Video: How To Tap Into The Tech Advisor Community

hey Channel insiders welcome back to channel Insider partner POV your source for untapped opportunities and unfiltered opinions in the it Channel all to help you make Better Business decisions I'm your host Katie boso and hey speaking of opportunities have you heard of Technology advice the parent company of Channel Insider if you're a vendor or solution provider looking to engage more Partners or customers we've got the tools and resources you need for more reach out to our vice president of sales Dana cell dana. sell technologyadvice.com okay back to the interview my two guests today are a channel power couple who started their own business together created a thriving Channel advisor community and move their family from the US to Portugal and back all within the last 5 years me Ashley and Ryan Roland Partners in running adaptive advisors and co-founders of the technology advisor Alliance in this episode we dig into why Ashley and Ryan value fostering community over competing with businesses like their own and why living abroad was a dream come true but there are probably some things you should consider before running your business from a different country welcome both of you thank you for having us thank you so much for having us on Katie let me kick this off by introducing adaptive advisors this is the business that the two of you run together and I have a whole bunch of questions about how you run it with your spouse but why don't you first tell me what is adaptive advisors and a little bit about what you do as advisors inside the technology Channel Community adaptive advisors is a technology brokerage so we help businesses Source their Telecom their uh connectivity their Network their collocation their cyber security all the typical technologies that businesses need to communicate better and uh run their businesses um so our business started uh five years ago now and it's just the two of us it's it's small on purpose we went through a lot of trial and error to figure out what we wanted our business to be and you know it's really grown organically and so we're really lucky to have our business and you know the fact that these businesses are even possible is something we're super grateful for very much so and what I love is when I follow the two of you on LinkedIn and on social media you love to be able to do Outreach to the community and that I believe is what spurred the now two-year-old technology advisor Alliance and I want to be able to introduce that too so can you tell me a bit more about what exactly the TAA is uh and what kind of community You're Building there so technology advisor Alliance is a pure Community um we don't have Technology Solutions Distributors we don't have vendors it's strictly a peer group where we can share kind of the intimate details of our business the core of it is an online social media platform so it's you know 247 365 always on there's a mobile app and you know it's crazy we'll see like these amazing conversations happening and we're like you know it's 1: in the morning and people are just like go hard you know like talking business strategy and it's pretty cool I want to back up for a moment and talk a little bit more about the advisor space uh again you started this like you said five years ago right before the pandemic so I'm sure that that was a a fun wrench that probably got thrown into everything but when it comes to the advisor space inside of the channel can you tell me for those who might not be familiar with what you do how do you differ from some of the other solution providers out there and talk to me about the Specialties when it comes to the technology that you literally advise your clients to go after yeah know the msps and bars end up being a lot of our best Partners um you I think that's something that a lot of people confuse they're like oh you know you guys are probably going head-to-head with these guys all the time but a lot of times there's a great yell uh symbiotic relationship there they have kind of their core product set and offering a lot of times their white labeling Services because they want to be experts you know they want to control everything they want to control that experience they want to have the in-house engineers and in-house implementation people that know that solution inside and out so they want to go to a customer with you know like a really buttoned up product offering and they can you know support and Implement and Bill all of it but then there's all these other components that fall outside of their core offering where they don't necessarily want to be experts and the 5,000 other vendors out there that their customers might possibly be engaged in and that's where we can really come in as you know kind of a trusted partner with them you know we can sit through the vendor meetings we can really like work with them and figure out what their customer wants you know what they're trying to achieve with the technology and we can say okay you know for these goals these are probably going to be the three or four very best vendors let's bring them to the table let's work through the solution and then let's match them up with the best possible vendor make sure they're paying Equitable and fair pricing for it it just benefits everybody and Ashley why don't I kick this side of the question over to you is there anything the vendors can do or try to do when it comes to impacting your decision to advise your clients on their technology um the most important thing is are they going to take care of our customer these days you can't just use marketing right you can't just say like we're the best at this or here are all these paid awards that we won you know you really have to prove it so I want to see testimonials case studies um I want to hear rave reviews from customers because the worst thing that we could ever do is put the wrong vendor uh in place with one of our customers so um I want to know can I trust that vendor the second thing that they can do to make it easy for us to choose them is just be easy to work with you know there's so many vendors that make it really complicated or if you uh bring an opportunity to them they demand to have a meeting with you sometimes you know I'm I'm looking at there's a there's quite a few vendors that I'm looking at you know so I don't have time for six meetings you know this week just that are introductory meetings um if you can make it easy for me to learn information about you as the vendor that will make my life easier that will make it easier for me to want to work with that vendor with that in mind let's shift gears talking about technology advisor Alliance we reviewed this a little bit in the beginning uh you started it in 2022 what about the creation of this Alliance did you feel was necessary did you see something missing when it came to the community of advisers out there on the channel oh yes think about um content right so have you ever like signed up for a webinar because you're like oh I want to learn this and then you find out it's just a sales pitch right or or like you sign up for a webinar to learn something and then you you get like a swath of prospecting emails after you attended that webinar you know that that kind of stuff really annoys us we thought that there was a lot of fluff in our industry you know a lot of tons of sales pitches we wanted a place where peers whether that's technology advisors msps you know um anyone brokerages you know anyone that's selling to customers um we wanted a place for these peers to connect you know and share advice share strategy talk about vendors all of those things without any sales pitches without any like bias you know um I always think about um like when I'm hiking like I'm terrified of rattlesnakes I just even recently bought Gators to cover my nobody wears these in Boise but there are tons of snakes so I was like I don't care I'm going to cover my um my ankles and my feet with these giant Gators um but like when you're hiking and you see a rattlesnake on the trail you know you you definitely are going to tell the next hiker like hey there's a rattlesnake up there on the left you know it doesn't take away from your hike right it doesn't like take away from your business to share advice with the next hiker in fact you feel good about it because you know like that person's not going to get bit and have to go to the hospital or maybe die like you saved them right it's like the same in our industry um you know like before the TA um at least on the ADV advisor side I know the msps are much better at um being in forums and being in groups and sharing information but the technology advisers didn't have a place to do this so the only time we would ever build relationships with our peers is when we you know go to Technology Solutions Distributors events like you know intellisis event scans Source event you know Taris event those kind of events and when you're there you know you might get lucky to bump into another Pier so now they have a place that they can go and have these conversations without vendor involvement without their Technology Solutions distributors or their Pax a or whoever no oversight um so it's it's just a peer group for each other and we felt it was really needed and um we were right because people are people are getting so much out of it and um you know the community is growing growing at a very exciting pace so when it comes to creating that community my mind I was thinking well why would you want to help your competition but why is it not like that why is that mentality that maybe I'm approaching it with not the right one and how does this idea of community help your business and it's really been a mindset shift the the Technology Solutions distributor channel has been very siloed and there has traditionally been sort of a prevalence of this like scarcity mind mindset like I'm not going to help fellow advisers because they might come in and win a deal that could have been mine um but the reality is there's so few of us compared to the addressable Market space out there like we are just scratching the surface on you know the total potential market share that we can take and you the competition is in each other like it's not Ashley and I against another advisory you know it's against the centures of the world or you know direct teams that are trying to push Channel operations out well Switching gears from there I know that the two of you are very big on work life balance and I think the people listening to this are just like wait uh these these folks run their own business they started and run a whole Community like they're probably working 247 uh but you also just moved back to the US after 10 months living away abroad in Portugal with your children and that blows my mind to think that you were doing everything we just talked about in a country that you you don't even you're not even from so I first of all why why Portugal Why move your whole family why uproot and say this is what we're going to do for almost a year we've always been a little bit nomadic um when we met we lived in Colorado and then we kind of decided we wanted a new adventure we ended up uh arving through a big chunk of the pandemic uh just traveling the country full-time with two babies a dog and a cat oh gosh um a new business and a new business yeah doubt but I think we kind of had this like itch to like really try something super different like totally unknown um so we started looking uh internationally and you know you grew up in Pennsylvania I grew up in Colorado we've always been landlocked we wanted something totally different so we wanted that like Mediterranean climate live on the ocean um so we started looking at okay where can we go Portugal is a beautiful country beautiful weather uh they had a you a digital NAD Visa program that made it feasible for us to to go and we just went for it and it was a really incredible experience uh for us for our family it definitely scratched that itch for something new and you know really gave us that Adventure experience we're looking for but I think it also gave us this uh just incredible perspective on home um um and you know sort of a new found appreciation for the United States and you know just what a wonderful country we live in as well and yeah like he said it was wonderful like don't get me wrong we had so much fun but it was really hard to work there I have to say we lived right on the beach so when you're looking out at the ocean all the time and you see this big beautiful beach it's like should we you know work or should we just go for a nice walk and make this mimosa and enjoy the beach right so um and we we did a lot of our working at night too which we thought would be so easy because you know we do a lot of you know marketing and video content and such at night those are that's a creative things that we were able to do here in the States but in Portugal our night was us daytime so we would have to be on meetings at night speaking to customers or our community members or or whatever we were doing and that's a different ball game like being on and on camera at night is really hard what do you think that you learned from that experience that you would advise to others I mean for those of us working out there who uh maybe the day-to-day looks a little too monotonous and we're thinking how do we shake this up would you advise them to move to another country and continue to try to operate their business from there or what did you take away from that experience that you think you advise to one of your peers let's say do it I mean as long as it's not going to be like financially ruinous to your family like it was it was hard uh for us there was definitely a lot of challenges along the way um but trying to start a new business while traveling in an RV was super hard too but yeah if you overthink it you can find a million reasons why you shouldn't do it while there's too many tasks there's too many barriers there's too many hurdles to clear clear but if you just kind of set your sights on the goal and just start chipping away at it you know that's what we did and yeah I think we traveled out like end of April to do kind of a scouting trip and then we just went for it it goes for anything you know you want to write a book write a book you want to start another business start another business you know the worst thing that can happen is you fail like you could consider us going to Portugal a failure it's not a failure we just we just changed our mind right and then we wanted to come back so we did you know the worst thing has happen is you you alter and you change your path yeah worst thing happens is you have an amazing experience and learn along the way yeah totally so as we start to get done the first uh question I want to ask though is how do you make business work with your spouse what is the secret what can we uh learn from working together with our significant other from you gosh we talk about this all the time kind of like we we talk about how lucky we are to have found the match that we have you know we're really lucky um that we have each other so um like as far as like working with your spouse I mean it's kind of just similar to love you know you just like have Comm you know you just have to communicate right like um there's a lot of things in business where we want to go different directions yeah and we just talk through it you know and we respect each other I think we both bring very different perspectives to the table um so I think that makes us you know uh compatible business partners as well go on walks and talk about business like it's so much better than sitting at a desk talking through like we never sit down and talk like we're always moving because you know your brain just flows differently while you're while you're while you're like moving your body yeah our strategy sessions are always walking hiking biking floating the river like it's always outside yeah this is fun I want to come work for the two of you these strategy sessions sound amazing as we wrap up here folks I'd love to know I always ask at the end of these podcasts and and videos when it comes to what you do day-to-day are there any vendors out there that you say these folks just have it nailed down they're really great their product offerings are great they always have a high success rate when we suggest them to our customers so this isn't a traditional vendor in the technology space but we I have to shout them out because they've been such a great partner for us and that's circle. so that's the platform that our communities on there are so many opportunities for communities in our space um circle is absolutely amazing um just the functionality of it the analytics of it um the just the capabilities and they're constantly coming up with updates uh based on the feedback from all of their users like us I think you probably have to shout out command link like they're yeah they do just an amazing job of you know taking care of their Partners delivering consistently excellent experiences for clients if I'm an IT buyer and I need to get in touch with you for adaptive advisor services or if I'm an adviser myself in the community and I want to get in touch uh to join the technology adviser Alliance where can I go what are all the links that I can go visit to join up well really easy find on LinkedIn so definitely connect with us there um and our our businesses and our domains are really easy adaptive advisors.com and then the technology advisor alliance.com well phenomenal Ashley Ryan it's been such a pleasure to get to speak with you and get to know you and I wish you the best of luck through the rest of the year and into 2025 thanks so much to Ashley and Ryan for joining me today and thank you for watching or listening check out all episodes of Channel Insider partner POV on Channel insider.com or watch on our YouTube page at Channel inssider newws and Trends you can also listen to every episode as a podcast on your preferred podcast listening platform don't forget to like subscribe and follow wherever possible so you never miss an episode come connect with Channel Insider on LinkedIn and X at Channel Insider or with me at Katie boso once again I'm your host Katie boso and I'll see you next time time

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