Big Red Media - September/October 2021

Big Red Media - September/October 2021

IT CHANNEL INS IDER September/October 2021 | Volume 6

ZANE CONKLE IS ON A MISSION TO SEE HIS MSP PARTNERS SUCCEED WITH ROBIN’S CUSTOM MARKETING CAMPAIGNS LEADING THE WAY

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IT Channel NEWSFLASH Page 3

Page 9 CONGRATULATIONS To The CEO Of Galactic Advisors For His New Bestseller Book For MSPs!

How To Build REAL SELF- CONFIDENCE AND RESILIENCE Page 6

A Big Red Media Production

Upcoming Channel Events 2 0 2 1

Digital Marketing Corner How A New Business In A New Industry Hit Back-To-Back Record Months While Locked Down

IT Marketing Roadshow SEP 28–29 Dallas, TX

Starting a brand-new business is challenging. Starting a business by creating a whole new market is extremely demanding. Starting that business in a pandemic where your entire country is on lockdown is next to impossible. But that’s just what the team at Augmentt recently accomplished.

NOV

OCT

Newark, NJ

2–3 Las Vegas, NV (Plus Virtual)

21–22

Chicago, IL

28–29

Located in Ontario, Canada, CEO Derik Belair co-founded Augmentt about nine months ago after leading the digital marketing strategy of SolarWinds for many years. The team at Augmentt fills an underserved need by optimizing and fully managing SaaS for MSPs and IT pros. While Derik wanted to make his presence known at Technology Marketing Toolkit’s 2021 Boot Camp in Orlando, Florida, the Canadian government had other plans. They locked the country down. Naturally, Derik pivoted and reached into his bag of digital marketing tricks to score 150 MSP opt-ins with a dynamic virtual booth with multiple digital sponsorships. In addition to their virtual booth, Derik’s digital marketing presence consisted of:  A premium directory listing  Online billboard ads  An ad in “Robin Recommends”  An ad in the online version of MSP Success magazine  A dashboard ad The results were immediate and exceeded expectations. Derik said, “From our virtual presence and digital marketing at Robin Robins’ event, we overachieved on our client acquisition targets and have managed to hit two consecutive record months! Even more impressive, we managed to stay under our partner acquisition targets!” Derik and the entire Augmentt team remind us that a sound digital marketing strategy will make your presence known, even when you’re 1,582 miles away (or 2,545 kilometers) away. 

ITMarketingRoadshow.com

DattoCon OCT 11–14 DattoCon.com

ConnectIT OCT 19–22 ConnectIT.com

ITNation Connect NOV 10–12 ConnectWise.com/theitnation/connect-na

MSP Demo Day DEC 8

For more information on this virtual event, please contact our Big Red Media team at 844-999-0555.

For a complete list of channel events, visit MSPSuccessMagazine.com/channel-events.

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Big Red Media | A Robin Robins Company

IT CHANNEL NEWSFLASH

Movers And Shakers

international markets, and contributing to the company’s overall marketing and business strategies. “I made the jump to CrewHu because of the company culture and their focus on employees as the most important corporate asset and the key to success.” For more information, go to CrewHu.com. Kevin Lancaster, Former CEO/ Founder Of ID

Matt Solomon, Former VP Of Business Development At Kaseya, Is Excited To Announce His New Role As CEO Of Channel Halo “Throughout the last five years in the channel, I’ve been dedicated to helping the

Agent, Is Ramping Up His New Startup, ‘The Venture Mentor’ Kevin’s new venture (pun

companies I’ve worked with grow on the vendor side while also tirelessly working with MSPs/IT providers to help scale their businesses. In that journey, there were a lot of lessons learned about what to do (and not do), who to connect with, and how to present your company to the channel and to your customers.” According to Matt, “Channel Halo is my way of passing along those lessons. I am passionate about helping my clients develop strategies around events, create presentations that will resonate with their audiences, become more comfortable selling, and have an opportunity to give them a larger voice in their communities and in the channel.” To check out more about Matt’s new endeavor, go to ChannelHalo.com.

intended) offers strategic investments and advisory services for innovative technology vendors focused on the IT channel/MSP space. Check out the podcast on the YouTube channel Channelfied Podcast. (He gave Robin Robins a shoutout in Episode 1!) The Big Reveal will be September, so stay tuned!

Nerdio Welcomes Natasha Boyko As Their New Senior Director Of Partner Programs & Community Natasha is thrilled to expand

CrewHu Welcomes New VP Of Sales To Strategically Position Company To Accelerate Expansion Plans Ryan Denning, formerly with Blackpoint Cyber, is now heading up the channel program at CrewHu, which is the only employee recognition and customer satisfaction

Nerdio’s footprint in the channel and help MSPs develop strategies that will accelerate Microsoft Azure adoption for their SMB customers. She will be managing their event strategy and overall engagement with MSPs. “In order to have success in this community, we have to have a strong presence and connect with MSPs every single day, sharing not only our story but the stories of our successful partners. Nerdio is growing rapidly, and so much of that growth is because of our amazing MSP partners.” 

platform built specifically for MSPs. Ryan’s responsibilities will focus on streamlining the sales process, promoting sales team leadership, expanding CrewHu’s presence in new national and

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IT Channel Rock Star

Zane Conkle Is On A Mission To See His MSP

Zane Conkle’s grandfather helped him understand that at the end of the day, what matters most is fulfilling customers’ needs and see - ing them succeed. The co-founder and CEO of Cytracom, Zane started his first IT business when he was just 15 years old after convincing his grand - father to let him set up a computer shop in a vacant building in the town where Zane grew up. His grandfather, who owned the building, knew nothing about computers but was a savvy businessman. “My grandfather ran businesses Partners Succeed With Robin’s Custom Marketing Campaigns Leading The Way

to market,” Zane said. “There was always this disconnect or misalignment with the vendors about how I interacted with my customers … from pre-sales to ongo- ing support.” This led Zane and his team to create their own hosted VoIP solution to serve his SMB clients. “We realized that if we didn’t own our own technology and our own IP and if engineering wasn’t in- house, we would never be able to really service the SMB market the way that it needed to be serviced,” Zane said. As he started moving his clients over to his internal solution, he saw his cus- tomers’ frustrations and phone challeng- es disappear. “When I saw that our solu- tion truly addressed their problems and how much happier our customers were, it became clear to us that there were more MSPs with the same challenge.” In 2008, Zane sold his MSP business to aggressively focus on building out Cytracom’s own IP from top to bottom, with the idea to serve the MSP commu - nity exclusively. After bootstrapping the business for 12 months, he and his partner took Cytracom to market. Today, Cytracom’s posture is a result of the early principles that Zane's grand- father instilled in him while growing his first IT business. Cytracom is focused on serving MSPs a truly comprehensive VoIP and UC offering for their business and their SMB clients. To ensure its

whelming demand for VoIP solutions. At first, Zane felt confident in recommend - ing solutions, but he began running into problems as he implemented and rolled out solutions from big-name vendors. Soon his grandfather’s words were burn- ing in his ears. “We had customers that wanted to move from old phone systems to voice- based solutions, but reliability was a nightmare,” Zane said. “Sometimes customers would receive their calls, and other times they wouldn’t. It was a huge distraction and challenge for their businesses.” The new features and advantages of VoIP also brought new complexities, as the solutions weren’t created primarily for the SMB market. “It got to a point where we no longer wanted to recom- mend VoIP because there were no good options in the market,” Zane said. VoIP vendors were also failing to help MSPs be successful. “None of the vendors understood the way MSPs went

throughout his whole life,” Zane said. “I’d been tinkering with computers for years, so I taught him technology and he taught me business. It was amazing to watch my 72-year-old grandfather go from barely being able to turn a comput- er on to tearing laptops apart and help- ing customers with their early Windows servers. It’s a great memory for me and something I cherish.” Early on, Zane did break-fix, serv - ing both residential and commercial customers in his local community. While growing his IT business, Zane recalled getting frustrated and not understanding the customer’s viewpoint. But his grand - father made him see things differently. “My grandfather created this burn- ing passion in me to help customers succeed, which has survived and lived on to this day.” Quickly, the commercial side of the business grew, and in 2007, after morph- ing into an MSP, he noticed the over -

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Big Red Media | A Robin Robins Company

My grandfather created this burning passion in me to help customers succeed, which has survived and lived on to this day.

to help our partners be more effective,” Zane said. “The early results of this campaign have been extremely success - ful. We appreciate Robin’s dedication. She is heavily engaged in ensuring that this campaign drives the results we’re looking for.” Through partnering with TMT, Cy- tracom has experienced a good uptick throughout the years, but the most im- portant thing to Zane is seeing his MSP partners succeed. “The most rewarding thing for me personally is to think back to our early MSP partners that attended Robin’s seminars,” Zane said. “They were learning how to grow their busi- ness and partnered with Cytracom. To look at where they are now as compared to where they were and see how they’ve grown and the level of success they’ve achieved is super rewarding.” He adds, “The methodical focus we have on our partners’ success with their customers comes from my grandfather and ensuring we always do the right thing. Even when we don’t understand or see it the way the customer sees it. At the end of the day, our customers’ needs are always met and most important.” 

at Robin’s events is key,” Zane said. “We actively engage with our partners and potential partners on a one-on-one basis and leverage speaking opportunities to talk about new products. We’ve also sponsored happy hours and different events to gain access to new partners and new leads.” In 2020, COVID-19 accelerated their mission to connect the modern work- force and help users stay in touch and connected on any device, from any location. To help MSPs position them- selves better and sell VoIP solutions to their customers, Zane teamed up with Robin to create a series of marketing campaigns for MSPs to use. “We wanted

partners are successful, Cytracom goes deeper than just selling a product to the MSP community. “Every question we have and every decision we make — from product and engineering to customer success—revolve around how to create the best experience for our MSP partners and their customers,” Zane said. Cytracom’s engineering team works out of its Dallas office, allowing them to talk directly with support and product teams on an ongoing basis. This has al- lowed Cytracom to serve the nuances of the MSP community better and innovate more quickly. As a result of Cytracom’s laser focus, in-depth understanding of what MSPs need to be successful, and their willingness to act, they’ve brought products to market that no other vendor is providing, such as Voice Continuity and Shared Inboxes. “We listen to our partners and develop solutions to meet their requests,” Zane said. “Our partners can manage their customer life cycle journey from end to end at a very deep level, more so than they can with any other vendor.” In 2011, Cytracom got involved with Technology Marketing Toolkit (TMT). “TMT’s Bootcamp was the first event we attended,” Zane recalled. “We’ve found the TMT community to be highly engaged and interested in learning how to grow their business. That aligns extremely well with us, so we’ve heavily engaged with them ever since. TMT has brought us better visibility and created a platform to share what makes Cytracom unique with the broader MSP community.” Over the years, Cytracom has primar - ily partnered with TMT at Producers Club events and their annual bootcamp. Zane has launched new products at TMT events and worked with Robin Robins on strategic opportunities. “The booth

Zane Posing With Former Heavyweight Champion Of The World, George Foreman At The 2021 Producers Club Meeting Celebrity Photo Shoot Sponsored By Cytracom

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From the Desk of Robin Robins

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Big Red Media | A Robin Robins Company

I n the 1920s through the ‘50s, several inventors attempted to design and patent “teaching machines” that could educate an individual about a subject without a teacher and without failure. These machines achieved this largely by quizzing the individual very closely on the subject matter, delivering a piece of information, then immediately serving up a question on that >Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12

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