MSP Initiative Live with Pete Busam of Equilibrium Consulting

[00:00:00] to a October, wow, October 8th edition of the MSP Initiative The MSP Initiative. Wow, the year flew by. Before you know it, it'll be Halloween, which is a few short weeks away. We'll be into the holiday season with Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's. Man, it's going to go warp speed. I feel like this year went by pretty fast.

[00:00:27] I guess that's one guy's opinion. But anyway, MSP Initiative dot com. That's where you're going to find recordings of this podcast. It'll link back to our YouTube, our podcatchers. Make sure to like, subscribe, download all of that stuff. A couple of things that are worth mentioning in terms of upcoming things in person, you know, for whatever it's worth.

[00:00:52] We have one more MSP and IT community block party this year. So if you are headed to or happen to already be in Sydney, Australia, we are doing a block party in conjunction with the Kaseya Connect APAC, which is based in Sydney. Dates of that event for the conference itself, November 17th through the 19th.

[00:01:21] Our community block party will be on second. There it is. The 17th night of the 17th, right down the street from the convention center where the conference is located. So if you happen to be in the area and you're an MSP and you want to join, whether you're going to the conference or not, join us. Register for free ahead of time.

[00:01:49] If you are going to the conference on the conference agenda, join us, too. And we'd be happy to take care of you and give you a good evening out on the harbor there. So that is the last community block party of 2026. There were a lot of them. And thank you for everybody for working to make all of these community events possible.

[00:02:12] The last thing I want to bring up and you'll find on MSP initiative dot com is the remainder of the 2026 channel sports tour. We have the following games left on the schedule this weekend in London. Eagles Jaguars at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. We have the Steelers at Buccaneers October 18th in Tampa. We have the Chargers at Rams November 1st.

[00:02:41] They share the stadium if you didn't know that at SoFi Chargers in the Rams. Forget who's Chargers at Rams. So I guess Rams is the home team for that game. Kind of like the Giants in the Jet chair stadium, the Chargers and the Rams chair stadium. So that'll be interesting. So that's at SoFi in Los Angeles, November 1st. It's a 4.05 Eastern time game, which means it's a 1.05, I think, game. I have to double check that time. Always get the time zones messed up. And then 49ers at Cowboys to close out the season.

[00:03:11] That's on November 15th in Dallas. So these have been awesome. A lot of interest this year in the Channel Sports Tour. So much so that we can't take everyone because there's so many people interested to a tailgate and an NFL game as a channel event. But I digress. If you don't get on the list, the wait list, then you don't have a chance to go. So if you're an MSP, you're interested in joining us, put your name on the wait list and let's see if you make it.

[00:03:38] So all of that information can be found at MSPinitiative.com. That is all my housekeeping. And funny enough, not funny, but, you know, perfect guest, you know, to say this statement. The Channel Sports Tour actually was a current day, slightly evolved version of the Channel Strong Tour.

[00:04:02] And if you followed us back during COVID and our tens of thousands of miles driving through America and all of these cities in parking lots in the open air when, you know, being inside was challenging. But being outside was OK. We we brought the we brought the Channel Strong Tour to you. And thanks again for all the MSPs that hosted us in their various parking lots.

[00:04:31] And the idea behind the Channel Strong Tour was, hey, we're going to go tailgate style in your parking lots. You just drive down, you know, in your backyard down the street and join us. And let's get a little community going while we were all cooped up inside. And so obviously that morphed into the Channel Sports Tour current day, right? Because, you know, tailgating is part of the story. That's kind of sort of how we put this together. So I welcome back to the pod Pete Bussam from Mark IT, Mark It Text, get it? Marketing?

[00:05:01] Mark It Text. And Pete, oh man, I feel I'm sure, you know, because you probably kept it for accounting purposes, how many miles you put on your pickup truck and trailer for Channel Strong Tour, man. But you you you definitely you definitely kept up with us and you brought out your your Nissan sports car. That was pretty cool. Yeah, we clocked a little over 61,000 miles.

[00:05:31] Mark It Text Yeah, that's a that's a that's a lot of what I don't know what the per mile rate was at the time. Right. For for, you know, accounting IRS right off purposes. But that's a lot of road miles. Pete I'll just say it was between eight and 11 miles to the gallon. So a lot of gas. That was a ton of gas. Man, that was a great time. You know, it's funny.

[00:05:56] I talked to our mutual good friend in the sandbox, Ken Patterson. And, you know, he actually just brought up to me. He's like, you know, people still ask me about bringing that back. And I'm like, oh, boy, I still think we need more time before we can think about that. Yeah, I don't know that I'm ready for another 61,000.

[00:06:16] Yeah, I would think I would think we would need to definitely right size, you know, you know, something if we decided to bring it back to the conversation for sure. But yeah, 61,000 miles, man. And that was, you know, America, you know, they also they say taking trains, you know, across America is like a unique experience. Driving through the country on all those back highways.

[00:06:44] Also, a very interesting way to see the country. Probably one of the best and funnest is Ken and I were heading from California to Arizona. And my GPS didn't keep up or we must have flipped out. And all of a sudden we went from 200 miles to 500 miles. Wow.

[00:07:09] And then about 30 minutes later, we realized that we missed the turn to go south. So we ended up to going Flagstaff to get down to Scottsdale. So a three and a half, four hour ride turned into about a six and a half. Wow. And my GPS readjusted like three times. And Ken would be, did you just see that? Like, I don't know. I think there's gremlins in the, you know, in the GPS. Yeah.

[00:07:37] So that was just one of those fluky type things. Yeah. Well, driving in the middle of the desert with no, with no lights other than your headlights. Definitely. You could miss a turn for sure. But the 500 miles, the fact that you had to go 200 plus miles to turn around, that that's interesting. So anyway, it's been a while since we've had Pete on, on the pod. But, um, and obviously the sandbox that we live in is constantly moving.

[00:08:06] Uh, no, no shortage of things happening. Stories, you know, out there. Um, you know, there's plenty of them every day, I feel like. But, uh, Pete, since I think it's been, I don't know. Have we had you on this year? I think this might be the, if we did, it was real early on. Real early in the year, yeah. Yeah. So here we are, we're in Q4, um, historically, I always reference this time of year, October,

[00:08:35] like end of September, October, like, and then into November as the gauntlet. I'm sure you've heard me say that a thousand times. Feels like maybe not anymore. Um, like, you know, these events being stacked up together, uh, the way that they used to be. But, um, this is usually the time of the year where things get jammed together, right? Uh, bigger events all smashed together near each other. Um, I guess. October, November timeframe, it just collapses. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:04] I feel like it's a little bit more spread out finally, thankfully. Um, because, you know, for our, our travelers out there, they're just on the road for a month or something straight. It's crazy. Um, good to see that, you know, the industry is kind of, uh, course corrected just a tad. Still a ton of events out there, Pete. Hundreds of events. Yeah. So, but, you know, I, I think we're still seeing people starting to really choose where they're going to see benefits of their business.

[00:09:33] And choosing, you know, where you used to see one person always ran, uh, around trying to figure out how do they even run their business? You know, cause they're at every show and that's not the case anymore. No, I, I, I think. Seeing different faces and newer faces. Yeah. I, I think people have evolved their, their thinking and their strategy, maybe sending other

[00:09:59] people in the company that haven't traveled before, or maybe selectively picking where they're going. That that's clear for sure. Uh, it's not always about the, uh, the lobby bar for sure. For sure.

[00:10:10] Um, I know we, I remember talking to you last time we talked to you and I'm going to double AI or space X AI, uh, or, uh, you know, the open AI, right?

[00:10:39] Like all of these agent based systems, right? The AI based systems in there. And I see, I'm sure you see them. I see them all the time. It's like, Hey, you can, you can hire a, uh, $80,000 social media maker for less than a hundred dollars a month using AI or, or whatever. Right. And I'm like, I know everybody has an agenda and all this stuff we see in the feeds isn't a hundred percent on point, but you know, I've seen a lot of people say, Hey, I'm just,

[00:11:08] you know, I'm just gonna, instead of spending money with somebody that it's, it's their expertise, I'm going to give it a run to do my ads through AI, or I'm going to give it a run to rebuild my website for the 15th time through AI, or I'm going to give it a run to, you know, do my SEO, you know, for search engine optimization through AI. When I redo my website and then AI, AI, AI, AI. And, uh, fast forward.

[00:11:34] I just saw an email, at least in my mailbox earlier today, it's like, Hey, join the pilot for chat GPT ads. And I was like, Oh, here we go. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that, you know, that's now another, another avenue. Right. So I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm just going to be honest though, but I, I see a lot of people burning credit card dollars on all this. I don't know if it works, but I, I see people trying it.

[00:12:04] I have to assume you're seeing similar things and I'm curious to see what, what's real and what's just the new version of what's always been broken. So the system continues to be broken, but I think it's more of an expectation of people looking at marketing and saying, I'm going to do something and overnight my pipeline is just going to fill at the top and I'm going to just have all this great business.

[00:12:30] And in our space, I don't care what anybody says, relationship is still what drives itself. Right. Right. People buy from people. They know people buy from people. They like, and then it's up to the brand to deliver behind that person. Right. But AI definitely has changed there. Make no mistake. Right. Every day you see some new AI tool, like you're saying, the problem is, is, um, and, and I posted just about this just last week.

[00:12:58] There's people out there making claims that they have a bigger, better product and they're cheaper and they've been at it longer. And then people make the conversion over and they make a comparison to another firm. And you probably feel it all the time too. I mean, you've got some, you know, smart agents that are out there that have good, solid integrations through API and other things. So they're not just AI.

[00:13:23] And so people that go out and just put a shell around AI, that's tough because at some point that's not sustainable and it's not built to keep up with the changes or the API changes or an integration. And so it breaks. So companies like yourself, that's a SaaS provider or a chat GPT, they're going to put the development time in with the team to keep up with that product.

[00:13:53] And, you know, just because you can buy code doesn't mean you should. Just because you can save a nickel doesn't mean you should. Right. Because in the long run, if you're not building that app to sustain and stay up with the current updates and upgrades that are being put into the other things that you're integrating into, it's not going to work. And it's going to be flaky. And so what we're seeing is everybody goes out and advertises.

[00:14:22] I got this great new product. It's AI, right? So everybody wants to flock to AI, right? But in the end, two months later, they're gone. Where did they go? They didn't have a sustainable business platform and they didn't have a sustainable business plan, right? They didn't have a strategy. They just said, let me go. Let me see if I can collect some dollars on this. I don't care if it wins or loses, right?

[00:14:49] So companies like yourself, myself, that have been in business, we've been around a long time. We've weathered many storms of economy, shifts, competitors. You know, we've been doing it ourselves going on 19 years, right? And the AI, we have become an AI-enabled marketing agency. We've been doing it. Human-first led. And what does that really mean?

[00:15:18] Behind the product, behind the process is a human reviewing. And the human still is the checkpoint to make sure that it's there. So we've built a lot of tools that we could commercially release to everybody. And we've put some assessment tools on our website under resources that you can go and use any one of them. Our most popular is our AI ready or our AI assessment tool, where you can go in, put in your domain, put in your company name, push a button.

[00:15:48] It'll give you a query that you can then copy out into Gemini or ChatGPT. And it will tell you, basically, how is my company being seen? It doesn't, we're not asking for any data points from you. Don't use it. You want to talk to us about it and how you can get better? No. It, you know, it's just a free tool out there to do it. But everything is changing in the marketing side as a result of AI.

[00:16:14] The way our competitors are talking, saying what they can do or can't do. And they've gone to the AI slop, as I would call it. And everything starts looking the same. Everything starts looking AI generated. The content, you can read the content right away. You can tell exactly, some of it you can tell exactly which engine it comes from, right?

[00:16:37] And so whether it's ChatGPT or Claude, you know, every engine does something different from a marketing perspective. And we use all of them. Because each one is good. Like, perplexity doesn't just assess. It wants authority. So if you can't cite something, you can make all the claims you want on your website. They're going to turn it away and say, where's the third-party validation?

[00:17:05] If there's no third-party validation, I don't care. I'm not giving you credit for it. Where ChatGPT will say, I'll give you credit? No problem. Right? So every one of these engines does something a little different. And it's, you know, you need to do that. But you need to be careful of all of these fly-by-night operations that are out there. They really are. And it's a little scary because companies will go make the investment, and then they'll burn a bridge with a partner.

[00:17:32] Well, you know, and I don't blame, I mean, I guess a smaller, lower OML kind of organization, they should try at a cost, right? They should try, but don't abandon. Maybe do it parallel. Do a pilot. See where it is before you dump your existing partnership and all that. Because the partnerships can bring you other things, right? They can bring you referrals.

[00:17:58] They can bring you relationship builds plugging you in and other things that you're not going to get from these AI fly-by-nights that are just advertised for $1.50 a month where they can't deliver. Yeah, listen, I appreciate the time-taking tasks that can be sped up with all the new tools. I get it. I did a thing yesterday where I was copying 200 posts from one system into another system.

[00:18:29] And funny enough, Pete, for the first time when I went to my AI tool and said, can you connect these two together and just copy this data over for me? That would have taken me a couple of days of time, right? And I did it in an hour. The AI tool came back and said, this is not the most efficient way to do this. You should be using a different tool. I was like, if you want me to proceed, I'll do it.

[00:18:52] But it's got to be way more costlier to do it this way than by doing it a different way. And so at least their current iteration gave me the warning label, right? Like, hey, just connecting some MCP tools into me and asking me to do stuff. It can be done, but this is not the right way.

[00:19:15] It is the clunky, expensive way rather than the most efficient API-driven way. And that's great, by the way, because six months ago, I don't believe I was seeing those messages. Now I am. So that's smart, right? That there's a, hey, this isn't the right path. And I think that people, I remember when I was at the Roost conference earlier this year, Pete, and the keynote from their CEO, Aaron, was like, I don't think you understand.

[00:19:44] Maybe we did a bad job marketing what MCP was meant for, right? I think a lot of people are trying to figure out what MCP is, how to, you know, should they lease it out in AWS by somebody that already built it? Or, you know, but boy, it's a buzzword and everybody wants it. So, you know, I think it goes back to the guardrails around AI, right?

[00:20:14] What are the guardrails? How are they being policed? And the MCP might give me that opportunity to police it a little bit better. Sure. Get it. So, so let me, let me go and start asking very targeted questions. I know I like to do this with you because I assume these are the questions that MSPs who would come to somebody like you and your firm would ask. So let's try it this way.

[00:20:41] Google optimization or AI searching optimization? Wow. Good lead. So if you go back to when Google search originally started, we did everything for free, right? We did keywords. We did it and everybody was excited. They were ranking number one. They didn't have to pay for it. They did it.

[00:21:05] Then all of a sudden paid ads came in, sponsored ads came in, buying keywords to rank higher and move your page higher came in and all of these things. And during COVID, it was a big thing because we, we did that. It was one of the only ways we could market and sell, right? So that was there. But now what we're seeing is Google search as we know it is fading away.

[00:21:34] It's being replaced by Gemini search. Okay. Both Google tools here, right? It's Google search. I'm getting to this. And Google Gemini. Stay with me here as I continue to frame it out. But what's happening is, is Google is losing its theme. Less people are spending money on Google ad spend than they were ever before because they went to this new free thing called answer engine optimization, right?

[00:22:01] And the AEO lets you become an authority, get that third party validation. Like I was talking about perplexity. You can go out and start building third party validation. You can put certain things in your website. And the answer engines now ingest your website and all of your references that are citable. And they turn around and they say, hey, this company should be listed.

[00:22:29] So now search is dying from this. Now, it's still important because you still have to build the core website to be built around search, right? But now the answer engines are the ones that are doing the investigation. And people are in chat GPT asking questions. So we've lost a couple things here. We've lost the traditional Google ranking that we used to work on.

[00:22:55] And we've lost the visibility as marketers to see what people are doing because they're doing it in the answer engine. And you don't see when somebody's arguing with a chat engine to say, hey, tell me about OneStream, right? And it goes out and then it gives me five more suggested questions and I click on the bubble and it gives me another. I don't see all of that going on, right? So now the answer engine. So now Gemini Search is coming in.

[00:23:24] And the first thing you see is the AI search. Now, you don't see the traditional sponsored ads and the listing. You see the AI search first in that panel. Where we're going. And Gemini Search is about to fully replace by the end of the year traditional Google search. So what you see. That's actually really big. It's huge. But Google has also been threatening us for years that we're going to get rid of cookies.

[00:23:53] The cookies have been going to go away. And this is Google's answer is the answer engine. Now, since Google controlled search, they know how to run ads. They know how to place ads. They know how to do things. Now you have Gemini Search. And Gemini Search brings up a block about what you were looking for out of the answer engines, right? Because it consumed all that data from all these websites. And then it gives you a little bubble off to the right.

[00:24:21] Well, what you're going to start noticing is those are sponsored bubbles. So they're going to start taking the traditional advertising that they did in traditional Google search and move it into Gemini Search. And they're piloting that program right now.

[00:24:38] So much, and I think I posted today or last night, that Google Gemini is also paying certain companies that are influencing the answer engines for that content.

[00:24:55] So there may be a point where there's a reciprocal agreement where you're not only advertising in Gemini Search, but you could be paid based on how much good content and reputable and citable and authority is going into Gemini for answer engines. So the model is changing. That's kind of more like YouTube, right?

[00:25:24] Where if you put enough content, your content is watched enough, then you can actually get paid based on how much that comes up and how many interactions and likes and all that, right? Brilliant analogy. And who owns YouTube? Google. Google has the empire of advertising on the internet. They control it. They've learned from all these tools, and they're going to put it into Gemini Search.

[00:25:52] So by the end of the year, you're going to see that be predominant. Does that change what happens on YouTube? Because I know YouTube is another way to generate traffic. No. No? Well, it's just going to replace that traditional Google search. It's going to become – it'll probably show up still at Google because that's their flagship brand, right? But Gemini Search is going to be the engine behind it.

[00:26:19] And all of those advertising lessons from the YouTubes and the Google search and paid are all going to be folded into Gemini Search. So I assume that you're probably – like people are going to have to adjust somehow. What does that adjustment look like? If right now I've been all tuned up for Google traditional search, now this shift is being done after this pilot that you're talking about gets through.

[00:26:44] So let's say Q1 of next year, early 2027, Google announces that they're about to make the big shifts, right, from one side to the other. Now what do you do? You've got to adjust for that, right? The whole layout of how they do things. You know, we watch when we bring a new website up. We watch how it learns.

[00:27:14] We watch how it dives down. It levels out. Then we make some lever adjustments. We see it climb back up. And then we see Gemini and the answer engines testing it against other like sites to see how your content is against somebody else's. So the algorithms of how it awards ranking now is different too.

[00:27:38] And so that is something that I think they're rolling out as they figure it out. And then they tweak it and they go from there. So it's going to continue to adjust. I don't think we're going to see it normalized until probably late Q1.

[00:27:56] But I do expect them to start rolling out how you can buy space to advertise or at least place your content into Gemini Search. So it sounds like we're in a very – this is a very wild, wild west period, right? Because the dust is not settled yet. And things are like literally changing as the plane is in the air. It's incredible how quick it's moving. Wow.

[00:28:24] I assume like, you know, monkey see, monkey do, right? Like does Bing and all of the other guys that aren't Google going to follow suit? Or are they going to wait until that's done before they come out with whatever they do to counter? So what's interesting is Bing mimics and takes a lot of their information from Google, the reciprocal type stuff. So think of like, you know, there's only two brands of washing machines or three real brands of manufacturers of washing machines.

[00:28:53] Everybody else puts their – then they buy. Just like these AI aggregators are all buying from each other and keeping it in the family loop, right? Same kind of methodology is Google owns that space. And so Bing has a fair share of it. But when you think about listing your company and doing it, do you think of going to Google or Bing? You're going to go to Google, right? I never use Bing.

[00:29:23] I know some people are Microsoft people and they use it, but I don't. And so when you set up a Bing business profile and you've got a really good, robust Google business profile, you can link it so Bing updates from your Google and you never have to touch Bing. I like that. It's an integration. You go into your Bing, you set it up, you say feed from Google. And it just – every time you update Google, it updates Bing. So Bing is getting its information from Google predominantly.

[00:29:52] So there's a lot of – So there's got to be – and again, it sounds like it's changing. So we don't know the definitive yet. Maybe we bring you back on in January or somewhere in Q1 to figure out what the update is here. But on LinkedIn, they actually put out a – I think YouTube, if I'm not mistaken. They put out a report AI slop, right?

[00:30:13] Like the quality of your data and how that scoring is done plays, it sounds like, a very important part in how you show up in this new search. But if you're having the AI build the entire thing and it's just regurgitating the same thing that the next guy has to do to build them their website, then I got to think it's going to get a low score, no?

[00:30:40] So it's engagement-driven and it's authenticity, right? So the algorithms now are designed to find different things inside that AI would do that a human might not do. Simple things like we saw early on in the ever-evolving, changing world of – I mean, how many things did you see that started out with that? You could say that was AI almost immediately, right? Yes, very noticeable, to be honest. And then the dashes, right? Yes.

[00:31:07] The dashes instead of a comma or what happened. And so if you don't edit that out, those things that's saying that there's no human leader involved in that, right? That it's just AI and they're pushing it straight out. And it's going to push those down, right? It's going to suppress those entries and show them – a lot of times you'll say, why am I only seeing this two weeks later after somebody posted it? Because it's AI slop.

[00:31:34] And the algorithms are saying, why am I going to reward somebody that's letting AI do all their work versus somebody that's actually spending time? Yeah. Putting in authenticity, putting in their voice, getting in their culture, and all that. So the algorithms, whether it's Google, Bing, LinkedIn, all of them are pretty much wanting to reward the authenticity side.

[00:32:02] So simple things like emojis, dashes, and a lot of those things will push your post down and you'll see less engagement. Interesting. So big picture, you can't just expect good results.

[00:32:27] Or maybe if you do, it might be very short results, not longstanding ones. If you're totally relying on your subscription to the AI provider to do all this work, right? And so I know a lot of people – and it's just the reality, especially for smaller IT companies out there, MSPs, like they just don't have time to keep up with things, right? They'll do it one time.

[00:32:55] They may not go back to it for a while. But things are moving too fast for that to work, it sounds like, in this new situation. I think for small operators, they can very easily spend an hour or two a month. They choose not to because it's just not something of interest to them. You know, the AI brings a little bit more interest to them and then they can link it and set it, forget it.

[00:33:22] If they use one of the tools properly where you can link your chat generator right into your social poster and have your social poster, schedule it and put it out for you. But you still need to take the time to say, what do I want to do? So, you know, an hour or two max, they could probably set up social media for a whole month. Sure. With some of these tool sets. Whether it's good content or not, at least they could do it and they can give themselves a presence, right?

[00:33:52] I saw something in my feed last week where somebody was rolling out a podcast just for AI bots to consume. And I was like, what? Like, is that really a strategy now in 2026? This is what we're doing now? Just content specifically to get imported by the AI tools, like a podcast, like this. Does that work? I don't know. I guess we'll see.

[00:34:21] I mean, there's different things and there's a lot of smart people out there trying different things to see what will work, right? And so I think we're in a stage now where a lot of people are throwing a lot of spaghetti up on the roof. And, you know, seeing what will stick and won't and what sticks. If you're doing good analytics, you'll be able to see it. And if not, you stop doing it. You try something else. Throw some more spaghetti in a different way. You know, it's kind of my analogy on it.

[00:34:51] Okay. That's fair. It's really hard to see where and what's going to stick right now because everything, like I said, the algorithms just keep changing. And, you know, some are broken and some work really well. And when they're broken, they fix them pretty quickly. You know, at least from the Google perspective, they fix them pretty quickly. On the other hand, they need some work on their algorithm. Fair. Fair. We're in flux.

[00:35:17] Pete, what about all of the ads I see for the completely automate your go-to-market strategy? Come here. Buy my subscription. We will fill up your mailbox with leads. You know, you don't need any humans. And I'm like, what? I don't believe that at all. Here's what I always say.

[00:35:41] Everybody that's ever gone into marketing, especially in demand gen with callers, they've always asked for a guarantee for number of appointments. And what I ask, and you're one of your friends, how'd that work out for you? Nine times out of ten, that company's in some kind of battle with that provider saying, you didn't deliver. I want my money back. Sure. You said that it was a guarantee and I could get my money back. And it's one of the reasons we won't go into the cold calling business. It's not what we do great.

[00:36:10] We are a good brand and a shift to demand company, right? So we get your brand. And in our business, nobody gets up in the morning, stretches their arm. And I can only stretch one arm right now because this one's still healing with surgery. But nobody gets up in the morning and says, I'm going to go select new MSP. They just don't, right? And so revenue leaders need to think differently about brand.

[00:36:38] It's the brand and the education and that staying in front of somebody full time that is going to get them the opportunity when the time comes. For whatever the six, ten, whatever reasons, when it all boils down to their existing provider isn't giving them enough money. So they're going to look for it, right? They can't give them the love because they've grown well beyond the capability.

[00:37:04] There was some type of incident with the owner or tech or technically something didn't get done and they've given them several opportunities, right? But so, you know, again, go get a guarantee. We won't guarantee anything. We guarantee you that we will put a platform and a process in place that will build you on something that will scale. So as you grow, your building and your brand stays consistent and all that.

[00:37:33] But AI is not going to do that for you. AI is not going to drive you because everything is going to look the same, feel the same, and there's going to be no uniqueness. And, you know, every MSP that's out there looks the same. So they've gone, they've got a website from one of my competitors and they look the same. They have no separate look and feel.

[00:37:59] Vendors are different because they've got products, they've got solutions, and they have a different, you know, way of going to market. But for the common company that's going out doing B2B to SMBs, they're all carrying the same tech stack. And I really don't care whose major brand of RMM, PSA, it's still the same tech stack at the foundation. It's still doing the same thing, right? So what differentiates you?

[00:38:28] AI is not going to find that differentiation. It's not going to give you that, right? It can from a product perspective, but it can't from a services perspective. All right. So let me, I'm sure you have had, you know, you've been around, you said 19 years. Like, like just in the natural course of business, somewhere in the line of, you know, your customer who's an MSP came out with something that they wanted to launch out of their MSP, right?

[00:38:58] Could be a product, could be a new consulting division, could be a new, something that isn't traditionally IT or managed services services. More these days, I feel like some people may have jumped the gun and may have like, you know, vibe coded something. I digress. But let's just say your existing MSP customer gave you a call, Pete, and said, hey, I need you to help me stand up a new brand because we've decided to build, you know, send this new thing out into the world. Where do you start?

[00:39:28] I'm sure, like, by the way, is that happening? I think it's happening. It is. Yeah, no, we've got it. We've got customers that are rebranding and launching some new things or separate brands, like, you know, moving out of traditional IT services and moreover to compliance where they want a true division so they can take away the third-party validation side versus the touching the network side.

[00:39:56] So, you know, it's all about what is the brand, what's about the brand, and it all goes down to, you know, definition and process of how do you get there. And AI enablement can help you get there faster because you can feed in inputs, you can get ideas, it can trigger something. But in the end, you still need some people to sit down and put the character around it.

[00:40:19] So would you suggest that company completely separate from their IT MSP brand into something brand, brand new? Or I guess the circumstances determine whether it's like a sub-brand of your main brand or you create an entirely new picture, no? Well, let's use us for an example, right? Teen of our 18-plus years, we were known as Equilibrium Consulting. Right.

[00:40:49] And everybody said, what does Equilibrium Consulting do? You're a consultant, right? Oh, okay, market. I get it. And they go on down the aisle. But now we have the Market Tech brand that's leading, right? And we've taken the play on a Market Tech. What is a Market Tech? You know, we've defined it up in the website. We've given it a good visibility. And it's a play on marketing, market, IT, right, for IT.

[00:41:18] So we're showing not only what we do but who we do it for. And the techs are the people behind it, right? So there's meaning in that. And eventually you'll see by Equilibrium Consulting disappear, right? Just like you did with Runstream over B-Boy, right? You're more than Dial Tone, right? And how many years did you beat the drum saying, we're more than Dial Tone, we're more than Dial Tone?

[00:41:47] We feel like 10 years. Exactly, right? So you had something that was of higher value, but people continued to say, okay, just switch and Dial Tone. You know, I can get that from anybody, right? So it was a harder sale. But now you get into something that's showing a higher value, that has an outcome, it has some good business drivers, and it's not just switching Dial Tone, right?

[00:42:14] It's all the integrations and all the implementation that you've built. So you switched it out where it had a sub-brand before, but you made that sub-brand top billing, right? So those are the kind of evaluations that firms need to make as to do they have something that they've been toying with, gave it a sub-brand, and they move. I mean, we have a lot of sub-brands, but MarketX says who we are.

[00:42:41] We still have our traditional URL, but we'll be rolling out at some point, MSPMarketing.pro. It says a lot more about what we do. It makes it a little bit easier to remember us, right? And so relating your brand to what you do and where you, as a brand, are trying to derive value in your perspective base, right?

[00:43:08] And I think that's where people really fall short. And those are things that AI can't capture. You can convey that to me, and then I can translate that into something that generates ideas or thought processes or some messaging. And then we can craft and we can work together to get it right. And then we can go to web development and social and get boilerplate-type stuff, content written quicker because of AI.

[00:43:36] But it still doesn't remove what we're doing. Got it. I wrote a really interesting series of articles. You know, I write the Omnichannel Monday that I put out every Monday. And I've written this last series starting out, I don't know, like number 101 or 102 somewhere. And it's, are you found? Can you be found?

[00:44:02] And then part two is, is your next perspective may be an AI agent. You, George Vardisi, could go out and create an agent that goes out and investigates everything you're looking for in a specific area and do all the research on all of the competition that's out there and come back with a recommendation. And if you're not optimized in the answer engine, guess what? You may not make the test.

[00:44:31] You may not even get there. Now, all of a sudden, let's take that AI buyer and let's say you have a sales agent in your website. Now the two of them start talking. No human involvement. Right? Is your AI sales agent have the right stuff built into it to respond to the AI buyer so the right information gets ingested by it?

[00:45:00] To make you and keep you in the competition. Interesting. That's a completely different way for people to buy, for sure. But it's happening. Right? And then there's other parts in there like now your buyer found your sales agent and your sales agent is programmed, but you didn't think of one of the variables. And now it makes a promise. So you're willing to stand behind that promise. Yeah.

[00:45:27] I mean, legally, I'm not a lawyer. I just want to preface that. But I've read, I believe it was Air Canada ran into an issue where their website agent completely went against their policy. And the person who bought the ticket took them to court and won. Like basically the court's like, hey, you put it out there on your website. You're responsible for what it does. And this is not the only occurrence. There's several different industries that have run into this exact situation.

[00:45:57] Right? Like when you're, like, you know, it went off the rails. Right? It hallucinated or whatever it did that it gave the wrong answer. And so here's the fallacy about a hallucination. Okay. Hallucinations don't happen. Somewhere in that subconscious, there's something that's lurking that makes that happen. Right? Something happened in life that triggers that or whatever in a human being. Right? But if you look at it, there's so much information that just gets scoured from your website.

[00:46:27] And if you went out and did on one stream or Bevoid, you would find inconsistency across so many platforms. Sure. Your messaging is not the same. So you have to take the time to clean up all of those things. Either clean them up or get them delisted. Right? Right? Because that's an authority signal that the answer engine is saying, wait a minute, I have an inconsistency.

[00:46:51] So I'm going to identify that to my research and say, hey, this is where it is. And perplexity is really good at finding those in there and telling you exactly where they are or what you need to do and all that. But it can take a lot of time. So basically, it's old stuff that, you know, is being used in the responses. Yep. So it may have been in the terms and conditions.

[00:47:17] But somewhere in their website, something probably told that bot that information. And there was inconsistency in their own website. And we find it all the time when we audit the websites. Like, we find, like, why isn't this page ranking? Why isn't it getting ingested? Because two pages are competing for the same cohort. Interesting.

[00:47:45] And if you do that, now it pushes them up through the roof and it gets pushed down in the algorithm instead of up. Right? It's interesting you said that. I read an article about, you know, people are using AI to book their travel. And they're getting outdated information. And so there was an example of a guy who flew to another country. And maybe the data that, you know, that showed up was older data said he didn't need to apply for a visa.

[00:48:14] He gets there. He didn't apply for the visa. They make him go home. Because it said he didn't need one. But in reality, he does now. Mm-hmm. So inconsistent data that's out in the Internet right now is huge. And that's what causes a lot of the hallucination. Because the chat engine, whatever it finds first, it may use. So it's really important to make sure that you have consistency across all of the crap that's out there.

[00:48:44] And that's something that AI can't fix because you have to log into the website. You have to get into the website. You have to clean it up. You want to make sure that whatever you have in your website matches up with what you're going to put into that. And then you have to make that list and maintain it. So if you change your messaging in your website, you go clean it up again. So, you know, these are where marketing agencies are looking at things that you wouldn't think of.

[00:49:12] So if you go out and you use AI and you just put messaging out there and you're inconsistent, you may not do as well as you would hope. And then you're discouraged and, you know, you're on Reddit complaining about something out in the cesspool, right? In the cesspool sandbox of beating up everybody. That's fair. Right? But the bottom line is that there's a lot of inconsistent information that's available on the Internet. And the answer engines ingest that.

[00:49:41] And as a result, you'll get a hallucination because it's going to go on. So if I know that there's something that perplexity is telling me, I will say, yeah, but I just went to the website and I looked and I saw that. So what is it that's giving you conflicting information? And when you query it and you argue with it a little bit, you'll find those inconsistencies.

[00:50:09] And then you might have to dig a little bit to get where you need to go to fix it. Interesting. It's a lot of effort. So maintaining the digital profile is more important than it's ever been and will continue to be for the near and long term, right? I don't see that changing.

[00:50:29] And marketing organizations that shift like we have using AI enablement help us with that and help us scale our customers differently are the ones that survive. The ones that are saying we have an AI platform and we do everything AI and you can build your paper. That's short term. That's a six to 12 month plan. Let me capture as much money as I can.

[00:50:57] And I hopefully have a backup for that to stay in business. Otherwise, I'm back into shrinking my company. So, but at the bottom of all of this, the foundation here is data. Data is king. And the better the data is, the better the outcomes on top of the data are. It sounds like it's an old lesson, brother. Look, what's marketing all about?

[00:51:27] Taking prepackaged stuff from 30 years ago and renaming it and putting a new spin on it and bringing it back to market, right? Yeah, the technology has changed, but the idea has not, right? The core fundamentals don't change. And I think that's where AI is changing the game is people are saying, I don't need the core fundamentals anymore. I can just go do it on my own. And AI will do it for me.

[00:51:51] And when they omit the core fundamentals, that would be like, well, we wrote a process and the process is never going to change. And we're just going to run on that process. Two years down the road, you're scratching your head saying, why are we sitting in this place? Shouldn't be here. It's because you didn't keep your eye on the wheel and you didn't work through the evolving side of what your processes need to be because technology changed, not necessarily the concept.

[00:52:20] Well, one thing's for sure. I have not seen anyone try and reinvent the Harrier jet promotion that Pepsi tried to do with the Pepsi point. You remember that? I do. And there's a whole Netflix on it now, docu-series, documentary on it. It was like three episodes. And I'm like, I remember that commercial. I remember the whole thing. I was like, I don't think anyone's tried to do that again. Nope. Nope.

[00:52:47] Pepsi and Coke have done some pretty interesting things over the years if you go and search YouTube on their advertising. They have done some really creative, high-end type things that everybody kind of looks at. And for the time that they did it, there was no AI to magically make these things happen. There was CGI and all that. But a lot of that stuff is real.

[00:53:17] Real stuff that they did and pretty out there. I mean, not to go completely sideways, but I definitely appreciated in A-Team and Knight Rider and Airwolf and all those ones. They actually launched that car over the back. They built a ramp and they sent that sucker right across. That was not a computer-generated anything.

[00:53:45] I ran a chat prompt a while ago on the Blues Brothers. Okay. And I said, in every Blues Brothers movie, what was the net income for the Chrysler Corporation for all the cars that were built, delivered, and totaled in that? You think that data is out there? It is. It was an enormous amount of cars that they used, of the old Plymouth Furies and the Blues Brothers.

[00:54:13] And they crashed those things in the shopping centers and on the roads and police cars. But it was all Chrysler product. If you go back and watch that movie, everything in the – it wasn't a mix of other manufacturers. It was mostly Chrysler product. That was a lot of pileups in that movie. Yep. And then if you take the whole series, it was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

[00:54:38] And I'm sure they were skinny-down versions of what was going to go out to production because the safety features that went into some of the cars were very different than what we would have. Yeah, 100%. I wonder if you go back and run that search and you find out – they still do a lot of ad placement, right? Like inside of TV shows.

[00:55:03] Actually, I just posted – I think a month ago, I was watching Chad Powers, which used to be on Hulu. It's now merged into Disney Plus whatever bundle. And I saw Threat Locker product placement. I knew he put that up. Yeah. I was just absolutely floored. I was like, wait a minute. Rewind. I know this company. Yep. So – There you go. The HPs of yesterday are the Threat Lockers of today. Crazy. Just absolutely floored.

[00:55:31] Our generation of people that we knew when they were small and starting up and have become huge now are showing up in common type features. It's amazing. Like totally surprising, but I caught it. And so, yeah. Bottom line is I agree with you. The stuff that works is a permutation of stuff that's worked before, right? Mm-hmm.

[00:56:01] I'll leave you on a couple of other ideas before we close. So, another series that I love to watch, The Food That Built America. I haven't seen it, but I've heard that it's – So good. So good. I know there's like three or four seasons of it now, but it's the brands that we grew up on, right? And like one that I thought was – that always comes to mind is Philadelphia cream cheese never came from Philadelphia. It came out of New York.

[00:56:30] They just named it Philadelphia. And I was like, oh, why? Because at the time in upstate New York when this guy was making his version of this cheese that ultimately became what we know as cream cheese, he was competing against all these other cheeses and he wanted to make it a more premium brand. So, he named it Philadelphia brand cream cheese. Eventually, the word brand went away and they just called it Philadelphia cream cheese.

[00:56:55] But like the way that these names came out for some of the products that we all grew up on, like you just – would have not – like until you go hear the story or research it, you'd be surprised where these names came from. I'm really big on looking at – and I love looking at logos too. I like looking at the hidden attributes of logos. Like, you know, the most noticeable one that everybody sees is FedEx, right? And between the E and the X is an arrow. Yep.

[00:57:22] And if you know that, you see it. But like Wendy's has mom on the necklace. I did not know that actually. Yeah, if you look at the necklace, the pearls go in and they say mom. Oh. But there's a whole bunch of different things that are hidden in logos that people just never catch. Wow. They're engineered into it right from the beginning. And some people catch it and some others don't.

[00:57:53] You know. Hmm. Very interesting. You know, not saying that most of the companies in our space are big enough to get their brand put into a TV show, but – or a movie for that matter. It's a great thought, right? You know, on how to build yourself into a more polished presentation for sure.

[00:58:16] I think what you're going to see in advertising is the cost to get some placement in TV is going to change dramatically with AI and scale. Getting placement is not the same as a full-time ad. Right. You know, the example you used with Threat Locker was obviously we know they're in Orlando Airport and that scene is going through Orlando.

[00:58:44] So we know they're on every TSA tray and all of that, right? So that was a great opportunity and anything that gets filmed in that area will probably catch their logo at some point in that scene, right?

[00:58:58] But we're starting to see – we're starting as a traditional marketing firm to be contacted by network media saying, hey, we can get you placed into a TV show where, you know, something's on a table and it goes through and there's your logo. And that's a paid placement. Hmm.

[00:59:24] And so you can get that and they can insert that into a scene very easily using AI. They can just edit it right in. Something's heard there. So we're starting to see those kind of things come up. I don't know that that's a good spend for an MSP. Still not reasonable in my opinion. But some have that money and some will want to pay for that kind of stuff, right?

[00:59:51] It'll have a different impact if they can, you know. I mean, I assume if you're big enough to do advertising in a sports stadium for a major league team, it might be in your wheelhouse. Mm-hmm. Yep. Just saying. Yep. Pete, I definitely want to bring you back on probably towards the end of Q1 around that time when maybe all this dust settles with this whole search shift, which is literally in the air.

[01:00:19] This sounds – it's actually going to probably change the entire conversation. So I'd love to hear how the plane lands, right? Like what is the outcome of all of this? So we definitely want to get you back on. Where do people find more information about the company? And if they're interested in maybe taking a look at some of the stuff that you guys can help with, where do we send them? Well, they can always go to the traditional equilibriumconsult.com or our new MSPMarketing.pro. Right?

[01:00:48] They can find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty – just Google my name. If you can't find me, I'm sorry. We've got enough content out there that it's pretty well plastered all over the place. So if you're listening to the audio version of this, it's Pete, all right? P-E-T-E. Last name, Bussam. B-U-S-A-M. Put him in there. He's definitely on all the platforms that I'm on. So I see him on there all the time. Yep.

[01:01:17] Guys, looking forward to seeing you on the road, hopefully over the next month or two. If we can bump into you at one of the places that we talked about earlier, definitely let us know. Pete, I think we're going to see you shortly. I think you're going to be out at the inaugural Ninja One MSP conference. Yes. Awesome. Yes. Looking forward to seeing you. It's been a while since we've been face-to-face. Yeah.

[01:01:44] I got to bring back a Channel Strong tour so I can see on the road. I will be there, and I will be there probably with my sling because I'm only going to be about seven weeks out of some pretty major shoulder surgery. So I know that they're going to want me to wear that in a congested space so people don't bang and knock it out and re-injure it. So I will be easily spotable.

[01:02:15] And I can tell you I don't have a booth, but you will find me in the Ninja booth. Okay. And more to be talked about. We'll leave that as a teaser. Okay. So if you're headed to Austin for, I think it's called Ninja One NXT? NXT? NXT? NXT NXT. There you go. I believe that's in October in Austin.

[01:02:44] I think they're sold out. That's what I read. They are. Yeah. Yeah. Standing room and waiting to get back on. Hopefully, Austin, Texas in October will be nicer weather. It shouldn't be too bad. I'm hoping it won't be cooking hot as sometimes it gets in Texas. Guys, thanks for watching this and listening. And make sure to like, download, subscribe.

[01:03:13] Follow Pete Bussum and check out his stuff. And then obviously keep following us. See you on the road. Catch you on the next one. See you later, Pete. Peace. Good chat with you. All right.