Video: How To Be An MSP Channel Champion Through Community

hey Channel insiders I'm your host Katie boso and welcome back for part two of my interview with Henry Tim CEO of MSP Phantom Technology Solutions if you're not caught up on part one head on over to Channel insider.com right now in this half of the interview we dive into the many industry Community groups and boards that Henry is a part of in including one peer group he helped co-found called the tech degenerates I'd like to move on to talk a little bit more about you and your involvement in the it Channel which is expansive I have to say I mean just looking at your LinkedIn page you're involved in several different peer groups I think right now I've got you on seven advisory boards is what I've had written down such as threat Locker super Ops you're on three with ktia just ktia alone so that's impressive to know that they have that many you could be involved with your pro proactive but why be this proactive and be on so many boards I think it's really important one uh that I give back to the community because I have been able thankfully to be in a place now where I I am able to get back and and hopefully help someone else get through uh some of the mistakes that I made uh because I've made several throughout my career and will continue to but giving back where I can the other part of it though is I believe in trying to educate and democratize as much of the resources as possible for those in the industry so making this as available for those smaller startups because frankly and uh selfishly I need those smaller msps to understand that there's things they need to be doing better to better secure their clients so that it doesn't taint the rest the name and reputation for the rest of us and then I guess uh thirdly is I'm looking at how as a industry I can help shape what the future legislation might look like and what those future requirements might look like so some of the things that um been passionate about doing over this last year for example have been about building out resources for vendors to build better go to market strategies uh for their products and how to better align themselves with some of the security Frameworks that are out there like CIS so that someone on the buying side understands exactly what their product is capable of versus not and uh where it best suits and fits uh client needs that are out there to provide the protections that we all truly need and with that comes a peer group that you helped co-found along with several other players in the industry that I think many people would recognize Don caer Mark men Juan Fernandez hi everybody and the name itself stands out to me as something that I have definitely been familiar with over the years the tech degenerates and I absolutely love that name I'm going to give you credit for coming up with it just because you're the one that came on on the podcast but for those who don't know what is the tech degenerates and how did it start after all of these other peer groups that you've clearly been so passionate to belong to where did you see the need to start your own the tech degenerates is a community that is made up of msps and vendors alike with kind of an equal footing and playground there to share resources back and forth freely it started uh purely accidental as a text chain actually between several of us trying to keep up in between events and share resources back and forth and some of our knowledge and it kind of grew into this life of its own uh chat where at one point uh I think the group chat technically had somewhere around 150 people in it so it was just scrolling by all day long with kind of a who's who in the industry of leaders uh just kind of sharing uh different resources and stories and experiences throughout the day so we tried to tame it a little bit by so that it could actually be consumable and so we migrated over to Discord but we've been using that as since it kind of organically formed as a method and means uh for us to kind of further couple different priorities one obviously around the community because there is the demand for it but also starting to build out some free education some Consulting and enablement for vendors and msps and then also some of the uh tools and resources that we all kind of wish we had when we were starting out I'm going to put you on the spot right there is there an example you can give me in which you helped maybe a more Junior MSP through Tac degenerates uh and give them a resource that they otherwise might have crashed and burned without we actually have a informal peer group that uh started within it of several uh smaller msps and they've uh leaned on other msps in the group for uh Sops for buying power we've seen some people assist as far as getting individual jobs done or uh if they have an employee last week I know that there was a vendor that had an employee that they needed to place elsewhere and was able to do so through the uh through the group fairly quickly so there's definitely a lot of community uh connections that are happening there just to kind of share those things back and forth for some who might be new to the space or who might just not understand the need for Community like that who might say isn't that help your competition how do you respond to that I think that the there's a lot of strength in um kind of the culture of abundance rather than obscurity and I think that even if someone were to open another MSP right across the street from me with the same tools very much we're going to approach business in very different ways and that's part of the reasoning behind the name of the tech degenerates is we didn't want to be seen as Ivory Tower it can only be done way and way way to find success we wanted to have some humility in the fact that there are a a bunch of different ways of uh being successful in the uh industry and our individual definitions of what success looks like are all going to be very different and I think that a large portion of us look at helping each other just in general is kind of one of the core tenants of the industry uh to be involved I love that I think it's so important to be able to reach out and help because I can imagine that so many people first starting out were terrified were excited were uninformed were biom Majors who just went to a hospital and said I'd like to change a few things so I think it's incredible that you form this group with the purpose in mind of giving back even more than you've already done so with those other groups if I'm an MSP and I want to get involved with the tech degenerates is there anything I can do to get started or do I have to pass any tests do I have to do any quests a lot of msps find us at shows a lot of our group actually either will be at a booth or you'll see them around in some weird costume because they always seem to find a costume for different events that they're at look for the photos if you don't uh you're unfamiliar but the other thing you can do though is Hop on social media or on our website Tech degenerates docomo which is just kind of a free flowing ongoing discussion there's also a monthly happy hour call that happens Thursday of the month uh every month and that's uh very akin to like going to one of the events and hanging around the hotel bar just kind of free flowing conversation that ranges all over uh it's usually a really good time and unlike any other industry call I've ever been on because it will start at uh 8:00 pm and it sometimes goes till 2 am which is just craziness to me but uh people are obviously having a good time with it and aside from that one of the other things you can do is you'll be can uh look for us we have a ly live stream where we take a channel topic and kind of break it apart so I know our next one will be about what you don't know about industry events about what goes into them and what goes on in the background and all the cost and everything that as a consumer on the MSP side you may not be aware of so when you're not happy about the snack selection that goes on in the hall in The Pavilion at the end of the night understand that somewhere maybe a cost had to be cut and they went with soft pretzels it's okay make it there's a bar outside so I want to get back to talking about Phantom Technology Solutions because I really want to give you an opportunity to talk about one specific success story that comes to mind that if you could brag this is what you would brag about to show the strength of your company is there one that you might be able to tell me a client that you might be able to share with me about two years ago now someone else's unfortunate situation became our our win um and really all credit to my team there was another MSP that had been acquired uh in our area and the acquiring company decided to stand down their uh book of business uh with 30 days notice to all of their clients we were able uh through mutual connection to take most of those clients on within that uh period by working uh intently with our team here internally but also with our vendor partners that really stood up and helped us migrate a lot of collocated servers into what uh new hosting situations while we built out the infrastructure and and essentially onboarded uh I believe 44 customers uh in that 30-day period so just in an insane lift um that we were able to do not without hiccup but really kind of showcase the the power and stick to a diffs of our team here to make sure that we got the best success that was possible for those clients I'm sure the piano behind you saw a lot of rage chords here and there throughout that period of time for sure that's uh that's always a good outlet for me anytime I need to get some emotions out your team down the hall can listen and say like okay this sounds like a light-hearted song we can knock on the door exactly so moving on and wrapping up here Henry I'd love to know we talked about that m&a activity we've talked about AI we've talked about a whole bunch of Trends but are there any Tech trends that maybe I haven't brought up that you're currently following closely and considering uh bringing that into your company to your clients companies or maybe you've already done this one of the big things we're pushing right now with our clients well I guess both with our clients as well with our vendors is the adoption of the uh CIS uh Center for internet securi uh framework that they have and the idea being that we want to be uh have some defensibility and what we do for our clients in their choices and what they are showing to their insurance providers uh that they are doing and their investors that they are doing from an IT standpoint so we're working very hard with our clients to make sure that we're helping them adopt CIS specifically implementation group to and hire if uh they are a regulated industry and uh we're working uh on the vendor side of that is helping vendors understand what safeguards and controls they actually help fulfill and can potentially move their products to help further uh fulfill expand their uh target market and offering aside from that we're also pursuing currently the CompTIA security trust Mark as a means to just show our clients that we're taking everything as seriously as possible and to show our support for CompTIA and their initiative around this of showcasing that not only are we holding ourselves to a higher standard uh around cyber security but the way that the trust mark is set up is that it is constantly being evaluated by a third party over a period of time so that even if you're doing the same stuff four years from now uh you could be marked down and lose the uh that trust Mark so they're they're highly incentivizing the idea that you need to always be working towards better security better policies and better systems for your staff and uh clients absolutely I like the word you you use saying incentivized because I think it's very important to do something of that structure to keep people constantly improving because as you said you could be doing the same thing but four years from now it just won't cut it you have to keep up the thread actors will keep up you got to keep up with them you belong to several of these different uh boards but are there any vendors that you're working with right now that are just doing a great job and you might like to shout them out at the moment because they're just a a partner with a couple that I I really enjoy working with obviously uh a little partial with threat Locker they've been very good to us I think they're doing some cool stuff and they've got some neat things on the horizon that I will be looking for but that also been very impressed with some of the things that connectwise is doing to kind of reinvigorate and reinvent their own business even as a a big Behemoth in the industry which is encouraging to see an organization like that do and then uh always keeping an eye out on things like uh Halo uh PSA is doing a great job with their product line and seeing some things pop up like stry which is an EOS platform so it's more of that business process side of thing rather than a uh technical but it is focused primarily on our MSP market so it's uh interesting to see some vendors like that popping up and excelling at what they're doing so as for you in Phantom Technology Solutions Henry is there anything coming up this year that you need help investing in any charitable efforts that you're you're taking a part in anything that the audience can do to help support you so one of the uh big upcoming things that we're going to be doing from the tech degenerate side of things is going to be involved with it Nation uh coming up where we will have a mini track of Education uh that we get to build out for the event and so we'll be looking for people to be involved in that but we will also be working with connectwise on the uh charity cause this year as well so we'll be looking for any donors and uh people that want to be involved with that as well on the Phantom portion of things we're always looking at different ways of giving back to our local community so there's about 26 different local charities that we're involved with so even if you're not a client we offer ways for you to be involved with some of those different charities in the area and whether that's you know showing up to help with the food pantry or uh some of the education resources for students in the area uh schools and Henry if we'd like to get in touch with you if we're a customer maybe even an MSP that is looking to get involved in everything that you're currently involved in and getting some advice what can we do to reach out to you and to Phantom so the easiest way to get a hold of me would be on LinkedIn I believe it's Henry L Tim on LinkedIn and can you always email me anytime you'd like at HTM Phantom ts.com and you can also visit our website Phantom ts.com uh or my personal website Henry tim.com Henry thank you so much for all of your insights today it's been a pleasure talking to you and I wish you the best of luck through the rest of the year thank thank you so much Katie thanks again to Henry for joining me and thank you as always for watching or listening you can check out all episodes of Channel Insider partner POV on Channel insider.com or watch on our YouTube page at Channel Insider news and Trends you can also listen to every episode as a podcast on your favorite podcast listening platform don't forget to like subscribe and follow wherever possible so you never miss an episode once again I'm KY boso and I'll see you next time

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