So you've built a solid MSP business, and you're delivering real value to your clients every day. But when it comes to marketing, most MSPs are either avoiding it altogether, throwing money at tactics that don't stick, or wondering why the leads they do get never seem to turn into the right conversations. Today, we're digging into what actually works with someone who has worked with over 300 MSPs since 2017 and has seen every marketing mistake in the book. We're going to cover the real reason past marketing efforts failed, why chasing leads is the wrong goal, and how AI is reshaping what MSPs need to do right now to stay ahead.
Join Tim Fitzpatrick and Josh Smith for this week’s episode of The Rialto Marketing Podcast!
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300 MSPs, One Truth: What’s Really Broken in Your Marketing
Tim Fitzpatrick
So you've built a solid MSP business, and you're delivering real value to your clients every day. But when it comes to marketing, most MSPs are either avoiding it altogether, throwing money at tactics that don't stick, or wondering why the leads they do get never seem to turn into the right conversations. Today, we're digging into what actually works with someone who has worked with over 300 MSPs since 2017 and has seen every marketing mistake in the book. We're going to cover the real reason past marketing efforts failed, why chasing leads is the wrong goal, and how AI is reshaping what MSPs need to do right now to stay ahead. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we help companies turn client acquisition from their biggest challenge into their biggest advantage. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to have Josh Smith from Wingman MSP Marketing with me today. Josh, welcome, and thanks for being here.
Josh Smith
Hey, Tim. Thanks very much for having me.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I'm excited to dig into this, man. When I connect with other marketers, we can always jam for a long time. So I know we're going to have a great conversation. Before we do that, I want to jump in, ask you a few rapid fire questions to help us get to know you. You ready to rock?
Josh Smith
Yeah, sounds good.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, man. When you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?
Josh Smith
Yeah, I'm a big foodie. Big, big foodie. Yeah, If I'm not working, I'm probably in a restaurant or cooking. They're the two main things. I can't get enough of my food. I know my metabolism is going to catch up with me one day. As everyone always tells me, I'm going to hit 35, and suddenly I'm not going to be able to eat what I want anymore. But yeah, food is life for sure.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Now, do you exercise a lot to burn some of those calories, too?
Josh Smith
I do exercise a fair amount. I do a few different things. In CrossFit, I'm into my running. But probably not enough to counteract the food. So my metabolism is still doing some of the hard work, I think.
Tim Fitzpatrick
What food do you like to cook?
Josh Smith
I'm a big Asian food fan. Me and my wife enjoy a good ramen, and we have them probably too often than we should. But I'm big into my Asian food and all the different spices and everything like that. So, yeah, I follow a lot of different TikToks, Instagrams for different recipes.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?
Josh Smith
I said this on a recent podcast I was on is just don't be embarrassed by your mistakes. Go out there, hope for the best. It's how I got this job. I've explained it a couple of times before, but I reached out to the directors to try and get the job. I was an accountant in a previous life, realized that I was doing the wrong career, and we'll probably come onto that. I reached out and hoped for the best. And obviously, here I am now. So if I hadn't done that because I was worried about being embarrassed, I obviously wouldn't be here right now.
Tim Fitzpatrick
That's awesome, man. What's one thing about you that surprises people?
Josh Smith
It goes back to that one, the accountant piece. I think a lot of people are so surprised, especially in the MSP space, that didn't know me before. If I go to an event and we talk about backgrounds, I'm like, Oh, yeah, I was an accountant before. I worked in finance. And everyone's like, You're not an accountant, surely? Everyone I've got the stereotype that you're a silent person who just sits in the corner on Excel, whereas that's very much not who I am. So, yeah, that's always something that surprises people who didn't know.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Nice. What success mean to you?
Josh Smith
Being able to go to nice restaurants all the time, having the money and having the free will to be able to do that, not working 50 hours a day and not being able to do that stuff. So, yeah, success is just enjoying life. And enjoying the life is obviously the food that I enjoy.
Tim Fitzpatrick
And where's your happy place?
Josh Smith
Buy a swimming pool with a nice cold beer. If you could if you could pay me to go on all-inclusive vacations for the rest of my life, that is exactly where I would be. You can't take me away from the side of a swimming pool with a nice cold beer or a cocktail, I suppose. Depends what time of day is. Cool.
Tim Fitzpatrick
And what qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?
Josh Smith
Honesty. Honesty more than anything in the world. My friends, my wife, my family in business as well. I'd rather you just be honest and tell me what's going on rather than finding out a week later than I ever should have done. Honesty is definitely the biggest value I see in other people.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So before we dig in and start talking marketing, tell us a little bit more about what you guys are doing at Wingman.
Josh Smith
Yeah, so we're a full service sales and marketing agency and dedicated to the The MSP space. We've got some vendor partners. We work with some of the peer groups as well, but primarily the MSP space. Obviously, my accent, there's going to be some people questioning that. We are based in the UK, but probably 65, 70% of our business is stateside in the US and Canada as well. We've been in business since 2017. We come from a founder who worked in MSPs, realized there was a gap in the market. A lot of MSPs didn't know how to market themselves. Generic marketing agencies struggled to the space, and that's when we started. And yeah, we've worked with over 300 MSPs over the last nearly 10 years now. And we do everything from website design, strategy and messaging, all the way up to event planning, telemarketing, email campaigns, video, you name it, we cover it.
The Single Biggest Mistake MSPs Make When They Decide It's Finally Time To Get Serious With Marketing
Tim Fitzpatrick
So you mentioned this, you've worked with 300 plus MSPs. That's a lot of reps. What's the single biggest mistake you see MSPs make when they decide it's finally time to get serious about this in the market?
Josh Smith
Yeah, this is what I think about all the time because I probably speak to 5 to 10 MSPs a week, whether it's as a prospect or whether if it's to chat at an event maybe. But so often, MSPs grow through referral, which is great. Referrals are free. They come, we always say, halfway down that sales funnel because they already trust you. And I think at some point in most MSPs journeys, those referrals slowly dry up, whether it's noticeable at first, whether it's intentional, whatever happens, whether it's just your industry peers are starting to retire or move, whatever it might be. Those referrals may start to dry up. And I think a lot of the MSPs that come to me, look, marketing is not an overnight fix, Tim, is it? We're all friends here. It's something that takes the wheels to start getting in motion and build. And I think people come to us not when it's too late, but when they should have maybe come to us 6 months earlier. They've relied on referrals. Suddenly, the referrals have dried up, and now there's no pipeline, there's no funnel, there's no list of businesses that they need to speak to. I think that's such a key, key mistake that I see happening is, oh, I've got referrals, so I don't need to worry about marketing. And then suddenly, those referrals stop, and it's like, Oh, no, I have nothing now.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. The other thing that I see, too, waiting, right? Waiting too long. But when they make that choice, they skip strategy. And the way I think of strategy is it's fuel for the engine. We're helping clients build that growth engine. Strategy comes first before tactics. And I see so many MSPs just jump right into the tactics with this default to action. But without it, they're building an engine that doesn't have any fuel, and then they wonder why it doesn't work. I wonder, how often are you guys being approached by MSPs that have already worked with another agency and things haven't worked out well? What's that mix look like, would you say?
Josh Smith
Yeah, probably. I mean, from the conversations I have, maybe 70, 30. So 70% of the people haven't done any marketing at all. I'd say 30% have tried something. And when I say they've tried something, it means they've done SEO on their website for 2 weeks and haven't got 10 leads, so they've stopped. Because I think, again, that's probably part of that same mistake is the referrals drop. Okay, I'll try a bit of marketing. So I'll do a couple of social posts and I'll do one email campaign without thinking about the strategy, as you mentioned. And suddenly it's like, yeah, the tactics are nothing without the strategy. We need to sit down and work out, okay, who are you? What is your MSP? Why are you different? Who are we targeting? What's the market look like? What do they care about? Who are the right clients to approach? And if you don't do any of that strategy and that message and all those foundational pieces, those tactics are never going to work because you're trying to be everything to everyone, and we all know that never works.
Tim Fitzpatrick
And getting into it with realistic expectations, you touched on this. It's a long term thing. And guess what? It's marketing's fault. There's so many marketers that over promise and under deliver. In the last 2 days, I deleted, I don't know how many emails that said, Hey, if we can get you one to five new clients this month, do you have capacity to do it? It's like, Dude, give me a break. Marketing does a horrible job setting expectations. Let's just be real here. It's a long term thing. Do not go into this thinking you're going to do it for 60 days. If that's how you're thinking, then just don't do it at all.
Josh Smith
Yeah, totally agree with you. I think it's something over the years, we've changed in our approach. Obviously, we were a new business at one point. We were happy to take on business where we could. Now we're probably a little bit more picky in our own approach because as we've told our MSPs to do the same, we've niche down into one industry, always have done. But now we know what the right fit client looks like for us. And it's more of a, probably from our side, it's less of a size thing. We've got MSPs who are one-man bands all the way up to our biggest clients, like an 800 person global data center. We've got a large client and a small client, and we've got a lot in between. But the commonality is that they have the same attitude to marketing. They know it's a necessary evil at times. I appreciate that. If you're not a marketer, that's how you feel about it. But the honest answer is it's not an overnight fix. You're not going to guarantee leads. No one can do that in this space. We're not selling something that someone buys like that. It's not an overnight decision from the end user. It's the same with us. Our sales process is very long, maybe because people don't trust marketing at times. They go away to one of these, as you mentioned, one to five new clients, we guarantee you. And then 3 months later, when that doesn't happen, we have a follow-up conversation. But yeah, the sales process is so long that you need to give it time. You need to have several conversations with someone before they're ready to buy. And that's where the referrals are an issue as well, because people get a full sense of why marketing works, because they get a referral. That person, like I said, comes down halfway through the sales funnel. They trust you already because their friend does or their peer in the industry does. And suddenly, as long as the price is right, they're happy to have a conversation. Whereas someone who's never heard of you, you need to convince them to speak to you first rather than convinced just to work together.
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Why Chasing Leads Is The Wrong Goal
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So let's talk about conversations, right? A lot of MSPs think the problem is they just need more leads, right? But a lot of your framing is built around conversations. What's the difference and why does that distinction matter?
Josh Smith
Yeah. Leads. I always find leads is a dirty word. What is a lead? I think it has so many different connotations. Everyone thinks a lead is a different thing. Is a lead someone... I mean, for example, we use lead forensics on our website and all our clients' website, so we can see if someone looks at a certain page or where they've come from. Is that a lead? Is someone just being on your website a lead? Or is a lead someone who you've actually booked a conversation with? And that's why we're trying to avoid that word just because it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, where conversations, as I mentioned, a long sales process or a long sales cycle, you're probably going to have two or three conversations with someone at the very least before they're ready to buy. So we're trying to set up those conversations. We're trying to put you in front of the right people at the right moment. Changing MSP is like changing bank. You've got to have a real big reason to do it. And that catalyst might be a cyber security breach, or maybe their MSP gets acquired and the service level drops maybe, or they worked with the owner and the owner's now left. So they're looking for a new MSP. That doesn't happen all that often. To try and make someone change is a big deal. And like I said, it It doesn't happen overnight. So you need to have several conversations with people, whether it's at an event, whether it's on the phone, whether it's through email, until they're ready to go, Okay, do you know what? This MSP is the right MSP for me. So I've always been a hater of the word lead, and I think conversations frames it a lot nicer.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I think that distinction is really important. When we talk about leads, you need to define what that lead is. And I agree with what you said. Somebody that signs up for your email list, that's not a lead. Somebody that signs up for a webinar or a workshop, maybe they're a prospect. But to me, a lead is somebody that has raised their hand and said, I want to speak with you. Before that, you don't know. Because until you have a conversation, you have no idea what is going on with that company. You can do all the research you want, get intent data. Okay, great. So there's some But until you have a conversation, you do not know. So it is so, so important. I love that distinction. It's really, really important. The other thing that piggybacks off of what you mentioned is that people don't switch MSPs unless the pain is really, really high. I see so many MSPs doing all kinds of outbound activity, trying to find that 5 to 10% of the market that's looking to buy right now. And they forget or neglect everybody else. And it's like, man, guys, that is such a big mistake. Your marketing effort should be nurturing people, whether they're ready to buy or not. Because when that trigger event happens, if you haven't been in front of them and they're not thinking about you, you're not winning that business. How do you think about that?
Josh Smith
Yeah, a thousand percent. I think, like I said, people aren't ready to buy when you speak to them a lot of the time. They'll come to your website, they'll kick the tires, they may meet you in an event. The catalyst that's going to happen at some point, whether it's like we said, the cyber breach or whatever it might be, you need to be ready there to pounce when it happens. I think that's probably going back to the mistakes we As I mentioned earlier. That's another one. It's not the single biggest one, but it's one of them that MSPs will try marketing. And because that person they spoke to didn't want to buy in that first sales call, they just throw them to one side because they're like, Oh, they didn't want to buy. They're not worth my time. Sales cycle is very similar for us. I will speak to someone probably three, four, five times over a couple of years before they're ready to purchase something from us. And whether it's a stepping stone product and you have an initial strategy which is sometimes what we do, whether it's an initial video piece of work that we do with an MSP to get them into that feel of marketing. Same with a MSP, whether it's a cybersecurity assessment you do or something that's paid where it's a stepping stone product into, okay, I now trust these guys and let's have a further conversation. That's where a lot of MSPs struggle. They don't want to buy right now, so not worth my time, but you need to nurture them. You need to be in front of them. So when their contract comes up or the catalyst happens, or they just are fed up with their current MSP, you need to be there and ready to have a conversation. And that's because you've kept in contact over that time. If someone new joins the business, you've sent them some brownies as an example. You can't do that with everyone. I've always you'd spend all your marketing budget on brownies. But principle is you have the right people in the right places that it's worthwhile of your time to send them a gift.
The Real Reason Past Marketing Efforts Failed
Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it, man. So MSP comes to you, says, Hey, we've tried marketing before and it didn't work. Yeah, we've never heard this, right? What's usually the real reason to fail? We can talk about this a little bit, but I think there's a few things. So I'm curious. Here, would you have to say?
Josh Smith
Definitely a few things. Yeah, I think trying to be all things to all people. I think really a generic sales message to a generic audience is just never going to resonate. Look, we're the first ones to tell people to niche because that's exactly what our business is. We only work with MSP, so therefore we understand what an MSP is going through day to day. And that resonates with them so much more than if we were a generic marketing agency who just didn't understand MSP. And it's exactly the same on the flip side. And it's not until an MSP works with us that they realize that's what's happened. They're like, oh, yeah, you guys get MSP, so we like it. And I'm like, it's exactly what we're telling you to do with your clients. If you work with CPAs or attorneys or maybe you specialize in manufacturing, you are going to understand their business a lot more than a generic MSP is. So when you can niche down and have that actual core message of who your MSP is and why someone should listen to you, Then once you have that, you're in a great place to have a good conversation. So I think trying to be all things to all people is usually the one. But going back to what I said earlier, the time one is always a big indicator. If someone's tried marketing for a month, they really feel like they have tried it. And I appreciate if you're not a marketer, then it does probably feel like you have tried marketing. But unfortunately, like we said, it's not an overnight fix. So that tends to be where I see some of the biggest issues.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I totally agree with you. Again, targeting broadly comes back to a gap in strategy. And I'll give an example. Working with an MSP last year that Anytime we start, it's like, Hey, who are you working with right now? What's happening with your existing client base? What does that look like? Because usually when you're helping an MSP niche, they don't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel. There's already success there. We just need to look at what's happening in the existing business. And he had some registered investment advisor clients. He had done good work for them. And so we started to go down that path. Josh, when we started looking to try and find MSPs that specialized in RIAs, mind you, we didn't spend weeks doing this, but we mined the Internet, we leveraged AI. We found less than five companies in the US that specifically said, not that they had a service page saying, We help RIAs, and they had eight other service pages, less than five on their homepage that said, We specialize in working with RIAs. Less than five. There is so much opportunity out there if you choose to go down that path, but most MSPs don't do it. I'm narrowing. I'm going to lose out on business. But the reality is that, man, most MSPs, if they got a new client every month, they'd be ecstatic. It's not everybody I know. But if that's your reality, there's plenty of business in one vertical. Plenty.
Josh Smith
Yeah. Well, it comes down to a lot of the time we see the two, but it's obviously more complicated than this. But the market is split between your very, very local MSP. You are that person in the town, in the city that you focus on local and hyper local because that's your differentiator. It's like we're on your doorstep, we'll come and help you. That doesn't work as you go further out if you branch out. Whereas when you niche, a business 100 miles away, it won't care that you're 100 miles away if you fully understand their business. I've just said our whole team, well, most of our team, we've got a couple of people in Dallas, but most of our team are based in the UK. I don't think most of our US clients are worried about that because they're like, you get MSP. I don't care if you're a thousand miles away or two miles away. You understand us. I think that's where people worry about the narrowing. But actually, you're broadening it because you can go further and wider than you need to.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes. Well, the reality is even if... I think the pandemic changed a lot of MSPs viewpoints about local. When they realized, Oh, I don't really need to be local in most cases. But even if you do need to stay local, you can still... We work with people in Denver, Colorado. It's not a very defensible moat for an MSP. The more competition comes in, you really can't defend that. So as an intermediary step, the other thing that I always look at is, okay, we'll focus on a couple of complementary verticals and open it up. Again, there are still plenty of business in most geographic areas. If you were to narrow down to two complementary verticals, you can't go broke.
Josh Smith
It just- 100%. Yeah, 100%. And I'm going to come back to another point as well before it goes out on my head, because I know it will, is we said about what's some of the mistakes they do, and why is it not worked when an MSP comes to us? And I think it's, and we've touched on this It's a little bit, but it's going after a singular tactic. So it's like an MSP will come to us and say, We've done SEO, but nothing's worked. And it's like, That's fine, but you haven't done anything else. That's why. There's only a small fraction of the market that even knows a better MSP might exist. So they're not out there looking. Yes, SEO still has its place and we'll come on to AI and stuff, I'm sure. But being found is important, but not everyone's looking. So if you're just focussing on SEO or It's just on inbound pieces. There's a whole fraction of the market out there that you're not speaking to, you're not getting in front of. So that's one of the other ones as well. It's a focus on a singular tactic. I did telemarketing, it didn't work. I did SEO and it didn't work. But no, these are multiple touch points to build that trust over time so that someone wants to have a conversation. So yes, they found our website. Okay, we then emailed them on an email campaign. We then invited them to an event. We then followed up on the phone. We connected on LinkedIn. All these multiple touch We sent them a video testimony from one of our happy clients just to ultimately build that trust. And if you just do one singular tactic, you're always going to struggle with that.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I think the way I think about it is, you don't need to be everywhere. But I think you need to have three or four strong channels that are working. It's like the way I think about it is, most MSPs growing through referral. It's like riding a unicycle. If the tire goes flat, you're not getting anywhere. If you have three or four channels, you're on a three wheeler, you're on a four wheeler. If one of the tires goes flat, things may slow down a little bit, but you're still going to get to the destination. And so it evens out your business, too, because you're not reliant on one thing. Dan Kennedy in marketing talks about the worst number in business is one. One great client, one great employee, one great tactic. You're very vulnerable there. So totally agree with you. On the flip side, don't fall into the trap of, oh, my God, there's all these marketing channels, and I need to find it. You don't. There's a happy medium right there in the middle.
Josh Smith
Yeah. You don't have to send one email to one person, and then one LinkedIn, and then just do all those in sole individual pieces, because, yeah, that's not going to work either. It's finding that happy medium. But that is exactly what strategy is for, Tim, isn't it?
How AI Is Reshaping What MSPs Need To Do Right Now To Stay Ahead
Tim Fitzpatrick
That's right. So we can't have a conversation these days without talking about AI. AI is it's changing search, outreach, content creation, and it's doing it quickly. How are you evolving your approach for MSPs? And what should MSP owners be paying attention to right now that most are are ignoring?
Josh Smith
Yeah, I'd say probably one of the main things we get asked about is this from MSPs, just because AI, as you mentioned, is such a buzzword. It's the first time from both perspectives Because people are solution-aware, but they're not problem-aware. They know that AI can help them, but I don't know exactly how it's going to help their business until you really sit down and think about it. And then the biggest focus we have is on the search piece. As I mentioned, yes, there's only a smaller a fraction of the market who are looking for an MSP, but people are searching in different ways now, and it's always going to happen. I think I'm a big fan of using ChatGPT to search for everything. I love Google, but I don't use it so much anymore. If I'm searching for a new holiday destination, I'm not going to look in Google. I'm going to go ask ChatGPT to tell me the best options. And a lot of people are doing the same with business searches as well and MSP being one. So IT support, near me, was a big term for Google. That's generically what most people search. When it comes to AI and ChatGPT and Claude and whatever it might be, people get a little bit more hyper-focused on asking an actual question as if they're speaking to a human And one of the key ones, and I'm not an SEO expert, I'm not going to claim that. But one of the key ones I know is like having FAQs on your website at the bottom of the page because IT support, you can have it in your headers, you can have it as the image, you can have it in the text. But if you're answering real hyper-focused questions in the FAQs, which people are going to ChatGPT researching, that's ultimately going to help. So that's one big way we've seen it work. On the flip side, I think where it doesn't work so well is the automated outreach on LinkedIn and things like that. As you mentioned already, until you speak to a business, you don't really know the core of what's going on inside of it. And AI scraping tools only do so much. So when you're trying to send out a unique message on LinkedIn to someone, it's very, very clear still to this day that a lot of them are AI. I'm obviously very much in the marketing world, so I can see an AI message from a mile away. And yes, I appreciate a lot of end users might not, but it's still very clear that it's not there yet. So we're still big fans of building trust, building relationships. It's with people, and AI just hasn't replaced that just yet.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Everybody that I talk to on the sales side with AI says that it sounds so great to have AI automatically do all your outbound. It's not working. It's not. I was on a call a few weeks ago, and somebody in the group said, If it's easy, you probably shouldn't be doing it, which really stuck with me because it's like so many people are looking for the easy button and they're doing this. It's not working. It takes effort. Things can be simple, but simple versus an easy or two different things. And there is no easy button. So if you're looking at some of these things, especially with AI, and going, Oh, I can automate all this stuff, and it's just going to be great. Man, if it's easy, you probably might want to double. You might want to rethink it.
Josh Smith
Yeah, definitely. I think because I've even noticed that... I mean, look, AI and the automated outreach can have its place in certain industries. I think when it's an impulse buy, If you're sending out a generic AI message to a load of people about a specific product, and it's something that they can buy and not really worry about, not Instagram ads and Facebook ads. My boss is a real sucker for those. Someone pops up and it's like, vitamin pads on your arm, and he's like, Oh, yeah, I'll give it a try because it's an impulse buy. You know that you can just throw it away. If it doesn't work, you maybe spent 5, 10 bucks on it, and it's not really the end of the world. Whereas IT is such a different sell that I'm not going to... No one's ever Impulse or a 12 month managed service contract. If they have, then maybe they're not the client you want anyway. So, yeah, that's where I think AI does definitely have its place. But the MSP space right now, it's struggling, I think.
Conclusion
Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, and I think there's ways you can leverage it in the process, but you probably shouldn't be leveraging it to try and automate everything. Right? Well, and that's another thing I see, too, is people trying to automate, but the process isn't where it needs to be. So they're automating it is something that's not working well. What's the point? The output, if you're automating something that's not working well, you're just doing it more efficiently. You're not getting better results. You need to make sure the process works first, then you can actually automate it. This has been a great conversation, Josh. Do you have any last minute thoughts, words of wisdom you want to share with us before we wrap things up?
Josh Smith
Yeah. Something we haven't discussed, actually, is a big core part of our strategy. So I probably should have mentioned it earlier, but it's events. I've mentioned that building that trust, building those relationships with people is one of the biggest parts of the MSP space. What we found as a big success over the last couple of years now, obviously, COVID-affected events, and it all died down. Now we're back. People want to get face-to-face. AI, and it probably stems on from that last topic, is the real big reason why people come to a room. People have got FOMO. It's probably, and my boss says this all the time, but it's one of the first sexy things that an MSP has had to speak about is AI. IT support and cybersecurity have had their place, but AI is now the reason people are coming to a room. We found that we can start a conversation for an MSP, get people, local businesses in the room, to talk about AI because it's something they care about, it's something they know is happening. Again, as I mentioned, people are solution-aware. They know what AI is, but they don't know what the problem is that fixes in their business. And then a lot of MSPs have a worry about it. It's like, Oh, but I'm not an AI expert, but you're going to be more of an AI expert than your clients are, than your prospects are. And it doesn't have to be fully AI, because even in a room full of people, when you say who's using ChatGPT, everyone puts their hand up. Does everyone have an AI policy? Oh, suddenly all the hands go down and it's like, okay, well, now it's a compliance conversation. Now it's a cybersecurity conversation. And all those normal IT topics come into fold. So I think events people should... If you're not doing events, you should be looking at events. And AI is a real big topic of getting people in a room. It's one of the, like I say, sexiest things an MSP has ever had to speak about.
Tim Fitzpatrick
It's a hot button right now. So where can people connect with you, man?
Josh Smith
Yeah. So wingmanmspmarketing.com. You can come and book a conversation. It's very non-sousy. I'm a big hater of the sales conversations. Come and discuss what I'm seeing in the space, and obviously we can help you out. And even if it's just a bit of advice and you take it away, that's great. Or, of course, my LinkedIn. I'm not going to read out the URL because there's a lot of Josh Smiths in the world, but as you can see. But, yeah, find me on LinkedIn and connect.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. We'll make sure that both of those get in the show notes. Josh, I really appreciate you taking the time in. It's been a great conversation. I know people are going to get a ton of value from it. Those of you that are watching, listening, appreciate you as well. If you want to connect with us, you can do that at rialtomarketing.com. The other thing we have for you, if you're feeling stuck in the marketing maze, you're not sure what's working or what to focus on next, take our free marketing engine scorecard at marketingenginescorecard.com. In 2 minutes, we'll help you evaluate the nine areas of what we call the Supercharged Marketing Engine. So you get clear on the direction on what to fix right now to help you get where you want to go. So thank you again. Till next time. Take care.