SuperSummit London - the first step to road to a million

Every journey starts with that first step. But, that first step is the most daunting.

The SuperSummit London journey starts on a hot and humid day.

As people where trickling down into our workspace, our CEO walked up to me and spoke about organizing an event. There was, however, a caveat- NO vendor pitches (including ours).

At first thought, this was super exciting. but my second thought was: “will people even attend something organized by a vendor without vendor pitches?”

But boy did that message resonate with MSPs, industry experts, and everyone involved!

We envisioned a “for the community, by the community” event, an event that would kickstart the conversation on how MSPs can work together, share knowledge, learn from each other, so everyone could grow and reach and cross the magical 1-million revenue milestone.

I admit we had our doubts and . But, considering the response we go, we shouldn’t have had any.

At SuperSummit London, we met some of the best minds in the MSP space who shared their journey, mistakes, and learnings. And we thrived on some British “spirit” at the after-event party!

So what went down? Read on!

The Big Why

Why do we need a meetup when there are so many around?

Why should we do an in-person event when the world is going virtual?

How do we differentiate ourselves?

Do MSPs need yet another community?

These are the questions we had in the run up to the event. There are ton of events (attended quite well), there are MSP communities for every challenge they face, and then there are vendors who provide MDF, templates, and more to attract MSPs.

But, how many of these tips, tricks, and events are run by subject matter experts, or MSP owners?

And how many of these:

• enable free sharing of knowledge between MSPs?
• communities speak more about failures to avoid (rather than gloating about how things are done)?

We searched for the answers, and couldn’t find a lot of communities that are founded and run by MSPs or help MSPs without an ulterior motive. Our good friends at Tech Tribe do it. But you can’t find many others.

And we decided to take things in our hands.

So, what did we actually do in the event?

What went down?

As I said earlier, we wanted to achieve a singular goal - help MSPs reach a million in revenue. So all our talks, panels, templates were just focussed on this.

But was it all so rosy? With an event like this, it seldom is. It was 11:00, the London sun was out in all its glory. And we had our first guest walk in to the room, asking if this is where the SuperSummit was happening.

All he could see was a chaotic room, with mics being tested, swag packages strewn around, and a bunch of people running around. But, it was all starting to come together.

One became three, then five, and before we knew it we had 40 people in the Lunch hall having some channel banter over their sandwiches and afternoon tea.

Pretty soon after, the sessions were in full swing, with every topic from using your PSA tool to build a more profitable MSP to living a good life being discussed. There were many moments of laughter, and of deep introspection. I could go on, but I am a numbers guy, so let the numbers speak:

• 1 drone gifted to the most prolific social media poster.
• 3 hours of networking, and 3 hours of sessions
• 8+ partners giving exclusive offers, consultations, and resources as part of the promotional booklet.
• 11 speakers speaking about MSP growth, mental health of MSP owners, challenges with hiring, operational efficiency of MSPs, being profitable, marketing and sales.
• 65+ MSPs were in attendance. From 1-person shops asking about how to scale to 10-people MSPs talking about predictability, we had them all.
• 100+ social media mentions, posts, and insights shared across Linkedin, Twitter, and Instagram.
• 186 pints of beers, 8 wine bottles finished. Now that’s what we call finishing on a high ;)

and

• 0 vendor pitches!

As Sophie, one of the attendees, said:

“I’ve never seen a vendor event with NO vendor pitches. Loved it”.

What next?

Do we plan to continue these meetups? Absolutely!

But in addition to the meetups, we want to come up with podcasts, template libraries, interviews, and insights into ensuring we enable MSPs reach a million in revenue.

And, we will stick to our motto - for the MSPs, by the MSPs.