 Tom here for more systems in this video is one a follow-up to how I started my business and how I Got started in technology and started my company back in 2003 to talk a little about marketing and let you know why I'm not an expert So if that's all you wanted to know is that Tom's not an expert on marketing perfect That's the purpose of this video if you want to know why I'm not an expert keep watching This is actually something that came up a lot where people started DMing me on Twitter and on Facebook going Tom Tell me the secrets of marketing and how you get clients and I'm like Hi, I'm Tom from YouTube and that's mostly how we get clients here in 2020 Therefore that does not make me positioned in 2020 to be the expert on it I have plenty of videos that I've done in the past where I've talked about how I do it And that's what this is a little bit of a breakdown is what I've done in the past But that's different than what we're doing today And we'll start with and I'm not going to throw my ad roll But YouTube being the inbound lead system that it is usually is because I throw an ad roll in here that says and I'm Sponsoring myself essentially going hey if you want to learn more about me in my company head over to Lawrence systems calm There's a hires button right at the top. You've watched any of my videos. You've heard that so head over to my Lawrence systems calm If you want to hires for project, but that project can't be marketing because it's not my field of expertise Over here. This is over in a Facebook group called the IT business owners group It's a private group. I'm not sure how you join. I think if you Google it it bug.org they have something I don't know. I've been a member for years. I'm belong to many Facebook groups but this came up and This was like one of those things that pops up in your memories and things like that And it's because I was doing some public speaking events and public speaking is probably the key I would say to how I got where I am and public speaking was something we did and this is a post I had in this group from just last year And it's related to this photo. That's me in the background I know it's kind of small but I'd worked with some credit unions to do these public speaking events So exciting seeing my photo at the bank and it's not on a wanted poster, you know, start out with a little humor But in all seriousness, this is part of how I generate leads through doing speaking events by providing value to people I have been doing my protecting digital you talk for a number of years And I am doing it again with the upcoming small business conference hosted by the local credit union and this and you know Is one of the keys to my business. I've never spent a ton on marketing marketing is really challenging I am not an expert at it. So I will to absolutely tell you if someone says spend this much of marketing and get this result And there's some marketing company that can do some proven results on that They might be right and Tom could be wrong that I could have grown the business faster If I had a better strategy around Facebook ads Google ads and things like that I had a few people asking what percentage do you put into marketing? Well From 2018 till right now I get paid to market because I do monetize my YouTube videos Got a link for that I can leave below where I talk about money and income we make from YouTube and the Revenue services from affiliate links. I don't hide that that is technically if you want to look at YouTube because that's our inbound Lead system. That's how we do marketing and if you want to know how hard marketing is spend any time in any form on Facebook any form that deals with technical people in the MSP space like reddit r MSP and do a search for lead generation and you'll find a ton of discussions There's not just one way to do it all the ways to do it have levels of difficulty building a YouTube channel is not something I would say is easy either so as if you wanted to follow my pattern and go Hey, I want to produce a YouTube channel is that's my inbound lead system and Tom did it I can do it too. I think anyone can do this It's just a matter of all these take a lot of effort and a lot of time and there's no one right path Public speaking was what worked for me for years. How did I get into public speaking? I like standing up in front and talking to people. I like talking about deeply technical issues on YouTube I like getting up in front of crowds of more of a general audience usually business owners I'd worked with several banks to pull off like the one that was just listed right here turns out if you're Put together good, you know Engaging talks and people want to talk about security. You're not looking down at them I bring it up a lot because this is a technical problem a lot of people have where they talk over people and go deeply technical No, I have a lot of very practical talks I put together that we're engaging and easy for people to follow who were not in the tech industry But we're effective and I did so without any sales pitch That's a really important thing. I came out there and just dropped knowledge on people I'm still doing that here on YouTube While I say yes YouTube is a way I do inbound marketing to get my name out there You'll find a lot of my tutorials and this one for example Is you really want to call it a tutorial? It's more of me just talking about marketing. There's no ask here I have nothing to sell you. I will make a few dollars literally dollars for maybe making this video But that's it. There's not I'm not always out here trying to make a buck and people realize when you are So if you're paid engagement or free engagement that you do for public speaking and many of them I did for free Because it was just a good opportunity to get in front of a lot of people or participate in a Chamber of Commerce or business Organization where they have people that come up and get out in front there I never mentioned anything more than hi I'm Tom from Lawrence Systems and that was the last time you heard my company name until the very last end Where it says how do you get a hold of me Tom at Lawrence Systems? Here's my company information and contact info By the way, if you try to get a hold of me that way now here in 2020 because I have too many people trying to contact me That won't necessarily work. We have a form now. We direct people to our website But either way same concept we direct people to our website So once you come up with a few of these ideas and put these speaking engagements together and maybe that works for you This is what ended up working for me. Now This is the bigger picture though If you want to talk about this entire space of IT and MSP clients are hard to get no matter Which path you choose the other thing you can find a ton of discussion about on any of these forums and This is one that popped up last night and not because these for some of these forums are private So I'm not going to share the discussion, but it was about purchasing other businesses This is probably the number one way that I have seen these companies grow fast. So any of the large I'm talking thousands and thousands of customer large IT companies I've met and talked to the owners and one of them was posting in or now who's quite big Acquisition is flat answer like hey, what what did you do to acquire? You know this many customers and this many endpoints that you manage their answer is pretty universally acquisition And that was the most common way if you probably were to take a poll of any large MSP any ones I've talked to acquisition is the One key factor and the reason why is like using us as an example Many of our clients local speaking did bring in a lot of clientele and over time We've been in business for 17 years now and they've just been a clients We've acquired some of them since the very beginning When I started my company before we offered, you know managed services and we brought them along with us to the managed services plan So once you've just longevity at some point if I were to retire from their business Someone would then probably acquire my business if there wasn't a transition and then they would add it to the collective So to speak of all the other companies they have purchased in that pool That is one of the reasons that there's a lot of value in this space and you'll see a lot of offers matter of fact When it's funny because this came up in my memories in Facebook I had flown down to an event over with MSP 360 on my plane ride down there to the big Connectivize event I sat next to someone that's all their company did and this person was the negotiator It was great conversation on the plane I had with them That's all he did was negotiate terms of sale to companies once they reached a certain number of clients and or endpoints His company which was a very large MSP He would fly down there And it's what he was doing is got not more people to hang out an event to figure out who was ready to sell their client base So there's a lot to marketing. I'm not an expert on it. That's why I did this video It's going to be hard work no matter which path you choose and for those couple other offshoots that do get asked a lot like Hey, Tom, what about this company? It claims they can line me up with you know, essentially connect you with people I don't know. I've never used any of those paid services. I don't have any recommendations for any of them So this video is kind of a response for all those people that deem me I'm just gonna fire off this video when you ask about marketing our current inbound lead system is 100% YouTube I technically spend $0 on marketing other than all the time and effort which I do Admit does have a very big time cost To put together a studio and do all these videos that I do so my cost of marketing is the cost of my time And it kind of was a natural evolution public speaking leading to YouTube Why you can only fit so many people in a room you can scale up quite a bit better with video And it seems to be a great way to engage with people. So there's my thoughts on MSP marketing Just want to qualify it like I did beginning not an expert on it But I am an expert on lots of other things that you can hire us for and head over to our website So back to my how I actually can generate leads and get clients. 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