Why Integrity Matters in the MSP Channel

Welcome to Gone Phishing, a show diving into the cybersecurity threats that surround our highly connected lives. Every human is different. Every person has unique vulnerabilities that expose them to potentially successful social engineering. On this show, we'll discuss human vulnerability and how it relates to unique individuals.

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Connor Swalm:

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Gone Phishing. I'm your host, Connor, the CEO at Phin, and we have a special guest today: Mary Signorelli. She has been working in the channel for eight years and is our director of partner experience. Mary, how are you doing today?

Mary Signorelli:

I'm good. How are you today?

Connor Swalm:

Oh, fire. Any better, I'd be a twin. I'm having a blast. It's a beautiful Monday. The sun is out here shining now—it was raining earlier, but I'm doing pretty well. Why don't you tell folks a little bit more about yourself?

Mary Signorelli:

Yeah. So I was in education for about 20 years. Did a little entrepreneurship during that time, too. I opened my own teacher store. I invented a toy to teach kids to tie their shoes and generally just like talking to people. So when I had some mutual friends in the channel and was asked if I would be willing to jump from educating kids to educating adults, it was a perfect opportunity. So it's been a blast.

Connor Swalm:

There are a lot of people in this industry that are previous teachers, and it feels like everyone in my life is also a teacher. I don't know why. So, why, in your mind, is integrity so important in the MSP channel?

Mary Signorelli:

Well, I don't think it's just the MSP channel. I think it's everywhere. You want to surround yourself with people who treat people the way you want to be treated and who do what they say and say what they do. If you don't have integrity, you don't have anything—certainly not a growing business.

Connor Swalm:

Hopefully, not growing without integrity is not the right move. I've noticed there's a huge focus on community and teamwork here, even among competing MSPs. Before I got into the industry, one of the first things I recognized was how big community is in this space. It's not only a way for you to meet new people, but it's a way for you to challenge your own ideas and grow.

Mary Signorelli:

Yeah, for sure. The channel is unlike a lot of industries I've seen, where it's cutthroat and trying to push out the competition. I really see it as a lot of people trying to help each other. They make an exit from one business they've built, and then they're like, "Okay, what other problem can I solve in the channel? How can I help people?" When I was an MSP, this was my pain point. Then, they develop something that helps people who are in their shoes. So it's a very close-knit community.

Connor Swalm:

Yeah, it really is a close-knit community. There's a quote that people buy from people they like, and I think it's very hard in this space to not be liked and then still try to have a successful business.

Mary Signorelli:

For sure. I was actually, I don't want to say a victim, but of the tech layoffs that happened about a year ago. I had partners reaching out to me on LinkedIn, just saying, "We can't wait to see where you go and how you can help us in the future." It's because of those relationships you build over time at events or webinars or anything that you're a part of that people want to help each other. So it's been a really fun ride.

Connor Swalm:

People want to do well. You'd hope that people do what is right, even when nobody's looking. It's weird how much people find out about things that you do anyway. You don't think anyone's looking, but it turns out somebody was. What is the shopping cart analogy that you put here?

Mary Signorelli:

So, the shopping cart test: basically, if you're at the grocery store, you go to your car and you think it's not your responsibility to put up a shopping cart. You're not going to get an award for putting it away. You're not going to get anything other than the fact that it's just the right thing to do. If I see people not putting up a shopping cart, I'm like, I don't want them on my team. I want to know that people are going to take care of other people.

Connor Swalm:

Do you chastise those people when you see them in public?

Mary Signorelli:

Usually cough very loudly. You don't even have to say anything. And then as they get in their car, you go to the shopping cart and you show them, you model the correct behavior.

Connor Swalm:

Sounds similar to teachers, for sure. Jamie was telling me a story where he watched a guy walk his dog and then his dog took a poop right in front of him. Jamie, a member of our team, watched this guy have his dog poop on the grass and was about to walk away. Jamie's like, "Yo, what are you—oh, like, I'm too busy. I got other things to do." Jamie goes, "Yeah, I know what you should be doing. You should be picking that up." He goes, "Oh, well, I don't have a bag." And Jamie was standing right next to the dog poop bag receptacle. Jamie literally just shamed this man into then picking up his dog's poop. But I guess that's like the same thing with a shopping cart. There's actually a whole YouTube channel called Cart Narcs where a guy does that. He takes a giant magnet sticker and puts it on their car when he watches them not put their cart away. People get insanely mad about it.

Mary Signorelli:

It's actually funny. I don't think I'm brave enough to do that, but I have gotten somebody a bag and a paper towel to pick up their dog poop in my front yard. The lady just was letting it happen and I was like, "Hold on a second. Can I ask you something?" She was like, "Sure." I ran inside and got a bag and a paper towel and handed it to her. "It looks like you need that." I think Jamie and I are related in some kind of way.

Connor Swalm:

Very. It actually happened right out here in my backyard. I watched some kid walk his giant German shepherd over here and then let it poop right here and then walked right away. I know where this kid lives, too. It's a few houses over.

Mary Signorelli:

It's just crazy. Do you pick it up and leave a present on his porch?

Connor Swalm:

I thought about it, but no, I did not do any of that. It's still out there. It's right over there.

Mary Signorelli:

So what makes me question is, if the kid is doing that, where did he learn that from?

Connor Swalm:

Yeah, I don't know. Because he had to walk his dog five houses over to here through five other backyards to get right here. It's like you're walking him in the backyard, you know it's going to go to the bathroom, like, what are you doing?

Mary Signorelli:

Yeah, no, I always say that they learn the behavior somewhere and the nut doesn't fall far from the tree.

Connor Swalm:

So in the spirit of bringing this back to MSPs: the shopping cart analogy is a whole lesson in doing the right thing, even when nobody is looking. It generally speaks to a sense of responsibility or morality that people have. Where do you see vendors typically falling short of this with their customers—of honesty, integrity, service?

Mary Signorelli:

I think that old school thinking of vendors is that you never tell a customer no—just everything is a yes. We can do that. We can make this happen. What I've learned over my time working in customer experience is, if the answer is no, the MSPs just want an answer. They don't want to be strung along and told, "It's on the roadmap," the mysterious roadmap that everybody has, and then it never comes to fruition. It makes them question your believability. I don't mind telling an MSP, "No, our product's not intended to function that way," or "It wasn't built in a certain way." Even if a feature request is submitted, it's not up to me to tell them, "Oh, yeah, we'll build that." That's up to the product specialists and that team to decide. So I think just being honest and treating people the way you want to be treated—you really can't go wrong.

Connor Swalm:

Promising people features that we don't have is... that's my job. Not anymore. I've been scolded away from that. Why do MSPs care so much about integrity and honesty? One thing that's been clear to me is it feels like everyone always wants to do business with people that they trust, for sure, at the very least. But it feels like there is this intense focus in the channel on who are the people that work at this company. What kind of people are they? Are they open, inviting, exciting, energetic? Are they honest? Do they have integrity? Are they thoughtful? Do they care? There seems to be a much larger importance placed on that in this industry. Why do you think that is, after having worked in it for a little while?

Mary Signorelli:

I think if you peel back the layers of that, MSPs are very passionate about taking care of their customers. As vendors, we have to make sure we're just as passionate about the MSP and their customers, because that's their lifeblood. Think about all the data and everything they have access to for their customers. That's a very trusted and valuable relationship. The role of vendors is to help support MSPs in that.

Connor Swalm:

Yeah, I was making the statement last week that to an MSP, your clients are people that you've maybe grown up with. They are figures in your community. They're people who are there. There's somebody you probably met at a chamber of commerce event—a local group of local businesses working with local people. These people are not just logos to put on your website and names to reference in your customer database. They are friends, sometimes family, sometimes people that you've known or friends that you've had for 30, 40 years at a time, or that your grandparents had. There is this very integrated relationship you have and this level of reverence you have for the people that you serve as an MSP. Whereas if you flip over to the vendor side, that isn't necessarily the case. I didn't grow up with the people we serve. I didn't live in the same town as them. We're not a geographically located business, so we do business everywhere in the world that we possibly can. We don't just serve a single community like most MSPs do because of the nature of their business. So as a result, these MSPs have—well, if they feel that way about their relationship with their clients, sometimes they impress that upon their vendors as well, where their expectations are: "This is how the people that we work with should also feel about us." That's, in my mind, what creates tension between vendors and MSPs—their expectations are these are people that I should absolutely trust and care for and do what is right at all times. Whereas vendors don't necessarily feel that way. No vendor ever sets out to be a horrible set of people doing horrible things, but they just don't have the same level of reverence for the relationship. That's one thing I was thinking about the other day.

Mary Signorelli:

Yeah. I don't think they understand the importance of those relationships. When you're involved and entrenched in a community and you're taking care of those members of a community, and if you think about the lifecycle of an MSP 20 years ago, it was break-fix. You only helped people when something was broken, and you could never rely on your monthly recurring revenue. It just didn't exist. Now, MSPs are true partners with their customers and they're taking care of them all the time to make sure they're always up and running. It's not just because something broke. So that relationship is key.

Connor Swalm:

Yeah. I think a lot of us could take a lot of value—what would happen to the world if everyone treated all of their relationships like that? I don't know if it'd be a bad thing, actually. Usually when you say, "If we did all of this one way," usually that ends in bad things, but I can't think of an example. Never say all and never, and then I find myself stopping every time I do. It's like, hold on. I should think about this for a second.

Mary Signorelli:

So I think we should leave everybody with a little homework.

Connor Swalm:

What's the homework? It's almost like she was a teacher in her previous life. What homework should we leave them with, Mary?

Mary Signorelli:

I just think they need to be a little more observant of shopping cart habits.

Connor Swalm:

I would say so as well. I've never had a shopping cart run into my car, but I would be very upset if all someone had to do was walk 20 yards to put their shopping cart away and they didn't do it.

Mary Signorelli:

Next employee.

Connor Swalm:

Honestly, I would take somebody who I saw doing that. The pinnacle of Christlike morality, in my mind, is almost like, are you putting other people's shopping carts away and nobody told you to? It's just like, wow, that person went out of their way to do that for somebody else. That's insane. I need to talk with that person. Why are you the way that you are? Are you on a Dr. House episode? Is there something messed up in your brain that you have to give away all of your wealth and everything?

Mary Signorelli:

It's like the final question as you get to the pearly gates. By the way, I was watching you in the parking lot with that shopping cart.

Connor Swalm:

Passed six shopping carts on your way here. Didn't put any of them away. You're banished to hell forever. That'd be unfortunate. So yeah, observe. For those of you that are listening, observe your shopping cart habits. Walk the extra 20 yards and put your shopping cart away. You never know who's watching. Mary might be watching.

Mary Signorelli:

I'll be watching.

Connor Swalm:

Awesome. Once again, you were listening to an episode of Gone Phishing. I'm your host, Connor, CEO at Phin, and we were joined by the wonderful Mary Signorelli. Have a blessed day and we'll talk to you next time.

Thanks so much for tuning in to Gone Phishing. If you want to find out more about high quality security awareness training campaigns, how to launch them in ways that actually engage employees to change their habits, then check us out at Phinsecurity at Phinsec IO. Thanks for fishing with me today and we'll see you next time.