Proud dad this week. My son heads off to Cambridge University on Friday. He’s 18 and so has always absolutely hated the motivational quotes I love and have tried to push on him over the years.

So, what have I done?

Made him his very own book, with 50 of them in there.

He will possibly burn it. I hope he doesn’t.

I wish I had been given this at 18.

So much wisdom and shortcutting of experience.

They are listed below – I hope you can pick one that means something to you … 🦉

1. Good intentions never work, you need good mechanisms to make anything happen
2. Be great in small ways and then look back in a year.
3. Building good habits now helps you to do more of what you want in the future.
4. It’s easier to stay in shape than get in shape. Maintain your progress.
5. Optimise for your interests not your happiness. Happiness is momentary. Interest has more meaning.
6. Have a dream. Make a plan.
7. Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.
8. If you refuse to quit you cannot fail.
9. Many problems are minor when you solve them immediately. They grow when you let them linger. Fix it now!
10. The time to worry is three months before a flight. Decide if the goal is worth the risk. If it is, stop worrying. Worrying is another hazard. – Amelia Earhart
11. The prepared person is positioned to benefit from unexpected opportunities.
12. Often what stands between you and what you really want is a better set of questions.
13. Do what you say you’re going to do and exceed expectations. That alone will set you ahead of the crowd.
14. Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life!
15. The view changes once you start walking. You don’t need all the answers now. New paths get revealed if you have the courage to get started.
16. Many rewards will elude you if you’re not willing to get a little uncomfortable first.
17. Success changes, depending on where it gets measured. You’re not failing, you’re in the middle of succeeding.
18. If you resist the reality of slow progress, five years from now, you’ll be five years older and still looking for a shortcut.
19. Always do something a little different. There’s then a great potential for reward.
20. People forget numbers and charts, but everyone remembers a great story.
21. You can’t remove struggle from your life, but you can improve your ability to handle change.
22. Those who believe they can do it and those who don’t, are both right.
23. What am I continuing to do out of habit, which is no longer serving me?
24. The dog that chases two rabbits goes hungry.
25. Think about what you want today and you’ll ‘spend’ your time. Think about what you want in 5 years and you’ll ‘invest’ your time.
26. Too much challenge makes life hard. But so does too little.
27. On things you don’t enjoy. Rephrase it. You don’t ‘have to’ … you ‘get to’
28. Not enough time, resources or connections? OR not enough courage? Is that the real bottleneck?
29. A ship is safe in harbour. That’s not what ships are built for.
30. The quality of your relationships will determine the quality of your life.
31. You can’t control the traffic, the weather or your boss. You therefore must learn to control YOU
32. Your response to failure determines your capacity for success.
33. We exist temporarily through what we take. We live forever on what we give.
34. Be first. Say hello first …. Smile first.
35. Working on a problem reduces the fear of it. It’s hard to fear something even if progress is slow or imperfect.
36. If it’s not a ‘hell yeah!’ it’s a ‘hard no’.
37. Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. The world needs more people who have come alive!
38. Don’t take it personally when someone lets you down.
39. If you don’t like it, change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.
40. Always give value, before you ask for value.
41. Your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results.
42. Just beyond yourself is where you need to be.
43. Life is too short not to be pursuing the best opportunity you know of.
44. It’s easier to hold your principles 100% of the time, than 98% of the time.
45. One day you’ll look back and realise that you worried too much about things which don’t matter.
46. Real wealth is not about money, it’s about freedom.
47. The hardest part about solving a problem is actively defining it.

This is the next article in a series of adapted excerpts from my book, MSP Secrets Revealed (episode #2 is coming soon, with your help).

I wanted to share some of the interviews I did for that book with the world at large and so each month during 2022,  I’m sharing one secret from the book with the world to inspire.

This next one is from Nigel Moore. If you’ve never met Nigel, you’re missing out on a bit of life. He runs The Tech Tribe – possibly the world’s greatest MSP community. I’ve been part of it for the last two years and am honoured to be a ‘Tribal Elder’. You’d be crazy not to at least take a peak – and no – I’m not on commission – I just believe in what goes on there.

Nigel’s secret centred around pricing and applies to all businesses – not just MSPs.

Don’t sell commodity

Our core MSP services are becoming more and more commoditized and so over time, the only real differentiation will be … price. I want to encourage you to SMASH that type of thinking out of your head.

Coffee is a commodity, yet some people sell it for $0.01 per cup and others sell it for $5 per cup.

Flying is a commodity, yet some people sell a seat on a plane for $29 and others sell the same seat for $299.

T-shirts are a commodity, yet some people sell t-shirts for $1 and others sell them for $1,000.

Things like experience, emotion, comfort, fear, a sense of belonging, status, etc. ALL have a direct impact on how much someone will pay for a (seemingly) commoditized product/service.

Sure, monitoring, maintenance, support etc is “commoditized” to a degree – but all the stuff / experience around it isn’t.

If Nigel’s thinking doesn’t shake up your perception of pricing and value, then you need to take yourself outside and give yourself a good talking to. You’ll find a lot more in his book. Search “Nigel Moore book” and dive in.

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A couple of additional thoughts of my own on this, as I think about some of the things I teach in both Helpdesk Habits and Website Success 101.

If you’re not selling on price, what are the other options to push price down the list of buying critera? Price will always be lurking – it’ll never not be a consideration – but wow-ing and persuading customers using the power of customer experience is so important.

Do you have 100 5 – star Google Reviews, and dozens of testimonials – video or text – on your site and within your sales process?

If you do – you will know that’s the ultimate demonstration of credibilty. It shows that you are more than a safe pair of hands – it’s shows you’re the go-to people. You’ve got ultimate trust from your customers. Prospects will pay a premium for that piece of mind.

In Shep Hyken’s recent survey, The State of Customer Service and CX, I want to pull out 2 stats for you:

 42% of respondents would rather clean a toilet than call customer support.

Would this be the perception of your business? If so, you will almost certainly need to sell on price in a race to the bottom.

Turn this around. Make your business both responsive and “convenient” to do business with.

When EVERYONE in your team interacts with customers, ensure that the Human Customer Service ethos kicks in. This concept is something I’m passionate about and talk about regularly.

Here’s something else for you to consider and 100% backs up Nigel’s secret:

58% of respondents said that customer service is more important than price.

Wow. Whilst it shouldn’t be a surprise, it kind of is. And I know that stats can prove anything, however, it’s one I don’t think you can ignore.

If you’re selling purely on price, it’s time to start thinking differently.

Before you go …

Nigel runs a brilliant community and coaching program for MSPs. I should know, I’m part of it.
Use the link below to get your first month’s membership at a 40% discount.

https://thetechtribe.com/mspsecrets

Every month, I’m publishing one secret from my almost best-seller, MSP Secrets Revealed.

Reflecting on it recently, whilst I had a brilliant time researching and interviewing and I learnt a lot (more) about business, it’s only when I started to talk to people about their ‘stories,’ the interviews became even more revealing. Some IT professionals were very happy to open up, in the hope of benefiting others.

The final chapter in the book is called “Personal Stories.” There are eight in total.

Today’s excerpt is one of those stories, from a well known name in the MSP community – Mark Matthews. <—  connect with him on Linkedin

I’ve admired Mark from afar for a long time. He’s one of the few MSP owners who has managed himself out of his own business. That’s not easy. We had a phone call recently, where he talked to me about the difficulties in doing just that. He is winning though.

What was his personal driver for doing this? Because of the story he very openly describes below.

If you’re struggling with the pressure, the day to day, your mental welfare, your life in general. Stop for a moment and read Mark’s story …

It’s not about the money

Five years ago, I was really unhappy. I was working 70 hours a week and I had staff issues. I couldn’t switch off, and it wasn’t in

a good way. I felt like I was going backwards. At that stage my business had been going 26 years, so it was a strange feeling to have. It wasn’t because the business was unsuccessful or unprofitable, but personally, I felt like I was going backwards.

I was always on the phone. Holidays were a nightmare. My phone used to be next to me on the sunbed. I used to hate holidays, because I’d always end up having to ring the office.

I felt like I was blagging it. People think if you’ve been running a business for as long as I had that I must be really successful, but I didn’t feel that way. I found everything very frustrating.

I’d had enough, and I felt suffocated. Suffocated enough that, one morning five years ago, I was driving on the motorway on the way to work. I was in a nice car, I had a nice house, my kids were successful.

“10 minutes into my half hour drive, I started to cry. I was 46 and crying on the way to work. What the hell? What did I have to cry about? Luckily, my dad’s a counsellor, so I rang him and asked what I should do.”

He told me to go home and make a doctor’s appointment, as only that weekend one of his friend’s sons who worked for a worldwide software company had taken his own life by jumping out of a 3rd-floor window, so I did. I live in a small rural village, so I was fortunate to get an appointment within the hour and the GP had a list of questions to go through with me, one of which was “did I have a shotgun at home?”. I curiously asked why?

“The doctor said that three people in my village had used a shotgun to commit suicide in the last two years.”

I’m sure you can imagine, this was a massive shock that he felt the need to ask me. After that, I realised I had to take my situation seriously. I was prescribed some tablets and went home, and then pretty much stayed in bed for six months. I’d go to work for a few hours, but when I got home, I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

I then got to the stage where I didn’t care if I didn’t wake up the following day, and I pulled the covers over my head. But the next day, I decided I was going to get my arse out of bed, go back to work and start to get my life back together. One phrase in particular helped me with that: ‘There will come a time when everything is finished. That will be the beginning’.

People who knew me at the time would never have known I was suffering. I used to think it was an owner’s mask we all wear, where we always have to say things are brilliant and going great. We never say, ‘Oh, it’s shit’, because we want our peers to think well of us. Nobody would have heard me say anything negative at all.

I would have never shown anyone how I was feeling, because I would have seen it as a weakness. There’s no way I would have ever spoken to any of the people I knew about anything, even individually, because I wouldn’t want to be belittled.

Turning things around

I came home one day to find a book I hadn’t ordered had been delivered. ‘The Fred Factor’, by Mark Sanborn, is about a postman who does lots of things for people without asking for anything in return.

Prior to reading it, I was the type of person who wouldn’t do anything for somebody without getting something in return. That’s what I thought you had to do to be a businessman. If you want to grow the business right, you’ve got to get what you can. But Fred went out of his way to help the people on his post route.

“You think it’s about money. It’s not. In the last four years, I’ve reduced my working hours from 70 hours to 26.”

We had a 24% increase in turnover last year (2018), and a 110% net profit increase. I’m now allowing people to do the job that they’re paid to do. Because we’ve got trust. If you think of Patrick Lencioni’s pyramid, we can’t hit the figures if we haven’t got trust.

The best thing in the world for me, out of all of this, is that I’m the happiest I’ve been for years. I’m earning less money than I did five or six years ago, because we were a much bigger company then, but I know where I’d rather be. I’d rather be where I am now, happiest spreading the word about trust and showing the difference it can make to you and your workforce …

… because it’s not about the money.

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Mark Matthews is the CEO of ATG IT in the UK, and is the exec director of Network Group.

A big thank you to him for his honesty.

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This is the first article in a series of adapted excerpts from my book, MSP Secrets Revealed.

I wanted to share some of the interviews I did for that book with the world at large.

The first one is the highlights of an interview with the very awesome Juan Fernandez, previously of Imagenet Consulting. He exited that business in 2021 and is now on a crusade to help MSPs in lots of different ways.

Juan has an infectious personality – and it’s been tool long since we’ve met. It’s my turn to beat him at bowling.

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Juan is the ultimate advocate for relationship creation, which is appropriate, as we met at an after conference party in a bowling alley in Phoenix, AZ. He was much better than me.

He learnt to sell from an early age. His Grandmother sent him out to cut grass for a $1 … and he would come back empty handed. She told him it was because he didn’t know how to sell himself. She taught him to add value first, then to sell yourself and finally trust kicks in.

Juan was recently asked by a colleague, “If you were still on the phones, trying to sell, what would you say to your targets?”

He replied – “I’d never call anyone.”

Invest in relationships

Juan has built two businesses – and at no point in their evolution did he or anyone else ‘hit the phones’.

Instead, he has continuously invested in relationships. He taught his VCIO teams (franchise holders) to do exactly the same.

He is a big advocate for community engagement programs and meetups. He finds people he wants to work with … and then builds relationships with them. Caveat being that those individuals are part of companies suitable for Imagenet’s services.

He trains a lot of teams and goes to great lengths to explain that when you meet with a customer, you must never assume you have a deal.

“It’s very easy to forget that a customer doesn’t realise they’re in a sales cycle. Instead, teach yourself to remove the concept of selling something from your mind, regardless of how the conversation develops.”

Stop jumping to solve problems

Juan knows that the engineers amongst us typically jump on problems they can solve.

If they know, through questioning, that a customer has a need for a 4082 multiband gigablaster, conversations then tend to focus on selling just that – it’s almost a relief that there’s an opportunity to solve a problem and therefore sell something.

Juan’s advice is to do the opposite. File those thoughts away and remember to always “treat customers like you’re dating!”

“Salespeople need to become solutioneers.”

With his considerable experience, Juan points out that it’s important not to know where a customer is at right now, but to focus on where they want to be in the future. He also believes it’s not important to know how they got to where they are today.

Instead, focus on three outcomes – return on investment, employee productivity and profitability. Steer conversations and questions to these big picture areas, as opposed to plugging a firewall gap. That can of course come in time but should never be your initial focus with a prospect.

If you know you are an ‘accidental entrepreneur’ … you saw an opportunity and set up a business around it, it’s possible you haven’t ever had a need or been forced to work out how to build a business and create trust.

Juan’s path was different. He resigned from his job and actively set out to grow an MSP from nothing. He believes this forced him to focus on relationship selling and building trust, as he didn’t have a problem to solve initially.

Juan has one last lesson – his motto in business:

“Provide quality products and services that everyone can afford and add so much value they can’t afford not to buy.

Be the difference …”

Ask questions. Build relationships. Earn trust.

You won’t go far wrong.