Some interviews ask the tough questions.
The Hot Seat asks them while your mouth is on fire.
Welcome to the latest video series from CloudFest and MSP GLOBAL, supported by WebPros, where industry leaders swap PowerPoint for poultry and polished media training for progressively more painful chicken wings.
The recipe is deliciously simple. Sit two experts at a table. Add four increasingly ferocious hot sauces. Throw in some industry-defining questions. Then stand back and watch as the heat rises, the foreheads glisten, and the conversation becomes refreshingly unfiltered.
It’s part fireside chat, part food challenge, and part endurance sport.
But there’s more to it than seeing respected technology leaders discover their limits on the Scoville scale.
CloudFest and MSP GLOBAL have always shared more than an events calendar. The Cloud and MSP worlds overlap every day through the people, businesses, technologies, and partnerships that keep digital services running. Many of the industry’s biggest names move comfortably between both communities because the conversations shaping one are increasingly shaping the other.
The Hot Seat reflects exactly that crossover.
Whether you’re building Cloud infrastructure, growing an MSP, or somewhere in between, the biggest opportunities—and the toughest questions—are often shared. Sometimes all it takes is a plate of chicken wings to get people talking honestly about them.
Episode 3: Paul Lloyd
For the latest serving, Christian Jaeger, CEO of CloudFest and MSP GLOBAL, welcomes Paul Lloyd, one of the most experienced sales leaders in the MSP channel.
With more than two decades helping MSPs build sales organisations, win new customers and prepare for growth, Paul has seen just about every sales mistake—and success story—the channel has to offer.
As the sauces get steadily hotter, Paul remains impressively unfazed. Christian… perhaps slightly less so.
Watch the full episode here:
Three Hot Takes from Paul Lloyd
1. You’re not selling technology anymore
The first wing delivers the first reality check.
Customers don’t buy technology for technology’s sake—they buy outcomes. The MSPs that consistently win new business are the ones that understand what success looks like for their clients before recommending a solution.
That means asking better questions, understanding the customer’s business, and resisting the temptation to lead with products instead of problems.
Or, as Paul puts it, if you try to sell everything to everybody, you’ll end up selling nothing to nobody.
2. Find your niche before somebody else does
The second sauce brings one of Paul’s strongest opinions.
Too many MSPs spread themselves too thin.
Instead, specialise. Pick a vertical. Own a geography. Become the recognised expert in a particular technology or market. Customers pay more for specialists because specialists understand their language, their challenges, and the outcomes they’re trying to achieve.
Paul even serves up one particularly spicy opinion: if you’ve never lost a customer, you’re probably over-servicing them. Great MSPs don’t try to be the cheapest—they deliver enough value that customers are happy to pay a premium.
3. The future belongs to value creators
By the time the hottest sauce arrives, the conversation turns to where the channel is heading.
Paul believes MSPs are approaching a turning point.
As vendors automate more capabilities and platforms become easier to consume, simply reselling technology won’t be enough. The MSPs that thrive will be those helping customers transform their businesses—improving efficiency, solving commercial challenges, and becoming trusted advisers rather than technology suppliers.
The hyperscalers can deliver platforms at scale.
What they can’t deliver is local knowledge, industry expertise, and genuine customer understanding. That’s where MSPs continue to earn their place.
Worth getting your fingers sticky for
The episode ends with Paul turning the tables and grilling Christian about what motivates him to build CloudFest and MSP GLOBAL.
The answer? Community.
Because while the hot sauce eventually wears off, the conversations, partnerships, and ideas sparked by bringing people together tend to last a lot longer.
If you enjoyed this first helping of The Hot Seat, go back and catch Episode 1 with hosting.com’s Dom Taylor and Episode 2 with Namecheap co-founder Matthew Russell. The wings are just as spicy and the conversations just as candid.
