Long-time SMB Nation member Phelim Rowe has emerged as a leading industry analyst and has grown his intellectual event model over the past several years. It’s serious business ‘cause he’s a dapper British dude across the pond who takes his body or work seriously and you will be dazed and amazed with his efforts. What stands out to me is his geo-targeting his event conent so he has West Coast SMEs in the MSP world for this event. Join me!
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation |
Hey, hey, Nation, Nation, back with our friend across the pond, Phelim Rowe. Phelim, always a pleasure. Thank you. You have an event coming up that we want to drive some attention to, but before we do that,
I was with two things. I was with
A guy from Manchester, I get Manchester, England, he's an MSP here in my one-horse town in Dripping Springs. We had a watch party for England for us yesterday afternoon at a pub in the World Cup.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 0:42
Assuming you saw the game or were mindful of it.
Phelim 0:46
I know that it was happening. I was working, but yeah, I think people have high hopes this time.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 0:50
It's back.
Yeah, yeah, no, it was a lot of fun. Any event, you put out a notification on LinkedIn. It's been too long since we caught up, by the way, but you put out a notification that you're doing one of your geo-targeted security events, and it was the Pacific Northwest
Phelim 1:07
M.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 1:12
folks, you can see on the screen Mount Rainier in the image. And what got my attention, and again, very briefly, but my son just completed this expedition up Denali, aka Mount McKinley. So when I see a mountain,
I'm like, huh, that's interesting. So that's the giggle. So Fellah, first of all, quickly introduce yourself. You've really grown into a leading industry analyst. What are you doing with your event model? And then more importantly, what's going on with this event?
Phelim 1:44
Thanks. Well, we are expanding our series, which traditionally, as you say, have been geographically focused. So MSS Seattle, MSS LA County, MSS Miami, for example. And those events have combined the MSP, MSSP and select end customer community.
And we've done that so that the picture is more complete, because you will have seen conferences that exclude end customers and conferences that exclude third parties. Now, what we've done is to say, let's think in terms of scale of the service provider. And when we do that,
we realized that some of the scalable MSSPs, or maybe medium-sized MSSPs, they are not thick on the ground in every geography. So this one is the West event. We've had the Mountain event, and we're going to have the Central and
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 2:34
Correct.
Phelim 2:43
East events coming up. So ostensibly, we're asking, is there something special about the medium and whether or not that means we're talking scalable MSSP?
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 2:56
Yeah, yeah, a couple of thoughts on geography. And again, congratulations on your success, dude. You've hung in there. You've really grown this thing over a few years. That's extremely hard to do. But a couple things about geography that always startle me.
It's not quite the right word, but you know, my career was based on overseas travel. And what I found is, as you very well know, in the US, we have cities are hubs. So Detroit is car manufacturing. Down here where I now live in Texas, it's oil. California, Silicon Valley, you know, it's like these hubs.
Seattle Aerospace, and of course, Microsoft and Amazon. And I'll get to my point why your geo-targeting is relevant. But when I had this talk, one of my reflections is on a trip to Australia. They don't really have hubs. You can't really say
Perth is the, you know, military industrial complex of Australia. How about the UK? Do you have hubs or is it a little more agnostic in terms of industry and cities?
Phelim 4:12
Well, I guess, I mean, globally everywhere can be a hub for something if you look hard enough, you know. So Manchester used to be Cottonopolis, which was the UK and maybe global centre of cotton processing. But of course, that was like
150 years ago. So, you know, you got to you got to look harder. And in the UK, you've got London as the place where international businesses come together. You've got this sit that
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 4:42
Okay.
I just guessed that you have finance. Yeah, you have finance. Fair enough.
Phelim 4:48
And you got, and you got, and you got the city of London that persists. It persists for a very long time, right? No, people aren't even sure where the when the corporation of London started, certainly before the Norman Conquest. So, I guess, yeah, you got to look hard, but it's not the same as in the States, where, as you say, Detroit is auto. I would push back a little bit on Perth, because Perth is very much
mining and fly in, fly out. So it does have its niche. But yeah, geography does win the day. But when we're talking scalable MSSP, I think we've just got to admit, well, like there might be just a couple in any one city.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 5:14
Okay. Okay.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And we only have about a minute and a half left. Like I say, I wanted to do a quick hitter and give you some love on your event. To wrap up on geography, what I would offer, you know, people forget this, Boeing is still the largest, well, one of the largest employers in the Pacific Northwest. So
you know, you're seeing a lot of CMMC compliance conversations. And of course, that relates to security. You know, just throwing out a tidbit. What can we expect with your event on the 25th? It's a full day online event. Give it your best shot.
Phelim 5:55
Mm.
We're going to bring the West Coasts.
best and most prolific scalable MSSPs and smaller MSPs that are on that pathway. We are offering a counterweight to the world of enterprise MSP, MSSP, and we're asking what stack, the quote unquote medium or scalable MSSP,
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 6:22
Ohh.
Phelim 6:37
can use that was quote unquote enterprise grade and give it to the wider customer base. But we're also kind of dealing with some tricky questions such as if there's such a successful medium company, how do they retain talent? Because if you've got lots of talent, you don't want to remain A medium-sized company.
Or, so the story goes, so it's a full day, nine-hour event, and it's all to play for. Yeah, we got, we got some, we got some great people.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 7:02
Good Lord.
Great. Well, I'll tell you what, folks, before I let you go, we had a little bit of giggle at rehearsal. Fellah and I are going to catch up personally on July 3rd. And the reason is, is there will be nobody in the US working. July 4th is a Saturday is the 250th.
birthday. And so we both agreed July 3rd would be great. I'll get 0 emails. And I appreciate you accommodating my request to just, you know, just kind of get together and, you know, BS. So
Phelim 7:46
Mm-hmm.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 7:48
Have a great show, folks. The link is in the blog. Fellah, have a nice day.
Phelim 7:54
You too. See you soon.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 7:55
OK.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | stopped transcription