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Thank you. Thanks for having me. Great to have you. So if you

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could maybe start us off, we're going to be talking about co managed

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and just to set some context here, if you could

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give a bit of background on your company.

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How. Long you've been in business and other operating notes.

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Sure. We are been in business about 18 years. I

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started as an infrastructure person, IT manager, IT director,

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worked at a bunch of different companies. And

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in my early days, when I first started getting into computers, in my

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early 20s and I'm 52 now, to put that in perspective,

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I got a computer, I loved it. I got addicted to

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computers and upgrading them back in the 86 days

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and we used to go dumpster diving, pull computers out of dumpsters and build

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home networks. And when ebay became a thing, I buy

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network switching and stuff and I just started building networks. It just became like a

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passion for me to do that and parlayed that over time into working

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in IT and did that for many years and then started

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my company, like I said, about 18 years ago. And the impetus for our company

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was I had several friends that were doctors and they were telling us about

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this HIPAA thing and he said, hey, we're charts or paper? Charts. I mean,

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we need to get this EMR system and we got to get all this electronics

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and we don't have any idea how to do that. Can you help us with

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that? And I went and read big chunk of the omnibus rule and it's like,

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oh yeah, this is just enterprise IT being foisted upon small practices in

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the name of efficiency and safety.

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Efficiency, exactly. Yeah. The more portable your

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data is, the more secure it is somehow. But anyway, that's all other

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podcasts right there. But so that kind of got us

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started and we had a couple of medical clients early on and a couple of

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manufacturing clients and just kept growing and growing, shrinking, growing,

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shrinking, failing and succeeding off and on, trying to go out of business every

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couple of years and failing to go out of business.

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And it kind of got us where we're at today. So we're right now we're

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at nine employees. We're out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. We primarily

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work in regulated industries. Healthcare was our primary. We've since

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shifted to do a little cmmc, a

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little dod, some manufacturing. And I love to tell

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people whenever I go to talk to prospects is, you

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know, we take care of everyone from hospital clients all the way down to we

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have a hair salon. You know, it's people that like the way

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we serve our clients and they're willing to pay a fair price to get the

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really rapid response and the knowledge that we bring to the table. So that's

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my long worded response to a simple question. That's perfect.

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All right, so the predominant delivery model that you guys run,

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well, maybe it isn't predominant. You can, you can sort of fill that in if

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you like. But a big section of your business is co managed, which

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is not typical for a lot of organizations unless they're working

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in enterprise or at least sort of large mid sized organizations.

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So maybe if you can spend on that a little bit. I'm curious sort of

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how that happened and why you view that as an important model for how you

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guys are deploying delivering for your clients. Sure. We got

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into it originally, of course we're in healthcare and

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when Covid really ramped up, there was a lot of funds pushed into rural

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healthcare. And as those funds got pushed into rural healthcare, they started

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looking for companies that could help them with securing their

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environments and to do all these different things. And that was, we did

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have co managed before that, but that was what really kind of got us more

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into the co managed is trying to really serve these rural healthcare clients.

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And so, you know, we came in, did, we started

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doing assessments for hospitals, started with risk assessments, partnered with a couple

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of different risk assessment groups external that had the

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tool set that we used to be able to do those and started presenting the

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findings and figured out that they, you

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know, I shouldn't even say we figured out. You kind of know rural hospitals, they

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don't have the local talent to really manage their

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infrastructure. And Todd, you've been in the MSP space for a very

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long time and you understand just how important it is to

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touch a bunch of networks and to work in a lot of environments. That's where

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your skill grows. If you are working in a rural hospital and you've got

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five hyper V guests on a physical host,

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you're stagnant. You're going to be, you can't not be stagnant now you can be

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getting certifications, but you're not touching enough environments and enough different

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infrastructure to really get a well rounded understanding. And so

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as an msp, we kind of parlayed that into hey, we touch a lot of

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environments, we touch a lot of rural hospitals. We can take our experience and

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knowledge number one and try to keep your costs down because they don't have a

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lot of money. Right. The COVID funds dried up really quick. They didn't last

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very long. And hospitals oftentimes, especially rural hospitals,

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work on Grants so they don't have, they don't know if they're going to be

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able to pay your bill two years down the road. So we came in

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and we tried to work around their funding cycles, the way they function, to

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give them at least the minimum necessary security they

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needed for their environment and the amount of support that's timely that

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they needed for their environment. That was kind of the impetus and it's where we've

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been mostly along the way with some shifting into more trying to

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coach our clients on how to manage their internal infrastructure teams

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as well as how to use those teams in conjunction with us. That's, that's a

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bigger topic I'm sure we'll get into as we go. Absolutely. So many, so many

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threads to pull on there. Yes. Maybe to start with the first one that

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I think is bang on is I always talk about co

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managed the model like the value

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that you're often bringing is either subject matter, expertise on a

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particular technology or as you kind of stated like breadth of

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knowledge and you know, two parts is I often tell people like

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the value of getting started in your, in your career

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in an MSP is dramatically different than working

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in other environments for exactly that reason. You know, when people are sort

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of like pulled away from an MSP potentially, you know, they hear

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the siren song of X amount of dollars and, and you

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know, simplicity and not you know, low stress of going into

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corporate it. It's like well you better like what you're doing in that

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job because that's all you're going to be doing for the next seven years. Right.

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So that to me is a huge, huge benefit of working in this environment

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and as you say like bringing that, that level of knowledge and

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experience to, to those customers is huge because

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as even a mid sized organization to be able to hire

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a team with the relevant knowledge to cover all of your infrastructure

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and then be able to scale and grow with it is kind of an impractical

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ask. Right. So I think that this is a huge value that I think is

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really understated by a lot of MSPs that

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they have this capability of understanding sort of trends and

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environment and can lend that to an internal team not as a

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replacement but absolutely as an augmentation.

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Absolutely. And you kind of help them overcome the

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bureaucracy too. Right. I as a third party

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can say what needs to be said, whereas the internal IT guy whose

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job is on the line is going to be far less prone to say what

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needs to be said. It's like you know, our, we've got when give you a

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good example. We got Windows 10 computers. We've got a night

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a hospital that has 500 computers, let's say rural

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hospital, and they're all Windows 10. Well, we all know that's end of life in

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October of this year. But the guy that's managing that's like, well, you

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know, I could, I could hack together and make these work. There's like some things

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we can do to maybe make them run Windows 11. And we

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come in and we look at them and said, oh, those are over, you know,

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you know, they're at 5 years old, they're

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Windows 10. We don't want a hacked solution. You have a hospital, people's

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lives. I can say those things and not worry about it. Because

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honestly, if you fire me, there's someone else lining up to be told the truth.

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If you don't want to tell the truth, if you don't want me to tell

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the truth. I'm not your, I'm not the guy you want to work with as

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a consultant. I often say you pay me for my opinion, whether or not you

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like it or not. Exactly. Exactly.

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But we do get to cut through that bureaucracy of these

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hospitals and other. Any large organization has bureaucracy.

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Years ago we did work for an organization. I'm not going to name

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them, but everyone was related in this rural hospital.

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And I say everyone. I mean like every

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doctor's kid worked in the hospital. And it was like, no wonder you guys are

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a mess. Everyone is worried about the hierarchy of how things operate

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here. And so we were able to come in and say, you got to re

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cable the hospital. You're running non plenum cable in a plenum

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airspace. You're doing, you know, all these things that you're doing that

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are bad. You need to fix them. And they were able to

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say, you know what if we pay you to do it? We're not stepping on

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anyone's toes. We're not. You know, it's just easier to have you guys

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do that work. And so that was been a real nice segue for us to

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cut through the bureaucracy, tell them what they need to do and then they can

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save face with their internal departments and let us handle it. Yeah,

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so the other one that you touched on there, I think that's, that's super important

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and we'll probably spend a bit of time on this is sort of

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the, the relationship between internal IT and

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external party. Especially in a co managed like there's a delicate dance that

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happens there and maybe we'll Start with sort of like the getting to know

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you phase, where like you show up as an external party and internals

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like, oh God, the consultants are here. I'm going to lose my job. I have

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to look, you know, like I know what I'm doing and, you

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know, potentially sort of cause a bunch of fud and undermine the

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consultant so that they don't end up replacing my job. So, I mean,

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I'm sure you see sort of that, that, that tension that exists

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there. How do you guys address that when you're first started making your way into

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an environment? You know, it's interesting because sometimes you're brought

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in to do exactly that. I mean, right. They know they've got a problem

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and you're actually being brought in to clean house for them. It does happen.

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More than anything. It's having a candid discussion with the person who's bringing you

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in. Oftentimes the CFO's over it. And hospitals and other

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organizations. I'm sure you've seen that. I don't know why they think that. Well, it's

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a cost because it's a cost. A lot of money.

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Usually the CFO is bringing you in, and sometimes the CFO doesn't have

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an understanding why he's bringing you in. He just thinks things aren't getting done. But

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he's also clamped down on the internal. It's where they can't spend money and

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do the things. And he doesn't trust that they're giving him good advice. I would

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say the majority of the time when I come into an organization, what we

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find is they're not spending money in the right areas

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and that I have to have a candid conversation with the cfo. It's like, I

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can't solve your spending problem, that you won't spend money. I can't

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solve that. What I can tell you is this is how much IT costs

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per person. And I can go back to the.

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I'm going to forget the name of them just because now I'm talking, but I

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can go back to some of the studies that are out there on how much

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it costs per employee in a rural hospital or any hospital

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setting to provide them with IT services, security. And it's not a small

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number. I remember at one time it was like $7,500 per employee per

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year to provide them with the IT services and security and everything that they

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need. And so I can go back and I can talk

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about that. And what I try to do is I try to say, in your

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industry, this is how much support someone needs. And I like to point to like

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Gary Pica and Peakonomics and he talks about, you know, the

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average amount of support and maintenance that a person will need within an

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organization. And I walk through that with them and I say if this

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is true. And I believe it to be true because I work with lots of

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organizations. If this is true, your problem is you're not spending

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enough money in the right areas. And it's usually the right areas, right?

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It's not, you're not spending enough money. It's like I'm going to bounce

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around here. So I'm going to give you another great example and I'm sure you've

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seen this as well. You go to a hospital and they've got a

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hundred thousand dollar storage array with 100 employees

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and you're like why do you have that? Well, the IT guy told

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us we needed it and he brought in a consultant. The consultant said that's going

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to save everything and make us all very, very efficient. And I'm like

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no, you could do all that on a nice server for

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maybe $20,000 and have some virtual hosts

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and tell me what you're even running on that and you find out that

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it's, it's really doing nothing. But someone sold him a bright shiny object. The

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IT guy that worked there wanted to play with it because he likes toys and

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now he has no budget to do, you know, Zero Trust or

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edr, the real things that they need. And what's funny, in

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those situations, the IT guy is wrong. You know, he's, he's

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either not skilled and trained enough to know what are the things that are most

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important to the organization or he's misguiding them to get the toys he wants to

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play with. Right. So anyway, I'm sorry, I'm kind of bouncing around

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a bunch of places. That's great because like, like all of these threads are things

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that I can, I can pick up because like I have all of these experience

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like for those that like don't know like from, from listeners and perspective

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is like, like I'm immersed in the MSP environment but like

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my, my original and sort of where bread and butter where I

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grew up in it was enterprise and mid market. Right. So like I worked,

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I oversaw multimillion dollar co managed

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teams embedded in some of the largest oil companies in Canada,

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the largest airlines, all of that stuff. Right. So this is all very,

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very familiar to me. So the other

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thread that you noted here I think is this interesting aspect of

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enough or not enough, right? Like where that internal IT person

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is setting a budget and trying to manage sometimes to the best

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of their ability, but other times like they are just building their own personal

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playground. And yep, it's incredible the number of times that you see

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this where there is sort of that misguided application of technology. You come in

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there, you're like, what is all this gear for? And you can really like get

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an idea like they don't know what they're spending money on. The guy is just

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sort of building stuff as a, as a hobby to like play with things and

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have that environment. But you also see the opposite where there's some

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guy who is like, who he is like trying to save them every

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dollar that they can and undermining the business. Same time it's like,

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oh well you know, I was able to keep this thing together and you know,

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I got this, this cheap server off of ebay and all

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this stuff. Right. It's like neither of these are a good option

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basically. Right. Like don't overspend to, to, to your other

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point about sort of budgetary numbers, a good one to sort

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of reference with people that I find is, is an industry standard number

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is your IT costs. Your technology spend for

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a business should be 4 to 6% of total budget. And like for

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a lot of people when they do that back of the napkin number, they're like,

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holy crap, that's a lot of money relative to what they're currently spending.

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And they're like, yeah, like you guys are probably underspending on technology.

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And I think it's an interesting aspect that you raise as well is like maybe

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they're not actually underspending, they're just spending in the wrong places relative to

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what their actual business needs are. And this is exactly what we're talking about of

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like bringing that consultative angle to these conversations rather than just being

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beholden to. We have this one guy, he's the tech expert. He kind of tells

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us what to do. We don't know if he's right or he's wrong. We can't

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judge that. And that's a really sensitive position for a business to be in.

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Well, I love the three legged

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stool. Good, fast or cheap, you can only choose two. Right. And so

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in that case, what we find a lot of the times is organizations

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and I'm talking about even just MSPs, we start to go toward cheap because that's

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easier to sell on. Right? Well, I'm the cheapest. And then you claim to be

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good and fast, but you're really Just the cheapest. Well, when you do that

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long enough, you end up where you don't have the bandwidth to truly

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provide the service that you claim to be selling. And then

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you implode. Hospitals, specifically, they have more or less a fixed

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income, Medicaid, Medicare, all those kind of tell them what they can reimburse for, especially

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rural hospitals. And so when you go to them and you say you need to

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spend up to 4%, the hospital looks at you, say, I want a fixed budget.

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I cannot, I do not have the ability to do that. And,

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and so we then have to do is help shape them to look at, well,

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where is your money going? You know, and I hate to say it because

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I've done this before and it never goes over well, so I have to be

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careful not to do it. Is I'm like, okay, well where can you make more

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money? What can you do? You guys got to think outside the

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box instead of thinking inside the box. What can you do? And there's things like

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critical access, hospitals, there's ways that you can shape

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up your hospital to do different things. There's grants that you can go after.

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And so they have to sometimes be able to get the things that they really

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need. They've got to go find those opportunities. We try to help them find them

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as well. There's third parties that you can work with just watching,

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like Microsoft ran a big thing about a year ago for rural

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hospitals and other hospitals, I think all hospitals where you could get real big

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discounts on their solutions for a period of time. But

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that's a hard discussion. It doesn't always go over well, especially when you're talking to

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the CFO and you're telling him he needs to do more to bring more money

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in so he can meet the minimum security standards they need to protect

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their environment. So you got it. That's really. You got to really kid glove

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that. But when I go back to the good, faster, cheap,

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you can only choose two. In my msp, we

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started out trying to be all things to all people. And then we

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decided we wanted to be good and fast and we knew we couldn't be cheap,

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but we had to be appropriately priced. And that's a learning thing.

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That's something you can't just go out there and say, and I'm sure you see

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this all the time in discussion groups and people will have out there, how much

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should I charge? Oh, wait, no, that's not a real question. That's. You can't even.

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There's nowhere to start with that. You know, it's, it's. Well, I used to make

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80,000 a year when I did help desk. So I just want to make,

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you know, $40 an hour, $50 an hour, and be independent. Like that's not going

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to float you very long. So. But being good,

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fast and cheap, if you are too cheap, you cannot scale

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into delivering those services that you need to. And the same is true of all

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of your clients. And so when we talk about co managed, I'm trying to bring

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this back around. When we talk about co managed, when you get into a client

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and you walk through the facility and you see that it's a

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bit of a shambles. You know, the building hasn't been updated in

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50 years. You know, people are using very old

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equipment. When you walk through, you've got to make a decision right then

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of can I accept them, give them just the minimum

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service and just walk away from knowing that they're not going to be in good

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shape. Can I make that work or can I shape them into the company

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I need them to be to make our services and all that we want

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to do with them work? Well, the MSP coaches, a lot

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of them will say walk away when they're like that unless they're all in.

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And I don't agree with that. I believe that there's always value in

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every opportunity. You've got to be smart and wise enough to be able to

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find the value. But do your risk calculation to make sure you're not creating

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too much risk for yourself. And we've done a pretty good job on that in

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the last few years, so. But not everyone's a good fit. No,

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agreed. And I think that is a really important aspect because I agree with you

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that the absolutes that get floated

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in the industry around best practices are a little dangerous. Right,

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Agree. I think that lends to an interesting question of do you believe

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that there is sort of a rural discount that happens,

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that if you're in a smaller regional market that automatically you need

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to price lower? Do you believe that that's true?

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I do not. Well, so I'm a firm believer that

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your price is your price is your price, that you put your effort and your

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time into figuring out what a good price and that you can deliver good service.

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We used to get asked all the time and it used to frustrate me to

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no end with nonprofits. They'd say, well, we are a

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nonprofit. We don't have a lot of money. Can you give us a discount? And

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the answer is yes, but I can Also discount the quality of the service you're

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going to get from me. And you don't want that. If I'm having to make

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a decision when we're really busy, the company that's paying me, you know,

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$220 an hour or the nonprofit that I'm charging $60

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an hour and I write off half of their bill half the time you're going

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to get pushed out of the way. So do you need good support or do

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you not? And so I never discount any prices. I will

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discount the service. In other words, I'll say here's 20 things in

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our standard stack. You are in a. And I always,

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I always quantify. So you're not in a regulated industry. You don't.

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If you get compromised. Here's your risk assessment. We talk about

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a recovery point objective, recovery time objective. How long can you live

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without your data? How long can you. How much data can you afford to lose?

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And if those are really long times, if someone says I can be down for

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a week and I can lose a week of data, we can recreate all that.

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We've got paper that we do a lot of stuff in. I can still serve

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you. Maybe I roll out EDR to your endpoints and I give you

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a help desk service co managed with your team because they don't have

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enough people to do that that might be a good fit for you or you've

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got a help desk person or two or three and they don't

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have the breadth of knowledge to manage the infrastructure. So we manage your Azure environment.

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You. So the answer to that is

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we never discount. Like I don't have a product that's $5 and I go to

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a rural community, I make it 250 never. I have a product that's $5.

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I have another products that's $5. Another, you know, all these different products priced

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differently. I remove products and I remove what we're giving the

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client and to get their price down and I educate them on

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you're losing this. Here's why I feel like this is viable for you

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and then you can sign the agreement. Now I will tell you, and

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I'm sure you've seen this, all of our insurance companies

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serving MSPs are scared stiff, right? They literally

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the one we were using, which is a great company, we switched recently because I've

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got a partnership with National Insurance Company we're working

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with but they've all sent me these documents saying,

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do you have proof that your customers refuse all these

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security controls that you recommend? Right. So they want me to create that,

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that plausible deniability. And I get it, I understand where they're

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coming from. So what we've done is when we do quotes for a new

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customer or renewal, we list all of our security controls, we use

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quoter as our quoting system and on there when we do, our security

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controls are listed and it's everything from a NIST baseline, like an actual

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project in there to each product, like

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keeper security. Things that we don't mandate but we do recommend. So

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when they go sign it, they can check the box to add it or not.

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That's my plausible deniability. And so that gives me a

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degree of safety that my customers have rejected the

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controls and the recommendations and it's even called recommendation recommended add

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ons so that I can then sell them what they want

375
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but have a degree of security myself. So that's interesting because like

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I wanted to ask, like, are there base minimums? Like what disqualifies a customer

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customer? Where you meet with someone, you're like, I could probably help you but I

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choose not to. And if it's not necessarily price, like

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is there sort of values judgments there or like just

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the interactions, the vibe that you get from them, how like what are some circumstances

381
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where you're, you met with a customer who you probably could have helped but chose

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not to because of risk or value alignment or whatever that was that that

383
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sort of rubric was. You know, it's interesting about, like I said,

384
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about a year or two ago, we started to stop saying no as

385
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much. We spent a year where I rejected about a million dollars in revenue for

386
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our company because they didn't want to go on full service. They didn't want everything

387
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in our stack. And after that I had a come to

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Jesus moment with myself and my sales team and my infrastructure guys

389
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and I said we got to find a way to serve these people.

390
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This is ridiculous. It's because I bought into the Kool Aid of the

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full msp all or nothing.

392
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Everyone's got to buy everything. And they do. They the people that are marketing that

393
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sell you on fear, right? If they don't buy everything and something happens,

394
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you're going to be liable, right? If they don't have

395
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EDR with Sock and they get compromised, you're going to be liable.

396
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So I bought into that and I don't disagree that

397
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that's the best way to go. My clients that are on our full service are

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the best relationships I have. They value what we do.

399
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We charge enough that I can give them very Fast response, very

400
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fast resolution. But we've got to say

401
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yes to more companies, especially if you have an economic downturn.

402
00:24:29,370 --> 00:24:32,730
The MSPs, in my opinion, that are full service are going to take a beating

403
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if we have an economic downturn. Because everyone that has a laptop and

404
00:24:36,570 --> 00:24:40,250
says they can do it for $80 an hour is going to get

405
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your business. I mean, it happens. So how do we serve those

406
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people? How do we keep that cost down and give them the value

407
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that they need? And we came up with a minimum subset of security

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controls and services and they're pretty inexpensive. But I

409
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will say this. There's never going to be a time that I'm going to go

410
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to a company and say, for example, if you wanted to go

411
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on our lowest Tier and it's $300 a month, it's not going to include support,

412
00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:09,440
right? It cannot. And so

413
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that $300 a month, how much labor is actually in managing that

414
00:25:13,640 --> 00:25:17,280
agreement? We're a connectwise shop. We use a lot of different tool sets to do

415
00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:20,920
a lot of things to make our lives a little more efficient. But in that

416
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:24,800
agreement, how much labor do I have to put into invoicing you? Are you

417
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:28,000
arguing about your bill? Do I think you're gonna argue about your bill? Are you

418
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super cheap or do you get it now? Here's the way I look at that.

419
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We had a client about a year ago that bought into one of our agreements

420
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at that low tier. And every month was I don't know where my hours are

421
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going. Cause we were doing a block agreement for them. I don't know where my

422
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:44,570
hours are going, I don't know what I'm paying for. And that

423
00:25:44,570 --> 00:25:47,970
agreement, we don't have that agreement anymore. I'm going to give you a. Let's see,

424
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I'm trying to figure out how I bounce around so much.

425
00:25:52,450 --> 00:25:56,130
The agreement we had for them was when our first attempt at doing not

426
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full stack and it was here's a bunch of security controls

427
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and you buy so many hours per month they expire after 90 days. Just kind

428
00:26:03,490 --> 00:26:06,370
of a typical block agreement where they carry over and expire after 90 days if

429
00:26:06,370 --> 00:26:08,810
you don't use them. And what we were doing is, we were saying here is

430
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your security stack at say 50% markup on, on

431
00:26:12,510 --> 00:26:16,310
the agent cost. And when you need us, we're gonna do

432
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work and we're gonna deduct it from those hours, say five hours a month or

433
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something. But if your security agent flags for a virus, we're also

434
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gonna deduct from Those five hours. Well they had so many problems in their networks

435
00:26:26,870 --> 00:26:29,350
they didn't wanna fix anything. Cause they were cheap that they were using up all

436
00:26:29,350 --> 00:26:33,150
those hours with us doing maintenance, trying to hammer away to get Windows patches

437
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to apply to systems that were messed up and so on. And he

438
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came to me and said I don't know what I'm paying for, we're gonna go

439
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with someone else. And they went with someone else that was just a cut rate

440
00:26:41,630 --> 00:26:45,440
provider. And that's fine. That's actually the. And so

441
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:49,200
we learned from that. We said okay, there's no way we can do a block

442
00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:52,600
agreement where we're actually covering those base services. So our

443
00:26:52,600 --> 00:26:56,320
base always includes support on whatever those agents are, be it

444
00:26:56,320 --> 00:26:59,960
edr, what have you. And so if we're going to do a low cost,

445
00:27:00,039 --> 00:27:03,760
it's got to include the support in the agent fee. And then they don't have

446
00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:07,560
that question. And then we do what we call retainer where they put so much

447
00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:10,840
money down in a block. We're not doing monthlies anymore. They have to have a

448
00:27:10,840 --> 00:27:14,660
minimum block of retainer and then we deduct from the retainer. And that's only for

449
00:27:14,660 --> 00:27:18,220
reactive. Now reactive is we're monitoring, we may notify

450
00:27:18,220 --> 00:27:22,060
them that they had an incident that we could not remediate. Like

451
00:27:22,060 --> 00:27:25,780
saying using Sentinel 1. We couldn't remediate it remotely. We notify them and say

452
00:27:25,780 --> 00:27:28,180
do you want us to remote into the computer and fix it or do you

453
00:27:28,180 --> 00:27:31,860
want us to roll someone on site? They say yes, that is them doing

454
00:27:31,860 --> 00:27:34,900
reactive. Right. They're saying yes, go take care of this. Then we built from it.

455
00:27:34,900 --> 00:27:37,380
So sorry. Yeah, okay,

456
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:41,920
cool. So let's, let's roll back to the

457
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:45,680
internal IT relationship. The other aspect of this is,

458
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:49,760
and you kind of, you noted this a little earlier and I see this

459
00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:53,440
as a really prominent problem where. And I think we talked about

460
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:57,200
this earlier when we connected that the standard

461
00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:00,880
applied to an external consultant versus an internal IT

462
00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:04,300
person could not be more different. And it's

463
00:28:04,300 --> 00:28:07,860
incredibly frustrating for an effort for a consultant at an msp.

464
00:28:08,180 --> 00:28:11,300
You want to sort of expand on your experience with this?

465
00:28:12,100 --> 00:28:15,820
Yes, we trying to figure out where to

466
00:28:15,820 --> 00:28:19,420
start on that. I want to be very cautious. I don't want to throw any

467
00:28:19,420 --> 00:28:21,060
of my clients under the bus on that.

468
00:28:23,460 --> 00:28:26,980
I have yet to go and do work for a

469
00:28:27,300 --> 00:28:30,750
customer in any industry that we do co

470
00:28:30,750 --> 00:28:33,470
managed where they manage by the numbers

471
00:28:35,310 --> 00:28:38,900
and that's it's mind because people will be in these companies, you know, 15,

472
00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:42,750
20 years. They started Help Desk and now they're the CIO

473
00:28:42,750 --> 00:28:46,510
or they're the IT director. And I think what it comes down

474
00:28:46,510 --> 00:28:50,350
to is the impetus to manage by numbers in the, in the

475
00:28:50,910 --> 00:28:54,750
infrastructure side. Private sector is not really

476
00:28:54,750 --> 00:28:58,390
there because the people over you just want to know things are being work. They're

477
00:28:58,390 --> 00:29:01,500
working, right. And when they don't work, everyone accept that you have problems

478
00:29:02,290 --> 00:29:06,090
in the MSP space. We don't accept that because problems mean we

479
00:29:06,090 --> 00:29:09,890
lose money. Especially on all inclusive agreements. Right. We need as few problems as

480
00:29:09,890 --> 00:29:13,410
possible. We need to make things work and they should just function.

481
00:29:15,170 --> 00:29:18,930
So the difficulty for us is we manage by the numbers. We

482
00:29:18,930 --> 00:29:21,810
are attraction EOS shop. We've probably got

483
00:29:22,450 --> 00:29:25,810
100 KPIs that we track between project team,

484
00:29:26,610 --> 00:29:30,400
help desk and so on and we run like that.

485
00:29:30,640 --> 00:29:34,120
And so what I try to do now, and this is

486
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:37,760
relatively new in the last year, is I try to take how we operate and

487
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:41,200
when we meet with a co managed company, I talk to them, I show them

488
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:44,680
like we use Stretti for managing our traction. I'll pull up our internal

489
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:48,040
Stretti and I will show them the metrics we manage our help desk team by.

490
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:51,720
And I'll say look, it's important to manage how many tickets are they getting

491
00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:55,130
done, what is their average billable for? For a client that's not

492
00:29:55,290 --> 00:29:58,690
billable but it's productivity. Right? You gotta be at least 80%

493
00:29:58,690 --> 00:30:02,450
billable is what we call it. They have to be 80% productive working on

494
00:30:02,450 --> 00:30:06,210
things that move the company forward. And you

495
00:30:06,210 --> 00:30:09,450
gotta have how much time on ticket, you know all these things. I know you

496
00:30:09,450 --> 00:30:13,130
do all the training on all this so this is nothing new for you but

497
00:30:13,210 --> 00:30:17,050
you gotta have those things and does your system support generating

498
00:30:17,050 --> 00:30:20,650
those numbers? And nobody does. Most of them are still using email for a

499
00:30:20,650 --> 00:30:23,330
ticketing system or they're using spiceworks.

500
00:30:24,050 --> 00:30:27,730
Spiceworks a good tool but you're not going to get those KPIs. You can't manage

501
00:30:27,730 --> 00:30:31,490
your team by numbers unless you have a tool that does it. Streamline it

502
00:30:31,490 --> 00:30:35,250
for ConnectWise is not. It's got its problems but we

503
00:30:35,250 --> 00:30:38,890
can get all those numbers right and we can then help them manage their

504
00:30:38,890 --> 00:30:42,610
team. That's like pulling teeth. That's hard to do. We're still trying to

505
00:30:42,610 --> 00:30:46,410
figure out how to get our clients, our co managed clients to start to run

506
00:30:46,410 --> 00:30:49,980
their business by the numbers. I bought. I'm sure you know Bob

507
00:30:49,980 --> 00:30:53,020
Coppage, I've got all his books

508
00:30:53,580 --> 00:30:56,940
and I'm trying to go through his going, okay, what, what can I garner from

509
00:30:56,940 --> 00:31:00,780
Bob, to, to really help me get this,

510
00:31:00,860 --> 00:31:04,460
this message to them, to manage by numbers so we can match our numbers to

511
00:31:04,460 --> 00:31:08,260
their numbers and help them really make sure they're being productive. Yeah, I

512
00:31:08,260 --> 00:31:12,100
like that approach of it being educational. Right. Because, like, and to your point of,

513
00:31:12,100 --> 00:31:15,580
like, not throwing people under the bus, I don't think any of this is malicious.

514
00:31:15,810 --> 00:31:19,610
Like, I think this is just sort of a misunderstanding and sort of a

515
00:31:19,610 --> 00:31:23,410
lack of context of how to apply those systems and frameworks

516
00:31:23,410 --> 00:31:27,130
to, to an existing business. Right? Because you meet

517
00:31:27,130 --> 00:31:30,890
with a lot of, you know, say it's CFO that's overseeing IT and

518
00:31:30,890 --> 00:31:34,610
they know that the person does work. They see them support

519
00:31:34,610 --> 00:31:38,090
staff and fix the printer when it's broken. Beyond that, they don't really have a

520
00:31:38,090 --> 00:31:41,490
good context for how they spend their day because for whatever reason,

521
00:31:42,130 --> 00:31:45,850
it is still sort of this mysterious, magical thing in a business and people are

522
00:31:45,850 --> 00:31:48,810
just like, oh, I don't know, they do all that fancy work over there. There's

523
00:31:48,810 --> 00:31:52,610
geniuses. And I don't get it yet. When they engage

524
00:31:52,610 --> 00:31:56,130
with, with a, with a provider, my issue that I tend to

525
00:31:56,210 --> 00:31:59,890
see is, like, there's a different gear that they kick into in

526
00:31:59,890 --> 00:32:03,250
wanting to hold you accountable when they're not necessarily setting those same

527
00:32:03,250 --> 00:32:06,690
expectations of accountability to, in the internal it. And I see that as

528
00:32:06,690 --> 00:32:10,460
incredibly unfair. It's like, I can tell you, like, like there's

529
00:32:10,460 --> 00:32:14,260
a lot more we could get out of this internal IT person if you were

530
00:32:14,260 --> 00:32:17,700
applying the same rigor that you're trying to apply to us. We're

531
00:32:17,700 --> 00:32:21,540
compliant with this. Yet you've never had these internal conversations

532
00:32:21,540 --> 00:32:25,260
with that. That person. And that's not always the case. Like, I'm not saying

533
00:32:25,260 --> 00:32:28,500
that internal IT people aren't useful, they

534
00:32:28,500 --> 00:32:32,260
absolutely are, but they're also not getting the same level

535
00:32:32,260 --> 00:32:35,820
of training and context and support that you would get as a person in an

536
00:32:35,820 --> 00:32:39,350
msp. We run our businesses in a very particular way,

537
00:32:39,590 --> 00:32:43,230
and a hospital or a logistics firm or something runs their

538
00:32:43,230 --> 00:32:46,830
business in a very particular way. They don't run it the same way that they

539
00:32:46,830 --> 00:32:50,150
run the rest of their business. That's the gap. And what I find

540
00:32:50,150 --> 00:32:53,990
fascinating is just that that piece of, you know, hey, I can help you

541
00:32:53,990 --> 00:32:57,550
to be able to apply these things the same way. And I think, like, to

542
00:32:57,550 --> 00:33:00,790
that point, like, the education around that of, like, this is what it looks like,

543
00:33:00,790 --> 00:33:04,310
what good it looks like, and how this can actually be run like a business

544
00:33:04,790 --> 00:33:08,190
and that if you can get them on board for that education, that's fantastic. And

545
00:33:08,190 --> 00:33:11,830
hopefully that is enough and that works. But what we tend to see in a

546
00:33:11,830 --> 00:33:15,510
lot of these situations as well is like we're doing all the ticketing. We

547
00:33:15,510 --> 00:33:18,830
pass a ticket to the internal staff to pick up and carry on and then

548
00:33:18,830 --> 00:33:22,190
they just go and do some things. They don't necessarily manage the ticket, but then

549
00:33:22,190 --> 00:33:25,870
that's our fault because they don't see whether or not it was closed,

550
00:33:25,870 --> 00:33:28,510
so and so complained. And you're like, you go and look at the queue for

551
00:33:28,510 --> 00:33:31,410
the internal IT guy and they have like 10 tickets to stacked up over the

552
00:33:31,410 --> 00:33:34,490
last three weeks that haven't been, haven't been closed out. You're like,

553
00:33:35,370 --> 00:33:38,210
there's only so much I can do. Like it's your staff, like, how do you

554
00:33:38,210 --> 00:33:41,050
manage that tension between the expectations of you

555
00:33:41,450 --> 00:33:45,290
overseeing it. But then, you know, sometimes, and I will stress

556
00:33:45,290 --> 00:33:48,970
sometimes having that internal IT staff, not necessarily sort of

557
00:33:48,970 --> 00:33:52,090
living up to the standard that everyone else is. Setting,

558
00:33:53,690 --> 00:33:57,210
it's really tough. I will say this, I have failed at this at times.

559
00:33:58,690 --> 00:34:02,130
I don't know how many CFOs I've offended. It's quite a few.

560
00:34:03,570 --> 00:34:07,330
I think what they have to understand is the difference between IT

561
00:34:07,650 --> 00:34:11,370
and your finance department. You'd said earlier,

562
00:34:11,370 --> 00:34:14,490
you said that they need to run the IT like they run the finance or

563
00:34:14,490 --> 00:34:18,130
run the other departments. I agree to that to a

564
00:34:18,130 --> 00:34:21,410
point, but I think there's like a nuance to that.

565
00:34:21,890 --> 00:34:24,730
So if we talk about a finance team, and I've never managed a finance team,

566
00:34:24,730 --> 00:34:27,910
but I just kind of watched the this, right? You've got mostly

567
00:34:27,910 --> 00:34:31,590
professionals, college educated people that have, you know, finance

568
00:34:31,590 --> 00:34:35,390
degrees, CPAs, all the way down to maybe some clerks and people that

569
00:34:35,390 --> 00:34:39,150
do things. But if I'm a CFO and an invoice doesn't

570
00:34:39,150 --> 00:34:42,990
go out, that person failed. There's my metric, right? If I'm

571
00:34:42,990 --> 00:34:46,590
a CFO and the. The entire network is down, what is my

572
00:34:46,590 --> 00:34:50,350
metric? Because my IT guy just says, oh, it was

573
00:34:50,350 --> 00:34:54,030
an update. Oh, it was outside our. He doesn't know. He can't go

574
00:34:54,030 --> 00:34:57,769
and say, just like an invoice, hey, why aren't you invoicing? And

575
00:34:57,769 --> 00:35:01,489
that person says, well, you know, I forgot to

576
00:35:01,489 --> 00:35:05,089
generate. Okay, now you're in trouble. But the IT guy gets so much.

577
00:35:05,089 --> 00:35:08,889
I love the term plausible deniability. He gets so much plausible deniability

578
00:35:09,049 --> 00:35:12,889
because no one knows. And the worst part about that, and do you

579
00:35:12,889 --> 00:35:16,689
remember back, it's probably been 15 years ago now. 10, 15 years

580
00:35:16,689 --> 00:35:20,169
ago, everyone had viruses on every computer and it was never anyone's fault.

581
00:35:20,820 --> 00:35:23,940
It was like you'd go into companies and they'd have 20 toolbars, you know, those

582
00:35:23,940 --> 00:35:27,660
malware toolbars. And they were like, can you stop

583
00:35:27,660 --> 00:35:31,300
this? And I was like, yeah, fire your employees, turn your computers

584
00:35:31,300 --> 00:35:35,140
off. No one accepted responsibility.

585
00:35:35,220 --> 00:35:39,060
And so we had 10, 15 years of managers. And these are,

586
00:35:39,060 --> 00:35:42,900
you know, your CFOs are not usually spring chickens, right? You know, 60,

587
00:35:42,900 --> 00:35:46,620
even 70 years old. And they have ingrained in their mind that

588
00:35:46,620 --> 00:35:50,260
computers have problems. That's to be expected. We're going to have

589
00:35:50,260 --> 00:35:54,060
system outages, we're going to have all these issues. And I just need to have

590
00:35:54,060 --> 00:35:57,420
something to take to the board and tell them this is what happened, the guys

591
00:35:57,420 --> 00:36:01,060
are working on, shouldn't happen again or what have you.

592
00:36:01,060 --> 00:36:04,299
That's not acceptable. You and I know that because we run companies that go out

593
00:36:04,299 --> 00:36:08,140
of business if we make that acceptable. Right? So for us, we have to do

594
00:36:08,140 --> 00:36:10,940
an after action review. We have to go through and figure out why was there

595
00:36:10,940 --> 00:36:14,780
an outage, who failed at their job. How are we going to put safeguards

596
00:36:14,780 --> 00:36:18,580
in place to prevent those things from happening again? But I think that

597
00:36:18,580 --> 00:36:22,300
the problem, the biggest problem is leadership, especially in the

598
00:36:22,300 --> 00:36:26,020
world with CFOs have been trained over years of

599
00:36:26,020 --> 00:36:29,740
time that problems just happen and that's just

600
00:36:29,740 --> 00:36:33,379
the way it is. And they don't understand it. And these are very smart

601
00:36:33,379 --> 00:36:37,180
people, right? They could be it. I always say this about my, my guys

602
00:36:37,180 --> 00:36:40,900
ever start griping about a client, be it a doctor or a

603
00:36:40,900 --> 00:36:44,100
professional. And I said, they can do your job better than you if they chose

604
00:36:44,100 --> 00:36:47,710
to do it. That's not their job. That's why they're paying us to do it.

605
00:36:47,790 --> 00:36:51,150
There's no doctor out there that can't be a good, great IT guy. I mean,

606
00:36:51,150 --> 00:36:54,750
they can, they can store knowledge. Do not talk bad about those

607
00:36:54,750 --> 00:36:58,470
guys. They're very smart. Your, your job. He's paying you to do

608
00:36:58,470 --> 00:37:02,110
the things that are not worth his time. If he's billing 500 an hour and

609
00:37:02,110 --> 00:37:04,750
he's paying you 160 an hour, he's smart.

610
00:37:06,990 --> 00:37:10,750
If he doesn't know how to open Chrome, that's your

611
00:37:10,750 --> 00:37:13,790
problem, not his. And he's paying us to do that and that's great. Love it.

612
00:37:13,790 --> 00:37:17,570
So. Respecting the customer

613
00:37:17,570 --> 00:37:21,250
and like the position that they have in, in the relationship that you're in. Right.

614
00:37:21,250 --> 00:37:24,210
And you make a point that I think had not occurred to me, but I

615
00:37:24,210 --> 00:37:27,930
think is really insightful that like, especially in finance, like

616
00:37:27,930 --> 00:37:31,770
the level of professionalism as a baseline is so much higher than

617
00:37:31,770 --> 00:37:35,490
IT because in a lot of circumstances like especially like internal

618
00:37:35,490 --> 00:37:39,170
IT people they're not even necessarily formally trained,

619
00:37:39,170 --> 00:37:43,010
right? Like maybe they went to college but a lot of them are just hobbyists

620
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:46,800
that got into IT and ended up with some skills and got a job.

621
00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:49,680
So I think that distinction is actually really important

622
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:54,800
base expectations. And I think again why an MSP

623
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:58,600
can play such a pivotal role in this is they can bring that level of

624
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:02,280
professionalism and validation to the IT department because it

625
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:05,880
doesn't inherently exist with the person who has just been

626
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:09,600
tinkering with computers for the last 20 years and knows what they know

627
00:38:10,450 --> 00:38:14,210
but you know, can't necessarily explain that doesn't to the business doesn't really have

628
00:38:14,210 --> 00:38:17,650
systems to be able to manage those things. So it is a bit opaque.

629
00:38:18,690 --> 00:38:22,170
I think that's a huge level of value that we can bring as an external

630
00:38:22,170 --> 00:38:25,690
provider around like you said, like here's how we run our business, here's how

631
00:38:25,690 --> 00:38:29,410
we're able to judge good quality, whether or not people are productive. Like

632
00:38:29,410 --> 00:38:32,570
this is how I would like to see things work in your environment. And then

633
00:38:32,570 --> 00:38:35,970
it really just becomes a question of whether or not the person that

634
00:38:36,610 --> 00:38:40,280
you're working with in a co managed environment or like who steps up who is

635
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:44,080
actually willing to sort of like work in a more professional fashion versus you

636
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:47,720
know, the hobbyists. That was like oh well this isn't as much fun anymore,

637
00:38:47,720 --> 00:38:51,560
right? I don't have my personal playground because these guys are calling

638
00:38:51,560 --> 00:38:55,280
bullshit on occasion. Right? That's it.

639
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:58,640
We do run into that, you know. You know, it's.

640
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:02,680
You'd mentioned earlier, you said something about how do I deal

641
00:39:02,680 --> 00:39:06,330
with the people who maybe think I'm trying to take their job. Right.

642
00:39:07,210 --> 00:39:10,970
And those guys who have made it their personal playground. I

643
00:39:10,970 --> 00:39:14,090
tend to tell the people before I go into any kind of co managed environment

644
00:39:14,490 --> 00:39:18,250
is I'll say look, if you don't have a good solid

645
00:39:18,250 --> 00:39:21,970
system if you're bringing us in because you don't trust your guys, just expect

646
00:39:21,970 --> 00:39:25,330
they're all going to quit. And when they quit I can help you build a

647
00:39:25,330 --> 00:39:27,850
good culture. But it's going to be around numbers, it's going to be around the

648
00:39:27,850 --> 00:39:31,610
way we operate ourselves. I honestly yet to have

649
00:39:32,550 --> 00:39:36,390
anyone take me up on that. I've had, I have customers now

650
00:39:36,950 --> 00:39:40,750
that that have good internal it but I'm still

651
00:39:40,750 --> 00:39:44,270
working to try to get them to use our numbers to those teams and to

652
00:39:44,270 --> 00:39:47,710
use the right systems to manage those teams. Some we're seeing some

653
00:39:47,710 --> 00:39:51,030
improvement along the way. I wish it was Better than it is,

654
00:39:51,750 --> 00:39:55,030
honestly. But we're still working on that. I'm actually,

655
00:39:55,910 --> 00:39:59,540
I'm writing a, trying to write a book as I have time

656
00:39:59,860 --> 00:40:03,140
of how to use what we do as an msp. So I came from infrastructure.

657
00:40:03,140 --> 00:40:06,660
You came from infrastructure. When you work in an MSP that is really

658
00:40:06,660 --> 00:40:09,780
efficient and you figured out your numbers and it's starting to really click.

659
00:40:10,260 --> 00:40:13,979
That works in an enterprise. I mean it really, you talk about

660
00:40:13,979 --> 00:40:17,620
running an enterprise, it. I wish I could go back to my previous enterprise

661
00:40:17,620 --> 00:40:21,260
jobs with all of my knowledge and put these systems in place for

662
00:40:21,260 --> 00:40:24,940
those organizations. I mean just. It would be amazing. It would be, it would

663
00:40:24,940 --> 00:40:28,660
be just fantastic. So I'm trying to get a good

664
00:40:28,660 --> 00:40:32,420
book together of what I've learned from the enterprise. Going from that

665
00:40:32,660 --> 00:40:36,460
to running an MSP and trying to rewrite that back to the enterprise

666
00:40:36,460 --> 00:40:40,180
of you need to do this. And then once you do this, you

667
00:40:40,180 --> 00:40:43,820
decide what your strengths and your weaknesses are and then you can go and analyze.

668
00:40:43,820 --> 00:40:46,260
Do I bring in a help desk team to outsource? Do I bring in an

669
00:40:46,260 --> 00:40:49,980
infrastructure team to outsource? If you're rural, if you're in a community that

670
00:40:49,980 --> 00:40:53,620
doesn't have a lot of highly skilled people, you should not be outsourcing

671
00:40:53,700 --> 00:40:57,060
your help. That or your, yeah, your help desk, maybe you can get those guys.

672
00:40:57,060 --> 00:41:00,700
But outsource your infrastructure and if you're in a large community that

673
00:41:00,700 --> 00:41:04,380
has lots of smart IT guys, well,

674
00:41:04,380 --> 00:41:08,220
maybe you need to outsource your help desk and keep your. Anyway you

675
00:41:08,220 --> 00:41:12,020
get, I'm jumbling it up. That's exactly the conversation that I would have with

676
00:41:12,020 --> 00:41:15,620
organizations when I met with them. When it was obvious it was a co managed

677
00:41:15,620 --> 00:41:19,470
situation. I said, look, your team can be good at support

678
00:41:19,630 --> 00:41:23,430
or projects, probably not both at the same time. So which role do you

679
00:41:23,430 --> 00:41:27,150
want us to play? And then that I would often have that conversation with

680
00:41:27,150 --> 00:41:30,550
the internal staff saying like, look, we're going to take all the back end the

681
00:41:30,550 --> 00:41:34,230
projects, the complicated stuff and you guys can continue to work on supporting the

682
00:41:34,230 --> 00:41:37,910
users like you're good at it. You have subject matter expertise on, you know,

683
00:41:37,910 --> 00:41:41,750
the vendor software that you guys use, the isms of all of the

684
00:41:41,750 --> 00:41:45,560
stuff that goes on. You have good relationships with the staff and now you're gonna

685
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:49,400
have time to focus on those things and not like leaving projects on the, on

686
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:52,360
the vine to die. We'll go and take care of those things and make you

687
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:55,880
guys look like rock stars or the opposite of like you guys

688
00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:59,520
understand sort of the direction of the company. You can work on the projects, we'll

689
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:02,800
take all the BS of dealing with the user so they're not distracting you all

690
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:05,920
day from the projects that you should be working on. And that sets up a

691
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:09,760
much more sort of like a more clarity in the situation of

692
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:13,270
like, I'm not coming here to take everything, I don't actually don't want it. Like,

693
00:42:13,270 --> 00:42:17,030
it may not work for us and for these reasons. So, you know, here's

694
00:42:17,030 --> 00:42:20,110
how we're going to split division of duties so that both of us can look

695
00:42:20,110 --> 00:42:23,310
good. Right. And I think that's. That's a helpful way to sort of position things.

696
00:42:23,310 --> 00:42:27,110
And generally pretty true, right? Like, maybe there

697
00:42:27,110 --> 00:42:30,750
are certain circumstances, especially back in the day when we were more var centric,

698
00:42:30,910 --> 00:42:34,510
that we didn't really want help Desk. Right. That was not what we did.

699
00:42:34,590 --> 00:42:38,310
And NMSP is different. Like, hopefully we're better at both of these

700
00:42:38,310 --> 00:42:42,160
now, but internally there's just not again,

701
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:45,960
that breadth of knowledge and exposure to all the relevant technologies to

702
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:49,760
be good at project delivery. Right. Like, you're good with systems, you maybe understand the

703
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:53,440
network, but, you know, could you deploy a complex VLAN

704
00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:57,000
structure with a VoIP installation? Right. Like, yeah,

705
00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:00,600
that's probably beyond what you've been exposed to. Right. So it's perfectly

706
00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:04,360
reasonable that there is an external party that you can rely on to be

707
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:07,230
like, yeah, I don't know how to do that. You guys go ahead and do

708
00:43:07,230 --> 00:43:09,670
that and like, maybe you can give me some training. So I'm up on it

709
00:43:09,670 --> 00:43:12,430
and I can kind of support the end users once you're done, right?

710
00:43:13,150 --> 00:43:16,830
Yeah, absolutely. It's. Speaking of that training, that's something we

711
00:43:16,830 --> 00:43:20,510
do quite a bit. We actually have a prospect we're

712
00:43:20,510 --> 00:43:24,110
talking to right now. They've got a very tight budget, they

713
00:43:24,110 --> 00:43:27,070
are investing heavily in growth

714
00:43:27,790 --> 00:43:31,550
and they've got, they're currently with a large national MSP

715
00:43:32,350 --> 00:43:36,060
and the price is not. It's cost prohibitive for them to be able to

716
00:43:36,060 --> 00:43:38,980
grow. And so we looked at it and we said, well, everything they're offering you,

717
00:43:38,980 --> 00:43:42,380
we think you should have. You know, we think that that's all viable,

718
00:43:42,700 --> 00:43:46,420
but we understand where you're at, so you have to make a risk calculation. And

719
00:43:46,420 --> 00:43:49,460
we helped them make the risk calculation and they decided that they were able to

720
00:43:49,460 --> 00:43:53,300
tolerate more risk for less cost and so we were able to give them that

721
00:43:53,300 --> 00:43:55,580
solution. It's.

722
00:43:57,020 --> 00:44:00,780
I apologize. I'm kind of getting myself derailed on this stop.

723
00:44:03,170 --> 00:44:06,210
I forget where I was even going. I had a point there and I've lost

724
00:44:06,210 --> 00:44:09,010
it. So you got an edit right there. Just mark that point.

725
00:44:11,650 --> 00:44:15,370
I do have, I have one thing I wanted to bring up and you

726
00:44:15,370 --> 00:44:18,210
might want to ask the question, but the thing that I want to bring up

727
00:44:18,530 --> 00:44:22,090
is how you work with your co

728
00:44:22,090 --> 00:44:25,890
managed client on an ongoing basis. Like how do

729
00:44:25,890 --> 00:44:29,580
you communicate, how often do you communicate, what do you talk about? And I'd like

730
00:44:29,580 --> 00:44:32,900
to, if you want to ask me that question, I've got some pretty good input

731
00:44:32,900 --> 00:44:35,700
that we've learned and struggled with. Okay.

732
00:44:38,340 --> 00:44:42,180
So one of the things we tend to struggle with is how to sort

733
00:44:42,180 --> 00:44:45,780
of best engage. We kind of talked about, you know, the importance of the

734
00:44:45,780 --> 00:44:49,500
relationship with the business owner is obvious there.

735
00:44:49,500 --> 00:44:53,140
I think the importance of the relationship with the internal staff is actually

736
00:44:53,140 --> 00:44:56,380
really pivotal as well. And we kind of touched on why this is important to

737
00:44:56,380 --> 00:44:59,700
be able to set up that relationship so that it's healthy and not adversarial.

738
00:45:00,390 --> 00:45:04,150
What are sort of the systems and processes that you guys utilize to make sure

739
00:45:04,150 --> 00:45:07,470
that you're connecting at the right level at the business side, but also on the

740
00:45:07,470 --> 00:45:10,630
technical side so that your, the relationship stays healthy.

741
00:45:11,510 --> 00:45:15,230
That's a great question. It's one that we didn't do very well on a

742
00:45:15,230 --> 00:45:18,070
couple of occasions and we've had to learn to do it better.

743
00:45:19,110 --> 00:45:22,830
I'll give you what we did wrong initially. So we didn't have a

744
00:45:22,830 --> 00:45:26,230
good cadence of meeting and we didn't have a good,

745
00:45:28,280 --> 00:45:32,080
we weren't using smart goals like to scope out projects. We kind

746
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:35,280
of went in, said, hey, we can really help you guys a lot. You got

747
00:45:35,280 --> 00:45:38,520
all these things that we identified through our discovery that need to be done. We

748
00:45:38,600 --> 00:45:42,320
need to build those into projects. And we left a little too

749
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:46,120
much up to the client to determine when we met and what we talked about

750
00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:49,920
and so on. And time goes by and things aren't moving and they're not

751
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:53,730
moving and they're not moving. Well, like you said earlier, we can get blamed for

752
00:45:53,730 --> 00:45:56,490
that. Right? They have a pro, they should have a project system they should be

753
00:45:56,490 --> 00:45:59,850
tracking and if things aren't moving, they should be communicating to us to move them

754
00:45:59,850 --> 00:46:03,170
themselves if they're a large, I'm talking large co managed

755
00:46:03,170 --> 00:46:06,850
organization. But they don't. But yet they're taking

756
00:46:06,850 --> 00:46:10,490
the helm and we're let, we're, we're abdicating that

757
00:46:10,490 --> 00:46:13,970
role of making sure things are moving forward. So what

758
00:46:13,970 --> 00:46:17,570
happens in that? We didn't start with that as our intention, but you get

759
00:46:17,570 --> 00:46:21,420
comfortable, you start to build maybe some relationships. They've told you some of

760
00:46:21,420 --> 00:46:25,260
their struggles in the organization You've empathized and you're trying

761
00:46:25,260 --> 00:46:28,980
to be kind and not call them out and not push them too hard. And

762
00:46:28,980 --> 00:46:31,780
the next thing you know, you're just the same problem they already had. You're just

763
00:46:31,780 --> 00:46:35,260
the outsourced problem. You're not making sure those things are moving.

764
00:46:35,660 --> 00:46:39,420
So in that case, what we end up doing, we had a meeting

765
00:46:39,420 --> 00:46:42,900
where we regrouped with the client, we talked about it and said, hey, here's the

766
00:46:42,900 --> 00:46:46,740
deal. We have a project management system. We track everything we're doing in

767
00:46:46,740 --> 00:46:50,420
there. Let's track everything you're doing in our meetings. And

768
00:46:50,420 --> 00:46:52,980
we're going to start, we're going to go through every project, we're going to set

769
00:46:52,980 --> 00:46:56,780
smart goals for them. We're going to agree to the timelines and everything. We're going

770
00:46:56,780 --> 00:47:00,260
to track it all in our system. And so we shifted. We created an actual

771
00:47:00,260 --> 00:47:03,700
meeting agenda that we follow for every meeting, which should have started that way.

772
00:47:03,700 --> 00:47:07,540
Honestly, we should. It's silly. We didn't, but it was just so easy to segue

773
00:47:07,540 --> 00:47:11,260
in, okay, tell me your problems, let's start solving them. Or here's our

774
00:47:11,260 --> 00:47:14,290
list. We actually had a whole list of stuff and, and you tell us what

775
00:47:14,290 --> 00:47:18,130
your priorities are and they shifted constantly. So we sat down, we got everything into

776
00:47:18,130 --> 00:47:21,610
smart goals. We got to where we had an

777
00:47:21,610 --> 00:47:25,330
agenda and then every week we have a meeting and we walk through

778
00:47:25,330 --> 00:47:29,090
that agenda and we walk through every project and we literally bring up for

779
00:47:29,090 --> 00:47:32,450
us, it's connectwise. We bring up the project with all the phases and everything in

780
00:47:32,450 --> 00:47:36,130
it and we talk about who's doing what, you know, are they on

781
00:47:36,130 --> 00:47:39,250
track, off track and so on. And we work through it that way. Now

782
00:47:40,250 --> 00:47:43,850
that has been a game changer because now every meeting we have, it's,

783
00:47:44,090 --> 00:47:46,850
you know, you said you would do this. Here's where we've got it. You said

784
00:47:46,850 --> 00:47:50,450
it'd be done by this day. It didn't get done. And we're tracking that now.

785
00:47:50,450 --> 00:47:53,890
And we're starting to create reports on the things that are not getting done that

786
00:47:53,890 --> 00:47:57,170
we were given timelines to do. Now that doesn't push the

787
00:47:57,170 --> 00:48:00,330
organization to fix their internal problems and start to manage

788
00:48:00,490 --> 00:48:04,130
properly, but it does protect you as the provider. And

789
00:48:04,130 --> 00:48:06,740
it's kind of like, you know, either they're going to start

790
00:48:07,380 --> 00:48:10,660
exactly. And they'll either get on board or eventually

791
00:48:11,060 --> 00:48:14,620
they'll have to start changing their processes. But it can't be you

792
00:48:14,620 --> 00:48:18,260
letting them run the way it says. The takeaway from that is

793
00:48:18,340 --> 00:48:21,820
when you do co managed, you have to make sure things are moving forward. And

794
00:48:21,820 --> 00:48:25,620
if they're not, you have to make sure you're documenting what the roadblocks are,

795
00:48:25,620 --> 00:48:29,340
and it cannot be your team. So make sure you've got a

796
00:48:29,340 --> 00:48:33,120
strategy, a plan, a meeting cadence, an agenda for it, and

797
00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:36,360
that everything you're doing has been crammed into those smart goals.

798
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:40,720
I think that's really insightful and super important. I will underline this because

799
00:48:40,720 --> 00:48:43,960
I think this is a make or break for people working in these

800
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:47,799
environments. You have to bring the professionalism. Just because the client

801
00:48:47,799 --> 00:48:51,320
isn't setting that standard or demanding it, or in some cases even

802
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:54,920
participating, that doesn't matter. It's still incumbent on you to

803
00:48:55,160 --> 00:48:58,800
set that tone and to try and make sure that those, those

804
00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:02,640
systems and processes are bought into over time, even to some

805
00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:06,200
degree. Right. Like maybe some clients just don't get on board with all of the

806
00:49:06,200 --> 00:49:09,920
things and the practices that you would like to have. But having some of those

807
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:13,680
systems in place makes you look more professional and hopefully sort of

808
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:17,520
gets them to buy in over time and improves that relationship for sure. No, I

809
00:49:17,520 --> 00:49:20,720
think that's super, super helpful. Yeah, I,

810
00:49:22,480 --> 00:49:25,840
from experience, you can get that lulled into.

811
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:29,710
I'm. We're trying to meet them where they're at, and that's.

812
00:49:29,870 --> 00:49:33,550
You don't do that. You're not meeting them where they're at. You're elevating

813
00:49:34,190 --> 00:49:37,630
them to operate efficiently and appropriately

814
00:49:37,950 --> 00:49:41,670
for the way you need to function, to protect yourself and to make sure they're

815
00:49:41,670 --> 00:49:44,670
moving forward. And if they're not, you have to be able to show that to

816
00:49:44,670 --> 00:49:48,390
leadership. Because I guarantee you, I know this

817
00:49:48,390 --> 00:49:52,190
is cynical, but it's true. I guarantee you behind the scenes, things that aren't

818
00:49:52,190 --> 00:49:56,040
moving are your fault. Whether your fault or not, they're your

819
00:49:56,040 --> 00:49:59,800
fault as far as the organization is concerned. Right. We used

820
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:03,320
to, years ago, we didn't do tbrs or qbrs or anything with our

821
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:06,880
clients. And we would lose a client and it would just. We had this problem

822
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:10,440
and no one ever fixed it. And we go, look, no ticket never got put

823
00:50:10,440 --> 00:50:14,160
in, you know, never saw it at all. And it was, you know,

824
00:50:14,480 --> 00:50:18,080
this printer wouldn't print well internally. Everyone

825
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:21,480
knew that that had been submitted a dozen times and we just never got it

826
00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:25,030
done. And they were frustrated and no one ever said anything until they turn

827
00:50:25,500 --> 00:50:28,780
with us. Now we do the TBRs and it's okay. We walk around.

828
00:50:29,260 --> 00:50:32,860
Susie. Hey. Anything going on that you need resolved? Yeah, that printer

829
00:50:32,860 --> 00:50:36,140
hasn't worked for a couple of weeks now. Well, has anyone put a Ticket in.

830
00:50:36,140 --> 00:50:39,220
No, they haven't. Okay, well, I'm gonna go fix it right now. We're gonna get

831
00:50:39,220 --> 00:50:42,940
it taken care of. Right? That's, that's what's always happening

832
00:50:42,940 --> 00:50:46,380
in the background. Every customer you ever had, whether it's co manager,

833
00:50:46,380 --> 00:50:50,140
otherwise, you've got to get those things out in the air and

834
00:50:50,140 --> 00:50:53,280
you've got a document when they're happening, when they're not happening. And you've got to

835
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:56,920
be communicating those to the right people. Like, I'll give you a good example.

836
00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:00,840
If I have a weekly cadence call with the

837
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:04,600
IT team that is constantly missing meetings or

838
00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:08,360
constantly failing to meet goals, I can't just do that forever.

839
00:51:08,360 --> 00:51:12,160
I've got to have a regroup meeting with leadership to talk about, okay, here's the

840
00:51:12,160 --> 00:51:16,000
issues. And you've got to be emotionally detached enough, which

841
00:51:16,000 --> 00:51:19,150
is hard for me because I get really invested in these things, but you got

842
00:51:19,150 --> 00:51:22,470
to be emotionally detached enough to say, here's the fact.

843
00:51:22,950 --> 00:51:26,390
Excuse me, here's the facts. We had this project, we

844
00:51:26,390 --> 00:51:30,190
budgeted 120 hours. We were going to start on this date, finish

845
00:51:30,190 --> 00:51:33,870
on this date. We are at 160 hours. You guys

846
00:51:33,870 --> 00:51:36,950
are paying us to go to meetings that no one shows up at. We don't

847
00:51:36,950 --> 00:51:40,670
want that for you. You got to figure out how to get your

848
00:51:40,670 --> 00:51:44,500
team to fit in the system that they agree to, and they agreed to it.

849
00:51:45,130 --> 00:51:47,210
So what are you going to do to make that happen? Do you want us

850
00:51:47,210 --> 00:51:49,890
to just keep going the way we are, or do you want to try to

851
00:51:49,890 --> 00:51:53,050
fix it? And it starts to get them to say, what are we going to

852
00:51:53,050 --> 00:51:56,330
do different? And my goal is, hopefully they're going to come to us and say,

853
00:51:56,650 --> 00:52:00,250
yes, you guys have a plan. We get it. We're going to try to figure

854
00:52:00,250 --> 00:52:02,610
out how to fix our systems. Do you have any ideas how we can do

855
00:52:02,610 --> 00:52:06,290
that? Well, yes, I do. Hopefully we

856
00:52:06,290 --> 00:52:09,450
haven't got there yet on these, but we're still working toward that.

857
00:52:10,010 --> 00:52:13,360
And I think that's, that's what people need to recognize is that this is all

858
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:16,920
a process. And it's sort of an evolution of, of the relationship and

859
00:52:17,240 --> 00:52:20,960
the systems that you can, you can instill, but you have to try to just

860
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:24,760
sort of say, the clients, they, they don't do this. Like they're not interested. It's

861
00:52:24,760 --> 00:52:28,520
like, well, if you accept that, then, you know, the, the outcomes

862
00:52:28,520 --> 00:52:32,240
are going to be pretty predictable as like, the relationship just doesn't flourish and they

863
00:52:32,240 --> 00:52:35,880
don't see the value, and you probably get, get broken out. Right so,

864
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:39,610
yeah, but, but as an entrepreneur, not as an IT guy or a

865
00:52:39,610 --> 00:52:43,290
technician, as an entrepreneur, did you make money while it was lasting? Did you

866
00:52:43,290 --> 00:52:46,290
deliver service and value while it was lasting? Can you feel good about it even

867
00:52:46,290 --> 00:52:50,090
when they left? And if the answer is yes, you still won. And that's, that's

868
00:52:50,090 --> 00:52:53,330
one of the things that always, you know, in the different peer groups that I'm

869
00:52:53,330 --> 00:52:56,770
in, there are some people that are really adamant, never do co managed. Co managed

870
00:52:56,770 --> 00:52:59,930
is awful. There's no money in it. The truth is if you do a co

871
00:52:59,930 --> 00:53:03,490
managed project and it lasts a year and you made money and you

872
00:53:03,490 --> 00:53:07,140
managed it appropriately, you didn't, you didn't have a lot of problems and they

873
00:53:07,140 --> 00:53:10,820
decide not to use you after that, you made money, it worked. But, you know,

874
00:53:10,820 --> 00:53:13,180
you got it. You got to make sure that it makes sense and you're making

875
00:53:13,180 --> 00:53:17,020
money. Just because something doesn't last forever doesn't mean it failed. Yeah,

876
00:53:17,020 --> 00:53:20,220
agreed. No. Well, this has been great, Brian. Really appreciate your

877
00:53:20,380 --> 00:53:24,100
insights. For anybody who wants to get into CO managed more,

878
00:53:24,100 --> 00:53:27,500
I think there's a lot of opportunity that's going to flourish in the future and

879
00:53:27,740 --> 00:53:30,820
I don't think people should be afraid. I think it works really well. You just

880
00:53:30,820 --> 00:53:33,900
have to recognize like it is different and you have to be aware of these

881
00:53:33,900 --> 00:53:36,830
things. So I think this has been really helpful in framing some of those things.

882
00:53:36,830 --> 00:53:40,630
So really appreciate your time and have an awesome one. All

883
00:53:40,630 --> 00:53:41,990
right, thank you. Take care, Todd.