Podcasts about it glue

Joel Abramson, managing partner at Top Down Ventures Today’s In The Channel episode lands on the same morning that Vancouver-based Top Down Ventures announces the close of Founders Fund I at C$38 million – oversubscribed against an original target of US$25 million, and positioned as the first institutional venture fund focused exclusively on early-stage software and AI for the managed service provider ecosystem. Managing partner Joel Abramson joined the show to walk through the fund’s thesis and what it means for the channel. Abramson co-founded and led Fully Managed through more than a dozen acquisitions before its $137 million acquisition by Telus Business Solutions in 2021. He joins general partners Chris Day (founder of IT Glue and ScalePad) and Mark Scott (founder of N-able) at Top Down – three operators who between them have spent about 75 years building and scaling companies inside the MSP ecosystem. The fund’s first exit – zofiQ to ConnectWise, which closed in January 2026 – returned 5.3 times the invested capital in roughly six months. Abramson describes it as a case study in what Top Down looks for: founders solving singular problems with exceptional depth, validated by real MSP operators rather than generalist investors. The macro thesis is equally compelling. The global IT services market is projected to grow from $600 billion to over $1 trillion by 2030. And in 2026, SMB IT spend is on track to outpace enterprise IT spend for the first time ever – a shift Abramson contrasts with what he calls the “SaaSpocalypse” in enterprise, where headcount reductions are translating directly into fewer SaaS licenses. The fund’s LP base of more than 100 MSP operators – including Pax8 – acts as a flywheel for validating investments, sourcing design partners, and connecting portfolio companies with the customers best positioned to stress-test what they’re building. Find Top Down Ventures, including their newsletter and annual research report, at topdown.com. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show. If you caught The Buzz this morning – and you really should have – you already know the headline. Vancouver-based Top Down Ventures has closed Founders Fund I at $38 million Canadian, oversubscribed, as the first institutional venture fund focused exclusively on early-stage software and AI for the managed service provider ecosystem. The story behind it, though, is rich. Top Down was founded with three partners with deep roots in the Canadian channel community: Chris Day of IT Glue and ScalePad, Mark Scott who founded N-able, and today’s guest, Joel Abramson, who ran Fully Managed through more than a dozen acquisitions before its $137 million sale to Telus Business Solutions in 2021. The fund already has its first exit in the books. zofiQ, an agentic AI platform for MSP service desks that ConnectWise acquired just six months after Top Down’s investment, at 5.3 times the invested capital. Joel joined me this morning to talk about why MSP software needs its own dedicated venture fund, what the first exit tells us about where agentic AI is headed, and one market shift that has the team genuinely excited about the decade ahead. Let’s get right into it. My chat with Joel Abramson. Joel, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Joel Abramson: Great to be here, Rob. Robert Dutt: I wanted to start with the origin story here. I think it’s an interesting one in that you had a big role in building and running Fully Managed through a dozen or so acquisitions, then sold – instead of going off and retiring on a boat somewhere or that sort of thing, you ended up in venture investing in specifically MSP software. Can you walk me through how that happened? How did Top Down come together? Was this something that you sought out or something that Chris Day pulled you into? How did that happen? Joel Abramson: Yeah, well, let’s be clear – I do love being on boats. To tell the origin story, you get to go through a 25-year journey of the MSP ecosystem itself, because there are three general partners: Mark Scott, Chris Day, and myself, Joel Abramson. Our journey dates back to the early 2000s when Mark Scott started N-able, and he was one of the pioneers that really helped value-added resellers and break-fix IT service providers become MSPs. I meet people every time I’m out on the road who have a story about working with N-able – transitioning their revenue model from break-fix to recurring. N-able is a phenomenal company today and I think Mark’s legacy lives on there. Mark started that company and then exited just before the SolarWinds acquisition. Then he went on to start a service provider called CareWorks – an MSP focused on senior care facilities. A really interesting vertical, as well as broad SMB. But I’ll pause his story and focus on Chris, because Chris is founder and chairman and really sets the vision for Top Down. Chris had an MSP as well back in the early 2000s. Eventually that was Fully Managed, and that’s where I joined him. I had a small – much less successful – MSP called Packetsafe Networks, and I rolled my little MSP into Chris’s marquee MSP, Fully Managed, and together we set on this journey. We wanted to bring that company to ten cities with $10 million in revenue in each city and then sell it to a Canadian telco – and it’s not revisionist history, it was actually the goal. But then a couple of years into our shared journey at Fully Managed, Chris got pulled into building software. It was because I’d built a bunch of software for Fully Managed to run on, and he made the mistake – or the fortuitous opportunity – of showing it to his peer group. His peer group was like, “I want to use that.” So he said, “Okay, well, I’ll build it for you.” He started building a documentation platform from the ground up and called it IT Glue, and that was a phenomenal ride for him – taking it from a couple of peer group mates trying it out to selling to Kaseya in 2018 and building a very large company in a relatively short amount of time. Not without a tremendous amount of hard work and grind. He was on the road with pop-up banners signing up logo by logo by logo in the early days, but eventually the movement just took shape and every MSP realized that they needed a documentation platform, and IT Glue took off. So IT Glue exits to Kaseya in 2018. Chris has to make that decision: do I want to golf and travel for the rest of my life, or what brings me joy? And so he actually started Top Down as a way to re-engage back with the MSP community. He had an early portfolio of three companies: Warranty Master, a company he had started with his brother; Backup Radar; and Quoter. Together those three early companies started to grow at their own individual pace. Keep in mind, we’re still running Fully Managed over here – I’m running it for him. Then we ended up putting Fully Managed together with Mark Scott’s MSP, and that’s how the three of us came together. Then yes, we did a number of acquisitions. We grew Fully Managed to be $100 million in revenue. It wasn’t the straight line Chris and I had talked about – ten cities in ten years – but it was maybe seven cities. The bridge version: Telus came in and said they wanted to acquire Canada’s largest MSP, which was Fully Managed at the time. They had done a bunch of research and nine months later we consummated that transaction, at the end of 2021. I’d been working with Chris for a number of years on the early-stage portfolio, because we’d get a couple of calls every month with people saying, “Hey, I’m starting this project, Chris, are you interested in taking a look?” So we started to build this reputation as investors in early-stage MSP software companies. We tried some other stuff – everything from consumer packaged goods (we still have a couple of investments) to starting a country music label, which we’ll save for another time. But we always knew our home, I think, was in the MSP space. After the Fully Managed exit, we decided we wanted to really compound our impact. We had this idea of a venture fund – and maybe I’ll pause there, because I can continue the journey, but we’ll wait and see if you have any questions up to that point. Robert Dutt: Understandable. It’s a wild journey, and it really is back to the heart of the early days of the MSP movement – as you say, from break-fix and VAR models. I guess tell me a little bit about where you’re at now. The fund is positioned as the first institutional VC targeting early-stage software and AI for this ecosystem. Why do you think this space needs a dedicated fund? What does a generalist venture fund miss or get wrong when they’re looking at the space? Joel Abramson: We’ve been doing early-stage investing for a few years – five years. At the same time, Warranty Master became ScalePad, and ScalePad started to gain really, really great momentum. ScalePad brought in a growth equity partner, Integrity Growth Partners, who are just phenomenal folks. They capitalized the business and that grew ScalePad from $10 million to $50 million. They were great partners, great board members, and we watched these guys – we were like, wow, we’ve been through this journey a couple of times. They add a lot of value, and we’re really excited about that relationship. We were doing our thing with the early-stage companies, and so we looked across the ecosystem. We said, there is a ton of capital that’s ready to invest in companies in the MSP ecosystem when they get to a certain scale – that was kind of the scale that ScalePad had gotten to. Then we looked down and said, well, what about the guys that are just starting out? There’s not a ton of support. There’s a ConnectWise pitch contest that grants $60,000 or $70,000 to early-stage companies. And there are early-stage investors – we’ve seen companies like Pax8 and Huntress go through many rounds of financing and they started somewhere. But we saw that the strongest source of capital in the MSP ecosystem was actually coming from angel investors. It was Joe Paniterri and Kevin Blake and Channel Angels, and they had done a number of deals, bringing together really early-stage capital and putting $100,000 into a business fueled from a number of different folks. That’s really, really cool. But where’s all the venture? You look across horizontal software and there are funds of venture that just pour in. In the big markets – the Valley and New York – and then in secondary markets, there are funds focused on those areas. But we saw early-stage MSP software companies as vastly overlooked. So we said, what if we could bring together capital from the MSP ecosystem? Because we’ve made plenty of millionaires just by acquiring them with Fully Managed. You look at how that scales out across the ecosystem: you’ve got Evergreen and Integris and Thrive and all these folks buying up MSPs. The stats are over 200 search funds, family offices, and MSP aggregators buying MSPs right now. That’s generating a lot of wealth for a lot of people. Then you have MSPs that are super profitable and people are making good cash flow. Then you have all the software companies that have exited with similar stories to Chris’s. There’s actually quite a bit of capital that could be put to work back into the ecosystem if we just found a way to harness it and focus it on innovation. We said, instead of doing a couple of deals a year, what if we could make 8 to 10 investments a year by bringing capital together? And then what if we could build a system around that to take everything we’ve learned working with early-stage companies – applying those practices, bringing folks together for design partners, early customers, advice, and partnerships in the MSP ecosystem? So we set out to raise a $25 million venture fund, and we said we were going to focus on educating the MSP ecosystem on what investing in a venture fund looks like, because it’s really just going to fuel innovation for MSPs themselves. Our goal was to have half the fund raised from the MSP community and half from outside – similar to what it was at Fully Managed: let’s tell the world about what a great opportunity exists in MSP. We were super successful in the first bucket. We got really well received by the MSP community. We have over 100 LPs in the fund and we exceeded our target of $25 million. In the second bucket, we still have a lot of work to do. We’re one year into our Outliers podcast, we’ve produced one white paper, and we’ve had hundreds and hundreds of conversations in the institutional community, educating funds of funds and family offices on the opportunity for early-stage MSP software investing. We only got a couple of participants in this fund – which is all right, because it shows the strength of the MSP ecosystem. We still oversubscribed our target. But we’re excited to continue that journey of educating institutional investors for our second fund and beyond. Robert Dutt: You mentioned you’re in at the early stage. Where in the lifecycle do you typically start looking, and what does a target portfolio company look like at the point you’re getting involved? Joel Abramson: I’ve only been doing this for a few years, so I’m still learning some of the language, Rob. But we talk about early stage being right at inception – which is called pre-seed, the first money into a company. Maybe they have an idea of what they want to build, a prototype, a business plan, some people, but they haven’t actually started that path to launch – all the way up to around that first million or million and a half of revenue, where they’d be called a late-seed investment or an early Series A. So maybe it’s the second money in, or in a Series A it could be the third. But really we’re focused on the early stage where we can leverage the strength of our LP base – a lot of strong MSPs – as well as the strength of the community that Top Down works to enable and bring together. That can be for design partners, early customers, folks to help with advice, and then partnerships in the MSP ecosystem. Maybe a company is working with ScalePad to solve a problem and ScalePad can help by bringing that product to its customer base. It’s really about building the things that matter most to MSPs. And that’s why I think we love this ecosystem so much – it’s a partnership of vendors and service providers. If we look forward to how AI is going to impact things, you have small and medium businesses at the frontline – all the enablement use cases there, all the cybersecurity use cases. Then you have the service provider layer, which is MSPs helping them with all those things. Then you have a middle layer of supply chain software like the companies we invest in. And on top of that, you have the hyperscalers, the cloud companies, the frontier companies. That four-tiered system really matters, because without the innovation from Microsoft and Anthropic, the macro doesn’t move forward. But very rarely is it going to go straight from there into frontline workers’ hands. The two layers in between – the layer we invest in, and the MSPs themselves – are really what’s helping bring the value from the top to the end market. We think it’s an incredibly resilient ecosystem. We think there’s nobody better positioned to help with AI transformation than MSPs. And that layer between the frontier companies and the hyperscalers and the MSPs is really important – that’s where innovation happens on their behalf, and that’s the kind of companies we’re investing in. Robert Dutt: One example of that would be zofiQ, which I think was your first exit – and some pretty startling numbers there: a six-month turnaround, selling to ConnectWise, bringing back more than 5x what you put in. What did you see in that company that made you say “we’re in,” and what did the ConnectWise acquisition tell you about the market for PSA and agentic AI and where that’s all headed? Joel Abramson: It starts with Lee and his team. We get the fortunate opportunity to look at a lot of things that are being built and we’re still learning, trying to keep pace. As the last couple of years have played out, we’ve been students of what people are building and how they’re looking at solving problems, armed with the knowledge of the last 25 years of the ecosystem. When we met Lee, we were really impressed with him as a founder. He had a strong track record of purpose-building solutions. When Chris and I sat down with him, it was obvious he was solving singular problems with a tremendous amount of depth, versus some of the other folks we’d seen building solutions who were really going an inch deep and a mile wide. Knowing how mission-critical these solutions are to MSPs – that for every time they mess up a service ticket, they put that customer relationship at risk – we knew that Lee’s approach was just bang on. He was obsessed with solving singular use cases. It showed in the team he put together, the technology he built, and what customers were saying about the product. It’s very atypical to make an investment and then six months later have it acquired. When it was all going down and we were talking to the ConnectWise folks, it was bittersweet. We’re so happy to see ConnectWise gain this incredible capability, but we were sad to know we weren’t going to have Lee in the Top Down portfolio anymore. Ultimately, thrilled – because what it means for ConnectWise is that they can get this really powerful technology into a lot of people’s hands. That has a tremendous impact for the ecosystem, the end market, the MSPs partnered with ConnectWise. They can get this great innovative technology out into the market much faster than Lee could on his own, just going out and telling the story and waiting for the momentum to build. Thrilled for ConnectWise, thrilled for Lee and the team to jump into an organization like ConnectWise. And proud that we were able to play a tiny part on that journey. Robert Dutt: zofiQ was automating the service desk with AI agents. From what you saw inside that experience with them, and looking across the portfolio now, I’m curious – especially given your background running an MSP – when you’re talking to MSPs about what some of these companies are doing, how ready are they to adopt and operationalize this kind of agentic tooling? Both in terms of willingness and interest, which I’m sure is high, and actual aptitude and ability to make the operational changes that come with it? Joel Abramson: It totally depends on the MSP’s maturity. I’ve been through the life cycle of MSP maturity many times – two steps forward, one step back, a bunch of times. Every MSP is on a similar treadmill of growing and maturing, then having to embrace new technology, then getting hit by outside factors: whether it’s COVID, the move to remote work, the push back to the office, or the change in technology. It’s not a static industry, but it is an industrial-strength ecosystem because it’s so mission-critical for the customers MSPs serve. Everybody is at their own part of the journey. Companies like zofiQ come around and they focus on building the right technology, then working with the ideal MSPs that are at a place where they can embrace it. I go back to an inspirational investor, Dave Lahn, who always talks about the different buckets of work: the hero work, all the work that supports the hero work, and then all the work that should be done but isn’t. I think about MSPs with that third bucket. As a 20-year MSP operator, there were all these things I knew I wanted to do but could never get around to because we were always fighting fires, then trying to do proactive work, then project work – it compounds and you never had enough hands for the work that should be done that isn’t. I think that’s one of the huge opportunities with AI – actually getting that work done, staying on top of it, and providing more stable, secure environments for MSP customers. If AI is the great enabler for MSPs themselves, then how exciting is it to be in a position where I can’t think of a service provider that supports small and medium businesses that’s better positioned to bring AI enablement down to that market than an MSP. I doubt it’s the accountant, I doubt it’s the janitor or the maintenance people. I think it’s the MSP, because you’re already talking technology. As MSPs continue to evolve from the server room to boardroom conversations, AI is an incredible hook to get into that conversation. That’s why the work ScalePad does around customer success and supporting the strategy conversations is so critical. But the next wave of companies we see are really around helping MSPs actually deliver AI use cases successfully to their customers. That transformation will take place for a long, long time. Robert Dutt: Your base of limited partners includes more than 100 MSP operators, including Pax8. That’s unusual for a VC fund. Was that a deliberate choice? And how does having operators as limited partners actually change how you source and evaluate deals? Joel Abramson: It just makes us so strong. We have the brainpower of over 100 people there for us to tap and leverage. At our Horizons event in November – where we bring all of our LPs together – I’ve never seen a more aligned group of individuals, focused on supporting the supply chain of an ecosystem, come together and have meaningful conversations without any real individual agenda. We think about it as a flywheel. We have a group of limited partners with all of our capital in this fund together. Of course we all want to make money – but I think what drives that outcome is supporting innovation and figuring out exactly where the best place to put capital is today that can have the largest impact tomorrow. zofiQ is a perfect example. Here’s a strong founder with a huge problem, solving it at the deepest level, that MSPs are going to be able to take forward and dramatically impact their businesses and their customer experience. That, to me, is the genesis of venture investing: aligning all those things and putting the right pieces together. We think about the strength of the mindshare of our LPs, figuring out ways to connect them with our portfolio companies, ways to validate our thesis and investments by harnessing that energy, and then making the right investments and providing the right support throughout a portfolio company’s lifecycle, thanks to that really, really strong LP base. Robert Dutt: So if I’m an MSP owner listening to this – not an investor per se, just someone running a managed services shop – why should I be paying attention to what you guys are doing and what you’re funding? What’s the typical practical downstream impact on my business? Joel Abramson: You could look at our portfolio with a degree of confidence that these companies are getting great support to build great products, that they’re talking to top MSP operators around the world to help shape what gets built. The average MSP is the benefactor of that, because it means they’re getting great product built that they can use in their MSP or deploy to their customers. We’re doing this to earn and keep the reputation that a Top Down-backed company means tier-one innovation, great people behind it, that it’s been validated and tested – and that MSPs themselves can be the benefactor of that by leveraging this technology. Robert Dutt: You closed this fund at about $38 million, oversubscribed, in what you called a slog of an environment – and I get that. What does that tell you about where institutional capital is actually flowing in 2026? And what does a successful Fund I set up for Fund II? Joel Abramson: A lot of institutional capital is flowing towards the frontier companies and the supply chain of AI. We think that’s great, because just like the Microsofts and Googles that have powered the ecosystem for the last ten years, we think heavily capitalized AI companies are fantastic for the downstream companies – the software companies we’re investing in, the AI companies we’re investing in, the MSPs themselves, and the SMB layer. Capital flows down as well. As vertical-focused funds like ours demonstrate a strong track record, more institutional capital will flow into vehicles like ours. Certainly a lot of capital is tied up at the top right now, but we see that as a great thing because we’re not super concerned about the capital cycles of the next three months. We’re much more concerned about the capital cycles of the next two decades. As we’ve mobilized a non-insignificant pool of capital to support early-stage MSP software companies, we strive to earn the right to have a second fund with a more diverse group of participants, and subsequent funds beyond that – as long as we continue to find the right companies to partner with and add value along the way. Robert Dutt: And that seems like – just with the names you’ve mentioned and the names I can think of off the top of my head – a target-rich environment. There are lots of companies building specifically for the MSP market for obvious reasons. But I’m curious: without necessarily naming names or tipping your hand, what problem or product category are you most excited about in the MSP software pipeline right now? Where’s the white space that’s still underbuilt? Joel Abramson: In our research paper, we talk about two big macro things happening in the market right now. One: we think this market – let’s broaden it to IT services, not just MSP – is going from a $600 billion addressable market to a $1.3 trillion addressable market, certainly $1 trillion by 2030. That’s a huge market. On the MSP side specifically, we have four or five scaled companies at or above a billion in revenue. Ninja is on its way up there. N-able, of course, is a big company. But you’re talking about a much larger addressable market – there’s still empty canvas where new companies can scale up to fill the middle and eventually be alongside some of those platforms. We expect those platforms to continue to grow and thrive, and we hope to build or invest in companies that can partner with them to take advantage of their distribution and ultimately make small and medium businesses better through MSPs. All that said, what are some of those categories? I don’t think it’s new MSPs starting up and buying PSA – that market is fairly saturated. Nor do I think it’s more EDR or XDR – those are pretty saturated markets too. There’s still market share that will trade, don’t get me wrong, and innovation will build on top of it. But doubling the market requires new products, new revenue streams, and obviously AI is a critical part of that. Whether it’s the evolution of agentic service work to do all the work that should be done but isn’t, or raising productivity levels so the service is that much better, or helping the average SMB with a sophisticated IT strategy that evolves into an AI strategy – we see the category of AI services enablement for MSPs as a huge, huge opportunity. In the enterprise, we’re living through what I call the SaaSpocalypse – the idea that big SaaS companies are going to see fewer licenses because people are going to downsize headcount and thus take an impact on their top line. But we see the SMB market as more resilient, because my accountant with 60 people and one person in marketing – they’re not going to downsize that one-person marketing department. That person is actually just going to get that much better thanks to all the tools they’re using. SMB IT spend is expected to outpace enterprise IT spend for the first time ever in 2026. We believe that’s because of the resiliency of the SMB market – the idea that when a big tech company lays off 5,000 people, those people don’t all sail off into the sunset. A lot of them move into the SMB economy and start small businesses. Maybe the IT folks start an MSP. So we see the SMB part of the economy continuing to thrive, and it’s showing itself this year – thanks to this crazy stat that SMB IT spend will outpace enterprise IT spend for the first time ever. For all those reasons, we’re very excited about the opportunities it creates in the companies that we’re invested in. Robert Dutt: That is a crazy stat, and it’s worth underlining – because of where you and your peers and so much of this community is focused, right in that SMB space. And closer to home, as a Canadian podcast, we’re very much a nation of SMBs. So it really is super impactful here. Joel Abramson: Yeah, I would agree. Robert Dutt: For people who want to follow what you guys are doing – whether they’re founders, MSPs, or just interested in what’s coming in terms of new AI-first MSP software – where do they find you? How can they find out more? Joel Abramson: TopDown.com. We publish a newsletter and try to share all the learnings we’re gaining each quarter. We publish a white paper annually. We have a conference in November called Horizons – if you’re interested in investing in the MSP ecosystem, our goal is to bring everybody together as peers. We do a lot of dinners and events around the big MSP events. Our goal is always to bring everyone together as peers, not in a supplier relationship where you’re being sold to – just everybody trying to solve this thing together. The community aspect of the MSP ecosystem is so strong, and that’s how you engage. I’m pretty easy to find and always interested in a conversation with anybody from inside the ecosystem or outside, as we try to build this thing one brick at a time toward 1.3 trillion of addressable market. Robert Dutt: Brilliant. Go get that. Go build that. I appreciate you taking the time, Joel. Joel Abramson: Thank you so much for having me. Robert Dutt: There you have it – Joel Abramson from Top Down Ventures. I’d like to thank Joel for his time this morning. Thank you as always for listening to In The Channel. A few things stuck with me from this conversation. First, the framework Joel described: frontier AI companies at the top, then the supply chain software layer that Top Down invests in, then MSPs, then SMBs at the front line. It’s a clean way to think about how AI value actually gets delivered to small and medium businesses. And the point that MSPs are the most natural vehicle for that delivery is hard to argue with – from where I sit, and probably from where you sit too. Second, that stat about SMB IT spend outpacing enterprise IT for the first time ever this year. If we’re in what Joel calls the SaaSpocalypse for the enterprise, we’re in a resilience story for SMB. For an audience of MSPs, that’s your market, and that’s your moment. And the zofiQ story. A six-month hold, 5.3 times the invested capital to ConnectWise. What Joel said about what made it work – going deep into a singular problem rather than an inch deep and a mile wide – is as much a product philosophy lesson as it is a venture capital story. If you want to follow what Top Down is doing, find them at TopDown.com, where they publish a regular newsletter and annual white paper on the state of MSP capital. Their Horizons conference runs every November if you’re engaged in this ecosystem as a founder, an operator, or an investor. If you’re enjoying the show, please give the podcast a follow or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or most of the major podcast directories. Ratings and reviews are always encouraged. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Compensation models for technical staff in MSPs require careful alignment with business objectives and operational capacity. Both James Kernan and Amy Babinchak emphasized that financial incentives such as commissions or bonuses can be appropriate when technicians are directly responsible for generating additional monthly recurring revenue (MRR) or securing new accounts. However, they noted that proper monitoring tools are essential to track productivity and ensure fairness—without adequate systems, variable compensation based on efficiency or project profitability can introduce operational risk and potential inequities. Supporting this, Amy Babinchak described implementing a tiered productivity incentive where technicians received additional pay for surpassing utilization rates above 80%, but expressed concern over excessive overtime. Both speakers underscored the necessity of clear job role definitions; rewarding sales activities for technical staff may be appropriate if it aligns with broader company goals and does not compromise core technical duties. Non-monetary recognition, such as trophies or gift cards for ticket resolution or utilization, was also mentioned as an effective, low-cost incentive. The episode expanded to analyze current challenges in industry education and vendor-driven events. Citing a survey from the "All Things MSP" group, Amy Babinchak reported that 86% of respondents believe MSP conferences are now allocating too much budget to entertainment at the expense of substantive educational content. Comments from participants indicated skepticism toward vendor-led sessions, noting that paid speaking slots are typically used for product promotion rather than useful training, raising questions about increasing conference costs and the dilution of actionable takeaways. Key operational topics included shifting preferences among AI tools, with both speakers confirming recent moves toward Claude and Copilot, and persistent debate over MSP documentation practices—ranging from ad-hoc tools like OneNote to industry solutions. The discussion concluded with an observation about payment processing costs: James Kernan highlighted a case where $24,000 in annual credit card fees significantly reduced firm profitability, stressing the importance of passing such costs on to customers or utilizing ACH to preserve margins. MSP leaders are encouraged to assess compensation structures, conference participation ROI, and vendor relationships in order to minimize risk, align incentives, and ensure operational resilience. Question of the week:  Should I pay my tech commissions? Rod Trent Substack: learning to talk to our apps https://rodtrent.substack.com/p/the-new-normal-talking-to-your-apps?r=h2641&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action   Do you think that MSP conferences are spending too much on entertainment and not enough on education?  All Things MSP survey   What is your favorite AI tool right now? Blog post: AI Image Generators Can Now Spell: https://www.thirdtier.net/2026/03/20/breaking-news-ai-image-generators-can-spell/   What tool do you use for Documentation? This is more for the smaller MSPs or internal IT folks not running something like IT Glue or Hudu. GitHub: https://github.com/       TALES FROM THE FIELD: Payment processing fees of 24K reviewing financials during valuation.  Alternative Payments and other payment automation firms help reduce/eliminate these fees by giving customers options for EFT or passing fees to them.https://www.alternativepayments.io/   UPCOMING CHANNEL EVENTS: Reinvent Telecom – May 12-14th, 2026 Mastermind Event – July 30-31st,2026 Amy's Podcast Appearance Book Tour happening! Learn more about the book here: https://www.thirdtier.net/20-questions-every-msp-owner-asks-before-selling-their-business/                        Do you have a story from the field that you'd like to share? Or a question you'd like us to answer? Email it or send it as a voice memo or video to james@kernanconsulting.com, and we just might use it in an upcoming show. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send us a textIn this deep and forward-looking conversation, Joey Pinz sits down with Chris Day, founder of TopLeft and creator of IT Glue, to explore how technology, intention, and transparency intersect in leadership. Recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025, this episode is a must-listen for any MSP founder or operator navigating rapid scale, system chaos, and AI disruption.Chris shares what it was like to build IT Glue from scratch, how TopLeft was born from his own pain points in task management, and what he's learning as he transitions from building tools to building teams. He dives into the current AI landscape, unpacking what's real, what's fluff, and what MSPs actually need to be paying attention to.The conversation also turns personal: Chris discusses the pressure of past success, the challenge of staying grounded post-exit, and how transparency — in business models, client interactions, and personal growth — has become a guiding principle.Whether you're scaling a platform or scaling yourself, this episode delivers clarity, candor, and strategic foresight from one of the MSP industry's most influential builders. 

Nadir Merchant is the General Manager and CTO for Kaseya's MSP and IT operations Product Suite. He's worked in DevOps, engineering and also held the role of chief technology officer for IT Glue, the documentation experts. Today, his work is focused on building out the engineering offer.In this bonus TubbTalk episode, recorded live at Dattoncon 2024, Richard asked Nadir to explain IT Glue and their new collaboration tool, My Glue. They also discuss what it means for the company to be part of Kaseya Datto. Nadir shares his thoughts on how AI will affect documentation, how IT Glue helps to manage stale information and information overload, and what the company has got coming up in the next 18 months.Mentioned in This EpisodeMSP conference: DattoconMicrosoft collaboration tool: SharePointIT documentation: IT GlueIT and security platform: KaseyaPassword management: MyGlueITGlue blog: NetworkGlueCloud wifi: Cisco MerakiNetwork solutions: Datto NetworkingTech company: UbiquitiCybersecurity platform: FortinetIT security: SophosAI-powered networking: ArubaAI assistant: IT Glue Copilot

Tate Talks with....Caitlyn Jopp, Channel Program A long overdue catchup with Caitlyn where we discussed her career and her encyclopaedic knowledge of MSP events. About Caitlyn Caitlyn Jopp has spent nearly a decade focusing her career on forming meaningful relationships with IT Professionals and other vendor partners within the Channel. She has always had a passion for Event Management and Demand Gen Marketing and has worked with companies such as IT Glue, Auvik Networks and most recently, Channel Program. She held a seat on the CompTIA Advancing Women in Technology executive council from 2017-2019, and is a three-time CRN Women of the Channel honoree for 2018, 2019 and 2021. Most recently, she was awarded CompTIA's first Future Leaders award in 2020 and has been nominated multiple times by her industry peers for CompTIA's ChannelChanger and Advancing Women in Technology award. In her spare time, she has spent the last several years advocating for the advancement of women in technology with CompTIA, and still holds a position as a Technology Interest Group Advisor today. You can connect with Caitlyn on LinkedIn ⁠here⁠ Channel Program- https://www.channelprogram.com Credits: Music - https://www.purple-planet.com

Segment One: Amy's First Company & Some Updates   April 1st marks the anniversary of Amy B's first company. We discuss how she got here. --- Segment Two: MSP Question of the Week & News Are you keeping an eye out for vendor errors? And one more thing about AI. Some people want to stop it. Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak:  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-apple-co-founder-103416584.html  --- Segment Three: Five minutes with a Smart Person ft. Rich Freeman and Manuel Palachuk Rich Freeman is founding editor and executive editor of The ChannelPro Network. One of the tech industry's most experienced, respected authorities on the SMB channel, Rich has been writing about managed services since 2007. He has spoken or moderated sessions at live and virtual events for Acronis, Auvik, Axcient, ChannelPro, IT Glue, and SkyKick, among others, and has written for CIO, Computerworld, InfoWorld, Network World, and Redmond Channel Partner magazines. Rich has also produced strategic content for vendors including AMD, Citrix, Dell, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and VMware. Manuel Palachuk has over 30 years of business, management, and training experience in the computer and electronics industries. Manuel has owned several successful businesses, managed several successful IT and MSP service companies, and coached, mentored, or trained many more businesses all over the world. He is an expert of process, systems, and their efficiency who is driven toward continuous improvement in all aspects of business. He is a well-known author in the IT consulting community for Small and Medium-sized Businesses, and an experienced speaker and trainer at industry conferences. --- Don't miss this:  Asigra - Don't Be the Latest MSP Victim.  Learn how new ransomware threats put your business at risk. - April 19th -https://mspwebinar.com/does-your-backup-protect-you-against-the-latest-ransomware-attacks/ Register Now: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ruK7Mp77TEaZyIXID96DLQ NSITSP - Amy B., Karl, & Jeff Ponts - Channel Partners Conference & Expo on May 3rd Channel Partners Conference & Expo Here: https://channelpartnersconference.com/ NSITSP - Insurance - Brian Mahon - April 26th  https://nsitsp.org/event/webinar-cyber-insurance-deep-dive-2023/    Resources & Links:  Amy's Facebook communities Ransomware, Security, Compliance  and Privacy https://www.facebook.com/groups/RansomwarePrevention Intune, MeM, Defender and Lighthouse  https://www.facebook.com/groups/endpointmanager Legislation and Regulation  https://www.facebook.com/groups/MSPRegulationAndLegislation   

Tate Talks with…. Chris Day It was great to finally get Chris Day onto the Podcast. He's a great story to tell about his journey through the MSP industry. Most people will know him as the founder of IT Glue, but there is a lot more to it than that. Enjoy. About Chris Chris Day is a recognized technology leader, strategist, and investor. In 2002, Chris founded Fully Managed, and led its growth to become one of Canada's largest and most successful Managed Services Providers (MSPs) for SMBs. In 2022, Fully Managed was acquired by TELUS, one of Canada's largest telecommunications providers. In 2013, Chris launched his first SaaS venture, IT Glue. IT Glue quickly became an industry-leading documentation platform which was acquired by Kaseya via Insight Venture Partners in 2016. In 2015, Chris launched his investment firm Top Down Ventures, and began investing in early-stage SaaS companies, including Backup Radar, ScalePad, Quoter, ControlMap, iQKitchen and Produce8. You can connect with Chris on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/cbday/ Topdown Website - https://www.topdown.com/ Chris spoke about : Credits: Music - https://www.purple-planet.com

Tate Talks with…. Luis Giraldo Really interesting conversation with Luis - We touched upon his music career, touring with Shakira and how he found himself in the world of IT and MSPs. About Luis Luis Giraldo serves as ScalePad's CXO, helming its Partner Success and IT organizations. In addition to building his own MSP business, Luis previously developed and commercialized SaaS application Monkey Box, and has held senior leadership roles in product, strategy, and marketing at major MSP tool vendors IT Glue and N-able prior to joining ScalePad. A consummate IT professional and product strategist, Luis provides thought leadership to the industry, and presents frequently on MSP best practices and strategies. Contact Luis https://twitter.com/luisgiraldo https://www.linkedin.com/in/luisgiraldo/ Michael Fass I don't have the link to Luis's album yet, in the meantime here is the one from Michael Fass that we mentioned. Credits: Music - https://www.purple-planet.com Tate Talks is kindly sponsored by JumpCloud for MSPs

Wayne Selk, executive director of the CompTIA ISAO is back to review this week's activity in the Cyber Forums. Highlight for this week is the discussion around the IT Glue password reset from this past weekend and Microsoft's Patch Tuesday. Wayne also launched the Tough Talk on Cybersecurity series in the CompTIA Connect Youtube Channel. Check it out when you have a chance! Stay safe, stay healthy and remain secure! Tune in each week to hear the most important cybersecurity news and threat alerts from last week in the ISAO forum and updates you need to know for the week ahead from host Wayne Selk, executive director of the CompTIA ISAO. Listen now, subscribe, and tune in every Friday for the latest news.

In today's MSP Dispatch we cover IT Glue forced password resets cause chaos, US Airpot websites DDoS'd by Russian hackers, ESET Threat report T2 2022 and much more! MSP Dispatch is your source for news, community events, and commentary in the MSP channel.  Hosted by: Tony Francisco and Ray Orsini Give us your feedback by emailing news@mspmedia.tv   Register for Huntress's hack_it 22 at https://www.huntress.com/hack-it-2022 Apply for a chance to win one of five free 0-day sessions courtesy of MMN at https://go.oit.co/hackit2022 Story Links: IT Glue Forced Password Resets Cause Chaoshttps://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/xyq1al/itglue_recommends_changing_passwords_of_all_users/US Airport Websites DDoS'd by Russian Hackershttps://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/us-airports-sites-taken-down-in-ddos-attacks-by-pro-russian-hackers/ESET Threat Report T2 2022https://www.welivesecurity.com/2022/10/05/eset-threat-report-t2-2022https://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/eset_threat_report_t22022.pdf1 Million FB Users Compromisedhttps://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/meta-warns-as-many-as-one-million-facebook-users-that-their-logins-may-have-been-compromisedWebcam Monitoring Violates Privacy per Dutch Courthttps://www.theverge.com/2022/10/10/23396461/remote-worker-webcam-on-all-day-dutch-court-employee-rights-privacyFortinet CVE 2022-40684https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fortinet-warns-admins-to-patch-critical-auth-bypass-bug-immediately/Samsung Phones Go Boomhttps://www.phonearena.com/news/samsung-phones-blowing-up-at-pandemic-rates-urging-return-of-removable-batteries-samsung-responds_id142922 Community Events: 10/10 - 10/12 In Person Event | GlueX: Miami Beach, FL10/12 @ 12:00 pm ET | Build IT Better Discussion Presented by Everything MSP10/13 - 10/14 In Person Event | GrrCON: Grand Rapids, MI10/14 @ 10:00 am ET | MSP Dispatch Week Wrap Up Presented by The MSP Media Network Connect with our hosts:  - Tony Francisco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyjfrancisco/ - Ray Orsini: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rayorsini/ Connect with our guest Jason Slagle, CNRW INC. Jason Slagle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jslagle/ Be sure to follow us on social media:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mspmediatv/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mspmediatv LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mspmediatv/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mspmediatv   Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/mspmedia Discord: https://discord.gg/Hc7b55cJPF 0:00 Intro 3:09 IT Glue Forced Password Resets Cause Chaos 9:43 US Airport Websites DDoS'd by Russian Hackers 14:09 ESET Threat Report T2 2022 19:18 Notable Mentions 22:53 Community Events 24:14 Sign-off 25:30 Outtakes

In today's MSP Dispatch we cover IT Glue forced password resets cause chaos, US Airpot websites DDoS'd by Russian hackers, ESET Threat report T2 2022 and much more! MSP Dispatch is your source for news, community events, and commentary in the MSP channel.  Hosted by: Tony Francisco and Ray Orsini Give us your feedback by emailing news@mspmedia.tv   Register for Huntress's hack_it 22 at https://www.huntress.com/hack-it-2022 Apply for a chance to win one of five free 0-day sessions courtesy of MMN at https://go.oit.co/hackit2022 Story Links: IT Glue Forced Password Resets Cause Chaoshttps://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/xyq1al/itglue_recommends_changing_passwords_of_all_users/US Airport Websites DDoS'd by Russian Hackershttps://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/us-airports-sites-taken-down-in-ddos-attacks-by-pro-russian-hackers/ESET Threat Report T2 2022https://www.welivesecurity.com/2022/10/05/eset-threat-report-t2-2022https://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/eset_threat_report_t22022.pdf1 Million FB Users Compromisedhttps://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/meta-warns-as-many-as-one-million-facebook-users-that-their-logins-may-have-been-compromisedWebcam Monitoring Violates Privacy per Dutch Courthttps://www.theverge.com/2022/10/10/23396461/remote-worker-webcam-on-all-day-dutch-court-employee-rights-privacyFortinet CVE 2022-40684https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fortinet-warns-admins-to-patch-critical-auth-bypass-bug-immediately/Samsung Phones Go Boomhttps://www.phonearena.com/news/samsung-phones-blowing-up-at-pandemic-rates-urging-return-of-removable-batteries-samsung-responds_id142922 Community Events: 10/10 - 10/12 In Person Event | GlueX: Miami Beach, FL10/12 @ 12:00 pm ET | Build IT Better Discussion Presented by Everything MSP10/13 - 10/14 In Person Event | GrrCON: Grand Rapids, MI10/14 @ 10:00 am ET | MSP Dispatch Week Wrap Up Presented by The MSP Media Network Connect with our hosts:  - Tony Francisco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyjfrancisco/ - Ray Orsini: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rayorsini/ Connect with our guest Jason Slagle, CNRW INC. Jason Slagle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jslagle/ Be sure to follow us on social media:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mspmediatv/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mspmediatv LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mspmediatv/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mspmediatv   Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/mspmedia Discord: https://discord.gg/Hc7b55cJPF 0:00 Intro 3:09 IT Glue Forced Password Resets Cause Chaos 9:43 US Airport Websites DDoS'd by Russian Hackers 14:09 ESET Threat Report T2 2022 19:18 Notable Mentions 22:53 Community Events 24:14 Sign-off 25:30 Outtakes

3 Monate, 6 Städte, 6 spannende Fragestellungen aus dem Systemhaus-Alltag - das war die unsere Live Tour.

Episode 132 includes: Valuable advice for keeping on top of cash flow The benefit to your MSP of doing a 'ticket frenzy' Plus on the show this week an industry expert joins Paul to explain why now is the time to get things done and move your MSP forward Featured guest Thank you to Luis Giraldo, Chief Experience Officer at ScalePad and CEO of Ook Enterprises, for joining Paul to talk about why MSP should focus on growth in the second half of 2022. Luis has founded, scaled and sold various successful IT businesses since 2006. He created SaaS documentation platform Monkey Box in 2013, which was acquired by IT Glue in 2017. He has since held key executive roles with vendors such as IT Glue, Kaseya, and N-able, and is an influential leader in the global MSP space. Luis helms the Partner Success and IT organisations, and brings deep MSP experience, thought leadership, and long-term strategic focus to ScalePad. Connect with Luis on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/luisgiraldo Show notes Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng Thank you to lead generation and LinkedIn expert Mark Firth for recommending the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Eric Jorgenson: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Almanack-Naval-Ravikant-Wealth-Happiness-ebook/dp/B08FF8MTM6 https://www.linkedin.com/in/markfirthonline In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by RevOps specialist (and the creator of the Feel-Good MSP) Brian Gillette, to talk about how you can actually feel-good about selling: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-gillette-27884b128 Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

Episode 132 includes: Valuable advice for keeping on top of cash flow The benefit to your MSP of doing a 'ticket frenzy' Plus on the show this week an industry expert joins Paul to explain why now is the time to get things done and move your MSP forward Featured guest Thank you to Luis Giraldo, Chief Experience Officer at ScalePad and CEO of Ook Enterprises, for joining Paul to talk about why MSP should focus on growth in the second half of 2022. Luis has founded, scaled and sold various successful IT businesses since 2006. He created SaaS documentation platform Monkey Box in 2013, which was acquired by IT Glue in 2017. He has since held key executive roles with vendors such as IT Glue, Kaseya, and N-able, and is an influential leader in the global MSP space. Luis helms the Partner Success and IT organisations, and brings deep MSP experience, thought leadership, and long-term strategic focus to ScalePad. Connect with Luis on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/luisgiraldo Show notes Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-green-msp-marketing/ https://www.paulgreensmspmarketing.com/about/ You can join Paul in the MSP Marketing group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mspmarketing/ Right now you can watch the extended interview with this week's featured guests on the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEBEL1Sh4Z-t3PXKbsW7b4BC To dig deeper into this episode, Paul joins Sophie Law on the complimentary YouTube show 'Another Byte', from this coming Thursday: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDRSdM8tZbEAXxJRY5vU4LWldRNLjZZng Thank you to lead generation and LinkedIn expert Mark Firth for recommending the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Eric Jorgenson: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Almanack-Naval-Ravikant-Wealth-Happiness-ebook/dp/B08FF8MTM6 https://www.linkedin.com/in/markfirthonline In next week's episode, Paul will be joined by RevOps specialist (and the creator of the Feel-Good MSP) Brian Gillette, to talk about how you can actually feel-good about selling: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-gillette-27884b128 Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mspmarketing Subscribe to this podcast using your favourite podcast provider:

Topics: -This week we welcome back our friend, Luis Giraldo. Luis is CEO at Ook Enterprises and Chief Experience Officer at ScalePad.  -A long standing MSP, Luis started Monkey Box in 2013, which carried him over to IT Glue.   -Luis speaks about managing his time between his MSP company and time with ScalePad.  -Luis discusses the hero complex that consultants face, where we just want to do right by the customer but have trouble billing appropriately for our time.  -ScalePad addresses this head on and approaches conversations with customers as a service activity as opposed to a sales pitch.  -As Sam recalls learning about scheduled client meetings from Luis' appearance in years past, he talks of more automated and regular reports.  -Jerry wants to hear about Luis' business story through Covid times.  -Somehow he has not opened Apple Mail in months. He has moved to web mail clients and talks about the hardware being of less importance as cloud is the focus.. -Both Sam and Luis have been having trouble hiring new employees. They discuss the employee driven market.  -Joe has had thoughts about stock options or profit sharing. Luis also brings up what small businesses have to think about to retain employees for the long term.  -IT consultancy acquisitions and personal brands are hot topics as of late.  Care to reach out to Luis Giraldo or learn more about him? Look no further. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/luisgiraldo Paul Dippell Interview https://www.n-able.com/studio/paul-dippell-on-operational-maturity ScalePad - Chief Experience Officer (CXO) https://www.scalepad.com Ook Enterprises - CEO https://ook.co Luis' Jazz albums on Apple Music "It's Always You" - 2008 - https://music.apple.com/ca/album/its-always-you/285522012 "Day Dream" - 2002 - https://music.apple.com/ca/album/day-dream/58606887 (New album coming in 2022 with the New York-based Ben Paterson Trio!) In the immediate future, he will be in Phoenix Jan 18-20 for the IoTSSA conference https://www.iotssa.com/cybersecurity-expo-phoenix/

About Episode: Rick Jordan interviews the President and Chief Customer Officer of Kaseya at the ConnectIT event in Las Vegas. Listen to learn some of the current topics on M&A inside MSP Space and what has been trending.Episode References: Kaseya - https://tinyurl.com/5nn58rwtKaseya Connect IT - https://www.connectit.com/Kevin Harrington - https://kevinharrington.tv/SharkTank - https://abc.com/shows/shark-tankMSP - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_servicesM&A - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mergers_and_acquisitionsDallas, TX - https://dallascityhall.com/Pages/default.aspxKaseya Breach - https://tinyurl.com/2p86e53rConnect:Connect with Rick: https://linktr.ee/mrrickjordanConnect with C.J. Wimley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-j-wimley-963a1a3/Universal Rate & Review: https://lovethepodcast.com/allinwithrickjordanSubscribe & Review to ALL IN with Rick Jordan on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RickJordanALLINAbout C.J.: C.J. Wimley leads the customer organization for Kaseya and its family of brands including Unitrends, Spanning Cloud Apps, Rapidfire Tools and IT Glue. As President and chief customer officer, Mr. Wimley oversees the holistic customer experience including the adoption of Kaseya solutions within the existing customer base that help Kaseya customers grow their businesses and build efficiency for their IT departments.Under Mr. Wimley's leadership, the Kaseya customer organization strives to delight each customer as they successfully utilize the Kaseya IT Complete platform. From successful implementations, education and transition processes to dedicated ongoing relationship management, including usage questions, technical configurations, administrative assistance, technical and business consultation and expansion opportunities, Mr. Wimley and his team are relentless in their focus on doing what's right for the customer.A 30-year veteran of the B2B technology industry, Mr. Wimley joined Kaseya from TeamDynamix, where he served as CEO and oversaw the transformation of the company's go-to-market strategy and customer success organization. Prior to TeamDynamix, Mr. Wimley was an executive at SunGard, where he held various positions including head of the order-to-cash business and lead for the innovations team within the corporate solutions vertical. Mr. Wimley joined SunGard as part of the GETPAID acquisition, where he was part of the management team for over 10 years. During this time, he built a global services organization, led research and development efforts and a worldwide sales force, and later spearheaded the sale to SunGard.Mr. Wimley holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Moravian College.

Our first guest of the series is Luis Giraldo, who made a life-changing pivot from Music to Tech! Luis started his career as a professional musician, playing at international shows for Pop Star Shakira; more recently, Luis's stage-time consists of delivering speaking as an executive and industry leader to thousands of IT Providers across the globe. Luis is well-known in the technology and MSP space, having worked for IT Glue and N-Able. He now runs his own successful MSP and has recently been appointed as Chief Experience Officer of ScalePad - an application that automates asset lifecycle management for hardware, software, and warranty services for MSPs.

On the PreSales Podcast, James Kaikis and Supriya Yerramilli connect on the topic "Six-Month Check in: Life as a SE". Supriya, Sales Engineer at IT Glue, talks about her experience breaking into PreSales, getting hired as a Solutions Engineer, and ramping into the role. Supriya has hit the ground running and even won "SE of the Quarter" in her first ramped quarter. 

In this episode, Dan talks with IT Glue CTO Nadir Merchant about the IT Glue 2021 Global MSP Benchmark Report.The two explore the outlook for the MSP industry in 2021, the biggest opportunities for MSPs in the upcoming year - and more.Download the report here:https://www.itglue.com/resource/global-benchmark-2021/And connect with Nadir here:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/merch/Website: https://www.itglue.com/

Get ready for a sucker punch of IT news, views, and insights. Joined by guest host Vince Tinnirello, of Anchor Network Solutions, Matt and Rich chew over IT Glue buying TruMethods, Pax8 buying Sea-Level Operations, Sophos entering the XDR market, and Cytracom adding team texting to its UCaaS solution. Then your hosts catch up with Darren Gottesmann of Ingram Micro for a look at the crazy year behind us and the “golden age” we may be entering now. Just be sure to duck if you see a fist headed your way. Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly! iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/channelpro-weekly-podcast/id1095568582?mt=2 Google Play Podcasts: https://play.google.com/music/m/Igodza5l63vd5w5mdybtpq2cr7e?t=ChannelPro_Weekly_Podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7hWuOWbrIcwtrK6UJLSHvU Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a1d93194-a5f3-46d8-b625-abdc0ba032f1/ChannelPro-Weekly-Podcast More here: https://www.channelpronetwork.com/download/podcast/channelpro-weekly-podcast-episode-185-punched-mouth Topics and Related Links Mentioned: IT Glue Buys MSP Consultancy TruMethods - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/it-glue-buys-msp-consultancy-trumethods Pax8 Buys Sea-Level Operations to Expand Partner Enablement Resources - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/pax8-buys-sea-level-operations-expand-partner-enablement-resources Sophos Introduces XDR Solution - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/sophos-introduces-xdr-solution Cytracom Adds Business Team Texting to UCaaS Solution - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/cytracom-adds-business-team-texting-ucaas-solution Ticket Management Pro Tips - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/article/ticket-management-pro-tips Biggest Zero-Trust Hurdle: Getting People To Listen - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/article/biggest-zero-trust-hurdle-getting-people-listen Rich's ICYMI plug and quickie preview of the week ahead - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/tags/icymi

Erick and Rich discuss IT Glue going big on virtual CIO services by acquiring TruMethods, share a book tip every leader should read, and marvel at the guy who wants to exchange fees he paid in cryptocurrency last year for far less valuable dollars.

The guys are breaking news on this week's podcast. Nadir Merchant, general manager of IT Glue, joins the fray to discuss the Kaseya company's just-announced acquisition of TruMethods. Merchant will explain how the tie-up will make MSPs more effective and efficient. Also on the show is Buffy Naylor, managing editor of Channel Futures. She's also the manager of Channel Futures' new diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) community. Buffy will talk about our DE&I efforts, which include an upcoming channel workshop on June 8 and a DE&I 101 list of influencers in the channel. All that, plus it's Craig who heads to the game lab this time. He'll challenge James to identify some quirky Guinness Book record setters.

Dan Tomaszewski interviews Mike Puglia, Chief Customer Marketing Officer at Kaseya & Nadir Merchant, General Manager & CTO of IT Glue. The group explores what worked in 2020, what didn't, and predictions for 2021.

Need one more reason to be excited about 5G? It’s 100% coronavirus-free! Or so say Matt and Rich as they discuss the HTTPS-based privacy safeguard Webroot has added to its DNS filtering product, IT Glue’s latest wave of product enhancements, the completion of Tech Data’s acquisition by private equity firm Apollo Global Management, and Tech Data’s read on hot coronavirus-era solution opportunities.  That’s all followed by a conversation with SolarWinds MSP President John Pagliuca about why MSPs have become truly essential workers and where the managed services market is headed next. It’s interesting, informative, and disinfected by default! Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly! ​ ​ ​ ​ Look for us in your favorite podcast app. If you don't see us (yet) then you can subscribe via RSS in almost any podcast app using this link: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/rss/cpw Show Information: Episode #: 152Title: Inherently DisinfectedDuration: 1:37:51File size: 44.8 MBRegulars: Rich Freeman - Executive Editor, Matt Whitlock - Technology Editor Video of ChannelPro Weekly #152 - Inherently Disinfected Topics and Related Links Mentioned: Webroot Adds DNS-over-HTTPS to DNS Filtering Solution  IT Glue Rolls Out Security and Network Visibility Updates  Apollo Global Management Finalizes Acquisition of Tech Data  Tech Data Sees Continued Demand for Next-Generation Solutions  SolarWinds MSP to Partners: “You Have Become Essential”  SolarWinds MSP Introduces New Customer Success Resources  Matt's Museum Pick: ThinkPad Tablet 2 Matt's Tech Pick: ThinkPad Tablet 10 Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 Review Lenovo's 64-bit ThinkPad Tablet 10 Unveiled at Accelerate; First Impressions Rich's ICYMI plug and quickie preview of the week ahead  

Need one more reason to be excited about 5G? It’s 100% coronavirus-free! Or so say Matt and Rich as they discuss the HTTPS-based privacy safeguard Webroot has added to its DNS filtering product, IT Glue’s latest wave of product enhancements, the completion of Tech Data’s acquisition by private equity firm Apollo Global Management, and Tech Data’s read on hot coronavirus-era solution opportunities. That’s all followed by a conversation with SolarWinds MSP President John Pagliuca about why MSPs have become truly essential workers and where the managed services market is headed next. It’s interesting, informative, and disinfected by default! Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly! iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/channelpro-weekly-podcast/id1095568582?mt=2 Google Play Podcasts: https://play.google.com/music/m/Igodza5l63vd5w5mdybtpq2cr7e?t=ChannelPro_Weekly_Podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7hWuOWbrIcwtrK6UJLSHvU More here: https://www.channelpronetwork.com/download/podcast/channelpro-weekly-podcast-episode-152-inherently-disinfected Topics and Related Links Mentioned: Webroot Adds DNS-over-HTTPS to DNS Filtering Solution - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/webroot-adds-dns-over-https-dns-filtering-solution IT Glue Rolls Out Security and Network Visibility Updates - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/it-glue-rolls-out-security-and-network-visibility-updates Apollo Global Management Finalizes Acquisition of Tech Data - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/apollo-global-management-finalizes-acquisition-tech-data Tech Data Sees Continued Demand for Next-Generation Solutions - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/tech-data-sees-continued-demand-next-generation-solutions SolarWinds MSP to Partners: “You Have Become Essential” - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/solarwinds-msp-partners-you-have-become-essential SolarWinds MSP Introduces New Customer Success Resources - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/solarwinds-msp-introduces-new-customer-success-resources Matt's Museum Pick: ThinkPad Tablet 2 Matt's Tech Pick: ThinkPad Tablet 10 Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 Review - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/review/lenovo-thinkpad-tablet-2-review Lenovo's 64-bit ThinkPad Tablet 10 Unveiled at Accelerate; First Impressions - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/lenovos-64-bit-thinkpad-tablet-10-unveiled-accelerate-first-impressions Rich's ICYMI plug and quickie preview of the week ahead

Our sponsor today is PC Matic - Thank you! More info at https://pcmatic.com/msp -- -- -- Topic 1: Coming boom for freelancers? Part of the rhythm of the economy is that economic downturns result in new opportunities. This time, the question is, will this help independent IT consultants? Note: When decision makers are looking for special skills, they would rather hire an outside source rather than train someone in-house - even if cost is not a factor. Related Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2020/06/12/the-coming-boom-for-freelancers/   Topic 2: IT Glue released their 2020 Global MSP Benchmarks. A few notes. Around half (51%) of MSPs saw monthly revenue decreases as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, more than a quarter (29%) of MSPs saw their accounts receivable increase, showing more clients could not meet contract deadlines to pay for services. This survey did show a jump of prioritization of cybersecurity, from 27% of respondents in Feb to more than 50% in May. Old priorities were wiped away, replaced not only by cyber security but with customer churn, price pressure, and a second lockdown. Link: https://www.itglue.com/news/itg-global-msp-benchmark-2020/ Topic 3: Life After the Pandemic . . . Increases in "Agile." We look at the business of the IT channel in the post-quarantine world … specifically how channel partners need to adapt the way they plan and operate, and how they engage their vendor partners. Things look like they're going to be a lot more Agile. If you're not in project management, you're still going to have to learn the terminology of PM very soon. Related Link: https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/partners/old-business-planning-out-agile-approach-in/#comment-13 :-)    

Andreas, Kai und Patrick sprechen mit Jürgen Ebner, Autor von "Einstieg in Kali Linux" über das Thema IT-Security in Unternehmen. Ausserdem steht das Thema IT-Dokumentation auf dem Programm, mit einer aktuellen Beurteilung von Tools wie ITGlue, Docusnap und Passportal. SHOW NOTES Follow-Up: https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Downloads/BMF_Schreiben/Steuerarten/Umsatzsteuer/2020-06-12-befristete-Senkung-umsatzsteuer-juli-2020.html (Be­fris­te­te Ab­sen­kung des all­ge­mei­nen und er­mä­ßig­ten Um­satz­steu­er­sat­zes zum 1. Ju­li 2020) https://www.wewamo.de (Denis Krnjaic, Designer des neuen LiveBarTalk Auftritts) Einstieg in Kali Linux: https://www.amazon.de/dp/3747500331 (Einstieg in Kali Linux: Penetration Testing und Ethical Hacking) (amazon.de) https://www.kali.org (Kali Linux) https://icte.biz/ (ICTE GmbH) Dokumentationstools: https://www.itglue.com (IT Glue) https://www.itglue.com/networkglue/ (Network Glue) https://www.docusnap.com (Docusnap) https://www.passportalmsp.com (Passportal) https://www.rapidfiretools.com (RapidFireTools) https://www.auvik.com (Auvik) https://www.liongard.com/roar/ (Liongard Roar) Getränkecheck: Kai: https://www.braumanufaktur.com/biere/lucky-experience/ (Lucky Experience) (braumanufaktur.com) Patrick: https://www.brewdog.com/uk/shop/brewdog-pale-ale (BrewDog Pale Ale) (brewdog.com) Andreas: https://www.gemmrich.de/produkt-kategorie/wein/unkaputtbar-wein/ (Unkaputtbar Wein) (gemmrich.de) In eigener Sache: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfFlnSJxgDoZ-pDPoSie2xg (LiveBarTalk bei YouTube) https://www.facebook.com/livebartalk (LiveBarTalk bei Facebook) https://bartalk.live/listen (LiveBarTalk Podcast) (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast) https://www.instagram.com/livebartalk/ (LiveBarTalk bei Instagram)

Today Back to office thoughts from two new surveys to review http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/06/15/2047914/0/en/IT-Glue-2020-Global-MSP-Benchmark-Survey-Reveals-Impact-of-Pandemic-on-State-of-the-Industry.html Zoom’s misstep in China https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zoom-video-commn-privacy/u-s-lawmakers-ask-zoom-to-clarify-china-ties-after-it-suspends-accounts-idUSKBN23I3GP AND Three items of blocking and tackling https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-windows-10-updates-printer-bugs-000112943.html https://www.thurrott.com/apple/236403/apple-launches-zero-interest-financing-for-most-hardware

Andreas, Kai und Patrick sprechen über die angekündigte befristete Mehrwertsteuersenkung und die damit einhergehenden Hürden in der Umsetzung sowie Checklisten und SOPs in Verbindung mit den diversen Prozessen in ihren IT-Unternehmen. SHOW NOTES Follow-Up: https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Pressemitteilungen/Finanzpolitik/2020/04/2020-04-03-GPM-Bonuszahlungen.html (Anerkennung für Beschäftigte in der Corona-Krise) (bundesfinanzministerium.de) https://support.office.com/en-us/article/outlook-roaming-signatures-420c2995-1f57-4291-9004-8f6f97c54d15 (Outlook Roaming Signatures) (office.com) Mehrwertsteuersenkung: https://www.haufe.de/steuern/gesetzgebung-politik/absenkung-des-mehrwertsteuersatzes-2020-probleme-in-der-praxis_168_517790.html (Herausforderungen durch die Absenkung des Umsatzsteuersatzes 2020) (haufe.de) https://www.sage100.rocks/jetzt-muss-es-schnell-gehen-die-mehrwertsteuer-in-deutschland-ab-1-juli-2020/ (Jetzt muss es schnell gehen – die Mehrwertsteuer in Deutschland ab 1. Juli 2020) (sage100.rocks) https://www.dhw-stb.de/2020/06/senkung-des-umsatzsteuersatzes-ab-01-07-2020/ (Senkung des Umsatzsteuersatzes ab 01.07.2020) (dhw-stb.de) https://blog.fastbill.com/mehrwertsteuersenkung-2020/ (Mehrwertsteuersenkung 2020: Alle Infos für Selbstständige) (fastbill.com) Checklisten und SOPs: https://ww18.autotask.net/help/Content/ServiceDesk/CreateTickets/TicketChecklist.htm?Highlight=checkliste (Checklisten in Autotask PSA) https://support.itglue.com/hc/en-us/sections/360007265971-Checklists (Checklisten in IT Glue) https://process.st (Process Street) https://www.process.st/checklist/?s=msp (Process Street MSP Templates) https://zapier.com/apps/process-street/integrations (Zapier Process Street Integrations) In eigener Sache: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfFlnSJxgDoZ-pDPoSie2xg (LiveBarTalk bei YouTube) https://www.facebook.com/livebartalk (LiveBarTalk bei Facebook) https://bartalk.live/listen (LiveBarTalk Podcast) (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast) https://www.instagram.com/livebartalk/ (LiveBarTalk bei Instagram)

Enhancing Your Business With Madeline Clift Josh: G'day everyone out there in podcast land. We've got a guest here from Level Up Chartered Accountants called Madeline Clift, and she's going to be going through some awesome ways that you can enhance your business methods and processes with the help of technology. So Madeline, a quick question for you. What would you say is the number one thing that businesses can implement to make sure that they are able to enhance their processes? Learn more about enhancing your business at dorksdelivered.com.au Madeline: It's real listening. It's a weird one, but that's probably the best one that you can do, make sure you're listening to your staff and your clients. The first thing we've done was making sure that the business runs smoothly for ourselves internally as a company ourselves, even though we're accountants helping other businesses, is we ask our staff what they want. We make sure that they can do their job to the best of their abilities, and it's really paid off for us, especially during this scary pandemic time. Josh: Yeah, it is definitely a time of unknowing, isn't it? And I think you're on the right page there, where you say invest in your staff is very, very important. We were given two ears and one mouth, so use them in that ratio. Listen twice as hard as you're talking. Madeline: Exactly. Josh: That's very, very good advice. So start by listening and making sure that you've got the processes in place to get rid of the deadwood, I guess, would you say? How would you go about making sure that you do have a team of unicorns? Madeline: Team of unicorns, that's a funny way of putting it. We call them wizards actually, funnily enough. Josh: Oh, wizards. Madeline: Yeah. We'll have to tell them that they were referred to as unicorns. Josh: Yeah. Or ninjas. Sometimes I call them ninjas as well, but yeah. Madeline: That'll work too. Yeah, so our internal wizards, the first thing that they said to us was that they actually love how simple it is to work away from home if they need to. A lot of the guys have kids. This was long before pandemic time, but the guys were like, "Oh, I'm really glad you guys just gave me a laptop that sits on a desk with two monitors, because I can go home and work if I need to, if my kid gets sick for the afternoon," things like that. And because we invested in them right from the get-go, that wasn't an initial cost for us when everyone had to start working from home. Everyone was already ready to go. They took their laptops home and they even stole, basically, half of the monitors that we had floating around the office, so that they were even more set up at home. Everyone's working with two screens. Everyone's super comfortable. And that was just from that simple thing of listening. It's really already paid off for us when it comes to the stressful times. We know our IT provider, again, was really stressed out just trying to provide laptops for the week to get other businesses sorted. Josh: Being ahead of the curve there's really important, and it'll pay off in significant quantities, I think you'll find over next few months and years. Because it means that your commercial overheads from a commercial real estate perspective can be kept a bit lower. Which means that your footprint, that you're putting your carbon footprint, if people are working from home, is lower. Your time wasted between traveling is lower, which means people have time to spend with their family. They're spending less time and money on maintenance for cars. It's by far the most sensible way to go. Josh: And we started the business 13 years ago in mum and dad's garage, where all tech startups start. Went from there to a bricks-and-mortar building a couple of years later and had the staff coming in there. And then, same as you guys, have gone and went, "This is stupid. What am I doing? We're going to other people. We're very, very rarely having anyone come to us." And I thought, if they want to come to us then they're probably close enough to have them come to the house and have a beer on a Friday afternoon anyway. So that's the approach that we went, and I think a lot of businesses are going to be adapting that. Josh: And one of the things that I found, actually, after we started going through the remote workforce, this is probably now 2013 or so, we found it took a little bit of refining and adjustments for people that were used to coming into work. And we put in systems and practices to make sure that we had different KPIs, that we're able to manage around that. What would you say would be a method that you guys are using to be able to monitor and manage your staff to make sure that they're not having a few sneaky looks at Facebook? Or maybe they are. Maybe you've got that written in their agreement. Madeline: Technology-wise, we've actually already got a monitoring system in place. The guys know that they've got ActivTrak on their laptops. So if they're ever doing something they shouldn't be, like installing Bitcoin to try and make money, it flags our IT subsidiaries. There's one method, I suppose. We make that clear so the guys know that they can't be stuffing around. Madeline: Second one, which we're quite lucky for because in our industry, we have to report billable hours. So everyone has to put in a time sheet for what they're working on. It can be done simplistically, like you can say, "All right, for the first three hours this morning, I'm going to be working on this client's data. So I won't be free, don't talk to me." But then we've actually got the time sheet logged in there and saying, "Okay, well, they've actually done all of the work papers. They've done the end of financial year job for the entire client and all the individuals." Things like that. Madeline: Even for our admin staff at the moment, them working remotely, they're doing time sheets per hour. They're much smaller slots, but they're still actually putting in, "Okay, well, I actually spoke to this client for half an hour on the phone." It may or may not be billable, but they've at least put that time sheet in. So at the end of the week or the fortnight in the pay period, the director and myself are able to go through those time sheets and double check, "Okay, well, actually, you've worked a 12-hour day." Funnily enough, I find that more of the staff are spending more time, realising, because they're not doing anything at home, they're actually doing more work, which is really funny. But we're really lucky. Madeline: Yeah. Time sheets and actually the software tracking systems are probably the best bet, I would say, for most business. Josh: Cool. And so I guess we have two different models of clients. The majority of them, we charge a set rate per month where we just give them unlimited support, which works great for the clients. And then we guarantee their uptime to make sure that they're not. If they have downtime, in fact, we pay them. So we don't want them to have downtime. So we make sure they don't have downtime. So we're fighting for them to be up as much as possible and to be as efficient and utilised as possible. So that's the model of payment that we have for our customers. Josh: But for our staff, we have a similar model where we have hours that are measured, and then KPIs, which are normally on the efficiency of the work that was accomplished. Josh: So say if you have a client that's bringing in $2,000 a month, for instance, and that client calls up 10 times and the hourly rate, or the amount of time that client is spent on, if that was say a thousand dollars worth of time, the staff pool bonus is 10% of the difference. So they'd only get 10% of the money remaining. So it's in everyone's interest to make sure then it works, don't go down, and they stay up as much as possible. Josh: Then that's a sort of the big metric that we found because we put in place a program assistant called ObserveIT, which lets you see all the screenshots and keyboard logs and activity and things like that. And then we built a couple of other bits and pieces ourselves so that we can see if the sort of traffic and how utilised each PC is and if one's running slightly slower and all that sort of stuff. But when it came back to it, we just needed to make sure that the staff and the business were steering in the same direction, was the big thing of making sure that the reasons why businesses are working with you are bred into the culture of your business. So then it sounds like you guys are doing pretty well the same thing, which means you're a step ahead of a lot of accounting firms out there. Hats off to you. Madeline: Yeah. I don't like to toot my own horn, but we think we've really taken it to a different approach, I suppose, than a lot of the boutique accounting firms in the past. And then even at the moment, we've found other firms that are roughly the same size as us, the way they approach, I suppose, how they treat their staff, the hierarchy in the office, they're all 50-year-old practices. They've upgraded maybe the technology. They know how to use Xero now, which is great, but all of the rest of their systems and their processes are just stuck in the last century. Josh: We were using QuickBooks. It was about 1,000, $1,500 or whatever it was, back in 2007 to 2013. I hated it. I hated it so much, but it was the only system that our ERP solution integrated into, and smile from ear to ear the moment we moved across to Xero. You guys would use XPM as well, I'd imagine because you're a practice manager? Madeline: Yes, we do. We use both. Then again, a third system, monday.com as well, just for tasks and scheduling. Yeah, that was even simpler to use for our staff. Pretty much all of our systems are cloud-based. We don't want anything not to be on the cloud because we actually feel that that's more secure for us. So there's nothing wasted and paying for installing systems. I think the only thing that we pay for a subscription for is a PDF-editing software system. Josh: That's not too bad. As long as you've got the security behind it. I'm a big advocate for the cloud as long as it's been set up correctly. And that's another thing, a lot of people sort of just hear lots about it on the internet and read about it. And then Yellow Pages, even we're doing big campaigns about it, saying, "Everyone needs to move to the cloud," and I'm like, "Yeah, okay. That's cool." As long as you know your data is secure, encrypted, and isn't going to be attacked. Josh: My goodness, the number of solicitors and accounting firms that we've seen that have vulnerable data that's out there that we've been able to find, show them and they've just gone, "Oh my goodness, how'd you get access to that?" Or, "You shouldn't have access to that." And I'm like, "I know I shouldn't." I said, "And there's other people in there that wouldn't be telling you that they've got access to it." I said, "We're one of the good guys to help you guys out." Madeline: Our biggest expenses as a business actually are the people we employ to do our IT and I'm happy to speak their name, which Connected Platforms, and our actual staff. Those are the biggest costs for us as a business. Staff that we employ and how much we pay our IT company to manage everything that we're doing on the cloud. So those are our two biggest investments that I think are the biggest payoff, really. Josh: Absolutely. That's a differentiator with a lot of businesses. Some businesses look at staff and some of the other required services, such as IT, as a liability and an expense, where really it should be an investment. It should be something that you're sitting there and your Connected Platforms hopefully sits there with you on there, as like a virtual CIO or CTO to talk about how they can leverage new technologies, and what's your exit strategies for the business, and how are you going to be going along with that to make sure that your practices have built up around that? I would completely disagree with what I just said if it was 50 years ago, but nowadays, you can't run a business. It's kind of like saying, you want to run a business without electricity. It's like, yes, it can be done. Is it the most efficient, easiest way to do it? Absolutely not. IT is definitely where people need to be investing their time and money. IT automation and marketing would be our biggest expenses internally. Madeline: I think it will change, depending on industries. For example, we have a lot of clients, where their IT isn't obviously their biggest investment. It might be the equipment that they're using. Because they might be that kind of industry, where they're actually like earth moving or something like that, that's quite a big investment, earthmoving machinery and things like that. Madeline: Then secondary to that. It's always the people that they employ. They need to trust their staff. They're moving those million dollar machines around and things like that. So I think those two are pretty integral, regardless of the industry that you're in. Josh: I agree, obviously you have set up costs and bits and pieces. If you've got, as you said, earthmoving equipment or any sort of industry-specific equipment, it's going to have a big cost. But the good news is, I guess it's also equity sitting there in the business that if shit hit the fan and they had to start getting rid of staff, the equipment they could sell and it's going to give them something back, hopefully, unless it's completely depreciated. What have you guys found that are things that many businesses or accounting businesses can put in place that removes staff overheads and things like that? Madeline: Training in those systems, I think. The biggest problem with accounting, I suppose, is you've got a lot of young people coming out of university who, a hundred times work and study, then you're really trusted and really, really knowledgeable accountants in their forties and fifties. There's a definite gap there where you've got people who are incredibly tech savvy and just want something done and know that they can get it done quickly. And then you've got people who are used to looking at the Tax Agent Master Guide, which is a book bigger than any Harry Potter novel. They're going, "Check this index against this," and they're going, "Well, I could just Google it, mate," where like, what's the term or phrase kind of thing, like, just so we can make sure that we've got the ruling right if we want to make changes. So training and investing in those staff is the biggest thing that's kind of, I suppose, saved us, especially during this pandemic. Madeline: I know that other businesses that we engage personally have just absolutely had to shut down, apart from their few youngest employees who have to run the show at this point because they can work remotely. They figured out how to use the laptop and remote login to the systems. Things like that. Their older employees are just like, "Well, what do I do? I sit at home and do nothing?" It's like, "Well, I can teach you how to, I don't know, use Slack or something like that." Like a direct messaging system, that like, if you're struggling with Facebook Messenger, going to be a problem. Josh: A degree in Google is what I refer to that as. People just need to know how to search for what they need to find. You don't need to know absolutely everything. You just need to know how to use the tools that you've got to be able to find the answers, and the tools can be people or it can be your search engines or documentation systems and the like. Josh: And documenting your processes is great because it allows for you to level up. It lets you level up. You can easily chuck in more accountants and they can read through the on boarding documents. If you have a new business that you're working with, there can be on boarding documents for them as well. And off boarding documents, if you are downsizing or a business is no longer working with you, it makes everything more straightforward. Josh: And the way I would relate it is the biggest business that's operating or one of the biggest businesses is McDonald's and it's run by 14 and nine month year olds. Madeline: Yes, step one, step two, step three, press the button. It's all automated. Yeah. Josh: Exactly. And so getting those processes in place is super important. What do you normally use to create the documentation? Is that something that you're doing with the likes of video recordings or text-based things or both, or situationally, are you putting people into a situation where you can have them learn to become the teacher? Madeline: Yeah, actually funny, you just said that, just last learn to become the teacher. That's probably pretty much the best thing, we want to level up the staff that've spent years in the office because once they can write their own processes and teach someone how to do it, it's... I have two 18 year olds in the administration team, reception and administrative assistant. They're sitting there telling the 40 year olds, "Okay, this is how we're going to use this process." Madeline: It gets rid of that hierarchy as well, because you've got an 18 year old teaching a 35 year old how to use a program, but we're not using kind of like recording processes because everyone's an individual in how they teach. Everyone's, I suppose, an individual on how they learn. So there's no one set way of learning. I think we've discovered that a lot, just through focusing on the individuals in the office. It's one-on-one, 100%, but we document what needs to be done. Madeline: We use another program called MyGlue. So that one's again, referred to from our IT company. They use it for a lot of their internal processes and you can step out what you have to do for on boarding a client, like the step-by-step processes with that. We document the basics, but it's really a one-on-one experience. Yeah. That's why the business has basically quadrupled in size over the last year and a half. Just on that one-on-one mentoring, it's just that keeping to the basics in a PDF document. Josh: Talking about MyGlue, that's a, I think it's a part of another product called IT Glue. Madeline: Yes, it is, sorry, yeah. Josh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So when you said MyGlue, I'm thinking, I'm pretty sure it's IT Glue. It's a fantastic tool. We have the same family of tools that we use internally, and having that documentation there, as you said, not everyone learns the same way. We've spent a lot of money to have multiple ways for people to learn, videos of onboarding of new staff, as well as then screen captures, as well as then videos that they can watch from a screen recording, as well as in the text document. So you can then have your own internal research to be able to look it up and find out something. Josh: The biggest thing is to start with something. Having something's better than nothing. Having a process there and being able to write yourself out of the business is really important. You don't want to be sitting there working day in, day out, as the business owner. You want to make sure that as long as you're not in a position where you can become redundant, you want to be able to make yourself redundant. Madeline: Exactly. It's funny. Bring it back to you were mentioning the DISC profile before. And a lot of accountants being just one type. We used to do the DISC profile on all new employees coming in, but I no longer bother with that because I want that personality that's able to speak to clients and isn't just really process-based. It's just like, "Well, no, I just follow the process." We go, "Well, that's not being an innovative creative accountant." We don't want you to absolutely defraud the tax office or anything like that. But there is ways that you can be innovative and help the client in that business advisory way as well. So if it leads back into that we don't want to be that typical accounting firm where you're just following a step-by-step process and individualising it to every person and employee, making sure that they fit in. Josh: I think it's important to be personable and not be like what the industry says. Like I'm a, as I said, I started in mom and dad's garage, but that doesn't mean that I'm not the guy that jumps up on stage and talks to everyone about how they can better their business. It's about making sure that you are the thorn in the bush, if everyone else is the bush. So be the one that stands out and be refreshing. Madeline: Yeah. We're definitely not your typical accounting firm. Really accounting is a secondary, I suppose, skill that we want you to have if we're hiring you as an accountant, we actually want you to be able to talk to us and have a meeting with us and want to work for the company because I'll tell you what, the amount of offices or typical, even real estate agents I've worked in too where you walk in and it's sort of funeral tone to it. Because there's no sound. It's just a quiet receptionist sitting there that goes, "Hello. How are you?" And speaks very professionally. Madeline: In our office, when it's open, when there's not a pandemic on, we've actually got a dog. Usually in the office, there's always music playing. People are welcome to come and go as they please, if they've got appointments with work and stuff like that, the office is just where they can come to work. But there's definitely an open-door policy as well. No one has their own office except the director. If they need a private space, we've got those areas. But we're basically a big team where you can yell out across the room and go with someone, so and so, about this, "Who's handling that?" So it's definitely not your typical accounting firm. We don't want that. That's what we're trying to avoid. Josh: Well, it sounds like you're the Google of accounting firms. If anyone out there in podcast land's looking to level up the way that their business is running and make sure that they've got someone there that they can give you advice as much as they can give you without being a financial advisor, I'd definitely suggest checking out Level Up Chartered Accountants. Is there anything else that you'd like to cover off on, Madeline, before we finish the podcast? Madeline: Don't be surprised at how young some of us are. If you are interested in coming into the office and seeing how things go. We do have people that are experts, been in the industry for 20, 30 years. But Drew himself is in his early thirties, me myself only just turned 30, I'm pretty much the captain of the ship. So yeah, we've got a lot of young wizards in there, and that can be scary, I think, for some businesses where they they've known their industry, it's been the same way for 20, 30 years. And we don't disregard that. We know that it's your business kind of thing. We're just going to make sure one part of it runs smoother because we've taped up, we've leveled up so we can hopefully level up at least one part of your business and maybe it'll flow through to the rest. Josh: You heard it from the head wizard's mouth. And I think that's absolutely appropriate because when I started in business, we were dealing with much bigger businesses. When I was in mom and dad's garage 13 years ago, as a... Far out, was I, 19 years old at that stage. I was talking to these businesses and they're looking at me going, "What could you possibly know?" But people just, at the moment, anyone gave you the... Open up their ears, and that's circling back to what you were saying earlier. People need to listen more than they're talking. The moment they were able to listen and they went, "Oh geez, this person knows what they're talking about." Josh: I know myself, I was a few years ago, sent over to Vegas to do a presentation in front of three and a half thousand IT businesses about how we automate some of our internal processes. And I was freaking out because I'm thinking, Oh no, I'm like nearly 30-ish. And these people, when I'm looking in the audience are like you said, 50s, 60s, 70s. And I'm going, they are going to think just I'm a wally. They're probably still talking about punch cards. Anyway, I get up there and I start talking. And first minute, you see people's eyes sort of like not really paying attention. Second minute, everyone's there taking notes and writing down things and you could see their attention. I went, "Awesome." Josh: It just takes a couple of minutes for people to see the change and the benefit that you can have. And it's refreshing, I think, not doing things the same way that people have been doing it for decades. It's good to have some fresh blood in a business, to be able to push that along and have that experience, have some of the nomads in there, the grey-haired nomads, but also have some of the younger whippersnappers that are going to be able to break out, change, a difference. Madeline: Definitely. Yeah. We've found a happy medium, I think. Josh: Sounds good. Sounds exciting. And yeah, if anyone out there does want to have a discussion with Madeline, definitely jump across to levelupca.com.au That's levelupca.com.au, and you can check out what they've got on their page there, and probably even be able to book in a session to jump in there and meet the team and pat their dog. Madeline: Yeah. He's Chewy, he's lovely. Josh: Chewy. Awesome. Well, I've loved having you on the show and look forward to seeing how everything goes after this COVID situation. If anyone has any questions or has any reviews or feedback, make sure to jump across to iTunes and leave us a review, give us some love. Everyone out there, stay healthy and stay good.  

Hips don’t lie, folks. Neither do Matt, Rich, or their guest host this week, MSP extraordinaire and former IT Glue exec Luis Giraldo of Ook Enterprises. Listen in as they discuss Tin Can, Luis’s interesting new cooperative services venture, plus Dell’s latest commercial laptops, stats about ransomware, and ChannelPro’s 2020 Vendors on the Vanguard list. Then keep listening for a timely and insightful conversation with Cisco advisory CISO Wolfgang Goerlich about SMB security and its surprising parallels with enterprise security. We’d be lying if we said Shakira shows up too, but then again she has that effect on people. Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly! Topics and Related Links Mentioned: Dell Unveils Smaller, More Powerful Commercial PCs - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/news/dell-unveils-smaller-more-powerful-commercial-pcs 3 Facts About Ransomware in Honor of Anti-Ransomware Day - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/slideshow/3-facts-about-ransomware-honor-anti-ransomware-day Meet the 2020 ChannelPro Vendors on the Vanguard - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/article/meet-2020-channelpro-vendors-vanguard Cisco security study: Big Security in a Small Business World - https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/security/2020-smb-cybersecurity-series-may-2020.pdf?CCID=cc000160&DTID=odicdc000509&OID=rptsc021237 Matt's Museum Pick: The Smart Split-Key Keyboard Matt's Tech Pick: Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/microsoft-ergonomic-keyboard/93841NGDWR1H Rich's ICYMI plug and quickie preview of the week ahead - https://www.channelpronetwork.com/tags/icymi

Hips don’t lie, folks. Neither do Matt, Rich, or their guest host this week, MSP extraordinaire and former IT Glue exec Luis Giraldo of Ook Enterprises. Listen in as they discuss Tin Can, Luis’s interesting new cooperative services venture, plus Dell’s latest commercial laptops, stats about ransomware, and ChannelPro’s 2020 Vendors on the Vanguard list. Then keep listening for a timely and insightful conversation with Cisco advisory CISO Wolfgang Goerlich about SMB security and its surprising parallels with enterprise security. We’d be lying if we said Shakira shows up too, but then again she has that effect on people. Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly! Look for us in your favorite podcast app. If you don't see us (yet) then you can subscribe via RSS in almost any podcast app using this link: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/rss/cpw Show Information: Episode #: 146Title: Hips That Make Men LieDuration: 1:58:08File size: 54 MBRegulars: Rich Freeman - Executive Editor, Matt Whitlock - Technology EditorGuest Host: Luis Giraldo, Senior Consultant and CEO, Ook Enterprises Video of ChannelPro Weekly #146 - Hips That Make Men Lie Topics and Related Links Mentioned: Dell Unveils Smaller, More Powerful Commercial PCs 3 Facts About Ransomware in Honor of Anti-Ransomware Day  Meet the 2020 ChannelPro Vendors on the Vanguard  Cisco security study: Big Security in a Small Business World Matt's Museum Pick: The Smart Split-Key Keyboard  Matt's Tech Pick: Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard Rich's ICYMI plug and quickie preview of the week ahead

In this week's episode MSPs thrive or dive on the successful completion of small technical tasks. Paul suggests an easy solution for those times when a simple small mistake can be devastating to the business Check out the first of a two-part interview with an ex-Microsoft employee who can help you sell Azure with fantastic margins Also in this week's episode; how to spend more time out of the business with the Three Plus One plan. And the best way to run an email marketing campaign Show notes Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert Find copies of the book The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande on Amazon Paul mentioned services and tools including IT Glue, ConnectWise & AutoTask Find out more about the video production services for MSPs websites at mspvideos.co.uk Paul's guest talking about the best way to re-sell Microsoft Azure was Joseph Landes from Nerdio (who will also be back next week talking about Windows Virtual Desktop) You can order your free copy of Paul's book Updating Servers Doesn’t Grow Your Business right here The concept of the 'Learning Zone' was in reference to previous guest Fiona Challis who runs the The Next Gen Sales Acceleration Academy The question about the best type of email campaign to run came from Andrew Eardley from Prompt PC Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Paul Green: Hello. Here's what's coming up on today's show. Joseph Landes: Taking advantage of these five suggestions that we've made. You can easily make up to 80% margins on Azure. You can save up to 80% off the list price of Azure. Paul Green: That's Joseph Landes from from Nerdio. He's going to be telling you later on how you can sell more Azure and make a lot more profit on it. We're also going to be talking about checklisting everything in the business using paper, not screens, and I'm going to be answering a

In this week's episode Not many people have heard about the Impact Box, but Paul talks about some MSPs are using them to tip prospects over the edge and turn them into happy clients Also in this week's episode; you may not realise it but you have a Hassle Bucket in your brain. And Paul explains how to stop it overflowing Plus special guests join Paul to discuss selling more hardware to customers and finding time to get the important stuff done Show notes Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert There is more on the concept of a 'Hassle Bucket' and how to manage yours here Here's a link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing Paul's guest talking about how to sell more hardware to your clients was James Cust from Warranty Master They discussed services and tools including IT Glue, Kaseya, ConnectWise & AutoTask The question about how to prioritise important work came from Andy Price from Initial IT Our guest on the next show on 11th February to talk about the best way to re-sell Microsoft Azure will be Joseph Landes from Nerdio Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Paul Green: Got another cracker for you this week. Here's what's coming up. James Cust: And we'll be able to see real live data about their estate, and see an overview of devices which are in warranty, get the idea of the proportion of their estate, which ultimately is unprotected. Paul Green: We're also going to be talking about something called an impact box. It's a bunch of stuff that you send to them in the post to push them over the edge. And I'll be answering your question about how to prioritise what's most important every day. Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Paul Green: I want to start today by talking about hassle buckets. I believe that every single one of us has a hassle bucket inside our head. So what's a hassle bucket? Well, it's a measure for how much hassle, how much grief and stress we can deal with at any one time. Paul Green: And some people's buckets are very deep. They can take enormous amounts of hassle before their bucket overflows and they run into problems. Other people's buckets are more shallow. I d

In this week's episode Google Analytics is an extremely powerful tool, but using it can often feel daunting. Paul has found a simpler and more visual way to understand what people are really doing on your website Not that you should sell up and move on (well, not yet), but Paul introduces you to a couple of incredibly insightful books; one of which explains why a ‘ready to sell’ mentality could really help improve the way you feel about your business Paul welcomes special guest Andrew Eardley to talk about a package of tools that could be easily re-sold for increased Monthly Recurring Revenue (and they make life easier for your techs, too) And there’s a great question from the audience about whether virtual offices are really worth it Show notes Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert The two incredible books Paul talked about were E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and Built To Sell by John Warrillow The book Paul mentioned in the previous episode was Influence by Dr Robert Cialdini To help systemise your business, Paul mentioned the tools called IT Glue and IT Boost The tool to better understand what’s users are really doing on your website is Hot Jar MSP Marketing Edge is the marketing content service Paul mentioned Thank you to special guest Andrew Eardsley, the MSP who has created MSP Easy Tools The great question about virtual offices was posed by Greg Micallef from GMA Next week's guest will be MSP sales expert Fiona Challis who runs the The Next Gen Sales Acceleration Academy Here's a link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast. Paul Green: Hello. Here's what's coming up on this week's show. Andrew Eardley: In terms of security, I'm sleeping way better at night because I'm no longer wo

How do you like your eggs, people? Take your time pondering that important question while Matt and Rich chat about IT Glue’s short- and long-term product roadmap, the $147 (million) that Goldman Sachs just invested in Acronis, a new RMM release from Barracuda, a new augmented reality tool from TeamViewer, and Pax8’s alliance with CloudJumper. Plus opportunities in vertical markets, why you should be charging for assessments, the Delta Airlines partner program, Star Trek, and yes, dutch babies. Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly! ​​​   Look for us in your favorite podcast app. If you don't see us (yet) then you can subscribe via RSS in almost any podcast app using this link: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/rss/cpw Show Information: Episode #: 117Title: Those Sticky Dutch BabiesDuration: 1:57:05File size: 54.0MBRegulars: Rich Freeman - Executive Editor, Matt Whitlock - Technology Editor Video of ChannelPro Weekly #117 - Those Sticky Dutch Babies Topics and Related Links Mentioned:  IT Glue Outlines Password Management, Mobile App, and Other Product Enhancements Integration and Automation Dominate IT Glue’s Roadmap  Acronis Collects $147 Investment from Goldman Sachs  TeamViewer Builds Smart Glasses Functionality into Remote Support Solution  Barracuda Updates Managed Workplace RMM Solution  Pax8 Adds Cloud Workspace Software from CloudJumper to Solution Catalog  Profit Fuel, Part 3: Vertical Industry Solutions  Assessments: More Than a Foot in the Door Matt's Museum Pick: Ode to the db25 Matt's Tech Pick: StarTech.com 6ft USB to db25 adapter Rich's ICYMI plug and quickie preview of the week ahead 

Luis is IT Glue s VP, Product. In his native Colombia, he was in the music business, once playing keyboards on tour with Shakira. Luis will be talking about Unified IT, and the Capabilities of Kaseya's IT Complete Platform What are organizations struggling with, and how the value of a unified platform can help drive higher efficiency, deeper workflow-level integrations, and lower overall cost. To learn more about Kaseya, visit: https://securityweekly.com/kaseya Full Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/ES_Episode146 Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes!

Luis is IT Glue s VP, Product. In his native Colombia, he was in the music business, once playing keyboards on tour with Shakira. Luis will be talking about Unified IT, and the Capabilities of Kaseya's IT Complete Platform What are organizations struggling with, and how the value of a unified platform can help drive higher efficiency, deeper workflow-level integrations, and lower overall cost. To learn more about Kaseya, visit: https://securityweekly.com/kaseya Full Show Notes: https://wiki.securityweekly.com/ES_Episode146 Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes!

Special Thanks To Our VIP Sponsors! -This week we have a special guest host as Michael Thomsen takes the mic. Michael is the Director and Founder of Origin 84 - https://www.origin84.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjthomsen/ -Victor Glemme is a member of the Origin 84 team and he joins Michael in his hosting duties. Victor previously worked at Apple and Jamf and originally hails from Sweden https://www.linkedin.com/in/glemme/ -Will O’Neal receives a call from Michael and talks about his business and the upcoming ACEs Conference.  Will owns Mid Atlantic Computer Solutions and is on the board of directors for the ACEs Conference - 4macsolutions.com -ACEs Conference this year will be held in Kansas City, MO June 4-6 http://acesconf.com -This year at ACEs Conference, they will focus on small groups and less speakers.  This new collaborative and mentoring format will be a welcome and exciting change to an already impactful conference. -ACEs has its own Slack channel at acesconf.slack.com -A yoga class will once again be at the start of the conference this year -Kansas City has been chosen as a 5G test city.  Will and the team will attempt to work with Sprint to provide some demos for participants. -In a bonus, LuisGiraldo also joins the Origin 74 team on the show Luis Giraldo on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/luisgiraldo/ ITGlue - https://www.itglue.com Ook Enterprises - https://ook.co -Luis gives us a quick history of his business life in Ook Enterprises and how he came to be at IT Glue -Luis talks about meeting with his partners and setting goals for his business -Monkey Box was developed to “scratch an itch” and he tells the story of how that brought him into the IT Glue family -What is IT Glue exactly? It provides a structured way to create consistency, efficiency, and scalability by having a centralized IT documentation platform -Luis gives a shout out to some great members of the Mac Admins community: Tom Bridge and Chris Dawe on Wireless - http://macadmins.psu.edu/files/2017/07/psumac2017-154-A-System-Administrators-Fundamentals-of-Wi-Fi-or-Arguing-With-Physics-Section1-RF-Wi-Fi-Jargon-rgldvy.pdf -Rich Trouton - http://derflounder.wordpress.com -Charles Edge - http://krypted.com

You knew Clippy was annoying. Did you know he’s evil too? That’s one of many things you’ll learn in this episode of ChannelPro Weekly, featuring guest host Ed Correia of Sagacent Technologies. There’s also plenty of talk about Carbonite buying Webroot, Eaton updating its partner program, Continuum launching a new security assessment solution, StorageCraft introducing a new healthcare storage offering, workplace culture, and more. Plus, Matt experiences some fairly persistent microphone problems. You can guess who we blame. Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly!    Look for us in your favorite podcast app. If you don't see us (yet) then you can subscribe via RSS in almost any podcast app using this link: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/rss/cpw Show Information: Episode #: 106Title: Clippy Joins the Dark SideDuration: 1:35:52File size: 44.3MBRegulars: Regulars: Rich Freeman - Executive Editor, Matt Whitlock - Technology Editor Video of ChannelPro Weekly Episode 106 Topics and Related Links Mentioned:  Carbonite Buys Webroot in Bid to Become Comprehensive Data Protection Leader The Carbonite-Webroot Deal All Boils Down to One Word Eaton Rolls Out Updated Partner Program Four Glimpses into the Future from Eaton Continuum Launches Security Assessment and Dark Web Monitoring Service StorageCraft Introduces Healthcare Data Solution Auvik Releases Integrations with BrightGauge, IT Glue, Passportal, and Warranty Master Matt's Museum Pick:  Toastmaster TMMGW Rich's ICYMI preview and peek ahead at the news week to come

On the podcast, today is Chris Day CEO of Top Down Ventures. Chris is a well-recognized member of the MSP channel, as the founder of IT Glue. IT Glue's remarkable growth curve and industry attention are unlike anything we've seen in the market. He recently exited IT Glue after selling to Kaseya. Now he's working with SaaS application entrepreneurs to provide capital and scaling strategies for their businesses. In our discussion we catch up with Chris on the recent M&A activity of Glue and Fully Managed, the projects currently on deck at Top Down, and we discuss the current M&A madness in the MSP channel.  The products being managed by Top Down we mentioned Quoter Backup Radar Warranty Master

Happy New Year! And what better way to celebrate the impending arrival of 2019 than to take a stroll with Captain Serious himself (aka Rich Freeman) through a compendium of gloomy security-related predictions for the new year from leading vendors. Fortunately, Rich, Matt, and special guest host/marketing expert Herman Pool have less depressing things to talk about too, like Kaseya buying IT Glue and The ASCII Group introducing a security awareness training toolkit. There’s even a live interview with Michael Fraser of cloud automation and orchestration startup Refactr to wipe the sour taste of that bad news sandwich out of your mouth once and for all. And remember, you can watch this episode of ChannelPro Weekly on video too. Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly!    Look for us in your favorite podcast app. If you don't see us (yet) then you can subscribe via RSS in almost any podcast app using this link: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/rss/cpw Show Information: Episode #: 101Title: The Bad News SandwichDuration: 1:42:33File size: 47.3MBRegulars: Rich Freeman - Executive Editor, Matt Whitlock - Technology Editor Video of ChannelPro Weekly Episode 101 Topics and Related Links Mentioned: Information about Herman Pool: His personal webpage Vertical Axion The Association of Computer Repair Business Owners One Hour Marketing: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Simple Effective Marketing Kaseya Buys Documentation Leader IT Glue in Latest Expansion of IT Complete Platform ASCII Group and InfoSec Institute Partner on Security Awareness Training Toolkit The Year Ahead in Security: A Roundup of Vendor Predictions The Year Ahead in Managed Services: A Roundup of Vendor Predictions Refactr Officially Launches Cloud Orchestration, Automation, and Integration Solution Matt's Museum Pick: D-Link DUB-H7 Matt's Tech Picks: TP-Link UH720 Rich's ICYMI preview and peek ahead at the news week to come

What kind of sandwich do you see when you look in the mirror? Something to ponder while you listen to Matt, Rich, and guest host Joshua Liberman rap about the news from IT Glue’s GlueCon event, SolarWinds MSP’s outsourced SOC offering, a new cloud management platform from Linksys, a review of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (6th Generation), and more. Oh, and the correct answer is “foot-long Chicken & Bacon Ranch Melt.” Not sure why, but it is. Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly!    Look for us in your favorite podcast app. If you don't see us (yet) then you can subscribe via RSS in almost any podcast app using this link: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/rss/cpw Show Information: Episode #: 092Title: What Sandwich Are YOU?Duration: 2:06:34File size: 57.9MBRegulars: Rich Freeman - Executive Editor, Matt Whitlock - Technology Editor Topics and Related Links Mentioned: IT Glue Adds Integrations, Document Storage, and Training Resources  Six Things We Learned About Chris Day at GlueCon 2018 SolarWinds MSP Launches Threat Monitoring Service Program Linksys Introduces Free Cloud Networking Management Platform RapidFire Tools Adds Dark Web Scanning from ID Agent to Network Detective Pulseway Ships New RMM Release for Growing MSPs Living Up to a Tall Reputation: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (6th Generation) Matt's Museum Pick: NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT Matt's Tech Pick: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Rich's ICYMI preview and peek ahead at the news week to come

Impressioni a caldo su GlueCon, la prima convention organizzata da IT Glue. 450 MSP da nove nazioni, una ventina di sponsor e una tonnellata di contenuti. Con l’aiuto di Emanuele Briganti, Andrea Monguzzi e Claudio Panerai distilliamo a caldo, direttamente dall’Arizona, il meglio dell’evento. Tutti i dettagli sul sito di RadioAchab.

IT Glue ha raccolto una imponente mole di dati da centinaia di Managed Service Providers e l’ha distillata in questo report.  Che cosa fanno e che cosa non fanno gli MSP di successo. Spunti per confrontarsi, riflettere e valutare come migliorare. Tutti i dettagli sul sito di RadioAchab.

Did you attend this year’s Microsoft Inspire partner conference? Bet you didn’t eat as many chicken fingers there as Rich did. Find out what else he snacked on during meetings, not to mention what he and Matt have to say about Microsoft’s slow but steady progress toward the big partner program and sales process changes it announced last year. Then stick around for discussions about the latest news from IT Glue, Sophos, BitTitan, and Pax8, Intel’s 50th birthday, the merits of integrated managed services suites, and hard drives old and new. It’ll be one more item off your checklist! Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly!    Look for us in your favorite podcast app. If you don't see us (yet) then you can subscribe via RSS in almost any podcast app using this link: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/rss/cpw Show Information: Episode #: 085Title: Behold! Checklists and Chicken FingersDuration: 1:39:34File size: 45.7MBRegulars: Rich Freeman - Executive Editor, Matt Whitlock - Technology Editor Topics and Related Links Mentioned: Microsoft Adds Partner Solutions and Services to Cloud Solution Provider Product Catalog Vendors Say Microsoft’s Partner Program Overhaul Remains a Work in Progress  IT Glue Adds Documentation Checklist Feature  Sophos Ships New Edition of Intercept X Security Product for Servers  BitTitan Adds Library of Automated Azure Management Procedures to MSPComplete  Pax8 Introduces Professional Services for Infrastructure as a Service  Intel by the Numbers  Matt's Museum Pick: Maxtor Basics 160GB HDD Matt's Tech Pick: TowerRAID TR4UTBPN Rich's ICYMI preview and peek ahead at the news week to come

Richard speaks with Melissa Saar, Partner Success Manager at IT Glue, a SaaS-based documentation platform.

What kind of name is MMRMM? Exactly the kind ChannelPro’s resident marketing genius Matt Whitlock would have choosen for the RMM system actually named Pulseway if he had had the chance. Alas, this episode of ChannelPro Weekly is the only place you’ll ever hear that can’t-miss idea, not to mention your hosts’ thoughts on SonicWall’s big push into the mid-tier enterprise, Tech Data’s new family of niche security services, the winners of this year’s Readers’ Choice Awards, and more. Unlike this week’s show title, moreover, all that interesting discussion includes plenty of vowels. Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly!    Look for us in your favorite podcast app. If you don't see us (yet) then you can subscribe via RSS in almost any podcast app using this link: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/rss/cpw Show Information: Episode #: 083Title: MMRMMDuration: 1:50:30File size: 50.7MBRegulars: Rich Freeman - Executive Editor, Matt Whitlock - Technology Editor Topics and Related Links Mentioned: SonicWall Introduces Mid-Tier Enterprise Security Portfolio Tech Data Expands RECON Security Service Portfolio  Pulseway Integrates its RMM Platform with IT Glue's Documentation System  KnowBe4 Announces New Breached Password Test  SkyKick Updates its Office 365 Backup Suite  ChannelPro SMB Forum events The 2018 ChannelPro Readers' Choice Awards  Matt's Museum Pick: Motorola RAZR Matt's Tech Pick: Motorola moto z3 play Rich's ICYMI preview and peek ahead at the news week to come

Rallying after a humiliating interview recording mistake (you’ll have to listen for the unfortunate details), Matt and Rich explore Kaseya’s big integration announcement with IT Glue, the free money SYNNEX is handing out for mobile activations, SolarWinds MSP’s new single sign-on functionality, D&H’s plan for century number two, an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it USB hub from D-Link, and more. They also have a lot of trouble—even with the assistance of a calculator—trying to translate zettabytes into petabytes and terabytes. Math, apparently, isn’t their strong suit. Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly!    Look for us in your favorite podcast app. If you don't see us (yet) then you can subscribe via RSS in almost any podcast app using this link: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/rss/cpw Show Information: Episode #: 071Title: Count Those Zeroes!Duration: 1:08:22File size: 31.4MBRegulars: Rich Freeman - Executive Editor, Matt Whitlock - Technology Editor Topics and Related Links Mentioned: Kaseya Announces Integration Pact with IT Glue SYNNEX to SMB Partners: Cash in on Mobile Activations  SolarWinds MSP Announces Enhanced Single-Sign-On Login  Data Center Traffic Expected to Be Nearly All Cloud by 2021  When Arnie Met Arlin: What’s Next for ConnectWise and HTG?  D&H Enters Second Century with New Mission  Matt's Museum Pick: D-Link DUB-H7 Matt's tech pick: D-Link DUB-H7 and StarTech ST7300USB3B Rich's ICYMI preview and peek ahead at the news week to come

On this week's show, we welcome on Luis Giraldo, VP of Products at IT Glue, to discuss how proper documentation helps your business run more efficiently and improve profitability. We also share an update from Hurricane Harvey, discuss a new (somewhat invasive) IoT application in the workplace, and introduce a new segment we'll be doing each week. Tune in now!

Alex & Drew open the show talking about interviews at Drew's workplace, talentful, The Bike Shed Podcast and discuss Alex's coding progress which you can read more about in her blog. Select meetups around town Alex and Drew attended last week were the Vancouver Tech Meetup which Drew hosted at Beanworks and the DDD/CQRS/ES Meetup at DCTRL. Highlighted Meetups Around Town Alex and Drew are looking forward to this week are Hackernest on Monday, January 30th and the continuation of creating the product nota at DDD/CQRS/ES on Thursday, Feb 2nd. Our guest this week is Renee Hildebrand, Technical Writer at IT Glue!

Autotask adds a new BDR solution, AVAST and AVG merge complete, Continuum Banks Success on the Numbers, and Jeff Dryall talks IT Glue. Rich, Cecilia, and Matt talk about it all, and much, much more! Download/Subscribe and listen today! Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly! Look for us in your favorite podcast app. If you don't see us (yet) then you can subscribe using this link: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/rss/cpw, or in iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/channelpro-weekly-podcast/id10955685... Show Information: Episode #: 026Title: The Glass DoorDuration: 1:09:11File size: 31.7MBRegulars: Rich Freeman - Senior News Editor, Cecilia Galvin - Editor in Chief, Matt Whitlock - Technology Editor Topics and Related Links Mentioned: Autotask Broadens its Product Portfolio with Addition of New BDR Solution Avast Completes AVG Acquisition, Appoints New SMB Chief Tripp Lite Expands Line of Managed Gigabit Ethernet Switch PDU Combos Juniper Networks Extends Software-Defined Secure Networks with Advanced Automated Enforcement and Threat Prevention For Continuum, Success is All About the Numbers Interview: Jeff Dryall of IT Glue on managed services documentation Where's Joel? Matt's Museum Pick: DroboShare Matt's Tech Pick: AG271QG AOC Gaming Monitor

Find more content at http://www.continuum.net. On this episode of MSP Radio, Nate and Joe talk with Chris Day of IT Glue, who shares insight from his time as an MSP, what he learned growing his business to $10 million, and how documentation and "freeing minds" can unlock more potential and efficiency in your organization.

Why is documentation so important to IT businesses and how it can it have a positive impact on the bottom line of any IT Solution Provider or Managed Service Provider (MSP)? Chris Day on the importance of IT documentation In episode 10 of TubbTalk I speak with Chris Day of IT Glue, an IT documentation platform, and the CEO of one of Western Canada’s biggest MSP’s, Fully Managed. In our conversation, Chris and I discuss:- How an MSP can think globally rather than just locally. The biggest challenge in being the CEO of not one, but two businesses. How running a SaaS business is different to running an MSP. Why IT documentation is so important to MSP’s. How to calculate the cost of poor IT documentation to an MSP business. What the benefits of good IT documentation are to an MSP’s clients. The best way to get started with IT documentation. Mitigating the risk associated with bad or lack of documentation. Which RMM tools will integration with IT Glue. The concept of Documentation-as-a-Service. An IT Glue discount code for TubbTalk listeners. Transcript Richard:               Hello, everyone. Richard Tubb here and I’m speaking today with Chris Day, the CEO of Vancouver-based managed service provider, Fully Managed. Fully Managed is one of the largest MSPs in western Canada. Chris is also the CEO of IT Glue, a software-as-a-service solution to the problems of IT documentation for IT companies. Now, among his recent honors – Chris has been awarded the 40 Under 40 award for his individual success as a CEO. Fully Managed, as a business, had been named Alberta’s Best Workplace and British Columbia’s Small Business Best Employer as well. I’m delighted that Chris can join us today. Chris, how are you? Chris:                   Doing very well. Thank you, Richard. Thanks for the wonderful intro. Richard:               You’re welcome. How’s Vancouver today? I know it’s early in the morning for you. Chris:                   You know what? It’s a beautiful day here. Sunny which is unlike Vancouver, which is known to be like Seattle — very, very rainy — but it’s been beautiful, so I can’t complain. Richard:              Excellent. Sounds a lot like Birmingham in the UK where I’m calling from this day. We’ve got an absolutely gorgeous day, and that’s a rarity. I’ve mentioned that you’re CEO of two companies, a managed service provider much like many of the listeners to this podcast, and also a company that provides solutions for MSPs in IT Glue. Perhaps you can share a little bit about how you ended up running not one, but two very successful businesses. Chris:                   Yeah, absolutely. The last couple of years have really put me through the ringer, I would say. There’s a lot that goes into – it’s just mainly starting a new business, in general. But particularly with IT Glue, where we have been on a very, I would say, aggressive growth curve. It’s been absolutely nuts. The good thing about Fully Managed is that it’s a fairly established business. It’s been around since 2002, and I have a partner in that business – Charlene. Thanks to her. She’s the president and then I have another, basically a VP of Ops andSales. The collective three run the business, essentially. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to take the last two years and focus, I’d say, 95 percent of my energy on IT Glue. The five percent – Fully Managed has been really more on quarterly strategy meetings and annual strategy planning meetings. I’m very thankful for that. Richard:               IT Glue, I’m intrigued. I know a little bit of background of IT Glue. I understand IT Glue came together as a result of peer pressure, for lack of a better word. Perhaps you could explain a little bit more about that. Chris:                   It was. Probably like yourself, I spent a lot of time in the ConnectWise community back then. Obviously, I’m spending time in both the...