I’ve been where many of you have been. I vividly remember the Valley of Death—the gap between $2 million and $5 million in revenue. I’ve been there with my MSP, and I know the challenges you face. I’ve had to be the on-call guy more nights than I’d like to remember. And I was the all-in, do it the right way kind of CEO. No shortcuts.
Like you, I was interested in making sure my clients were secure. If anything were to happen to them on my watch, I accepted that it was my fault.
Way back when I started my MSP—over 20 years ago at this point—I never could imagine the problems we’re facing today.
I’d never imagine in my wildest dreams that someone would want to harm an MSP. We aren’t very polarizing as a community. We keep our heads down, do our due diligence, and try to please our users with good service. Yes, we have to deal with a lot of complaints sometime, but we’re trying to do the right thing.
Our Environment Is Changing
Over the last few years, something has changed. The status quo of trying to do the right thing was no longer good enough. And simply letting our clients decide whether they wanted to invest in security or keep their networks under-invested and under-protected became our liability.
What I learned is that even if we had tools that showed people exactly what was going on and what was going wrong, businesses would still get hacked.
My big lesson in my last year of running my MSP before I sold it to start helping MSPs protect their clients is that security isn’t so much about having the right tools or plugging all the holes as it is about a mind-set. It’s about an organizational culture.
After starting to help other MSPs identify and prioritize their security, I’ve received hundreds of success stories from MSP owners, IT operations managers, and IT salespeople who had been desperately looking for something better. They’ve used my security operations calls—weekly calls in which our membership and their teams review critical security operations issues—and Super Sales Friday calls, during which clients’ sales and marketing teams learn to use penetration tests to find bigger and better opportunities to increase their top-line revenue without having to add to their teams.
Could You Imagine Doubling Your Revenue Through Cybersecurity?
Several of our MSP clients have actually doubled their revenue quarter over quarter using our tools and framework. I have been inspired—and hope you will be inspired—by what they’ve accomplished, even during what some have called the hardest times of our generation.
What I realized is that a large part of your success depends on your motivation. Our program lays out exactly the steps that your organization needs to take to both secure your network (and those of your clients), but also grow your business.
The mechanics are here. But ultimately you have to commit to getting the work done. Ultimately you have to go from your first read of this book to following the steps, implementing the changes within your culture and network environment, improving your sales methods, and effectively communicating with and engaging your clients by means of reports and dialogue they can understand.
Here are some tips to launch you on this mission:
- Don’t be intimidated. There’s no magic or fancy Ivy League degree required.
- Recognize the value and power of what you’ve built. Compile lists of what you know about each of your products and processes—and rethink the reasons why things are done that way.
- Keep an updated status of your own and your clients’ security so that you’re prepared for the worst.
- Get your team to think in terms of security. Most of what I talk about in these chapters boils down to how your cyber stack is laid out. If you don’t know where to start, consider allocating resources to this. By all means use the worksheet that helped me secure the public school system in the state of Maine (GalacticScan.com/Worksheet) as a model.
- Avoid perfection paralysis and do something! Don’t worry about creating the best, most perfect cyber stack out of the gate. Will you have holes? Certainly. But if you don’t start somewhere, you’ll never be any safer.
- Don’t go overboard. Many people believe that great cybersecurity conscious MSPs have to first invest in a complete overhaul. They think they need to rearchitect their entire network, stack, and team. That’s nonsense. No new flashy tool or expensive executive search is worth the time or money.
This Won’t Take Ages To Get Done…
Over the course of twelve weeks or so—sometimes even a couple of weeks, depending on how motivated you are—you’ll notice dramatic changes. Your business will run more like a well-oiled machine. The more you invest in the gradual improvement of your team and processes, the more quickly your clients will see the difference.
The easiest way to get started?
Get a cyber stack evaluation to see if your house is in order AND learn how to use the same exact methodology—through penetration testing—that is growing revenue for so many MSPs in 2021.
