Alicia Shepherd van GTIA over de kracht van community, die onderschat wordt nu iedereen over AI en security praat. Veel MSP-eigenaren werden het zonder dat te plannen, en dan kan het eenzaam zijn. Over GTIA als vendorneutrale non-profit, mentorship, een interessegroep over fusies en overnames, en waarom AI gebruiken nog geen AI-strategie is.
So, Alicia, we're here today at MSP Global in Barcelona, and I wanna chitchat a little bit about community. So the power of community is underrated when everyone is talking about AI, cybersecurity, and MIPS. Without a community, there is there is nothing. Most of the MSPs at this event today didn't set out to be an MSP or a business owner. And it can be lonely as their business grows. And I think that's when the community comes into its own and embraces the culture, the challenges. And I always say to everybody, if you have got a unique challenge, it's only unique once. Because with GTIA, you have a global community that you can reach and that what feels like a unique challenge at that moment in time, somebody else would have experienced that and they will openly share with you what the solution is. And and I think for me that that that surmises to me that the strength of community, you don't need to be alone, strength in numbers. And I think a lot of MSPs are still not really leveraging the power of the community. Right? I think I feel that they're still trying to figure out all the bits and pieces by themselves, and I think there's a massive opportunity there. Oh, for sure. And and I think, you know, for for GTIA, we are... We like to be seen as the the umbrella that all other communities sit under. And every... And there's room for us all because every community is different. We're a not for profit. We're a vendor agnostic community. So if you come to a GTIA event, we're not going to put you in a room because a vendor's paid to be there and they want their pound of flesh. You know, you'll still meet those vendors, but you might meet them at the coffee machine or you know, when you're getting your lunch and you have a conversation with them on your terms. You don't need to be pitched to because you already know what your stack is. But the the power of community is those those other voices, those faces that are in the room and knowing that you can talk openly with them and discuss the challenges, you know, peer to peer, thought leadership. And and you're right, it's undervalued but I think I think it's... As we build that momentum with the community, and we're seeing tremendous growth across all of EMEA. You know, we we are building a move... For want of a better word, a movement where more MSP owners are kind of like what what where has this been? And it's you know, it's not just the events, it's the opportunity to join our mentorship scheme. It's the opportunity to join interest groups. We have our ISAU, you know, which is giving live cyber threats. The the benefits that you get from being a GTIA member are awesome. And yes, I'm biased. But prior to joining GTIA, I was a vendor that was a GTIA member. So you know, I'm... The proof is in the pudding. You know, I've switched sides so to speak. But I see the benefit of the membership and the power of community and it's it's real... It's like an avalanche at the moment. It's it's just gaining more and more momentum as more and more people are are realizing. And it's and it's through you know Yeah. Doing interviews like this, being at events like MSP Global that that this is happening. So what do you think are the most relevant topics or challenges that you see within the community? How do you truly monetize AI? But on the flip side of that, everybody talks about AI. And people will say, I've got an AI strategy. What's your AI strategy? I use AI. Saying you use AI, AI is not an AI strategy. It's really thinking about how does that streamline business processes? How does that save time? How do your ultimately your end clients benefit from that? Cyber security obviously is you know, that's been a buzzword for for years and and importantly so. You know, you've got Jake Moore here talking about deepfake, how he did an interview with an AI specialist who didn't realize it was a deep fake interview. And I think being part of communities, you get exposure to a lot of other stuff that when you're in your bubble of being an MSP owner who you know, you didn't you didn't set out to be an MSP owner but you are now and you've got people relying on you, you know, both staff and clients. When you come to an event and you and you see real world circumstances, it's just you know, it it... You can't put a value to your business on that. Yeah. And I think... What I think is also very interesting because what we see at least in the Benelux landscape is that there are also a lot of I mean, the buy and build strategy is real, right? So there are a lot of companies who are buying other MSPs. I can imagine also sharing all these experiences with each other is is very relevant for a community. It is. And we are across the whole of EMEA. The the mergers and acquisition is that's really really... There's a lot of MSP owners who are kind of like, right, want to sell up now. And we have mergers and acquisition interest groups. So that's not just if you are interested in doing it, it's also who know know what your your MSP down the road is doing. And and I think we've been really lucky with The UK and Ireland where the guy that's been the chair for us on that mergers and acquisition interest group, he's actually gone through that himself and he's just finalized the sale. So so he's kind of like taken taken everyone that's joined those webinars on that journey from you think you want to sell, all those emotions that happen. Are you being disloyal to your staff? And you know, he's owned this MSP for twenty plus years. And it's all those different steps and each webinar has shared those real life experiences. And and you know, and it and it is happening in this industry. You know, there's you've got a lot of MSPs who want to get into telecoms. You've got telecoms who want to get into MSP. Some of some of those mergers work really really well and and others don't. You know, that's part of the course. But again, being part of the GTA community, you will meet people that are going through that. I think... And that's a very relevant topic I think because you have people, you can do training whatever you want, workshops or whatever. But I mean, if you have people who are actually really going through the motion or have been going through the motion, that's priceless. Right? Exactly. You know, it... This isn't something that you can just read a read a PDF and it tells you about it. This is this is somebody actually sharing, you know, all of the emotions, all of the challenges, know, all of the great stuff that's happened. You know, he's now working three days a week. He's still working for the company but he's working three days a week rather than he was working you know, eighteen hour days, seven days a week. You know, he wasn't seeing his family. He wasn't seeing you know. So for him it's like wow. Yeah. But he still gets to determine the direction of the company. So he doesn't... So that that initial sense of feeling disloyal, he doesn't. Yeah. Because it was all about you know looking after and protecting those loyal staff, but also looking after himself. And yet you can't you can't get that off a PDF, but when you come to like a community meeting or join a webinar, you know, you you get to meet these people. Yeah. So... And normally we don't do promotional stuff because we always say, well, we don't want to pitch on on our videos. But one question. So for the people who are watching, if they're not a member yet, can they do like a try and buy, see what they're doing in the community? Are there any opportunities like that? So I would certainly say we have chapter meetings and we do open house chapter meetings. So for sure, you know, we would we would welcome non members to come along. Like you say, try before you buy. What we've seen is since we kind of we used to we used to really promote, you know, come along, see if you like it. We never saw the membership grow and we never policed it. But ever since about nine months ago, we said look, know, we need to respect the membership that have paid for their membership and not give this stuff away for free. Because if something is free, there's no value. And it's amazing valuable, right? Mean, you know, it's... And remember the membership is for the whole company. So whether you are a company with two people in it or you are a company with 200, a membership with GTIA is like whether you're giving your staff holiday, pension, private health care, it's like you get a GTIA membership. It is that individual's membership within that company to do all the training, experience the mentorship. But but it's very much ever since we kind of said we're not going to give this, we're not going to devalue our own membership, we've seen membership do that. We have lots and lots of key partners that work with us who they have their specific codes which offer crazy discounts for the membership. The the membership costs so I don't know the exact figures but say like for every dollar of membership, we're losing $9. Because we're not for profit. Yeah. It's about we we want to create that community, we want to create that ecosystem and that's that's what's important for GTIA.
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