EP299 - Why Most MSPs Stay Stuck – The Cost of Waiting, Overthinking and Not Taking Action with Neil Shaw and Ian Luckett

IAN: In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast, once and for all, we're going to help you to stop overthink, stop waiting, stop procrastinating, and start to get some momentum in your MSP.

INTRO: Welcome to the IT Experts Podcast, the only podcast to help MSPs scale to 1 million, and if already there, get to five and go faster. At the end of the day, isn't it all about building a business that works for you rather than you for it? I hope you enjoy the show

IAN: So good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the IT Experts Podcast. Today I've got, I'm going to say this and you are going to cringe one of my favourite guests. This guy is so easy to talk to, we just ramble all the way along. We've got Neil Shaw in the house today. How are you, Neil, how are you doing today?

NEIL: I'm very well, thanks, Ian. How are you?

IAN: I am good. I am good. We've been for a swim. We're ready to go. We've got a great podcast that's got, got a lot of oomph behind it. And today we're going to be talking about, basically it's about procrastinating. So we were talking at the MSP Show, weren't we? And it was like, what can we do on the podcast? The energy was really high and it's like, ah let's do this or let's do that. So we said Neil, back on the podcast, let's talk about this subject of hanging around overthinking, not taking action. Because all the time you hear people who've been running their MSP for 15, 20, maybe 25 years, and they're at a level where you think, wow, you should be a little bit further on than that. Why is that? We're going to unpick some of that stuff today, but before we do, Neil, who are you? What'd you do? Who'd you help? And why am I talking to you on the podcast today? You might not know the question to the answers to the last question, but start off with the first.

NEIL: Okay. My name's Neil Shaw been in the IT industry for over 30 years now. Surprisingly started in MSP in 2017, exited it early last year, and now I help other MSPs try to do better through using some of the stuff I learned that was good and some of it that was bad and helping them not do that as much, if that makes sense.

IAN: Brilliant stuff. Yeah, absolutely. A massive amount of experience running, owning, been in pain, exiting the whole MSP landscape. And the thing that we absolutely love whenever we talk about this is the mind behind the success, isn't it? Is the mindset of that leader, of what makes people tick, what doesn't make people tick. And the ultimate question today is how do we help people to get unstuck? And I guess it's probably worthwhile just rewinding a little bit and going, what does stuck, in your opinion, what does like stuck look like? When you talk to someone and say, yeah, I can help you. When we talk to people in the Growth Hub, yes, we can help you in your world, Neil, what does when people are stuck in the mud, how does that show up to you in terms of representation?

NEIL: I guess what it is people that have been in the industry for probably quite a long time, number of years, they've done the same thing over and over again and had a level of success.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: But they just don't know how to push through that. And it could be something really simple. But generally it's just almost like choice paralysis. There's so many options for them. They get so many people pulling them in different directions. You need a marketing function. You need more sales, you need this, that, and the other. And they just dunno which way to turn. So they just default to just do what they know and don't take the first step.

IAN: Yeah. And it doesn't help, does it? It is a, you're a victim of your own success, victim of your own business model success, because it doesn't help that referrals just keep popping up. Does it? Because it means you don't even have to look at marketing because you just as long, the longer that you sit in the seat, the more successful you're going to become. Isn't it? It's really weird analogy, isn't it?

NEIL: Yeah, absolutely. We were really successful with referrals and fell into the sort of more marketing and PR side of things in the later couple of years of me being there. But yeah, absolutely. You can do a good job. Referrals will always come. I know some people say they do dry up. Think you have droughts and then you'll suddenly have a flood of them come in. It's more like that. It's like buses, isn't it? They all come at the same time.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: Absolutely. it's sometimes scary to make a choice that may change the way you do, you operate your business, but it's probably the most powerful thing you'll ever do is making a choice and taking a step forwards.

IAN: So you get to a point when, when you running your MSP, when good is not good enough.And until you get to that point, and it doesn't, this is the thing. It doesn't have to be rock bottom. I would say an awful lot of people who come towards us at the Growth Hub do so because they're just about to lose their biggest client. Now, they might not have adopted some best practises in account management, which is why they're in this position or they might have been subject to an acquisition or a liquidation or anything like that. Something that's out of their control. But it's normally people go and look for help when something happens to them, doesn't it? We talk about people sitting in their comfort zone, but is it just an innate nature of a techie business zone? Like for yourself, for many years you must have been what you would consider now has been plodding along, doing all right, paying the bills. But what was the moment for you when you went, hang on a minute, I need to deliberately do something here. Otherwise, if I always do what I've always done, I'm always going to get what I've always got. What was that moment for you?

NEIL: I think it was quite early on, to be honest. We built up quite a decent small client base and then we're like what's next? What do we do? And you go it's a bit of a lifestyle business. It's paying the bills, but we're never going to get where we want to be. So I think it was just taking a step back, as cliche as it sounds, and looking in and going, okay, what do we need more of? Do we need better systems? Do we need be more staff or staffing different skill sets, or do we just need more clients? What is it we need? And we really stripped it back to like the bare bones of it and figured out what it was missing to take the next step. And for us it was just getting some more skilled people in to allow us to take on more clients and maintain the really high standards that we'd become known for.

IAN: So when you are, when you say we, obviously you are talking about the business in particular, who were those individuals in your team?

NEIL: So myself and my business partner, we did a bit of everything. So there's multiple hats as you do.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: And then early on we got from day one we had an apprentice and a seasoned IT professional seven or eight years in the industry.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: And then we started looking at we need a little bit of account management, so we can do that, but we really need to hand that off. And then it was, do we need someone a little bit more technical to offer the cloud-based skills that perhaps we didn't have to start with when we first started on-prem was still quite a thing, SBS servers and all that good stuff.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: So yeah, it was just building out a small team of multi skills in different areas. So there was a bit of overlap, but everyone had something they could shout about and be that little bit better than those two.

IAN: Brilliant. So you've walked straight into the coaching question there, Neil, unfortunately. So basically what you did was you went, you had a decision tree, how do we do things better? Which is great because there's always one person that's visionary. And so I think the first thing I just want to, you know, remind everybody here is that, you become the average of the five people that you hang around with. Neil, you were hanging around with your business partner and other people who are going, yeah, how do we make this better? So number one is get the right team around you, and if you haven't got the right team around you, build the right team, find people, they don't have to be employees on 150 grand a year or strategic marketing directors and all of this kind of stuff. There's so many people giving in the Neil for one person giving in the industry who give some information and give you some advice to do that. Because then also another thing that you just said there, just picking it out is letting go. Let's talk about letting go for a minute because you just said I knew that person, although they might not do it exactly as I wanted it to do, and I remember Jason, one of our very early clients, he goes, good is good enough if you can get somebody to do your job to 80%, that's 80% more of you not doing it than somebody else. So talk to me about how did that feel for you about letting go? Because that's one of the biggest blockers, isn't it?

NEIL: Yeah absolutely. I think a key point is acknowledging the fact that you need to do it. It's as we know, many it business owners come from a techie background, so they're so used to doing everything, but then they have to also run the business. They have to do the operational side of it, they have to do the business development. There's all these things they have to do on top of the tech. So letting go of the tech is very powerful. So what I would probably advise is look at the areas that you are still doing, which are heavily old school, old you, let's say.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: Not business owner old you and figure out who you can get in. And also hire a little bit ahead of time.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: People wait far too long and then people are now in 90 day notice periods. If you're struggling and creaking, you can't wait another three months to find someone, then three months for them to hand the notice in. You need to act a little bit before you get there. So I think it's just yeah, identify what it is that you do that you shouldn't be doing.

IAN: Yeah. Absolutely. And then when we've got that team in place shiny ball syndrome, shiny object syndrome, whatever we want, we were just talking about it on the way here about how certain vendors and software providers now and AI and all of this kind of stuff is kicking in. We know that the MSP channel, the IT channel is probably got some of the most neurodiverse people in it. Whether it be through, various shades of autism, whether it be various shades of ADHD, and it doesn't help going onto LinkedIn and seeing, oh, they're doing this. Oh, they're doing that. Oh look, I can get this for 99 pound for the next food. This, and how on earth, we were just talking about a certain large vendor sounds a little bit like Mike's known soft. And it was like, everyone's getting a little bit of crack. Everyone's getting a little bit of drugs on AI and a little bit of a tea, and now they've ramped the prices up and you can't go without it. It's absolutely, it's kind of monopolisation on a grand scale. And it's if they turned around to you today and ChatGPT, I know many people who are paying 20 pound a month for it. If they turned around today and they said we're going to, we're going to put that up to a hundred pound a month, you'd find it, you'd absolutely find it because...

NEIL: Yeah.

IAN: You've got a point where you can't live without it because it's solving so many different problems. However, we were just talking about another couple of tools that in actual fact, you're bolting on a tool because it's a new shiny AI thing when your PSA can do it already. So how do we help the MSPs in this landscape, which is just literally like a kaleidoscope of WTF is going on, to, oh, should I be doing this? Should I be doing that? I think I should be doing this. I should be think, be doing that. If you put yourself in those shoes, how would you choose the tools that you need? Bring it back down to basics, what you were just saying there.

NEIL: Yeah. So I think the first thing I would do would be to accept the fact that an off-the-shelf product is not going to revolutionise your business to the point that it gives you what you want from it. I think what you should do is take a step back again and figure out what would break if you weren't there. If you weren't there for a day, what would break if you weren't there for a week? What would break and a month? And go through it and prioritise because they're the things you need to fix for the business to run without you doing what you are doing all day every day.

IAN: Love it.

NEIL: Because at the end of the day, people are either looking to build a lifestyle business where they don't want to run it and they want to step back and just take the profit or they want to sell it. And if someone's going to buy it, you need to be redundant. Okay.

IAN: Yes.

NEIL: So I really think that imagine you're on holiday, what's going to break first? Make a list and then fix that, and then just go through it one at a time. And before you know it, you'll have fixed all the things that breaks and you'll be okay. Don't need me anymore. Now what can I do to make the business better? So I think accepting the fact that buying something off the shelf without naming anything isn't going to fix the problems. It'll just give you more problems because you'll have more things to think about. You'll have more processes to tweak. You'll have your team will be confused as to where you're going and probably distracted from actually delivering the job you're paying them to do.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: So I think, yeah, fix what breaks first and then work your way out from that.

IAN: I love that going on holiday and analogy thing, because while you are there in the office, you are not necessarily in pain, are you? And it's not until, a big client leaves or a key employee leaves or something like that, that then the floodgates open and it all falls back to you that you then feel the pain where you go, shit, I've got to do something. I've got to take some action. I've got to move some things forward. So having that thing because what's just struck me, what you just said there, Neil, was, it might not... the biggest thing that you might need to hand onto somebody else probably isn't going to be the most obvious thing that, that you are going to need to hand onto to somebody else. Is it? And that's where that team, have the team got the capability, have they got the capacity that you then you then, I was talking about this yesterday in one of our accountability pods and and one of the clients said to me, he goes, it was something that I actually said to him. He said, which really resonated. And it was the fact of I want my team to do the thinking for me, because if I have to do all the thinking, then my brain's only so big. And they need time to chill out as like an engine, isn't it? All those, remember those engines before electric cars? Don't get me started on that. You know, It's that time where you need to decompress and have those proper thoughts. And so many times people coming up to the owners and going, oh, should I do this? Should I do that? Because they're delegating that answer. So getting them to think, how did you get your team to think and to take confidence in how to take over some of the tasks that you were previously doing.

NEIL: I'll just throw them under the bus and see if they sing us win. No, maybe not.

IAN: I wasn't expecting that answer.

NEIL: Yeah. No. It's about, I think a lot of business owners think they are, it sounds okay, can't think of a better analogy, but they think the kings of the castle, they don't think anyone's going to be the contender to the throne. And absolutely, you should be thinking, look I don't want to do this anymore in the same way I'm doing it. I can't, it's exhausting. It can be lonely if you're on your own or even if you're with somebody, you might not be quite aligned as much as you thought. So it's look to the strengths of people I always, when I interviewed people, I always said from apprenticed up to, managerial positions and you say to them, where do you want to be in five years? Where do you want to be? And then if it doesn't really matter, if you haven't got a place for them right now, it's somewhere to aim. And if they're enthusiastic about that they'll thrive in that environment. So I'd always have a picture of where people want to be. And then as soon as that role would be needed, because it wasn't for myself or business partner or another senior person to do, we'd go person A, you want to do this and now's your opportunity. And you are motivating them. They're doing something they love and it's taking weight off you. It's like triple win. You're not losing at all. You've just got to be man enough woman, enough person enough to step back from it and go off you go. And be there for them. Know that the book doesn't stop with them if they take on a new responsibility or more responsibility, be there for them until they don't need you anymore and be open to letting them go. It's really powerful once you get out of your own way.

IAN: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

STUART INTERRUPT: Hey, just a quick one from me for everybody that's listening. Stuart here. If you're serious about growing your MSP, but you're not sure what help's right for you, then just grab our Ultimate MSP Growth Guide. It's a really simple way to check out what's out there for support that could really help you work. There's no fluff, there's no filler, just facts. Or alternatively, if you want to meet us face to face and see how we do things up close, come along to one of our events. They're regularly put on. They're all in the links below. Go check them out. And now it's back to the show.

IAN: Thanks, Stuart.

So what's some of the biggest mistakes I guess, that you've seen where there's been a missed opportunity that's like, come back, later on where they oh, I wish I'd done this. I wish I'd done that. Because the, looking back and being retrospective is all very good and proper, what's something that's come up in your world where you've seen something and it's thought, oh my word. Why didn't we do this? Or Why didn't you do that? Or look at this kind of opportunity?

NEIL: I've got a few, I think for this one in no particular order one of my favourite things sounds horrible. Firing bad clients, that was always a good one. Getting, if a client isn't paying the right amount due to pricing or whatever they're bad to deal with. They're toxic, they're bringing the team down, getting rid of them. You hang on to clients far too long because a lot of MSPs who are either starting or stuck in the mud, they think we need to keep hold of that client because they're paying 200 pounds a month.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: I kid you not, if they're paying 200 pounds a month. They're not paying enough, probably.

IAN: You're not making any money out to it.

NEIL: Exactly. So getting rid to a bad client was always one. As I touched on earlier on, making it higher before you need them. Getting that done. Raising prices, that's always one that people go, I can't put the price up because they'll leave. Everyone else is putting the prices up. The vendors are, as we've just talked about.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: And I guess what we've just spoken about is letting go of the delivery work being okay to step back from that. So if you put all of those three, four things together, you've got a good foundation to start from I guess.

IAN: Excellent stuff. Let's talk about what successful MSPs are doing? We touched on some of it already. If we talking about, imperfect action, assigning accountability and all of those kind of things around, you build a plan, you know the plan's going to work, right? Because you work the plan. A great thing that Darren Strong always talks about. So having that plan is the most important thing. But how do they bring that alive in terms of getting that momentum and getting that speed up and running? Because you can't do that all on your own, can you? Which is probably one of the myths about why it takes so long.

NEIL: Yeah. I guess part of it is you need to make a decision to move forward before you have all the information. So a lot of MSPs will wait until they think they've got all the information, and by that time the opportunity's gone. So I say without putting a number on it exactly. Somewhere, 70%, 75%.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: When you think you've got most of the information, you can make an informed decision, make it and learn from it and move on. Thought choice paralysis or procrastination, it's going to, it's going to kill your business or it will at best stall it to a hold holding fast position. So I think it's definitely if you have an idea, figure out do I think it's going to work? Make a decision, and if it works, brilliant. If not, make a decision to stop doing that and move on to the next one.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: I think that's what it is. It's just getting the momentum going. You've got to, every journey starts with the first step. Same for MSP, same with every, every business. You've got to make a decision, good or bad, learn from it and move on.

IAN: It's like I was taught early on in my corporate days. It's say yes and then work out how to afterwards. It's always...

NEIL: Fake it 'till we make it I guess it's.

IAN: That's it. Yeah. make it to make it. So you've got an idea, you've got a plan let's walk through something now. MSP's listening to this and he says, yeah, I need to do two things. I need to fire some client. I need a bit of account management. I need to fire some clients and I need to put my prices up. What I find happens next is, and we get this every now and then, although it's reducing because of the way that we onboard our clients is I'm going to do marketing, okay. What are you going to do to marketing? Well, I'm I'm going to get some leads. Okay. How are you going to get some leads? And this questioning can go on for many days as because we need to get to the bit where you can actually take action. So if we were to talk about doing, doing that bit of account management raising clients, raising prices and analysing my clients, in your view, what would that next few steps be? So that it'll actually turn it into an action plan that they could take, measurement on every single week. Because we know what will happen if the elephant's too big and you try and eat it. The, the ticket's going to ring and you're going to go, oh, I'm just going to go and fix this problem. You're going to go over here and you're going to fix the problem. And guess what happens a month later? Nothing's moved.

NEIL: Yeah.

IAN: How we break that down?

NEIL: The way I did it, and I think this answers the question, but I'm going to say it anyway because it's sounds quite good. What I did was I put all the clients in a couple of columns. I, it was biggest spend to smaller spend least hassle to most hassle, whether I like them, whether I don't. Okay. And form a matrix of the low paying. Pain in the ass, not nice people to deal with. They're the ones you hit first. You get, if they're not paying what they should be, put the price up to what it should be. If they're really bad, put it up a bit more than it should be and make them pay for the pain they're causing you.

IAN: Which fats tax they call that.

NEIL: Yeah. Yeah. I know somebody that does speaking engagements and they have a multiplier of how much they don't want to work with you. The multiplier goes up. So it could be three times what their normal rate is because they really don't want to work with you. So I wouldn't say go that ruthless, but you've got to make it worthwhile. So definitely put them into some kind of order where you can go right. Least favourite and work your way up. And before you know it, you may have lost a few, but the ones that you do like and are loyal to you and appreciate what you do because it is a thankless job for the most point. You will find that you'll start adding to your bottom line and cutting the noise that's causing you the problems. And that for me was really powerful where you can go, okay, we've lost two clients, but 10 of them are paying more than the growth of what the other, the 10 were doing previously.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: We've got less work, more head space. I'm not as busy, the team aren't as busy. We can increase the level of service to our existing clients. Everyone wins. Everyone wins. So I think that it's break it down into a list, however you want to cut it up to then hit them in the right order and that you might find that some of your big clients are under paying as well, but by the time you get up to those, it's a less scary conversation because you've already made up for potential.

IAN: Love it.

NEIL: Potentially losing them by increasing your other prices.

IAN: Yeah. You've built that confidence up as well.

NEIL: Yeah.

IAN: I'm going to layer something else on top of this cake now, MSPs are now saying, yeah, but I'm too busy and I haven't got time to do this and I don't trust my team. So what I'm now going to throw in is you've got a team member who you think could do a half decent job at this, but you don't actually trust them that they're going to do it properly. The exercise you've just mentioned. How do you approach that?

NEIL: Going from a real world example, I would say. Have a chat with them, identify if they're open to a change of role or change of responsibility. And then put a plan into action. If it, like I mentioned earlier, it's not about throwing someone under the bus, metaphorically speaking you want to be with them, you, your team, learn and grow by strong leadership. So if you are there to say, look, I can help you through this. It will be bumpy. I don't think you're quite there yet, but you can be, you just need a bit of help. Not necessarily just from me, but from leaning on the rest of the team and build them up. Because empowering people to take that next step in their career and everything, it's really good. From a business owner point of view, one of the best things we're seeing someone come in as an apprentice.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: And before you know it, they're going to work for a top cyber firm or they've been poached by a rival because they know they're a valuable team member. It's awful when they get poached, if they do get poached, obviously. But it's one of those situations of you should be proud of it. You've made that person or helped that person realise what they can do. So I think it's anything's possible, you've just got to be there for them. And it's not a them and us, we had an open plan office and the most junior member of staff would sit the closest to me. So that a) I could give them assurance that where the book stops, we've got your back, and I could help them in the early days gain the confidence that would expedite their journey through the IT industry from being an apprentice for a year to being an apprentice on paper for a year. But three months later, they've got real world experience amassing into a year or two, giving them that, really helping them shine.

IAN: Yeah. Yeah. Lovely. I love that sitting next to them and giving them that confidence. because I'd love to know where that person is right now, what they're doing and what they're up to. Do you know what they're up to?

NEIL: Yeah.

IAN: Is it a positive outcome?

NEIL: Very good. Yeah. All, yeah, I think.

IAN: Fantastic. That's good.

NEIL: Very quickly.

IAN: I didn't know where that was going to go.

NEIL: Yeah no. Yeah no, so I think I, I interviewed and employed I think it was nine or 10 apprentices. One of them left change of career just wanted to, IT wasn't for them. I think all the other ones remained with us. And some of them have left since, since I've left. Not because of me just career progression and stuff.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: But they've gone on to really good, solid, bigger companies where they just want to, you know, spread the wings and use what they've learned.

IAN: Yeah. That's lovely. It's lovely to see, I think mentoring and coaching and supporting people in their early days is just so powerful. And Yeah when I was 26, I was running a team of about 50, building the national network for what is now Virgin Media. But I had complete trust, from our leaders, from our business owners that we were going to do it. And it was a bit of a laugh because we were all the same age and none of us knew what we were bloody doing and we seemed to flag it, so that seemed to work.

NEIL: Oh, totally. Yeah. Blagging, it is half of the superpower in this industry and also it's a right proud dad moment, when...

IAN: Yes.

NEIL: Because for many years I was always the youngest and most inexperienced in the IT field, and then suddenly you go.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: Well Actually I'm the oldest and I've probably got yeah. So yeah, you have to translate from being the it's like the, the pad one becoming the master, isn't it?

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: Yeah. They master loosely because you're a jack of all trades really, aren't you? Until you, you start building the team out.

IAN: Absolutely. Just before we before we, we wrap up, I've got some rapid fire questions in a minute, which look quite a lot. Let's just talk about momentum quickly. We've gone from this, okay, I'm going to take some action. I'm going to take some action around my prices or whatever it might be, or hiring ahead of the curve or anything else that we've kind been talking about today. But, action's, all right, motivation's okay. But momentum is the thing that's really important because motivation is you'll come to an event or you'll have a conversation, you'll listen to a podcast and you'll be bused up and away you go. And then a couple of days later, the cat will be sick on your shoes and the kids will muck around and then you forget what kind of what you're doing. How do you build momentum? Those small, daily, weekly, monthly steps, whatever it is, the measurement, the accountability, whatever. It's to keep things moving and to keep the plan on track. What does that look like in your world?

NEIL: I think you have to accept that change is necessary before to, because like I said earlier so many people are repeating the same thing because it's safe and it's been what they know. And that you need to accept that something has to change. Yeah. You might not know what, but that's that the first thing is going. Yeah, something needs to change and being open to it. I've seen quite a few people who say they're open to it and aren't, and won't implement solid changes.

IAN: Your heart won't be in it, will it?

NEIL: Yeah. Yeah. Be open to being better at what you're doing because, everyone can improve every day's a school day, no matter how successful you are, you can do something better. Marginal gains here and there, so yeah.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: Open to change.

IAN: Yeah. And then in terms of a rhythm, a cadence to get into what would you expect, you know without trying to boil the ocean? What would you expect as like a day one, we sometimes say to our clients, get a buddy and buddy up and have just a check in on a Friday or something like that. What does some things work for you?

NEIL: Yeah. So absolutely sharing your thoughts wishes, your roadmap. Share it with somebody and have that accountability partner, definitely. It's all very good. You have an idea on a Monday, Tuesday, you are fed up of Googling or looking at what other people are doing. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you're on MSN or searching Amazon for buying something. You lose that momentum. So I think other websites are available. I do think it's having an accountability partner and feeding off each other's energy. It doesn't have to be a business partner, it could just be somebody you trust within a business or even external to that have a champion that goes, you know what? You can do it. Everyone needs a cheerleader. All the best athletes. Not that IT people are anything like an athlete, but, most of them, I think you need somebody to be, I was thinking of you with your swimming.

IAN: Oh, bless you.

NEIL: Yeah, there we go. Yeah. I think everyone needs a cheerleader. It could even be a spouse. My wife was the best cheerleader for me ever because I'd come home, we'd have a chat about something and she'd go, she'd think of it from a different point of view and it's really good.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: She's not technical, but she has some really good ideas that then make me think, ah, and you get excited about it and you want to move things along.

IAN: Yeah. Yeah. Lovely. Absolutely. Brilliant. Love it, Neil. Okay. Let's get some questions. I've not put these questions together. Okay. I know who has put them together. So let's see what happens. Five questions we've got here. What's the best decision that you've ever delayed?

NEIL: Getting rid of a bad customer.

IAN: Excellent. Good stuff. Good stuff. The worst decision that you delayed?

NEIL: Not putting prices up.

IAN: Not putting any prices up. Yes. That's always a key one. The one thing every MSP owner should stop procrastinating about?

NEIL: Increasing prices.

IAN: Putting prices up.,

NEIL: Anything. Yeah, putting prices up. Honestly, it's a common theme. It really is a common theme. Everyone's prices have gone up over the years. MSPs don't tend to do it for some bizarre reason.

IAN: Yeah. Yeah. It's fear is the number one thing. What's the one thing other than putting your prices up that they should do this week?

NEIL: Try and step back from one thing they deliver, I think. So whether it's a project, a technical thing bit bookkeeping, whatever, try and hand that off to somebody and see how liberating it is that you've got one less thing on your plate.

IAN: Yeah, absolutely. Brilliant. Brilliant. And what's the biggest growth killer in MSPs today?

NEIL: Procrastination.

IAN: Procrastination. All of the above. All the last 30 minutes..

NEIL: All of the above. Yeah. Pick one and let's talk about it for another hour. Honestly, it's just make a decision no matter how big or small, start with small marginal gains you'll get there.

IAN: Yeah.

NEIL: Every journey starts with the first step. Take the first step. Don't be afraid.

IAN: Absolutely. Absolutely. Neil, as always, it's an absolute pleasure talking to you. We could talk ramble for hours and hours. Thanks for sharing with us today. If people want to get in contact with you, they want to learn a little bit more about what you can do and how you can support them and some of your great things, maybe speak on stage or anything like that, how do they find you?

NEIL: Websites, msp.clarity.co.uk. I'm on LinkedIn if you want to find me there. And generally I'll be at a few events, but I don't tend to mingle too much. I'm so used to being inside, behind a screen. I quite like being here. So LinkedIn email neil@mspclarity.co.uk.

IAN: Fantastic. Lovely stuff. Look all the best of the future. Loving to hear those stories earlier on before the show about some of the clients you're working with, which is great. And I'm sure we'll be catching up with you real soon. Take care. Enjoy the rest of your day, mate.

NEXT WEEK TEASER: So you made it. You made it through 299 episodes of the IT Experts podcast, and next week you have got a real treat. We're going to go Stuart back in the podcast lounge, and we are going to be talking about the lessons that we've learned over the last seven years, 300 episodes of the podcast. Don't miss it. Tune in. We'll see you then. Take care.

OUTRO: Oh, but one last thing just before you shoot off. And if you're curious about how this episode links with the ability to scale your MSP to a million or, or if you're already there, accelerate to five, then we want to invite you to come and take the MSP Mastery Quiz. And in just three minutes, you're going to get a 360 degree scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that can help you find more time, engage and align your people, and help generate more leads in your MSP. It's really simple. Just click on the link in the show notes. And if you have enjoyed this episode, we'd love to get some feedback from you by means of a rating, review on Spotify or iTunes or your podcast platform of choice. We really appreciate every single one of them. Now you can go and enjoy the rest of your day, and we look forward to catching up and connecting with you soon. All the best now.