2025 Holiday Party & ITB Podcast Awards (EP 951)

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here, and the microphone is okay. Here we are, folks, the last live show of the year, the Holiday Party, the ITB Podcast Awards. This is it, folks. 

This is the big hurrah, the big shing-ding. I have my adult beverage here, which I will open up in just a minute. And I also have our mug for tonight's sponsor, ThreatLocker, zero trust, total protection.

We will talk more about them as we get started. Well, just to let you know what's going to happen tonight, folks, I only know a little bit of what's going to happen. I know I'm going to announce the Podcast Awards. 

I know I'm going to thank some people, but we've got some guests on, and who knows where this will go? I don't have any prepared questions or any comments. You know how it goes. It is open mic night here at the Holiday Christmas Party. 

Although I'm going to start with an opening monologue and some closing remarks, I'm actually going to read because I want to make sure that I say all the things that need to be said. The last couple of years, I've winged it and left some things out. I want to make sure I get some stuff really said. 

So this is what I want to say, folks. Thank you for, first of all, joining us. If you are here watching live, fantastic. 

If you are listening by audio, that is fantastic as well. We have made it through another year. And whether you are on the road to a client, buried in tickets, sneaking a walk in between remote sessions, I know some of you like to listen on the job, in the car. 

Every download, every comment, every, hey, Uncle Marv, I listened to that episode, that is what keeps me doing this. It has been fantastic. This year, of course, has been full of change for our industry. 

AI, managed intelligence, went from buzzwords to tools that you are probably deploying in your stack. Vendors pushed hard into automation, security, and smarter service delivery. Many of you made big decisions about what to keep, what to replace, what to finally let go of. 

And at the same time, the basic stuff did not go away. Still had to answer the phone when it rang, still had to secure users who still click on everything. You had to run an honest and profitable business. 

This show, my business, we exist in that same tension of trying to evaluate the new shiny things that come out, as well as dealing with the unglamorous work that keeps our clients' businesses alive. To the guests that came on the show during 2025, you guys shared a lot of stuff with your service offerings. You shared some hard-won lessons.

Thank you. I know that it takes time, sometimes a little courage, to come on a show like this to talk about stuff. I ask questions a lot differently than other people. 

There were some experiments that we did this year. And it's not like going to a conference and trying to get those scans. It's not like throwing out an ad campaign coming onto a podcast. 

You never know what it's going to be. But I thank you for that. To those of you that are listeners and or watchers, I love it. 

I love when I'm at a conference and you walk up and say, hey, I listen. I appreciate it. That lets me know that I'm not just speaking out into ether and that the download numbers, yeah, they might be a little wrong. 

But I appreciate that. To the sponsors and partners that support the show, thank you for believing in me, the show, believing that MSPs, we deserve real talk, not just glossy marketing. Your backing for this show helps keep it alive.

You keep the conversations going. You allow us to be candid and practical and focused on what actually works out in the field. So as we dive into this episode, I want everybody to just kind of look back and consider what 2025 meant for you. 

Maybe you hired your first tech. Maybe you finally niched down. Maybe you got your pricing right. 

Or maybe you just simply survived another year. But there's something to be said even for that. Another year of just being the IT person for everybody and everything. 

So maybe you're tired. Maybe you're energized. Either way, you're here. 

That means you're still in the fight, still serving clients, still trying to build something better. So as we think about all of that, we're going to dive into this final episode of the year. We're going to talk about what's happened over the year, what has mattered, what is next, and let's get to it. 

Let us bring out some folks here and kind of wondered where they had been throughout the year. Of course, we didn't see them at the tech cons. They were all over the place, and I didn't go. 

They didn't go, but they're still all over the place. The Millers are here. What's going on, Mark? Jason and Deva, how are we? Good, how are you? Where's that hard rock shirt from? London. 

London? London. Oh, did you go to London this year? We did. In March, we went to London and Paris for the boys' spring break. 

For their spring break, really? That's how you couched it? Well, we don't do anything in the summer. It's really hard with baseball. We do take a family vacation, so we usually do fall break or spring break for our vacations. 

Okay. All right. Next up on the guest list here, a first timer to the holiday show, Rayanne Buchianico, ABC Solutions on the other coast. 

Rayanne, how are you? I am doing great this year. How are you doing? I am doing good. Is it raining over by you today? No. 

Good. No, we haven't seen rain in like, I don't know, a year. I mean, it's serious. 

We had no storms this year. Last year, we had three hurricanes back-to-back. This year, nothing. 

So, it's a good year. All right. You just summoned the hurricane gods.

That's weird. Yeah. And let's bring on also another person that, as we found out tonight, just moved to your area. 

Brook Lee from LionGard in the house. Brook, how are you? I am doing great. Good evening, everybody. 

Yeah. The house looks new and clean. There's not a lot of stuff in here yet. 

I've been doing, trying to do some shopping, a lot of Amazon stuff. It's just, it's this time of year, and you just do the best that you can. Okay. 

All right. So, welcome to Florida. Yes. 

I'm from Savannah, so it's not like that far to drive. I'm used to the humidity and the heat and all that kind of stuff. It's just a little bit further south.

But crossing that Florida-Georgia line, though, you are going to see some things. I'm in a part of Florida that's very similar to Savannah, so I think that I'm okay. I'm not like in the middle part. 

Middle parts, up there in the panhandle, that's where you're going to see some stuff for sure. You see stuff anywhere in Florida, anywhere in Florida. Let me do this.

Let me go ahead and recognize we've got several people in the chat that have commented. Thank you all. Let's see. 

Look at that, Tom with a woot, Carl with a woot, and Robin Miller. Hey, Robin. What is, who is that? Ratchatatat? I don't know.

Hello there. Matt Lynn with Thread. How are you, folks? Let me also say, if you are in the chat watching us, so around the 830-ish mark, we're going to be giving away an Amazon gift card to people that are specifically here. 

And it does not matter if you're watching on LinkedIn, YouTube, or the Facebook. If you type in hashtag challah in the chat, that will give you an entry into the giveaway. We'll do it about 830-ish. 

I will try to remind people to do that, but if you're here now and listening, hashtag challah in the chat, and that will record over here on this screen. That's why I'm looking over there. I'll see the entries, and then I'll be able to pick or draw on the winner and get a little gift card. 

I believe it's $100, so it's pretty nice there. So, all right. If they draw more than once, do they get more than one entry? No, it's going to, it's going to kick back error.

So, all right. So, who's had anything super interesting this year? The Millers, like I said, you guys have, I mean, I see you in the chat. I see you on the media. 

I see you do stuff, but what big has happened besides that trip to London? I've just been constantly expanding our business, as far as the IT side of things. Yeah. We're renting out part of our building to another tenant, and so they end up leaving us.

Not leaving us, but we offered that they could move out early if we could take it over, because we needed the space. We've been adding more people to our business. We've been, probably the past two months, been reorganizing the whole office, moving people around. 

They've loved us for doing that, let me tell you. Techs are like, I'm setting my ways. I don't want to move, and you're making me move. 

So, we moved our, we needed to move our help desk around, because we might possibly be needing to add another help desk guy, and the room they're in is completely full, and moved our field engineers to other places, and hired some new boy guys, and it's just been a little crazy, so. Are you guys, are you over 20 yet? How many we had now, 20? 21. 21.

21. Good number. Yeah.

So, next conference you're at, you're going to run into that guy that's going to tell you that your metrics are all wrong? Probably. I'm pretty sure I saw him this year at the Kaseya Connect. I'm pointing him out to Jason, but he did not speak to me.

No. It's okay. She might run him over this year.

Rayanne, you were a part of Pitch It this year. I was. That was like, that was my first time even considering doing something like that, like we're accountants. 

We never marketed. I'm pretty sure that nobody would know who we were, if it wasn't for Carl Palachuk. So, hey, thanks, Carl.

Because he does a, you know, between you and Carl, you guys just do amazing things for the entire channel. So, thank you for everything that you do. But yeah, this year we were rolling out a new service, and I literally had no idea how to market it, because I've never done that before. 

And so, Pitch It really helped me understand how to take my idea and bring it to market. And then I joined, I was accepted into the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program. And so, I've been using, yes, thank you very much.

And that has been an incredible learning opportunity, and where you take this growth opportunity in your business, and they teach you how to analyze it from, you know, 10 ways from Sunday, and you build out your growth opportunity plan. And my plan, I've got to turn it in on Friday. And when I last looked at it, it was 70 pages. 

That's seven, zero pages. And that's before my financial forecast worksheet. So, it was like a four-month, you know, intense meetings, learning, exercises, and really diving in. 

Like, it made me remove myself from the business and learn. So, anybody that's interested in doing something like that, I highly recommend it. Go to 10KSBApply. 

And- Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. Are you getting a little kickback now, too? No. 

Nope. I get nothing for that. Like, literally, it was just such an amazing program, and I want everybody to learn to get that information.

All right. So, that means some point in 2026, there might be a sale in the future there? No. No.

All right. Brook, so, it's coming up on a year, right, of moving over to LionGard? Yeah, we've done, I've done a lot. We've traveled a lot of miles this year, gone to a lot of shows. 

LionGard has changed a lot. Just in this year, we've had so much stuff in the pipeline. So, we went from basically what the product started as, with the two gentlemen that built it, Joe and Ben. 

They're based out of Houston, Texas. They had an MSP, and like a lot of products that we have in our space, they were like, hey, we see a need for something, we develop this, we want to share it with everybody else. So, where it sort of started out was like, you know, this asset change management type thing. 

But over this year, we've really had our foot on the gas, because if you're not developing new stuff all the time, then what are you really doing? I mean, you're just sitting still at that point. So, we developed a really more in-depth security offering, Threat Impact IQ. We now have Visual Insights Pro. 

So, that's like dashboards that multiple people at an MSP can use. Again, we've got stuff, we've got cyber risk dashboards, all those things. It was basically just sort of this; we are the keepers of the data. 

We already have all the data. So, data is just noise, unless you can do something with it and turn it into something actionable for an MSP. So, it was like, how do we get all that data and put it into a format that every single person at the MSP can use? So, that's sort of been like the driving force all year long. 

We have a new gentleman, our new CPO, Alex. He came from a different space. He actually used to run product for YouTube. 

We are extremely fortunate to have him. He has really just been like, yeah, we've got the cool LionGard swag. He's been a game changer for us, being able to just really map out the roadmap for us, which is a lot also what our partners want to see. 

I run the PAC here. So, the PAC members want to see that and being able to have a clear roadmap that everybody in the company understands and then we can then turn around and tell all of our partners, because that's definitely something that's important. So, I'm very excited that Alex is here. 

It's been a good year. All right. Stop, stop, stop. 

That's it. Too much pitchiness. Self-pitching. 

He's great. I love Alex. No, you, you always.

We'll come after you. We put some miles in here. You have.

miles. I brought up the stats because he's been 89,000 miles this year. We have been to 29 airports, nine countries, 33 cities, and over 30 events. 

Listen, Henry Tim is not here. You don't need to compete. Don't worry about it. 

I don't know that I have the same miles. I did an eight-week trip in Europe this year. I had a bunch of events back-to-back to back. 

So that was an experience. I liked it. I don't know that I would want to stay gone that long again.

I'm not a live out of one suitcase, backpack kind of girl. That's something that I definitely learned on that trip. I went to Oktoberfest this year while I was over there. 

Went to Munich for Oktoberfest. Hung out there, had a good time. I like Munich. 

It's a nice city. All right. All right. 

So I want to take a quick break here. I want to do our first award. And this is an award that was not one of the ones that you voted on, folks.

It is the first time that I have created my own award and given out. And I'll give you just a little bit of history. This was an award that I decided to give after I spent the I mean, I've spent what the last four or five years doing this swag thing. 

And then, you know, some of the vendors get it. Others don't. And it's always a battle as to whether I can get something or not without getting a bad swipe and stuff. 

So that's always the joy. And of course, if a vendor doesn't know me, then I'm just some cheap ass MSP trying to get free stuff. But there are vendors who are like, yeah, take it. 

I don't care. We just have to pack up and take it with us. So that's not what I do. 

And you know that the idea of the swag is to evaluate stuff that I'm going to use. You know, a lot of stuff is free, but that doesn't mean it's good. So good swag is swag that you're going to use, whether it's a pen, whether it's a cup, whether it's a shirt and all of that stuff. 

And I came across this vendor who I had seen them multiple times and they would just wave, never asked for my badge, never even asked me who I was. If I took something, no big deal. And so finally I, you know, was stopped and I got their pen and I was doing the clicky thing that I do. 

And if you don't know that, that's to make sure a pen is, you know, is a good sturdy pen and is going to last. And then I take it. Is it going to do the one job he's supposed to do, which is right? Yes. 

And so we got to talking and I, you know, asked them about, you know, their swag, which I actually, you know, had a bunch of their swag. I actually have their mugs. I actually have their pens. 

I have stuff. And, and I said, you guys never asked me, you know, for a, for a swipe. And they're like, well, are you interested in our product? And I said, well, not really. 

And they're like, well, then we don't need your swipe. So that was lovely in my mind, the fact that they were okay with not getting the swipes. Now they did ask about, you know, is their swag good? How can we do it better? And we talked about some other stuff and I am going to have them on the show, but I decided that I'm going to give them a booth etiquette award. 

And so that award is given to first time vendor on the show, MSP CFO, and I got them award. They could not be here, but I have a video that I am going to play as soon as I can find it here because everything is tiny. So here is that video. 

And this year I am going to present them with my very first best booth etiquette award for this year podcast award 2025 to MSP CFO. And I've got with me, Larry Cobran, CEO and co-founder of MSP CFO is joining me, Larry, welcome to the show. Thank you, Uncle Marv. 

It's a, it's an honor to be here. It truly is. So I know you just heard me kind of go through all the stuff and accolades there and presented the mug to you. 

So I guess the first question is, what are your thoughts? You know what? At the end of the day, no one's really going to judge me based on how many scans I made or, you know, how, or maybe somebody will judge me on how good my swag is, but I kind of want them to judge us on being nice people. That's one thing we've tried to do. And there's never been a way to validate that. 

And thankfully somebody came in and filled that hole and showed that, you know, there is, there's a mug in it for you. If you're nice to people about that, there's your mug. That is my mug. 

And what's funny is I've actually, I've had one of these mugs and you've got a matching blue one as well. We do. So I now have the set and the pen I was holding up. 

This is your pen, by the way. You know, I wasn't aware that you were giving out awards, I have to be honest, but it has been something that we struggle with. I've struggled with for the 10 years I've been in business, how to get good swag. 

Because when I started doing this, you know, my kids were very little and I would pick up everything as you talk about and give it to my kids. And as silly as it was, they would love everything. My youngest is a senior in high school. 

She could care less. If there's a swear word on a shirt, she kind of thinks it's funny. I'll take that.

But it's always something we struggle with. So I'm actually kind of pleased when somebody likes our stuff. And when you came and you clicked our pen, you know, 50 times, I wanted to first make sure you were okay, because it's not a normal behavior. 

If you needed help, I would have tried to find someone to give you assistance. But second of all, I thought it was kind of interesting. You know, you cared. 

And it matters a little to us. It matters that you care. And to the point of the etiquette and the scanning, like, again, we want to be known as nice people.

I don't think we're going to close deals as nice people. Let's be honest, I'm a capitalist. That's what I really want to do. 

That's why we're there. But I don't know if we sell more by scanning everybody. We really try to engage the people that come by and want to talk to us.

And if, you know, we could start a conversation because of our swag, that's great. But there are people that come and go, the bingo card people, the people that just want to grab your swag, the people that want to talk to us. We're excited to have a conversation with them.

Yeah. And I do want to make sure that I let everybody know, I'm going to have a link in the show notes so that you can, one, reach out to Larry if you want, or reach out to somebody at MSP CFO if you want. But just to let you know, I mean, I've looked at you guys and, you know, I'm a small boutique MSP and I might be at the edge where I could use your services or not.

But to let people know, I know that you are a cloud-based business intelligence company. For the people that maybe for the first time, this is them hearing about you, give a quick explanation. So what we do is it's not simply reporting. 

It's trying to identify the drivers of profitability. So we look at all your clients, your agreements, your projects, your engineers to see which one's really driving growth and which ones are bottom line growth and which ones are drag on it. So you can address the discrete problems and fix your business from the book of business you have rather than feeling you have to grow it to grow the bottom line.

Oh, and taking a step back, I will tell you, you did miss out on the best swag that we make every quarter. I bring homemade cookies to my lunch and learns when I go to them. I fly out on Sunday, but Sunday morning I make the cookies and I put them in a container and they're there fixed on Monday for my lunch and learns. 

Right. I'll have to time it accordingly next time. Yes. 

To the point of the product, anybody wants to find out more about us, feel free to reach out. If we're not a good fit, we will not take your money. And we want to make sure we're adding value. 

And we do. I think we do have value, but not in every case. And if it's not a good fit, we'll just say, you know, we'll part ways as friends. 

Right. Well, Larry, I certainly appreciate the way that you guys approach your booth. I'm sure. 

And the ladies at the booth, I know that they were kind of miffed at what I was doing, but again, I appreciate it. What? More confused than that. That's true. 

But I did want to, like I said, I wanted to give you guys some respect, some homage. And, you know, I'm not going to say every vendor has to be like you, but I liked your approach and I appreciate it. And for that, I'll be sending you this mug. 

Awesome. Thank you so much, Mark. Thank you. 

And there it is. The first ITB podcast award for 2025. Yay. 

And I see Larry was getting some great love in the chat there. Larry is the man there. We're going to have some people that heard, they broke in the chat. 

I mean, that was nicely done. I mean, it's just, that's a great way to run a business. Just say we want to be nice people. 

And I mean, some places are very scan heavy and some people are just like, cool, grab some stuff. What can we help with? What questions can we answer? Do you just want to come by and say, Hey, and chill out for a little bit and then move on? Then that's okay. I mean, again, and it doesn't make one person right or wrong or one company right or wrong. 

Everybody runs their business differently, but kudos to him for making it work for sure. All right. We've got the second shift getting ready to come in here. 

I just want to say, if you are watching us live, one of the gift card giveaways that we are doing will be based on the fact that you are here. And if you've been paying attention to the chat and you're wondering why the word hashtag challah is in there, well, that is the giveaway. So if you put hashtag challah in the chat, it does not matter if you are on LinkedIn, YouTube, or the Facebook, I will have it here. 

And we've got double digits now. So that is adding up. Let me go ahead and start bringing in some other people here. 

We are going to fill the screen. Let me say hello to one of the show sponsors this year. And he's got his own, it's a horrible color Santa hat, Mr. Bardissi from Bvoip.

George, how are you, man? Doing well, Mark. How are you doing, guys? Hey, George. Doing great. 

Awesome. All right. Let's see who else is here. 

Oh, the man from up north, Tom Wyatt, Wyatt Technologies. How are you, sir? Good. How's it going? It's going good.

And I have also with us, there she is, Destiny Bertucci from Domotz in the house. Destiny, it's been a long day for you. It has. 

Hi, everyone. Oh, my. I'm at the firehouse. 

I'm on my next shift. Oh, my. All right. 

So let's see here. We had a couple more entries. So it is 8.29. I'll give it a couple more minutes for the first gift card giveaway. 

Let's see. Destiny, since I've said that it was a long day for you, you started off, well, I saw you, not that it started off because it was like 11 when I saw with the Fa La La Land webinar that you guys were doing. Was that your last one for the year? That is the last one for the year, but it was a lot of fun. 

I like going back and just helping folks and sharing some fun tips and tricks. Yeah. All right. 

George, are you done adding stuff to the OneStream? Absolutely not, man. AI is the new rage, right? Everybody's talking about it left and right. I feel like everybody's just adding AI in front of every product on the planet. 

But no, breaking into the world of voice AI agents has been a fun little journey this year. How many did you add this year? Was it 11? I lost track, Mark, to be honest. You don't want me coding anything. 

I just like to jump in and see stuff when it's actually working. So I let all the people press all the buttons in the back room with the hoodies on, and I come in afterwards and say, that looks good, or we need to work on this. But yeah, it's constantly moving. 

All right. And Tom, you're one of the guys that I talk to on a regular basis, and you're always trying to tweak something in the business. Have you got it worked out this year? No. 

23 years, no. It's a never-ending process. I'm just happy to be here. 

Here? You've been everywhere else the last few months. You too have been traveling. Okay. 

I had to take my wife somewhere nice for her 30th. Otherwise, I'd be in trouble. Okay. 

And did she approve? Yes. Yes, it was wonderful. Okay. 

But was that based around the conference that you were just at? No. Okay. So since we left our previous PSA vendor, we don't go to the big show anymore.

So we tried some new stuff. So we did ASCII, which was fun. We go to an Ingram event, which is always fun. 

And I think we've got three or four set up for next year. And then I got to figure out where I can take her on vacation. Okay.

Well, he made it to Philly this year, Marv, so we took care of him when he was here. You were talking about mugs, Marv? Yeah. This is my bvoip mug. 

That's all that's left. I've, I had two of these. I broke one of them in the office.

Let's go back to Philly. Philly was the most amazing experience I've ever had because I don't know if there are stop signs that George knows how to read. I would argue that's the norm.

Just wide enough for one car. There are people parked on both sides and we are whipping through Philly and it was amazing. It was the best four hours I've spent in any city, anywhere. 

We definitely took a little bit of a food tour around Philly, Marv. I need to make sure, you know, the Wyatt's were well taken care of so that they got the non-tourist experience. Yeah, it was great. 

It was fantastic. Thank you again, George. That was wonderful.

No, I'm glad you came. I enjoyed it, actually. It was fun.

So my Philly experience was going to Shea Steaks, which was right next to the hotel because it was too damn cold to go anywhere else. At least you got a cheesesteak from inside the city limits, Marv. Not a subway, you know, microwave cheesesteak from, you know, down the block.

Know that that's probably as good as it's going to get, my friend. Okay. All right. 

All right. I think we've given people enough time here. We are going to do the first giveaway. 

Let me bring this up on the screen so you guys don't think I'm cheating. We've got 17 entries. Last chance, 20 seconds worth of time if you have not put hashtag challah in the chat. 

This is going to do it. That's the delay that usually happens on these streams. That's why I'm always watching and stuff to see where we are. 

So we're down to about eight seconds left on the delay here from the time I said put hashtag challah in there and five seconds. We're counting down here and that's going to do it. So our first gift card giveaway is going to go to, and if it's the Millers, okay, James Percorato 408. 

So James, what I need for you to do is reach out to me and we'll get your contact info so we can get that sent over to you and you get the choice of a physical card or a digital card. So James, thank you very much. And that first giveaway is actually going to be presented to you by, oh look, Bardissi in one stream is our Amazon gift card giver for today. 

George, thank you very much for that. Happy to participate guys. Merry Christmas. 

All right. While we've got a couple of things here, let me go ahead and do the next award and we're going to do best episode. All right. 

And this was kind of surprising to me. Probably not to a lot of you. Let's see here. 

So this year's best episode went to Auvik versus Domotz, episode 817. So Destiny, aren't you glad I told you to get on here? I'm so excited. That was really fun. 

Thanks for allowing me to be on there. Well, I do want to say this. I did not think that episode would be as popular as it was based on the amount of time it took for us to put it together. 

Because I think both you and the Auvik people, and by the way, folks, I did ask Auvik if they wanted to come to the show as well in the hopes of winning the prize, but I did not hear back. I think you guys got a little nervous when you're trying to do this back and forth analysis comparison, you know, us versus them type of show. So thank you for agreeing to do that. 

Absolutely. Knowledge is for everyone, right? Like just be honest and transparent and have some fun with it and solve problems. And I asked what feedback you got from it, if any.

I have a lot. So I actually did a couple of consulting after that as well on people who were wanting to, you know, dive a little bit more into their monitoring solution as a whole. So that was kind of neat. 

It was really neat to hear from the AV side, as well as some integrations and just foundations of network monitoring itself, where people are just really, how do I use my tools? And it wasn't just, you know, our tools that were on the episode, right? Like they had questions about other ones. I've been in monitoring for 22 years. So I was like, let's peel back the layers and start at the foundation and let's talk about what's actionable and how we can actually, you know, do something about monitoring and management. 

And that's something that I think I really enjoyed from having that because it was your audience as well, of which that was there. And just people kind of resonated with that because they were like, oh, wow, she's just trying to help us. I'm not trying to get you to go anywhere. 

I'm just trying to make sure that you know what you have in front of you. Right. Okay.

Well, fellas, you still with us? What? Yeah. I know there's a lot going on here. I just want to make sure you guys are still here. 

We're live, man. Yeah. Okay. 

So, of course, we are missing a couple of people that are usually here. We're missing Stan, the man, Lucent out of Jersey. We're missing Tom Bull. 

Don Sizer is on an airplane somewhere. She got rerouted and she was supposed to be here. And then, of course, Diamond Giles is not here this evening. 

So, I get a little break from Tom's questions and stuff. So, let me ask this. Any of you guys have questions? So, how many IT conferences you plan next year? I'm cutting back.

I always make fun of Marv because my pod catcher, it's like I have like maybe five podcasts to listen to. It used to be a bunch more. But then Marv started going to all these IT conferences. 

And at one point, my pod catcher was set to a hundred episodes. And it was warning me that I was over a hundred episodes. And I never get that many. 

It's like he gives a show and there's like 30 episodes. It's like, oh my gosh. He gives another show the next week, there's 30 more. 

It's like, oh my gosh, I can't keep up. So, I'm always giving you a hard time that I can't keep up. But I've had to lessen the number of podcasts I'll listen to. 

Yours is still one of them. But I'm still behind pretty far. So. 

And a lot of the big shows, they do this it's called podcast row now. And I mean, there's like just guys and girls lined up and it's literally people are just in and out all day long. It starts at like nine, 10 o'clock in the morning and it runs till five o'clock. 

And I mean, you'll just see people rotating seats. So, and again, sometimes there's six, seven, eight different podcasters set up. So, I mean, there's a ton of content that's getting cranked out. 

Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's almost too much though.

Because here's the thing. Here's what you guys don't know is that if I don't limit the number of podcasts that I can do, literally I would sit there all day, every day of each conference and just do podcasts. And I would not be able to go get into the vendor hall. 

I wouldn't be able to see sessions or stuff like that. So, it got to the point where I was like, you know what? I've got to put a timeline in. I actually had to schedule lunch. 

And then of course, I had a guest offer to buy me lunch so that I could stay at the podcast booth and do the interview. So, that did happen. That's nice, but is that what you wanted to do? Yeah, listen, it is what it is, right? So, I will be doing less than 10 in 2026.

Okay. How many did you do in 25, Mark? I did 11. He is doing less.

Are we talking nine next year? Is that it? I'm actually, you know what it is? I think I would love to go back to what I was before. I was one a quarter. Wow. 

So, if I could get back to four, that would be great. I just don't think that that's going to happen because of all the… So, that's why we're in high demand, you know? Like, everybody needs to see that. Well, it's not that. 

It's that there's so many conferences now. I mean, that's part of it. And now, they're all like, hey, we want podcasters there. 

So, you know, at least they've stepped up. And I'm not saying this to like call any vendor out or anything that does conferences and stuff. But as a podcaster, being able to go as a media and at least get, you know, the perk of a free ticket and some other stuff from time to time, that makes it easy. 

Otherwise, I can't afford to go to all these conferences. It does definitely add up, for sure. And if you see me wandering over here, folks, I'm actually downloading the list of survey participants so I could put them on the wheel of names. 

So, that's what I'm doing. The Miller's won. It's okay.

Actually, I don't think you guys voted this year, did you? I did. You did not? I didn't want to win. We're giving everybody else a chance.

Does everybody feel more confident in the, you know, I like to call it the sandbox, but I guess the IT, MSP land going into 26? Or do you feel like there's a lot of extra pressure to be functional and successful going into next year, like as an industry, as a business? I don't feel any different this year than I did last year. Just, I was about to say, I love this industry. I've been in IT for 30 something years.

It's same stuff, different day, a lot. I mean, yeah, throw some AI in there to keep some people happy, but it's the same stuff every day. You know, we had somebody, let somebody in their email today. 

You know, it, it's, it's Wednesday. It's never boring. Still more about people than it is about blinking lights then.

Yep. I think so. Well, let me, Brook, George, let me ask you as vendors, when you're talking to MSPs, one of the, one of the big complaints that I've heard recently is that while we're getting all of this new technology and stuff, we're getting AI, we're getting service desk help and stuff. 

We're still dealing with a lot of the same mundane, everyday stuff when it comes to our clients. And if we're letting AI, and if we're letting like service desk magic and those sort of things take over that level one support, when it comes time to hire for a level two or level three, they're, they're not finding the qualified talent out there because now we don't have people doing level one to learn to move up to level two. Are you guys getting any questions or feedback from MSPs about that? So, I'm, I'm in the boat that I don't think there's a talent shortage. 

I think people don't look in the right place. I firmly believe that I've been hiring, helping MSPs hire for years and I've never had an issue helping an MSP find somebody. I think you don't look in the right place.

As far as AI being able to solve things, absolutely, they can solve the mundane stuff, but you still need to hire a tier one talent because you want to help mold them and grow that person. Having AI do the easy stuff for them, that's just going to allow them to do what they got into tech for in the first place. I mean, I've been in tech my entire life since I got out of college. 

I mean, I don't want to reset passwords all day long, but we need to. The client needs this too. They can't reset their own passwords. 

They can't install the printer. They need help with their email. That's our job. 

Otherwise we wouldn't have a job. So, you still need people to be able to do that, but it's, I always tell people, you can, I can hire anybody if they have aptitude and attitude. If they have those two things, I can teach them how to do it. 

Again, there's nothing we do in this space that's rocket science. I can teach you how to prep a firewall, do a 365 migration, any of those things, but you have to care and you need to care about your clients. And if you hire those people that are, again, they're younger and they don't have a lot of experience, they're fresh out of tech school or high school or whatever, and then you can train them up, but you can train them up earlier on the stuff that they really wanted to learn, which is what is going to keep them at your MSP. 

Because if you just have them in the, I call it a meat grinder. If you have them in the meat grinder of just resetting passwords, installing printers, onboard, offboard people, they're not going to stay because it's boring and I don't want to do it. But if you give them some foundational stuff and allow them to move up and again, give them an opportunity to work some really cool projects, like maybe George and I work at the same MSP and he's doing a 365 migration and I'm using AI to get some of the mundane stuff done. 

But that means I have time now to shadow with George and I can go sit with him while he's doing migration and learn the stuff that I want to learn. And I think that's critical. I don't think there's a talent shortage. 

I think it's a shortage of people not looking in the right places and not wanting to help people learn because none of us got out of school knowing how to do everything. We all learned from somebody. I learned from a tier three tech. 

I attached myself to that guy like Velcro. I knew he was the smartest person in the building. And I knew that that was the person I needed to learn from. 

And all of us want to be able to do that. I didn't know as much as I thought I did. And I learned from that guy. 

And that's what you have to hire people that just have that drive and that initiative and the hunger to learn stuff. And you don't want to squash it by just having to do the same stuff in and out every single day. So let AI do that but allow them to do all the cool stuff that we all got into before. 

On the other side of that, I think there's a lot of healthy skepticism on how far this AI conversation goes. That's number one. Number two, the customer experience guys, right? If you eliminate the feel good human experience, like humans are designed to work with other humans. 

If you eliminate your part of that equation, you lose the relationship with your customer. And I think that's where you become more commoditized than ever. And that's where people will move elsewhere quickly without blinking.

So I think as a business, everybody has to make a decision. Are you trying to give people the VIP TSA pre-check global entry lane experience? Or are you trying to give people the, you can never get to a human being and I'm trying to computer you into oblivion so that I can hide the fact that you'll ever get to a human being. And if you ask my opinion and based on all the conversations I've had this year on this topic, I think that the hybrid approach is the winning approach and the too far into any one direction is the losing approach. 

I think that avoiding AI altogether and what it can do for you is probably not the right long-term approach. But I think going too far down that road and trying to take people away from the customer experience is a recipe for a disaster. I think you got to find a way to leverage both sides. 

That being said, Marv, I actually think some of this, if you do this right, and even if you adopt a new solution or hire a consultant temporarily just to get things set up, I think some of the automation that's available solves the higher end thing. And so you can actually need maybe not tier three, tier through people all the time to do some of the stuff they're doing now. That kind of stuff can be automated to a large degree and you're doing more customer service, client management, project management work than it is scripting and coding and command prompt type stuff. 

So I think that there's a healthy balance of things that can be taken into the whole, how am I going to run my business? What do I want my customer experience to be? I'm going to say something everyone's heard a thousand, 10,000, a million times. You are in the outcome business. Technology is just a tool.

So if you're going to forget that part, the customer experience part, then I think to Tom's point, we're in the people business and not in the technology business. And if you forget that, I think that's a problem. The backend stuff, you want to automate the backend, do some AI in the backend. 

Great. But we live answer our phones. There are places, I believe, this is just me, I believe there are places for the AI and for the automation, but with a client is not it.

And I think I'm going to call out Keith because we all love Keith. Keith Nelson's big thing is if you provide value, you can charge more. And I think he's a hundred percent correct. 

I think when you start throwing everybody into AI or agents or whatever else, I had to yell at an auto attendant today calling Spectrum. That's not fun. I think it also has to do with like your clientele, like the older clientele, they don't want to deal with AI. 

They don't understand it, that type of thing. But then like your younger generation, they would be okay with it to get results quicker. So like having the hybrid approach, I think it's also knowing your clientele and what they want. 

All right. So let me put this out there. I've been using this example now for coming up to 24 months, but I think it's very viable. 

We all have heard travel, right? Sorry, Henry, you're not on the call. Sorry, Dawn, you got stuck in the airplane connector. But Frontier Airlines in 2023 coming into 24 deleted their phone number. 

They sent their phone number to a disconnect message and said, you can only communicate with us through our app, period, end of discussion. I'm sorry. If that's the only way I can communicate with you in order to get whatever the price point that you're trying to sell me, I'd rather pay more. 

I do not want to be stuck with a cancelled flight and being completely SOL, not knowing if I'm ever going to get where I'm trying to go. That's not an answer for me. I don't know about the opinion the rest of the people are here, but I think that that's too far in the wrong direction. 

Absolutely. Definitely agree. And that's one of the main things, like Tom there, we live answer our phones. 

They press one button, they have a tag on the phone and we win so many deals because the previous MSPs, they're like, go online and put in a ticket when you call them. It's like they just dismiss them and we'll get to you type thing. And no one wants to have issues and wait three or four hours for you to call them back. 

They want it fixed now. It's Instagraphication, Walmart society, whatever you want to call it. But yeah, press one, you got a technician, they're loading in, helping out. 

And there are people in our office that are very personable. They're all rock stars. So I mean, it really helps out with customer service. 

To that end, I had a call with an MSP earlier this week, and they were frustrated that they had a tech contact, our support as a vendor, and they were going back and forth via email. And I was just like, Hey, we asked to move to a live call, like seven times in this whole back and forth change. And you guys were like allergic to that request. 

Like we could have had a five minute conversation and solve days of ping ponging back and forth. And what ultimately resulted in this conversation was, well, most vendors in our space refuse to have a live communication, like we have to have a major problem to get to that. And I'm like, we believe in the other way, we'd rather just solve the problem now, so that it doesn't get to that point. 

And so if you need to rewire yourselves, and I understand nine out of 10 vendors in the MSP space won't take a live call, that's their problem. We want that, so please call us instead. It's the same thing that I'm hearing from you now.

Yep. I know of at least two customers that I have almost based on the fact that I took their call. They were surprised that somebody picked up the phone and answered, and they love the fact that we do that. 

So that is great. And here's the other thing. Even if you don't solve their problem right away, the fact that they've talked to somebody and at least had a little sense of comfort as, yes, I'm working on it. 

You know, even if you try for five minutes and say, hey, look, I know we're not going to solve it right now. Give me a little bit of time, I'll call you back. And they're okay with that, as long as you call them back.

Yes. All right. I want to go ahead and open up our next award for best guests.

And this one is going to go to... Don't break it. I was shocked when I looked at it. Brook Lee.

Was it me or was it Leo? Let's just be honest. I don't know. Because for a long time, when the voting first opened, it was the two previous darlings of the channel, you know, Diana and Dawn, that were leading the vote. 

So this is... I'm sure they're going to be quite upset that they did not get this. But Brook, you got it. Awesome. 

Thank you so much. I'm super stoked. Now, let me ask you this. 

Do you think you got it because you're now at LionGard and you guys have, you know, done so much stuff? Or is it you? Maybe some of both. But part of it is the podcast that we did. I mean, we didn't talk a ton about LionGard. 

We talked about MSP stuff. I mean, we were talking about, you know, how to have vendor transparency. Who do you need to talk to? Who do you not need to talk to? What's a red flag? How to approach people, how to make sure that when you're going to partner with a vendor, the questions you need to ask. 

And if they won't answer those questions, you need to keep walking. So I don't think that has a ton to do with LionGard. Because, again, if you can't get those questions answered, you need to keep going. 

And also, I try to, we had a conversation, I think, on our podcast about the shiny object syndrome and how to prepare people to come to some of these conferences. Because there's a lot of MSPs that, I mean, they may only go to one a year. So I want you to get sort of your, the most bang for your buck when you go to those conferences. 

So like, you know, we were talking about having a plan, talking to your team, what do you actually need so that you, you know, focus in on those particular vendors when you get there, the questions you need answered, you know, how to sort of get the lay of the land. So, I mean, we talked, I mean, I don't really tell you that much about LionGard, but it was a whole bunch about MSP stuff and about how to navigate the channel. Because it can be really overwhelming as an MSP if you're not used to it, or it's your first couple of times come into an event. 

Because if you go to like a big one like IT Nation, Caseo Vegas, the PAX 8 Beyond events, I mean, there's just hundreds of vendors in there and there's thousands of people. And most of us are introverts anyway, as engineers and techs and whatnot. So I mean, it can be very daunting to have to sort of wade through that. 

So how do you sort of do those things in a way that you accomplish what you need to accomplish? You're going to have a good time, you want to network, you want to meet people. But at the end of the day, as an MSP, you have to have some ROI on the event. You have to come back with something for your team. 

Like, why did you go to this event? What are you bringing back to your team? So that's going to elevate your MSP. Do you need to replace a solution? Do you need something new? Have y'all realized that y'all have a gap in something? I need to go find email protection. We don't like our backup solution.

We want to switch PSAs. We don't like our RMM. So how do you sort of narrow that down to who you need to talk to? And again, I think those are important things. 

And a lot of vendors don't want to talk about that kind of stuff. But again, these events are expensive for vendors as well as the MSP. And I want to make sure, again, that you get the most out of your money. 

I don't want you to pay to come to an event and then you don't get out. I mean, I want you to have a good time and have fun, but you need to go back and be able to get something out of it so that you can say, this really helped us get to the next level that we were, whatever we were trying to fix, whatever problem we were trying to solve. Yeah. 

People want to know that they're going to get something and they're going to feel heard and listened to. And if you take the time, you know, to listen to them and talk with them, you know, whether it's before or after you scan the badge, that's what they're going to remember. You know, if it's all about. 

That's what I do at the booth. And that's why I've been extremely fortunate to work for the people that I work for, because a lot of times it has nothing to do with whoever I'm working for at the time. I just listen to the MSP. 

Tell me what you got going on. Let's see if we can figure this out. And, you know, it's not a me thing. 

Okay. Let me walk you over there. Okay. 

What you really need is you need what George has. So I need to walk you over to his booth, introduce you to George, pass you off over there, tell George what you got going on, and then I'll leave you voice to it. Or you, Rand's got what's going to solve the problem here. 

So I need to walk you over there and introduce you to her. And I think that's, I don't know, I think it's few and far between in our space, but that's definitely what I hang my hat on. It's what I'm known for. 

And I will never not do that. Again, my job is to try to help you figure out what the problem is and how can we help solve it, regardless of whether it's me or somebody else. And that's why you have to stay so plugged in to all the tech that's out there, all the vendors, all the everything. 

So when somebody needs help, I know which direction to kind of, to kind of get them in. And then Corey's commenting down here, because he and I were at the ASCII days. Again, I think that's where I really learned sort of to hone that skill is because it's a lot smaller MSPs there, smaller vendors, and that's where you make friends with people and you develop those relationships. 

To George's point, I mean, I develop relationships with all these vendors. So I feel comfortable taking somebody over to George's booth because I know George is going to take care of them. Or I take them over to Corey's booth at SonicWall and say, hey, Corey, I need you to take care of this guy or girl. 

You know, this is what they got going on. And I have those relationships and I feel comfortable doing that. I wish more people in this, in the larger community, the sandbox that we all play in, had the pay it forward mentality that we just heard. 

I mean, if we did, I think a lot of people do. It's better for everybody. It's better for all of us. 

Well, let me, let me, let me say that I think most people do. I think it's in the last few years when all of a sudden we have to mold to the metrics. That's probably the best way to describe it. 

Everything has to be based on some sort of number, some sort of return that isn't based on relationships. It isn't based on, you know, am I making your MSP better? It's based on other stuff. And I mean, I think Larry mentioned it, you know, yeah, we all want to make money, but I think it's how we make the money that really makes a difference. 

And if it's all about, you know, the numbers, if, if a vendor doesn't want to talk to me because I can't buy 1500 end points, yeah, well, fine. Move along. I mean, I'm not trying to talk bad about vendors, but I think some vendors are, you know, kind of a little pissy that way.

So, and I hate that because again, it's whoever the person is, it's coming to the booth again, tell me what you got going. Cause I think that's also the reason that you really have to stay plugged in. And that's why I go to so many events that I go to, because I get to talk to MSPs literally all over the world. 

And you learn what somebody's got going on. What are the hot topics out there now? What are they struggling with over here? And then I never know. I might talk to some guy in the UK somewhere, but then I come back over here and I'm in Denver and he's got the problem.

And I'm like, I just talked to a dude two weeks ago that's got the same thing. And this is how we figured out how to solve that problem. And now I can help this guy with what the conversation I was had before. 

Again, I think it's just, you have to have that. I don't know. I think that's just being to Larry's point. 

You just gotta be good people. All right. Let me do this. 

I'm sorry. I mean, that was a great conversation. Rayanne, I have a question for you, but I also want to make sure that I give the Millers a graceful exit. 

They only committed to being here a little while. We are at the first hour mark. The show will continue on. 

Millers, thank you for hanging out. We'll see you at TechCon 2026. It's on. 

It's on. It's on. All right. 

Thanks, guys. Rayanne, so as we talked about all this vendor talk and you being in PitchIT for the first time, kind of being on the other side of the fence in that regard with marketing and doing that. How was it for you to be at, let's see, was IT Nation the first time you had the big booth at the big event? That was our first booth ever, aside from Channel Pro when we would have tables at Channel Pro, which is where Brook and I first met. 

We did the whole circuit one year together. But I just kind of want to go back to what you were talking about just a minute ago. We're talking about these vendors, and yes, they put an awful lot of money to get into these shows.

To George's point earlier, just because you can't afford 1,500 seats or you don't have any use for it, you don't want to talk to them. They also need to realize, us as vendors, we also need to realize that people pay a lot of money to go to those shows, and they need to leave with value. Otherwise, they're not going to come back next year. 

Do you want to sell your whatever it is, fill in the blank, product, service that you're selling to these MSPs? Sure, but I think you would make a better impression on that person if you took Brook's approach to say, let me help you solve this problem. I don't have this solution for you, but I know who does. Let me take you over, walk you over, introduce you. 

They're going to remember Brook for that simple kindness and that reach out like, oh my gosh, this woman, she heard me, she understood my problem, she introduced me to somebody who's going to solve it. They're going to remember that far more than the 1,500 seats they bought. I hate to get on a soapbox for the 30 seconds here, but a lot of these big events, as far as I'm concerned, my personal opinion is very Disney World-like. 

Everything is monetized, and it's almost set up in a non-community way, meaning it's set up to have the people selling things on the right and the people maybe buying things on the left. I don't think that it's set up to generate the conversations that we're talking about. I think Brook's example is, she's just wired that way. 

It doesn't matter what hat she's wearing that day. She just wants to help people. Awesome. 

Love it. If everybody was that way, better for the whole community. But from a blueprint standpoint, that's not how a lot of these events are set up. 

I think that it's almost to the point where people have this perception in their head that they're always being sold to and there's an angle. I don't think that that's where a lot of authentic conversation happens when that perception is that way. Miracle on 34th Street.

Carl just put up a really interesting tidbit that the PE companies, they're really not interested in what value you get out of it. They're really more interested in what value they get out of these things. For us, yeah, we had our first booth at a big event, and it was a lot of fun.

We met some really great people. But for us, some of our best events were just having conversations in hallways. There's a group of people standing around in a circle. 

We're talking about just what the problem du jour is. Then somebody says, oh, I had that, just like Brook was saying. I talked to somebody, and we saw this doing this. 

Or, hey, have you spoken to George? Because they've got this really great blah, blah, blah. Those are the times where you're really making those human connections, not standing in front of a booth with a video behind you or swag on the table. That's not what makes those relationships.

The hallway track is the best part of most of these shows. I agree. And note to the big boy conferences, you need to put time in the conference schedule for those hallway chats. 

That's what a lot of the smaller conferences have done, where it's not as soon as one session is over, you don't have three minutes to run across the campus to get to where you want to go. I hate that. Those are like the worst, when it's just like you can't talk to anybody, because they're ripping and running to try to go to the next class, the next breakout, the next whatever. 

They don't leave any gaps in there. Leave time for people to get a drink, have a conversation, check the emails. Because if you do that, then they'll stay plugged in in the sessions. 

Because if you don't, they are going to check emails and everything else while they're sitting in there. That's when you see them on their laptops, somebody's up there on stage talking or whatever, and 90% of the audience is not listening because we're past lunchtime and there's been no time to do anything. And that's when you see them just like where they're really not focused on anything because you haven't given them any time in between the sessions and classes to do that. 

And there's too many of those conferences that there's one that used to be that way. They've made a big shift over the past couple years. It's all sales now. 

It used to be an education-based conference. It was one of the biggest ones that we had in North America. It's made a shift and the attendance has reflected that. 

They're not bringing in the people that they used to bring in, the numbers, because nobody wants that anymore. Nobody wants a sales pitch. I don't want to. 

I'm not sales. I'm not going to get up there and do it. I don't want to listen to a sales pitch for 45 stinking minutes. 

I mean, teach me something. I want to learn something. I don't want to spend $2,500 to fly out to just have you pitch me.

Or have to get up at six o'clock for seven o'clock breakfast. I think the other thing about that where you don't give people time between the sessions is that people burn out because by the afternoon, right after lunch, people start filling out. I'm guilty of it. 

Two o'clock hits and I'm burned out because of the fact that I've been in six sessions already. I'm expected to run between rooms. I'm going back to the room and taking a nap. 

Screw this crap. If they gave us more time where it's a little more relaxed, I'm more engaged. I'll be there all day.

They've got to give more value. Part of this is on the event organizers. You've got to push some of these vendors to tell them we need value. 

You need to provide value. Yeah, you can do a little smidge at the end about your stuff. If you teach people stuff, I've seen it. 

I'm in the rooms. I'm doing them. The room is packed when you teach people how to be better at something. 

People get up and walk out and leave in the middle. It happens all the time. If you're watching live, I put on the screen. 

Yeah, this is the wheel of names, folks, for the IT Business Podcast. There were actually there were a lot of people that voted. These were the, shall I say, the valid votes.

So, 33 names. There were a lot more. I thank everybody for participating, but these are the 33 that are going to be in the running for a gift card here. 

I'm going to shuffle the names here. All right. And then we are going to maximize the screen there so you can see it in full display.

And we're going to click. I don't know if we can hear the noise. I don't hear it. 

I think I muted the browser. But, oh, really? She was on here. Destiny. 

I will have to. She had to leave, folks. She did have a training to go to. 

So, that's why you didn't see her on the screen here. I'll reach out to her and see if she wants it or if she wants to donate it. But I'm going to do another spin here and see if we can get either a backup winner or a second winner for another gift card here.

And it looks like. Oh, Alexandra. Alexandra Boyd. 

She's one of the ladies on my Women in Tech group on GTIA. Did you recruit her to vote for you? Absolutely. I told them all to go vote.

Nice. It's a good group of women that I work with. I've been very fortunate to make some good friends and work with a good group of women for the Women in Tech program at GTIA. 

We have a core committee there and she's on the core committee that's helped us do a lot of really cool stuff. We cranked out a book this year. We did two sessions at various events together. 

Again, she's been a huge help. She's a great person. Okay. 

I want to let you know. So, the last two gift cards are presented by our good friends over at TruGrid, Secure Remote Desktop. So, thank them for that. 

I have one more award to give out and then we have open time here. Is everybody good or does anybody need to go? I can do one more award and then I got to go. Okay. 

I'm with Brook. Okay. All right. 

So, this is for Best Swag 2025. I'm excited to see this one and see what the swag was because I love some good swag. I won't pick up anything if it's not useful. 

So, this is Super Ops and that is probably difficult to see and I don't think I brought them in here, but these are wireless earbuds. They are over the ear and I actually use them. I was quite surprised at their sound. 

I am usually a Bose earbud type of guy, but these actually sounded pretty good and they actually lasted a good while. So, they were not cheap swag in the sense of most of those earbuds, I think, they'll last a couple of trips and break and stuff like that. I have had these for, I think, three months now and I actually took them on my trip to Canada and used them. 

So, they were good. Nice. So, congrats to the Super Ops guys. 

And let me just bring up real quick the voting just to show you guys how close it was here. Get this on the screen, get the dashboard up and then share this, share this screen. So, here are the three competitions. 

Best guess, the reason I asked if you recruited people to vote for you, Brooks, is, I mean, 60.61% of the votes. The other two races were pretty close. The best episode, 36% to 27% and the best swag, 27% to 24%. 

So, those were actually pretty close. I thought the Black Point Yeti was going to win. Yeah, those are always super, Yetis are really popular. 

Yeah. Because there's a lot of water bottles and stuff out there, but a lot of them are not great. Yeah. 

Right. But as I said, when the voting first started, it was, you know, D&D were in the lead and then, of course, LionGard just came in roaring like a lion. Got my peoples. 

So, there you go. That is the vote distribution, folks. So, that is there. 

All right. I still have stuff to do and some people to thank, but if you guys need to go, I understand it is, we are past there. Thank you so much. 

Thank you, Brook. I really appreciate it. George, it was great to see you. 

Tom as well, same, I will see you guys around in 2026 because I'm going to be out there again. All right. We'll see you then. 

Have a great holiday, everybody. And it was wonderful to see you. Thank you so much having me on here tonight, Marv, George, Brook, Tom. 

Great to see all of you. Bye. All right. 

I do want to thank a couple of the sponsors here. And then, of course, we have the holiday montage that will end off the show. So, let me do this real quick. 

Let me thank, I've got to thank the first sponsor here because they actually made this really work this year. So, of course, our show is presented by ThreatLocker, the zero trust security platform built for today's MSPs. Instead of praying your antivirus catches the bad stuff, ThreatLocker flips the script with a deny by default, allow by exception model. 

So, only the apps and scripts you trust are allowed to run. With powerful application, allow listing, rent fencing, storage and network control, privilege elevation, and more, you get true preventative security from a single MSP friendly console. And ThreatLocker keeps leveling up, adding integrated patch management, web control, 365 cloud control, and the user store to help you simplify your stack while actually tightening security. 

So, if you're ready to turn zero trust into a real competitive advantage, go with ThreatLocker. Check out the link in the show notes, your zero trust security partner. And thank you to ThreatLocker for being a sponsor there. 

And I almost timed that out perfectly. There. Let's see. 

LionGard was also a sponsor. OneStream by bvoip. I have you guys in there. 

And of course, TruGrid, we've mentioned earlier. Guys, thank you very much for being travel sponsors this year. George, where are you at, by the way? Are you up north or are you down south? I am actually, you know, home in Philly area, which is great. 

A lot of moving around like everybody else this year. But I might be taking a quick, quick jaunt up to Buffalo for December 28th, Eagles at Bills. Catch that stadium before they shut it down, move to their new building.

Yeah. And then starting off the year early. Gotta be headed to New Orleans January 5th, that week. 

So, it already started. All right. Tom, what's your next trip? Oh, Zero Trust World? Right of boom. 

Beginning of February. Right of boom. Okay.

Starting the year off in Vegas. Vegas. And in February when it's nice and warm.

Yeah. Maybe. Yeah, I don't think so. 

It wasn't bad last year. It's, you know, 50, 60 degrees, which is better than here because, well, today was warm. Today was shorts weather.

It was almost 40. Yeah. Yeah.

You're like Ken Patterson. You'd be in the North Pole with shorts on. It's a Michigan thing. 

I mean, I was at the gas station one time and it was 40 degrees out. There was a guy riding a motorcycle on with shorts and a t-shirt on. No.

When we go through the winter here, as soon as it starts to warm up, 40 degrees is the tipping point and people are out on their bikes. Wow. Okay. 

Hey, if you can tolerate it, if you're built for it, more power to you. I'm not riding a bike in it, but I'll wear shorts in it. Okay. 

I'm going to see you out there shoveling. I have a tractor for that with a heated cab because I'm old and sensitive now or something. I don't know.

Okay. I thought you were about to say you had a heated driveway. Oh, you know what? I thought about that, but no, that's expensive.

I know Marv's been thinking about it. He just has a heated, his driveway collects heat the whole year. So I experienced heated seats for the first time this past weekend.

I was up in the mountains of Georgia for Christmas. It was 35 degrees folks and 35 degrees in the mountains felt like zero to me but thank goodness the rental car that I had had heated seats and I never thought I would actually enjoy heated seats. So do you use cooled seats? No, just a seat, man.

Do you have cooled seats in your car now? No, they're just seats. I finally have a car that has both heated and cooled seats and cooled seats in the summer. That's life changing. 

It's, it's amazing. And I live in, I live in Michigan. It gets warm in the summer.

Yeah. I mean, heated seats we've had forever, but this summer with the, with cooled seats. Well, you just turn the AC on or roll down the window. 

You don't, you don't need cold seats up down here. It's that VIP experience Marv I was telling you about, man. You know, it's all about the bougie lane.

Yeah. Well, listen, I also don't have a real commute. I mean, it takes me, it takes me a minute to drive from my house to the office. 

So. Yeah. If I have to do either, you know, hot or cold seats between then, that's a problem.

It gets real hot down there in Florida, Marv. It does. That's, I just, that's why we work remote.

Fair. I was going to make a comment about all of the podcast episodes from the shows. Yeah.

And they're the perfect length because my office, my commute to the office is 15 or 20 minutes. So I can knock out two of those a day. Yeah.

Well, that will, that will continue. A lot of shows will be the 15, 20 minute mark. And then we'll still do, we'll still do the extended long format shows.

Uh, and then I actually might be doing some micro shows. So some little five, five minute, you know, quick hitters, um, talking with somebody about doing a special for that. But, um, you know, I need another sponsor because that's more work.

I gotta, I gotta hire editor and producer and all that stuff. Oh, but there's AI for that, Marv. Yeah. 

I've started using AI. It's, I mean, I use, it hasn't quite hit the mark. I've, I don't know if you've read some of my show notes, but that's AI it's, and I have to rewrite it half the time.

Yeah. It is definitely not perfect. That's for sure.

Yeah. So, all right. Um, I think that's about it. 

We've got, uh, looks like people are starting to trail off here. Uh, we still got some listeners and viewers. Thank you very much for those of you that stayed. 

I see somebody just put in hashtag Holla. That's a little late. Well, Brook left. 

That's why. Oh yeah. Well, she probably recruited the viewers too. 

So probably had half a lion guard, uh, doing stuff there. Um, so let me do this. Let me do a closing monologue and then I will end with the video montage. 

Uh, it is three minutes. So it's, it's, it's lengthy, but it is a recap of everything from the year before I do my closing remarks. Uh, I usually allow for the guests that come on to say anything they'd like to say. 

Do you, you guys have anything that you want to, you know, throw out there to the people for 2025, some, some nuggets of wisdom or things to look forward to in 2026? Yeah, absolutely. First, uh, long year, but a fast one, you know, I guess everybody experiences things and stop and go, but, uh, you know, every year should be a learning year. You're not learning, then you're not doing something right. 

So I'm excited for 26. I think that there's like the next two, one, two, three years. Right. 

I think we're in a transformational, you know, time in our industry. So I think a lot of cool things are going to come out of the next couple of years. So buckle up. 

It's going to be fun. Yeah. But to Tom's point, it's still about people do not, whatever it is that we're talking about, whatever new trick up your sleeve, there is remember the human element. 

You're in a human being business. Second, you forget that, please go do something else. Other than that, enjoy the holidays folks. 

And looking forward to seeing you guys in 2026. Yeah. Same thing. 

Same thing George said. I mean, this is, I'm excited for the AI and the automation and stuff like that, but you can't, we can't let it get in the way of the, the relationship we have with the clients. That's it. 

You know, if I can free up time for my texts to do more customer facing stuff, that's what I want to do. And just, you know, keep learning, keep learning, keep moving forward and, you know, never give up. So happy holidays. 

Thanks. Well, I appreciate you guys and what you said there. And I want to also reiterate that. 

Yeah, it's been a long year. It's actually been a long few years for me, both with the business and the podcast. So I do want to say, if you, even if you're watching this after the fact, if you've watched this to the end, or if you're listening by audio to the end, I know that it's either, you know, through long days, you know, or long nights patching windows early morning commutes listening in your ear and stuff.

I want to say thank you. I know that for the most part time is probably the most valuable thing you have and to ask you to come on and watch the show live or listen. I can't take it for granted when you guys do this. 

Next year will be the 10th year of this podcast. It's not been the same name, but it has been 10 years that I will have done this podcast. I actually didn't think I would do that for this long, but I have, I do not have an end in sight.

So I know that most of my success has really been because of a lot of you out there that have been with the show from the beginning the pod nuts community, the MSP unplugged, the community, the peer groups that I've been a part of the conferences that I've been able to be a part of. It's not grown just in numbers, but in depth. A lot of you we actually call each other friends because we see each other and talk to each other so much. 

It's not just something where, you know, I see you once a year or we talk all the time. We have honest conversations, we share playbooks and we help each other in ways that I'll be honest, never make it to the air. So a lot of you guys wonder, you know, how my business is. 

Those conversations I have with listeners, I have with peer groups. Some of them will never make it to air. Some of them will at some point. 

But thank you for your time to the sponsors and partners. Another heartfelt thank you to you as well, because to be honest these shows take a lot of time and money. I mean, to pay for the hosting services, the equipment to travel to the conferences and do the shows.

I try to keep it separate from my business and being able to get the listener support through Ko-Fi or Patreon or the sponsors, that helps. I appreciate it. I know that I said it earlier at the beginning of the show, sometimes the return doesn't look as flashy as spending, you know, $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 on a conference.

But I think the genuineness of the people that have listened to this show, that have participated, that have told me what the show means to them. And it's not really because of me. It's because of you guys. 

It's because of the guests I have, the conversations we have, that people have been able to make choices to do their business better. Some of them have told me that they probably wouldn't stay, they wouldn't have stayed in business if it wasn't for a show like this. And I know there's others out there. 

I know there's competition. There's more podcasts. There's more webinars. 

Every vendor is doing office hours and chats and stuff. So when you choose to come here, I really appreciate that. As we all head into 2026, give yourself some credit because I know a lot of you have spent many years doing this.

This will be year 29 for me. And I know some of you have lasted that long as well. And take time to acknowledge that we're here. 

We've survived. The systems have stayed up. Be thankful for the clients that you've renewed. 

Be thankful for the fires that never made the news because you quietly handled them. And look ahead with some intentionality. What will you add next year? What will you stop doing next year? What will you double down on? Who will you bring along for the ride? So I, again, want to thank you all for being a part of the IT Business Podcast. 

Whether you've been here for years or whether you just tuned in for the first time in 2025, keep sending your questions, your stories, your feedback. They help shape the episodes. They help me find the right guests. 

They help the direction of the show. And with that, I'm going to say goodnight. And I'll say that until next year, take care of your business, take care of your clients, and take care of you. 

That's the most important thing. So that's going to do it, folks, for this episode and this year. I will see you again in 2026. 

And until then, Holla!