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Beyond the Startup features Atlanta-area business owners and leaders sharing their entrepreneurial journeys. We explore how businesses get started, the challenges of growth, and the lessons learned along the way.
Peter: I quit.
And she looked at me strange.
She said, "Quit what?"
I said, "I quit my job."
We didn't have a mortgage.
We had no kids.
We, she had a really good job at IKEA.
I had no risk.
There are people who start businesses
that put a lot of things at risk.
So I give people who do that a tremendous
amount of credit, 'cause it's really
hard to do when you have so much to lose.
I had nothing to lose.
Once you hire your first employee,
you will never be right staffed again.
You will either have not
enough work or too much work.
On the first day of the month, I had zero
in revenue, and by about the 20th, I broke
even, and hopefully I made some money
between the 20th and the 30th of the month
Lliam: So good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Lliam Holmes.
I'm CEO of MIS Solutions, and this is
another episode of Beyond the Startup.
And so today, we have a personal friend
of mine, Peter Briden, who has decades
of experience in working in the IT and
technology field, and we are privileged to
have him on, our show today to be able to
really talk about his journey from being
an employee all the way through starting a
business, selling that business, and then
kinda re- rebooting his career afterwards.
And Peter has a tremendous
wealth of knowledge to share.
one of my personal mentors here
at MIS Solutions, and we are so
grateful that he can join us today.
So Peter, would you like
to introduce yourself?
Peter: Hi.
good to see you, Lliam,
and thanks for inviting me.
my name's Peter Briden.
I'm based out of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, and I've had the
great privilege of working in the IT
services space for my whole career.
I got to know Lliam and Jennifer
right before the pandemic and have
had a wonderful business/personal
relationship with you guys since then.
And, like I said, I'm just thrilled
to be a part of your podcast.
Lliam: Fantastic, Peter.
So if we can just jump right into this.
you started out, like all of
us, working for somebody, right?
And talk us through those early years,
like what your career looked like.
Peter: I'm gonna turn back the dial
just a little bit, because I think how
I got to that first job is somewhat
interesting because I wasn't really a good
student and I didn't do well in school.
so in high school, my guidance
counselor kept telling my parents
I'd do well if I'd just apply myself.
And I did get through high school by the
skin of my teeth, mostly because I was
the editor of the yearbook, and that got
me C minuses and Ds in all my subjects.
but I did get out of high school,
flunked out of college twice.
And after all my friends had graduated
from colleges and started their kind
of adult lives and I was still just
bumbling around, we were at a party
at the first friend who got married.
They, he got married, they bought a house.
We were at a party at their house.
He worked for his father
in a carrier, HVAC company.
His wife worked as an administrator
in a technology school.
And they decided I needed to
do something with my life.
And we flipped a quarter to
decide if I was gonna go to IT
school or, HVAC school.
And the quarter flipped.
It came up for DeVry, the technology
school, and I went there, and
I actually did quite well.
I was in my
22,
Peter: 23 years old.
I was ready, and that led
me to my first career job.
So that I just go to say to parents
out there, 'cause I'm a parent, my kids
are now all grown, and the trials and
tribulations you go through through your
kids, it's not all doom and gloom when
they don't live up to your expectations.
Lliam: And it's not always easy when
you're young like that to know what
you're good at or what you're gonna
do or where you're gonna start, right?
there's no blueprint.
I think, like most of us, you're
in high school and you graduate
high school, and you have this, "Oh
my gosh, what am I gonna do now?"
And so the expectation is you
gotta go to college, right?
And some of us do and some of us don't,
and, not everyone's cut out for that.
And I, think that, gosh, Peter, as
successful as you are today, to look
back as to, I barely finished high school
and I had a hard time with college, and
you ma- you flipped a quarter, right?
Yeah, hard to believe, such a successful
person today started with really
just almost a flip of the quarter
as to what am I gonna do, right?
pretty amazing story.
And so talk to us a little bit about
that, that first professional career job.
Peter: So I got my first job.
I grew up in New Jersey.
Woodbridge, New Jersey.
but my first career job I ended up
taking in Boston, and it was for a
company, it was called Lanier Business
Products, and the division I went
to work for made word processors.
This was right before
PCs, and to date myself.
so I went to work for them.
I was young, and I was hungry, and
I was ambitious, and I wanted to
have the president's job someday.
And I was on my career track.
and that went worked well except for
I didn't always play well with others.
So in kinda that corporate world,
this was an IBM-ish-like company.
blue suits, red ties, white shirts,
and that didn't always fit my mold.
And I got my hand slapped more than once.
I probably would've gotten fired
if it wasn't that I was actually
very good with the technology.
but I learned the technology and I was
one of the kind of the front runners,
and it allowed me to be selected very
early on for this new training for
this next gen technologies, which
at the time was Novell Networking.
And so I was very early in my career.
I got trained in Novell Networking.
My CNE number was 733, so I was
like on the front side of it.
and that's kinda what really
springboarded me into really
being technically good at my job.
I went from Boston, I went
to Richmond, Virginia.
From Richmond, Virginia,
I went to New York City.
And right about then, the IT
world was in this huge shift.
Lanier couldn't really make the
pivot from this closed architecture
to an open architecture system,
and that started to falter.
At that time, I'd met my wife.
she was living in Pittsburgh.
We decided that we would live there.
I went there and took a job with a
Lanier distributor that was related.
and I started my, career now in a
little different, in a different
area, and it didn't take me long
being there, I was only there a
few months, when I figured out that
wasn't really the right place for me.
So I went home f- for lunch one day, and
was with Kathy, and we were talking, and
I said, I think I can do this on my own.
I don't think I need a company."
And she says, "Yeah, That's fine.
That's great."
And I went back to work that afternoon,
and when I came home for dinner, she
said to me, "How was your afternoon?"
I says, "It was great.
I quit."
And she kinda looked at me strange.
She said, "Quit what?"
I said, "I quit my job."
And she says, "What
are you talking about?"
I said, "You said I could.
You said I could go out
and start my own company."
She goes, "That's not what I said."
Oh,
Lliam: wow.
She
Peter: said, "We're getting
married in six months.
We got stuff to do, bills to
pay, and you're telling me that
you're gonna be unemployed?"
I said, "I'm not gonna be unemployed.
I'm gonna be a businessman."
And, she says, "I'm giving you six months.
If this isn't a real business
in six months, you're going
back and getting another job."
And- ⦠and that was the start out of
going from being employed, and I spent
five years, I learned my craft, I got
really good at it, and then I moved on to
saying, "I think I can do this on my own."
Lliam: What do you think that seed was w-
for really wanting to do this on your own?
Was it, you didn't like working for
other people, or you didn't like other
people's rules, or was it the politics?
Or, what was the thing?
Peter: a- and I think you can relate
to this because we were in the same
industries, is you would see people
in your company that were selling
products and solutions to suit their
own needs and not the customer's.
And it was like you're selling them
the wrong product, you're selling it
at the wrong price, and even if it was
the right product at the right price,
it's not gonna solve their problem.
And, so it was, I was
just, I got frustrated.
It's "Just get out of the way."
And let me do it.
Rugged individualism, and it
worked for a while, where I was it.
I ran the company, I found
the business, I did the work.
the true definition of
rugged individualist.
and that'sâ¦
Then things started to change.
Lliam: Yeah.
So I think the scariest part that I hear
from most people when they're in that
place where they know they wanna jump,
they know they wanna do something better,
they, have all the confidence in the
world, but we all have a Kathy, right?
We're all worried about paying the
bills, and we're thinking h- geez, h-
you know, how am I gonna support myself?
How am I gonna feed my family?
How am I gonna take care
of all my obligations?
And so-
When you think back to making that
decision, now you had a lot of confidence
in "Hey, I think I can do this."
But how did you get your first
customers in the very beginning?
Peter: I just wanna s- I'm gonna
tell you about that, but before I
do, I wanna go back to something
you said before is making the jump.
I have to be clear.
I had no pressure.
I had zero pressure.
we had, A, I had a negative balance sheet
when - Kathy mar- married me, but that
was her own fault for not investigating.
But we literally had no debt.
We didn't have a mortgage.
We had no kids.
We, she had a really good job at IKEA.
It was, there was no risk.
There are people who start businesses
that put a lot of things at risk.
they take out mortgages on their second
mortgages on their homes, and they
take all their savings and plow 'em in.
I had no risk.
so I give people who do that a tremendous
amount of credit, 'cause it's really
hard to do when you have so much to lose.
I had nothing to lose.
so with that, how did I
get customer number one?
In the three months that I was at that
company, that distributor, for Lanier,
I had met an attorney, who wasn't a
customer but was looking to have something
done, and they weren't able to help him.
But I went and talked to him, and
I explained to him, I'm like, "This
is what you should be doing, and
this is how you should think about
it, and this is probably where
you should go and look at it."
And he said, he says, "I don't know
what you're doing for those guys,
but you should be doing this."
And I didn't have anything to offer him.
The company didn't have
anything to offer him.
But he's "You have a way of
explaining things, so that
it helps me understand them."
And two things.
One is that not only did he give me
that bit of advice, the second is he
was one of these connector people.
He was an attorney, he had his own firm,
and he, within short order, referred
me to three or four of his law firms.
Now, I was familiar with the
legal industry, 'cause Lanier
made word processors, and word
processors were in work- law firms.
So I was very comfortable in
that environment, and that was
just what kickstarted me and
gave me a foothold in the market.
So now I had some revenue
and some critical mass.
I knew nothing about nothing,
from running a business.
I'm not sure if you've ever read the
book The E-Myth so the E-Myth's a really
great book, and I'm really glad I didn't
read it before I started the company,
because if I did, I might not have
started the company because I didn't
know all the things that I didn't know.
But the E-Myth tells you all
the things that I didn't know,
' Lliam: cause I didn't know
Peter: any of them.
Lliam: You were, if you
weren't afraid before, right?
Peter: Yeah.
Yeah.
But anyway, then it was just, then it
started, taking on a life of its own.
Lliam: Yeah.
And so I think you get going in the
beginning and, in your case it, it, you
almost had a seed customer, somebody who,
would at least help you get going, and
he had relationships that he introduced
you to as you continued to do a good job.
And I guess reputation was
starting to be formed, right?
And I know at least in, in my
business, in our business- The first
thing that we ran into was how do you
know when to hire that first person?
Peter: Ah.
So I have a story on that.
So I was really running hard, Theâ¦
I was running out of hours.
and I knew I needed to hire someone, and
so I went to one of my law firm customers
and I said, "This is what I'm thinking."
And he goes, "You're probably right."
He says, "But I'm gonna
tell you something.
Once you hire your first employee,
you will never be right staffed again.
You will either have not enough work or
too much work, and you will constantly
be going back and forth, as youâ¦
you're too busy, you hire someone,
now you gotta keep them busy.
Now I gotta go look for more work,
and now I'm too busy again and
I gotta go hire somebody else."
and that whole thing.
and he was right on that journey.
For the first, up until we
hit past 10 employees, it was
pretty much in that scenario.
And back then, unlike today
in the IT services space,
everything was transactional.
You basically sold time.
And it was, the f- on the first day of
the month, I had zero in revenue, and
by about the 20th, I broke even, and
hopefully I made some money between
the 20th and the 30th of the month.
Lliam: Sure.
Yeah.
And I think too, when you, when
it's just you, if you make a
mistake, if you misestimate how long
something's going to take or, whatever
happens, you can fix that problem
by simply putting in more hours.
But as soon as you hire that first
person, they're going to get paid
whether it was your fault or not.
And so all of a sudden, I think
it really creates a change in your
company where you really have to start
thinking about, profitability, and
you have to for the first time start
thinking about covering payroll, right?
Even though it's, just that first person.
But I think it changes the way that
you think about things, and I think
it changes the way that you start to
price things, because you now can't just
cover it by just working harder, right?
Peter: Yeah.
And so from that standpoint, I took
my share of lumps by making mistakes.
It wasn't until I was in business seven
or eight years that I really started to
understand finance, started to understand
unit costing and figuring out how to
actually build profit into the business.
but ultimately I did, and fortunately
I had enough cashflow along the way
so we didn't, that we didn't starve.
but-
it's a challenge and I had a cheat code.
I still have it, but I don't
have to use it as much.
is I like things to be the same.
I like things to be neat and tidy.
I like things to be very reliable.
I don't like things to break once
they've been set up or fixed.
And so I was very much into documentation
and writing down processes and procedures
and checklists from the time that I was
by myself, because I needed to do it for
our customers so that they felt confident
that if I got hit by a bus, that they
could continue on in their IT journey.
But as I hired that first employee,
that we did everything the same and
we knew what each other did, and
that snowball just kept rolling and
rolling, and that's what really gave
us the stability in the company, the
profitability, the gross margins, to run
a really good company for a long time.
. Lliam: And I know for us, I think about
this sometimes and when you look at all
of the other managed service providers
who, in certainly the industry that,
we're in, you either have these companies
who were started by salespeople, right?
And they're good at selling, they
can get the revenue, but they
struggle with the operations side.
Or like in my case and, in your case,
Peter, like we were the technician.
We were the people who
did the work, right?
And some of the other parts of the
business took a little longer for
us to figure out because we really
didn't have a lot of exposure to that.
And, sales is certainly a common one.
Finance, taxes, right?
Some of these other things.
hey, we're running around
fixing computers and networks.
we weren't doing a lot of finance
stuff involved in that, right?
And so you start to elevate beyond that
solo entrepreneur, and you start to
actually have a real business, and I
don't think it's very long before you
realize that if you're gonna run this
business, m- there's probably gonna be
skills you're gonna be uncomfortable
with, and you're gonna have to learn them.
Now, doesn't mean you'll have to be,
a genius at them or be mastery level,
but certainly the better you are, the
better off you're gonna be, right?
And, I think that when you start
to get a couple of employees,
these, other things start to
creep into your daily life, right?
Peter: Yeah.
And that is so true.
career after I'd started the company,
I had a, my in- my insurance broker was
at some conference and heard somebody
speak and picked up his book, and
the book was about technology, and he
gave it to me over breakfast one day.
And he said, "Hey, I
was at this conference.
Here's this book.
I thought it would be
really interesting for you.
You're from technology."
And I read the book, and I'm like
this wasn't about technology.
This was about how the organizing
structure of the world is
changing due to the microchip.
So yes, technology is in there,
but it's really about how
the world has changed overâ¦
It was- the book was called The
Great Crossover, and how it's
changed from, from, tribalism to
religion to governments, and now
into this IT microchip world.
And, it got me- connected with a program.
The guy that wrote the book's name's Dan
Sullivan, and, and he had this program,
still has it, called the Strategic Coach.
And I got enamored with it and joined it,
and I was a member of it for 25 years.
I met four times a year up in Toronto,
made some really great friends out of it
that, f- we, we really super entwined.
But part of the core concept of this
book is, your world is this set of
concentric circles, and at the center
of the concentric circles is your gift.
your unique ability.
The things that you can do
that no one else can do.
It's effortless.
You enjoy it.
You don't even feel like it's special.
And then as your, the s- circles go
out, it gets to things that you're,
good at, okay at, not so good at.
And the idea is, that you wanna peel that
set of concentric circles like an onion
and get those things to people who are
really good at them and, and build a team.
And that team can be people that
work for you, it could be outsourced
people that you have on contract.
But the idea was is to get yourself so
you stay at the center of those concentric
circles and build a team that makes sure
everything else gets done just as well.
And 25 years in being in that program,
I got about two-thirds of the way in.
it wasn't 100%, but I got
about two-thirds of the way.
Lliam: Yeah.
one of the things that, that I know I
learned in my journey through this was
that there are things that you don't like.
And then we all have things
that we don't like to do, right?
That, to your point, we're just not
naturally gifted at doing But what
never occurred to me was there is
somebody out there who absolutely
loves doing that thing that you hate.
And so just because you don't like it
doesn't mean everybody doesn't like it.
there is somebody who lives to
do that thing that you hate.
And I think sometimes we hang onto
things a little bit longer than we
should because we feel like that we
have to be responsible for doing this
thing that we don't wanna do, and no
one else wants to do it either, right?
Peter: So I have another observation
on that's a little different, is,
'cause I see this over and over again,
is when somebody has something in
their world that they don't like, and
they bring somebody in to do it, l-
before they've really figured out that
it's what that person really loves to
do, they abdicate the whole role and
function to that person and go do the
things that they really like to do.
And, and that person has some level of
success or failure, and when you pick up
your head and you go back and you look
six months, nine months, a year later,
you're like, "Oh my God, this is a mess.
This didn't turn out anything
like I anticipated it to."
Yeah.
I see that
over and over again with companies.
Typically, onceâ¦
In our industry, once they get into
that kinda 10 to $20 million space, y-
they can't get away from the thing they,
don't wanna do anymore fast enough.
And if, you do it with the right
person that's gonna take it and do
it the way that is right for the
company, is right for them, is right
for you, is right for your team-
it's, a home run.
But I can see it go, I see it
go sideways oh so many times.
Lliam: The other thing I heard you
say too, which is I think is worth
taking a minute to explore, is
that Dan Sullivan peer group, or
even just peer groups in general.
And Peter, I know that you're
really big into peer groups, and
I think when you are learning
a new business or you're very
early on in that business,
Oftentimes, there's very few people
you have to ask, very few people
that you can bounce ideas off of,
and sometimes you feel like you're
out in the world trying to slog this
thing through all by yourself, right?
Without that realization that
There are, people out there just
like you trying to solve the exact
same problems that you are, and
there's value in these peer groups.
And I'd love to hear your perspective
about Dan Sullivan, and gosh, I
know you've been involved in lots
of peer groups, but I'd love to
hear your perspective on that.
Peter: Now, the strategic coach was
the first one that I became a part
of, and that was, a group ofâ¦
It was an entrepreneurial group.
And, if there was an industry
vertical that they catered to was
financial services, so there weren't
a lot of other business people, but
the principles were all the same.
and and I gravitated to that, and I
got some really good peers who are
still really good friends today.
but somewhere along the line, I
needed something a little more.
And right around 2000, 2001, I got
introduced to an industry peer group.
This was people that just did IT services.
And around that time, this is post-Y2K,
dotcom just happened, the industry was
going through a major transformation.
superficially, it looks like the
business model just changed, but
there was a lot more to it than that.
and the people that were in my peer
group, we were all going through it at the
same time together, and we would share.
We would say, "This is what our vision is.
This is what our strategy is, and
this is our plan, and this is how it
turned out, and this is what's next."
And we would share our successes, our
failures, what we thought and what
it ended up turning out to be, and it
helped us all make more progress faster
than we would've done on our own.
And then finally, I had a local in
Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh
had an entrepreneurial school, and
I went and became a part of that
and got into their peer group.
So I actually had three peer groups,
which sounds like a lot But they
all did different things for me,
and the time that I spent in them
paid for themselves in spades.
it got me out of the business, out of
the fire, to be clear my head, think
strategically, talk to other people that
could look me in the eye and tell me the
truth, and it really worked out well.
Since then, I'm no longer
in the strategic coach.
after the pandemic, I just
couldn't take the travel anymore.
And, but I still run my old
peer group now that I'm out.
I run another industry peer group
and I'm still involved with the
University of Pittsburgh, so big fan.
Lliam: Yes.
I'd love to hear your advice.
For somebody who's thinking
about a peer group, like how
would you find a peer group?
What would you look for?
'Cause I know there's a lot of them,
and some of them are better than
others, but if I had no experience
and I was trying to think about
joining one, w- what would I look for?
Peter: first you have to
know what you're looking for.
you know, I believe that there's
two traits that are really useful
in being a human on this planet.
one is curiosity, and two is the
initiative to follow up on that curiosity.
And that kind of learning journey and
getting yourself in a place where you can
get with people that you can give and take
and get on that learning journey together.
it might be a general business one.
there's lots of YPOs and EPOs
and WPOs, and there's all these
organizations that are general business.
there's industry ones.
Every industry has them.
and they're organized so that you
have some geographic separation.
There's no conflict of interest.
there's benchmarking, you share
operations and financial benchmarks.
but you ha- you have to know what
you're looking for, and then get
in with the right people that
you're gonna have chemistry with.
it's all about giving and taking.
nobody wants somebody to come in
the group and just take, take,
take,
Peter: take, And they also don't
want somebody to come in the
group that's a know-it-all and
just tell everybody what to do.
so it's, if, if- It's a
Lliam: relationship, right?
Peter: It's a sh- it's
absolutely a relationship.
Lliam: Yeah.
Huh.
And so at this point in, in, in your
business, in your life, you've gra-
graduated beyond the single person, right?
Y- you've got a couple of employees.
You're, starting to
enter these peer groups.
You've, learned a, couple lessons.
And I think a lot of people, at least
certainly the ones I speak to, they
get stuck right about there, right?
Where it's, themselves
and a couple of people.
they've learned some lessons, maybe
even sometimes even got- gotten stuck,
In terms of where they are, where
their capacity is, and they don't
really know what that next step is.
But it's really discouraging, I think,
when you get to this point because y-
you're just not sure how to climb the
mountain any higher than you've gotten,
and it seems like a lot of people get
stuck there for a long period of time.
What would your advice be for
someone who is feeling maybe a
little discouraged, a little stuck?
they, have gotten to the
level that they can do.
Peter: I don't believe
in the Peter principle.
I think everybody can keep going as
long as they want to if they're willing
to learn and be objective and grow.
I don't believe everyone needs to be
Elon Musk or Bill Gates or St- not
everybody needs that pinnacle of success.
there's a lot of satisfaction you
can get out of creating a good
business that serves its customers
well, serves its employees well,
and serves its shareholders well.
You can build that and run
that very comfortably for
a very long period of time.
Now, with that said, it becomes
much less enjoyable if you're A,
not making money, or B, you're
fighting fires day in and day out.
You know- neither one of
those are any fun at all.
And if that's the stuck, you gotta go
after the root cause and get unstuck,
and then get on with your journey.
Lliam: So I think that's
a good point, right?
There comes a point in your
business where- What got you
here won't get you there, right?
You, were able to muscle it up, you
were able to make things work, right?
And gosh, I oftentimes think about when
MIS was much smaller, we were six people
in my house around my breakfast, and we
used to eat breakfast together, right?
There wasn't a huge need for a lot
of process or a lot of documentation
or a lot of systems because
there was only six of us, right?
But boy, there came a time, and it snuck
up in the middle of the night, right?
We didn't see it coming.
But, there was a time when we
realized, wow, we're gonna need
real systems and real processes
and real accountability, right?
And for us, I think that was that
next hurdle that we had to cross.
But I'd love to hear from
your perspective, where you
are in the business now.
You've got these peer groups,
you're, beyond that startup part.
what do you think people, their
next hurdles are, or maybe
the next two or three hurdles?
Where do they get stuck?
Peter: M- most of the time I see
small business get stuck is when
they have a leadership chasm.
And what I mean by that is, is that
the leadership starts to get too
concentrated at the top, and too much
is reliant on too few, and the volume
suffocates any growth or expansion.
And so in the IT services space
where I spend most of my time,
there's actually really predictable
levels where this happens, both in
revenue and number of employees.
But the companies that don't get
stuck recognize that leadership
is something that needs to be
intentionally developed, and you need
to develop it before you need it.
And so the idea is how do I
take my existing leaders and
make them better leaders?
How do I make the layer below
them start to become leaders so
that as the organization grows,
leadership permeates down?
O- one of the things that people get
confused is leadership and management.
I will tell you, every manager
needs to be a great leader, not
every leader needs to be a manager.
There are people in your
organization who are leaders that
don't manage people or process.
They're c- individual contributors,
but they're cultural leaders,
they're technological leaders.
These are people that other
people gravitate to when they
need direction or answers.
And so the more that you can
intentionally develop your leadership
in your organization, the better the
chance that you're not gonna hit one
of these impact zones and get stuck
Lliam: You ever find when you're mentoring
other companies that each of us have a
preferred spot in the organization, right?
Sometimes people wanna be the
CEO, they wanna be the leader.
Sometimes they're really good
managers, sometimes they're great
project managers, sometimes they're
just great technicians, right?
And that's what they wanna do,
that's what they wanna be, right?
And they, reach this place where
they're stuck because what they wanna
be and what the business needs may
not always be the same thing, right?
And I think that sometimes you have
to realize it's okay, even as an
owner, to hire people above you,
below you, aside- beside you, right?
it ⦠Being an owner- Sure ⦠is
not necessarily always about, having
whatever the highest position is
if you don't like doing that thing.
Peter: I agree with you with a caveat,
is if you are the shareholder, you have
to be very committed to the vision.
Most times it is your vision,
whether you're executing it or not.
and you do need to understand
the mechanics of the business.
That you can't delegate away.
but I'm with you.
That doesn't mean you have to be the
CEO, that doesn't mean you have to
be the CRO or the CTO or any other
executive level functions, that
you can focus where you wanna be.
I'm a huge Patrick Lencioni fan,
and he's got a book that talks
specifically to this called The Motive.
And, we're, all raised ⦠No, we're not
all raised, but a lot of us are raised
to say, "Hey, I wanna be the big cheese.
I wanna be the top of the tree."
And, and, so we're all kinda grooming
that way, and then you get there and
you're like, "Oh my God, this is awful."
This is I, like- I don't wanna- ⦠that,
and you're making me do all this stuff.
Yeah.
but I, do believe that if you wanna
be an entrepreneur, you ⦠Part of
that is you've gotta own the vision,
and you've gotta drive the vision.
It doesn't mean you need to
execute the vision, but you gotta
understand how it all works.
Another really good book, and like
him, love him, don't love him, The
Book of Elon, around Elon Musk and
the way he works, is fascinating.
There are so many lessons in there.
Nobody can do what he does, but there's
all kinds of nuggets for emerging
leaders on how to be successful in there.
Lliam: Yeah.
I know too that as you continue to grow-
People are people and the chaos
unfortunately ensues because you have
lots of people, lots of opinions, right?
You can put in structure and these
kinds of things, and there are these,
these other organizations like EOS
is one of them, Gazelles is another,
and there's certainly others.
But, did you ever get
involved in any of those?
and I'd love to hear your take in terms
of the value that those can bring to a
business, and when's the right time to
start looking at something like that?
Peter: So we were a Gazelles
shop, so that at the time it was
called the Rockefeller Habits.
and their thing is the
one-page business plan.
EOS is the system du jour and
so I'm a big fan of the core
fundamentals of all those programs.
The one thing that I'll tell
you, my observation, is that
these are all tools in a toolbox.
we learned really well how
to do business planning.
We learned how to be very clear
on establishing our core values as
an organization, and then living
them inside our organization.
we were really clear on our
operational and financial metrics.
And so th- the pieces of the toolbox that
we needed, we gravitated to and we did.
One of the things that, that I see
a lot of people do with EOS is they
get stuck in the system, as opposed
to what the tools in the system
should be able to do with you.
So I'm a big fan of business planning.
I'm a big fan of meeting rhythms.
I'm a big fan of core values.
and however it is that you
can figure out how to do those
things in your organization,
I believe that it's important.
And we had a coach that helped us.
He came in once a quarter to work
with us on our business planning, and
really that's all we used him for.
We didn't really need
him for anything else.
but it was how we all stayed on the same
page, objective third party in the room.
th- there was some real value to that.
Lliam: Yeah.
I agree.
And so if you look at PC Network
Services, the company that you founded,
you guys started that company in 1990.
Peter, you started that company in
1990, all the way up through 2014,
and so that was 27 years, right?
You had that company quite a long time.
At some point after you had climbed
the mountain, you obviously started
thinking about legacy, thinking about
transition, thinking about what's next.
What, caused those thoughts?
I'd love to hear your idea on that.
Peter: So just two things that I need
to share, and then I'll get into that.
One is that we had a leadership
team that was super committed at the
top level that kind of drove all of
this down through our organization.
You know my wife Kathy.
Kathy ran finance, ran
HR and ran projects.
And in 2014 when we sold, they
ended up having to replace her
with three people to do those three
functions, and they couldn't still
get the results that they needed.
And she to this day, tells me
that she was very underpaid
for a very long period of time.
But getting the right person in roles.
Now she had people on her teams to help
her, but she had those three functions.
Clint Laviano, who you know really
well, he ran all of our ops.
He s- he oversaw everything.
He was my last boss at Lanier.
He came, he had some phantom
equity in the company, and we were
brothers from a different mother.
We were completely locked in culturally.
He liked the operations side, I liked
the theoretical side, and together
we made that team, and it hummed.
It wasn't easy.
Th- I- complex service
delivery is really hard.
Keeping all those balls up in the air.
At any moment in time, a f- the fire
alarm can go off and changes everything.
like you, we had a private cloud
and if there was a hiccup in the
private cloud, the world stopped.
And so but it was a great company.
It was very predictable.
We had very predictable operations,
very predictable finances.
But there was something that I kinda had
an itch, and this goes back to strategic
coach, and one of his concepts is you
live in these 25-year compartments.
And right when we were getting to that
point in time, our youngest daughter
was getting ready to go off to college.
we'd been running hard
for a very long time.
Kathy started getting involved in
the business by year four or five.
and so it was like, "I think
I could do something else.
I think I wanna do something else.
I just don't know what it is."
It was right around the beginning of the
M&A cycle in the IT services space, so
we had the opportunity to do an exit.
they wanted the company.
They didn't want us.
So the, so we took that deal.
I was 52 years old.
Melissa was just off to college.
both Kathy and I weren't gonna
have roles and we could figure out
what we wanted to do from there.
And I will tell you that first day that I
came home and I'm like, "Okay, this is it.
I don't have to go back anymore,"
when we looked at each other and
it's It's just you, me, and the dog."
"How's this gonna work?"
Lliam: Sure.
Peter: And then the dog died.
Lliam: Oh, no.
Yeah,
Peter: it was bad.
but we figured it out.
But one of the things, I didn't
know what I wanted to do.
and I established what I called
my four rules of engagement And
what my four rules of engagement
were is I'm not gonna do anything
long-term until I try it short-term.
I'm not gonna do anything with
a bureaucratic time system that
I have to be someplace at 8:00
on Monday until 5:00 on Friday.
whatever I do, I need to be
able to do most of it from afar.
So this is 2014, way before the
pandemic and remote work was a thing.
And then whatever it is had to
give me passion and purpose.
It had to blow my skirt up.
It had, I didn't wanna have to
do anything I didn't wanna do.
And it probably took me three years
for that to settle in, and then it
took another two or three years for it
to mature into what it is right now.
And now, 12 years later, it's
getting ready to go through
another iteration of that.
So I'm gonna back out of some things,
take some more things off my plate, and
allow other things to percolate up in.
But it's, it, that, that
philosophy has served me well
over the second half of my career.
And I'm gonna tell you that I've done
better work in the second half of
my career than I did in the first.
the work that Gary Peak and I
did, at the beginning of the
pandemic when we would getâ¦
And we were just,
I was, March of 2020.
I was down in Hilton Head and we were
sequestered there, and Gary and I would
get on these public webinars, and we'd
have 2,000, 2,500 people on a webinar,
and we would just talk through some
logic and how to think about things.
That was some of the best work I ever
did in my whole career right there
Lliam: Really amazing, right?
Because when you've had a business
for so long, 27 years, and you
sell it, gosh, it's never about the
money, but it's about that legacy.
It's about all the blood, sweat, and
tears, and I think when you sell it, a-
and I've never sold mine, but you talk
to people and there's an emptiness in
terms of okay, but now, y- what's next?
What am I going to do next, right?
and what do I fill my
days and my time with?
And I don't know that you recognize, at
least at that point in time, how valuable
you are, how much you've learned, and
how much you have to give back, right?
But I think that for those
people who wish to stay involved,
the calling finds them, right?
And, a- and they, start to realize that,
what they've learned is valuable to other
people and that they can really help them.
Peter: So there's two things in that.
one is I do see people that
commit to something else too much too
soon and kinda get locked back up in jail.
one of the beauties of
my life is my geographic freedom.
We don't have to be any place
in person if we don't wanna be.
And but I can still do the
things that I do and still get
great satisfaction out of that.
and I wouldn't wanna give that up by
having some- something that I had to be
someplace all the time in the same place.
the second thing is that
everybody's different.
I have some of my really good strategic
coach friends, they're retired.
Retired they play golf and fish and
travel and they have no vocation left.
and they're happy as clams.
so it's, everybody's different.
I'm not at a point in my
life where I can do that.
I, just, I think I would
get bored really, soon.
I like to have gaps of free
time for my hobbies, but I can't
make that my life's calling yet.
There may be a day.
And so it's knowing who you are and what
you need to help fulfill you because you
don't wanna lose purpose, you don't wanna
lose your ability to grow, you don't
wanna lose your ability to have social
interactions, outside of cocktail hour.
You wanna be able to, do the things that
you wanna do and have choices and options.
Lliam: And if I think about from
a, from afar, Peter, what I see,
you, sold your company, you got
involved in the coaching thing.
You really seem to have enjoyed that.
And I know you would never say this,
and so I'm gonna say it for you.
you have become one of the very
few, one of the largest legends
in our entire industry, right?
There are very few rooms anywhere
across North America that I can't walk
into, s- mention your name, and people
know who you are, people have met you.
And many times I would even say
people have been helped by you
A tremendous, person who
has really given back.
And when I think about the second half
of your career, I know I didn't know
you in your first half, but when I think
about you in your second half of the
career, you you have given back to an
amazing industry in ways that I don't
think you'll ever truly understand,
and we're very appreciative for that.
And I'd love to hear a little bit about
that transition for you personally.
PCNS is now gone.
You're doing this coaching.
You've developed your
four rules of engagement.
and gosh, you have developed a following
that is truly nearly second to none.
Peter: the following doesn't reallyâ¦
Lliam: Whether you want it
or not, Peter, it's there.
Peter: I do like to be useful.
and, one of the things that I do think
that I'm good at is understanding
situations and meeting people where they
are, and trying to get there and start the
journey and make the progress, and that
seems to gravitate with a lot of people.
But, I don't know.
it's about helping others really.
It sounds kind of corny when you say it
that way, but if you take care of other
people and you do right by them, things
have a tendency to work out for you.
And you don't do it for
what it does for you.
You do it for what it does for
them and how it makes you feel, and
anything else will come out in the
Lliam: wash.
Awesome.
If we turn around for just one second
and we look back at your career all
the way from the beginning, what was
three pieces of advice that you might
give to somebody who is still in the
middle of walking out that path, that
journey that, that you've gone through?
Peter: I'm a big fan that you need to
find out what you're really good at.
it's not easy to do.
If I look back on my career, the
thing I was really good at, the
pattern was everywhere throughout my
whole career, and it's about taking
things that are in disarray and
making them organized, neat and tidy.
it didn't matter whether Iâ¦
my one of my first jobs
was washing trucks.
I love washing cars and trucks
and that's had the same pattern.
I could get it from cleaning my garage.
I've fixed up old Jeeps.
The same pattern is over and over again.
It's taking things that are
messy and making them not messy.
So that was my pattern.
It's finding out the thing that
you can just do effortlessly,
that it doesn't feel like work.
the second thing is to find things
that are valuable to society.
it's one thing to have something that
you love, but if it's not valuable to
society, it's hard to make a living at
that, whether you're entrepreneurial
or you're part of a great team.
I also think that you wanna find
something that you can continue
to get better and better at.
So if you can constantly be in an
improvement mode, then you don't
have to worry about the world or
the technology or the AI or anything
bypassing you, because you're constantly
getting better and honing your craft.
And then the last thing I'd
say on a personal front is
to be very astute financially.
e- even as an individual, build
your own little simple balance
sheet and live within your means.
Always have surplus.
And I'm not talking about living in
austerity, but making decisions about
how you spend your money because the
rule of compounding is very real.
And if you can start constantly as
you're on your journey being financially
responsible, it will pay dividends
and give you options later on in life.
Lliam: Surely makes some difficult
decisions much easier to make.
Peter: Options are good.
Lliam: Yeah.
Peter, I can't thank you enough for
spending the time with us today.
And I'll tell you, I can't end this
conversation without bringing up
Kathy is an amazing person.
Unbelievable, right?
I have tremendous respect for her.
And, it makes me think about those
husband and wife teams that are out there.
Certainly MIS was Jennifer and I, can
tell you, I wouldn't have been able to do
this business without Jennifer on my own.
Peter, you're an amazing person, but
wow, you married well, my friend.
Kathy really helped you guys
through that 27-year period as well.
Peter: and just toâ¦
And we probably could have spent
a whole podcast on working with
your spouse, because it does have,
it's got great benefits, and it
creates great challenges as well.
fortunate that we spent a very good
career together, and we came out the
other side, and, still had a vibrant
marriage on the other side of it.
and it did, it set us and
our family up for success.
and we're very fortunate for that.
And Lliam, I really appreciate you
inviting me and being a part of this.
I love being in your circle.
I think tremendous amount of you
and what you've built, and can't
wait to see where it keeps going.
Lliam: Thank you very much, Peter.
I really appreciate both you and Kathy,
and certainly all the gifts and talents
that you have bestowed into MIS.
we just think so highly
of you guys, so thank you.
Peter: Thank you.