, obviously, the financial side of it, but this is not about saying, come join, spend 500 bucks.

This is about building community. And part of that community is what we have, and you know Charlene, and I think a lot of people know Charlene, right? I know Charlotte.

Yeah, there you go, Charlotte. She's a firecracker, right? And she wouldn't mind me saying that, but she's very, very good at what she does, and she holds free marketing sessions for MSPs.

If you want to learn how to better market yourself, she does that. So that's just part of the benefits to MSPs, and again, you don't even need to be a member to be on that. You just need to jump on and have a listen or ask questions.

And if you want to be a member, that's great. Part of the other member things is like, if you are a member and you, I don't know, let's say you have a new CIO you hired, and you want to distribute that, we can help distribute that to our business community through our media partner, absolutely. No problem doing that at all.

I set two hours just before the conference, last week before the conference, I sat with one of our MSPs for two hours, and we were going through his entire marketing strategy. I am not a marketer. Don't get me wrong.

I am not a marketer. I'm a tech guy, okay? But I know how to do marketing, so we were going through stuff, and it's like any MSPs.

There's thousands of us all over the place, and there's a thousand different marketers out there. You just need to find something that works for you. And so that's, we just want to support the MSP community, and again, this is not for everyone, and that's okay.

It doesn't have to be for everyone.

[Uncle Marv]
So let me ask you the tough question, and I'm sure you get asked this a lot, but our industry is full of organizations, and there are, I'll mention, I mean, there's ASCII, there's the CompTIA's, there's all the partner communities that are out there. There's the Facebook groups, all the sub-communities, the peer groups and stuff. What was it that you saw missing that made you want to start the MSPAA?

[David Jooste]
Yeah, actually, I do get the question quite a lot, to be honest with you. So all those groups you just mentioned is, a lot of those groups are internal focus, meaning that if you're an MSP, you go join those groups. Those groups are telling you how to run your business, what to do, when to do it, what marketing you should do, what, what, what.

That is not our philosophy. That is not how we run the association. Our primary mission is we're public facing.

So we engage with the business community, and we distribute MSP content to the business community. Now, if you want help with something, yeah, we have a lot of resources, and we can connect with people, and we can even use some of the resources we have. We can absolutely do that.

But our primary mission is we're a public-facing entity to put you, the MSP, in front of small businesses throughout the United States. We have what we call our open contract section. So every now and again, we get companies that reach out to us asking us to help them find MSPs for various, and we've had about five in the last nine months, give or take.

And those open contracts, we list those, whatever the criteria from those clients, and we publish them through the MSPs, and we say, this is what this client is looking for. And it's a first-come, first-served. We don't try to do the matchmaking game.

That's not what we do. And the reason why is we don't get involved in your business. We don't even get involved in vendor businesses.

So as an MSP, how you run your business, how I run my business, is me. And that's your decision. We never, ever tell you what to do or how to do it, because everyone is different, right?

And I think, Mo, you and I know that. We've seen this a lot. So we don't get involved in your business.

Can we help distribute some of your content? Can we help get your name out there? Absolutely.

But a lot of those other groups, that is the primary mission, is to tell you what to do, how to do it. We don't believe that. So that's the one main distinction.

We get about 30,000 visitors a month looking for MSPs and various things. Yes, some of those are vendors. And yes, a lot of the keywords nowadays is obviously AI, and a lot of the other keywords is managed cybersecurity.

So we get a lot of visitors searching for those things through our site. And if someone connects with an MSP, fantastic. That is amazing, right?

We had an MSP, and I've shared this story before, we've had an MSP about nine months ago, actually. Brand new. Brand new.

He was only less than two years old. He only had 200 endpoints, and he listed, he got online, we've done a whole bunch of stuff with him. We've done a lot with him.

And within, I think, a month and a half, he actually picked up a new client that changed the face of his business. And he went from 200 endpoints to just over 500, about 525 endpoints, and it changed him overnight. Now, that's not to say that's going to happen for everyone, right?

But the bottom line is, as he was willing to do what we're doing now, you know, get in front of people, be in front of the business community. And that's what we say to all our MSPs is, if you want to do that, we have the resources to help you with that.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. Now, I know that you do a lot of the things that you did with me, where you get us in front of people, you showcase us. Do you have any sort of like peer groups or discussions where, you know, MSPs can get together and have those discussions about, hey, how can I grow my business?

What are you doing right that I can learn from? Are you having those types of meetings?

[David Jooste]
So what we do is, and we're going into a new cycle right now, but what we do is usually every once a month, usually it's on the last Friday of the month, we have a virtual space where MSPs can just come jump in and we have some of those discussions. It's not a peer group, as you say, because like you said, there are hundreds of those and we're not trying to compete with those. And you know, you have the comp T's, you have the ASCII's, great.

And those are fantastic. Right. We're not trying to compete with that because our mission is to get you in front of the public community.

But we do every month, we do have that. Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So outside of, you know, getting MSPs exposure and stuff, do you have any other types of goals?

[David Jooste]
Good question. See, I didn't expect that question. Right.

See, one of the questions I threw at you on the panel. So our primary goal is, you know, since we started, it's kind of blown up a little bit. We've been approached by Canada, we've been approached by Australia, we've been approached by the UK, HP has approached us, Lenovo, Oracle, Google has approached us.

So it's kind of blown up a little bit. And a lot of those things is all of those big players in the tech world always ask the very same question is they want access to contact those MSPs themselves. Right.

And that is not something we do. That is, you know, there's only even though we have a whole team, there's only three people who have access to that list, which is myself, our CXO and our member relationship advocate, Amy. No one else in the team even has access to that.

So when you say what are our other goals? Our other goal is to honestly get just more MSPs recognition. We have some MSPs that are brand new and they have no idea which way to go.

And we were all there, right? I mean, I'm sure you were there at one point. I know I was there at one point.

And that is where the birth of the association came up, because that's how I felt 12 years ago. And when I came to the to the partners and I said, “How do we help these guys? And that's how the association came about.

And that's why we said we need to make this public facing. So our goal is to honestly create more public awareness for the MSP community out there. That is our primary goal.

And we do that through multiple different channels.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So the MSPAA, MSP Association of America. So is it MSPAA.org?

[David Jooste]
Dot net.

[Uncle Marv]
Dot net. Yeah, see, I should do my research ahead of time.

[David Jooste]
That's OK.

[Uncle Marv]
I knew I had been there. And one of the things I was going to ask is you've got a thing where it says find an MSP or register an MSP. So the find an MSP, is that where you're talking about, where people can come and look for local MSPs in their area?

Or what is that?

[David Jooste]
So the site is kind of split into two. Right. So one section is for our visitors.

And that's find an MSP and ask MSP questions. Like a lot of companies just don't know what to ask MSPs when they're looking at contracting with them. So there's a bunch of information there for our visitors.

And if visitors do need help, we have that as well. Then we have the MSP section, which goes more to the MS account profile, MSP resource. And that's for our MSPs.

Yes, that's where the registration page is. There's also, we have a partner section that we work very closely with a number of partners. And we work with those partners to give significant discounts to MSPs.

And that section is there for MSPs as well. Use it, don't use it. One thing we always get asked from vendors, ironically, is we've always had vendors come to us and say, hey, we will give you a commission if you can get us an MSP.

And we've been asked by some really big companies for that. And the one response is, we're not interested in that. We're not interested in commissions.

We're not interested in affiliates. We're not interested in any of that. If that is something that you as a vendor want to do, just give it to the MSPs.

I mean, if you're willing to offer to us, just give the MSPs the discount. It just makes common sense, right?

[Uncle Marv]
That's the way I like it.

[David Jooste]
Sorry?

[Uncle Marv]
I said, that's the way I like it.

[David Jooste]
Exactly right. I mean, it's all about relationships. And, you know, you said it, and that's one of the reasons why, like I said earlier, when I invited you to that event, and I believe you had a good time.

It looked like you were having a great time.

[Uncle Marv]
I always have a good time. This is my home, first of all, so it's easy. I don't have to worry about travel and all of that stuff, but travel is good.

So people can become members, and there is a fee, a $4.99 fee. I guess the next question is, what really is the benefit to joining?

[David Jooste]
Well, so let me go back there for a second. So there is no fee for the first year. It's complimentary.

There is no cost, any of that. So anything that you want to do with the association as an MSP for the first year, it's kind of like your trial year, if you want to call it that. There's no cost to it.

If you want to continue and it renews, then yes, there's that fee. But no, there's no fee to actually sign up, and you will not be charged for the first year at all. Now, coming back to your second question, what are the benefits?

So when you register, and we have MSPs who do this, right, first and foremost is we verify everything. For example, at the conference here where I am, Marvin, we had another four or five MSPs register that were not U.S.-based. They were located outside, predominantly in India. So we verify everything.

And the reason why we do that, one, because we're a U.S.-based entity. And then secondly is a lot of the U.S. business community who are searching, they want to work with U.S. companies. So we go and verify.

We verify that you are actually an MSP because we had a bank register at the event, actually. We had a bank register because they wanted to get in. And we said, yeah, I'm sorry, that's not going to happen.

So we removed that. And then after that, we go cross-reference the company with the state records. And that's a big one of how we find out who's legitimate or not.

And that Indian company, when they registered, we said, we can't find your state registration certificate. And they said, oh, no, no, how do I fill that out? Can you fill it out for me?

I said, well, no, we can't do that. So we do verify it. Once that's all done, you as a new MSP will get a welcome email, like anything else.

I have a bunch of information on there. But primarily as you know, there's some key aspects to an MSP profile. Like you have your website is your description.

And in the description fields, those are searchable keywords. And it's highlighted and read there. Because if someone is looking for AI for argument's sake, like everyone is nowadays, if AI is in your description, you'll pop to the top of the results when someone is looking for that.

If it's not, then it's not. Now, obviously, if you don't do AI, you're not going to put it in there. But I think all MSPs are dabbling in AI at this point in time.

So that should be something part of your profile. Then we do exactly what you and I do. We do a lot of live interviews.

We do webinars. We do a lot of event hosting. We have a dinner coming up in White Plains, New York, next week, the 27th.

And that is open to any MSP here, whether you're a member or not. Kind of like what you've done. Just, you know, come and join us and have a good night of connecting with other MSPs.

We are very strict about who attends those, because we don't allow vendors into those, besides for the vendors that sponsor the dinner. But we don't allow vendors in that. And I don't know, maybe you can say this, Marvin, but at the dinner we had is, you know, some of the MSPs that were there and I spoke to, they thought they were going into a sales pitch.

And that wasn't the case. This was really about the MSPs. I don't know if you agree with that.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, that's what we expect. We expect that if a vendor, you know, puts up money for a dinner or luncheon or something, that they're going to pitch us. And I will say that there were a lot of people that were pleasantly surprised because I think they were given a minute to introduce themselves, and that's all they did.

They didn't pitch anything. They didn't even come to the table afterwards to try to pitch us, which is what happens at a lot of events, which is to some degree annoying, some degree expected. But this was good.

The vendors that were there, yes, I knew who they were, but I did not have to worry about, you know, are they going to come hit me up for something.

[David Jooste]
And you're right. And that's what we say to these vendors is, you know, we have an orientation with these vendors before this event. We say you are not allowed to pitch.

That is out. And Charlene and I, we were like hawks at these things, and we will stop them from doing that. They are not allowed to pitch.

They can introduce themselves, welcome themselves to give a brief overview of the company, and that is it. The rest of the night is when they need to build those relationships. That is it.

And that's how we run because you and I both know we get pitched all the time, right?

[Uncle Marv]
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I do have to say that the people that you had there, I met all of them.

So I already knew Crazy Char ahead of time so that there was a little predisposition there with her, but she was fine. But I met Amy, and I had that pod. Oh, by the way, my interview got all jacked up with the battery stuff.

Did that get fixed?

[David Jooste]
Yeah, we actually are editing it right now. I know there were some sections we had to cut out. We won't show those.

Nothing bad. But, yeah, we're editing it right now, and as soon as it's ready for you, I'll get it online for you.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. All right. Yeah, that was one of those where in a rare instance, yeah, you got to edit.

The battery died on the camera, folks. Well, Dave, thank you very much for coming on, and like I said, thank you for having me be a part of the panel over at the expo. A lot of times I like to try to sneak in and sneak out, but this was actually good to meet people and get asked those questions on the panel.

They were good questions, by the way. Not that they were completely out of the world type questions, but they were good.

[David Jooste]
Yeah, we get asked a lot to do that. But if you're in Vegas in March, come join us in Vegas, and we have the dinner there if you want to join us.

[Uncle Marv]
I'm not coming to Vegas. But for those of you that are, I know that there's a couple of things. I think Ride a Boom is in Vegas later this week.

I'll be in Orlando for Zero Trust World. And, again, next week you said, do you know which day next week you'll be at White Plains, New York?

[David Jooste]
Yes, February 27th is up in White Plains. There's a Fogo de Chão meat restaurant, which we always go to because I love meat. Mind you, so does everyone else.

But, yes, it's White Plains, New York. There's no cost if you're an MSP. You just register.

There is a $40 registration fee. But, as you know, Mark, if you show up and you're actually there, that gets refunded to you.

[Uncle Marv]
You got yours, right? Got it back on my credit card yesterday, yes.

[David Jooste]
Perfect.

[Uncle Marv]
So, yeah, if you're in that area, folks, sign up for that. Again, a nice dinner to meet people in the area, other MSPs, and a nice, lovely dinner.

[David Jooste]
Awesome. And good food.

[Uncle Marv]
Good food, yes. The food was good. Yeah, there was a bar there.

You can drink.

[David Jooste]
Yeah, if you want alcohol, that's on your own account. We don't do that.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So, Dave Jooste with MSPAA, the MSP Association of America, a new, well, not brand new, but fairly new organization in our space to help us collaborate and work with each other better. So, Dave, look forward to seeing you guys out and about more and more.

[David Jooste]
Yeah, we're looking forward to it as well. And, again, if you want to join us anytime, just let me know. We'll get you on another speaking engagement.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, sounds good. If you are listening to this after the fact or listening to just the audio, I'll have links in the show notes to the webpage, mspaa.net, and we'll get you some links to those upcoming events and those other areas as well. And thank you Dave.

Thank you to Crazy Char for doing all that stuff out there. That's going to do it for this episode, folks, and we'll see you out and about on the road. And until next time, holler.

[David Jooste]
Thanks very much.