How to Run Your Tech Tribe Chapter Meetup 🤝

Nigel here.

And so we kicked off our Local Chapters initiative quite a few years ago now, with the sole purpose to provide a collective space that msps all around the world can come and hang out together to be able to share the crazy, wild, exciting, tough journey of running an msp, on your own.

And so I got an incredible amount of help from my community over here when I was running my msp, my local MSP community.

And so the whole purpose of Tech Tribe Chapters is to provide a space for MSPs to go and have that same similar level of help and assistance to share, as I said, share the journey together.

Now we set it so that our chapter leaders and and our groups can run the groups however they really see fit to dependent on what the members are after.

And we don't say, hey, you have to follow this regimented agenda and you have to do these specific things because every single group has got different things.

Groups have got loads of different, like sizes.

And if you're a really small group, often you might do things differently to a group of 20 or 30.

Like some of our groups have grown to 20 or 30, some are four to six people.

And so the way you run your group is very specific to the type of group that you've got.

Not only the size but also the type of people that turn up to the group.

however, in saying that, we've put together this slide deck to help you as an example agenda to be able to just help the flow of things run a little bit better and just give you a tool that you can use bits of all of, some of, part of you can skip things over, over and whatnot.

And so I'm just going to run through very quickly, the slide deck.

You could go, well, it's a slide deck.

Yeah, it's built in Canva, but it's a presentation essentially.

And you, you will be able to click on one button, it'll open up in presentation view so it's up on your screen.

And if you've got a nice like a wall monitor or something in the boardroom or whatever room you're using, feel free to throw it up on that.

So it's kind of sitting there in the background.

but anyway, as I said, you don't like, we have no expectations that everybody has to run through everything in these.

You, you don't have to use the slide deck if you don't want to.

Again, it' to help it make, help make it easier and more structured for you in Here we've had a number of members, sorry, a number of chapter leaders desperately asking us for this thing to help make their jobs easier and to just provide some structure.

And so here it is.

Number, one, obviously you kick off your meeting with this screen sitting up on the, on there so that when as people are turning up on whatever, it's good to go.

Next, one is, as you know, we've got the WhatsApp communities.

Every chapter has a WhatsApp, group that you can go in and it's for news and updates about chapters, about local meetups.

It's about event legit, it's about having banter in between meetups and whatnot.

It's not, and I would, I would make sure you continually let your group know this.

It's not a place to go and ask a question like, hey, is anybody having this problem with Microsoft 365 licensing or, or how is everybody pricing and packaging their plans?

Because you're literally only asking a tiny, tiny, tiny cohort of people that question when you could and should be asking that question out in the greater community where you've got the benefit of having thousands and thousands and thousands of MSPs in there to answer your question.

So it's not about asking business questions in the WhatsApp group.

The WhatsApp groups are designed for that.

Building the relationship in between meetings and eventual logistics and hey, where is everybody sitting?

If you're at a social thing and all that sort of stuff, and if they click on that QR code, it takes them straight into the WhatsApp community that it can join and they can go and add any of the groups from there.

there will be, once we start to get some sponsors for these groups, you have to ignore that silly animation that one of my team put on.

they love throwing my face up in stupid wonderful ways.

But this one here, eventually, we used to have some spawn a sponsor for some event, but we stopped it, probably about 12 months ago.

And as we build up and grow this local chapter initiative around the world, we will then be able to go to a bunch of sponsors and say, hey, we've got all of these meetups happening all around the world, where all these MSPs are coming together in person.

Would you like to sponsor those meetups and provide us some money?

And you'll be able to put some banners up and et cetera, et cetera, and get some, some coverage there.

And that sponsorship money can then go towards dinner and drinks and more importantly Some regular social events.

I'd love to see two social events each year like a mid year event and a Christmas event where everybody in a local chapter comes together and the sponsor money helps put budget towards going and doing something awesome and fun with your friends.

But for now for some of the groups I've ended up paying for some of the things in there.

until we get sponsors.

The next section is a section that we'll keep it in there and you can obviously choose to flick through this as fast as you possibly want.

But a lot of our there's a big cohort of members that don't keep up to date with all the cool, exciting, fun things that we go and build to help make their business better.

So we'll put in the couple of slides each month with just some of the latest resources or workshops or templates or trainings or whatever it happens to be that we've gone and released.

So you can mention them on here.

So this one we've, we built an AI acceptable use policy template for MSPS that you can go out and give to your prospects and clients.

Click the scan button.

It takes you straight to that spot in the tribal portal.

The next one is we put a bunch of client facing security bulletins which we've got a bunch of feedback on that one which people love.

It's just little PDFs that you can go and slap your logo on and go and get them printed and hand them out to your clients to help educate them again on cyber security risks and whatnot.

Again QR codes on all of these.

we've recently built some Ms.

Break fix first MSP infographics that some members were asking for there in there.

we've obviously semi recently ghostwritten the secured book which if you come to my chapter or the chapter that John now local Person runs, every single person there has printed their books and got their name in print and become an author of this one which is cool and, and they're, they're out at events handing out and whatnot.

So this is one of those ones that once someone sees it in person they're like holy crap, I've got to get my name on one of them.

I wish I should have had one on my table as I recorded this.

so that one also the AI book that we go through for everybody, they're both there.

so that's it, that's the, the kind of news.

It's just a couple of slides.

You can say hey, here's some of the things that the Tech Tribes released lately that you might not have seen if you're not reading the weekly Digest or the weekly member newsletter.

Now, next up, we just set some ground rules for these meetings because we want these to be safe containers and safe spaces so that and the rules are kind of set up front.

There's a couple of basic rules where peers, not prospects.

There is no pitching ever allowed at a Tech Tribe local chapter meetup.

We don't want vendors.

As you all probably know, we invite vendors into the space, but vendors come into the space to serve and help, not to pitch their product.

And the smart vendors know that the more they show up and serve and support, the more clients they end up getting because they see they build this authority and influence in the space and they get seen as a very helpful person.

Then people go and find their product and buy it.

The not so smart vendors jump in those spaces like this and think, this is just a laundry list of prospects for me to go and pitch to.

And that's not what this is about at all.

So it's a peers not prospects program in here.

If a vendor's showing up, they are under strict no, no pitch, no pitch rules, including none of that sly pitching where they're kind of slightly working their way angle into things.

number two is we debate as friends.

There's not a single human on this earth that doesn't, that doesn't have a different, let me rephrase that.

All of us all have different wild, crazy opinions on all sorts of weird and wonderful things.

And that means that we're always going to have disagreements in things.

And that's the beauty of the human race is that we have disagreements and we all have differing views and we can hear each other's opinions and whatnot.

And in a space like our MSP industry where there's so many hotly debated things like pricing and packaging and cybersecurity, tech stacks and all of that sort of stuff, there is going to be disagreements and that is awesome because it allows you go and see different perspectives and all sorts of stuff.

So our rule here is we debate as friends.

We don't debate as ego driven enemies, which often shows up in it spaces around the world.

So if we disagree with someone, we just do it with class and integrity.

Simple as that.

And the third and final one in here is it's just a safe space.

Like we treat everything we hear in this container here, as in this meetup here, as confidential and private and we don't talk about it anywhere else because, I don't know about any of your groups, but in our group especially, we built this rapport over the last 12, 18 months where we go pretty deep into things like, we might start around on surface level things like pricing and packaging.

Then it goes pretty deep into the mental health challenges that are stopping us from increasing our pricing and our sense of worth and all that sort of stuff.

So we have some pretty private conversations in our group.

And I suspect a lot of like, my goal is that a lot of you, get to that point where you've got that level of vulnerability and trust with your groups so that people can open up about their, their fears and their struggles and their challenges and the things that are driving them mad and get through them.

Because again, this is all about having a space where, our industry can, show up with friends and share the journey together and share their struggles together.

And so to do that, we need, everybody needs to know that what's said here stays here.

It's like the, as you say, like, what's the, first rule about Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club outside Fight Club.

Second, rule of Fight Club.

See rule number one, the same thing here.

next thing is, and you see here, I've written an example agenda.

So this is.

You don't feel free to follow it.

We follow kind of a loose agenda like this for our one.

the first thing is, well, you always try to do lightning round and we try to keep this 60 seconds or less per person.

So lightning round is literally an intro and a win or a woe or a win and a woe.

Wins being something awesome that's happened in the last month.

A woe, something that's a challenge for the last month or something that's bad that's happened for the last month.

Often our woes are what turn into what our round tables or hot seat discussions are.

but anyway, that's 60 seconds for everybody to introduce themselves.

Next up is a roundtable discussion.

This might go for 45 minutes or so before you break for dinner.

And we're going to give you like, we've, we've got the PDF where you've got loads of different roundtable discussions that you can go and have.

And and otherwise, like with our group, sometimes during our wins and woes section, someone will come up with, a woe that the rest of the group will go, yeah, I've got that challenge as well.

And we'll just decide to double click on that one for our roundtable.

But essentially it's an open debate where you, as the chapter leaders, job is to, facilitate the conversation and keep people on track and make sure that not one, one person is not taking over most of the conversation in there and that everybody's being fair and debating as friends, etc.

Etc.

so that's, that's the roundtable discussion.

Then we have the break.

we normally order in pizzas or burgers or whatever for us and we sit there and while we're eating, we're talking about what's going on and all the casual banter we're building, building relationships and networking and whatnot.

then after the break we normally either jump back into another roundtable session on a different topic or we do then collective hot seats where, where we'll spend 10 minutes on a member and I'll run through that in a second as well.

And then at the very end, it's normally open networking.

now we typically go across to a bar across the road.

Like anybody that wants to, we go across to a bar and we all hang out.

We have a few drinks over there afterwards as well.

so that's it.

Super simple.

the, the way we've set this slide deck up is so that you've got some conversation starters in here.

obviously you can, if you're going to run your own, just skip this slide and run your own.

but the roundtable, we're selling this saying this month, hey, let's talk about selling AI projects to clients because it's a crazy hot topic that lots of MSPs are speaking about.

And we've thrown in some conversation starters, like have you sold an AI project to a client yet?

If so, what's the project outcome?

Did you charge for it?

What internal AI projects have you built at your msp?

And what are your clients asking for?

Like just conversation starters for you as the chapter leader to be able to help, the group start some conversation in here.

And so the roundtable is just build these things.

Obviously you'll have your own thing and your own questions that pop up and the group will also have their own questions that pop up and whatnot.

But we'll just do this each month to help give you some pointers to get started with to make your job super, super, super easy.

So you just have to show up and run through the slide deck if you want to.

And and everything's done.

the next part after the break is like the 10 minute hot seats, we call them, like, I've run many of these around the world and I call them 10 minute hot seats.

I learned them the process from a friend of mine that I learned a lot from called Taki, who, who has taught me an incredible amount over the years about hosting facilitated discussions and hot seats and masterminds and peer groups and all that sort of stuff.

And so the way, the way I love seeing these things.

And again, this is an example, it doesn't have to be followed militantly.

but number one is that we kind of set a timer for 10 minutes per person.

It's all right.

Hey, John's turn now.

10 minutes on John.

In the first minute, John has to explain his, issue to us.

He's got to give us all the context, all the background, all the history of his issue.

then there's another minute or two for us all to ask any clarifying questions where we need to know deeper context and whatnot.

And then we go into, and we're very specific.

Like when I host these things, I'm very specific around this.

Instead of then just opening it up so that everybody can just help John, we do it one person at a time around a table.

And so if we got six, 10 people around the table or whatever it happens to be, each person gets a minute each, or maybe it's 45 seconds each, or maybe it's two minutes each or whatever it happens to be.

the reason I do that, and I've started doing that many, many years ago when I was running these things, is that sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes there is some extremely opinionated people that occupy a spot on the table and they just overtake the conversation.

And they've obviously got a lot of value that they can go and give this the person that's sitting in the hot seat.

But they railroad the conversation to the point where nobody else at the table gets a chance to put their input in.

And the 10 minutes is up and no one else got a chance to talk.

and so we put it here so that every person at least gets a one minute chance to say, hey, well, I think this, or whatever, or sometimes people just say, I skipped this one.

Like, I got the challenge as well, and I don't have an answer for it, which is perfectly fine as well.

that's happened in a number of groups.

I've probably done.

I've probably been a, participant in these hot seats probably 50 to 100 times.

Somewhere thereabouts and I love them.

and so we run around the table.

Every person gets a chance to either say, skip or give a minute of their thoughts, feedback, advice, tips, resources, networks, connections, books, videos, workshops, whatever it happens to be that they recommend the person take a look at.

and then the table, if there's any extra time in there, which we're down here into the open discussion, then you can open it up to the group and that person that if there is one that's got lots of opinions, they can go a little bit deeper and whatnot.

And then at the very end, the whole job, of the hot seater is to just say thank you.

It's not to say but, but, but, but, but and be butt face.

It's to say thank you to everybody for all the input that they've given and write down any notes and, and often we ask like what's your one, two or three takeaways that you took away from this, to bring back and help solve your challenge.

So that's how, that's how a 10 minute hot seat, program can roll, container or whatever you want to call it, can run, the next slide that then kind of wraps up the couple of hours.

Then by, if you've, by the time you've run through all that, had dinner in the middle, done all this, you're kind of wrapped up.

then we do the next meetup here.

when you click on that, it just takes you straight into that portal page there where you can just go and see the next meetups and they can click on the RSVB button.

So it's just a good reminder to go and do it.

the next one is we always want to hear feedback on what, what, what's working, what's not this feedback form if they take a thing there, it's like a one minute survey to go and fill in.

It just gives us feedback that we can share around.

We'll share it around to all the chapter leaders each time, maybe in some sort of monthly format or something.

and it helps us learn what people love and what people think might be an area for improvement.

So, encourage your people to go and give feedback on these things.

It is anonymous, unless they want to write their name in there.

but we don't.

Anonymous means that they can often give more feedback in there without fear of judgment and whatever and fear of people knowing what they say.

But, it is what it is.

Lastly we just reminder again, if you're not in the WhatsApp group, go and join the WhatsApp group.

And that's it.

So that's everything.

Sorry, this video has been a little bit long.

It's 15 minutes.

we're going to use this as kind of the training thing for all new chapter leaders as we go and build out this chapter leader initiative around the place.

But, as always, thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you do.

our MSP industry, as I keep saying all the time, is such a giving industry.

And to be a chapter leader, to go and host a space for other MSPs out there, to have a place that they can come to each month or every second month or whatever it happens to be, where they get to share the journey with friends and work through their challenges and hear about all the latest and greatest things and whatnot is, an incredible thing to do.

So thank you for all the time, effort and energy you put into it.

I really do mean it.

And, I will see you hopefully at a chapter meet up sometime soon when I'm out and about around the world.

but that's it for me.

Hopefully that helps.

As always, if you've got any other things you think that we should add into this slide deck template example over time, obviously, just let us know.

In the chapter leaders WhatsApp group, always there's always things that we might like.

We're always open to hearing new ideas where we can improve this and whatnot.

But for now, let's just get it out there.

For those of you who want to use it, use it, use it however you want, skip parts that you don't want to use, et cetera, et cetera, and go for it.

That's all from me.

Bye for now.