Hong Kong Not Safe for Companies: Entirely Predictable

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The news that Hong Kong is not viewed as good place for Western companies is no surprise. After the failed attempts at democracy in then 2010s Beijing began to crack down in earnest. They started with the protestors, then the free press, then the legislature, and then the judiciary.

With a complete loss of democratic government in a Western-antagonistic. authoritarian regime, there is no reason for any Western companies to be in Hong Kong versus another safer city in the region.

Personally, I don’t think I’d travel to Hong Kong — much less the mainland — if I had the chance. I’m sure that hawkish writings here on and on social media have me on the Chinese government’s map.

If I can’t travel to Hong Kong because of outspoken writing in the US, why would any entire company want to risk placing staff there? (Well, at least outside of trying to make as much $$$ as possible in the Chinese market).

It’s a long way to 217

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A common Republican refrain is to say that “the government that governs best is the government that governs least.” By that standard, House Republicans are doing a fantastic job.

Jim Jordan “beat” Austin Scott in a vote for the speakership, Politico. 124. Scalise got 113 votes Tuesday. 124 is far from 217.

I’m not the only one that doesn’t see 217 as achievable for Jordan.

I don’t even think 217 is achievable with only R votes.

This is the natural culmination of the “burn it all down” mentality that came to Washington with the Tea Party (note: The Squad is not far from that mentality). Multiply that with MAGA and this is the expected outcome.

I expect that the Democrats are more than happy to let the Republicans stay in massive disarray. No need to make the case to voters that they aren’t responsible, wait until the shutdown gets closer and then start hammering at how they can’t even get their own house in order to begin to govern at all.

Realistically, I don’t think there is real pressure for them to figure this out yet. But it won’t be long before the combination of Ukraine, Israel and a budget to bring real pressure.

It may strengthen the speakership by the end of it. The speaker may not end up more powerful, but possibly have more staying power. Either the House adjusts the rules so that it becomes hard enough to depose a speaker that someone will take the position, or it stays rotating every few weeks because any given rep can call to vacate.

The most likely outcome may be a quasi-bi-partisan coalition forms to nominate someone relatively non-partisan. Or perhaps the middle ground, let McHenry have limited powers so the house can function. That’s a long way from certainty, to be sure.

But 217 R votes doesn’t look achievable by anybody. (One rep remarked that Jesus couldn’t get 217.)

Lightroom Lens Blur

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I just installed the Lightroom beta with early access to the lens blur — and its unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I’ve played with a couple of these before, it actually works.

Now, this is too soon for a full scale review, these are just a couple of photos I’ve used it on.

But unlike pretty much everything else ever, this is believable.

I’ve always had three use cases, in this order:

  1. Lower background distractions like telephone poles, or blur out a major distraction like someone else in the photo
  2. Lower noise in the photo, especially if the background is already dark
  3. Add higher bokeh just because it makes for a better photo

In the first image you can see that Gavrel’s jersey gets blurred out, but I don’t think you’d notice if it weren’t for the before and after. With a brush adjustment you don’t notice at all, it just becomes a light blur.

All images if you want to compare

All link to full size.

Gavrel Running Original
Gavrel Running Lens Blur
Gavrel Running Lens Blur + Adjustment
639 Running Original
639 Running Lens Blur

What is the Huntress M365 MDR?

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It is a SOC.

My posts on this are still my most viewed so I want to clarify: it’s definitely a SOC. RocketCyber is a competitor, SaaS Alerts is not.

Huntress was clever and called it an MDR, presumably because — whatever it would mean — an MDR for M365 would be an entirely new product category.

But if you dig in with Huntress people, and dig into their marketing collateral, you’ll see that it is very clearly a SOC.

Kaseya’s Powered Services Pro 2.0

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None of this is confidential to the best of my knowledge. The webinar is recorded and I expect all of this to make its way into documentation and public marketing materials if it hasn’t already. Quotes are best effort, I’m typing them up as they go, so they may not be exact. Some quotes have been cleaned up for grammar and spelling. Finally, the post may not be chronological, I order things so that it fits into understandable narrative.

AMP Overview

THIS IS NOT KEAP OR HUBSPOT.

This is CRM-lite. It’s like a stripped down CRM with Mailchimp-type email features built in. It lets PSP customers take PSP content and get it out fast, and effortlessly. It’s for the 80%+ of MSPs that don’t have a mature marketing program or a mature CRM. Or don’t have the time/skill to set it up and use it.

THAT SAID, I can see MSPs use this in conjunction with another CRM, as long as you can synchronize lists. We use PSP content today, and the content is good, the time-consuming part is loading it into Buffer, WordPress, and our mass-email tool.

Marketing Blueprint Overview

Think of this as a training track with PSP-certifications. It isn’t new public-facing content or a new product. Like other recent Kaseya product announcements, it really looks like it is targeted at making MSPs better, not something else to sell or buy. Weird, right?

Is this like Robin Robins / Technology Marketing Toolkit?

This question is half-real and half-trolling. It’s half-real because PSP borrows language from RR/TMT, if you looked at the PSP marketing materials you might think it is RR/TMT re-packaged. It’s half-trolling because, it’s widely believed that Kaseya purchased RR/TMT awhile ago.

But to answer the question, no, this is not RR/TMT nor is it like it nor is it meant to be a comparable system. The RR/TMT content does not have nearly the amount of social media content, thought leadership content, or category specific campaigns that PSP does. RR/TMT is focused on multi-channel educational marketing (direct mail, cold calls, social media, SEO, website, PPC). The peer-groups and events are next-level compared to other channel competitors.

The PSP material is very much in a thought-leadership and professional tone. RR/TMT content is unabashedly get-people-to-convert. PSP has a lot of prescriptive marketing material, RR/TMT has that plus a lot of descriptive content. RR/TMT also has years and years worth of training1, PSP does not. I could go on, but this post isn’t about PSP vs RR/TMT. They aren’t the same.

That chat was highly engaged and very positive.

Dan on LinkedIn. Will, who needs a profile pic. I couldn’t find Kelli.

Why did PSP start? To fast track MSP success. While PSP will have product-centric marketing collateral, the overall goal is to provide marketing materials that support MSPs more broadly.

Dan: “We give a lot of content,” I’ll vouch for that. There is a lot of available content categories.

The New Marketing Blueprint

If you think this sounds like something from Robin Robins, you are 100% correct. Is it the same? No, see the overview.

PSP has 10 steps for us to take, a nice marketing path in and of itself.

There Are Three Levels

Pro: Starter level, just getting into marketing. This is the PSP focus right now.

Expert: intermediate, “much deeper dive into marketing”

Master: level 3, really diving in.

BUT, this isn’t extra. It’s all part of the existing subscription. “We’re not going to come after you for additional money.”

PSP folks, should you read this, find better verbiage so it doesn’t sound like you split PSP up into 3-subscription tiers.

The [level] certifications are for the participants learning and extending your understanding and knowledge so you can grow your business.

If this looks like Storybrand, again, you’d be right. It is missing step 5, “Repeat”

So, what are these marketing levels?

Dan: “These are marketing levels, we want to teach you marketing and MSP. 101, what marketing is, how to leverage [different channels]… Understand your SWOT, your strategy, your brand is in place.

“[Then] take it to the next level… enhance it and make it better… then to the master level, your business is humming along, everything looks good and now we’re gonna make it better… that way everyone can see success…

“This industry is every changing… we’re seeing more digital transformation than we have ever before… the blueprint is going to evolve… As X [fka Twitter] changes to a subscription model we’ll update PSP [to work with the new X model]”

“And we get badges! Why? Dan says that this is for the marketing people. The tech people in MSPs can get certs everywhere, the marketing people are left out. They don’t have a way to show that they understand the MSP world. “It’s badge to recognize those people.”

So Dan is saying a lot of great things, but 25 minutes in I still have no idea how PSP is changing.

Roadmap

AMP: Automated Marketing Platform

If you ever used the Datto enablement portal, where you could send emails, etc., from inside their portal, it’s like that, but looks a lot nicer.

Not available until the end of the month! (Target, not a promise).

“We’ve heard from so many people, you guys have all this awesome content but I can never get it out to all of my customers and prospects… a lot of [MSPs] don’t have a full-fledged CRM.”

BMS will be coming after Autotask. Interesting choice to start with AT instead. I’d guess that AT has both a better API and a larger client base. What does “Coming Soon” mean in regards to AT? “An integration with Autotask is on the roadmap and in development.”

Sample Dashboard with Goals

The screenshot clearly shows that this isn’t a version of KEAP/MAP (Robin Robin’s Robinized version of Keap/Infusionsoft)

Same Audience Screen

That is a nice UI. I’m a Keap user, and have worked with Zoho and Zomentum in the past. I highly doubt that this is as capable as Keap, but the metrics sure are more clearly presented.

You can send emails from the UI, and easily launch landing pages (well, hard to say the latter without a demo). I missed the screenshot that shows how you can choose the list to send the email to.

Q&A

As a new MSP, I feel these campaigns are really geared towards more MSPs that are established. Will there ever be campaigns that can be geared towards new ones?

You don’t want to market yourself as a new MSP. The thought-leadership pieces are the right places to put out.

What is Social Pilot?

I am going to take this personally: it’s like Buffer, but included in PSP. We still use Buffer, but we have a fairly specific use-case for it. I’d probably go with Social Pilot if I could.

Will AMP interface with Keap? Connectwise? Hubspot?

It doesn’t now.

Is logic available for email campaigns?

Not now, but “it’s coming, we know it’s got to be here.” My $0.02, if you already know how to utilize this type of logic AMP isn’t for you. Go work with a more mature CRM. AMP doesn’t seem to made as such.

Dan: “We built AMP for people that were using Maiilchimp, ConstantContact, their PSA.” The implication is what I said: if you’re using Hubspot (and like it) then AMP isn’t for you. Will echos this thought a few minutes later.

Can AMP send custom emails?

Yes.

  1. PSP has plenty of sales-related content from TruMethods but nowhere near the amount of marketing content. ↩︎

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