Surviving MSP Pressure & Burnout (EP 825)

[Uncle Marv]
Hello, friends. Uncle Marv here with another episode of the I.T. Business Podcast, the show for I.T. professionals, managed service providers. Providers where we help you run your business better, smarter and faster.

You are joining us if you are watching live. The Wednesday night open house party and my guest tonight, Dawn Sizer from Third Element Consulting, is in the house. Some housekeeping stuff, folks, we're going to get right to it here pretty soon with conferences and I.T. nation stuff. It is going to be a busy, busy summer. So I just want to let everybody know that we have one live show next week in the two following weeks. I have no idea if I will be able to do live shows.

I will be attending I.T. Nation in Orlando, specifically I.T. Nation Secure. And that conference goes through June 2nd through the 4th. So is that Monday through Wednesday?

I don't know if I'll make it back in time to do a live show that night. I will be having interviews while I'm there on site. And then the following week, that next Sunday, we fly out to Denver for PAX 8 Beyond and I will be there and flying back on Wednesday.

Last year, when I tried to fly out on Wednesday, my flight got canceled. So that was a big old mess. But this year, I'm hopefully flying out early on Wednesday and should make it back.

But we will we will find out, of course, if you are listening to this by audio and it is the morning after. So Thursday, May 22nd, you might catch us in time. I have a special show with Rob Ray.

We are going to be doing a PAX 8 Beyond preview that will be recorded and released on Thursday. So it should be a very good episode when we do that. So some industry news today.

Apparently, Google has confirmed a major update to Chrome's password management system targeting all three billion Chrome users worldwide. It was a car going by. This move is designed to significantly enhance user security and simplify the often tedious process of updating weak or compromised passwords.

So what are the key features of the update? So Chrome's built in password manager will now offer. Thank you very much to automatically change a weak or compromised password for users on supported websites.

So when Chrome detects a problem such as a password that has appeared in a data breach or is simply too weak like one, two, three, four or password, it will prompt the user with a one click option to generate a strong replacement and update it instantly. So Chrome will not change any password without user approval. So, you know, user consent will be required and it is only going to be on supported websites.

And there are some links here. I'm not going to go into which supported sites those are. This update builds on Chrome's existing security features such as strong password generation and dark web breach alerts.

So why does this matter? Well, of course, you know, everybody is trying to fight the billions of stolen credentials circulating on the dark web. Cyber criminals are increasingly targeting weak passwords.

And this is going to be something that if you yourself are not a user of strong passwords, you should make sure that your clients are. So I'll have a link to this story. So make sure that you are communicating this to your clients, because I know if your clients are like mine, you have users that are doing all their stuff in Chrome, saving their passwords in the browser, all of that stuff.

So that is going to be something to take note of. And another big announcement for those of you still on Windows 10 or still have clients with Windows 10, Microsoft has released an urgent out of band update for Windows 10 to address a significant bug introduced by the May 2025 security update. KB 5058379.

This bug caused some systems to boot into the BitLocker recovery screen or experience repleted. Blue screen of death errors effectively locking users out of their machines. So this was a part of Patch Tuesday.

The Patch Tuesday update was intended to fix 72 security vulnerabilities, including several critical zero day flaws. However, after installing the update, a number of users, primarily those with business class hardware, reported that their devices were stuck at the BitLocker recovery prompt or entering the blue screen of death. So this is affecting Windows 10 22H2, Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021, Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 and devices with Intel vPro processors, which are 10th generation or newer, that include the Intel Trusted Execution Technology or TXT enabled.

So there is a fix for it. They released an emergency update KB 5061768. It is available exclusively through the update catalog.

So it's not going to be found through a standard Windows update. So you can download that. Microsoft advisedly.

Microsoft, God, why can't I speak to that? Microsoft strongly advises all affected users to install this fix immediately to restore normal system operation and prevent further lockouts. And if you cannot access your system to install the update, Microsoft recommends temporarily disabling Intel VT for direct IO and Intel Trusted Execution Technology, that TXT thing in your BIOS or UEFI settings, then rebooting, and it may allow you to bypass the BitLocker prompt and access Windows to install the fix.

So two big industry news items I thought I would let you know about today. All right, since I can't talk, let me have a sip of my trusted drink and. I don't know if Dawn will be drinking, but I'm trying to I got to get rid of these cord lights that have been in my office fridge for a while since we've not had any visitors here.

We will be drinking. So with that. Let's move along in the show.

Joining us, Dawn Sizer, the co-founder and CEO of Third Element Consulting with over two decades of experience in the MSP space, Dawn has built a reputation for delivering high availability, IT solutions and compliance expertise to some of the most demanding sectors, including law enforcement, government and highly regulated industries. Her company's commitment to white glove service and minimal downtime has made them a trusted partner for clients who simply can't afford to be offline. Dawn isn't just a business leader.

She's a champion for authenticity, transparency and strong client relationships, which have fueled Third Element's impressive client retention and growth. She's also recognized as a great voice in the channel, a frequent speaker at industry events and an advocate for neurodiversity and inclusion in tech workplaces. Whether she's sharing best practices on automation, compliance or the power of peer learning, Dawn brings a unique blend of technology know-how and people first leadership to every conversation.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome to the show my friend, Dawn Sizer.

[Dawn Sizer]
What's up? That was a lot. That was a lot.

That was way too much. I told you, just make it a trainwreck. It would be fine.

Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
How about that? How about that yellow dress?

[Dawn Sizer]
Well, you know, that was for a, um, uh, what is the horse race? The Kentucky Derby is a Derby thing. Yeah.

So that was that was the yellow dress thing. So it was the Kentucky Derby party. Oh, my gosh.

It was a couple of years ago.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. If you are listening to this by audio, this is one of the reasons why you should watch the show with a microphone. And we have it here on the YouTube or LinkedIn.

Had a nice little collage of photos for Dawn Sizer. So very nice.

[Dawn Sizer]
My Facebook.

[Uncle Marv]
What was that?

[Dawn Sizer]
So you're a creep in my Facebook.

[Uncle Marv]
Listen, if it's out there on the Internet, I'm going to find it. And there you go. Congratulatory claps from Frank in the chat there.

[Dawn Sizer]
Golf claps. I know exactly. Actually, Frank contacted me earlier today.

[Uncle Marv]
Really?

[Dawn Sizer]
He was looking into. Yeah, he was. He was looking into some of the marketing folks that we use on the regular and wanted to know how that went.

So I'm actually curious. So, Frank, you'll have to let me know how it went. Hopefully the meeting went well today.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, if you would stop. You know, stiffing us on our, you know, informal peer group meetings. Are you are you still a part of our group?

[Dawn Sizer]
I am. I see the better part of that. For those of you that don't know, it is an informal peer group, but it uses my teams.

So, yes, I'm still a part of my own team's group. Yes. No, hopefully.

So next Thursday is our official move date. So everything is still in flux. We still have a couple of things laying about yet.

And obviously, Dave stuff is still in the background here. But we're almost there. Closing was Tuesday and we have possession of the new property as of Thursday.

[Uncle Marv]
So now is this a personal property or a business property?

[Dawn Sizer]
Personal. So we've been 23 years in the same place. So packing up 23 years is a lot.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. And you're moving to the big house.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yes. The big house.

[Uncle Marv]
Let me ask this. You have a propensity for purchasing his purchasing historic properties there in Mechanicsville. So is this a historic property or is this a modern building?

[Dawn Sizer]
It is a modern home. It ticked all the boxes that we were looking for. And I'm super sad, actually.

It's a little chilly here. For those of you that can see, it's been in the 50s. It's been in the 50s all week here.

The pool was opened. There's a pool. I'm very excited about this pool.

And it's freezing cold.

[Uncle Marv]
The pool was open. So you do the whole thing where you have to close the pool. And I don't even know when to rise it.

Is that what you guys call it?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, I guess I guess it is. I don't know. I haven't had a pool since I was a teenager.

So we're going to have to figure this out. And apparently it's in ground pool and salt and all kinds of things. So it's a little different than what I have in this.

[Uncle Marv]
OK, because you may not know this because you've never visited, but we have a pool, but it's open 365.

[Dawn Sizer]
All the time. So you're on my schedule. All right.

You're on my schedule. I will see you not this week, but next, because I'll be at IT Nations.

[Uncle Marv]
You will, right?

[Dawn Sizer]
I will. Yes. I'm excited.

[Uncle Marv]
It'll probably be in the 90s when you're here.

[Dawn Sizer]
So lovely. It's just what I wanted to hear.

[Uncle Marv]
But it's a wet heat. So let me let me just go ahead and ask. So for people that may not know, of course, that nice introduction, third element consulting, you guys have been in business over 20 years and stuff.

Let me, you know. Let me just go ahead and ask. I know that, you know, we've talked privately about, you know, changes in the industry and where things are going.

Is there anything that, you know, you see right now that kind of stands out as something that you think other MSPs should pay attention to or is there anything happening, you know, with your business that you think is going to be setting, you know, a trend or, you know, changing in the next couple of years or so?

[Dawn Sizer]
So let me shake my magic eight ball. And yeah, exactly. I mean, the best thing I can tell everybody else is, you know, look at look at what you're doing.

Talk to your clients. What is working? What is it?

Do they see some of what you're doing as a as a commodity? Right. What is the commoditization look like of this particular industry?

And where are the areas that you can really lean into to bring value? How what's your differentiator? What makes you different from other people?

The people that you have in your MSP probably have some skills that maybe some other MSPs don't. And I would I would look at that. That's one of the things that I would do.

I would also watch what some of your vendors are doing. Right. There are some interesting things happening, I think, in the in the channel, in the industry in general.

So I would I would watch what's going on. There's one vendor that's been advertising on TV for about the last year, and they're not advertising to MSPs. They're advertising to the general public.

[Uncle Marv]
There's more than one of those, by the way.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah. So I would I would watch those carefully. Pick your vendors carefully as far as that goes.

So like I said, I don't want to I don't want to call people out specifically, but that's one of those where I would really watch what some of the vendors are doing, how they're doing it, the way they're going about it and whether or not they're going to cut you out of their future plans. So I would I would make I would make steps with my MSP and we have to diversify some of what we're doing. We're leaning into certain things that other MSPs aren't.

And, you know, talk to your clients, see what they're really looking for.

[Uncle Marv]
So part of the reason I asked that question when I was going through your intro, you know, you specifically work with industries where they literally can't have downtime. I mean, we're talking, you know, sectors where every minute really does count for something. Most of us deal with clients, you know, even if we're in a retail situation.

Yeah, they can survive for a little bit without something working. In Florida, we're used to not having power from time to time, stuff like that. So most of us have dealt like that for years.

But we're getting to the point now where people are expecting. Uptown, uptime, they're expecting the cloud to always work.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
And the pressures on us are growing, not just with that, but also with our diligence in dealing with, you know, cyber attacks, ransomware, phishing emails where, you know, we've almost got to think. About this stuff 24-7, even though we've got to take time off and sleep and stuff. So have you been talking to anybody about those changing landscapes?

[Dawn Sizer]
I mean, I think we've all talked about those changes. I mean, you and I have even talked about the changing landscape and what that looks like. And I think one of the things that we don't talk about enough, you talked about the pressures on us, right, because it is a lot.

And we joke about it. And this is one of those jokes that I think we've all heard a time or two. And you may have heard me talk about the margarita and hot dog cart.

I'm just going to sell the business and do that instead, because there's like way less pressure to do that. But the reality is that there's a lot of mental health strain in this industry. A lot of people don't realize that that's the case, like, oh, you just sit behind a computer all day and do X, Y, Z.

But that's not true. Not only do we have the weight of our business on our shoulders, but we have the weight of our entire client's businesses on our shoulders, their expectations, what that looks like, what the landscape looks like, what our vendors are doing. It's a lot of different pressures that we deal with.

So I don't think we pay attention to the mental health aspect of it enough and what that looks like and whether or not we're taking care of ourselves, whether we're taking care of our employees. I mean, burnout is big in this industry. So I think there's something to be said for all of that.

And it the other piece to that, again, depending on who your friends are in the industry, where you've made friends in the industry, being able to pick up the phone when you do have an issue, especially for those of you that don't have employees. It's really important to be able to pick up a phone and call someone and say, hey, I'm dealing with X, Y, Z. What do you know about this?

Can you help me? I mean, I'm trying to do a trying to do a thing. I know you and I did this just the other day with the Domotz situation.

I was looking at something. I'm like, hey, I know somebody that uses this. I'll make a quick phone call.

See if he has a couple of minutes to walk me through and, you know, just get the thing done. And that way I'm not Googling for, you know, 25 minutes trying to figure out that it didn't do exactly what I needed it to do. But I figured out a way to get the information that I needed talking to you, which was fantastic.

And it saved me lots of time.

[Uncle Marv]
You mentioned a couple of things of being able to, you know, pick up the phone and call somebody. I had a couple of calls today, and it was interesting because one of them was about hiring and dealing with texts. And one of them we ended up talking about just, you know, where how are you feeling, I think, was the question that I got asked.

And I remember saying that, you know what, I'm happy. I think I'm right where I need to be. And.

That conversation. Went another direction, but it got me to thinking about this whole. Thing where we are being told as MSPs how our business should be by industry leaders, by vendors, by other MSPs.

And I'm kind of the person that has really, I don't want to say not listened. That's not the right way to phrase it. But I, I know that my business model is different.

It is not your typical MSP model. I do what works for me. And I always try to tell people, do what works for you.

Find the vendors that, you know, have the products that support your customers the way your customers need to be supported. So when you talk about all of those things, you know. How do you deal with it?

Because you're in a much different situation than I am. You are looked up to as one of the leaders. You are looked up to.

Don't shake your head at me. Because people look at your business and they're like, yeah, man, I want to get there. And there, there is a different spot for a lot of people.

[Dawn Sizer]
So I heard, I heard us. So we are clear on all of this. This was not on the agenda.

I would not derail this this time. But this is this is a fantastic topic. I heard a statistic today, and it was that 60 percent of this entire industry never breaks a million dollars.

And I would I would believe that. I think that's probably a pretty accurate statistic. So when you say that everybody's in a different place, I think that's very true.

And I don't know that there's a right place. Right. I think the right place is wherever, wherever you as a business owner or as a tech or whatever the situation is, is comfortable.

Right. Are you making a good living? Are you happy?

Whether it's a hobby business, whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're doing it yourself, whether you have 50 people, whether you have 10 people, it doesn't matter. Are you happy? Are you in a good spot?

Are your people taking care of, you know, that kind of thing? I think that's the important thing. I think as you mature as a business owner, as an MSP owner, as a person in the industry, I think you figure out that there is no one set way of doing things.

There's a flavor for everybody involved. I mean, I think when I first really started into the channel, it was a whole lot of like, well, the way that we do things, that's the right way, obviously, because it's working. But the reality is that I think it's kind of like you could roll dice, right?

It's like playing Yahtzee. You know, you can roll them, you know, a couple of different ways and you can get to a certain number, a couple of different ways. Right.

I don't think that it's any different with the tech stack that we use. You can get to the same outcome with different products, with different ways of doing things, with different ways of doing things. With a different ideation and still have happy clients, still have a profitable business, still have good employees.

You're just doing business a different way. So are you doing business differently? Are you doing business the way that works for you?

And I think you're doing business in the way that works best for you, Kamara, the business owner.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. You want to get back on track?

[Dawn Sizer]
That was a long way. It was a really long way of saying, I think everybody has the right of it in their own way.

[Uncle Marv]
You do you.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, you do you.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. All right. You mentioned the Domotz thing.

I wasn't sure if I was going to ask you about that, but can I ask you about that? Do you want to tell people what was going on and why you called me?

[Dawn Sizer]
So I had a situation where we had some slow Internet and it was a whole lot of like it was it was random. It was some craziness. We were trying to figure out what was going on and we couldn't figure it out.

And we had we knew we had an issue with a firewall at what point. And we thought we had gotten that fixed. Turns out we did.

And there was still a lingering issue. I'm like, OK, well, do we have access points that are that are going wonky? What's going on in all of this?

So it was it was a mixture of things. But at the end of the day, turned out that we had a switch that was completely flaking out. And like I said, we it was a new switch even.

So that, you know, usually you think if you have something new, it's going to work. Right now, not today. So it was one of those deals was like, you know what?

Let's flip this box on. Let's see if we can figure it out. I was hoping I could get to a point where I could basically just do a trace route down through from the Internet down to, you know, different pieces of the network and see if I could just see where it was failing.

And we got to the point where it was like, oh, look, there's packets dropped all over the place from the switch, which is what you helped me find. And that was that was the end of that. But yeah, that's what was going on.

And it was like literally the first five minutes of donuts and me together. I was like, you know, screw this. I'm calling Marv.

And we'll figure this out together, because like I said, it was just it was something I wanted to do quickly to see if I could figure out what is it? The switch was a wireless access point. Or did we one of the guys thought we have a buried line from building to building and it's a fiber line and we did not want it to be the fiber.

[Uncle Marv]
Oh, yeah.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
Interesting. Well, glad I was able to help, although I wasn't sure how much I helped. But the fact that you just had a box laying around was pretty cool that you could flip on and turn on.

[Dawn Sizer]
To be fair, Dave had ordered. Dave's my husband, by the way, and also my CTO and CEO. But he had ordered some little Chinesium thing.

It was just a little tiny box. Yeah, it was pretty cool, actually. And had ordered it for just this purpose and was going to put it through its paces and see how it was actually worked in our network, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And hadn't gotten it like the whole way working yet. And he was out of town and this happened and I was like, see what happens.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So also, for those that don't know, if you haven't listened to the show, I recently did a optic versus domo series and I had MSPs and representatives for both companies come on to the show. We did a total of three shows so far, and I was going to do a wrap up show afterwards.

And one of the reasons. That I was so cryptic in the way I did the show was because I did not want it to be influenced by me. And the reason I say that is because I use domo's and I've used them for years.

And to be honest, I've even I've never even looked at it. So I wanted to make sure.

[Dawn Sizer]
It's really pretty.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice, nice, nice purple colors. But I wanted to you know, one of the things that I've always wanted to do with this show is to be sure to give every vendor the opportunity to shine. Because just because I don't use something doesn't mean that I shouldn't give other people the opportunity to find something that works for them.

So I try to have as many vendors on the show as possible. And that was that was my way to get off the show, to be honest with you. And I'm very happy that they did that.

Very glad that they decided to join and be a part of that. But yes, I use domo's. I've used it for six years, seven years now.

I even have my logo on the boxes. So that way, when it's at a client place, they know that's my box. But I love it.

And for the thing that you were talking about, I know that I had directed you to try to go into, you know, the device that you were looking at. And specifically, we talked about going into the switch and looking at the bandwidth on the switch, checking for latency, lost packets and stuff. And that is just fantastic.

If you have a managed switch or managed switches in your network, you can see those things.

[Dawn Sizer]
Well, and to be fair, had had the box actually been truly up and running, it wasn't we literally had it shut off. I turned it on when I called you. And had it been up and functioning, working the way that it was supposed to be working with that amount of packet loss, it would have thrown a ticket into our not queue.

We would have known that that's exactly what was going on. So I think there's. That could have gone in a way better manner than it did.

But again, we weren't we weren't to the point of doing a full vetting of the product yet. So it's just it was just one of those things. I figured, you know, we have the thing.

I don't know if it's on it. We're just going to, you know, turn it on and see what happens, see if we can see anything before we go poking at a fiber line.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So I put that in all of my locations. And I don't care if it's two computers or 200.

There's a domo box going in there with managed switches and stuff. And that has helped me so much just to have that there. Yes, it's always running.

You can go back and look at historical views. One of the things that I was going to do at a later show, but I'll go ahead and do now, I had started to talk about an issue that I was having with my ISP at a client move where we connected all of their stuff at a new location. And all of a sudden we were having network drops and we couldn't understand.

It was a brand new service. Everything had come up exactly the way that it was downstairs, except for one thing where. At the old location, we had phones and computers completely segmented, meaning the computers won one switch.

The phones were in another switch. But in this new location, the client did not want to double up on network jacks and stuff. So we had a lot of the phones sitting behind.

I mean, a lot of the computers sitting behind the phones. And it was only the computers behind phones. Well, let me rephrase that.

The whole network was blipping out. But when we were trying to locate it, I had my ether scope there and I couldn't really see what was going on. And I'm thinking, well, maybe DHCP is turned on the ISP side because they tried to run an MPLS.

We were running VLANs. We were running VPNs back to other offices. So there was a lot going on.

And in normal situations, the ISP would turn on DHCP and they would manage the network for both the voice and the data. And we said, no, we want to manage it. Well, to make a long story short, my Domotz kept showing me a conflicting IP.

With our gateway. And could I have changed the gateway? Yes, but I didn't want to because I didn't want to have to go through and manually, you know, force a reset on all the machines.

We had some DHP DHCP static stuff set up with the. Assignments and reservations, and I'm like, I'm not going through all this. But I argued with the engineer at the ISP.

For like 10 minutes telling him, no, you have a device somewhere, either in your Cisco Meraki or your VeloCloud that is set to the same IP, and here's the MAC address. And I went and then I went into Domotz and I had the history of all the times it would go up, it would go down. I'm like, here it is.

See it. And they're like, oh, yeah. Even though they had DHCP turned off, they still had something assigned to our gateway address and got them to change it.

But I. All I kept thinking of is what about other people that try to have these fights with without that, without those forever?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we've all been there.

[Uncle Marv]
We have.

[Dawn Sizer]
I mean, it's usually DNS, but, you know.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. Wasn't DNS this time. So I want to go back.

We're going to take a break here real quick, but I do want to frankly made a comment. No way. Those were loud claps.

And then I see that Giles has joined us at least for a minute to say peer relationships help for sure. And Giles also helped me out with a question today as I was helping somebody else out, I had I had missed. I had a.

I got the vendor name mixed up when I was giving a reference to somebody. And I had to reach out to her to say, hey, is this the company you use? She's like, no, run away.

[Dawn Sizer]
She's awesome. Have you seen her ASCII thing yet this year?

[Uncle Marv]
Yes, I have.

[Dawn Sizer]
It's really good. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
I have. Let's do this. Let's.

Let's say thank you to. Our sponsors here, of course. We are presented by, I guess I should turn off that.

Joys of a live show. What is wrong with that ally? Our premier sponsor, home of the ether scope, the link sprinter and all the tools in between.

They give you fast, reliable network testing in your palm of your hand. And when I head out to IT Nation in two weeks, I will be doing Internet live shows. Thanks to rhythms, the Internet in a box.

Steve Copeland in his monkey suit. Not sure if I have him pose by the booth there and do that. I've got some travel sponsors, of course, be VoIP, reliably.

Perfectly clear VoIP. TruGrid, remote work, zero compromise. And remember that camera device that we couldn't get to work?

Lion Guard is our gear sponsor, and they helped me get that. And I think I figured it out. So, Don, if you come and do a podcast with me, we should be able to have the camera not veer away from me just because you start talking.

[Dawn Sizer]
That was awesome. Yes, it was.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, here, let's see who else is joining us. Oh, Giles says, thank you, Dawn. Oh, all right.

OK. What else do we want to talk about tonight?

[Dawn Sizer]
I don't know what else is on your list.

[Uncle Marv]
So I'm in the middle of this vendor etiquette thing. Both vendor etiquette and MSP etiquette. I should probably have had the link set up.

But if you go to the website, ITBusinessPodcast.com, up at the top, there is a survey for both MSPs to talk about vendors and a second one for vendors to talk about MSPs. And it's just a couple of simple questions to ask. What are things that you look for in a business?

MSP slash vendor relationship. What are some good things that have happened? What are some bad things that have happened?

And I'm going to talk about them at some point. And I've got some very interesting things that have come up. But I know that some people have kind of hesitated because they don't want it to be in black and white written down.

Even though I said it's anonymous, nobody's going to know. I'm not calling out people for that stuff. But I've had people reach out to me and say, hey, I want to tell you this story, but I don't want you to say it was me.

I'm like, I'm not going to say it's you. But I do want to get some of some of those discussions because we have them. But nobody wants to have them in a nice, constructive way and say, listen.

Just a simple question, how can I improve my relationship? With either the vendor or the MSP? Because vendors talk about us, we talk about them.

But folks, we got to live together. So I will ask you this, because if somebody asks you the question. You're going to have a different answer than if they ask me the question, you know, how do we have a good relationship with our vendors?

And I know that in some sense, some vendors would give you preference because. You are a certain size and you purchase a certain amount that the vendor is going to do whatever they can to keep your business in with me. Your little boutique, you know.

Less than a thousand in points, whatever.

[Dawn Sizer]
So here's my take on that. I think there's in a million and one conversations that I've had with a million and one different vendors. They all have a different outlook on what their ideal client looks like.

And some of them are numbers. And to be fair, some MSPs look at numbers, too. I know you do with some of the clients that we have.

So I think that's I think that's a fair assessment when they're looking at an ideal client. Right. And maybe you've got the ideal client and maybe you don't.

But I also think that they need to look at an organizational maturity level also as part of that. So maybe there's a number, but maybe there's also an organizational maturity. Right.

So your organization is more mature than some other folks are. You know, the questions to ask, you know what it looks like, you know, going in. This is how I'm going to use your particular product.

This is what I'm looking for to do. Does it do this? Yes or no.

Can I get it at a price point that both my client and I can be comfortable with? Yes or no. This is how I like to do business.

Can we can we meet in the middle? That sound about right.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Dawn Sizer]
It's not that different for me.

[Uncle Marv]
I can tell you this. There are a lot of vendors that they're looking at the relationship from a standpoint that it's not just about numbers. And I think I can say this without offending too many people.

So I get looked at differently than other solo techs because I have a podcast.

[Dawn Sizer]
Mm hmm.

[Uncle Marv]
And the fact that I can say great things about a vendor or I could not say anything about a vendor. I can give referrals. I can do a lot of that stuff.

But you can do the same thing. People come to you saying, hey, who do you use? And then there are situations where it is, like you said, all about the numbers.

[Dawn Sizer]
Right. And again, I think this comes back to the flavors. Right.

We may use, you know, X, Y, Z product. But there are three other products that do some of the same things, depending on whether or not you have, you know, ABC product. You may want to look at something a little bit different because you're going to have too much overlap between the two.

Like there's all kinds of ways to look at this. I think at the end of the day, you have to be very satisfied with who's leading the ship at that particular vendor. What that looks like, right.

What their values are and whether or not your account manager is any good, because that's going to make or break a lot of that relationship.

[Uncle Marv]
I tell you what would help is if I had the same account manager more than a year.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, right. And I have some I really do have some really good account managers at some of the places that we do business with. And in fact, I just got to spend some time with mine from Sherweb out in Chicago.

Jacob Lohman, who's just awesome. He's just a stand up gentleman. And I really like him a lot.

[Uncle Marv]
All right.

[Dawn Sizer]
So shout out to Jacob.

[Uncle Marv]
Shout out to Sherweb then.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
I don't use them, but I've heard good things.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, we're happy with them.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So I'll give one survey response just to give people an idea. Here are the questions.

So, like I said, three questions. Number one, what are the most important qualities you look for in a vendor relationship? So this person, let's see, the three things that they checked were trustworthiness and reliability.

Open and transparent communication and ease of doing business. And there were some other ones in there, but those were the three that this person chose. What was that?

[Dawn Sizer]
I'm just clearing my throat.

[Uncle Marv]
The second question, what do you think is the most common mistake vendors make in their etiquette towards MSPs? This person, lack of responsiveness or follow up. Over promising without delivering.

Disrespecting your time and boundaries. That's probably the one I hear the most.

[Dawn Sizer]
Calling my cell phone on repeat that I didn't give you a number for.

[Uncle Marv]
Yes.

[Dawn Sizer]
I don't like that one.

[Uncle Marv]
That was probably one of the rants that I did a while back where somebody called Kim's cell phone.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, I remember you saying that.

[Uncle Marv]
And I was like, how the hell did you even get that number?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
Because that is nowhere in any listing, public or private, associated with the business.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yep.

[Uncle Marv]
So I think I know how it happened. I'm not sure which vendor specifically, but I do know that there are two vendors that when they ask you for that emergency contact number, I'm like, we're not giving that number ever again.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yep. Yep. Yeah, there's plenty of times you go to conferences and they request that you or request or require that you have your cell phone number in there and that gets sold.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, that's why. That's why I have a bat phone. I don't blame you.

Let's see. Describe your best and worst interaction with a vendor related to etiquette. What made it memorable?

Ooh, do I want to say this on the air? You know what? Listen, in all transparency, folks, I'm going to I'm going to read it as it's written.

Talk amongst yourselves. Best. Threat locker has never bugged me before or after the sale.

Worst, Kaseya calls me once a month, even though I've told them to stop. That's the that was the submitted survey.

[Dawn Sizer]
I had one same vendor there in the latter side of things, reached out to another client of theirs, gave that client my contact information to have them contact me to go around to not have the special K person contact me directly. So they gave my personal information out to another client to have them contact me.

[Uncle Marv]
Sorry for that.

[Dawn Sizer]
That was probably the one of the worst ones. Yeah, that was that was not OK.

[Uncle Marv]
So full disclosure, I use threat locker and I have some products with Kaseya. I don't know how much Kaseya calls me, but they call me. I don't think I've ever gotten a call from threat locker either.

But and this is not going to be just Kaseya. I know that there is a big push right now for vendors to have their account managers stay in touch with the MSP. Which I'm OK with.

If I want to be in touch with you.

[Dawn Sizer]
Right. That boils down to the preference, right? The preference and the way you want to do business.

Like I have account managers with some of the products that we do business with on the regular and we touch base once a month. We're friendly. It's a really good relationship.

It's great. Nothing wrong with that. They keep us up to date with things that are going on, anything we need to know.

If we have questions, they answer them then. You know, if there's anything they can't wait or whatever. But other than that, I mean, and then there's also products I never hear from anybody because it just keeps on keeping on.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I probably if I were to be honest, I probably don't want to hear from vendors except for maybe once a year. Yes, if there's product updates or if there's a special or something like that, I'll be on.

I don't need to talk to somebody. I just don't. Why don't I have the time?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, that's fair.

[Uncle Marv]
And even if I had more staff, I want to I want to do my business. I don't want to. I mean, there are so many vendors in the space.

Yeah, even if we took one vendor call a day from a different vendor, there are too many vendors to have one call a day. Does that make sense?

[Dawn Sizer]
It does. It very much does. We recently changed over some of our backup product to another vendor, and it was probably one of the smoother ones that we've done.

I think that was that was really good. Their technical team, their account management team, their professional services, they were just really good. I was so cheers to enable because that was really good.

Really? Our team is very pleased. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Nice. All right.

Here's a rant. I'll do a rant just to get people started to go to the website and fill out your thing. This is what I would like from the vendors.

If you have more than one product and I purchase at least one or maybe two of those products, do not attempt to sell me on every single product. In your portfolio. Every single week.

[Dawn Sizer]
Have you ever seen the mummy? The movie. The friend and friend.

[Uncle Marv]
No, because.

[Dawn Sizer]
OK.

[Uncle Marv]
No, I'll just leave it at that.

[Dawn Sizer]
There is there's a there's a gentleman in this in this movie, and as the mummy is coming at him, he's got like a whole bunch of different religious relics on. He like holds one up. No, that doesn't stop him.

Hold another one up. No, that doesn't stop. No, that keeps going.

That's what it feels like from some of those vendors. Like, what about this one? OK, not you don't want that.

What about that one? No, don't want that one either. But we have this one over here, too.

No, no, thank you.

[Uncle Marv]
So I really think it's probably more a management of their CRM. Because a lot of. Those situations, I think that one product line doesn't talk to the other, and they have different databases, so you may have yeah, you may have this product over here, but hey, what about this one?

Like you said, and no matter how many times I say. I cannot do that because of whatever reason I may be in a contract, I may have already looked at it and it doesn't fit my stack or whatever. There needs to be some way to mark those in the CRM that is not.

[Dawn Sizer]
I don't even know what the right word is, but I assume I assume things. Right. I probably shouldn't, especially with products that have been acquired.

Right. They're probably still in the original CRM. Right.

And different team, different product team is using different databases, like you're saying. So I think there's some grace to be had for that, because I feel for them and nobody, you know, one hand doesn't know what the other one's doing. But I'm with you.

Like if you've acquired something. Maybe bring it into the CRM so everybody has that information, that'd be great.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. I mean, that's my only real thing. I mean, I even get I even understand the fact that if there is there's a sales tactic to where new account managers will get old list.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
And you may get a call from a new person. Hey, I'm your new account manager. I'd like to chat with you about your business.

I've talked to three of you in the last three months. I don't want to talk to you anymore about my business. Yeah.

But at the same time, I feel bad for them. But I get it.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
But please, please just put in the CRM. Do not contact me unless this many days has passed or. This changes in your stack.

I don't know something, just I think it's a CRM management. I don't think it's necessarily a personal thing.

[Dawn Sizer]
And I think some of it, there's my question, I guess, for the rest of the MSPs out there. How many of you have ever been interested in a cold call phone call or bought a product from a cold call phone call? Like, who does that?

You're like, oh, I mean, I wasn't thinking about buying a GRC product, but now that you've cold called me, I should I should do that. Who does that?

[Uncle Marv]
OK, but it must work.

[Dawn Sizer]
Right.

[Uncle Marv]
Like because it's because that's who I don't know who. All right. So let me let me give you a story.

And this is going to be so my second job here in Florida when I graduated was for an insurance company. I don't know if they're still around the New England.

[Dawn Sizer]
Just I got I got very excited for just a second when you said my second job. And I was like, oh, you put the Iguana thing into practice.

[Uncle Marv]
No. But the way that we had to start selling was literally pull out a phone book and start calling. So for those of you that are not of the age to understand that, yes, there were physical.

Four to five inch phone books, and that's how I had to sell. And this is my first call. I got an appointment.

[Dawn Sizer]
Wow.

[Uncle Marv]
And everybody was, first of all, shocked because apparently you're not supposed to get an appointment for like days. But my first call, I got an appointment. And I'm like, all right, that works.

[Dawn Sizer]
How hard can this be, right?

[Uncle Marv]
So it works. It happens. People do respond to cold calls.

How else do people get tricked by I am calling from the remote support department?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, I don't know. I think it's more along the lines of. And maybe there's a certain demographic that when you're when you're in buy mode or when you're in discovery mode, I think is probably at that point, right?

When you're in discovery mode, you're going out, you're looking at whatever it is that you're interested in. You're figuring it out. And then you're figuring out, OK, there's two different ones.

Don't want to know that thing, right? There's these two things. I know I'm zeroed in on those.

So I'm going to test both of these things. At no point did I get a cold call for either one of those and decide one or the other was the way I was going to go or anything else. I was just research that I did on my own as part of the discovery process.

I went out and took a look. If they cold called me, I would have hung up on them anyway. I wasn't there.

That was not the stage that I was in. And then, you know, when I'm when I'm ready to buy, I'm just going to go online and do the needful. So.

[Uncle Marv]
Let me do a real quick search here on my LinkedIn, because the LinkedIn is getting to be the equivalent of a cold call where somebody sent me and we won't be able to find it now, but somebody literally. And this was either today or yesterday, sent me a message that was just literally, hey, I see you're in that industry. We should connect.

Blah, blah, blah, and I'm like, really, that's it. That's how you're going to.

[Dawn Sizer]
That's all I got.

[Uncle Marv]
I should have if I find it, I'll let you know, but it was just one of oh, here we go. So somebody sent me a request link on the LinkedIn and then a few minutes later sent me an email saying, hey, I just sent over a LinkedIn connect request and I wouldn't mind if you wanted to connect back.

[Dawn Sizer]
They wouldn't mind. Did you do it?

[Uncle Marv]
No, no. First of all, they don't meet my requirement limit. We don't have fifty five connections in common, so that ain't going to happen.

[Dawn Sizer]
All right, nice.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, so guess what it's time for, Dawn?

[Dawn Sizer]
Is it Florida man time?

[Uncle Marv]
It is time for Florida man. And I have a not it's not your typical Florida man story tonight, but a Florida man named Jeffrey Innocent. Was recently involved in a widely reported altercation in Green Acres, Palm Beach, Florida.

Despite his seemingly ironic name, Innocent was accused of several serious offenses at a sober living facility on May 20th. So according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, Innocent attempted to bring two bottles of alcohol into a sober home as a guest of a new resident when confronted by a resident about the alcohol. Innocent became agitated, leading to a verbal dispute in the driveway.

During this confrontation, a small bag containing an unknown white substance fell from Innocent's pocket when the resident tried to pick it up. Innocent allegedly attempted to stab him with a double bladed knife, but the man but the victim managed to evade the attack. The situation escalated further when another woman tried to collect the narcotics.

Innocent reportedly lift her and slammed her onto the concrete, causing her to briefly lose consciousness. After the altercation, he left the scene. Deputies later found him about a thousand feet from the sober home.

During his arrest, he reportedly damaged a police vehicle by kicking the prisoner's partition, causing $1,000 in damage. He was subsequently booked on charges of aggravated assault and criminal mischief. And by the way, he's 34 years old.

[Dawn Sizer]
Oh, I mean, that's impressive.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Dawn Sizer]
Reminds me of, I think it was an old cops episode, um, guy had narcotics in his pants and he's like, those aren't my pants. Okay.

[Uncle Marv]
So when I do my Florida man watch party coming up soon, we're going to, we're going to be doing those. We're going to have bingo cards. And one of the, one of the, one of the bingo spots will be not my pants.

[Dawn Sizer]
Not my pants. All right. I like that one.

[Uncle Marv]
Um, so I've not been having people challenge Florida man stories, but you, you came prepared tonight.

[Dawn Sizer]
So I did. Well, I was, I was struggling between this one and the one where the guy shot his neighbor's cow. But that's, that's old.

This was pretty good. So Florida man is facing charges for marrying three Florida women in three different counties at the same time.

[Uncle Marv]
That was last week.

[Dawn Sizer]
It was three weeks ago, actually, but it's pretty good. It's pretty good. He took each one of us, a County over to get married, said Brandy, his first wife.

So apparently none of the counties check on the marriage licenses. So if you need to get a second or third or fourth husband or wife, you just go to different counties in Florida and there you go.

[Uncle Marv]
So here's the, here's the best husband or wife. So, so, so the names were Michelle Betsy. Yes.

Brandy and Tanya. Those were the three names. And the dude was posting pictures on social media.

Like was nobody going to put that together? Well, let's see here. What I forgot what triggered that.

So Tanya was the one that suspected something. Oh, well, you know, so she was the Tanya was the first wife. Brandy was the second and Michelle was the third.

So Tanya started suspecting something. And so this is the part of Florida too. So remember when live PD was on.

[Dawn Sizer]
I don't remember live PD, but I remember cops really well.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, live PD was the update to cops and live PD would air Friday and Saturday night for three hours. And they would literally show live clips. Pasco County was probably the most popular County of all of the offices across the country because the craziest stuff happened in Pasco County.

So see Duval County was down here. Manatee County. Hernando County is right next to Pasco County.

[Dawn Sizer]
Oh, well, that explains a lot.

[Uncle Marv]
So he was only charged with felony bigamy.

[Dawn Sizer]
And I mean, it wasn't doing any. It's not like he shot his neighbor's cow five times.

[Uncle Marv]
No, no. So his sentencing is scheduled for July and he could face anything from probation to up to a year in jail. That's it.

[Dawn Sizer]
I wonder if he'd get married again in jail.

[Uncle Marv]
He'd probably have somebody send him a little pen pal life. My name is Anne Marie. All right.

So besides her, thanks for hanging out.

[Dawn Sizer]
Well, thanks for having me. I'm glad I could join you this evening.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, I probably should have said this in the very beginning because some people were probably expecting Michael George from Syncro to be on the show because I've been promoting that. He had to reschedule and I reached out to Dawn. It wasn't last minute, but it was.

I mean, it was fairly close. I mean, it was less than 24 hours.

[Dawn Sizer]
No, I think you gave me more heads up than that.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, if you had checked your phone while it was charging.

[Dawn Sizer]
I was hacking.

[Uncle Marv]
That was awesome. That was, that was the most, that answer when I saw that. So to give, to give more context to this folks, I had, I had touched it.

Dawn from the bat phone. And actually all I did was say you're busy. So, and you responded, I don't know what two, three hours later and you said, sorry, my phone was charging.

I was like, does it not work while it's charging?

[Dawn Sizer]
No, I had, I had put it on the charger. I have a little phone charger by my bed. So I put it there and I went downstairs and I was packing up stuff and I didn't check it for a little while.

So my bad on that.

[Uncle Marv]
That's okay.

[Dawn Sizer]
I didn't know you were going to text me.

[Uncle Marv]
Listen, it's Uncle Marv here from the bat phone. You never know when that signal is going to come.

[Dawn Sizer]
I will try to be more prepared from now on.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Hey, listen, I was just glad you were, you know, here in the country and available and you know.

[Dawn Sizer]
I am always available for you.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, folks, that is going to do it for this Wednesday episode of the IT Business Podcast. I was going to say like convict or something. We are live most Wednesday nights here at 8 p.m. Eastern. I have shows all the time, both audio and video. So be sure to follow the show. You can head over to ITbusinesspodcast.com and find your audio channel for your pod catcher. Subscribe to any of the social medias, YouTube, LinkedIn or the Facebook. And you can be notified when these shows are released, specifically tomorrow with Rob Rae, as we do the Pax 8 Beyond preview. So we will be back next week.

I think it's I think it's going to be titled Fix Your Face. OK, I'll leave you with that. It should be a good show.

But thank you, folks, for attending live. Thank you to, let's see, Frank and Giles. I didn't see I didn't see the stoic in there tonight.

Who else? There's some other people probably hanging out. So we're in a 30 second delay.

So we'll get somebody that will pop in after we get off the air here. So do it. Thank you to my friend Dawn Sizer for hopping in and attending the show with me.

That is going to do it. We will see you all soon. Maybe at IT Nation, maybe at Pax 8 Beyond.

If not, back here on the show whenever you tune in. Thank you very much, folks. We'll see you next time.

And until then, holla!