Leveraging Community To Drive Business Innovation & Growth
Tim Fitzpatrick
MSP & B2B Professional Service Firm Marketing Consultant/Advisor | Fractional CMO | Build and manage your marketing engine to get where you want to go faster. | Remove Your Revenue Roadblocks
Welcome to the Rialto Marketing podcast. Today's episode is a revenue acceleration series interview where we talk to seven figure B2B professional service firm owners that are actively trying to grow their business and get to the next level. We talk about the good, the bad and the ugly so that you can learn from their experience.
Join Tim Fitzpatrick and Amanda Lachapelle for this week’s episode of The Rialto Marketing Podcast!
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Leveraging Community To Drive Business Innovation & Growth
Tim Fitzpatrick
Welcome to the Rialto Marketing podcast. Today's episode is a Revenue Acceleration Series interview where we talk to seven-figure B2B service firm owners that are actively trying to grow their business and get to the next level. We talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly so that you can learn from their experience. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe you must remove your revenue roadblocks if you want to accelerate growth. And marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to have Amanda Lachapelle with me from B4 Networks. Amanda, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Amanda Lachapelle
Thanks for having me, Tim.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to dig into this with you today. Before we do that, I want to ask you just a few rapid fire questions if you're ready to jump in.
Amanda Lachapelle
Sure.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. So very quickly, what do you do? How long have you been doing it?
Amanda Lachapelle
I'm the Chief Operating Officer for B4 Networks. We're an MSP located in Fonthill, Ontario, Canada, in case people don't know that part of the geography well. And my day to day is, I mean, it changes literally from day to day. Operations is that beast. But anything I can do to help support people to deliver the best service that we can for our clients.
Tim Fitzpatrick
What's the most important lesson you've learned in running the business?
Amanda Lachapelle
I mean, there's so many that it's really difficult to be like, this is the most important I think the idea of just being able to not be self critical in the sense of being down on yourself, but being able to analyze the things that you do and not be so attached to the outcome that you're not willing to be able to make changes, even if they're micro changes, to be able to better yourself on an ongoing basis. That's something that can be really hard for some people to work on and something that I notice when people are able to adapt and take that mentality on that they end up bettering themselves in ways that maybe they anticipate.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, totally. You know what I started doing? And I think there's so many different ways we can use this, but if we're open to the feedback, I think a lot of times it's hard for some people to hear feedback from other people. I've started using it in ChatGPT. So taking sales conversations or meetings that I've had, dumped the transcript in and ask for feedback. Like, what did I do well? Where can I improve? Because the AI is unemotional, right? And so hearing that from something that's not another being, I don't know, maybe for some people, it softens the blow.
Amanda Lachapelle
Well, if you get mad at it, then you're only going to be really mad at the robot overlord whatever in the sky that's going to control it.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, exactly.
Amanda Lachapelle
That was sarcasm, just to be clear.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. But I mean, It's actually pretty darn good feedback. It's really interesting. So if people that are watching or listening have not tried that, give it a shot and see what you think because I don't know, I found it helpful. But We all know growing a business is hard. Do you have any mantra or motivational saying you say to yourself or share with your team to help push through those times of challenge or hurdles?
Amanda Lachapelle
Well, I think we pick different themes for each year. And I mean, mine for this year is really just do it scared. I talk with the team all the time about the things that I'm trying to take on that might be scary for me or outside of my comfort zone or putting myself out there and encourage them to do the same. And so does Brian. So it's part of the DNA in terms of B4 Networks is trying things and seeing what happens. Not everybody is bold and brave by the measure of the world, but they're for themselves against where they were yesterday or the day before that. That's what we ask people to do.
Running a Business with a Spouse
Tim Fitzpatrick
I love that one. I recently read a book, and I can't remember the name of it because I didn't finish all of it. But one of the things that he talked about in there that really did resonate with me was always operating in this place of fear, because if you're in that zone, you're pushing your comfort zone and your limits, and that's where we grow. And so, man, I love that. So you mentioned you run the business with your husband, Brian. Can you share some of the learning lessons about running a business with your other half?
Amanda Lachapelle
It's not for It's a faint of heart. It's really important to have some boundaries. And please, I would just like to say at the onset of this, this is not me saying this like, We got it down. We're doing great. These are the things that we have to focus on an ongoing basis and make sure we keep trying for alignment on because it isn't easy. You have to leave the things at work at work and try not to be discussing them too much at home because there should be clear spaces. And I think the part that works well is that I'm in operations and he's in sales and finance. So though they obviously interact and operate with each other, but having two distinct roles and two distinct impacts in the company allows us to have the freedom to manage our our end of things and then come to each other for feedback. And then I find that distinction very helpful.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So you guys both have your domains.
Amanda Lachapelle
Correct.
Tim Fitzpatrick
And that helps keep things separated to a certain extent. Yeah. I would also imagine that, like you said, having clear boundaries, but then just communicating, having super open lines of communication is helpful.
Amanda Lachapelle
I mean, open lines and the types of communication, though, are something you have to be really careful about. You have to remember that the walls that exist between yourself and another employee do not exist between husband and wife. So if you're going to have that open communication, you need to set aside separate time during the work day to be able to do that so that you're not having that open communication in front of all of your staff, because that's probably a boundary that shouldn't be crossed in terms of you can talk about planning and whatever, but when you hit something where you may not agree or where there's some conflict to work through that should be done away from everybody else.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Thank you for sharing that because I know it's... I worked with my dad for over 10 years, and it was a fantastic experience for me. It's not always that way for others. But I also realized that I wasn't working with the spouse, which I think adds another of complexity to that. So thank you for that.
Connecting with Other Business Owners
Tim Fitzpatrick
One of the things that we talked about when we connected before the interview was you had talked about MSP Geekon in 2023, and that being a really big moment for you. Can you just share with us what happened at that event and what changed things for you?
Amanda Lachapelle
Well, I think to understand the importance of that event, I just got to rewind very quickly Because the beginning of the company, it's mine and Brian's company, but he was the one working in a day to day. I had another company. And so when I decided to close that company down and work at B4 Networks full-time, I was coming into a world that he had very much shaped. I had given my input, I had been involved, but from the sidelines. And finding my feet was a bit interesting, again, while trying to respect these boundaries that we were talking about before in the husband and wife relationship. So a lot of my experience inside of the IT world or service delivery comes from actually working in call centers before, working in other places like I work for Dell Canada, and understanding what that looks like from that end, but not the actual technical side of things. So when I went to MSP Geek, I was bringing two of our technicians, and the mantra that was put out there about the conference, it was the first time a conference had happened, was bringing your level one technicians up to level threes or bettering your technicians. And I was like, okay, I'd like to bring these technicians to go, but I'm also interested in what this is all about. I'm going to go, too, so that I can learn. I'm the one who's built out our LMS and things internally in terms of training people, I want to understand a little bit better myself. And some of the tracks and stuff that they were talking about spoke to that. That's what I went in thinking I was getting and definitely got that. But what I got even more than that were these amazing conversations with other business owners, other technicians, just this community of people that were like, Hey, this is how I do the things that I do. Here's my recipe book. Let's talk about it. What do you think about this? Or if I was you, this is what I would do. And instead of before was channeling everything through this relationship with my husband, I now had this wider community that I could talk to. And I knew that there was a Discord or whatever before, but I hadn't really engaged, and I didn't join it or anything like that. I went into it going, Oh, these are the people that I know in the community, which was like two people. And I'm going to go and see what it's about. And I walked away with friends. I walked away with connections and a better understanding. And I decided to engage in the community, double down, if you will. And I have been so blessed by all the opportunities that have come from giving into that community. They've given back to me, and I didn't ask for it, but I certainly appreciate it.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Well, when you connect with other similar business owners, we all got the same issues, right? MSPs run into the same types of problem and sometimes you can help somebody solve a problem you've already solved, and sometimes it's the exact reverse. And it gives you the opportunity to connect with people that are ahead of you from a company gestation and growth process and people that are before you. I think there's always things to be learned from experiences like that.
Amanda Lachapelle
I think, too, not being a non-technical person in this space, being connected with so many technical people that just really wanted to talk tech was like, I'm willing to learn and listen. You can talk to me about this stuff. I don't always know what you're saying, but I'm happy to take in 50% of it. And then the next time that I hear it more than this thing, you know what I mean? For me, besides, I also have to just preface, I'm extremely weird, and I have a bit of an interesting personality. So the Goose people, they just spoke to me. Everybody there is a little bit silly themselves. It was not hard to feel like I belong there.
Understanding a Problem as Part of a Sales Process
Tim Fitzpatrick
I also want to jump back because you talked about these steps of understanding the problem. Does the potential client recognize that that's a problem? Are they committed to solving it? And what's their timeline to solve it? Is that the basic framework that you guys follow, to try and work through as you go through the sales process? Or where does that come into play in your process?
Mike Rhea
Yeah, so that's the framework for our first discovery call, right? Okay, got it. And look, it's not... I can give away the secret sauce because you still got to know what questions to ask.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, exactly.
Mike Rhea
But when those MSPs are having that conversation, here's how it typically goes. Okay, hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, your company, and what are some of the challenges that you're having? And they say, oh, it's slow response times, and we feel like we're not getting what we're paying for, and we're not really sure what cybersecurity looks like, and we feel like they should be telling us what we need to do with technology and not us asking them questions. Okay, great. So let me tell you a little bit about who we are and what we do. And look, we can solve all that, and here's how we solve it. And they go into pitch mode. But with what that client just said to me, there's so many questions I could ask. It's what I need to understand is, okay, so you have this challenge. How does that impact the business? And what's the ripple effect of that impact? And who else is voicing their frustration with that impact? And why haven't you done anything yet about it? How long has this been going? There's so many questions I can ask. Just to identify the problem, we haven't even gotten to, are you committed to solving it?
Tim Fitzpatrick
Right.
Mike Rhea
So many times you get to the end of a sales process and the reps are like, well, they didn't do anything. They stayed with their current provider. Or here's a good one. I'm forecasting this deal. Okay. Why are they making a decision? Well, they have to make a decision. They have so many security issues, and they're just not happy with their current provider. But it's like, no, the sales rep is emotional here. He's telling me that they have to make a decision because I think they have to make a decision. No, what evidence has the client given you that they are going to make a decision? Is staying with their current provider an option? I don't know. Did you ask? What's the delta between what we're charging and what they're paying today? Do they understand is the problem big enough that it's worth the delta? Because here's a good point. I'll pay a dollar for an aspirin when I have a headache, but I'll give my entire life's income away to get rid of a brain tumor. So the size of the problem determines how much I'm willing... The size of the problem, how I see the size of the problem, not the sales rep, how the client sees the size of the problem will determine how much they're willing to spend to solve it. So we have to help them realize and tell us how big the problem is by asking the right questions.
Tim Fitzpatrick
And your questions are just guiding them through this entire process.
Mike Rhea
That asker one was good. I just thought that.
Navigating Attrition
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, cool. I know you guys have had some recent employee attrition. How did you navigate this and what did you learn from it? I mean, a lot of people face this.
Amanda Lachapelle
Well, I think attrition... I almost hate that word because it always implies that a person left you. I think the reality of the IT landscape is that people leave by quitting, but people leave by also stop bringing their best selves to work. Sometimes that means that you, as the owner, have to make a decision in order to eggs them into something else that's going to be better for them. Not to sound like George Clooney in up in the air or whatever. But honestly, at this point, they're obviously not able to admit to themselves that this is not for them anymore. This industry is incredibly stressful, and it's really important to take care of your employees. That's our number one thing that we try to do is to make sure that we're checking in with their mental health. I think the acknowledgement just has to be that if someone's not in a position anymore to be able to give what they need to give to the role, that It has to be okay. And if you as a business can look at that and say, naturally, because this is a stressful job, there's only so long that we're going to be able to retain people, then you need to have a plan for how you're going to bring new people in, how you're going to train them, and how you're going to move them up the ranks, because you can't look at it like a bad thing. It's actually something that's just part and parcel with this type of industry. And I also think it's a reflection of the people who do well in an MSP are going to be people who enjoy switching their hats and trying new things, and need to be fed, right? But that can come at great personal cost. If the person can't manage their own mental health through that, that's going to take its toll. And you want to pay respect to that. I mean, some of my best people who've been with us for a very, very long time, we've all had hills and valleys. So when I say pay respect to that, I mean, give people some grace and some space when they're going through something to be able to navigate that and write themselves. And you'll have more luck of keeping them in the long run. I think there's also the conversation of what do we mean when we say take care of someone's mental health? I think people always get shy about that because they're like, well, I can't talk to someone. I'm not their therapist. That is not what I'm advocating for. What I'm saying is that find out where the pain point is the same way as you would in marketing and find out what it is that's stressing them out. So in our case here, for example, we had quite a few people that were stressed out by the idea of prioritizing. It would not matter that they would tell them. We would tell them that they have 30 tickets or whatever for the week, and that's actually quite normal. They just saw 30 tickets, they wanted the pile to go down. Having conversations about the pile is never going to go down, that's not our expectation. Our expectation is for the standard is this, I don't know, I'm going to make something up right here, is five tickets a day. The goal would be to get 10 done a day. Anything between that is fantastic. Teaching them how to prioritize in case that's not a skillset that they already have in their soft skills. These are the things that you can do to support your people in order to try and help them stay longer. And then if you can't do that, another thing that we've also been doing is working really heavily with automation and being like, how can we take the people that are working great, keep them interested through trying new things, but also doing this automation piece where, and I'm not just talking about an RMM, I'm talking beyond that, where we can really multiply the capacity of our current workforce and without having to necessarily always worry about hiring more people or keeping more of a headcount.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Do you guys outsource any things or is everything done in-house?
Amanda Lachapelle
No, everything's done in-house.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay.
Amanda Lachapelle
Yeah. Actually, I mean, that's accounting, but not the whole accounting, just part of it.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I mean, well, because I know there's... I mean, in the MSP space, especially, sometimes people will outsource help desk or outsource security operations or whatever it may be. There's a lot of opportunities to outsource certain things.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Amanda Lachapelle
I think there's some validity in how everybody gets to choose how they run their business. For us, we've made it a core to try and keep as much as we can in-house so that we can really... I'm not saying that you can't in the outsource section, but our team is so collaborative and they work together so closely. When we went through COVID, everybody was forced to go work from home, and I would get phone calls and messages going, Can I come back to the office? They genuinely missed being around each other. They missed being around their friends and being in office. So I feel like that would be really difficult for someone who was working outsourced to mesh in with that. So I guess it'd be a curiosity to see how we'd navigate. It's not something that we were considering at the moment, though.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. And there's no right or wrong answer, right?
Amanda Lachapelle
No.
Tim Fitzpatrick
There's benefits and downsides to both. It's just a matter of, hey, what do you want out of your business and what's the best way to make that happen?
Lessons from Acquiring a Business
Tim Fitzpatrick
So I know a lot of acquisition in the MSP space, and you guys acquired another MSP in early 2020. What did you-
Amanda Lachapelle
They were like a split between an MSP and a break-fix shop. But yes, that was... Let me finish your question, sorry.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, no, I was just going to say, what did you learn from that? And what have you learned since? Because I think, I don't know, acquiring it can be a great way to grow. But if you've never done it before, there's a lot of blind spots, potential blind spots, I should say.
Amanda Lachapelle
Well, I think there's different kinds of acquisitions, too. So there's a strategic acquisition. And I'm not going to say that this wasn't a strategic acquisition, but there's also emotional acquisitions. And I think for us, it was a bit of an emotional acquisition. So break fix/MSP shop that we acquired was actually the first place that my husband had worked when we moved back to this area. So for him, the owner had approached him and was like, I'm looking to retire from running a business. It's been 25 years. I want to make sure that the people that have worked with me for quite some time are taken care of and the clients are taken care of. I know you do that. I can't entice you to come back and work for me So I mean, are you interested? And that conversation from the moment that that conversation happened, there was still a year before anything really moved. And it's really important to understand that emotional piece, whether or not it is a strategic or an emotional acquisition, the person behind the business that you're buying is married to how it is, is married to the way that they see it going. They have all of their accomplishments and ego built into what they've built, whether it's amazing or literally a pile of crap. They've still got their own personal whatever involved in it, and it's not an easy contemplation. So you have to be realistic about whether or not they're going to be able to stick around and watch you change it because they may not agree with those changes, even if you believe they're for the better. Acquisition is a great way to grow. But these things that I'm pointing out to be cognizant of need to factor into your plan, because if your plan involves and all the relationships in the company that you're trying to acquire, live with this person, then you need to keep that person happy to keep them around a little bit longer. If you think that you can show them better service and it doesn't matter, then that's not an equation for you. I think another thing that we learned, and it was actually a business coach that told us about it, we hadn't really contemplated before, maybe that's just our naivete in going into it, was just about having a line of credit. We've never had any debt for the business before. We've never taken out any loan or anything. Everything was done like self-funded. And getting a line of credit was the first time that we had ever done anything like that. But the reason for doing that is because when you have the transition between that company, the person takes there, if you're doing an asset purchase, the person takes everything that's in there and they keep it for themselves. They hand you the rest of it. You have to deal with the payroll. You have to float all the service that's going to happen for that first couple of months before you start getting checks in. And if your business originally couldn't handle that in terms of, in our case, it was a 100% growth overnight, basically, then you have to be able to financially plan for that. So that was important. And a thing that, like I said, we hadn't considered before. And I think a lot of people need to consider how they're going to do that because those expenses are important. The list of things to go through is probably three or four podcasts in itself.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, it's a lot.
Amanda Lachapelle
But that was probably the most learning lesson that was really good for us to have given as a piece of advice.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Do you plan on making other acquisitions?
Amanda Lachapelle
It's always in the pipeline, but for us, we've very much identified that it has to be something where there's incredible fit. Doing an emotional acquisition has basically let us know that anything else would have to be more strategic because the upheaval that an acquisition causes on both sides, both internally at at your current company and at the company that you're acquiring is a lot to navigate. So you want to make sure that you're getting the most ROI out of it. I would say that we're very happy we did the acquisition. If I had to do it all over again, I would certainly do a few things differently. But I think that would probably be a harder stretch in this current stage where super MSPs are coming in and buying all the the the MSPs that are operation mature that we would be looking at. So we say we're not this interested it, but we're actually not going out and hunting for it because the competition on that is wild. If you're listening to this and you're looking to exit and you have a smart business and don't want to sell to those people, I'm not going to not talk to you.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I get it. What would you say is the top thing that comes to mind that you might do differently with the-
Amanda Lachapelle
In acquisition?
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, with the acquisition.
Amanda Lachapelle
I think if we were going to take on, and this was which is something that my husband and I disagreed on, and in this case, I went out and I was not right, and I don't have a problem admitting that. I think if we were going to take it on again, I would probably keep it because there was an MSP and a break fix component, I probably would keep it as a separate brand before, like leave it under that brand and slowly identify which clients were a good fit and then move those ones over first before marrying everything into our brand. Because anybody who who didn't appreciate the MSP model and who were break fix were put off by us from the jump. So that makes it difficult to overcome that in the relationship because they were not ready for that contract.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Got it. At the time, were you trying to transition those break fix to MSP?
Amanda Lachapelle
Not right away. But I need to quantify this, and I'm going to try to do this very gently.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, it's okay.
Amanda Lachapelle
The previous owner was the kindest man with the most gentle heart, and his staff were the kindest people and the most gentle people. And so I'll give you an example of what would happen. One would show up on site. Everybody loves them. They would do a great job, and they would go in and they would fix things, and they would go, You know what? I love those people so much. I'm going to write down 2 hours on the bill instead of the four that I was there. And then when the owner would get the bill, the owner would go, Oh, they're so great. And they come back to us all the time. I'm going to knock a little off the top. So there's a lot of things like that. When you then take over and then say, No, the time is the time, that's friction. It's very different. You have to consider all of the pieces of the culture that was built in that company in terms of what are the clients used to? Are they used to you doing things that you wouldn't normally do? And so creating that separation and distinction. This company was so giving of themselves, they would go and install a television, right? If you wanted them to, well, here's the problem. They would also go pick it up at Costco. And so the time to go pick up the television and install it was not built. And it was just a little markup on the television. But that's actually losing money. And as a company that operates by the numbers, that's not in line with how we would do things. And again, I don't want to say that's bad what they did because it certainly earned them the goodwill with their customers. But it is a difference that the customers could feel. So it is an important thing to understand because it creates friction, and friction can obviously have its own reasons for people leaving.
MSP Trends to Look Out For
Tim Fitzpatrick
I know things are evolving constantly. In the MSP industry. Any emerging trends or technologies that you're really excited about?
Amanda Lachapelle
I said it before when I talked about automation, but robotic process automation for me is always going to be something incredibly attractive. I think tools that have open API so that we can stop necessarily worrying about having to deal with one single Overlord vendor. We can mix and match as we need. That's always desirable. I think that then that's going to be something that you're going to see more and more people pushing for because with all this mergers and acquisitions that keeps happening, you'll leave one vendor because you're dissatisfied with the service. And all of a sudden they'll buy up the new thing that you go into. So having that flexibility is important. And I think when I talk about automation, I think most people would expect me to say AI, but most of AI is in its implication is a form of automation. And I think we're going to see a lot between those two things that I just mentioned that's going to change the game. I don't know if you care if I mention vendors, but we're working with-
Tim Fitzpatrick
We're finally there.
Amanda Lachapelle
Yeah. So we switched to Halo in February, and it was probably one of the best business decisions we've made in a very long time. Their single focus on bettering their product has been amazing. And for me, what I appreciate is that things that I used to have in my documentation system, I am now slowly moving into how our PSA works because the customization and configurability is so phenomenal that I can do what I want with it. And to have a product that has that flexibility, I think you're going to see more MSPs want to have that flexibility because we are the stop. We are the things that the person, I would say, that is in between what is likely going to be regulation and the business community. And we need to have that control in order to feel comfortable to guarantee. And where I'll give you an example of this is the incident response. If I, as an owner, I'm going to be held responsible for how we handle any security breach or incident, I want to make sure that my staff do it the same way every single time. But human error is human error. If I can configure my PSA to be able to handle it and walk somebody through the steps and create that accountability in how it works for how we say it works, not how some over whatever body says it works, then that's attractive to me. That's always going to be good. It's going to help me guarantee longevity in ways that I don't know that everybody's considered.
Conclusion
Tim Fitzpatrick
Where do you see the business in the next 5, 10 years?
Amanda Lachapelle
That automation piece is going to be huge. It's going to be huge in many. I'm trying not to tip my hand too much, but I'm going to say that we've got a lot of things in the works when it comes surrounding automation. And I think some of the best MSPs are understanding that the days of patch management and the simple things that we can do being a differentiator, we're not in that time anymore. The things that we can do for our clients have to go above and beyond that. If you want to call yourself a person's IT partner and really position yourself to work with them strategically on how you grow their business, you can't be just talking about replacing the life cycle of their computers. You have to be talking about more.
Tim Fitzpatrick
How are you staying on top of this stuff?
Amanda Lachapelle
You know what's crazy is that sometimes people ask me the question, How do you do your job if you go to so many conferences? And I'm like, I actually think it helps me do my job better. And the reason why I say that is because I will sit in any number of presentations. Some of them are sales driven by vendors, and some of them are not. There are other industry leaders that are giving me their insight. But then I also will sit in the bar and have conversations with other people and hear how they're doing it. And because of who I am and because of how I work, I can then come back, throw all up at my team and say, Hey, that's what we're going to do. This is how we're going to tackle it. And then we come up with a plan and we go and we execute. And whether or not I'm there, I've got the ideas. I'm going out there and I'm getting these ideas and I'm putting my own twist on them and shaping them in the way that makes sense for our clients and for our business. And I wouldn't be able to do that if I wasn't exposed to that. You can't stay in your bubble. You can't just live where you are and think that you're going to be innovative because you're not going to be seeing anything that's out there. I think whether it be travel, whether it be learning, whatever it is, reading, you need to find ways to get outside of your everyday in order to expand your thinking. Because without that, you can't conceptualize what's going to happen in the next five years. You can't think about anything beyond, how do I just do what I'm doing now to survive?
Tim Fitzpatrick
So for you, you're doing that at conferences and events?
Amanda Lachapelle
Yeah. So I will attend conferences and events. You know what else it's given me, too, is really they've given me a better relationship with the vendors that we work with. We've been able to ask for things that we need. Another great partner that we work with is Huntress, and we were talking about how it's really scary sometimes to think that you can have an incident happen and you have staff that's never walked through an incident before that you're going to have be involved in it, and they may not have used the product on a regular basis. So how do you teach them how to do that without actually making an incident happen? And one of our technicians actually had the conversation with somebody from Huntress at MSP Geek. The next thing I know there, we got an entire training facility set up in terms of you can actually run an incident response simulation right from Huntress. That was my tech that suggested that. We wouldn't have that access if I didn't have that relationship. That's an important piece of if we pay this money to these vendors every month, then it isn't just for the product, it's for also giving that feedback. They want hear that from you. It's the same we want to hear from our clients, right?
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. How often are you going to conferences?
Amanda Lachapelle
I have been on a plane every month of this year so far, and only one of those was personal.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay.
Amanda Lachapelle
Actually, no, except for one month.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I was going to say, I know, especially in the MSP space, it seems like there's an event or a conference every three or four days.
Amanda Lachapelle
Well, you have to choose wisely. You have to think about who's going to be attending and what the focus is of the conference and who's speaking. I like to look at the agenda ahead of time. And if it's just literally only, I'm not sponsors, but yeah, I guess sponsors and vendors speaking, I need something more than that in order to attend the conference. And then I will look at who's attending and go, is there going to be people there from the communities that I operate in that we can connect and touch base on what's going on and have that conversation? It's not that vendor tracks aren't great, but there should be more value than that if you're going to learn, right? And If you're going to learn and you can't learn from the tracks of what's being talked to, you need to see if the attendees can teach you something.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. Amanda, knowing what you know now, anything you do differently?
Amanda Lachapelle
In terms of the whole kit and caboodle? I think-
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, whatever you want to share.
Amanda Lachapelle
I honestly think I would have probably dived into community a lot sooner. I think COVID was probably a detractor in that and then the acquisition happening during that time. But I I think I would have probably jumped into community a lot sooner. I think it can be really difficult. And I want to give my husband a lot of credit because all my questions, and I have a lot of questions that I like to ask, in the beginning, were always directed at him. He was like my little Google for anything that I wanted to know. Had I had a community before that where I could have asked them, it might have taken some of that pressure off him, but it would have expanded those horizons probably a little bit sooner, because if you can't tell, I'm an extrovert, and I like to socialize anyway. I tend to do well in environments where I can learn from other people. I would have probably doubled that, double-clicked into that sooner.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that's awesome. Amanda, I really appreciate your time. Where can people learn more about you?
Amanda Lachapelle
Well, I post random videos on LinkedIn. I have a YouTube channel, which is not on the link here, but you can usually find a link to them in my LinkedIn posts. And then obviously, if you want to know anything more about B4 Networks, we have a pretty robust web page, which you can find at b4networks.ca.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. B4 Networks, so...
Amanda Lachapelle
Also, I just want to say, if you're not a member of MSP Geek already, please join.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes. Go join MSP Geek. We will make sure that all these links are in the show notes as well. So I mean, I really appreciate you taking the time has been a great conversation. And it's always interesting, especially for me, to interview people in the MSP space that haven't really come from the tech side of it. So I really do appreciate your perspective on it. So thank you for that.
Amanda Lachapelle
Thank you so much, Tim.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, absolutely. And those of you that are watching, listening, appreciate you as well. If you want to connect with us, you can do that over at rialtomarketing.com. The other resource we've got for you is over at revenueroadblockcscorecard.com. We help clients remove revenue roadblocks in nine key areas of marketing. If you want to know which of the nine are slowing down your growth, that's where you can do it. So go check it out. Thank you again for the time. And till next tim. Take care.
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