Today I want to talk about MSPs and who better to do that with than none other than the Chief Executive for MSPGeek Con, Kyle Spooner. If you want to learn how to grow a community to provide support, ideas, and resolutions to issues plaguing the Managed Services industry space then Kyle is your man!
Watch the full episode below or listen on Apple/Spotify Podcasts. (Check out more episodes on our Gone Phishing page!)
Episode 13: Listen on Apple
Full Episode 013 Transcript:
00:00:00:12 - 00:00:34:12
Connor Swalm
Welcome to Gone phishing, a show diving into the cybersecurity threats that surround our highly connected lives. Every human is different. Every person has unique vulnerabilities that expose them to potentially successful social engineering. On this show, we'll discuss human vulnerability and how it relates to unique individuals. I'm Connor Sloan, CEO, food security, and welcome to Gone phishing, everyone. It is Connor from Phin and you are listening to Gone phishing Again today.
00:00:34:12 - 00:00:46:01
Connor Swalm
I have a special guest and a good friend of mine, Kyle Spooner, and we are going to be talking about a subject near and dear to both of our hearts, which is managed service providers. Kyle, how are you doing today?
00:00:46:09 - 00:00:48:10
Kyle Spooner
I am fantastic. Thanks for having me on.
00:00:48:18 - 00:00:51:07
Connor Swalm
You are only fantastic. What's going so well?
00:00:52:13 - 00:01:07:15
Kyle Spooner
It's everything. Life, busy, the sports, my kids and the worst sport imaginable. Baseball. Though I have to suffer through the times until he gets the hit or field. You know.
00:01:08:09 - 00:01:12:05
Connor Swalm
It sounds fun. You got to bring a book or something to read in between innings.
00:01:12:13 - 00:01:12:22
Kyle Spooner
I do.
00:01:13:19 - 00:01:34:19
Connor Swalm
Also. So you and I met years ago. Now, at this point, you know, my hairlines receded a bit. I don't know. You look as young as when I first met you, but we met in MSSP Geek, which is a community for MSPs. What is an MSP, in your words? What is an image?
00:01:35:17 - 00:02:01:12
Kyle Spooner
I mean, it's in the name. It's a it's a company that provides services that they manage. It is it's and there's a couple of evolutions that matter service providers take they service companies do break fix work so someone has an issue and they call up a company and they get billed per hour to work on an item. And that's how they make their revenue.
00:02:01:12 - 00:02:35:21
Kyle Spooner
But managed service providers are contract based, so unlimited labor generally and we take in all the issues you have. We do a whole bunch of other cool stuff like monitoring and management of your machines, passing out that good stuff. And then we charge you per month and then there's other versions of the service for us. Like there's specializations like MSP Manage Security Service providers, which are just managed service providers with an extra s.
00:02:35:21 - 00:02:37:09
Connor Swalm
You're going to get some flack for that, but that's.
00:02:37:09 - 00:02:37:20
Kyle Spooner
Probably.
00:02:40:03 - 00:02:55:16
Connor Swalm
You heard it here first just to make sure that's all it. So it's a company that provides a bunch of services that they manage. You described if things break, they'll fix some. If there's issues with it, they'll provide the software, they'll provide everything.
00:02:56:16 - 00:03:25:23
Kyle Spooner
So a a lot of times in there, the management of a managed service MSP as a fighter, there's what they call operational maturity levels and depending on where you're at in that spectrum, depends on if you have what they call a stack. Basically, it's just a stack of products you offer your clients, and that can go from we do Google or we do Microsoft, we do ESX or we do Hyper-V.
00:03:26:11 - 00:03:39:05
Kyle Spooner
It's just a full list of what we offer our clients. That's what you get in your contract and maybe a couple of extras. So that's that's generally how they they package their deals.
00:03:41:00 - 00:03:54:09
Connor Swalm
They provide a list of services and how do they decide what's what's going on? I mean, we could all make the statement. I could make a dollar on that. I'm going to start offering it. But is there any deeper reason that MSPs offer the things that they do?
00:03:54:22 - 00:04:24:16
Kyle Spooner
Sometimes, yes. Sometimes they do it. It depends on the on the person, the the executive leadership team of the MSP, the CEO, the technicians. There's a lot of different opinions on how to properly select vendors. But generally I like to make sure that if I call support, they're there. Does it solve my needs that I'm looking to resolve?
00:04:24:16 - 00:04:50:09
Kyle Spooner
Like if I have an issue, does your software provide that? If I can get someone on the phone like not so support related but account management, how difficult is that process? What is your security look like from a holistic perspective? A whole bunch of different like there are guides you can get online that just say this is what you look for in a vendor.
00:04:50:09 - 00:04:59:18
Kyle Spooner
But we just we that's where we generally start. And to make sure that what we're looking at so what we're going to get and what we can easily provide our clients.
00:04:59:18 - 00:05:23:03
Connor Swalm
That makes a lot of sense. I've always thought about it kind of like it's the back office i.t folk, but they're not in your office. Well, sometimes there is a case for you have techs on. Well, not going to get into that, but it's more like when you're running a small business and let's use our real pedantic example like a bakery, you probably know how to bake really good food.
00:05:24:03 - 00:05:39:23
Connor Swalm
Probably don't know a whole lot about the security of post systems or your phones or even your email. So something as simple as that. So it's like you're hiring expertize as a small business to make sure your business can run and can be functional and secure.
00:05:40:11 - 00:06:11:03
Kyle Spooner
Yeah. And a lot of times what you're providing, what you're getting is not just one person because a lot of companies can hire one individual who might have a general specialization with a managed service provider. They have teams of people, different tier levels of technician, different specializations, account managers, security specialists that may be able to not only help you with the security side of your business, but also be able to help you grow your business.
00:06:11:18 - 00:06:28:15
Kyle Spooner
From a technical standpoint, they're MSPs who specialize in only one industry and they stick to that industry and they know that industry extremely well and will help you actually grow massively because they know how, what works and what doesn't. From a technological perspective.
00:06:29:12 - 00:06:45:11
Connor Swalm
I've seen that a lot. I've seen MSPs that we specifically work with who serve one vertical. They end up having a more consolidated set of tools because that industry is more prone to use certain tools and they also know how to use them a little better. But you made a statement and I know we talked about this a little bit beforehand.
00:06:45:23 - 00:06:55:15
Connor Swalm
It is managed security service provider. Do MSPs exist but brave? Do you want to be tech?
00:06:55:16 - 00:07:27:06
Kyle Spooner
Technically they exist. Right. Okay. But there's it's still a managed service provider. They're still providing services. It's just specialized to security. It's an MSP with an extra. Yes. And I know not everyone we saw for years that opinion, especially MSPs fees. But I mean, if you want to call yourself an MSP and understand not everyone, the MSP and sometimes the industry itself has a bad name and I understand trying to distance themselves from the stigma.
00:07:27:17 - 00:07:33:19
Kyle Spooner
But at the end of the day, you're still providing services that you manage.
00:07:33:19 - 00:07:38:06
Connor Swalm
MSP managed service provider with an extra s you should put that on a t shirt, sell it.
00:07:39:02 - 00:07:43:02
Kyle Spooner
I could. I don't want to get yelled at though, because selling.
00:07:43:11 - 00:07:43:17
Connor Swalm
Yeah.
00:07:44:03 - 00:07:44:17
Kyle Spooner
100%.
00:07:45:01 - 00:07:47:06
Connor Swalm
If somebody is already on it you anyway you might as well type.
00:07:47:06 - 00:07:49:20
Kyle Spooner
It in the comments right now. So I dare you.
00:07:50:17 - 00:08:13:19
Connor Swalm
You actually you bring up an interesting point which is I've talked about this with Reg Harnish from Rural Fire. Jimmy from I think you were on that webinar is can MSPs be MSSP, can they actually provide security services and came down to real simply if you have security expertize on your staff that do security services that yes if not, please God go find somebody that.
00:08:13:19 - 00:08:15:00
Kyle Spooner
Can 100%.
00:08:16:01 - 00:08:35:16
Connor Swalm
So it sounds like the comment you had made earlier about you're not just getting a single person, you're getting typically a diverse set of skills across many different people, some of which are security, some of which are in infrastructure. And someone like Tom Schwartz, who does cabling all the time and is apparently like famous for doing that. I don't know.
00:08:35:16 - 00:08:36:09
Connor Swalm
Oh yeah. A lot of us.
00:08:37:09 - 00:08:40:01
Kyle Spooner
We haven't used them yet, but if we need to, I know who to call.
00:08:40:12 - 00:09:01:11
Connor Swalm
Yeah, it's like this weird. Incredibly, you wouldn't know what it takes to actually run a business from a technical standpoint until you started, I guess, paying somebody to do it. So MSP communities, groups out of these MSPs getting together, talking online, maybe grabbing a drink occasionally, why are they so important to the industry?
00:09:01:20 - 00:09:13:00
Kyle Spooner
I think it's fairly simple. I mean, humans are social animals, right? We cluster into groups, but look at sports franchises, right. You're a fan of the Tom Brady team or.
00:09:15:05 - 00:09:16:14
Connor Swalm
Or you watch a lot of sports.
00:09:16:14 - 00:09:38:00
Kyle Spooner
But yeah, first of all, you know, touchdown homerun. But it's your group and you you find fraternity in that area and managed services is no different. You're in the same industry. You just group and find other MSPs and you find your area where you can stick and then you can not only get help with questions, but you can help others.
00:09:38:16 - 00:10:07:23
Kyle Spooner
And I think the mixture of when you need help being able to get an answer and being able to help others, that gives a nice balance to people. And most of the communities in the MSP space are like that. They're willing to help you and also let you help if you have expertize. I mean, I run MSP geek along with a bunch of other great people and it is enlightening to see a lot of the success stories that we've seen.
00:10:09:18 - 00:10:31:01
Kyle Spooner
I mean, I know people who have gone from low level technicians to high executives in companies, and they've done it because they've asked a couple of questions at MSP Geek. They've answered questions. They've grown with the community that's grown around them. And there's other communities like that. There's, you know, Reddit are our MSP, there's a MSPs are US tech tribe.
00:10:31:16 - 00:10:39:02
Kyle Spooner
There's several Facebook groups. And it's just we gather around and help each other out.
00:10:39:11 - 00:11:03:03
Connor Swalm
People love to help those that help themselves steer it. And that's actually how we met. It is big. So you are a part of MSP. If what I put you on this on the spot, I guess what sets MSP geek aside or is it just. It is, as far as I know, the largest of the communities, because it's been around and most people are willing to technically read.
00:11:03:03 - 00:11:42:05
Kyle Spooner
It is bigger, it's been around longer. But from the real time chat communities I think were the biggest and we've we've will ten years next month it will be around it was founded in May 2013 and we started out as a community centered around a single product and then as those who use the product grew and as we grew, as a community, we expanded and we decided to rename ourselves because we were called Latch Geek at the time and we rebranded ourselves to MSP.
00:11:42:05 - 00:11:49:19
Kyle Spooner
He equally formed a nonprofit organization to help continue our goals. We have a board of directors and we're throwing a very first conference.
00:11:50:18 - 00:11:51:14
Connor Swalm
And we more about that.
00:11:51:23 - 00:12:23:04
Kyle Spooner
What's the so we decided that we wanted to help educate that the an area that hasn't been focused on in the MSP space which is the technicians. We wanted to dedicate something to them and we figured a conference would be the best way to do this. So we spent a large amount of time with a lot of fantastic individuals planning and building this conference centered around how to be a better technician.
00:12:23:20 - 00:12:50:01
Kyle Spooner
The whole thing is about the learning journey and taking to your technicians and increasing their abilities and making sure that we capture the actual skills that is in use by higher level technicians and bring them down and say, This is the skill you need to learn and use to be a better technician. We're not teaching them how to open the start menu and go to the C Command prompt and type in words.
00:12:50:01 - 00:12:58:06
Kyle Spooner
We're teaching them the core values for the core skills to be able to know how, why you do that, and how to progress. If you don't know how to progress, you.
00:12:59:03 - 00:13:07:15
Connor Swalm
Like what it actually means to be providing a good service or good security, not just if I can go to StackOverflow and copy these.
00:13:08:12 - 00:13:13:00
Kyle Spooner
Correct. But when you copy that, you know why you're copying it at what it's doing. Yeah.
00:13:13:11 - 00:13:33:17
Connor Swalm
Yeah. Let me be very clear. You're still doing the copying, but now you have a little bit of insight. Makes it all better. But I remember hearing of the conference and thinking, Wow, that's exactly how I got started, is I showed up as a random guy in a random MSP in a random selection on random Reddit thread and said, Hey, I know nothing here at all.
00:13:33:17 - 00:13:56:23
Connor Swalm
Bunch of questions I have. You know, there are some people who weren't weren't nice. Yes. Whatever. It's it's the world. That's the world deal with it. But the overwhelming majority of people were so willing to invest. And I thought it was super cool that you all were bringing it to reality. So I'm very excited and I'm speaking of MSP MSP technicians.
00:13:57:10 - 00:14:20:20
Connor Swalm
We're having Kyle on next week on another episode of the podcast, and we're going to talk about what good MSP technicians look like. They're apparently levels to MSP technicians, and we're going to figure out what that's all about, how to train them and just what it means to be an MSP and have texted off stuff. So join us next time with Kyle on an episode of Gone phishing and we will see you soon.
00:14:21:00 - 00:14:21:23
Connor Swalm
Thanks for joining us.
00:14:22:14 - 00:14:23:03
Kyle Spooner
Thank you.
00:14:25:17 - 00:14:47:08
Connor Swalm
Thanks so much for tuning in. To go on phishing. If you want to find out more about high quality security awareness training campaigns, how to launch them in ways that actually engage employees to change their habits. Then check us out in security at phinsec.io..
00:14:47:19 - 00:14:52:01
Connor Swalm
Thanks for phishing with me today and we'll see you next time.
