This Crazy Mistake Stops MSPs Capturing Leads In 2026

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Well, hello there. If you want to win new clients and make more money from your msp, this is the podcast for you. Here's what I've got coming up today. We're going to talk about the best lead magnet for MSPs in 2027. Also, the power of having a strong opinion in your marketing. And I've got two special guests today. I've got someone who sold his MSP and also the guy that bought it. They're going to tell us how to make your business more attractive to well funded buyers. Welcome to episode 362, powered by MSP marketingedge.com Paul Greens MSP Marketing Podcast. Let me start today by asking you a question. Have you ever put something on your website that says sign up for our newsletter or get our free guide or something like that, and then over a number of years you've discovered that like
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nobody ever does it.
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Maybe your mom fills in the form or something, but she's the only one, you know, no one else does it. If that's happened to you, then you're not alone. That's a common experience for MSPs. And today I want to talk about why that happens and what actually works instead. What we're talking about there is something called a lead magnet. You've probably heard that phrase thrown around the Internet. It's a common phrase in marketing. And we're going to talk about the kind of lead magnet that works best for MSPs, not just at the end of this year, but in 2027. So put simply, a lead magnet is something that you give away is in return for someone's contact details or you give it away in order to start a conversation with them. That's the whole concept. It's not new at all. In fact, the concept of a lead magnet actually predates the Internet. It was something that was being done in like the 19th century where people would give out samples to start a conversation with people. It's. That's how old it is. But in the Internet age, we give away a thing, a PDF or a physical thing, and we do it in order to get their contact details and then we can do some automated marketing to them. That, that's the theory. However, it's 2026 and nobody wants more emails, right? If you just say to someone, please sign up for our newsletter, they're not going to do that. That's actually not a lead magnet. And that hasn't worked for 20 years because that's just asking someone to add another task. Right. To get more unwanted emails in their already overflowing inbox. And no one's going to take you up on that they haven't done for the last 20 years. So. But they will still do it. They will join your mailing list if you offer them something that's of such a high perceived value that they really, really want it, and they will happily hand over their details. And I know this is the case because I'm doing this every single day of the week. And I'll tell you more about that in a second because I've got a freebie for you, my lead magnet. I'm going to give it to you in just a few minutes, but let's talk first about the options for you. I've been doing lead magnets for around about 15 years or so. So I started doing it with really well in my last business, and this whole business started with a lead magnet. I built a list by putting a lead magnet out there just to MSPs in the UK about 10 years ago, and that's how I got this whole business started. So we can talk about what works and what doesn't work. Because I have learned this the hard way by doing it, and I've generated, I reckon it's getting on for nearly 30,000 leads over the last 20 years, which is not the biggest number in the world. So someone like Alex Hormozi has generated millions and millions of leads in just five or six years. So I know it's not the biggest number in the world, but I've done it consistently across a whole number of different sectors. MSP's is just the last sector that I'm ever going to work with in my working career. I've previously worked with veterinarians, dentists, opticians, optometrists and a whole bunch of other business owners, and they all came from lead magnets. So when you are putting together a lead magnet for your msp, you've got a number of options and the first of them is it's your PDF. Right? It's the easiest thing to create. I mean, you can use, you know, Claude to make it look pretty these days. Or Canva, you don't even need design skills these days. However, whereas a PDF worked well, kind of okay, 10, 15 years ago, I believe that for 2027, it's actually one of the least effective lead magnets that you could ever use, because everybody, especially you, has thousands of PDFs, so sitting in a folder or on your desktop, you've downloaded them, but you've never, ever Opened them.
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Right.
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In fact, I said this to one of my MSP Marketing Edge member calls the other week. We have a call every single Tuesday called Tactical Tuesdays. And one of the MSPs actually went and looked and he had, he had like hundreds, I forget the exact number, but it was hundreds and hundreds of PDFs that he downloaded as lead magnets. Never open them. Right. So the chances. So if you give someone a PDF, the chances of them ever actually opening it and reading it are painfully low. And as much as you've already got their contact details by giving them a PDF, we do actually want them to consume the lead magnet, right? Because if they don't read or consume the lead magnet, then you can't influence them. Does that make sense? So your PDF is your first option. Your second option is something physical and something tangible. So that could be a printed book, it could be a wall planner, it could be a guide, it could be something that you send to them through the post. And those three things I've just mention, there are all great options. I've done all of those. They've all worked very well for me. The physical stuff works so much better than a PDF because it's real, it sits on a desk, it's hard to ignore and almost, I can almost guarantee that no other MSP in your marketplace, or almost no other MSP is doing this. So as I say, I've given away, it must be getting on for 15, 20,000 of these over the years. And I've genuinely built two, a million pound a year businesses off giving away physical lead magnets. And I know that again, that's not the biggest number in the world, but that's a good, solid business that runs really well, makes some really good profit. There's no dramas in either of those businesses that I built, and they all came from giving away physical lead magnets, right? Sending stuff to people in the post, mailing it to them, I know that's expensive, I know it's difficult, and that's the reason why it's the right thing to do. So option one is the PDF. Option two is sending out physical stuff, same information as in the PDF, but it's real and tangible. Option three, I think this might be the one for you because it is an interactive lead magnet. So you might do something like a quiz or an assessment, and that might give the person who's filled it in a personalized result. So you could do something like a cybersecurity score, just asking them some simple questions about their setup, or maybe an AI Readiness score or something like that. And all they have to do is answer for four or five simple questions and then at the end they get a report that's very specific to them. And people love this. It's a really good thing right now because it's not generic content, it's personalized to them. And here's the clever bit. The questions that you ask can be the exactly the same questions that you would want to ask a hot prospect in real life. So let's say, for example, you're building one around AI readiness. You might ask them something like, on a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you right now that none of your staff are putting company data into their own personal, personal AI tools, which of course we know as shadow AI, but the average business owner has never thought about. And so the answer tells you immediately how hot that prospect is and what that specific pain point is. In fact, we use this ourselves. We have a marketing scorecard on our website. You can go and find it at MSP marketingedge.com just go into the navigation, you'll see Marketing Scorecard. I think it's under Resources and it works exactly this way. Every answer, just to give you a heads up, if you go and do that, every answer you give there feeds into our CRM HubSpot. So when in my sales team, you might fill that in today and then we might have a conversation 6 months, 12 months down the line. But when they talk to you, they've got the answer that you gave when you first filled in the scorecard. So they know your pain points before the conversation even starts. Does that make sense? There's another version of this which actually we built specifically for MSPs. If you go and have a look@msppriceguide.com and I built this with Marcus Sheridan, who's the author of a book called Endless Customers, which used to be called they Ask youk Answer the and he's built a thing called Price Guide AI. We white labeled that and added in our MSP knowledge to create MSP price guide.com and that's about getting your prospects to tell you all about their setup in a way which kind of gives you, gives you leads, it generates you leads and also they get a rough idea of how much it would cost to work with you. So I'd strongly recommend that that is a great combination of a price calculator and also an interactive scorecard. Msppriceguide.com it's completely powered by AI, by the way. Oh, and they have to their email address that's what makes it a lead magnet. So it ticks two boxes at once. It answers the pricing question that prospects always want, want answered. But it also captures a lead for you at the same time. And if you go off and build your own version of this, let me give you a super hot tip. If someone gives you their phone number as well as their email, call them immediately. Like the second they fill in a form. You get that at 10:01, pick up the phone at 10:01 and 2 seconds and call them. Right. Because no one hands over their phone number on a lead magnet unless they're genuinely ready to talk. I promise this. It feels like overkill, it feels like intrusion, but I promise you it's not. I've read a whole ton of research on this. It generates extra sales. Not just extra leads, extra sales if you call someone the second they give you their phone number. Now, one thing I want to flag to you, because it does trip a lot of MSPs up, if you're thinking, yep, I like this. I like the idea of a quiz. I also like the idea of doing a physical lead magnet. Don't use a buyer Buyer's Guide for this. And this one's particularly aimed at my MSP Marketing Edge members because for Both our memberships, B2B and Co manage, we give you a Buyer's Guide, which we update every year. We delivered the 2027 version in, I think it was either the end of August or early September. A Buyer's Guide is a very specific tool that's only for people who are ready to have a conversation now.
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Right.
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You never want to gate a Buyer's Guide. So that, gate, by gate, it. I mean, they have to enter an email address. That's good for a lead magnet. That's what we want for a lead magnet. The Buyer's Guide is when they're so much more further down the funnel, they are ready to start talking to an msp. So we don't necessarily. Well, we definitely don't want to make them give us an email address in order to get a Buyer's Guide. Your Buyer's Guide should always be available for anybody to freely get it off your website, because it's a positioning tool. And, like, the only people who would read that guide are those who are thinking of switching MSP right now. We don't want to put a barrier in front of that. Of course, if you do want to know who's on your website, there's plenty of software out there that will identify people visiting your site. And of Course you have to pay for that data, but it's not like you're getting 10,000 visitors a day, right? It's always worth knowing who has been on your site. So to summarize, we've got three options there. You've got your PDF lead magnet, which is easy but not that effective. You've got the same information in a physical lead magnet, which is expensive and difficult, but so much more effective. And then you've got your interactive quiz. Those three things. Very, very powerful lead magnets for MSPs in 2027. One final thing that we do need to talk about and that is traffic. You can have the best lead magnet in the world, but if you are not proactively driving traffic to it, then you're not going to get people actually giving you their contact details. And that's a common thing. I hear from MSPs, they say, oh, I set this up on my website, but no one ever fills it in. And I look at it and it's actually a really good lead magnet. But then I say, well, how are you driving traffic to it? Because traffic has never been harder or more expensive than it is right now. Go back 20 years. When I first started my business, my first business 20 years ago, traffic was easy and free or very, very low cost. I mean it was seriously different 20 years ago. But in 2026, 2027, it is not
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like that at all.
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So if you need fast results, unfortunately you're going to have to spend money right now. Meta ads like Facebook, Instagram, that kind of stuff, it's the best place to do that. They introduced something called Andromeda which was at the back end of, I think it was back end of 2024. It's an AI powered targeting and it's pretty good. We've been running meta ads for about three or four months to a lead magnet and we get a little bit of wastage. So about one in, I think it's about one in seven now is not an msp.
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So.
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So for every seven people that fill in lead magnet on our website, six of them will be an MSP or related like a reseller or a vendor or something like that. And what about 1 in 7 is
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like a beautician or a dentist?
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I don't know where these people are coming from, but we have a mechanism to spot them in our hub, in
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our in HubSpot and get rid of them.
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So we don't physically send anything to them and we delete them from our database. So it's not perfect and it is Expensive. I can't remember quite how much we're spending, but it's a few thousand a month, right? So Meta is a good place to go and drive traffic to your lead magnet. You do need patience. It could it take some time for the algorithm to figure out your ideal audience. And you need some budget as well, and you need some daily effort, but you can, you don't even have to do it anymore. There's an mcp, a connector that connects Claude to Facebook ads. So I run our Facebook ads, right, and I am the least, least technical person in the business, but I don't. If you've ever looked at the Facebook ads interface, it's like, whoa, that's really difficult. And we've got like nine different variations of ads running. But I, I do that with Claude. So every morning I just go into Claude in the, in the Facebook ads chat and I say, how's it, how's it going today? What's happening today? And what's cool is as well, because Claude is linked to our HubSpot, it can actually verify the results. So it can go in and say, in the last 24 hours, these three people have come through through Facebook. One of them is a beautician, flagging
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that up to you.
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The other two are MSPs. Isn't that clever? Right? There are other things, of course, that you can do to drive traffic. Just sharing your lead magnet on LinkedIn, adding it to your email signature. If you're having direct messages with prospects, mention that to them. You know, put it at the bottom of every blog post you publish. Have a call to action on every single page of your website, driving people into your lead magnet. And then the final thing to remember is the single biggest thing that makes any of this work is relevance. The more that your lead magnet, whatever it is, feels like it was written specifically for the exact type of prospect that you want to talk to, then, of course, the better it will perform. So you need to know your ideal client profile in real detail and use it to turn a generic lead magnet into something that people genuinely want. Paul Greens MSP Marketing Podcast. So everything I was just talking about there, as I told you, I have actually put into practice myself. And our lead magnet. Right, well, that's performing the best for us, is our MSP Marketing Map Wall planner, right? It's a physical thing, so it's a great big wall planner that you literally put on your office wall, rather than it being a PDF that just sort of sits somewhere on your laptop. And I've built it to be genuinely useful, not just something that you kind of get and recycle. What I've done, I've listed in this marketing map 36 marketing actions. So if you've got no leads right now, you can follow those 36 marketing actions and they will help you to win new clients.
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Right.
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And they're laid out in the exact order that I believe that you should do them. So I will post this marketing map wall planner to you completely free, at my own expense. And there's no catch, right? It's exactly the kind of physical, memorable lead magnet I've just been telling you about. It works so much better than a PDF. What's in it for me is what we get to start a business relationship. And hopefully my planner is going to be on your wall for the next
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couple of years, right?
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So at some point you're thinking, oh, I need more leads. You look up, there's my face and my website address. Maybe we'll go on to do some business together. Can you see the power of something like that? Here's how you get one. You go to mspwallplanner.com, go there right now, fill in your details. Not going to ask you for a credit card, not going to try and get you into a subscription or anything like that. It's literally, you go in, you fill in your details, you get the wall planner. Sure. On the thank you page, we tell you some of the things that we can do to help you, but there's no obligation to buy anything. So mspwarplanner.com or if you're watching on YouTube, there is a QR code on screen right now. Let's talk about something that terrifies most MSP owners, and that is having a real opinion in your marketing and sharing it with your audiences. Because most MSPs I've met are naturally cautious people, which kind of makes sense. It makes sense that you're cautious with your work because you're there to protect people, sometimes to protect them from themselves. And so that naturally expands out into the way that you do your marketing. And you don't want to offend anyone or put people off. So your marketing is kind of safe and polished. And the downside of marketing being safe and polished is that it is completely forgettable. So today I want to make the case for the complete opposite. I want you to have strong opinions or take any strong opinions that you have and put those all over your marketing. And I believe that's going to make you stand out more. Now, this matters more than Ever, right now. Because, as you know, more than most, we are living through an era where I can generate infinite content instantly. And every business now has access to exactly the same tools. So the ability to create really good content, which 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago, was just sat in the hands of a small number of people who had the resources to pay others to do it. Well, now, every business can produce polished, well structured, completely generic content. But what I cannot generate is genuine human opinion formed from real experience and held with real conviction. And the businesses that stand out, not just for the rest of this year, but in 2027, are not going to be the businesses with the most content. It's going to be the businesses, the MSPs, with the most authentic, most human, most opinionated content. Because being a real, authentic human being with an actual point of view, I believe is now a genuine competitive advantage, because it's the one thing that a machine can't fake convincingly anyway. So what we're talking about here is something called the Marmite principle. Now, if you're in the uk, you'll know exactly what Marmite is. If you're not, then let me tell you. So here in the uk, we have a spread called Marmite. I've got a jar of it just here and open it up. Oh, take a smell of it. It is absolutely the most delicious smell. I adore Marmite. I literally, genuinely love it.
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I have it at least two or
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three times a week on hot toast. And Marmite, it's a yeast extract. So in Australia, there's one called Vegemite, which is very similar. There is one in the us, I can never remember what it's called, but I don't believe it smells. It sells very well, it smells lovely, but it doesn't sell very well. Here's the thing. For years, Marmite's marketing has been around the fact that some people love it and some people hate it. That's literally their line. It's Marmite.
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You either love it or you hate it.
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And what they've done, very cleverly, is they've made people in the uk over a couple of decades, have a conversation of do you love it or do you hate it? And us lovers, we don't understand people who hate Marmite, right? Because it's delicious. I'm gonna have another smell of it. Oh, it's gorgeous. You know what I'm having for lunch today, don't you? It's gonna be some Marmite. Now, loving or hating a product is not a weakness in their marketing. In Fact, I believe it's some of the smartest long term marketing that any brand has ever done. They have deliberately built something that provokes a strong reaction, right? It even gets the people who hate the product talking about the product. How genius is that? Right? They would never have done that if they'd said Marmite. Marmite. You might like it a bit or you might not be so keen on it, right? Because that's a very lukewarm thing they've gone right in for. You love it or you hate it. Those are two extremes of an opinion right? Now, I'm not suggesting that you need to be extreme or deliberately provocative because obviously you're not selling a yeast extract spread, but you should be willing to be more Marmite. You should be willing to have people who genuinely resonate with what you say. And the only way to have people who genuinely resonate with what you say is to have people who don't. And you do that by being yourself and being authentic and actually putting your opinions out there. I do this and I know there's a tiny sliver of people who don't like me and that's okay because they don't like me. So therefore they don't follow my stuff, they don't listen to my podcast or watch my videos. And that's fine. That's absolutely fine. I would argue that 80% of people who come across my stuff agree with me and my opinions. And so, you know, and that's just a guess, but that's a guess because my audiences grow every year and have done for 10 years. And that's not me being big headed. It's just a fact that I've been sharing my opinion, opinions and exactly what I think about stuff for 10 years. And my audiences grow all of the time. And it's good that some people don't like me and don't agree with my opinions. And this is something that a lot of MSPs get backwards. If you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one. So you, you can't be scared of putting your opinions out there and being more you. I promise you, you won't alienate the vast majority of people. In fact, someone who doesn't agree with your opinion was always going to be a sucky client for you anyway. They don't like you and they don't agree with your opinions, but somehow they've bought from you. That's going to be the relationship from hell. So why would you want to attract that person in the first place? Much better that you Attract people who agree with you and completely want to be part of what you're saying because they think what you're saying makes sense. And I get why most MSPs don't share real life opinions. I know you're worried that you'll offend someone, you'll lose a prospect. You know, my, my view is if you're the kind of person who alienates people in real life, so if you're having normal conversation and you alienate people, then of course you are going to alienate people online too. But we are talking about a tiny fraction of people, aren't we? I'm sure you. Now can you think of all the people you've ever met over the years and think of someone that you found really weird who alienated you? Perhaps someone within the channel.
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Right.
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And you can only think of like one or two people. Yeah. Now think about all the MSPs that you've met or anyone in the channel you've met, who you got, you got on with and you thought, that's a nice person. There's dozens of those, isn't that. There's hundreds and hundreds of them. So most of us do not alienate people in real life. Most of us are thoughtful, reasonable, likable people. But we still have genuine opinions. So we should share those opinions and we should express them and express them respectfully. That's not going to drive prospects away, that's going to attract people. Someone consuming a genuine opinion of yours doesn't think, well, I disagree with this person. They think this person is real. This person is not an AI. They think about things. I trust what they're saying because it doesn't sound like everyone else. So the businesses that genuinely alienate people are the ones being needlessly extreme or unkind or divisive for attention. And that is not what we are talking about here. But what kind of opinions should you put out there? Well, I believe they should relate to your business and your world. If you have really strong feelings about Marmite or maple syrup, let's go with maple syrup as a more generic example, then that's not relevant to prospects, is it? Whether you're talking to business owners or IT directors. However, if you have genuine opinions about things that actually matter to your prospects, then those are the things you should share. What do you think about the use of copilot within a business? What do you think about AI in general? What do you think about cybersecurity? What are your opinions on the things that matter to the prospects that you are going to talk to. Those are the kind of things that you should share. What do you think about Microsoft's direction? What do you think about their pricing changes? What do you think about their product decisions? What do you think about the state of cybersecurity awareness among small business owners? What about remote work? Do you think remote work is a good thing or a bad thing? What about the impact on IT security? What about the channel? What do you think about the channel? Other MSPs, industry trends? What do you think's been overhyped? What do you think is underrated? Just taking those things there. And by the way, there's a transcript on our website MSP marketingedge.com navigation resources. You'll find the podcast. We transcribe every single episode on the website for you. So you can just go and grab that list of things I was talking about and give an opinion on all of those things. And that's a genuine, defensible opinion that the prospect you want to speak to, be it a business owner or an IT director, would find a lot more interesting than, you know, some of the other content that you might put out there. But just like we were talking about when we were talking about lead magnets, you have to keep your ideal prospect in mind, your ideal client profile, your icp. And this is where sharing an opinion kind of connects back to knowing exactly who you're trying to reach before you share an opinion. And ask yourself, how would my ideal client feel reading this? Would it resonate with them? Would it challenge them in a useful way? Or would it make them think, you know, this person gets my world? Your opinion doesn't need to universally appeal. It needs to just appeal directly to the specific type of business owner or IT director that you want to work with. Narrow and specific beats broad and generic every single time. So let's just finish talking about how to find your opinions, because we all have opinions. The challenge isn't having them, it's recognizing them and having the confidence to grab them and share them with an audience. So if you think about the conversations that you have with your team or your family or with other MSP owners, what do you complain about? What do you get genuinely animated about? It's those moments that's where your real opinions live. You know, if you go to something like scalecon or MSP Global or one of the big shows and and you're talking to another MSP owner and you're having a debate about something, even if it's a low level debate, that's you giving your opinions and what about the advice that you give your clients? You know, does it go against what other MSPs say, or are you particularly passionate about it? Do you regularly find yourself telling a client something that maybe contradicts what other MSPs might say or common industry wisdom? Because what is common industry wisdom? It's just best practice, right? There's no right or wrong way to do a thing. There's your way and there's someone else's way. That's an opinion and it's worth sharing publicly. Think about what frustrates you about the channel, about msps. You know, think about what frustrates you with vendors, right? Think about what frustrates you with pricing, with clients, all of these things. In fact, frustration is often where the strongest and most genuine opinions actually come from. And then, most importantly, when you write about these opinions, you do this in your own words. Please don't ask an AI tool to generate an opinion for you, because the whole point of this is authenticity, right? Getting an AI to do it doesn't work. What you can actually do is use a dictation app. I use Whisper Flow, I've just started my second year with them and it's a really good app.
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It's.
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I'm not getting any financial benefit from this, from telling you this. It sits on my Mac, it sits on my iPhone, it sits on my iPad. One app that, you know, uses AI to just tidy up what I'm talking about. So I will just sit and just blah, talk about stuff for two, three minutes and it kind of tidies it
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up a little bit.
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And then, then. And you could do this. Then I put that into Claude and ask Claude to actually restructure that, tidy up, turn it into some actual content. So the opinion comes from me, I dictate it so I can just talk about it. Because you can tell from this. I find it easy, lot easier to talk about stuff than I do writing stuff. And then I use AI to help me shape my opinion, but the opinion is definitely mine. So your opinions, they're one of the last genuinely unique assets that you have left in a world where anyone can generate polished content in seconds. They can generate polished content, but they can't generate polished opinions. Be marmite. Say what you actually think and make sure it's relevant to the right people and they are going to listen to you. The Ms. MSP Marketing Edge Member Update. If you're an MSP Marketing Edge member, there are two things sitting in your portal right now that work brilliantly together. And I want to make sure that you're using both of them. So the first is our website framework. This is the exact structure and template that we recommend every member builds their website around. And it covers everything from your homepage headline to social proof to your call to action. It's built specifically for how business owners or IT directors, because we have two different memberships, it's built on how they actually read and decide, not how you think they read and decide. So we've got that website framework there, you can access that right now. The other thing then is every month I do a website review. So I go through one of our members websites live on video and I judge it against the framework. You can see why I would do that. So it's me showing in real life, you know, here's, here's the plan of attack, here's how well your website measures up against that plan of attack. And then of course I give specific suggestions on what to change. And the goal is to generate more leads and get more discovery calls. So the each of these website Reviews runs about 20 to 25 minutes, which sounds like a lot, but it's a real in depth one, not a quick skim. And of course if you are a member you can enter the prize draw. You only have to enter it once and you're in that prize draw forever. So the earlier you enter, the more months you've got a chance of being picked. If you haven't entered yet, log in now. Just go into Tools in the portal and you'll find website website reviews in there. And if you're not yet a member, as I say, we have two memberships. We've got B2B which helps you. That's our most popular membership, it's the one that's been running for nine years. That helps you win more business owners as clients. Then we have our new one, Co Manage, which launched, I think it was earlier this year. And that's for winning IT directors. But each of them is only available to one MSP per area, so you can check if yours is available without having to contact us. You can just put your postcode or your zip code or your area in, depending where you are in the world and see for yourself. If it's available, go to MSP marketingedge.com membership Paul Greens MSP Marketing Podcast. When do you want to exit your MSP? Even if it's years in the future, it's kind of something you're looking forward to, right? Because when you do sell it, it's going to be the ultimate validation of all of the years and years of work that you are putting in right now. And I'm guessing that of course you'll want to sell it for the highest amount, but also sell it to someone who's going to look after your baby. Because as business owners, and I say this as someone who sold his first business 10 years ago, having someone that looks after your legacy, it's a really important thing when you exit your business. So right now I've got a unique interview for you. I've got an MSP who sold his business and also the guy that bought the business from him. And they're going to reveal both sides of that sale, why they picked each other, and how you can maximize your exit when it eventually happens.
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I'm Simon Pronk. I was the owner of 777 Networks, a company that I started in 2003 my bedroom and sold recently to Kingsgate.
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Hi, I'm Arjun Shastri. I am the founder of Kingsgate and I now work closely with Simon and the 777 team.
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I love it. We have both sides of a very exciting transaction on the podcast.
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I think this is possibly only the
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second time we've ever done this. Simon, you built up an MSP and you sold it. And Arjun, you bought that msp. And we're going to explore today why you bought Simon's business, what made it attractive to you, Simon, what was in it for you to sell your business to? Arjun? And, and of course, what we're hoping is for the hundreds and thousands of MSPs who are listening to this or watching this on YouTube that they can figure out how to make their MSP more valuable when they come to exit.
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So thank you both for coming onto the show. Simon, let's start with a little bit more about your, your story. And you just said that you started in your bedroom.
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And I mean, I know that's, that's a thing that founders say, isn't it? But you did actually literally start in your bedroom.
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Yeah, I did.
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I did back in, back in 2003 we had dial up Internet. And yeah, I worked for an MSP prior to me starting my own business. But yeah, for sure, the first day and the first year was spent actually in my spare bedroom with a dial up modem doing remote support for people with servers.
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Yeah.
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How do you do, how do you
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do remote support over dial up?
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Which there's a whole bunch of people
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listening to this too young to remember that.
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How do you do that?
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Yeah, and it very much Was like that. And yeah, you do it slowly is what you do. But you still don't have to go in your car and drive there. So it is actually, it does work. It does solve the problem. Yeah, yeah.
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So even in 2003, that must have felt like the far off future, which is you, you probably had no concept how it would be today.
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Yeah, that's it. That's it. I mean, you know, as Internet speed sped up, everything got much better. But yeah, I mean, I think the traditional way prior to us doing that was oh, we've got a problem, come and see us in the van we got. And that could be hundreds of miles. And yeah, as soon as we were able do remote access over, over modems, then, yeah, it made life a lot easier and just improved as broadband improved.
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Yeah, I can imagine. Very different business model. And you and I sound like a couple of old guys. We're talking about modems and stuff now, so we'll move on. So obviously that business didn't stay as just you in your bedroom. So you, you've been running it around about 22 years, 23 years.
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Tell us about the growth story.
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Yeah, so I mean, initially, really it was, it was an operation from my bedroom and we grew the business by word of mouth. You know, my, you know, way of approaching things was always to be to do a great job for people and you know, and that was felt by the, you know, the first customer who then recommended to the second customer, who then recommended me to the third customer. And off it went. And that's pretty much how we grew, you know, over the years. As we got busier, I added people to it. But the ethos was always the same. We're a quality and customer experience first business, let's say. And we grew very much by recommendation. We didn't do any marketing into much later or more recent years really. We were quite lucky to have known the people we've known and meet the people we've met over the time.
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Yeah, that sounds amazing. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna gently ignore the fact that you grew it on referral because that's as much as, that's a great way to grow. It's obviously the, the least proactive way to grow.
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What kind of size of business did
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you, did you get to at the point you were thinking about exit?
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Yeah, so as we, yeah, we were approaching like sort of, we got to. Well, the, the, the exit thing really started a couple of years ago. A few years back, probably five years ago, we, I ran into an Old colleague of mine who, you know, when we were just talking, you know, what's your plan for the business? And, and at that point we were doing probably about you know, one and a half million, something like that, you know, you know, around about there. And you know, we, he said, look, you know, why don't you try and actually work at this, you know, more than we had been and up until that point really considered it. And then a number of things happened and number of discussions at home and stuff like that. And yeah, we, we embarked on a, on a, on a, like a growth strategy and, and you know, when we eventually sold, you know, I think we were 3, 3.5 or something like that, million. So yeah, so we, yeah, we did, we did very well really.
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So that's amazing. So, Arjun, I'm going to come to you in, in just a second. Simon, I'm going to out you now on the, on the podcast. It's the first time I've ever outed anyone in that I know you have a family and the reason I know this is just before the interview you were telling me how on holiday in your family with Greece, you accidentally missed the flight and you're staying home, you're staying behind on Greece enjoying a holiday while your, your family have flown home. So we can all see through that, Simon. We know exactly what happened there.
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The reason, the reason I mentioned your
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family is, you know, there's a lot of MSPs get to about the mill, somewhere between a million and 2 million and you know, in revenue. And that, that conversation when you go home and you say, oh, actually, I
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think, I think I can, I can grow it, I can think I can double it. And often your life partner, be it
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wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. And your kids are going to be
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massively affected by that. In fact, I would argue they're more
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affected by you choosing to throw yourself in and get up to the next level than if you were to say, actually we're going to, I'm going to sell it and I'm going to do something, something different.
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So how did that, how did that conversation go?
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Well, it didn't actually. So the way that that happened, I mean really what it was is I was always pushing and the, the reality of it is, is that in my business and the way that I pushed hard to make the business work, actually there was a lot of downside for my family. There's a lot of, a lot of hours that I wasn't there, a lot of days that I wasn't there and it was A lot of, you know, let's call it hardship, really, and, you know, testing relationships. I, I'm very lucky to have, you know, the best wife I could ever hope for who has supported me through the really, really difficult stuff and, and through the good times, too, you know, obviously, but, and, you know, she, you know, without her, I, I wouldn't be here. Fact, you know, that's the reality of it, but it is very challenging. And, you know, when you start from a bed, from a bedroom, and you, you go, what you don't learn and aren't, and aren't given instruction on prioritization, you know, all this sort of stuff that happens, and also handling a family around you. So that's something that I learned in some ways the hard way, but it's something that came over time, really. There wasn't a conversation that said, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to push now and it's going to be like this. It didn't work like that. It was. We pushed first and the effect was felt afterwards. And we did have some conversations along the lines of, is this really what you want? Because we're not. We don't see you much. Right. You know, so. So that's how that went. Yeah. Yeah.
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That's interesting. Thank you. And I think there's a lot of people listening to this or watching this will relate to that because we, this is what we do as business owners, isn't it? We throw ourselves into it, we give it everything and then we look up
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and it's like, oh, it was 20
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years have gone by. The kids, you know, the kids are suddenly this age and I've been married this long or whatever is the case. And 100% as business owners, we take our business with us everywhere. And that means when it's good, you know, we're good. When it's not so good, we're not so good. And that's a, that's a common thing. So, Arjun, let's bring you into this. And obviously you're a founder as well. You have your business, but your business is a little bit different. It's not strictly an MSP. You obviously are acquiring MSPs and building, I guess, well, is the goal to build a big supergroup here in the
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uk something along those lines? I don't know about supergroup, but a good group maybe, is how I describe it. We approach it in, honestly, quite a simple way, but a way we think is a bit different and hopefully the right way to go about things, which is, I think, the thing in our business, that is an easy thing to forget is just how important the work that we and our companies do really is. Our teams are heads down every day, like you know, working hard and you know, and MSP work can be stressful and it's, it's easy to forget the fact that all of our work is in service of something really, really important. Right? Like our, our companies are not necessarily, you know, famous and well known, but some of our company, some of our customers are. And they do like, you know, they do healthcare work, keeping people healthy. They do, you know, specialty manufacturing work like keeping important industries going. They do infrastructure work, making sure like, you know, highway repairs happen and things of that nature. And you know, if we, if we aren't doing our jobs every day like our customers, it goes down and they're not able to do all these things that are important not just for themselves, but, you know, for thousands and thousands of people. And that's actually what attracted us to the industry to begin with. I spent most of my career as a principal investor in the IT world, but the reason to really dive in and really paint the vision we have at Kingsgate was to work with companies doing that kind of work, but doing it really well, having real customer success, building really long relationships where people, businesses at the end of the day. So to do all of those things, you need really strong team that's really cohesive and motivated and satisfied. And those are exactly the things that, you know, Simon built over a really long period of time. And you know, we're just fortunate we get to, we, we get to work with them, you know, going forward. So I, I, I say that whole kind of rambling for piece because you know, we are, we are business buyers but we, we buy with a very simple philosophy of we're working with companies that are doing all those things and doing it really well. That's why we want to come in and be involved. But our first duty above everything else therefore is to keep those things as they are. And you know, in building a group we're trying to take advantage of best practices that, you know, different companies have some, those things that are very differentiated and unique that, that he can help others in our group with. We can do a few other things with scale to help our teams, things like optimizing distributor relationships, stuff that's purely scale economics related. But when it comes to the real nuts and bolts of delivering great customer service, our teams who've been in place for a long period of time, they know how to serve their customers well. That's what the 777 team and Simon are so great at. And we really tried to, we really try to emphasize preserving all of that. And that's the spirit in which we're building our group.
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Yeah, and that's a, it's a really great thing to hear. And I say this as someone. I sold my first business in 2016 and the new owner dismantled much of that business and it went into liquidation at some point in the future and I wouldn't appear on a podcast with him. So. And, and I, I know as a, as you know, I'd put 10 years of my life into that. That and I understand that when we sell a business, we're not just exiting the day to day and we're not just exiting and taking some money that we've been building up. We also want that legacy. And that was, and I didn't know that until that business ceased. Ceased to exist and became absorbed into the still little bits of it left in another business. So, yeah, it's amazing to hear that you've got that approach and it makes sense. Why would you take 20 odd years of someone else's hard work and dismantle it versus taking their best practice and
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saying, right, what's the very best we've
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got from all these businesses we bought?
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What would be really helpful for all
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of the MSPs listening and listening to and watching this is could you give us a brief, almost like a bullet point list of the things about Simon's business that made it attractive to you? So you've talked about the, the longevity, the quality, the customer service, what are
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some of the other things? And I'm almost looking to create a
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list for our listeners and viewers of practical things that they should be thinking about, you know, up to four or five years before they think about exiting the business.
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Yeah, absolutely. There's a few. And none of this is going to be rocket science, but there are things that, you know, Simon just did a fantastic job with. You know what, what are the things you need to have a truly successful business in general, but specifically in the MSP world, You know, you need a, you need a really high quality team. So we typically are looking for companies with not just a strong team in place, but one that's been in place for quite a while and the employees actually have history, not just with each other, but with the customers. And all that knowledge really lives at the company. That is something we do notice being a big difference in the MSP world. It is an industry where some companies have a Higher turnover over employees. And you know, we just think long tenure teams with, with real strong customer touch points. History with them is a huge difference maker. The other is just what does your customer base look like? Right. So
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the,
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the thing that's so great about Simon's business, for example, is it's a highly diversified customer base. He has a large number of customers, but there are certain things that tie them together. So Simon, at the risk of, you know, oversharing, Simon built a really strong niche in serving customers in, I'll call the kind of heavy industrial industry. You know, guys doing like, you know, really big work with really big machines. They have very specific needs, they have very specific software systems they use that they've typically been running their businesses on for 20 years. Cloudifying them and bringing them into, into the modern age is, is not the simplest thing on planet Earth and only a few people can do it. So the company really has some specialized, not just specialized skills, but specialized success stories that they can advertise. And that's been just a really powerful driver for the company. And the, the last thing I'll say, which is not sort of mutually exclusive with my last point, is the relationships that Simon had with his customers are truly built on critical work. Simon, I think it's fair to say you've kind of prioritized from the early days of your business, taking on the most important challenges for your customers. And in most cases, I think in pretty much every case, you actually take care of every single piece of IT for your customers. Right. And that goes all the way from making the big strategic decisions on what your IT footprint should look like for the next 10 years, how you should protect yourself with your cybersecurity posture all the way through to what piece of hardware should you buy next week? And that's a very different form of relationship than a IT company might have if they are more kind of augmenting an existing IT team that a customer has and, you know, doing, you know, niche bits of spillover service. You know, Simon's business is built on the most critical work for his set of customers. And that more than anything is, is what's really powerful. Because if you're doing the most important thing for your customers, that's how you have the strongest relationship. That's how you build success together and, and real loyalty to each other. So, you know, I think those things are, they're not uniform across the MSP world. It's not like every company would fit that description. I do think many would, but Simon did it to a really high degree. And you know, that's really what, that's really what got us excited. And, and hopefully that paints a bit of a picture of how we break things down.
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It does, thank you. And what you're describing there is a moat, a moat business. And anyone who follows Charlie, well, obviously Charlie Munger isn't here anymore, but Warren Buffett, a lot of their investment criteria is what's a moat. So for example, those guys invested in Coca Cola because there's a thousand Colas out there, but there's only one Coca Cola. And Coca Cola has a 100 year old brand that, that will never be beaten. You know, Pepsi might have a good go, but Coca Cola is something different. And I think what you've described there is that Simon had created, whether by accident or whether by cunning strategy, you'd created a moat msp. So your customers are much less likely to go off to another MSP A because they don't have the same functionality and B, because they don't have the same relationship. Now Simon, let me just ask you a follow up question. We need to sort of just wrap things up. Obviously you, you sold the business, but you're here on a podcast with the guy that you sold the business to. So are you, are you still working
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in that business, running it or are
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you still working alongside?
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So what, and what, what was your, what was your thinking in that is
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because I guess you had a choice
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to walk away or to stay.
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Oh yeah, I think that, yeah, I'm. Look, I mean my business, I built a business based on being a custodian of somebody else's cash machine. And well, Arjun described previously was a full service it, a full, it managed service if you like. So, and in, in with that came an element of trust. And that's an everyday thing. So relationships are important. But we, when we ultimately decided that yeah, we would, we would sell a business, we met with quite a few buyers and having also seen acquisition go wrong number of times in our industry over the years, over the last 15 years, you know, that's happened numerous times and we've picked up number of clients when that had happened around us very conscious that choosing the right buyer was super important. Even, you know, irrespective of the money. You know, our business was built not on how much profit can we make, but how can we serve. And, and if we can serve properly, we'll automatically make profit. Right? And we have built a business like that. So when it came to choosing, choosing a buyer it was, we met with a few people and Then we met Arjun or I met Arjun and then I met with a few more people after that and you know, it was as soon as I'd met with Arjun I said to my wife, you know, if I, if I had to sell this business, I'd really want to sell it to him, him actually, because there's just a, just a connection. Our values are the same or similar in, in, in many ways around this topic. And I think that, you know that yes, money is one thing but, but, but knowing that, that your relationships are going to be, the relationships that you've built are going to be kept and, and looked after in the same way by someone's very important but equally, you know, as a, as a seller of a business, we wanted to ensure my wife and I, the, the very best experience. My mum was involved in the business too and the very best outcome for somebody taking it on, you know. So, you know, I said, you know, at day one and, and his father, James, we'll work with you until it's right, you know, that's how it will be and when we're done, we're done, you know, that's it. So they're really, I think that there are certain people, certainly people that we met with and certainly people we know in the industry who go out who we wouldn't, we would have sold the business and just walked away because we didn't want to work with them.
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Right.
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But these guys are different, you know, that's the truth of it. They have a different approach. They're very much in tune with where we are is don't worry about the money, it will come, just worry about the service. Right. And I think that that's where we connect and that's why, you know, I will continue working with these guys, you know, however long that might be.
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I love that, I love that. That's a great answer. Thank you so much. I'm going to ask each of you the same question just to finish and I'm literally looking for a 10 second answer. Arjun, I'm going to start with you, which is for an msp, listening to this right now, thinking actually yeah, an exit. It's, it's coming up even if it's a couple of years down the line. What's the one short piece of advice that you'd give to them?
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I would really reiterate what Simon just said. Find someone whose values align with, with, with your company because you or your team are going to have to work with them going forward. And we're at a relationship business at the end of the day, so keep that top of mind.
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I love that. Great answer. Thank you. And Simon.
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Yeah, I would, it's, it's almost the same. I would say that don't, don't be in a rush to, to sell. There are, there are loads of purchases out there. But, but just, you know, you'll reflect on it. You know, each, each person listening to this will reflect on it the same way. They'll have built relationships over the years and it really comes down to finding the right person, the right buyers that will make sure that that continues. And, and there are loads of buyers out there that you don't have to sell to.
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Yeah, absolutely. It is definitely a seller's market in managed services right now.
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Thank you both for being on the show.
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We had a lot of drama behind the scenes. All my bad. I had a technology fail when this is a second attempt at doing this. And you guys have been absolutely, absolutely great and so gracious with your time And Simon, I can see why you, you forgot to get on the plane home. You could claim it was just for this interview, which is fine. Simon, for any MSP that's listening wants to get in touch with you.
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Just tell us how to find you on LinkedIn.
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Yeah, I actually don't know how to find myself on LinkedIn, so use it too much, if I'm honest. But yeah, I'm there. Simon. Simon. Prong Triple seven Networks. You'll find me connect. You know, if you, if you really want to speak, you know, just ping me on there and I'll get you, get you my, my personal email and phone number. But I'm happy to talk to others about it. And I was lucky to have been introduced to another MSP owner by that, by these guys. And, you know, there's some really interesting conversations that came out of that. So, yeah, happy to, happy to share whatever.
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I know, yes, it's the greatest social proof, isn't it, to speak to someone who's already done the thing that you're thinking of doing. Thank you. And Arjun, again, what's the best way to get in touch with you guys? Either for MSPs that have got questions about this today or maybe even want to start that early conversation of, you know, is this something, a possible acquisition? Could that be something you'd be interested in?
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Yeah, absolutely. I can be found on LinkedIn. So if you take a look at Arjun Shastri, that's a R J U N space S H A S T R I and Kingsgate, you'll find me on LinkedIn. I'm also at Arjun Kingsgate. That's Kingsgate E N T. And you can also find me directly through our website. We have, we have a little email form that you can reach me through. We're constantly looking to speak with the best operators out there. So you know, for any of your listeners, please do reach out anytime.
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Coming up, coming up next week. Thanks for listening this week. Next week we're going to talk about building a personal brand. All of them are marketing experts agree that these days it's about having a strong personal brand more than a company brand. I've been saying this for years but what do you do if you're the kind of MSP who hates the thought of building a personal brand? Let's talk about how you can do that without selling your soul in next week's show. See you then for MSPs around the world. Around the World, the MSP Marketing podcast with Paul Green.