Collaborating with MSP's in my area

I first came upon Tom’s youtube channel when working with PFSense and ubiquiti, and though i don’t use the same stack in everything i do, i greatly value the content he creates and his business philosophies . I’ve been in business for ~20 years in my rural part of Northwest Oklahoma as a one-man I.T. shop. I have clients from Texas to Wyoming, but primarily in the SW Kansas and NW Ok area. I basically do everything- structured cabling, build computers, servers, 3cx pbx systems, pfsense firewalls, ip cameras. I prefer open source/linux where possible but MSFT server and desktop are practical and those are my core competencies.

I haven’t made the switch to MSP from break/fix. That is something i am working to change. I didn’t think i needed to advertise for most of those years because i was so busy i had to turn down lots of work. Last year i got overloaded and could not flex out to accommodate the load. I lost some clients. What i would like to do is collaborate with other I.T. companies in my general area so that i can pick up their overload and vice versa. Pooling of resources would be very helpful too.

Does anybody have any suggestions for making connections with area competitors? I’ve seen some really shoddy work by some of them. While i may not do everything right, i hold myself to a high standard. Trusting someone else to deal professionally with my clients has been a problem every time i’ve considered this, and i’d have to really get to know them well to do that. I understand it also works the other way too.

Thank you!
Scott

Easiest way is just to start reaching out and meeting in person or virtual and start with the simple question “What do you do?” Make sure they know your intention is to network and possibly share resources and see where it goes. Some people will respond, other will ignore and I don’t take that personally.

Thank you for the response! I’m doing that and getting some positive feedback. More than I thought I would. Our field isn’t very collegiate sometimes.

You can also go over to spiceworks.com and see if your area has a SpiceCorp. If they do, you can meet people that show up to their meetups. If not, you can probably become a SpiceCorp leader. Spiceworks will kick out an email to everyone in the area. You might also meet techs with corporate jobs that want a little extra work on the side. Either way, it’s a great way to meet IT Pros in person.