Ian Richardson WINs by helping companies strategically plan their success

Welcome to W.I.N. (what's important now?) - the entrepreneurial podcast where we dive into business challenges, achievements, and opportunities!

Join your host, Ian Richardson, from Richardson & Richardson Consulting as he explores what entrepreneurs care about and focus on. This week, Ian dives into the services R&R have to offer.

Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.

Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com

Book time with Carrie here!

Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.

Transcript

1:38

Hello and welcome to WIN. I'm your host Ian Richardson from Richardson and Richardson Consulting, and today I am joined by my special guest myself. This is one of three episodes we're recording for wind to kick off the 2023 season. This is season two of Win. Uh, and we're super excited to be joining. when is the entrepreneurial podcast where we talk about challenges, achievements, and opportunities. And I wouldn't be surprised if you see that, uh, that agenda expand a little bit. And for us to start doing a little bit of deeper dives, we are shifting gears for season two. We're gonna be, uh, really focusing in on the IT channel. As a whole, and we're gonna be doing that in in two parts. We're gonna be talking with managed service providers across North America and finding out what's what they're doing to be excellent and stand out in their field. And we're also gonna be talking with the software vendors that support the IT channel nationwide. So if you're interested in joining me on Win, please. Feel free to go to our website, r and r.consulting/connect. There you can choose to, uh, to join WIN, and it'll take you right to an intake form that can get the process started. Uh, all we ask is that you have an organization that has greater than a million dollars in recurring revenue to, uh, select to be on the, uh, on the podcast. 2023 was kind of a, or 2022. I'm sorry, was an interesting year for us. We spent the majority of the year building the systems, processes, and infrastructure that Richardson and Richardson uses to, uh, do our daily work. R and r divides itself into two different, uh, organizational focuses. One is strategy and consulting, and the other are marketing services on the strategy and consulting side That. Rest in my house, particularly I personally do all of our consulting engagements. I build the strategic plans in partnership with an organization called the Patterson Center, located over near the Denver metropolitan area in Colorado. Patterson, uh, Patterson Center is the intellectual property holder for Tom Patterson's body of work, Strat op and Life. I'm a certified Strat op guide and we use, uh, those constructs and that process and all of our consulting engagements. Um, when it comes to marketing services, we've developed up Carrie and I, uh, Carrie, my wife and business partner, and far better half have developed up some go-to-market strategies that's based off of the Richardson and Richardson database. Now, that database is a, uh, is a collect. Of information about the managed service providers and managed security service providers across North America, including who they are and what they, what they've done, how they've grown over the years, and, uh, what technologies they've partnered up with. All of that information has been volunteered through conversations starting at managed sales. Bros carries old organization and continued forward. Yes. Uh, as, as we talk with MSPs in our day-to-day existence, they share who they're partnered with and what their growth goals are, what their focuses are, and we take that information to maximize the return on a marketing campaign. If you're looking to target the MSPs, uh, across North America, we know who they're partnered with, but also we know who takes sales appointments and who. and that information makes our campaigns more focused and deliver quicker ROI than anyone else in the space. You also got a little, uh, dog cam of our unofficial mascot Simbro, the brown dog to use the descriptor my friend Walter Crosby uses. So throughout the, uh, throughout the, uh, the coming weeks and months, you'll see us start talking about those strategic plans, start talking about those marketing service engagements a little bit more intentionally. I had about 50 conversations with MSPs over the, uh, Over the past year, and I'll be sharing some of those, some of those conversations and what I've heard and what I've found, uh, in the second of these three go live shorty podcasts, they're each gonna be about seven to 10 minutes long. Um, really diving into what it is we're seeing, what we're hearing, and uh, what's been going on in the managed services trenches, so to speak. One of the. differences at r and r is are focused on guarantees. Uh, now this is, I, I'm a big fan of guaranteeing work. The way that we're able to guarantee it is with money back. Uh, and that I, I had a lot of mixed reactions when I brought this up. People think it's too good to be true, but that is, that is a core focus at R D R we guarantee. our work. So on the strategic consultation, it's easy if, if someone doesn't see value, I'll give them their money back. That's how strongly I believe in the strata process and in the delivering the delivery of our consulting work. If you don't see value after sessions with us, we'll refund a hundred percent of the money, no questions asked. If we can't find a way to make it right or find a way to show that value. So it's designed to remove the. the barrier around consulting. Sometimes consulting can feel like a, a mixed bag or man, I, I didn't get what I was looking for. You will get value out of those engagements or we'll give you your money back on marketing. I always struggled with, uh, with marketing. I thought it was witchcraft. I thought it was a little bit, uh, little bit like loose and fly by night. And man, it seems like you're not. Delivering much or I don't know what I'm buying, I dunno how to measure results. So we've put down scopes of work with very clear plain English deliverables and the promise on our marketing services engagement is that you'll receive over the course of a year's engagement, these set deliverables within that year or will refund a hundred percent of fees paid. Uh, that differentiation through those guarantees, we think makes us stand out. We wanna. It's the concept of not understanding what you're buying from consulting or marketing, and our guarantees are the way that we do it. I'm excited to do these, uh, these, uh, first three episodes when I'm excited to host people on when my, uh, next two episodes are gonna dive into a, uh, into a process series called the Thursday Process. That's the next one. I'm gonna record and dive deep into that, and. Give a preview of this quarter's guess and who's gonna be joining me as well as what you can expect from that webinar series. And, uh, the last one I'm gonna dive into is, um, just a little bit about, uh, what we've been finding, a little bit of a preview of the state of the channel from our spot in the sandbox. So I appreciate you tuning in. If you're interested in being a guest on Win again, go to r and r Consulting slash. There you can book in. You could also grab some time with either Carrie or myself at the Richardson and Richardson website. You can read our blogs. Those blogs are written by Carrie and I. There's no AI or ChatGPT here. That's all our individual knowledge and take on the industry. Sharing those best practices. You'll also see white papers, uh, case studies, previous videos, and episodes of WIN, Thursday Process and our other webinar series that you can consume on. Until next time, take it easy.