Sessions

Alright, IT wizards, buckle up! We're diving deep into the thrilling world of... wait for it... Policy Documentation & SOP! 🎉 Now, before you hit the snooze button, let's jazz things up a bit. Imagine you're a knight, and compliance is your trusty shield. Without it, you're just a sitting duck for the fiery dragons of legal penalties and lost clients. But with it? You're invincible! Our quest begins with understanding why this shield is so darn important. Spoiler: it's not just about dodging legal fireballs but also about shining bright in the competitive IT kingdom. Now, we get it. The mere mention of "compliance" might send shivers down your spine. But fear not! We're here to turn that fear into your secret weapon. Think of it as leveling up in a video game. With our four magical steps - Alignment, Authorization, Adoption, and Assessment - you'll transform from a compliance newbie to a SOP sorcerer. But wait, there's more! Ever dreamt of being the IT world's Don Draper? Well, we'll teach you how to sell compliance like hotcakes. And because we're all about that continuous glow-up, we'll also delve into the art of maintaining your shiny compliance armor. To wrap things up, we'll teleport to the real world with a case study, followed by a Q&A potion mixing session. And for those hungry for more power (or just more knowledge), we've got a treasure trove of resources waiting for you. So, ready to embark on this epic journey? Let's make compliance the coolest quest in the IT realm! 🌟🛡️🔮

In a rapidly evolving business landscape, how do we bridge the gap between authenticity, diversity, and commercial success? Join Megan Killion, a pioneering leader in the intersection of diversity and marketing, as she elucidates this crucial balance. Megan's narrative, as an autistic, ADHD, bisexual female entrepreneur, adds a profound dimension to her discourse, showcasing not just theoretical concepts but lived experiences that have contributed to over $500m in new pipeline growth for businesses. This presentation is a profound journey through the symbiotic relationship between diversity and ethical marketing. It serves as a testament to how embracing various perspectives and ethical considerations can unlock unprecedented realms of creativity, trust, and market relevance. Megan delves into the heart of what makes marketing ethical, the tangible benefits of diversity in marketing strategies, and how businesses can seamlessly integrate these elements for sustained growth and market dominance. Attendees will be presented with pragmatic strategies tailored for MSPs, underpinned by real-world success stories from industry leaders. Beyond just strategies, Megan also spotlights the broader ramifications of ethical decision-making on stakeholders ranging from employees and customers to prospects, highlighting the cascading benefits of such choices. In this era, where consumers are more discerning and value-driven than ever before, this session stands as a clarion call for businesses to align their practices with the evolving demands of the market. It's an essential exploration for MSPs, marketing aficionados, and any visionary keen on building a future where commercial triumphs are deeply rooted in diversity, ethics, and authentic engagements. View my shitty dry run here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQky9i0klkI

Managed Services, once the salvation of the IT industry, was invented more than twenty years ago. In computer years – it’s an antique. And while we’ve witnessed endless innovation in technology, the Managed Services model itself has been left to wither and deteriorate, suffering from antiquated economics, a rusting delivery model, and a vendor ecosystem that is eating itself. Enter cybersecurity, the latest giga shift for small business customers and their IT providers. The proverbial last straw – cybersecurity’s colossal mass first exposed the cracks in Managed Services’ crumbling foundation, and then ultimately decimated the model that was once the savior of IT providers all over the world. But as endemic and fatal as this sounds, it turns out the antidote to premature Managed Services aging is right in front of us. The planet’s most productive supply chains center around a single simple concept – partnership. If you’re a Managed Services Provider being dragged into cyber by your customers, forced into it by your vendors, or tempted by it, one nugget of advice rings loud, clear, and true – you’d better find a cybersecurity partner before your customers do it for you. Join Reg Harnish (Autotask founder and former CTO, GreyCastle Security founder and former CEO, Center for Internet Security former EVP, and currently the OrbitalFire Cybersecurity Founder and CEO) as we explore how MSPs can find opportunities in the demise of the old model and learn how to build a profitable, sustainable business model that creates customers for life.

In the Managed Services world, organizations often shoot themselves in both feet when selecting new leaders. We take our best engineers, rip them out of the technical role that they were rock stars in, and shove them into a new “leadership” role without taking the time to teach them the tools they need to succeed. This leads to teams decreasing in efficiency as they lose a top-performing engineer and gain an inexperienced and struggling manager. Team morale decreases, turn over increases, and the new manager is left feeling deflated as they have been promoted into a role they often feel is impossible to be successful in. This presentation is a collection of mistakes I made over the years as I went from good engineer to terrible manager, to a mostly OK manager that really just wants to prevent people from making the same dumb mistakes I did. During this presentation, we will cover high-level topics like the importance of driving organizational and team culture (seriously – it IS important), how to transition from peer to leader, and how to manage up. We will dive into tactical tools like using KPIs in a way that won’t make everyone hate you, choosing goals that people WANT to accomplish, and running meetings that don’t waste people's time (and are sometimes even kind of fun). And if that’s not enough, along the way I will also teach you how to make the best damn ribs you have ever eaten. This presentation truly has something for everything.

If you're an entrepreneur hopefully someday you will sell your business! We often talk about EBITDA when it comes to selling, but what other factors do buyers look at when determining the value of your company? In this session learn about the 8 factors that drive value when selling your business. 8 Things That Drive the Value of Your Company looks at eight strategies for driving up the value of a company. Whether an owner wants to sell their business – or just know they could – this presentation will show them the eight things that drive the value of a company and suggestions on how to dramatically increase the value of their business. This presentation looks at how to: Increase each of the eight drivers of company value. Find strategic buyers for your business that are willing to pay a premium price. Structure your business to maximize its value to potential buyers. Accelerate the pace of positive word-of-mouth for your business. Boost your company’s cash flow in the same way Harley Davidson finances its business. Differentiate your business using the same methodology Warren Buffet looks for in the companies he invests in. Minimize your company’s reliance on your personal involvement using some of the strategies Tim Ferriss used to reduce the time he spent in this business to just four hours a week. Even if you are not thinking of selling you business, come find out why this is exactly why you should be preparing it for sale!

Can cyber insurance be more than a piece of paper to your client? What if the insurance process could be used as an evolving framework to boost client cyber maturity? Join Reid and Will from FifthWall Solutions as they show you why cyber insurance matters more now than ever, how to address security gaps with your client to get cyber, and how your MSP can use cyber insurance in your conversations to improve your client’s cyber hygiene. As an added bonus, we're also bringing on Tim Golden from Compliance Risk as we cover how cyber insurance fills a crucial void in the NIST CSF by providing essential incident response guidelines and facilitating claims payouts for effective client recovery. Attendees will receive an IR Plan Template from our partners at Compliance Risk. -- Presenters: Reid Wellock, President, FifthWall Solutions Will Brooks, Channel Chief, FifthWall Solutions Tim Golden, President, ComplianceRisk

MSPs are increasingly leveraging mergers and acquisitions as a strategy for growth. As the need for a transaction of your own grows, the risk of a transaction not going as planned has to be contemplated. You can leverage learnings from the events of the past to create more successful deals today. Join Gerwai Todd, CEO and Co-Founder of TimeZest, for the top 5 insights gleaned from his experience participating in the formative M&A events of 2009 through 2019 at ConnectWise. He will cover the investments in CharTec and LabTech (2009), Quosal (2010), and ScreenConnect (2016), which brought four industry-leading technologies into a single product suite. In this informative session, you’ll look back at lessons learned and tips to make a future transaction of your own successful. Whoa, I guess I need to write 250+ words... I'm hopeful several of the lessons learned that I took away from those years are ones that can help others. There is also the just as interesting subject of how the competition wasn't our biggest challenge and how to avoid that yourself. I can walk through the timeline of events from 2008 and key decisions we made along the way. So many years have passed that a lot of people in the community don't recall the technology landscape at the time. I'll preview some of that here. In 2008, there wasn't a single PSA + RMM product or company. ConnectWise and Autotask were the 800 lbs PSA gorillas. N-Able, Level Platforms, and Kaseya were the well known RMMs, LabTech was a few guys working out of a house in Toledo, Ohio. No one had combined a PSA+RMM and Arnie was rightfully concerned that the MSP market would reject the idea of ConnectWise picking a side. We made several decisions based upon that concern. Now looking back, the clear value of combining a PSA and RMM has proven itself several times over. The entire ConnectWise leadership team was confident in the decision, we just had to manage how the MSP world would accept the landscape shift. I guarantee my walk through memory lane will be entertaining and interesting. And, that you will walk away with at least one golden nugget for you or your business.

At this point most MSPs understand the basics when it comes to MSP valuations. They know MRR is better than non-recurring revenue, and they know most companies sell for a multiple of Net Profit (EBITDA). We built a $10M MSP with month-to-month contracts that sold for a much higher multiple than typical MSPs do, and there were specific reasons why. Come learn how to transform your company from a commodity MSP that is poised for a tactical acquisition to a high-value MSP that is poised for a strategic acquisition!

We've seen it too often. Your client buys a pentest and you have no idea what the results will yield, or worse, they don't tell you they are having one done. The come to you at the conclusion and let you know that you're not adequately securing their environment, without a chance to defend yourself and explain your side. As the MSP, you should be controlling the narrative here. Maybe some of the "risks" the pentesting team found you already knew about and understand that those are not real immediate risks. Your client is upset with you and you need to play from behind trying to explain yourself. I know this because I have been the pentester in this situation. The MSP ended up getting fired. Instead, as the MSP you should be taking back control of this situation. Proactively planning for an independent pentest or risk assessment WITH your client. You should be involved in the scoping, the testing, the status meetings, the report readout conversations, and ultimately helping explain the results to your client. These pentests don't have to be a bad thing, they can drive your client to budget for things that you have been telling them they have needed to do for years..but if you're not on the forefront of those conversations, you'll be playing on your heels and your client will not remember that you told them they needed to update those Windows 7 servers in their quarterly business review in 2019, a full year before it went end of life. Come with me on a journey to see how a transparent pentest can lead to fantastic results and a more strategic and stronger relationship with your client!

This presentation was designed to communicate the value of accountability and metrics as a cultural element of your MSP using the common metric of time entry and real-time time entry as a conversation vehicle. Initially designed for a purely connectwise audience, the basic principles apply to any MSP using time as a COGS tracking method. The talk was also specifically designed to address the "why dont my techs enter time" refrain we hear at shows, and address the "lead from the front" mentality that many owners and managers in the space forget to do with metrics. The target audience was the lower OML MSP that had more than 3 employees but less than 50 (although it would apply to any MSP having trouble with this problem). The presentation was also designed to align with the SLI COA concepts being pushed at ITNation. It may need to be adjusted for a wider Rejection Con audience. The idea is to help MSPs that are doing cogs time tracking gather more actionable data they can make business decisions on with tools like MSPCFO, while also enhancing the quality of life and mental health of their employees to improve retention and quality of work. I had initially intended to provide some CW Specific gamification ideas, as well as some CW specific Deliverables they could take home with them. I'd still like to do that, and will need to workshop some ideas to make this more agnostic of PSA and include language that will appeal to AutoTask, Halo, etc. There is also some sarcasm. :-)