Master Your Pitch: IT Nation's PitchIT 2025 (EP 790)

3-20-25 Sean Lardo - PitchIT
[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT service providers, managed service providers, IT professionals of any kind, where we try to help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. This episode, folks, is a preview of the upcoming Pitch It competition, courtesy of ConnectWise and IT Nation. And if you have followed this show for the last couple of years, you know that each summer I will interview all of the contending vendors in a little vendor profile episode, and then I travel to Orlando to the IT Nation Connect event, and I don't know if I want to say participate, but they allow me to be there, I do some interviews at the IT Nation event, and I get to hand out the third place prize because the way that the competition works is that the grand prize is $70,000, the runner-up gets $30,000, and third place gets nothing So I have come up with my own little prize, a set of steak knives that they've allowed me to present, and that's what we do. Now to describe a little bit more about what the Pitch It program is, it's pretty much a transformation program, and something that allows vendors that are startups, that allows them to drive innovation in the MSP ecosystem, they are provided with tools and resources for creating impactful solutions, and it helps them achieve product market fit and gain traction in local and global markets. That's just a fancy way of saying that ConnectWise and IT Nations helps them get their foot in the door and be a part of our ecosystem.

Last year's winner was Senteon, and their solution allows users to bring systems up to major compliance standards with the click of a mouse. It addresses vulnerabilities left by Microsoft default settings, and I was able to speak with the Chief Revenue Officer, Zach Kromkowski, and he emphasized their ability to harden default settings in a single click. I'll get into that a little bit more, but what I really want to do is bring on the man that you all love, the man who I have nicknamed Summer Man, but he has somehow nicked himself the Champ Pain of Pain.

We're talking about Sean Lardo. Sean, how are you, man?

[Sean Lardo]
I'm doing well, and I do appreciate Summer Man. So much so that our good friend, Larry Meador, gave me a jersey, and on the back, it says Summer Lovin'. Really?

And I was like, that makes me sound so much more exquisite, so yes.

[Uncle Marv]
It would be great if I had the musical rights to play that, and we could have that as your intro.

[Sean Lardo]
Well, what I've learned is a way to circumvent that in a way of, you just create a clip instead as an advertisement, throw the music on, that way you don't monetize it, and just put it on social. Don't host it anywhere, just on social media.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, but even Facebook now is starting to tag things.

[Sean Lardo]
I know.

[Uncle Marv]
So I have to be careful. I've been accused of using, let me be careful how I say this, because even though you may find royalty-free music out there, it may work in the US, but because Facebook is global, there are companies in other countries that will claim rights to your music. So I've had to battle that, so I've been down that road, my friend.

[Sean Lardo]
I imagine at some point, Facebook will end up saying, here's a list of all the music you can select from if you pay us a small fee of X for this.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, YouTube's already kind of started that. They've got a YouTube library of music. I'm sure Facebook will come up with their own library, but we'll see how it goes.

[Sean Lardo]
No doubt. But anyway, everything is going great, man.

[Uncle Marv]
Good, good. So let me at least get another couple of personal things out of the way. I know it was your birthday recently.

Happy belated birthday.

[Sean Lardo]
Yes. We shared it together. We shared it together.

We're like Ebony and Ivory, living together in perfect harmony.

[Uncle Marv]
Only we weren't living together at all.

[Sean Lardo]
We weren't, which is really sad. Although I was in Scotland for my birthday. I was at home.

Well, I was thinking of you for the day. Well, thank you. Thank you, my friend.

[Uncle Marv]
And I should also say congratulations because you've been promoted. You've got a new title.

[Sean Lardo]
Yes, I have. Thank you. VP of IT Nation Communities.

[Uncle Marv]
VP of IT Nation Communities.

[Sean Lardo]
Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
So let me go ahead and ask the question that you've probably been asked by other people and politely not asked by others. What does that mean?

[Sean Lardo]
It's a great question. So and I'll start before I get into what my title actually means and responsibility. I'll start with what IT Nation is doing, right?

It became, you and I have been in this space for a long time, you know, and there's been a few places that have been the core essential groups or communities of our industry that have been instrumental in the advancement of the industry, right? IT Nation being one of them. When I was sponsoring as a vendor, I sponsored IT Nation every year, even though it was amongst the most busiest and most difficult as a startup to actually be able to work it as well as you might want to, because it's just a lot.

It just was a requirement because the community has always been so strong. So we basically put a stake in the ground and said, we want to be the community of communities. We want to have the ability to, we want to be almost like, we're like a community as a platform.

So for a community such as, well, we use the tech degenerates that everybody knows very well, right? We're giving them the ability to be part of our community while maintaining the integrity of their community within this as well. And what we're hoping for in the long run is this.

Because of how complex the industry is, we're hoping to give the ability within our community to boil it down and make it easier for a vendor and an MSP to navigate to find success. And if that's, you come to IT Nation and you meet the tech degenerates and you're like, wow, I love this group. I can learn a lot from them.

And you go follow them. Great. So be it.

If you come and you say, hey, I'm looking for certain vendors and they're at our shows and you find them. Great. So be it.

It's amazing. Again, the vendor, if you're looking for success and you're like, hey, I don't know what groups to be involved in. Who else should I be supporting?

Who else should I sponsor? Who else should I invest in? Well, here you go.

Here's some groups. Great. At the end of the day, it's more, you know, we pushed last year big time to go give our mentality and that's what this is really about.

So that's the premise of the direction of things that we want to do, right? Where I come into play is I'm the one that's going to be creating the strategy and administrating all of these things we just talked about. It's all about improving the experience for all parties, you know, because of a lack of a better term, just becoming that master connector.

Not me personally but creating it so that IT Nation is that master connector. Along with that, running PitchIT still. But actually, my guy, Sam, who we called Sam the intern forever, is now Sam the FTE.

So he will be running the back-end administration piece of PitchIT because he started doing it last year and he did really well. But whereas I'll still be overseeing it. So it's really some of the pressure, you know.

And then also working with the vendors for sponsorships and helping them to find success because the other big thing to really think about is, again, where we drew the line in the sand and put our flag in the ground was we're not naive to the fact that, and you know as well as I do, every MSP uses more than one product. We look at ConnectWise as a core product, right? It's a core.

And then there's all these vendors that are in PitchIT, for instance, that are the extremities of what MSP will use. That'll take what ConnectWise does in one specific area or segment of business, it'll take it the extra mile or the last mile even in some cases. So we want to make sure that make it easier to promote these vendors, to get them in better places because we want them to be involved in the community and reinvest into the community.

We also want MSPs to benefit and reap the benefits in regard to, well, here they still are and they're constantly advancing their technology to improve your way you do business as an MSP, you know. So this is all, there's a lot going on and it's going to be really exciting and I'm excited to do it. It's fun.

It's a nice new horizon to embark upon.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, well, I wish you luck and hope that you'll, you know, remember me as you keep climbing up the ladder there, all right?

[Sean Lardo]
I mean, I don't know that anybody can ever really forget about you, Mark.

[Uncle Marv]
All right.

[Sean Lardo]
I mean, you're the person that brings knives to the conference, so I definitely know you. So yes. Okay.

[Uncle Marv]
You can't say it like that. My brother brings knives to the conference, man. You want to rumble?

Get them. Get them. Yes.

So speaking of, all right, so IT Nation Pitch It is underway. We are still in the application period, which runs through April 30th, and we still have a number of 26 participants, right?

[Sean Lardo]
That's what we're looking for, yep. That seems to be the magic number for us. It still, it gives us the ability to focus enough on all of them and keep that diversity rolling like we want, you know, because if anything that I've learned for sure being involved in this, you get 26 different mindsets, backgrounds, and goofs.

It really creates a really cool cohort. It creates a really cool energy because they're all different. And it's just, it gives it the flavor to the competition.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice. Nice. All right.

And then once those 26 are chosen, they go through the 16 week boot camp, and then they go into the preliminary rounds where they do all of the initial pitches and then learn to hone their skills, tighten up their sales, elevator pitches, and all of that, and then do their final pitch at IT Nation Connect in Orlando, Florida. And I believe, have the dates been set for that? It's usually the first week in November.

[Sean Lardo]
I believe we did set it. We have not made an announcement yet. I'm looking up as we speak.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. Well, as we do that, since we did not prep for this properly, I would just say this, that the Pitch It program really provides exposure to these innovative solutions and these emerging vendors. I think that the competition has really helped them all refine their message.

As we mentioned earlier, it makes it easier for MSPs to understand and adopt these new products. And of course, MSPs benefit from growth of vendors participating in the program, leading to better tools and services for their businesses. How about that for a pitch?

[Sean Lardo]
That's a good pitch. It's looking like June 2nd to the, or no, that's secure.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, secure.

[Sean Lardo]
Oh, that's secure.

[Uncle Marv]
I'm on VP.

[Sean Lardo]
Nope. That's the 5th. You know what?

No, November 5th to the 7th.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. Yep. So, right.

So, first week. That works out great.

[Sean Lardo]
Yeah. It usually always is within that timeframe. But then I'll even add to, and something to come back to, so people know for clarity, for clarification, they have questions.

For the pitch of competition, when they go through the 16 weeks, when we go through the preliminaries, the preliminaries are in collaboration with the channel program, with Matt Solomon, right? And what we're doing in that case is taking all 26 vendors, they're all pitching. They do two pitches, one internally to the internal ConnectWise staff of like the guys, the men and women that run certain product leads, their VP of product development or product management or maybe also they run marketing, they run sales.

There's different group, different people there. And the goal is to get a scorecard to them that they evaluate. They do five minutes of pitching, 10 minutes of Q&A, and then they're scored accordingly.

And then on the channel program side, it's a five-minute pitch publicly to the MSPs that are within the channel program and the IT Nation communities. And they have a survey they put out to everybody. That survey is part of what goes into when we quantify the results to pick the three finalists.

We take the scorecard and we take those survey responses and we quantify them to figure out who those finalists are. That way we get the three finalists. Those three finalists then also get coached by last year's finalists.

So they all get assigned one head coach, which would have been last year's finalists.

[Uncle Marv]
And it is an industry secret that the winner of the previous year coaches the winner of the next year, right?

[Sean Lardo]
No, that's actually how it's been working. Actually, this goes back to Jameson West even. So Jameson West was one of the first winners of Pitch It.

OK, he was one of the amongst the first before I even came involved with this, before I came to ConnectWise or IT Nation. He was one of the first winners of Pitch It. He was also one of the first coaches or judges of Pitch It.

And then he was one of the first coaches of Pitch It. So literally, he coached Alert Ops. So he won.

He coached LARPs. They won. Alert Ops coached Thread.

They won. Thread coached... Sentient.

Sentient. They won. So really, you have like a dynasty taking place right now.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Sean Lardo]
This is not by design, obviously, for our sake. It is literally...

[Uncle Marv]
It's a ConnectWise conspiracy theory. That's how we're going to say it. Yeah.

[Sean Lardo]
No, you know what? You know what's good about the competition? Each year, we find three new finalist judges.

OK? And they're from different levels of whatever they do. They're respected territories, right?

They're respected professions. You know, like last year, we had Lori Berry. She works for a vendor.

A small one now. Used to work for a big one. So she's very aware.

Joe Pinone, which he had an MSP, sold it and does his Joey Pins podcast. And he's just an industry expert in so many different ways. Then we had Tom Lawrence.

He was an MSP merged with Jason Slegel. And he has his YouTube channel with, whatever was it, 400,000 subscribers now at this point?

[Uncle Marv]
Half a million, something like that.

[Sean Lardo]
So you're talking about people with all different perspectives when they look at this and they're evaluating. And each year, we've had different ones. And it's worked out well because they're very objective.

They're very objective, but they're also very biased because there's certain things they're looking for when they ask questions based off of their selfish motivations. Like, how would I use that? Would it make sense to do this?

Can you do this this way? So it's been very interesting to watch it happen. But, yeah, we have a dynasty going on.

It's our James from West.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. Now, I found in my research some numbers about the economic impact. And tell me if these numbers are even close to correct.

So the vendors that end up being the finalists, they see, obviously, huge growth because they're being promoted so much. I have one stat that says that in some cases they are getting over 40,000 collective website visits over the course of the picture program.

[Sean Lardo]
Yes. So, yeah, there is. Like anything, right.

And I like the fact that you use boot camp because I think that's a great example. You see people to go and they sign up at gyms for boot camps. Right.

And you only become stronger and better based off of how much you invest into this boot camp. Right. You go to that boot camp.

You already paid for it. They don't care. But if you don't work as hard as they're supposed to work, you're going to get less out of it.

Right. What we've been very fortunate that a lot of the majority of the vendors that come into the program, they do buy into everything. The concept of everything.

Yes. Every week we have those. We have virtual.

We have a virtual workshop session every week. There's multiple trainings between sales, marketing, branding, messaging, development, road mapping, mergers and acquisitions, investing. It's a bunch of stuff across the board.

Right. And then we have stuff with you. And Joey and you name it, that are that we're putting out content where you guys are interviewing them and they're working on their speak and they're getting their awareness out.

Right. And then there's also the whole social media posting that's taking place. The goal for us is to the pillars we literally stand on for the program is to help educate and fill in the gaps of what they may not know to improve their operational performance.

Right. Whatever that is, sales, marketing, whatever. The other part is to help them to increase the size of their network of friends.

Right. Relationships, which is from the cameo coaches to you guys, to whoever. Right.

Third is to get to create that awareness, to create that buzz so that they can actually generate leads and grow their business. Right. So with all those, yeah, you're seeing all these unique business to websites.

You're also if you look two years ago, CRN did an article on or on the three finalists. And they attested to the fact of Dorn from the beginning of the competition up until the finals. Even they had all added on about combined three million dollars in ARR.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, that's huge. Yeah, I saw the stat that talked about they get 400 percent increase in demo requests and engagement and 200 percent more increase in closed sales.

[Sean Lardo]
Yep, absolutely. They've they and you're looking at people that really took to heart how to fix it. Like we even we were toying around this year saying we should make everybody submit a video on their pitch before we accept them.

And then the ones that get accepted, let's look at that pitch on video from that day to the end of after the 16 weeks. And let's see how much it's altered, how much, you know, because what you'll see is. Again, back to if you put your time into it, your effort into it, you'll see a far crisper, better positioned presentation from every one of them.

It's sometimes it's not just it's sometimes just understanding what words you should use and shouldn't use or when you should deliver it. It's known what to say, when to say it and how to say it. That's what it boils down to.

And you alter those because of education, you know, and. Two years ago, I think it was. It was two years ago, I remember after we finished the finals, I was up on stage.

We announced the winners. I come down, I'm walking around the floor there, you know, shaking hands. We're talking, everybody congratulating, you know, thank you for coming.

And from the time I was trying to walk out the door to go into the court or four different vendors that are like very well-known people that work for vendors that speak on stage regularly said to me. They were all together telling me, as I said, watching these people, they put on a clinic of what should be done on presentations. These every vendor should come watch them present because they're better than what we've done in the past.

So, you know, it just goes to show you how the education, the follow through and people buying into it, how they've been able to adjust and become the cream of the crop at most.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, well, I can tell you this. One of the reasons that those presentations are so great is they've only got a few minutes. So you've got to have a high impact presentation.

Whereas most of the time we get to see vendors and 15 minutes here, half an hour there, an hour there. Listen, us MSPs, we're just like anybody else in life right now. Our attention span is not as good as it used to be.

So you've got to you've got to hit home with your message pretty quick.

[Sean Lardo]
You absolutely think about it's your spot and they have five minutes to present. Right. And so when they're presenting and we talk about this, like, what problem are you solving for?

Why did you solve it? How did you solve it? You can get into all the other frills after that, but if you can't address those, you're back to your point.

You're wasting my time. This is the goal behind a good presentation is to get people to want to talk to you more. That's what it's about.

Like, oh, that's amazing. Cool. I'm interested.

How do I get that? Where do I go to know more? Right.

That's what it's all about. And so when we break down the way we present, we talk about it. Like, tell me everything about your company right now.

If I said that to you, you would talk to me for 45 minutes because you're like, oh, and I forgot this. Oh, don't. And also about this.

Oh, by the way, if it should happen to be on leap year, we have this. You know, that's how the conversation goes. Right.

Then I'm like, OK, let's boil that down to a 10 minute conversation. Tell me in 10 minutes. Now you're like, oh, God.

Now you're like literally writing bullets out. OK, what are the most important things now? Give me five minutes worth.

Oh, OK. And then it's like, give me your elevator pitch. If you can boil it down from that 45 minute rambling to five minutes, doing a 30 second elevator pitch is no problem.

[Uncle Marv]
Absolutely.

[Sean Lardo]
You know, that's just it.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, that's it. So that's what the vendors will be going through as they make their way through the boot camp, through the preliminaries and on to IT Nation Connect. The final pitch, November 5th in Orlando, Florida, at the Rosen Shingle Creek.

So we're back there. We're getting a bigger room because we almost filled up the room we had.

[Sean Lardo]
Yeah, we're working on it. Negotiations are underway.

[Uncle Marv]
I see.

[Sean Lardo]
All right. It's fitting. You know what the struggle point is for it?

I want the main room where the keynote is. The problem is we wrap up and the keynote literally happens about 45 minutes later in that room. So it's like and they're trying to do last minute prep.

And I understand they want to have a good they want to have a good showing. And I totally agree. I'm like, so it's all right.

So the negotiations have been a way like how we could be in there, because I do think that this is this is going to be this is pitch. It is the biggest event inside of the event that takes place. It truly is.

It is the biggest thing that takes place. Dorn connect in Orlando, aside from the actual event itself. Right.

The actual I think should connect total event. And it's only getting bigger and better every year. And now, like, I just got back from Europe.

I got it from London. Right. To nation Europe.

And last year, second place final finisher. Dan Ellis and I were on stage together talking. We you know, and now that we've gotten more of a presence where we're overseas, I mean, connect.

I already had it said like a nation, but now pitch it is getting more. Last year, we had six different vendors that came from other countries other than other. You know, which is big.

And now we've now we've now had vendors from God. I don't even know. I think we're like eight different countries represented at this point between the US, the Canada to Israel to Australia, New Zealand and whatever.

You name it. Scotland. England, take your pick.

[Uncle Marv]
We've had you said England twice, so don't try to double up there.

[Sean Lardo]
No, I said England once in that spew of a sentence. I said I was in England. I guess I was in London at Europe.

[Uncle Marv]
Listen, I'm not going to edit this so we can go back and listen to it later.

[Sean Lardo]
Did I mention did I mention England?

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, Shani, thank you for coming out and spending a few minutes and doing this little preview here. And of course, I will see you over the course of the year.

And I actually have to talk to you about some money after this is done. So I will be looking forward to that. But there you go, folks.

It nations pitch it. And again, the applications, if you're a vendor listening to this and you want to be a part and you're an emerging vendor, applications are open till April 30th. I'll have the link in the show notes and then we'll look forward to seeing you at the final pitch.

November 5th in Orlando. At the Rosen Shingle Creek. And there you will see Sean, the summer man, Lardo, and see if he retains that title.

Champagne of pain. I just doesn't always. This doesn't feel right.

Rolling off the tongue.

[Sean Lardo]
The champagne of pain.

[Uncle Marv]
That's phenomenal. Summer man, Lardo sounds so much better. Summer man, summer man.

[Sean Lardo]
Maybe, you know, some people put like after their name, like MD, PhD, blah, blah. Maybe I'll just start putting all those after my name.

[Uncle Marv]
Your LinkedIn profile be three lines long.

[Sean Lardo]
Literally, you won't know what I wear. I work because my title of me is literally the whole first page.

[Uncle Marv]
You'll be like Apollo Creed from Rocky. Exactly.

[Sean Lardo]
I love Apollo Creed. So, yes, I'm in.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, Sean. Thanks a lot. Folks, thank you for tuning in and we'll be looking forward to seeing you guys and you hearing us throughout the summer as we promote Pitch It with the new incoming vendors.

That's going to do it, folks. We will see you next time. And until then, holla.

Bye.