dnsUNFILTERED: Matt Solomon, Put Yourself Out There

[00:00:00] Mikey Pruitt: Welcome everybody to another episode of dnsUNFILTERED. Today I'm joined by Matt Solomon. How are you, Matt?

[00:00:07] Matt Solomon: I'm doing great, man. It's good to see you. It's been a while.

[00:00:10] Mikey Pruitt: So Matt and I have chatted before in like a more customer vendor relation, we've talked a little bit, I've probably seen you at conferences here and there.

[00:00:18] Matt Solomon: Yeah.

[00:00:19] Mikey Pruitt: But Matt, you do a lot of things in the MSP space. Tell us your resume and how that all started.

[00:00:25] Matt Solomon: You mean going back, like how I even got into the space or?

[00:00:28] Mikey Pruitt: Let's start with. Now, and then we can say what did you, which law did you almost break to get started in computers?

[00:00:36] Matt Solomon: Sounds good. Yeah so right now I am a co-founder of Channel Program which is a resource platform for MSPs to visualize, manage, and evaluate their technology stack. In addition to that. You could argue I'm a co-founder of Better Tracker, which is a tool we sell that allows MSPs to manage all their vendor contracts, all of their SaaS subscriptions, and allows 'em to resell the tool to their customers so they're able to track the usage of everything their customers are logging into, and also track a lot of the expenses to have.

Better business outcome conversations with their MSP. So that's obviously very top level of what we're doing here. But yeah, that's we're excited about what we've built over the last couple years.

[00:01:16] Mikey Pruitt: So if you had to pick, which is your favorite baby, Better Tracker or Channel Program?

[00:01:23] Matt Solomon: It's always, Channel Program got us to where we are. And allowed us to build Better Tracker. So it's all part of one. But, moving forward, definitely my main focus, is gonna really be on Better Tracker and bringing that out to the MSP community. And we've got over just since kind of this version of the launch back in April, we've got over 330 partners in North America already.

[00:01:43] Mikey Pruitt: Let's talk about that MSP community for a minute. Sure. So there are several places online where MSPs gather. There's some. Like Slack group, some slightly more public than others. There's r slash msp, which is everyone's favorite place to get ridiculed. Yep. Me included.

[00:01:59] Matt Solomon: Yep.

[00:02:00] Mikey Pruitt: So it, the MSP community is like just different than almost any other community.

Tell me how it's different. What do you think about it?

[00:02:09] Matt Solomon: Yeah so one thing I love about the MSP community is it's one of the most like giving communities in terms of like willing to share data or information and successes with. Quasi some competitors in a lot of cases, so that's the thing I've enjoyed the most is just that everybody's like willing to help another person, even if they're not getting anything out of it, even if it is maybe slightly competitive. And it is actually fascinating even to see, like we've posted a couple dinners, locally in a few cities and, one of the questions was like, wow, you're like bringing a bunch of competitors together.

And they're like, they get in the room and they're like, we don't even. Face up against each other. There's so much business to, to have out there. So that's one side. You're certainly alluding, with those communities, there's also a side to the MSP community that's that everybody's voice likes to be heard really loudly.

Whether it's in the Reddit communities and it's definitely tough on being on the vendor side of that. So I think what it does is it really forces. The vendor community to be like really customer centric and really partner centric. Because no, no one likes to get put on blast in these social environments.

The only thing I would say though is, if an MSP is listening is, if these types of communities existed for. Your customers to complain verbally and things like that, there's sometimes better ways to do it than just doing it publicly. A lot of times there's just misunderstanding.

So I think just. I'd love to see an improvement on the communication of misunderstandings, but I get it. I get the social world we live in today.

[00:03:42] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. I mean they're, it's just humans. Yeah, we're just humans sometimes. But it is really fascinating of how giving the MSP community is like even the voices on LinkedIn a lot like there.

They're really providing value, not in a cliche, like trying to get an audience type of way. They're genuinely trying to help, and that is, you don't see that often.

[00:04:03] Matt Solomon: Yeah, no, honestly, it amazes me. Yeah, you've got a couple, there's like leading voices in the space that are Yeah.

They're MSP owners and rightfully they're the ones in the trenches. It's easy for us as vendors sometimes to talk about, what we would do but we're not in the trenches every day. So I think it is important that they have their own. People as major voices in the community.

But I see it, I'm part of formerly of CompTIA, but GTIA, I'm always amazed, like I, yeah, I give some of my time, back to the community there, but gosh, when I go there, I'm like, I'm blown away by, by both MSPs and vendors, the ones who just give so much and I'm like, you guys make me feel like a terrible person.

The amount that they're willing to do for this community.

[00:04:44] Mikey Pruitt: Like from those seats, they like, Channel Program is a great community. GIA is it, GIA,

[00:04:49] Matt Solomon: I guess is pronounced. I think they just say GTIA, I don't think they, I don't know if anybody pronounces it that way or not.

[00:04:58] Mikey Pruitt: Just me. Yeah. GTIA.

There's are, really great places to convene MSPs, get their thoughts together and talk shop with each other. How do you think the MSPs that are, I guess maybe they're successful, may not, but how are vendors, sorry? How are vendors? Doing things differently that kind of cut through the noise that all the MSP see.

[00:05:22] Matt Solomon: I think one of the, one of the biggest lessons I think vendors have taken over the years is really like having to empower. Their MSP customers are partners. I, I would say if you look back when we first got into the space with ID agent back in 2000, like 17, 18, like DA was like the clear winner in terms of like partner enablement materials.

Like it would just blow people away. And we were on the road with them a lot at some of their events and so like we, we copied what they were doing obviously in different contexts, but we just saw that and it really led to us having raving fans. Because we were putting so much back in, and I think it's like important to remember that, it's easy, right?

Like you wanna push your product to the msp, but the reality is they have 20 or 30 other core technologies that they're using and they're probably subscribing to 80 different subscriptions. They, my, my hat's off always to these MSPs because they're balancing so many different tools and it's really becoming difficult and the AI is really just adding more to that.

So I do think the one, one thing I've seen like a big change on the vendor side is really like honing in on enablement materials. And another area is around yeah. And no one likes the word onboarding, but. It is important that if you're gonna form a partnership, 'cause every vendor will complain, oh, the MSP's not doing anything with it.

So I do think those early stages of onboarding or whatever you're gonna want to call it, is critically important to getting usage out of the tool because if an Ms P uses the tool, they're much more, they're, infinitely more likely to roll it out to their customers. And so I think that's another thing that we've started seeing a lot of vendors really hone in on is that first couple, that first 60.

Days is so critical because I'm sure you hear, Mike, like the first, when an Ms P signs up with a vendor, the one of the first things they say is, how am I gonna how quickly can I make my money back on this? That's such a big thing. And that's where there's 30 to 60 days are really critical.

'cause if you can get them making back their money and those 30 to 60 days, you're gonna have a very happy customer.

[00:07:28] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, we actually, and I won't use real numbers but at DNSFilter, we see if people sign up for a trial and they actually send traffic to us, they're much more sticky in the long run to becoming a customer.

The numbers are not exactly sure, but it's significantly higher. They actually send us traffic and the, and that's what we focus on, is like. We want you to use our tool. We give, we're giving you two weeks to test it out on yourself and see if you like how it performs everything about it. But we really want you to send traffic.

Like just send it.

[00:08:04] Matt Solomon: Yeah, no, absolutely. The other thing I just think about is, I think. And it's not perfect, but I think you're getting a lot more transparency in the vendor space. I think part of it's just because there's so much competitive landscape that you don't have a choice.

You have to really be upfront about, what you, everything you're offering and whatnot. But it's because of that competitive nature. It is really forcing. Vendors to push their technologies to differentiate themselves. I think you're seeing that a lot. It's because, there's a million I'm not gonna, I won't even name a category, but there, in certain categories there, there could be 20, 30 vendors.

So how do you differentiate yourself? What's what's gonna make you stand out? So you're seeing, and I think with ai, obviously it's pushing development in a much faster pace. So it's but it's, which is ultimately good for the MSPs 'cause they're getting better products.

[00:08:51] Mikey Pruitt: So the, see, the things you've mentioned thus far seem like they're your thoughts around maybe what led you to create Channel Program, you and your team there.

Does that sound about right?

[00:09:03] Matt Solomon: Yeah. So if you go back to the origins of when we built Channel Program, it was during COVID and it was at a time when events to me, and they still are out of control in terms of how many there are, what the costs are, and it's so hard for an emerging vendor to spend that kind of money to have any type of stage presence.

And so we looked at it like. If so, we, Kevin and myself got this question so many times from vendors, if I don't have a million dollars, how can I make a name for myself? And it just kept happening and we're like there's no great answer, so maybe we should build something. And so when we first launched it, it was really a virtual.

Pitch event that we had where it was, we'd bring on six to eight vendors. Here's the key part though, is everybody got equal time on stage, and it was a virtual stage. It was seven minutes. And the cool part about it was MSPs could attend anonymously. So they, it was like a safe environment, so to hear from new vendors and only raise their hand if they wanted to give up their information.

So it was a really cool way of introducing new technologies or maybe a technology they've heard of before and just hadn't heard 'em on stage and just had a new opportunity to hear the new things they have. So we came in swinging using big words like we were gonna democratize the channel but we wanted to give.

All vendors an equal opportunity to get in front of MSPs. And in that first one we had 400 MSPs. It was peak COVID and like we thought we figured it out from there. And then slowly the platform evolved and really. Became a resource platform for MSPs to do everything along the buyer's journey up until the point of actually buying the product.

So if they wanna research, every company that does dark web monitoring, they can go in and search them and they can see how their peers are feeling about them. We've got over 6,000 reviews from MS and their name on it, so not like Reddit.

MSPs want to know before they do a demo. Sometimes they want to know, do you offer month-to-month contracts? Do you offer an NFR? Do do you offer MFA marketing, funds? So we're helping answer a lot of those questions, and ultimately that actually helps both sides because it doesn't waste an MSP's time with something that's not a right fit.

And same thing with a vendor. It's it sucks to get on a demo, go through a whole demo, and then they tell you, oh, you don't integrate to the RPSA. We can't. You can't move forward with this. So that's really where Channel Program over the last few years has become really the ultimate agnostic resource.

And there's, that's what I'll point out, Mike, very few agnostic places for MSPs to get all this information. And that's where we're tried to bring it all into one place.

[00:11:51] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, everything is sponsored by some vendor, even this podcast basically. Yeah Channel Program is really good. I've actually spent some time in there the past month, like month, like sprucing up the DNSFilter profile, like with some of the things you just said does it integrate with this and that PSA, like what's the service model? What's the license model? What's. How many NFR licenses and the way you got started with anonymity as a draw, I think is pretty important for MSPs because they're inundated with marketing emails and phone calls that they really don't wanna answer or respond.

[00:12:26] Matt Solomon: No, it's tough, especially after a conference where the lead lists are given to them, to all the sponsors.

Yeah. No, I don't have, I don't have be MSPs when it comes to some of that stuff.

[00:12:36] Mikey Pruitt: So you already mentioned the word the letters AI twice. Okay. So I want to get to that, but first I want to, I want you to tell me a little bit more about this from your experience, like in the MSP space. What are some like sales lessons that most security pros like from the MSP side that they don't really appreciate when they're trying to sell to their end users?

[00:12:59] Matt Solomon: So yeah, there's a couple ways I could go around with that. So number one I think is just first thing I was actually thought of was around social and having a voice in your own community. You see it vendors like myself, like you. You've got this podcast, we create voices.

We go out, like we just do it right? We create a voice for ourselves and it helps establish trust in our community. It makes it easier for somebody to say yes to a demo or a conversation because they'll come up to me at an event and they'll say, oh my gosh, I see all of your posts on LinkedIn. It's nice to put, a face to a name here at this event.

I think that's one area that's a huge miss for MSPs, and I understand that they, a lot of them are technical people who moved over to being an owner. And it's not their forte, but it's make to me because of that, it actually makes it even a bigger missed opportunity. I think in LinkedIn for example, I think the stat is 1% of all users, and you're talking about hundreds of millions of users consistently post several times a week.

And so what that screams to me is, oh my gosh, if I was an MSP owner in Austin, Texas, wow. What an opportunity to be in front of a bunch of small businesses that my competitors aren't creating a voice in front of. So that's one area that, that I would think of when it comes to talking around security specifically and, 'cause I talked a lot about this at ID agent and not a security expert.

It's funny, I would get put on panels sometimes with Kyle from Huntress and stuff like that, and like John from Black Point, I was like, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna be on this. This panel you're talking about, like John used to work at the White House, like I'm not like a security expert, but I knew how to articulate how an MSP could sell this tool to their customers.

And I feel like what I'm about to say is said a lot, but I guess it's worth repeating because I don't think everybody follows it, which is, you can't. Tech them to death in a sales pitch. I use the example like a network assessment. Like a network assessment can be very big.

Every MSP in the world can probably do a network assessment, but I'm not a technical owner. If you threw a network assessment in front of me, I wouldn't know what the hell I was looking at. So it's like you have to find how to talk about these things in a clear and concise way. Find the pain point of that data set that they're, that you're.

Assume that they shouldn't know, they're not gonna know about, and really just hone in on that. So I just think it's just making it much more simplistic and honing in on the problem and the solutions versus ev all the data set that's in a report.

[00:15:30] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, that's actually really good advice. I did a one of these episodes of this podcast with my coworker in marketing, Abigail Hendron.

And she, that's essentially what we talked about is have a voice, like there's a huge opportunity to go out and have a voice and like you said, oh, there's I'm a nerdy type and I don't like to be on camera. It's those are the best people to have on camera.

[00:15:52] Matt Solomon: Yeah. And just five fine topics that.

I actually, one of the things they get asked a lot is I don't know what to talk about. Just think about I think the easiest one is like FAQ. What are the most frequently asked questions a small business would have with a managed service provider? And put those videos out.

That's a great one, because you're answering a question that's, that all these small businesses have, and it's something you already know. So I think, and then just find your niche. It doesn't. You don't have to be awesome at all of it. And in fact I'd argue the videos that you do that are less scripted come off way more realistic and or authentic, I guess is the word that everybody uses.

And I find that with myself sometimes. I actually remember this one time I like. Really was using some tool and I like really spent a lot of time on the video and I put it out and it was pure cricket. I like was, I was like, I thought it was gonna be like a home run. You're

[00:16:46] Mikey Pruitt: like, this was a banger.

Yeah, it was perfect.

[00:16:48] Matt Solomon: Yeah. And then a few weeks earlier I had gone on my rooftop and it was when I was in Washington DC and it was snowing and I went out with a jacket, I had my thing just snowing. Did some message. It didn't really mean that much Tenex what I got on my production, like the one that I spent actual time on, so you just, you never know, but it's, I think people just like to see you in a real like environment. And that's why people do a lot of those like walking videos and, that's effective. People just oh, you did that at the conference we were at, blah, blah, blah. I think people overthink it.

And with chat GPT, you can obviously come up with probably a million ideas on content. You could just

[00:17:26] Mikey Pruitt: Read it right into your prime. Don't do that.

[00:17:27] Matt Solomon: Yeah.

[00:17:28] Mikey Pruitt: Which is the reason I did not send Matt the questions that I have for before this podcast. Authenticity. Yeah. So speaking of questions, my next question is about so MSPs are juggling a lot.

We already talked about the tools that are everywhere. There's oh, should I, start a YouTube channel? Should I have a podcast? Like, how do we do marketing? There's a lot of things they're juggling. How do they understand and balance what's urgent versus what's important?

[00:17:57] Matt Solomon: Oh gosh, that is a really good question.

I think. I think number one, I would say you obviously have to have your course, your core stack obviously. So and they probably already have that. Most of them. I think you're finding a, you have to find a balance, and I don't know if this is like the perfect answer, but I would probably be leaning on peers.

Find out what's working, what's not working. 'Cause look, you can go down, you could sign up for five AI tools and spend a whole bunch of time like I just talked about, and, waste time using those things. And that's why, I think that the MSP community so heavily relies on peers because there are people who've used various tools, get their opinions.

You can read product reviews on our platform. So I don't know if the, I don't know if I have the answer of what they should look at first, other than I think really depending on, try some things out, talk to your peers, do some research. But I do think from like a sales and marketing perspective, you.

I'm hammering it now. You have to start, you have to put yourself out there. You gotta start that pipeline of content and get it out to the world, because it's not fun being like the best MSP in York region, and nobody knows about you. And that's the reality. And vendors face that same challenge.

You could have the coolest technology, but if you're not out there and you're not putting it out there, no one knows about it. It doesn't really matter.

[00:19:20] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, I think we actually did a little training this morning at DNSFilter and we were talking about managers being like a coach and a, and the mentor and a a multiplier.

And I think what you're saying is. You don't have to have the answer necessarily. What do I work on? What's the most important thing? You don't have to know what the answer is. You just need to know like how to go find the answer and not necessarily find it, but be inspired for it to reveal itself perhaps.

[00:19:51] Matt Solomon: Yeah, and I guess what I would add onto that, as you were talking, I was thinking about it we've already been talking about not selling the tools. Like really focus on outcomes. I think that's a huge theme for this year, like selling the business outcomes efficiencies, right? Whether it's AI efficiencies or with like with Better Tracker, you're talking about technology spend.

Hey, you've got five products that all do the same thing. Why are you paying for all five of these? The simplest one that you could probably win and make and save your customers money is just Zoom and Teams. How many people are still paying for Zoom? When they've got teams for, not for free, but it's already part of their Microsoft bundle.

So there's a lot of ways, but I think it, I think, 'cause everybody's, we still have a pretty turbulent economy and it's forcing all small businesses to carefully look at their expenses, and then. We're in the midst. I don't know when this will play, but right now we're in the midst of a government shutdown, which has a ripple effect to lots of industries.

So again, what are people doing? They're looking at what they spend, personally and professionally. So again, when you're talk, be able, I think when you're able to talk about business outcomes, you're gonna have a lot more success selling whatever you're selling.

[00:21:03] Mikey Pruitt: A hundred percent agree. The, I just earlier this week had a, saw a little thing pop up in my Google workspace in the calendar and I was like, booking links new feature.

And I was like, oh we have a tool that does book booking links. Bye-bye. But my tool, we can now do this for the same price we're already paying for Google Workspace and stuff.

[00:21:23] Matt Solomon: That's exactly right. Like people use Calendly, but. If you have got HubSpot, HubSpot does the same thing.

There might be reasons do you, you want to use Calendly and I'm not, nothing against them, but there are ways you can be more efficient with your technology spend and also not have to manage so many SaaS subscriptions.

[00:21:39] Mikey Pruitt: And to the MSPs out there, that is what your clients are looking for. That's really why they pay you is because you are the bringer of clever efficiency in their business. You're like, what is the technical advisor? This is like the promise of MSPs is something you need to start doing if you're not already.

Yeah and the key word there is efficiency This year. Specifically? Yeah,

[00:22:04] Matt Solomon: no, absolutely. We had an MSP using our tool, they found, that their customer was, and some of it they knew, but they were using 365, they were using Google Workspace and Dropbox. It was like a 25 person organization.

And based on, discovering these different things, they were able to save that customer $8,500. And when you start saving people money, you be, you might have already been a trusted advisor, but they start liking you a lot more when you start saving them money. And then in turn.

They're willing to spend more money with you, most likely,

[00:22:33] Mikey Pruitt: yeah. Now, they have 8,500 worth of that's right. Exactly.

[00:22:38] Matt Solomon: I'd probably use like that, that the Zoom and teams one, because that's a really quick win on how to get some money over to your side.

[00:22:46] Mikey Pruitt: So let's get into the conversation about AI a little bit.

What type of AI are you and your team using regularly, currently?

[00:22:54] Matt Solomon: So we're using some development AI tools probably enhance our development by 50%. It's crazy how much faster you can move on a product which is awesome because then we just take the MSP feedback and say, Hey, we, you guys have been asking for this.

We're delivering it much faster than we ever could have before. Certainly, like the chat GPTs of the world or we're using those types of tools and, just refining things. I think everybody's getting a little bit better at spotting ai. And there's some telltale signs with the old.

DM dash and things like that. But. Definitely, it's a great brainstorming resource. It's, again, we talked about if you're stuck on ideas for video content, just talk, talk to an AI tool about it. And then so those are like what we're using like internally and then for our own self.

Like with Better Tracker, we're actually launching our first AI component where it's actually an ooc, a power, an AC. Ai OCR tool where an MSP can upload a contract, via PDF and it will actually extract all of the information out of the contract. 'Cause some, a lot of it was manual when we first launched.

So it really is helping pull out that information. And then we're creating AI agents for ourselves or for our customers, or MSPs where they can essentially have a conversation about their financials. With our tool.

[00:24:12] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, that's actually a really good semi segue a little bit. So you mentioned a couple things in there that really piqued my interest.

First, you were talking about AI development vibe coding esque. But the funny thing about coding with AI is if you have a developer doing it, they can spot where it messes up, which is really powerful. That's really cool. I do a little bit of that trying to build some little side things.

I'm like, oh, it would be cool if something could send me an email every day and run a little automation or some vibe coded thing. But nothing like production worthy. I don't trust myself quite that much, but if you have the right team that you can trust them enough. Yeah. The other thing you mentioned was, essentially ETL, which means extract, transform, and load. So this is where you can OCRA contract or any other document into a format that is AI friendly.

[00:25:00] Matt Solomon: Yeah, like

[00:25:00] Mikey Pruitt: markdown. If you're familiar with markdown, you can take all those documents, give them to an ai, like a repository and like a, what's called a vector database.

Sorry, I'm getting a little too nerdy for the audience, or you, Matt, but but you're essentially. Fine tuning whatever AI model you put in front of that knowledge base. So we've done, I've done this like just as a test with the DNSFilter website and our help docs. And I say, okay, take all the pages. I grab the site map, I ve I put 'em translate 'em into a markdown files, put 'em in a vector store, and then say, Chad, GPT.

You now have this tool to ask questions. And it's all publicly information, like for training to. Learn something for myself. And it's actually really powerful and your customers are probably looking for things like that, buying tools like that when you can either build them yourself or find efficient cost cost effective ways to give that to them.

Yeah,

[00:26:01] Matt Solomon: absolutely. And you're seeing it like I don't, I'm not familiar with all of the AI tools that are now coming in the MSP space, but people now selling or trying to figure out how to monetize the ai. It's, yes, people can use copilot, but that doesn't mean they really are using copilot, so you're starting to see AI as a service for some of these MSPs. The, I'd say the early adopters. I think everybody's still trying to figure it out though.

[00:26:23] Mikey Pruitt: So do you think there is a, like a market for AI consultancy kind of things being attached to MSP as part of their offering?

[00:26:32] Matt Solomon: I would say a hundred percent, because we all just don't even we, you only know what you know if you're not like super technical, like I think I'm doing some pretty cool things with it, but then, I get Garrett and you see some

[00:26:44] Mikey Pruitt: YouTube video and you're like, oh

[00:26:47] Matt Solomon: yeah.

Even just Garrett on my team, like our CTO and he's showing me what he is doing and I'm like, oh my God. That's a, you're thinking of this in a such a different way. And then, I went to an AI summit, a couple of months ago, and there was an MSP Corey Kirkendal, and I was on stage with him and I was like, oh my gosh, like I don't belong on the stage with him because what he's doing within his own business.

I like came, I went up to him afterwards. I was like, man, I was like, you should sell this to MSPs. I think you have something like that you could actually sell for MSPs to deploy because yeah, he was just on a whole nother level, there's so much to be learned, but I absolutely, I think there's money to be made for ser for consulting and services around it.

[00:27:25] Mikey Pruitt: Matt, you certainly belong on the stages, so I think you've got like a little bit of a imposter syndrome or something going on maybe just fully with

[00:27:35] Matt Solomon: AI stuff.

[00:27:36] Mikey Pruitt: The funny thing about AI and like competency and who's an expert, is that even an expert, it's only one or two steps ahead of you.

I know

[00:27:43] Matt Solomon: that's true.

[00:27:46] Mikey Pruitt: So like the other side of the AI coin is we can create things a lot faster and have a brainstorming partner if necessary. But there's also a lot of security risks. So there's like people adding data where they shouldn't and things like that. How do you see that kind of evolving and how do you, how do the precautions to take to prevent,

[00:28:08] Matt Solomon: so this is gonna be one of the questions I might punt slightly. 'cause I don't know that I, it's, I don't know that I can give an an educated answer on where the security of this ai, like video content and all this is going. One, I could just speak just anecdotally from what I've seen on like TikTok, it's freaking scary.

I was watching last night, it was George Washington versus ape Lincoln in a wrestling match. And if you didn't know who they were. It looks real it's obviously, those are the funny versions of it, but man it's, MSPs have to have real serious conversations with their customers because they're, phishing is already such a big, issue.

But with voice, I think voice is the one that might scare me the most right now in terms of like for small businesses is, it's. I think everybody's now gotten used to, okay, the CEO's not asking for this gift card via whatever email, but all of a sudden if you get a call from your CEO, and it sounds like them.

And then they're asking for it. It's a whole, it's like a whole nother layer that people just aren't, I don't know. I don't think any of us are really prepared for the AI threat, but I really can't speak to it from a too much of a security level.

[00:29:20] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. And they're not asking for a gift card. They're asking for you to reset their passport 'cause they're you on the actual.

Trip that they're the business trip that the person they're calling knows they're on. Yep. And it's oh, everything's adding up. This must be real. And they do the reset or do the whatever thing they wanted them to do.

[00:29:37] Matt Solomon: Yeah. And it all goes back to the airport selfie they took and told everybody where they were going.

Yeah.

[00:29:43] Mikey Pruitt: LinkedIn. It's always LinkedIn. Yeah.

Sorry, and sorry, I was talking about AI and security, like all day, like two different things. Sorry.

[00:29:55] Matt Solomon: No you're fine.

[00:29:57] Mikey Pruitt: So I wanna look and talk about culture a little bit more. So you're like pretty outspoken about NSP culture and this not just tools, what are. The practices like four teams and like how is, how do we go from reactive to like proactive measures in our MSPs instead of, firefighting.

There's a lot of, I see that where a lot in the MSP space, like we're firefighting and how do we get how do MSPs get a little bit more proactive in their strategies and processes,

[00:30:28] Matt Solomon: like with their customers?

[00:30:30] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, with our customers.

[00:30:32] Matt Solomon: Yeah, I think part of it is like we it's very easy to like, not wanna know tough or the answers to tough questions of like, how are things going and stuff like that.

So yeah, I think part of it is that started in there put in procedures to find out how things are going on a regular basis. Have somebody checking in with the customer. Obviously QBR are a huge conversation that, vendors and MSPs talk about. It is a chance to reset the playing field each quarter and make sure expectations are set.

I think that's the always the biggest disconnect is expectations, right? I think MSPs are in the inevitable position sometimes that they're supposed to be the experts on everything. But they're not like, they're not all cybersecurity experts, but by the nature of what they manage and stuff they're put in a position where that the small business assumes that they do all that.

And even with subscriptions and contracts, they, they're like, oh, why didn't you tell us about this contract that was up for we don't have access to that. It's not something we manage. So I think. I think that's where, probably like the industry can really mature is around those quarterly business reviews, but also in those reviews, really just setting the proper expectations of what you do and what you don't do.

Like sometimes it's, yeah, you have to be crystal clear on what you don't do based on their contract level.

[00:31:57] Mikey Pruitt: And you were talking about onboarding as a

The not so friendly word, or not so fun word, but those qbr are kind of part of that as well.

[00:32:05] Matt Solomon: Yeah.

[00:32:05] Mikey Pruitt: Like in order to build trust, you have to continually provide value and feedback.

[00:32:12] Matt Solomon: Yeah. And I think, look, continuing to listen to your small business customers that you know it's not that. You have to take every piece of advice. 'cause everybody runs their business differently. And it as a vendor in the MSP space, every MSP has an opinion and some of them are the best ideas and some of 'em we don't even think of.

But you can't, you also have to build tools or services for the masses. You can't customize everything otherwise you just don't have a scalable business. It on the vendor side, but, know. You just don't want a thousand different contracts and a thousand different levels of service because it really becomes unmanageable at some point.

[00:32:52] Mikey Pruitt: The is, and that I believe is what Better Tracker does, right? Like it manages those contracts for you.

[00:32:58] Matt Solomon: Yeah. So it manages all of the contracts and subscriptions. That one, there's the internal use case for yourself. So we had an MSP. Just tell me it was last week. I saved $20,000 using Better Tracker for myself.

And I was like, whoa, that's a lot. So how did you do that? And he is honestly, he is I take a lot of flyers on $200 a month SaaS tools and I just completely forget about 'em. And I really went through it and, cut things out that were either redundant or not being in use. And then on the flip side, you get the same thing with their customers.

Like we're in the technology space, so you'd think we would track it better, but we, but they don't, there's, there hasn't been a tool for small businesses that really allow them to, so it's infinitely worse for their customers. And what's neat about it is it gives the MSP visibility into things that they are not managing.

So yes, an MSP knows. The tools that they are delivering to their customers, but they don't know what they're signing up for. Outside of that, and that's where there's a lot of opportunity. It's a lot of we things we talked about, right? Efficiencies, redundant tools, have these business outcome op conversations.

I go back to the Zoom and Teams. It's a very small example, but that's what you discover. You discover, oh my gosh, you guys are paying $500 a month for Zoom. I had no idea you, do you get teams for free over here, or so, whatever it is. So that, that's a small scale, but it really unlocks a lot of upsell revenue opportunities for them.

But yeah, it's core, it's never missed a contract renewal ever again. And set up custom notifications so that you're getting alerted in a proactive way and actually give you even a personal one. Because, I use the tool myself. Like I need to know what's, how the tool's being used. And I did it myself and.

We, we have pest control over here in Austin, Texas, and my bill went up $20. I got alerted to it and I was like, what the hell is this $20 thing? Called them up. They added termite services to my thing, which I didn't agree to, and I got the $20 taken off and saved myself 60 bucks in retro. So that's the, that's where there's just, I literally could go on for days with examples of small businesses wasting money.

On subscriptions that just keep going and going.

[00:35:14] Mikey Pruitt: Does does Better Tracker peek into the bank account transactions or does it use the on device metrics? Which one? Or both?

[00:35:22] Matt Solomon: Couple things. So we first launched, you can manually add contracts. The second piece you could upload through CSVA lot of.

MSPs put a lot of their contract data in A CSV. The third is exactly what you're talking about, which is a plaid integration that connects to bank accounts and credit cards and brings in all the transactional data. So if you're familiar with Rocket Money. Just think of rocket money for your rocket money for your business.

And then the fourth evolution will be on at the end of October is the OCR element that AI powered OCR, where you can extract it. And that's where it really becomes, it's automated as you can with contracts. So it, yeah, it really it's gonna be very revealing for any, anybody who uses the tool and look.

You have to eat your own dog food. When we first launched it, we found $7,200 of just wasted spend, in 10 minutes. Because it was like you found a tool and you're like, I'm not familiar with that tool. And so we just went around. The executive team we're like, who uses this tool?

And it was one of those you have a marketing person leave and a marketing person's connected to 15 to 20 SaaS applications. And we thought we canceled it and we didn't. And that's the overarching thing is us as small businesses and I include ourselves, isn't that, it's like we, we can't afford those.

We can't afford those misses. So that's what we're really empowering MSPs to do with our tool both internally and for their customers.

[00:36:46] Mikey Pruitt: I So asking for a friend, can only MSP use Better Tracker?

[00:36:51] Matt Solomon: No. Anybody can use Better Tracker. Okay.

[00:36:57] Mikey Pruitt: Just asking for a friend. That's all. Anyway,

[00:37:00] Matt Solomon: it's definitely more of a business application currently though, even though I not, I mean Rocket

[00:37:05] Mikey Pruitt: Money's free. They just pester you with all kind of ads and everything. Yeah. For personal use. Yeah. Yeah. All right, cool. Yeah, I'll be sending that over to our accounting team.

Yeah.

[00:37:15] Matt Solomon: I mean that that's the thing is like I, and I can tell you like a small business, one of the pushbacks they might say is, I'll have a bookkeeper. Yeah. But a book a bookkeeper is using historical data, not proactive information coming to them, like on the, when the transaction takes place.

So they're always a minimum of a month or two behind, or three months behind, depending on when you do all your books. Yeah. Yeah. That's a,

[00:37:37] Mikey Pruitt: sounds like a really great tool. So we're in like a, this economic, let's just say tightening, situation in our worlds, in our country.

Do you think that efficiency spotting things like using tools like Better Tracker to save businesses money, do you think that is what you know, that efficiency is? What separates successful MSPs from the rest over the next few years?

[00:38:02] Matt Solomon: I think right now, yeah, I think it's one of the number one things, and obviously it sounds, it's a little self-serving, but it's the truth.

It's just the economic times that we're in. The first thing that people start doing when they tighten their bell is look at everything, right? Personal and business. It's the same reason that conferences, as a vendor. What's the first thing you do when you tighten your belt, you start thinking do we need to spend that much money at that conference or that, so it, to me, it's a pretty universal thing that, that's taking place and everybody's looking at it.

What I would point out, because of the insight we get in our platform is, 92% of the core tools an MSP has, 92% of it is the exact same as their competitor. And what are you doing to differentiate yourself? What's gonna separate you? And that's where I think like the business outcome conversations, even if it's not a tool that you're using, but you're having these types of conversations now there's tools like ours that make it easier.

But I just think really shifting the mindset to, to tackle those is gonna be just critical for an MSP to separate themselves and really become, we could say business advisor, but true partner with that customer.

[00:39:14] Mikey Pruitt: So you got you have a lot of things going on, Matt. That's kinda how we started this episode.

Yeah. You got Better Tracker GTIA, set it right that time.

[00:39:23] Matt Solomon: Yep. Yep.

[00:39:24] Mikey Pruitt: Channel Program. Like what is your prolific user of ai, what do you think is next on your plate? Or are you like, I've got too much, I can't do anymore?

[00:39:33] Matt Solomon: Oh my gosh I really don't stop. Maybe I need to get better at this stuff, but, I'm a believer of I'm in the grind with the rest of the team, and like I'm always trying to grow and do the next thing.

And actually, literally, my guy, right before this call, I was using LinkedIn because I wanna set again, be different. I went back to a list of people who first. Demoed our tool a long time ago before we had some of these other features and I was like, let me go back to them and just give 'em a quick update.

And I did, I'm doing personal messages via LinkedIn message on my phone, just as a way to try to stick out, so there's always that sales person in me, there's always a driver like that. But I'll, I'll be on the road, I'll be at a couple more events. We've got TMT Robin Robbins community coming up at the end of this month, and I'll be at.

Say it's true here. So yeah, I'll be at a couple different events. I think I've got a couple hosted dinners throughout the, a couple towards the end of December, or not beginning of December, but yeah, the same old stuff, man, just al always trying to push forward and telling you, man we're pushing forward our product.

Just, so much and, the only other thing I guess I could mention is we've got a cybersecurity like what we call a technology map coming out this month. And it really is just looking at the scope of all the cybersecurity tools in the space. And it's incredibly overwhelming because there's so many but it's really breaking it down by category.

And so it's a free report for MSPs that they'll be able to look at what are the most used products in the space, what are the highest rated based on the product reviews in our platform. Yeah, man, we got a lot going on. Yeah,

[00:41:04] Mikey Pruitt: I love seeing it. It's like an infographic of logos. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Every year you guys have one and I'm, every time I'm like,

[00:41:11] Matt Solomon: oh my gosh.

[00:41:12] Mikey Pruitt: I know if you can't even see your logo because it's so small. 'cause there's so managed. Yeah, I know a ton of work goes into that and everything else you're doing. I'll, I will enjoy continuing to watch your journey, Matt, but where can people find you on the internet?

[00:41:25] Matt Solomon: Probably the easiest way to find me is on LinkedIn. Yeah, that's probably where I'm the most prolific in terms of like putting out content. Or you can email me at just matt.Solomon@bettertracker.com. Yeah, I'm pretty easy to find. I'm out there.

[00:41:41] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. Yes. Likewise. Thank you for joining me, Matt.

I really appreciate it.

[00:41:46] Matt Solomon: Yeah, man, it's great seeing you. And I really, I truly appreciate you having me on and it's always good talking to you.