With the pandemic hitting hard and fast and few businesses having a plan for a global crisis, many businesses learned valuable lessons during the historic moment. With most employees leaving their office with no return day both owners, employees, and clients learned valuable lessons that many things cam be done from remote locations. We meet up with Lori Tisinai as she shares with us what she has learned from the pandemic, and why 2021 was one of their busiest years.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
Hey nation nation back with Lori. Lori, I have to ask you, because I always want to say Tisinai and you always correct me, please, what is your last name?
Lori Tisinai
It’s Tisinai
Harry Brelsford
If not, okay, I’m gonna get that we’re gonna bring you back quarterly hits the new year, and we need new analysts. And with that analyst role that we’d like you to talk about, you had a good 2021. And you’re absolutely roaring into 2022 of what’s going on with your business models on fire we don’t even see on social media.
Lori Tisinai
Oh, it’s it’s quite sad, actually, I missing my friends and being social and sharing ideas and concepts. But 2021 was a busy year for us, and was even busier than 2020 When COVID first hit, and I’m still waiting for that time where I can clean out a closet or a drawer. You know, everyone was doing that. I never, I never got a chance. But so I think, you know, I’m trying to determine why what why am I so busy? And I think, because over the past few years, I’ve been laying the groundwork for marketing and social media. And I have a lot of what I consider to be raving fans. And I talk about this often when I give talks about personal branding and business branding, that, you know, I haven’t really been doing any speaking engagements, I haven’t been going into any networking events for local businesses around where I am. But every week, we’re getting new calls for new businesses. Wow. And I’m putting together a new proposal. Now, granted, my market is different than other MSPs. But I like the smaller micro businesses, I like 10 users and less I feel that I can get, you know, give better service to those type of clients. So maybe there’s more of them out there. So I get more leads for those clients.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, no, absolutely. No, you know, you talk about here’s, this is good. But this is bad. And here’s what I was hearing a little bit of. And by the way, I have lived this life when, you know, I always like to go back to the day of Small Business Server, and just kind of drone on about that. But here’s what happened to me personally. And I tell this story is I got too comfortable. Like in 2000 7,8,9. I mean, the phone was just ringing. We at our big event, we actually put a vendor in a closet, we ran out of room on the show floor before the closet. And I personally got too comfortable. I was riding my bike every day more than I should and you know, eaten eaten ribeye steaks and. And that’s the downside of busy because you start to rest on your laurels. I learned my lesson, Lori, and I don’t think you’re falling into the same trap. But I just wanted to have a dialogue with you about that. You can get really comfortable when times are good.
Lori Tisinai
Oh, I’ve been there before we’re in 2000. It was either 2008 or 2009. May have been 2007. It was whenever the fall had had taken place. I would take my cell phone, my Blackberry and call my landline my business line to just make sure that it was working because there was no phone calls. Yeah, there was just nothing. Yeah, I would call myself just to make sure it was working. But what and
Harry Brelsford
we’re in different lines of work. The reason I was busy is Small Business Server 2008 had just come out. Right. So it was a product launch. And and so that’s very different than your feet on the street. I mean, you’re you’re actually doing the work. So true. Any of that. Well, what do you forecast for 2022? And then we’ll wrap it up? Are you thinking any? Are you adding any line to work or just kind of sticking to the knitting.
Lori Tisinai
Sticking to the knitting right now I am rolling out like a new, like a concept to start releasing some information about password managers. It’s a new year. So I’d like to get you know, new clients that maybe aren’t on a password manager or people just don’t know if it’s safe, or they think putting it in a book. So I’m trying to come up with some ideas where I can do some social media, like little, little, you know, little mini videos to get people more interested to retort people across the country. Because I think one thing that COVID has taught me is that as taught my clients, I don’t need to be on sites, we don’t need to physically be there and our clients can be anywhere in the country or really anywhere in the world. And so I think that’s where I’m trying to push more of my businesses to get maybe not so much small business, but lots of business from lots of little clients and then you know, put them on some type of a plan or a maintenance plan. So password management, maybe just tips for training, you know, try to come up with some Training tidbits for existing clients just separate changing but how to position it. That’s always the challenge.
Harry Brelsford
Absolutely. So next quarter when we chat with the genie in the radio controller, if he can make a note I want to talk about your event forecast will be in the springtime. You’re You’re well known for the IT campus. That’s a whole conversation. We’ll do it next quarter. Thank you for being one of our rotating analysts.
Lori Tisinai
Thank you. Bye
