Freeing Minds™ – IT Glue’s Learning Event

IT Glue™ is delighted to bring to you our inaugural Freeing Minds™ Learning Event in Vancouver, BC on Wednesday, October 5, 2016.

Freeing Minds is born out of our core purpose here at IT Glue. It is our intention to remove the burden of memorizing processes and documentation, thus allowing your people to focus on more valuable and inspiring initiatives. We want to release you to focus on growing and improving your business. With this in mind, we have put together a learning event focused on giving you the information, tips, and motivation to look for new and inspiring ways to grow your business.

In our first Freeing Minds Learning Event, we focus on key ways you can look to grow your MSP. We’ve brought together a panel of best-in-class speakers from a variety of backgrounds with years of experience in their respective fields.

Our panel will look to cover all aspects of business growth including:

• Culture
• M&A
• Marketing
• Security and compliance
• Technology stack
• Hyper-growth

Here’s a brief outline of the great speakers and content that we have for the event:

10 Lessons Learned Growing a $10M MSP – Chris Day

Why is it that some managed services providers (MSPs) are able to grow their business and deliver significant bottom-line profits, while others struggle to scale? People, product, process, and technology are the essential building blocks required to grow your business and increase your profits. Most organizations have no idea where to begin.

MSP industry expert and CEO of IT Glue, Chris Day, will share his real-world experiences growing an MSP from 1 to over 50 employees, while increasing profit margins and building an inspiring, award-winning culture.

About the speaker

Chris is an industry veteran within the managed services sphere. Having founded Fully Managed in
2002, he grew this MSP to become one of Western Canada’s largest and most successful technology
companies. In 2013, Chris founded IT Glue with the vision of profoundly changing the way that people create, manage, and interact with IT documentation, one of the industry’s most challenging problems. IT Glue has grown in a short time to support over 1,500 clients globally, with 30,000 users in 5 continents. Chris regularly speaks at leading technology conferences throughout North America and was instrumental in helping Fully Managed achieve Alberta’s Best Workplaces (Overall Category) in 2013 and Best Employer in BC in 2014. Chris is also a recent recipient of the Top Forty under 40 award in 2013 in Vancouver.

The New MSP Reality: The Impact of Merges and Acquisition Throughout the Lifecycle of Today’s MSPs – Fred Voccola

M&A activity is remaking the MSP competitive landscape, with new merger and acquisition announcements made almost daily. You need to recognize today’s M&A reality and understand its implications for your MSP whether or not you intend to grow through mergers or find an exit strategy via acquisition. Kaseya CEO, Fred Voccola will talk about how mergers and acquisitions impact MSPs throughout their lifecycle and why an M&A strategy is critical for MSPs of all sizes and at all stages of their development and organic growth. Learn best practices for creating an M&A strategy and executing against it and hear about the different perspectives of buyers and sellers in M&A courtships.

About the speaker

Fred Voccola is President and CEO of Kaseya. Prior to joining Kaseya, Fred served as President and General Manager of Yodle’s Brand Networks Division, providing digital and marketing automation solutions to small and medium businesses. Previously, he was President of Nolio, Inc., a DevOps SaaS company, where he drove 100% year-over- year growth and successfully sold the business to CA Technologies (formerly known as Computer Associates).

Prior to Nolio, Fred co-founded and served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Trust Technology Corp., where he drove significant growth over three years prior to the company being sold to FGI Global. Earlier, Fred co-founded and served as Chief Operating Officer of Identify Software, substantially growing the business during his five-year tenure, culminating in a sale to BMC Software. He then served as Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Services at BMC Software. In addition, Fred has held various management and executive roles at Intira, which was sold to Divine Systems, and Prism Solutions, which was sold to Ardent Software/Informix/IBM.

The Ideal Technology Stack – Joel Abramson

What does it take to run a successful modern day MSP? With so many product offerings now on the market, assembling the right technology stack for your MSP becomes a critical decision to ensure your growth and success.

Listen to Joel Abramson, Fully Managed CEO, discuss how he and the team at Fully Managed have worked to assemble an Ideal Technology stack. Joel will discuss how they are leveraging these tools to their full potential in their MSP to the the extent that they have been named Datto Partner of the Year 2016.

About the speaker

In 2002, Joel founded Packetsafe Networks, a boutique managed services provider with a specific end in mind of creating a sellable business. In 2012, it was acquired by Fully Managed Technology, where Joel now resides as CEO. Under his leadership, Fully Managed has become one of the largest and most respected managed services providers in Western Canada, employing 52 staff across two locations. He has also been responsible for unprecedented growth, seeing revenues grow 30% year over year since his arrival.

As a recognized thought leader in the field of managed services, Joel has taken a traditionally complex
business and simplified it, providing positive technology outcomes for mid-market sized businesses. He
has achieved this by merging people, process and technology, and a commitment to industry-leading
customer service. Inspired by a 20+ year career in Gastown, Joel has served as a board member of the Gastown Business Improvement Society. He is also the youngest director on the board of the Hollyburn Country Club.

Compliance, Security & Why It Matters – Mike Knapp

The dreaded maze of compliance and security is often avoided by all but the most stalwart IT people. With the amount of personal data businesses store and a growing number of breaches, compliance rules have become increasingly stringent, and we can no longer avoid them.

When you know the path through the maze, it’s easy to change compliance from a burden to an amazing business opportunity. Industry expert Mike Knapp will look to cover:

• Threats, risks, and our need of trust
• An overview of some of the major compliance frameworks and why companies use them
• The keys to compliance success
• Common controls and process that every provider can offer to build their security and compliance services

About the speaker

Mike Knapp is a partner with Incrementa Consulting, a boutique consulting firm focused on helping businesses be more successful. Mike is driven by challenges and leverages his expertise in technology strategy and operations, project management, and security to create scalable platforms for businesses.

During his career, Mike has worked with more than 60 businesses, ranging from startups to multi-billion dollar companies. His broad experience, combined with the ability to simplify complex technical concepts and communicate them to non-technical audience, has led to him being a strategic and technical adviser for CEOs and other executives.

Over the last decade, Mike has implemented security programs for companies ranging from startups to 100-year-old financial services companies. This includes implementations of common security frameworks such as PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, and SSAE-16 as well as dozens of compliance and security audits.

You can reach Mike at www.incrementa.ca

Modern Marketing For MSPs – Phill Claxton

Marketing approaches are taking a new direction. Across multiple channels and with so many ways to communicate, the buyer is now in control of information and how they access it. Communicating with your potential buyers has become a greater challenge but a huge opportunity for you to grow your business.

Phill Claxton will discuss the trends within inbound marketing and social media and how your business can leverage them as a source of growth and reduce your cost of acquisition of new customers.

About the speaker

Phill is an industry veteran within the world of IT, having worked in the sector for over 20 years in a career spanning several continents. Phill started his career in New Zealand working for small IT providers before heading to the UK to work as the Head of IT for a large multinational advertising group, Omnicom. It was there that he developed a passion for marketing and the role that it plays as it crosses the boundaries into IT. Phill returned to NZ in 2005 to manage a large MSP, and he later went on to co-found a highly successful client portal software company, DeskDirector. During his time there, Phill fine-tuned his skills in the areas of product management and marketing. He now works as the Chief Operating Officer at IT Glue, where he heads up the Product Development, Marketing and Success teams. He continues to enjoy helping MSPs succeed.

Culture as a Fountain for Growth – David Reeve

Many people often mistake corporate culture for cool-looking offices, casual dress codes, fun perks, entrepreneurial environments, etc. Although these are attributes that may contribute to an overall desired culture, depending on the brand, it does not get to the foundation of what real corporate culture is and how to design, implement, and sustain it for optimum growth.

Acclaimed author David Reeve will provide insights into the biggest foundational elements and approaches that you can take that will build amazing corporate culture and act as a catalyst for your brand’s growth.

About the speaker

David Reeve is an award-winning brand and culture builder. His philosophy: “Inspire greatness in everyone, everywhere, and leave them better than I found them.” Fueled by his personal purpose, David founded Unleash Cultureand is on a mission to help brands build amazing cultures and “discover greatness within”.

David has a proven track record of success, resulting in 58 awards for culture excellence for the brands he has mentored and has contributed to building two of the largest award-winning brands in Canada.

Brands that David has mentored have also been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Profit, Fox Business, Globe and Mail, Success, Fortune Small Business, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Alberta Venture, and Dragon’s Den, just to name a few. David is a published author, founder of five personal brands, and sought-after speaker.

He can be reached at [email protected] or www.unleashculture.com