Aesopians E4 - Leading With Cybersecurity To Spark MSP Sales Conversations

Speaker A: Welcome to the AsoPiance podcast where the wisest in the channel come to get their MSP marketing insights. Today we're talking about interactive lead magnets for MSPs and featuring Michael Bakaik to talk about his cyberscore, uh, cybersecurity, uh, lead magnet product. So let's hop right in. All right, Michael, welcome to the aesopians podcast. Uh, I'm here with Michael Bakek. How did I pronounce that correctly? A Kai. Okay, all right, awesome. Uh, well, again, welcome to the show. Um, let's kick things off, um, by, you know, you tell us a little about who you are and what you do.

Speaker B: Great to be here, Nelson. Nelson's your last name. Now I'm focusing on your last name because you mispronounced mine. We're not all as lucky to have his easily pronounceable names. Hunter. Great to be here, Hunter.

Speaker A: No worries, no worries.

Speaker B: I'm Mike from Iceberg Cyber. We make fun lead magnets and sales tools for MSPs. And as you can tell from this fun hotel, um, lobby backdrop that I have, which is not virtual, this is real. I'm at a small conference. I traveled to Madison, Wisconsin this past week to help one of our MSP clients prospect at, uh, the Wisconsin City and County Management Association Winter Conference. And if that sounded like a raucous party, you'd be surprised. It was actually a great show. The show floor is typical and I could talk about what to expect when you do small events like this, but they hired a magician for entertainment which was, which was a riot.

Speaker A: Okay, cool.

Speaker B: Yeah, so it's been a good week.

Speaker A: Uh, I actually saw a graphic recently that I think said Wisconsin was like, had like basically all of the top counties, uh, by alcohol consumption in the country. Um, so I could imagine there are some raucous parties in Wisconsin. Maybe not at that particular event, but in general, you know, it was, it

Speaker B: was a fun time. Everyone had a great time. The attendees, you can tell there, there maybe was a hundred human beings here, but everyone knew each other. It's a very close knit community. It was similar to a few weeks ago. I was at a superintendent similar type of event for schools. School districts, everyone knows each other. They've probably been to this event. This is my first time, but this is probably like their 20th time in their career coming to one of these events with their colleagues. And they all know each other very well and everyone's hugging so it's a time m for them to let loose and catch up with friends and Learn a little bit of stuff and then chitchat and come pick up tchotchkes because that's what everyone does when they come by your booth and grab a little squishy toys.

Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, you've been quite the road warrior. I, um, have been truly impressed by your dedication and commitment to getting out there and attending both the MSP conferences and helping out your customers by going to their conferences. So I know you got to be tired and uh, energized all at the same time, you know? Um, that's right.

Speaker B: I'm following the Michael Scott diet. Every morning I drink a cup of milk and sugar instead of coffee. Office reference.

Speaker A: Uh, my, uh, fiance is a huge fan. I have obviously seen the Office. I love it. Uh, but that's her on repay replacement repeat show to the point where I've had to be like, okay, you've seen it three, four times all the way through now. Like, you know, we gotta watch something new.

Speaker C: Uh, yeah.

Speaker B: But yes, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. I watch, I watch repeat shows. I have been on the road a lot. This is, this is week nine of the year and this is trip number six that I've been on. Next week I'm home the whole week. Well, there's a, there's an event in Toronto, but that's home for me. So I at home the week after. I am also at home, but I'm trying to offer my services again to one of my clients. They just told me that they got something on the 14th, so I'm going to try and go with that. And then I got two things at the end of March, at least one in Vegas with the Channel Partners event and the Managed Service Providers association of America. And then from there flying to Dallas for one of my clients. He's doing a golf tournament. So we're doing the one day golf tournament prospecting event that I know a lot of MSPs think about. So if you're thinking about doing a golf tournament, booth sponsoring the hole, stay tuned because March 28th, I'll be there recording and I'll tell you all I learned.

Speaker A: Okay, awesome. Are you going to uh, PAX8 beyond?

Speaker B: When's that? That's not on the calendar yet. What else is in March?

Speaker A: Uh, so that's in June. I was just curious because, uh, I'm moving to Denver April 1st. So now I PAX8 beyond, because that's in Denver. Circled, uh, on the calendar. Um, so I was just curious.

Speaker B: Um, maybe.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: It's Been such a whirlwind. I'm just planning march now.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Because from the, from the first of January, I've been going, which has been fun. Like the, the behind the scenes motivation here is I'm, yes, I'm offering my. To come to my clients MSP events and prospect for them. But this is my way of learning. Like, I've gotten a ton of new material on how to talk. Like, I'm on the front lines now. That was my objective, was to come and talk to their prospects so that I can help them, like, take what I knew before, help them talk to the prospects, and then try new material directly on the front lines. And that's what we did this past week. It's been really good and we're going to go over a bunch of the stuff that we learned.

Speaker A: Yeah. So Iceberg, uh, Cyber, um, for those who might not be familiar, is a kind of like lead magnet for MSPS slash, uh, prospecting tool. Maybe tell us a little bit more about that. Just for people who might not be

Speaker B: familiar, everyone, here's the backstory. I'm a tech person. Like many of you, I am an engineer. In Canada. We get these little iron rings when we come engineers. So I'm a tech person. I had a tech startup before Iceberg, and, um, I didn't like sales. That probably rings a bell. I actually at one point negotiated, um, against giving a salesperson commission.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: No. Knowing my personality now, your brain might explode hearing that. But that was my mindset. Like six years ago, I negotiated against paying commission to a salesperson. I'm completely opposite now. Um, we tried to be engineers and, like, let the technology build a business. Uh, the end result of that was I blew through $4 million of money and then that business doesn't operate anymore. So that mindset, that mindset was a downhill for us because the technology does not sell itself. That's a fallacy. And we were just too scared to try and be better at sales. We were too scared of rejection. So that's the origin story. After that, business stopped operating. I love computers. You know, I'm one of those people that loves computers. I'm like many of you. I wanted to do something in cybersecurity. So I started following the same downhill path. I created some security tech. That's a broken record. Everyone's creating security tech these days. Um, for like a year of Iceberg Cyber's origin, we were doing the same thing. Like, we were just trying to, um, hope that the technology would sell itself. That was bogus. Wasn't going anywhere. Then, fortunately, my business coach told me to read some books on sales. And slowly I started to thaw on this whole sales thing and stop thinking about it as a gross, slimy thing that used car salespeople do and the actual recipe for success as a business owner. And I really started to embrace it. And there was a book that really clicked for me that we can talk about. And my whole mindset changed. And so I applied that to iceberg cyber. And now the security tools that we were creating are completely repositioned as sales tools. And that's our whole ethos, is to use cybersecurity as a fun conversation driver for your prospecting and sales systems so that you don't have to approach someone cold and say, would you like to talk about it?

Speaker C: No, no.

Speaker B: No one wants to talk about it. No one wants to talk about it. There's a broader conversation there. But instead, like we did at this trade show, this conference, we had a fun tv. We had our little cyberscore lead magnet, and people are walking around. We got a little fun little graphic that's eye catching. They say, what's this? We say, hey, you want to play a fun game? We'll do your cyber score. And everyone lines up and they have this little voyeuristic. It's like, yeah, let's see it. And we show their colleagues and stuff, and everyone starts poking at the tv. But all of that is a conversation that is not socially awkward. It won't make you sweat. You don't feel like you're propositioning them. And that's the ethos now, is to use the security tools as the conversation driver so, like, you can be a trusted advisor looking at the third body of risk instead of you just propositioning a prospect, which makes everyone feel awkward.

Speaker A: Yeah, Um, a couple things you said there that I. I love. Um, you know, the. There's definitely, like, a little bit of a culture in the MSP space of, like you said, kind of like the tech will sell itself if you be this great technician. You know, it will, like, magically attract, you know, people to you, which it doesn't. Um, but, like, I think the thing that, you know, maybe needs to change culturally a little bit is, like, that's not a bad thing. You know, I think there's this, like, attitude of, like, um, you know, well, I have failed as a technician if I embrace sales or if. Or if I, like, try to, you know, market my business. Whereas, you know, that is. Is not. You're helping, you know, do more for people and help people at, you know, scale by selling more, you know, and implementing your technology solutions.

Speaker B: Uh, I believe that wholeheartedly, Hunter, because I started this business because I wanted to help people, not become victims of cybercrime. That was my hidden gem driving me. That's why we started making security tools. Unfortunately, security tools don't sell themselves. And if you work with managed service providers, if the managed service provider struggles to sell it to the small business, no one gets the security. Which was part of the formula that started clicking in my mind was, okay, it's not really that the tool is not good enough. It's that there's three people in this value chain. The small business owner that needs the security, the managed service provider, that's the critical link to deliver it, and then the people making cool tools, which are like, way up in the back. But if the managed service provider doesn't feel confident enough to get the value out there and get paid for it, which is not a slimy thing, they got to get paid for it to run a business, then the small business owner doesn't get paid, it doesn't get secure. So that's what we're doing at Iceberg is trying indirectly helping more small businesses get security by helping the managed service provider deliver it through a sales process that makes them feel comfortable and makes the prospect feel comfortable so that everyone's happy and more people get secure.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, and then they get to see what a great tech, you know, you as the MSP are, uh, when that happens.

Speaker B: So, yeah, I mean, there's nothing. There's no shame in. This is now the soapbox. And you and I are probably trying our best to change people's mindset when it comes to thinking about sales and marketing. There's. There's nothing intrinsically slimy about sales. There are slimy salespeople. There are slimy sales processes. We've all seen it. I was at a trade show two weeks ago.

Speaker A: You get them on LinkedIn every day.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, you wanna talk about LinkedIn? So the trade show one, like the trade show ones are easy because you walk by someone's booth and they just start pitching you. Like they start pitching you. No matter what they do or what you do, they just start, like, the record, the tape recorder click, whirls, and they just say their recorded thing, and I'm like. It says, exhibitor, I'm working. I'm not here to be pitched by you. But that's the trauma that a lot of people come into as a prospect and as the msp, like they've had trauma from them too. And I think that's how we got to help them with a little bit of therapy is come the MSPs at least come past that trauma. There are bad sales processes that make you feel bad, but you don't have to do the bad parts. There are great sales processes that make you feel good. Here are some. Follow the feel good ones and then you'll be able to grow your business and deliver great value to people and the prospects and your clients will love you for it. And it's a win, win, win.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, the other thing I kind of like, uh, about what you said earlier too is um, you know, you're, you're using cybersecurity, you're focusing on cybersecurity as a sales tool. And that's something I'm kind of talking to MSPs about a lot is like choosing a strategy. You know, you have to like, you can only create so much content. You can only like work so many angles. So you have to have trade offs of like do you want your MSP to be thought of as the data backup experts, the cyber security experts, the networking experts, like where do you want to build that like momentum in the prospects minds? So iceberg cyber intrinsically is a strategy choice which is I think great. And one of the reasons that I think um, you know, it helps some of your MSPs be successful is because like, it just helps them do that in a way that's really easy and natural.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: That's, that's the objective. That's the objective. What Even with the lead magnets that we have now, they're one, they're one recipe for success. The, the driving force here is trying to make everyone feel comfortable in the sales process. And, and we're going to talk about in a second the, the transformation that the two people from this MSP that I was working with this week, you can see like right before the event started, they were a little bit nervous. They hadn't done many of these in persons before.

Speaker C: And then by the end, like we

Speaker B: high five, we hugged at the end, they felt great because they spent two days, we talked to 30 people, we booked 30 people in go high level. So there's 30 new leads in maybe four hours max of booth time. And they're over the moon because each one of those 30 people they had a genuine conversation with and we got to ask them about their problems. And a lot of people were chatty. They told us about their problems, which is fantastic. Like that's when you really get lucky in the sales process. People want to tell you their problems and we listened, we took a ton of notes and they were already sending follow up emails. It was great. Like that makes um, the MSP feel great. And then yes, I was here coaching them through it, but they're just going to rinse and repeat for all the events that they have on the calendar now and they're probably going to book more of these small events. They're going to get out there, they're going to talk to tons of people and if in two days you can make 30 human to human connections with new prospects and qualify them then that's definitely a recipe for success. You're going to grow your business at that rate. Statistically.

Speaker A: Yeah. And just for the listeners benefit like the iceberg kind of cyber product really just allows somebody to enter a email or domain and then it gives a domain and then it gives them a cyber score with like a bunch of awareness items such as potential like password leaks. And do you want to expand on this? You know, kind of run this?

Speaker B: So the first lead magnet that we have is called the cyberscore. It's a quick landing page. You can host it on my server or you can embed it right on your website here at the event we had it on a big tv. So you go to your branded version of the lead magnet and someone puts in their website like wisconsin.gov and in 30 seconds it'll do the dark web breach report which is usually the hottest topic. So you get all the employee contact information and employee by employee dark web breaches. And then we do an email impersonation check. So this is looking for spf, dkim, dmarc which is the second most talked about criteria and we talked about that a lot here, which I'll talk about in a second. And then we look for secure email gateway, who their email provider is. So you know if they're on their Google or Outlook. And then we do some website security checks like making sure they have ssl which is a uh, table stakes at this point on the Internet, uh, whether they have a web application firewall which is always great hygiene and then some other website security inspections that we do. So it's quick, it's self serve which is really important for a good lead magnet. Self serve if you host it, even if you put it as a little iframe on your own website or squeeze page, someone can just come in, they type in their domain. We have a lead capture form in the Cyberscore landing page. So they see like half of the results and then the other half are blurred out. And if you want to see the full reporter download it, they put in their contact info and then that gets sent to the MSP CRM so that you can follow up. The money's in the follow ups.

Speaker C: Sure, sure.

Speaker A: Um, yeah. And it's uh, able to be deployed, you know somewhat inflexible ways. It seems like the way kind of, you know that the angle you're really working right now is using it as a trade show tool on um, more of like a physical device. Um, and then using it as a kind of a cold email prospecting tool for follow up from there.

Speaker B: Um, my favorite has been the in person. You can tell that I'm like an extroverted type person. So my favorite is in person not because I like it the most but because it gets the best results. You get direct human to human connection. You, they realize that you're not a scammer, which is the biggest part about prospecting. Cold is convincing the prospect that you're not a scam. So they see us, we chit chat. It allows them to open up and the real objective is not even to have them read the cyberscore. The real objective is just to get them to stop walking past the booth and open up to you. So we use a cyber score as the conversation starter. But then as they're reading through it I start asking them other questions and then they start talking about what their IT setup is. You know, if they've had any issues, what's on their mind, why are they at the conference. And you get talking with them and then that's where the more valuable prospecting gold comes from. Yeah, people are to, to continue on the list that you said the in person ones, great, that's, that's been the best bang for buck in terms of time and money to come to an event. The little networking events like uh, this is a hundred person conference. It's small. You get a bunch of the chamber of commerce events which are very similar to what we have here. Like hotel, uh, banquet room type thing and everyone gets their three by five table. That's quintessential small business sort of networking event. We've got a bunch of MSPs that are doing it for straight cold email that ebbs and flows. We can talk about cold email. You probably have experience cold email anything cold. Cold is low conversion rates but it's a higher volume. So that's where you could get some wins to do one to many cold is the lowest. We're doing one to one cold here, which is better. So you can do that through LinkedIn, which some of our MSPs use the cyber score as a conversation starter for LinkedIn outreach. Or you can do um, one to one lukewarm, which is like your existing sphere of influence on your newsletter. God. MSP is doing it through their newsletter with the cyberscore. That's a hot one.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Or you do it on the call scripts, or you can have it as an email signature in your emails. Or you use it, which is often the best thing to start off with all of our clients. You use it just as a catch up excuse with your existing clients and say, hey, we're doing this new thing. We just want to show your cyberscore we've noticed some issues. Our technicians have already fixed it. Here's the before and after. It's just a conversation starter and the clients may ignore you or they may say, thanks Hunter, for sending me that. And then you say, hey, who else do you know that might want to see their cyberscore? And that's your opener for the warm intro, which is the MSP's Darling Referrals. And warm intros are the best, the best you can get. Um, so that's the first playbook that I try and run with all of our new subscribers is existing clients just use the Cyber Score as an excuse to follow up with them. Do a before and after fix, something like to fix the DMARC stuff if it hasn't been, and then use that to say, hey, who else do you know that might want to see their score? Because inevitably they're going to say, yeah, that's cool, thanks or they'll ghost you. But that's a different problem. When they say, yeah, that's cool. Who else do you know that might want to see their score? And they'll probably say, oh, uh, yeah, Jimmy, my accountant. This would be great, he'd love to see it. And you just got a warm intro.

Speaker A: Okay, yeah, no, that's awesome. I hadn't even considered the um, you know, use case of sending uh, it out with your newsletter or you know, kind of working the, you know, existing customer angle first. Because I'm, you know, obviously as a marketer I'm in more of like cold traffic, lead magnets, landing pages, ad campaigns, blah, blah, blah. Um, but uh, yeah, yeah, in like

Speaker B: in the four sources you got the, the one to one cold, one to many cold, one to one warm, one to many warm. So the one to many warm is like your newsletter. One to one warm would be your existing clients. That's the best. One to one warm and then one to one cold is your cold email. And one to many cold would be like your SEO or ads which are you know like the lowest conversion rates. But those are your, those are your four pillars and in those you have like little levers that you can all pull on different recipes. Sure.

Speaker A: There's uh, you know, kind of the common um, talked about thing in like the SaaS space. Um and M, maybe not specifically applicable to um, msps, but you're kind of doing it right now and that's uh, maybe do things that don't scale um, to start and kind of vet the pipeline um, you know, because uh, realistically you know I don't do. You don't know what your total ticket price, lifetime customer value is, things like that. But it might not necessarily be profitable over the long term to hit your like long term business goals to go and do what you're doing with these MSPs um, right now. So hopefully you're going to get the critical mass of referrals, media exposure, things like that. But it's a lesson that um, you know the msps can take too is in that like you know, use a product like this and do things that like kind of don't scale to get those you know, um, existing customers that are, that those initial customers that initial traction, um, really understand the process at a like fantastic level. Uh, know the conversations like the back of your hand and then you can take those lessons learned and apply them to improve your um, more low cost, higher scale things. Because you know the tiers that you mentioned as far as like the one to one stuff converts, the best, gets the best results, things like that. But it's also the highest cost for you and the MSP to go execute. Whereas the, the cold email, the traffic and landing pages is more of the lower cost, lower conversion rate stuff. So there's like a trade off and a balance and you know, you need to do both and kind of you know, follow them in like a growth curve if you will.

Speaker B: Definitely. If you want to see a good example of do things that don't scale, you can look at my travel budget for the last nine weeks. So I'm not a sales consultant or anything. I'm not charging the MSP that was grateful enough to allow me to come here. Luckily um, like they're just paying my regular subscription price. This is not any sort of like consulting engagement. I'm Not a consultant. This is me investing myself into learning how to be better for them. I came because I need to be on the front lines. If I'm going to sell them a prospecting tool, then I have to be my own power user. And more than that, like the meta user that's experimenting on the front lines. That's why I came and I'm sharing ideas with them. We're learning at the same time. And now the responsibility is on me to make it scalable by going back home and writing down everything I've learned and then telling it to more people. It looks like it's not scalable if you just try and balance the equation with. Mike spent one week in Madison, Wisconsin for one client. My expenses were way more than they're going to pay probably in the year, probably. But uh, the responsibility on me as the founder is to go back home and figure out how to tell that to more people. Right now I'm delivering value one to one, which is fine because they're getting great value. They're loving it. They had a great week, they're loving it. I'm learning way faster than if I didn't come here, if I just relied on them going and them like sending me an email with how did it go? I'm not learning anything and I'm learning way too slow. So like as, as their support vendor, this is me in over investing to learn faster.

Speaker A: Yeah. And then this enables you to do stuff like go and create, uh, white label, you know, video content that you can supply to your MSP partners to fuel their cold email campaigns, things like that, that explain the Cyber Score, you know, and then if they want to go and override what you've provided them with, their own personal like more high touch videos and things like that, they can always do that. So like the msp, um, can take some lessons learned from what you're doing and apply them to, you know, how to leverage a product like the Cyber Score more effectively as well.

Speaker C: So, you know, totally.

Speaker B: But I do this. We're going to go into one of my strategies here. This is the recent thing I've been talking about with a lot of people. So I'm doing this for my clients and like we're go doing the extra hop because we're like, we're doing it for their clients too with the we're here at the city managers thing. So we're learning about city managers. But I also go to the MSP events and just sit in the audience and listen to what people are saying to MSPs so that I can also learn more about what the MSPs are thinking of, which is the um, sort of strategy to impart to your MSP listeners is if you want to be better at a vertical, let's not even say niche down, although you should, but let's just say you just want to be stronger at a certain vertical. You have some clients in the municipality vertical and you want to be stronger at that. You should go to the municipality events.

Speaker C: What I recommend doing is you got to invest your time to learn about the vertical. I know that sounds super obvious, but that's what we're doing here at this event. Uh, just imagine I was part of the MSP's team. Just imagine we came here not to prospect. Honestly, like the prospecting doesn't happen at the booth. If you put that pressure on yourself, you're going to be super awkward and the prospects are going to smell it and they're just going to walk away. We came here to learn about their problems. So we're sitting through their sessions that they're in, we're talking to them, we're asking them like, hey, why'd you come? What are you learning? What's been going on this year in your municipality? What are you doing for it? Who does it for? You were learning about uh, their problems. So we got like a huge shopping list of talking points, how they talk about it, who does it typically, which is, you know, great basic to understand. Do they, do they usually have someone internal? Yes. Is it an employee? Yes. Or do they have like, were, uh, statistically more of them already with MSPs? No. Most of them had some internal IT person learning that and all the talking points and the, and the problems that they talk about. Like statistically, um, that gives us all of the sales material that we need. Because now like, now the lead magnets that we're going to do as a follow up to this city managers thing are all city manager lead magnets. Like forget about talking about data backup, city managers. City managers care about like city manager things. So now the lead magnets are about city manager problems. Yes, there's data backup in it, but they're framed as city manager problems. And the only way that we learn that is by coming and asking city managers, which you can do in a time efficient way at a little event like this, or you do by asking your existing clients if you have any or by asking people you know. But that's sort of the uh, exact thing that I am in fact doing with my MSPs and then also what they can do with their prospects if they want to get stronger in a certain vertical. Just go to one of those vertical events so that you can learn.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, and, like, in a kind of a marketing context, like, for, uh, I've. I've learned, like, putting, like, we support specific software in a vertical on, like, a landing page, um, that that vertical would care about. Having a vendor that, um, you know, provides is something that has always, like, increased conversion rates. Um, so, yeah, anytime you can, like, learn the, you know, vertical at a deeper level and then show not. Not even learn it, but you have to show that you know that to the prospect, you know?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. I'm sure, Hunter, you've been asked this broken record. Like, how do I tell people that I'm different than my competitors that I don't have an answer to? Like, I don't know how you tell them that. How do you tell them, yes, I'm different? Because anyone can say, yes, I'm different. So your competitors are saying, yes, I'm different too. I think you show them by knowing their problems well or better than they do. You can definitely know their problems better than they do because you're thinking about their problems all the time. They're not. So you could definitely know their problems better than them. And you learn their lingo, you learn how their. How their hierarchy works. You learn how their operations work. That's how you show them that you're different than your competitors, because your competitors will say, we'll, um, sell to anyone with a pulse. Okay? So if you, if you. If they. If the city manager asks them, so how are you different? And they say, we respond to tickets, like, 10 times faster than anyone else. We're the super fast tickets. The city manager doesn't care about tickets. Like, that's not a city manager problem. That's an MSP problem. MSPs care about finding tickets. City managers care about having the website up so that residents can find out when the swim times are. That's what the city managers care about. So if someone says, well, how are you different? Say, well, you don't need to ask me. This is all the stuff we do for city managers. We make sure swim times are always available, and, uh, we make sure you're complying with your cyber insurance policy. And we have these special programs to help your administrators use Microsoft Copilot to write all these RFPs. And the city managers will say, oh, that's awesome. Those are the exact problems that we have you say, that's how we're different. We do city managers. And they'll say, awesome. Because the other MSP was talking about ticket times. What, What's a ticket? Like, what is a ticket to a city manager? Who knows about that? Nothing. So that's how you show them. I don't know how you say it yet. That's why I'm coming here to learn and practice. But that's how you show it. Like you use the right lingo and you know their problems. You know their problems better than they know them. So that when you say we, we do this Microsoft copilot training so all your city admins know how to use copilot because you're a lean team and when you got to do paperwork, it's killer. So that's why we train you on how to use copilot. And then the city manager is going to say, oh my gosh, I was just thinking about that because we, we don't have enough time to write all these documents. Yeah, I know. That's why we made this little training thing because we know city managers and we've, we come to the events and we listen. That's how you show them that you're different.

Speaker A: Awesome. Yeah, I love that. Um, so we are, you know, getting close to our time. So I do want to quickly pivot and dive into something you said a little bit earlier about a book and how you used it to formulate the Iceberg Cyber product. I thought that was interesting and I wanted to hear more about that. So I guess tell me about this book and tell us about this book and um, you know, uh, how you use that to formulate the product and um, yeah, just dive into more of that one.

Speaker B: If any of you audience have been

Speaker C: listening to my own podcast or watching my LinkedIn or even saw my LinkedIn post last night less than 12 hours ago. You know that I'm a big fan of Alex Hermosi's books. He's got two books right now. There's a third book coming out soon. Fingers crossed. Books are called $100 million offers and $100 million leads. How to make offers so good that people feel stupid saying no. And how to get strangers to buy your stuff. How to get more strangers to buy your stuff. He's a huge Internet personality, so it may seem gimmicky and I know there's a ton of people like selling snake oil for sales, but it genuinely changed my, the trajectory of my business and in many ways the trajectory of my life. Because as A small business owner. Like, my business is my life. I'm doing this for the gross majority of my life. I'm either working or I'm sleeping. And then there's a very small percentage of time that I'm doing other things. So in the waking hours, this is my life. So that book had a massive impact, like it's a zero or one impact on my business, which then has spillover on my life. So I actually just bought as a gift two of the audiobooks for the two MSP people that were here with me because they had such a great week. And they're like, how did you learn all this stuff? Um, it's not magic. I just read the books over and over and over again. I've read $100 million offers eight times, either physically or the, or the audiobook, because it's that good. And I would recommend anyone grab it. It's on sale on Audible right now. So I got it as a gift yesterday. I would, I would get a copy. Um, and it's only three hour audiobook. So spend three hours. If you, if you can invest three hours. I'm, I'm, I would put like, I'm putting my life on it. So I put my money saying that it would improve your business. Let me break it down. Some of the points. Like there's. You get a good story on how Alex, um, embraced, um, the sales training that he worked hard to learn and then systematize it. But the big, the big difference for me is it's very similar to the concept of like, the jobs to be done. I don't remember the author of that book, Christensen, or something focusing, um, on the problem. Alex has got a line about, um, you sell the vacation and not the plane ticket. And this I see because, you know, like, because I can see in Hormozi now I see it from the MSPS and even the MSP that I was with here. So they, they showed up to the event, they rolled out their little banner, and the banner's like 24 7. Monitoring, endpoint detection response, uh, backup, uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like these are plane tickets. The, this is how you get someone to the solution. No city manager cares about this. No prospect cares about this. Like, people want to get to the vacation. They want to be on the beach. They want to have their feet in the water. They want to be sun tanning. They don't want to stand in line at the airport. They don't want to be asked at the last minute to check their bag at the gate. They don't want to have to open their bag for security. Those are the plane tickets. Like, that's all the, that's all the, the, like, sausage making to get the sausage at the end. So, like, I see that with the MSPs now and then, like we were here, I was talking them through it, and they realized, yeah, yeah, no one wants to talk about this. Uh, they want to talk about city manager problems. This was one of the biggest things, and I live this every day from Alex's book is like thinking about the vacation. And you've got to have patience to listen for it. Because when a prospect walks up to you, you immediately want to talk about what you do. This is what you supply. No one cares about that. They have demands that they want resolved. Like they have problems they want solved. They don't want to buy your 247 monitoring. They don't want to buy your, er. No one wakes up in the morning thinking about that, but they do wake up thinking about, shoot, I, I need some, I need some cyber insurance. Because I, uh, Like, I heard my pal just got his business screwed. Okay, how do we get that for you? I, I got a whole plan on how to make sure that you comply with your insurance so that you got, you got rainy day protection. How we do that is our problem. Getting it for you is your problem. I will get that for you and solve your problem. That's probably the biggest thing that I've taken from Alex's books. Just thinking about the problem. And I parrot this, like, um, I'm typing this on my LinkedIn post all the time. I say it over and over again like a chant, like, listen for the problem. If you can make people feel comfortable enough, if you can earn their trust enough to get them to tell you their problem. The rest of the sales process is easy. Like, once they appreciate that they have a problem, the rest is just saying, I can fix it. How big of a problem is this for you to pay to resolve? And if they say, yeah, yeah, uh, it's a big enough problem, I've got this amount of money to resolve it. Okay, here's the solution. And it sounds overly simplified, but it comes from the patience to listen and not pitch them until they really start thinking that they have a problem.

Speaker A: So is it the problem or the outcome

Speaker C: that what? That they like people want the outcome. The outcome. You got to, uh, like to provide them with a solution. You have to understand the problem. You see this in other sales strategies too, is like, how you, like, qualify people, the qualification process and like asking them their budget and all that boring stuff is you helping them appreciate the problem. If you. If they know the problem and you know the problem, you can solve it for them. And if they really feel the problem, the budget is easy to say because, like, how much is this problem costing you right now? Opportunity costs. We're paying for this. We're wasting money on this. Okay, that's your budget. That's what you're already wasting your time and emotion and your effort. That's what you're wasting on the problem. Here's my solution. Okay, great. Let's do it. That's when the sales that's when the sales look super easy. But they look super easy because you had enough discipline to wait and listen and cultivate the problem and help them understand it more before you try and solve it for them. Because if you start at the beginning saying, if they say, what do you do? And you say, we do EDR and 24. 7 projection, they're going to say, those aren't my problems. They are part of their problem. Like the. That the problem is the tip of the iceberg. The bottom part that they don't realize comes from all these tech tools, but they never think about the tech tools. They just think about the problem and how it manifests in their life. You got to get them to talk about that. So that's a big takeaway from the book.

Speaker A: Okay, and then how do you, uh, how did. How does that apply to coming up with the iceberg cyber product?

Speaker B: Fantastic Segue hunter.

Speaker C: Okay, so the second book, and you're going to think that I like, rifle these often. I'm a genius. No, I'm just.

Speaker B: I've just read the book so many

Speaker C: times that I just try and remember them every day. So here's how you make lead magnets come from $100 million leads. We went through this exercise in the last two days. This is how you make lead magnets. You got to be patient enough to listen for when people talk about their problems. And then those problems, you try and solve them with a lead magnet. Because any of the problems that you're going to get in one of these quick initial interactions is like a tip of the iceberg problem. That's like something burning on their mind. Perfect lead magnet. So this whole copilot training thing, a few of the city administrators, because there was an AI session here. So a few of the city administrators were talking about how they've been using ChatGPT and Copilot to write, um, uh, RFPs and stuff, and how it's saving them a ton of time. So we asked them like do you think a lot of the other cities do this? No, we do. That's why we were presenting about it. Okay, sweet. That's a lead magnet problem. Because it's a problem that everyone has. All these cities are understaffed and under underpaid. They don't have enough people. AI uh is a great tool for like doing some of this mundane administrative work. Make a copilot how to use copilot or how to use probably copilot for a lot of MSPs with 365 how to use copilot to save your lean city administrator time. Team time doing RFPs. Great lead magnet. Or we had another one talking about one administrator said that their biggest security concern are the senior citizens in the old folks home getting scams. I said yeah, yeah, that is a huge thing. Why is it a problem for you? Well, because the seniors, um, once they get scammed they keep calling the city and complaining. Okay, so great, fantastic. Another lead magnet. Okay, so any MSP can do a cyber safety for seniors. It's very straightforward. Put something fun together. That's your lead magnet to the city administrators. Yes. It's going to cost you an afternoon or you do it on a teams webinar or just go in person to build folks, whatever make, make a human connection. It costs you an afternoon which is not that bad. And you're going to make friends with all the old folks in the old folks home which all have kids and stuff that are probably, we run businesses. They're going to pass your card around and the city now loves you because you solved one of their big problems. Now you've earned the right to ask them about the next problem that they have. And that's, I mean that's how I approach the lead magnet. Just listen for any, any hot topic problem. Solve that for free in a lead magnet and then that earns you their trust. So you can then say, okay, now that we solve this one, what's the next problem you have? And you just keep solving problems until you find that sweet spot where you get them on the big contract. Right. Because you're for an msp you're signing like these clients are going to end up being with you for 10 years. So doing an afternoon of cyber safety for seniors is a drop in the bucket investment for a 10 year relationship that you're going to have with someone. So do it for free. Like if too many people are asking for it, you can charge for it. And add some friction. But right now if you want more clients, do it for free to win the trust and then work them through the process to get them on the 10 year relationship. Because that's where you make the money.

Speaker A: Do things that don't scale.

Speaker C: But this like I, I'm doing things that don't scale, I'm, I'm flying to Madison doing that. That's a scalable solution. Like you don't have to lose money on a lead magnet. You just have to, you just have to be disciplined enough with the system that to get paid here. Right? Yes. It looks like you lose money here. And to everyone looking at my Expedia bill, it looks like I'm losing money coming to Madison. But my time horizon is years from now. And when you, when you see that uh, like the couple thousand dollars that I invested to learn so fast and test all these new ideas is going to pay off a thousand times fold in two years from now. So it's not, I'm not losing money. It does scale. You just, you just have to have a system that scales with it.

Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean I kind of meant like, you know, you do those things to learn how to do it faster and then that's where it becomes kind, scalable, repeatable. When you learn how to do it faster, quicker, more repeatably. But you have, you might have to do it something that's time consuming, uncomfortable initially to learn how to do it the uh, productizable way, you know.

Speaker C: Totally. I mean that's the equation that we're in as entrepreneurs. Yes. It's going to be uncomfortable to anyone that's going to start reading the book this weekend. Like sales is uncomfortable for you. That's was me. That was me almost three years ago. Now time is flying. That was me actually. It was two and a half years ago. It was October 1, 2022. 2023. When was. Anyways, I think it was 2022 or 2023. No, 2023. Oh gosh. It was so, so, so recently. Time flies, Hunter. Okay, this was like the, a couple weeks before um, Taher from MSP camp, Rob and Brian Gillette, um, before we did our Orlando pre Scalecon event. That was a huge bust and four people showed up. Um, that we planned it. The day after I started listening to Alex Hormozi's books for the first time. So like that week was a very formative week for me and I tell that story a lot. Um, but before that I was uncomfortable with sales. Like I did not like cold calling. I Like cold calling. Now I've made a system that makes it easy for me to cold call. And there's more to that. But I like talking to people now because I, my mind has been retrained to listen for problems and not be rejected. You know, like that. I think that's a big component when that might need a whole new episode on itself is, uh, uh, maybe that's the way it's the big takeaway. This is sort of an epiphany from Alex's book. Maybe that's my big takeaways. The book has taught me how not to be rejected, how I don't get rejected. When the sales process is like the prospect rejects the sales process because not every prospect is going to convert. Not everyone's qualified. Not everyone has a problem. Some people got to go on the long term nurture, but that doesn't personally reject me. Uh, the system has been built like that. But a lot of it comes from the mindset. And I think that's a big takeaway from listening to the problem because that's my way of saying if they don't have a problem, don't pitch them because you're definitely going to get rejected because they don't have a problem. Why would they pay you money if they don't have a problem? And so that helps me not get rejected or feel like I failed in the sales process because if I'm diligent enough to keep asking and listening and if I don't hear that they have a problem, don't pitch them, the answer is going to be no, obviously, because they don't have a problem. So don't pitch them. And now all the times that I pitch is a high conversion rate because I've waited long enough, which is really just like I've qualified them. I've qualified them well enough to know that statistically most of them will convert. If I wait to hear that they really have a problem and I know that I can solve it and they really feel it. Okay, pitch now.

Speaker A: Well, you've certainly gotten better at sales because you've at least sold me on listening to some Alex Hormozi this weekend.

Speaker C: Audible ca. It's on. It's on. Um, it's as a gift. It's a. It's on discount. Fun, fun note about Audible ca. As a Canadian, don't buy Americans audible CA gifts like I did yesterday because audible does not like cross border. So I had to buy them, then get rhythm refund, then buy them in audible.com Fun story, but definitely The. The audiobook is for free if you don't have the 15 bucks or whatever it is on Audible. And I don't get a kickback from Audible if you don't have the 15 bucks. Um, or just want to dip your toe in it. The audiobooks are for free on Alex's podcast called the Game. Just search Alex Hermosi H O R M O Z I and scroll back to October or August, something like that. 2023. He posted the audiobook as podcast episodes, so dip your toe in there. I bought the audiobook because I've listened to it eight times, and it's easier to go through Audible. And, like, I've gotten. I've got way more than 15 bucks out of it. So that was my thing. And I got the hard copy because I like flipping through the papers, too.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, Spotify just launched audiobooks, too, so I'm gonna check there. Um, so.

Speaker C: Yeah, um, sweet. What are you listening to this week? Hunter, you get the last takeaway. What book are you listening to this week?

Speaker A: Oh, um, I've been listening to more of the podcast stuff recently. I've been checking out the MSP Insider, um, show with, uh, Jeff Newton's new show. And then I've been. I've, uh, got Brian Gillette. Yeah, he's doing great. Uh, and then I got Brian Gillette's podcast on my, uh, next up sort of thing. So I've been on the podcast circuit more than the audiobooks recently.

Speaker C: Brian. Best hair in the biz. I wish I had hair like that.

Speaker A: Best hair in the biz. I love it. All right, well, we are kind of at time here. Uh, is there anything that I didn't ask you that you'd like to tell the audience? Before we go?

Speaker C: My slogan of the week is listen for the problem, and ye shall know thy problems, and their problems will set you free. That's a. That's. I gotta put that on a T shirt at one point, but that's been the big thing for me. Listen. Listen for the problems. Think about the problems. Ask them about the problems. Don't ask them about the stuff that you supply. That's your business. Try and figure out what their problems are. And I. And I'm. I feel it every day. I'm confident that'll help make you feel better about the sales process and win you more clients.

Speaker A: Okay. All right, well, you heard it here from Michael Bakaik. Did I get that right this time?

Speaker C: Pretty close.

Speaker A: I'll keep practicing. All right, well, thanks for coming on the show. Uh, we'll definitely get the iceberg cyber product in the show notes, uh, Alex Hormozi's book, and, uh, Michael's LinkedIn here for all of you to check out. Uh, so thanks again for coming, and until next time.

Speaker C: Right on, Hunter. Appreciate it.

Speaker A: All right. Hope you enjoyed the episode. Michael's a guy with a lot of contagious enthusiasm. Definitely. Be sure to check out his cyberscore product and give it a try for yourself. And don't forget to, like, subscribe, share, and stay tuned for our other upcoming episodes of the Aesopiens podcast. I'm Hunter Nelson with Tortoise and Hare software, and thanks for watching.