Terry Hedden (00:00)
I’m excited to announce today’s podcast guest, my wife and the CMO of Marketopia, Andra Hedden. She and I are introducing what could be the most transformative change that Marketopia has ever brought to the IT channel. And that’s where we get vendors to help partners grow, grow sales of the MSP’s traditional service lines, as well as the vendor service lines by reinvesting the vendor’s proceeds into the marketing of the MSP.
We’re driving down the cost of marketing, driving down the cost of lead generation, and we’re setting up a brand new form of distribution where everybody wins and wins big. Enjoy.
Andra Hedden (00:45)
I’m Andra Hedden Welcome back to the Grow Limitless podcast powered by Marketopia. Today I’m here with CEO of Marketopia, Terry Hedden. Welcome, Terry. We are going to be digging into today a few things that Marketopia is doing to continue to change the game and pivot to grow and be a great growth partner for MSPs in the space, vendors in the space, and also end users to a certain extent. So let’s get into it, Terry.
Terry Hedden (00:54)
Thank you, good to be here.
Andra Hedden (01:13)
Walk us through first, let’s kind of paint the stage for what Marketopia has been doing and how we’re really working hard to reposition ourselves. Let’s set that up before we talk about this particular thing that we’re doing in this space. So what’s been going on at Marketopia and how have we been really working hard to be a better
Terry Hedden (01:29)
You know, the market has fundamentally changed for what it is we do. Not only is the technology industry going through turmoil, but the marketing industry itself, I think is really fundamentally changed since 2003, or 23. And for Marketopia, this is really our fourth generation of services. We started off as a digital marketing agency focused on the MSP. We then added Teledygen to that.
We then broadened to offer both of those services to the vendors. And now we’re really rethinking what it means to be a growth partner. Most of our competitors continue to really do one thing and we, we have been successful by trying to do everything that’s needed to give our customers competitive advantage in the marketplace. But what we’re doing right now is big time different. What we’re doing now is to fundamentally change the game to where our customers.
Be they vendors or MSPs have a unfair competitive advantage in the marketplace. And we’re doing that by rethinking what it means to be a service provider in our space. We’re not a digital agency. We’re not a tele-elite generation company. We’re fundamentally bringing the entire ecosystem together into one unified program where everyone’s helping everyone achieve everyone’s goals.
And changing the game of ⁓ really what I would call distribution to kind of rethink that and what it is now in this next generation of technology when so little is physical and so much is digital. And so I’m really excited about it. And I can say that the last 90 days have blown away every expectation I had, every dream I had for what it could be.
The transformation of Marketopia has been challenging, ⁓ but I think the future is unbelievably bright for the vendors that join the program and the MSPs that join the program. And the one of the beneficiaries of that is Marketopia. So everyone wins.
Andra Hedden (03:45)
No, I agree. I agree. So I’ll dig into a little bit of what Terry was just mentioning. He’s talking a lot about just the complete change of the space. So when things like this happen in any business, particularly ours, we get together internally and say, okay, great. How do we stay ahead of this? How do we make sure? And I’ll talk about what we mean by this, Adam, but how do we stay ahead of the way that the industry is changing? How do we continue to make sure that we are the game changer? We’re the trailblazer. We’re the ones staying ahead of everybody else in sorting this out first on how we can be the best support to our space and our industry. And so when things like the past, you know, even few years, there’s been a lot of changes, right? AI has shown up in a very different way. Surely it’s been around for a very long time, but the way that it’s showing up right now, not only in business and to end users, completely changes the game. And we’ve had a lot of differences even since COVID happened. So with COVID and AI and the way that that businesses are able to move quicker now powered by AI because it’s moving so fast. And then the type of vendors that are showing up in the space in the AI time is really changing what happens. And back to what Terry mentioned with, it’s not as physical of game anymore, right? Like with traditional distributors, it was a physical game. You had to drop ship products and sure, you still have to do that. in some cases, you still need a server and you still need other things. But the software game is different and the application game is different than it ever was.
So what that allows businesses like ours to do is we can get together and say, okay, great. Now that there are these massive shifts and massive changes, how do we take advantage of that and leverage it to be a better partner for you? So what we’re gonna be talking about today is what Terry was leaning into, which is this program that we’ve developed, this look at potentially being a…distributor style engine in our space. So, so let’s start there. So you keep saying the words program. So what is it that, that we have developed for MSPs, vendors, and users? ⁓ What’s it called? And walk us through the makeup of it. What’s the structure of what we’re talking about?
Terry Hedden (05:55)
Okay. So since the Windows came out, right, in the eighties, the market has been ⁓ blessed with distributors that have done amazing things for their partners, whether it’s the vendor partners that needed help warehousing and distributing product or resellers that were trying to manage so many vendors at one time⁓ just for distribution played an amazing role and we’ve got some incredible companies out there from Ingram to TG Cinex to dozens of other distributors around the world. ⁓ But one of the challenges that I’ve seen and it, and it played into our world is that this distribution was focused primarily on servicing the vendor. let, they let MSPs buy helped them from a flooring finance perspective, but for the most part, was more about helping ⁓ the vendors reach the target market. They made a lot of money from marketing and helping vendors reach their target MSPs and VARs. But that game has changed now and we intend to be part of that change. What we want to do is to be a conduit for vendors to take the investment that they once gave to people in distribution that maybe didn’t invest as much as they could in helping that vendor sales expand by helping the partner sales expand to one that really focuses on that. so Marketotia has created a two-sided program ⁓ that fundamentally allows a vendor to reach far more partners than they ever would before, far more economically. And, and this is the key, those partners perform because the vendor’s investment, while smaller than the normal investment they would give in distribution, is focused on helping partners drive demand. So you take a lesser dollar amount and you reinvest it almost exclusively in getting more partners, getting more leads and getting more sales. All of a sudden you fundamentally transform how the channel even operates. And the partners benefit because they…
They are trying to sell products and services to make a living and to achieve their growth goals, but it’s not their thing. And investment of growth capital is a lot easier when it’s funded by the vendor or at least partially funded by the vendor. So we built a two-sided program. From the vendor’s perspective, we call it channel growth as a service or C-Gas. That program allows vendors to come in and provide a percentage of revenue that is reinvested into helping generate performing channel partners by getting more of them and then by helping them with marketing, Legion and sales, right? The three critical elements to success of the sales or product. So those vendors don’t have to worry about managing their channel partners as tightly or enabling them with marketing systems, we’re going to give all of their partners an amazing marketing platform filled with AI with hundreds and hundreds of campaigns for managed IT, cloud services, cybersecurity, the normal tech stack, as well as the vendors ⁓ in the program’s content. And then we’re going to surround that with concierges, marketing people that are going to work with the partners to deploy that and generate leads from it. And then the sales machine of Marketopia kick said that we’re going to teach the partners how to take those leads and turn them into revenue and profit for themselves and for the vendors that they’re representing. So we call that channel growth as a service. And it’s a, it’s an amazing program and the vendors have been unbelievably blown away by the immediacy of the impact, the ROI.
And the promise for the future, because as more vendors come in and more dollars get turned back in, we’re looking at at a, at a way, at a, at a time very soon where marketing for the partner will be free. Lead generation for the partner will be free. Sales and heavy sales involvement, helping make sure deals close will be free. That’s the path we’re on. And Marketopia intends to lead that charge. We’re already.
Seeing massive drops in costs. are lowering the price on every product and service we offer. And we’re using the vendor’s capital that they would have given somewhere else to give into that. And the impact at the vendor side is incredible optimism. We’re building up the platform to basically help a vendor come in. And instead of pushing a wet noodle, In terms of the reseller community that they represent, we’re giving them a high performing ecosystem, almost plug and play. Imagine if you’re a vendor that wants to bring on a thousand resellers or 10,000 resellers. And you can turn to one company and say, ⁓ not only do I want that. I want to fund it through sales, which is amazing, almost exclusively through sales.
We want to make sure that those partners are happy and performing and generating leads and closing sales and making money. That’s what the vendors are looking at. And the response has been incredible. thought it was when we first launched, it was primarily centered around AI, but we’re seeing other segments of our market come together and congeal around this concept of saying, let’s win by being a better partner. Let’s help our partners succeed and grow.
So we’re seeing companies come in and things like cybersecurity, which pretty logical, right? We’re going to help those partners get more customers, end user customers and get more partners. So we’re going to help those vendors grow cybersecurity. We’re seeing cloud, even mergers and acquisitions related sort of ancillary services around our community. We’re able to help drive margin to the partner that is much more comprehensive, reliable and high performing than it was before. And so it’s, it’s a powerful thing from the vendor perspective. Everyone I talked to is how do I get involved? we’ve paced the onboarding to make sure that Marketopia scales and prepares, build systems and processes to make sure it’s successful. But we’re preparing for a day where we have hundreds of vendors in this, maybe even thousands.
We’re preparing for a day right now where we don’t just have hundreds of partners like we would today or maybe five, 10,000 partners that we can see immediacy and working with, but preparing for a day where we have tens of thousands of partners, MST partners.
Andra Hedden (13:22)
Well, let me stop you there real quick. So, so let’s back up a little bit. Sorry. I appreciate that. And, and I think it spells out one of the couple, maybe even few sides of this program and the dynamic and, and I’ll, I’ll share a couple of things with regard to why Marketopia is uniquely positioned to do this. Right. So Terry mentioned that it’s similar to a distribution model, but very different. And in my eyes, you you mentioned the way that we’re positioned puts us in a very unique place to support partners and vendors in this way because of what we were built on. So for those of you who may not have ever known who Marketopia was, we have been a digital agency lead generation via tele ⁓ company that has been supporting the channel for almost 12 years now. So in doing that, we’ve uniquely built out an engine to support end user demand through the MSB.
So that’s what we’ve always done. We’ve always said, MSPs come to us, we’re going to help you grow through the generating leads and helping you close them, getting you in a place to where you can continue to build your business. That’s what we’ve historically done. Now that puts us in a unique position because unlike distributors or unlike other players in this game, they’re mainly helping from the vendor perspective, meet and connect with MSPs, but there hasn’t been…
⁓ There’s been some, but there hasn’t been a lot of focus on helping those MSPs with the last mile of getting those needs and helping them get close. Why that’s so important is because at the end of the day, what vendors want is net new sales, right? They want revenue. And why vendors care about the channel so much is because obviously they can scale. They realize at a certain point that to truly scale, you got to go through these partners to get to their reach, which is their end user base. That’s where the real multipliers happen.
So as we look at this, you know, internally at Marketopia, we go, wait a second, you know, we’ve got that last mile figured out. We’ve been focusing on those MSPs generating leads and helping to grow their business from that standpoint. So now that the vendors popping up, whether it’s AI or whether it’s again, cybersecurity, which has been very hot for the last, you know, segment of years now, these vendors still want that growth. They’ve been trying on their own through channel partner programs, which is many times again, giving MSPs what they need to succeed, but not always helping them with the next bit, which is generating those leads. That’s always been a really heavy lift, which is why we had created Marketopia to begin with, because that’s where the help is really needed. They need help lifting and getting that revenue in and helping them to grow.
So as we kind of step back from that, so we’ve got that figured out. Now these vendors that are coming to play, such as the ones that Terry’s mentioning, they’re going, wait a second, I need to get in on this. If we can get these MSPs to understand our products that are already generating leads, but now we’re just sharing with them our products, Marketopia is uniquely positioned to continue helping those partners generate real growth on behalf of these vendors. And so what Terry’s mentioning is that the way this program is functioning is that these vendors are going to come to the table with ⁓ high margin products and these MSPs are in a position where as moving so quickly that they need a partner to sit there and vet out net new vendors for them. There’s a lot of heavy lift in these MSPs running their day to day and then also going, man.
How do I offer AI or even some cybersecurity still sorting out? How do I offer this? What does it look like in my stack that I’m going to market with? And who’s the best out there? Well, partner like us can come in and do the vetting, but then also help with the lead generation and the marketing for it. So it’s almost just all encompassing in a very interesting way that we’ve never seen done before. So talk to me a little bit more about the… We’ll stick to the under side for a second.
Talk to me a little bit more about our unique positioning on it. Obviously you’ve said that the vendors are ⁓ wildly interested, which they have been. What else can you tell us about why this is a perfect marriage of Marketopia being the conduit to kind of bring these groups together and how that’s very helpful for obviously the vendor and the MSP? Then barge us into the MSP side of the house.
Terry Hedden (17:49)
On the, from the vendor’s perspective, Marketopia is the most comprehensive solve when it comes to growth. You know, not only do we have a global reach with a global resource capabilities, multi-language kind of things, advanced AI capabilities, but we also take care of everything from branding to marketing, both traditional digital to tele-lead generation to sales.
And even community where we have peer groups and community of people helping people stay motivated, stay performing, leaning on each other, helping each other, using each other’s resources, like basically teaming to win. So a vendor sees that and like, man, this is very different. We’re not just, we’re not a, know, a teloledent organization. We’re not a SEO agency. We are this all-encompassing solution and frankly have been for many years producing. saw a stat the other day that we are, we’re well, well past 50,000 qualified sales appointments held. Hundreds of thousands of digital leads generated, maybe even millions. And our team is literally starting the countdown to a hundred thousand held appointments. I think of that scale.
And then why that really matters is that that’s what vendors need scale. imagine this.
Through this program, let’s say an agentic AI company comes aboard. They’re, you know, funded, maybe not, maybe heavily funded, maybe lightly funded, but they were looking at the small to medium sized business market and they see this unbelievable opportunity. 16 million small businesses in the US alone. And no AI firms, true custom AI firms are going after that segment. And the reason is because it’s freaking hard. It’s really hard.
That last mile to the SMB is, is irrationally difficult. the SM and the MSPs and bars in this world have dominated that space since things started really since the PC was invented. So a vendor can, can look at a real world scenario by which they can instantly get a field sales organization and a field service organization of 50,000 MSPs, maybe 75,000 MSPs just in North America that have a direct line of sight and brand recognition and perhaps even a physical relationship, like a literal relationship with 16 million small businesses.
That becomes overwhelming to most organizations, but Market2WiP has a unique ability with the technology infrastructure and AI capability, strategy, experience of wisdom to deploy a campaign to 16 million small businesses and help the vendor make sure that those leads go to the partners and they’re not dropped or lost and they’re driven to close. Bringing in the vendor and the sales process, helping with deal registration, make sure that those opportunities don’t get soiled. And very few agencies or growth partners could even have that conversation, much less execute like that.
So vendor looks at us, I was like, let me get this straight. Terry, you’re telling me that you’re going to help bring to bear a 50, 75,000 company network for me and deploy campaigns that brings in leads to the entire SMB market from the entire SMB market and help us literally drive those to close. And it’s mind blowing to them, right? What’s actually possible now.
We got to crawl to get there. We got to crawl, he’ll walk, run, sprint. And we’re helping them do that by making the onboarding methodical and not overwhelming. Hey, let’s get your first 10 partners. Let’s get those 10 partners performing. Let’s get some revenue flowing in for you to help fund the next step because now we’re going get 100 partners and then a thousand partners and then 10,000 partners.
And so that’s the reason from a vendor’s perspective, it’s such a unique opportunity. It’s the ability to execute that makes Marketopia very unique. Even just our marketing automation platform can handle probably a million businesses today. We can literally onboard every MSP environment in the world today and handle it with capacity. Our processes, procedures, and internal systems can handle that growth as well. So from a vendor’s perspective, we’re just a really unique solve that brings a very unique capability with, I would like to think, advanced strategy and thought and foresight into where the industry’s going and how best to get there and make sure that they win.
Andra Hedden (22:51)
Absolutely. You mentioned the deal registration. So even that type of level of connection, I’ll say, inside of what we’re talking about in this program is important because a traditional agency is just going out there and creating leads or maybe marketing or creating some awareness. What Terry’s talking about is what’s being built right now and what is going to inside of Marketopia is the more of that distribution feel, that ability to say and get credit for and be able to have in a system recognize that, oh, that lead was generated this way, or oh, that MSP is registering a deal in the system to then go to a vendor. That is very distribution talk, right? So talk about that a little bit. You talked about our system, which we call the growth chain here at Marketopia. Talk a little bit about the growth machine and that capability and why that’s so important and also so next gen for an agency to be thinking like that and then we’ll jump into MSPs.
Terry Hedden (23:52)
The reality is that most MSPs lack the people or the systems to do their marketing and lead generation. There ⁓ are great companies out there that have created systems that can do some things there, but they’re not very comprehensive. They’re usually a side project or a, know, an, by the way, we also have this marketing thing and it tends to be very primitive with social posts, maybe some emails going out.
Marketopia brought the lead machine out two years ago. And what we did was we took an off the shelf enterprise class product, the growth machine, the growth machine, customize it for MSVs. Put hundreds of campaigns in there, loaded it with AI capabilities to create new campaigns from scratch to new content, to blogs, to telephony and an appointment setting to AI appointment setting and voice to AI chat, I think it’s got six AI employees built into it already. That system fundamentally changes the game for an MSP because they have the ability to execute it at press class level. It’s the same platform capabilities of maybe something that would cost 10,000 or $20,000 a month. And we’re able to bring it at a price point that’s much less expensive. So from the vendor’s perspective, we are empowering their partners with enterprise class tools at a price point that the MSP can afford very easily. And so all of a sudden you have partners that are a heck of a lot more capable than they were before, capable of staying organized, having the discipline to get things done, deploying campaigns, generating leads, setting appointments, holding appointments, closing sales, all within a single platform, and even register deals for every vendor they work with.
It’s a very unique capability. In fact, I don’t know of anyone else in the world that has something like that. And we built that over the last couple of years and we’re really proud of it. And we continue to add into it every single month. We’re depositing coins into that bank that I see generating dividends for partners and vendors alike for decades to come.
Andra Hedden (26:06)
No, absolutely. the vendors obviously are just getting a little bit of a look through this program into the types of things that we’ve been doing for managed service providers over the last almost 12 years, which is arming them with these types of tools that we’ve made our own by putting in what we’ve been creating over the last decade plus.
We’ve got so many assets, we’ve got so much know-how and knowledge and expertise that’s built into there that when they have our system, they’re ready to go. They’re ready to go and scale their business with growth. so it’s really fascinating now to be taking it to the next level, which is the deal registration. And again, having vendors come through that our MSPs can sell and grow with. so that’s a bit of the vendor side of the house, right? The goal being that we’re helping vendors facilitate growth through Marketopia because we are helping the MSPs grow and succeed, right? They’re coming on board, we’re vetting them. Before we move on, actually, I wanna talk about the vetting process. How exactly, so when vendors are coming to Marketopia, because they are, it’s not only us looking for great vendors to pair up with our MSP community, but also, vendors are coming to us and saying that they’re interested in becoming part of this. Talk a little bit about what that looks like. That was a question last week that we had in one of our peer group sessions was, how are we vetting these vendors? ⁓
Terry Hedden (27:31)
That’s a good question. I think ⁓ vetting is a big word and different things to different people. So our focus is less on the technology and more about really three things. Number one, are they committed to the channel? I mean, seriously committed. Even if they have a direct go-to-market capability on their website or service, are they committed? Do they see it? Do they see the small business and the MSPs going through that small business?
Number one is commitment to the channel, commitment to small business. Number two is commitment to being a better partner where it can’t be all about them. If it is all about them, they’re going to be a vendor, not a partner, and that’s not going to work long-term. The MSPs that succeed do so for their own capabilities and success, but also because they have good vendors that are partners and help them grow. And then third is want to be part of a bigger picture community.
A story for the IT channel that creates an entirely new paradigm saying, I’m going to be so committed to my partner that I’m going to, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is. I’m going to put, ⁓ I’m going to take money that I used to spend in other areas. I’m going instead focus on helping my partners succeed. And I want to be part of that community, committed to that community, doing things that are not traditional like.
If you’re in the community and you reg a deal with any of our vendors, every other MSP in the world is locked out for a period of time. That is unheard of. No one has that. Right. And so, ⁓ that, that those three things are very important. We also look at scalability because one thing that I think is pretty obvious, but, but maybe you don’t really think about it is.
We have the power to generate thousands or tens of thousands, or maybe even hundreds of thousands of leads. It’s not like a normal thing where you get a new partner, like hoping he gets his first sale or she gets her first sale in the first quarter and maybe gets 10 new customers this year. We are in control of the launch of the leads and we can deploy enterprise class with enterprise class tools and enterprise grade talent. And so we can, generate.
Leaves that that they need to be able to handle. So we are looking for partners that have to get it. That have a leadership team that we believe is capable. mean, there’s no way to know until it happens that have finances, financial capabilities, or at least the ability to get financial resources to scale and a service delivery network. Because that’s one of the things that we see has to be there for AI.
MSPs are already overwhelmed with their portfolio of products and services, running a business and you add Marketopia to it, maybe growing their business by 50 % a year. It’s a lot. so one of the things that we’ve been looking for in vendors, especially in the AI realm is service delivery where the MSP can make money and not have to do the work. And that is a key component to what we see is of AI.
The MSPs that are trying to be all things AI, unless they’re giant and have tons of money to work with, they’re going to fail. They’re basically going to abandon the MSPs part of the business that got them where they are and they’re putting all their chips on AI. And what you’re going to see in my opinion is the MSPs that win offer both because they’re so integrated, so tied together. Cyber security and AI are one in the same. Every piece of the tech stack now has AI integrated.
Andra Hedden (31:18)
So I’ve heard you say obviously that vendors are really going to care about this because they need to find an answer for truly generating revenue through managed service providers. And that’s where we come in is that trifecta piece is that we only can introduce the vendors to the MSPs, but we’re helping them as piece grow, which is ultimately what the vendor needs. And we’re a great partner to do that since we are the ones generating the demand and doing the lead gen on behalf of that partner. So we’re almost that little answer in there. And on the vendor side, they need a partner like that. They want to be introduced to these MSPs and they want a more cost effective and efficient route to doing that, which is growing their business on the vendor side. Now let’s switch gears over to the Mayors Service Provider side of the house. So we know why this program, which by the way, what’s the name of the program? The vendor side. So you did mention that before. So Channel Growing as a Service is what this program is called for the vendor.
Terry Hedden (32:08)
Channel growth is a service on the
Andra Hedden (32:16)
And now we know what it means to be successful for them. We know what we’re doing to help the vendors get there and get engaged and generate that new revenue. Let’s talk about the other side of this coin. you, you, you just ventured into it a little bit talking about how, you know, we are trying to position ourselves to help MSPs understand and be able to scale in the day and age of AI without having to try to do it all themselves. So bring me into the other side of this coin.
What does a program like this look like for the MSP? Why is this something that would make perfect sense for an MSP to be involved? And how are they making money in this? And why does it make sense for their business? And what’s this side of the program called?
Terry Hedden (32:58)
From an MSP’s perspective, it’s called the Grow Community. And we’ve long had the Grow Community. have thousands of members that have been getting newsletters and education, cocktail connects, coffee connects. Like Marketopia has had a community of believers and followers and people that we’ve done our best to help, some of which extremely closely, literally in our office every quarter.
To some that are just on the receiving end of emails, we’ve created a grow community and have for many years. But what we’ve done is to, I wouldn’t say double or triple down, don’t know, 10X our commitment to that community by creating a situation where vendors are brought into the benefit of the MSPs, where Marketopia is playing the role of aggregator of capital and resources and vendors and helping find vendors that get it want to be a part of something bigger and want to help their partners grow so they can grow instead of just thinking about things from their perspective. we call it the GROW Community.
You know, basically what we, what an MSP would see is they’d come in and say, okay, first of all, I think most people know marketobia and sort of what our capabilities are. We’ve been around for 12 years, been around for a long time, thought leader, executed at a high level. We’re not perfect, we make mistakes, but we’ve helped over a thousand MSPs grow, right hundreds of vendors and thousands of them, over a thousand MSPs is pretty, pretty awesome. So, so most MSPs might know who they are, but they come in here and the first thing that they’re blown away by is that just the thought of like, okay, hold on, let me get this straight. I’m not begging my partners for lunch and learn money. I’m not begging for a lead. I’m not trying to pick between six vendors that have very similar products, trying to figure out which one’s best.
Instead, I’m like, hold on, you’re going to help me find vendors that are going to invest in me, that are going to literally get the fact that their success is tied to mine. And that’s evident, not just in words, but in action. They go through the sales process and they come in like, okay, Marketopia is the best, or at least we’d like to think that, may think that, but we’ve also been expensive. Delivering real results, real qualified sales appointments isn’t easy and it’s not cheap.
Marketopia has a reputation for perhaps being the best, but also we could be kind of expensive. Well, they come in here and the first thing they notice that every price, most of our prices have dropped over the last year, two years, three years. Like as we’ve invested in AI become more efficient in the way we run our business, we’ve, we’ve lower our list prices and that that’s the first thing they notice. And then they get to the slide where we talk about the grill community.
And they see basically they go through a qualification process. It’s not overly difficult, but there is, they have to be in the right mindset too. And all of a sudden they’ll see a huge discount on their investment in marketing that brings the cost of marketing way down where most MSPs and I’m going to venture to say 95, 99 % can afford Marketopia for the first time because the vendors are putting money on the line.
And they’re like, wow, holy cow, that’s amazing. I, I, let’s play now. Now, now we’re talking. I can, I can get in here. I can, they’ll invest a lot in the upfront so I can generate a lot of leads, close those leads. And then by the time I’m paying a little bit more, I have the revenue to support that. And then they go to the next side and they realize, hold on a second. You’re going to help me get more leads from managed services than I’ve ever gotten before. You’re going to help me close them. It’s going to be wonderful. You’re going to get me AI leads, growth leads to new service lines that I’ve never had any revenue from. you’re going to generate the leads, help me close the leads and help me recognize the revenue to the point where my marketing price goes down every single month. And then at some point, depending on success, it becomes positive. And all of a sudden marketing, what we call growth solutions here becomes a positive in their P &L.
It flips from the expense category to the revenue category, or at least there’s a revenue offset in their P &L to where it becomes a profit center for them. these, it’s insane. And with AI, you know, we see a multi-trillion dollar opportunity in the SMB market. as MSPs have an ethical and moral responsibility to be in that game because it’s a security issue. It’s a responsibility from a thought leadership perspective, from a CIO perspective. But now.
Andra Hedden (37:36)
It’s
Terry Hedden (37:56)
If they get their fair share of that revenue and by fair share in Marketopia land, that’s somewhere between seven and a half percent to maybe 40 % of revenue, which is far more than they get from a lot of products. All of a sudden you fast forward this out a number of years and the investment that they pay in marketing and the time and energy invested in the grow community turns into a P &L, a profit line without a lot of labor dollars attached to it, which means it drops right to profit, revenue drops right to profit, that easily gets into the five and six figures a month. And the relationships that we’ve built with the vendors means that that revenue is very, very, very likely to continue for a very long time. So you have an MSP who can go from barely making it today to having a net profit potentially in the millions a year for the foreseeable future because…
They’re getting their fair share of money that their customers will spend on AI, need to spend on traditional IT, right? Infrastructure, cyber, whatever. And then already spend with someone, but not the MSP on growth. Then everyone is investing in AI tools and CRM systems and marketing automation and marketing services and agency services and AI tools surrounding lead generation and the MSP gets none of it.
All of a sudden, instantly, they’re brought into that conversation. They’re closing deals and recognizing revenue on sources that they never even dreamed of having. And the most beautiful thing is other people are doing all the work. The MSP is using their brand name. They’re helping the close. They’re facilitating it. They’re bringing their customers in. Their salespeople are facilitating the process, but the vendors are coming in, helping close the deals, helping deliver the services unless the MSP wants to deliver services and they can if they want to, but they don’t have to. So imagine if you’re looking at a situation where you’re barely making it today, all of a sudden your revenue surges by hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, much of it drives direct to profit and your labor costs are exactly the same. That’s the vision that people see when they go through the slide deck, the presentation and communication about the Grow community and then just blown away by it.
Andra Hedden (40:10)
And they should be. know, I think to boil down a couple of the great points that Terry was just making, the idea here with what we’re doing on the grow community side of the house is generating that new revenue streams for the MSP that, again, are going on around them, but they’re not getting a cut up. And so when he talks about the AI vendors and them showing up to actually do the work, They’ve got now vetted vendors that they can turn to to do something that is very overwhelming right now for MSPs, right? AI is extremely overwhelming. It’s hard to come around and it’s moving so fast on top of what they’re already doing to run their business today. So if they’ve got vetted vendors now that they can have through this community, they get a cut of that business as it’s selling through them. They’re a pass through with little to no touch, right? The AI vendors and the other vendors in our program will come in and support that.
That’s amazing for the MSP. So they’re able to play in this game right now quickly and be up to speed and have answers to the AI conversation that they might not have had before because of the involvement in this program. So because they’re in the grow community, they can go to their end user client tomorrow when they’re asking questions about AI or, how do we stay ahead of AI, the, whoever that client is. And now they’ve got answers ready to go off the shelf from Marketopia and the grow community of their involvement here.
Not only that, they’ve got through the peer groups and such, they’ve got the knowledge sharing of what other MSPs are doing right now in this space. And if there are other great vendors that another MSP has found, we can rope them in and bring them into the community too, to support the MSP. Now, on the other side of just the AI services and these other vendors that we’re bringing to the table to gain another net new revenue stream for them, the flip side of that is the group services that Terry’s talking about.
So this is something where you might say, ⁓ AI makes sense because obviously they’re at MSP. They’re going to obviously offer AI solutions, but we’re helping them get up to speed and get to market quicker. The other side of this is Marketopia is a vendor and in the grow community too. So you might go, well, wait a second, I’m at MSP. Why? don’t want to sell. Marketing isn’t my forte. Why would I do that? Well, the day and age is different today than it has ever been. And this started, you know, ages ago when marketing stopped being just about creating a pretty design and technology started to get infused. When websites started to be built, you started to get systems in place with these automations and the way to actually deliver marketing became technical. So that is when tech became infused. So today, even the individuals who are delivering marketing.
Many times you’re much more of a more tech admin. You need to understand systems and you need to understand how to work in technologies and software in order to deliver marketing. So it’s not just creatives as it used to be. That’s what opens the window for MSPs to be able to make sense at the table talking about lead generation marketing. It’s because the technology is actually what’s used to deliver today the lead generation of marketing. So that’s what’s so cool. Now, bringing Marketopia to the table, the thought of going, wait a second, how do I even have that conversation? That’s where some of these other pieces of the program come in. Marketopia will arm you with the outbound emails, the blogs, the printer website, the way to talk about in your particular way. Now you can help your end users with their growth solutions that they need, with the tech that they need to grow, and the way that they need to infuse lead generation marketing into their business.
You’ve got the answer and Marketopia shows up as that vendor, just like those AI vendors to help facilitate and be there to deliver those services for your end users. The beauty of all of this is at the end of the day, the growth, is why Marketopia is almost this missing piece that hasn’t been able to be there yet on the end user level. At the end of the day, when the end users grow, the MSPs grow, right? So if we come in as that growth engine for their end user base, they’re going to need more services, right? Or they’re going to be bigger and have more problems that they need solved by their MSP. Also too, the MSP grows and everyone’s growing, getting bigger and the vendors are benefiting too, right? Because that’s the services that are being sold through. So it’s a win-win all the way around. And it’s not only growth solutions and AI solutions or cybersecurity solutions or traditional types of vendors. If you talk about the types of vendors that we’re bringing into the mix too. Ones that don’t look and feel the typical, you know, mold.
Terry Hedden (44:49)
So one thing that you said that I think is very insightful and something that I want to kind of build on is that everything is tech now. Things that used to be very non-tech are becoming only tech. ⁓ Start, like give me an example, might be ⁓ your stock portfolio, but it’d be managed by Claude or some sort of AI tool or algorithm. And that’s what’s making your investments for you. When we started the MSP elite program, which is for MSPs that are really committed to growing, need some help from a financial perspective, like a fractal CFO, and want more of a growth consultant, literally work from one-on-one with them. call the MSP a NEAP program. It quickly became obvious that one of the ways that aggressive MSPs are going to grow is through buying MSPs. And the other way to grow might be merging with an MSP.
So Merck either selling to an MSP or buying an MSP, right? So all of a sudden buying and selling made became part of growth, which makes sense. But what we’re finding now is that AI is playing such a big role in every business decision that there is a place at the table for the MSP when it comes to financial things. So they can play a role in financial systems. Obviously they have for many years, but now
It is a very realistic thing for a customer to talk to an MSP about AI tools to help them run their business better from a financial perspective. And that can include selling. So one of the surprising and bunch bigger parts of the grow community that I thought was an &A part where we have advisors that come in and will help you buy and sell your MSP. They will help you finance your MSP through more high level finance, financing growth to accelerate the pace of growth. But also allow you as an MSP to get a stake sitting at the table with your customers as they’re doing the same things. They’re leveraging finance to grow smarter. They’re using AI and financial tools to run their, their finance and, and a P and A kind of side of their business and even selling it. So imagine that you get a conversation going with your customers. You’re bringing in tools, you’re helping them run their business better. It starts with AI, usually is the conversation that gets it going. And then all of sudden, you’re talking about their long-term plans and they say, know, our owner is 62, the goal is for him to exit in the next three to five years. And you literally bring in a financial advisor to help them with that conversation. And you get a percentage of the revenue that that person brings in. It’s another pot of gold that MSPs are oblivious to, but because of technology and how pervasive it is and how big it’s becoming in the age of AI, they’re now going to get a percentage of the sale price of their customers. And that can easily, it’s not, you know, 50 % obvious, but it can easily get into the five and six and maybe even seven figures ⁓ commission to the MSP just for making an introduction. They’re not providing the financial services. They’re coming in with their tech hat on and they’re bringing in someone that’s going to help their partner finance smarter and perhaps exit at a greater valuation than they thought possible. And so it really, if you think about it, opens the door to AI is going to open the door for MSPs to get a lot, a percentage of a lot bigger pie than they’ve ever been before. Instead of scrapping for infrastructure dollars.
They’re now in the finance department, the marketing department, the sales department, which get a lot of investment. And frankly, it’s not far away where robotics are going to be the talk of the town and their customers are going to be implementing robots to wash vehicles, manufacture goods and services, deliver them, et cetera. Whether it’s a robot shaped as a vehicle, a semi, or a robot shaped as a humanoid that’s in the factory or maybe just machines. And, and the grow community will allow MSPs to get a fraction of that revenue as well.
I believe the opportunity is measured in trillions. And if an MSP can get a tiny fraction of trillions, the world will be a better place in the MSP world. And we intend to make it happen.
Andra Hedden (49:23)
100%. And I think one of the big things that has been a little far this conversation, even the conversations that we have in the business is a change of mindset. Right? So whenever anything big happens in the industry or the space or when you’re pivoting your company or you have to make a change with this outside factor such as AI and other things are forcing you to do that, which is the time that we’re in now, right? Something very fast is moving along that’s forcing businesses to change their conversations, but also providing opportunities for you to play in portions of the conversation that you never did before. And so I think the switch of mindset to understand that the IT provider and the IT services that were supporting a business, don’t just fall on the IT department, right? You’re not just the outsource IT department. You are the infrastructure for the entire business and how it runs if you do it right. You are the backbone and the one who can infuse tech and solutions at every piece of the business to make sure that your clients are running the best that they possibly can be, which makes you such a pivotal role in that business, even though obviously you’re a third party. And that’s what puts you in a position to have a conversation such as growth plans for the business and potentially put you at the table to make an introduction for a sale, which even a few years ago, that just sounds wild, but because technology infuses every piece of a business, you’re so important at the table of every single one of your clients if you position yourself that way. That’s where the opportunities will come. So kind of to round out a little bit of the, the MSP side of the house making sure that one, the pivoting of the understanding of who you are at the table as an MSP. Now you’re different today than you were yesterday and definitely different than you were a few years ago. That’s how you should be looking at yourself inside of every single one of your clients and looking at how you need to sort out your map of who you are so that you can be positioning yourselves properly for net new leads and not just to your current clients. So I think…Revenue streams is the biggest thing, right? Reposition yourself mentally for who you can be at the table. These completely different revenue streams, be that with different vendors that are coming to the table, such as AI, but getting rebates and cuts of what they’re selling through like they traditionally would, but in a different way. Being able to sell growth solutions, which was never really the case. Being able to have an &A conversation and get a cut from that. There’s so many different streams that we’re just coming up with and bringing to the table today and tomorrow.
I’m sure there will be more. ⁓ But from an MSP perspective, what is the biggest thing that you want them to take away from why it makes sense to come be a part of the GROW Community and sign up to be a partner?
Terry Hedden (52:03)
I think there’s a few things that come to mind. Number one, you have to do something when it comes to AI. It is a tsunami that will either give you the best wave that you could imagine surfing in your life, or it will literally drown you. And I think the timeline is measured in months, not years.
Number two. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to become all things to all people because technology is way too big to do that. You don’t have to create agents. You don’t have to create software. You don’t have to create advisory services. Understand that you’re an agent of products and services created by technology companies in the future. AI and now AI companies, growth companies, even &A. You deserve a share of that revenue.
But you don’t have to do all of the work. In fact, I think a lot of the solutions that you should represent are the ones that you have to do less on, not more. Your team is going to become a lot more of a seller of goods and services created by other people, where you take a percentage. And even your service team is not, is going to be a portion of the stack of services, not the entire stack of support for your customers. Another thing is that the profit is out there and I’ve been running the numbers and I believe that it’s a very simple path to 10X in profit over the next 24 months for the average MSP. And over the next three to five years, 100X in the profit. And the craziest thing is it’s sticky. So you could literally get to the point where you’re the quarterback for a bunch of AI products and services, whether it’s cybersecurity AI.
You know, hardware to enable AI, you’re still going to have a role. They still need an advisor, but if you play your cards right, you’re positioning yourself to potentially a hundred act your, your profit. And, and, with the same team you have today with less stress than you have today. And if you retire that revenue stream continues because the agents will continue. The robots will continue. AI will continue for your customers. And the last thing is.
I want to remind every MSP out there of the moral and ethical obligation that they have to their customers. They trust you. They believe in you. You’ve represented security to them. You’ve promised security to them. You’ve told them peace of mind. You’ve told them sleep at night. You’ve told them I’m monitoring your backups. This is the time where you need to understand that your responsibility extends past infrastructure, software and it includes AI and agents and robots. You have a role to ensure that they’re implemented properly, successfully and securely. You will be monitoring agents, you will be monitoring robots, just as you do employees today. We know the dangers of AI, how easy it is to implement it unsecurely, where you open up all of your information to the world and…upload things under free accounts, free accounts where you are the product and your customers are uploading information, breaching the confidentiality and the IP and risking the safety and security of your customers. You have to step into that void. is your responsibility. And there’s going to be a pot of gold at the of the rainbow for doing that. So, so from an MSP’s perspective, you’re just doing what you’ve always done. You didn’t build hardware. If you build hardware, you probably stopped at 10, 20 years ago.
But you’re not building cybersecurity solutions. You’re not building an antivirus. You’re working with great service providers doing things that MSPs once did like Huntress, for example, is an excellent example of a service that you used to have a knock and a sock. And now you’re leveraging third parties to do it. Think of AI as just another thing you’re plugging in. Think of growth solutions as another thing. We have an opportunity before us to raise the level of perceived value business relationship, revenue, profit, responsibility. And I believe that if you play your cards right, your customers will be better for it. They’ll survive that they’ll surf the AI wave because you’re going to help them. And so will you. So it’s a really a win-win situation. And, and, and frankly, as Marketopia we’re honored to be a part of it. We just happen to have this unique capability to help the last mile from an MSP and the first mile from the vendor.
We don’t build vendors products, but we played a huge role in helping companies as big as Apple and connect wise and to say a data. I mean, lots of companies to bring in and build channel programs. So we’re going to do our best to make sure that the channel survives and thrives and what is to come. And we believe we’ve got the model to make sure that everyone does it survives and has extraordinary levels of success. Like we’ve never seen before because of it.
Andra Hedden (57:15)
Absolutely. So I love that. Let’s finish there. So I really appreciate being able to have this conversation I think you know, the the wave that you’re talking about is a little bit of a tricky wave I think and this this tsunami it’s it’s like a a whole a sneaky tsunami and and what I mean by that is that it’s a massive wave that we know is coming and and I don’t you know, if you’re if you’re riding it, you know, because you’re going to be feeling it in a financial sense if you’re riding that wave
But if you’re not, I don’t know that you’re really going to feel it until it abruptly hits you. And it will be a very different, there’s a little window in here where people think that they don’t really need to do certain things or they think it’s okay, or they’re kind of dipping their toe in here. Other people are so ahead of the game and moving so fast and leveraging what we have today and AI and other things to build quickly and move.
So if you’re not doing it, you will just wake up one day and your clients are now the person who was randomly giving them something AI are now actually gonna do their managed services too. And by the way, this, it’s just gonna fall apart. So it’s so important to be truly getting ahead of it and really understanding how to leverage it. And Marketopia wants to be the growth partner to help you get there. anything else that you wanna say before we wrap?
Terry Hedden (58:32)
No, I like what you just said. And I think the cracks are starting to show over 50 % of MSPs are reporting year over year declines. 50 % of our customers, I’m sorry, over 50 % are showing 10 % or more year profit declines. And over 50 % of our customers are showing 10 % year over year profits or more. there are two ways to attack the tsunami. One surfing it, one’s getting vote over by it. And you can see it in the reports coming out right now.
Make the choice that’s going to get you on the rosy path to prosperity and not the one that’s going to get you in the bread line here in a couple of years.
Andra Hedden (59:08)
100% and let us be there to help you with it. So thank you again, Terry. I really appreciate it. Hope that you enjoyed this and we will see you next time on GROW Limitless. ⁓
