MSPs: What’s your why?

Yeah, that's a bit of a strange question to put in a headline.

But what I mean is... why are you still working so hard?

Why are you working 60 hour weeks to run and grow your MSP?

You're not doing it just for fun, right? Because I know that after about 50 hours, it really does stop being fun.

And I know it's not to make yourself rich because there are very few MSPs motivated by having a yacht.

So, what is it that drives you? Why do you do this week after week after week?

Do you know? Or are you caught in the trap of working hard because you've always worked hard?

Let me share a bit of my back story to see if it's anything like yours.

I started my first business 20 years ago, after finishing a 13 year career as a journalist and radio presenter.

At first, I didn’t mind the 80 hour weeks to get the business going. But as I added staff and fought for every little bit of revenue, I began to resent working so hard all the time for so little personal income.

Does this sound familiar?

Everything changed with the birth of Samm, my only child.

Now she's 15 (that's us in Portugal in the picture above).

But back in 2010 I quickly realised I was TRAPPED in my business and couldn’t keep working at that pace, while also being a present partner and parent.

So, I made a decision: I was going to get good at marketing. To get the business to give me the lifestyle I wanted.

It didn’t happen overnight. I found 90 minutes every day to start learning and experimenting. My goal was an easy system to generate leads, qualify them as prospects, and get them into a sales meeting.

My marketing got better and better. I reinvented the business, turning it from being a struggling PR firm, into a successful healthcare marketing agency. And built it up, eventually selling it in 2016. That's when I entered the channel and started working with MSPs.

Today, I have great work/life balance which is by design. I work around 30 hours a week. This keeps me challenged, involved in the business and able to drive growth... but I also spend plenty of time with Samm and my partner.

My WHY is to spend plenty of quality time with the people that I love, doing the things we enjoy doing.

They're why I work every day. Of course I do it for fun and for the challenge as well. But the real driving factor is to give me a specific lifestyle. I want to make sure...

• Samm can do all the things that she wants to do as she gets closer to being an adult and entering professional training
• I have the time and cash to do some serious travelling when that happens
• And continue to be a present parent and present partner every single day. That's really important to me.

So, let me ask you again... what's your why?

BTW, the reason that I set out to get good at marketing was because getting the marketing right is the first step in changing EVERYTHING.

When you can reliably generate leads...

You’ll win new clients more often...

So you'll grow your MSP & have more resources...

Meaning you need to do less work yourself...

Giving you the cash & time to achieve freedom

This is what we help 700+ MSPs do in the MSP Marketing Edge.