Side Hustle to Successful MSP: Matt Hutter on Starting and Growing His Business

Talk about a journey of resilience and redemption! Today, we present an intriguing narrative of Matt Hutter who transformed his side gig into a thriving enterprise, all while navigating the tumultuous terrains of a recession and family life. Matt recounts his humble beginnings, the trials he faced in the 2008 recession, and how his tech expertise helped build a sustainable business.

Matt discusses the real value of networking, the art of right hiring, and nurturing talent through mentoring. Matt also discusses the need for financial discipline, understanding the distinct roles that owners, managers, and technicians play in small businesses, and the power of saving 1% of your profits each month. Join us for an episode packed with insights, lessons and more, all woven into this fascinating narrative of success in the MSP space.

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'Now that's it: Stories of MSP Success,' dives into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn Managed Services into the thriving sector it is today.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

myself, chris, maybe I'd go out on my own someday. I don't know if it would have ever had the guts if I wasn't pushed out of the nest. October 1st 2008,. Got laid off, came home at lunch in the middle of the week. My wife's like why are you home? And I'm like funny story the fifth month of being on my own full-time. I made enough that month to match my former Fortune 500 salary. I was like this is unbelievable. I don't have a boss, I'm not working for the man and I made just as much as I did working for someone else. That next month I made 20% of what I made the previous month. It wasn't until I met other MSPs that I really viewed it as this entity, this thing I've built over the last 15 years, that can stand alone, that has value.

Speaker 2: 1:00

Welcome to Now that's it. Stories of MSP success, when we dive into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn managed services into the thriving sector it is today.

Speaker 3: 1:14

I'm Chris Massey this week on. Now that's it. Matt Hutter did what most people do out of college. He got a job working for the man and, like so many others, when the 2008 recession hit, the man laid Matt off. With no other options, matt turned his side job into his own company. Now, nearly 25 years later, iconium Networks has evolved into one of the leading managed service providers in the world, and Matt feels like he's just getting started. I studied electrical engineering in college. When I graduated in the early 90s, I did not go into traditional electrical engineering.

Speaker 1: 1:53

I did, however, go to a VAR as we called them back then value-added reseller, which really, in a way, that's kind of what MSPs are today. It was an AutoCAD reseller Autodesk products so selling to a lot of engineers, but I wasn't a big fan of it. So I started selling to a lot of engineers, so selling to a lot of engineers, but I was a tech. I did IT support networks. Things were very different network-wise back then in the 90s, worked for a couple of VARs and then by 2000, went to a Fortune 500 company, really learned a ton about business and networking. There they were in 80 countries. We managed 1,500 servers. It was wild and that was the first 15 years of my career Really made great relationships still keep in touch. Two of my friends from the 90s at those VARs own their own MSPs now it's really neat and we exchange business. I talked to one of them today before this call.

Speaker 3: 2:45

As many of us have done in the IT industry. Matt began picking up work on the side and he was bringing in good money.

Speaker 1: 2:51

I had one friend that really fed me a lot of side jobs, these small businesses he hooked me up with. They were okay with me servicing them on nights and weekends. I actually incorporated my LLC while I still had a full-time job and kind of a pivotal moment in the early 2000s I remember when I made enough money on the side to pay my mortgage for that month and I was kind of an aha monell like why this thing has legs. For most people that's your family's biggest household expense and I was like that means that I could actually support my family doing these side jobs.

Speaker 3: 3:22

It wasn't just easy extra cash for fun in the sun, though you were really working hard and facing some challenges.

Speaker 1: 3:27

There were times where it got super stressful because I did not know how to fix an issue and I did not have a boss, I didn't have an 800 number to Microsoft, I didn't have a colleague I could be like, hey, I can't figure this out, can you help me? And especially on nights and weekends. Now many vendors are open 24 hours a day, but they weren't then and it really forced myself to learn things. I think today young techs might Google things a lot to try to find solutions, but we're talking early 2000s here. You really had to know the solution or learn it the hard way, and I appreciate that now, in that a lot of those items were self-taught.

Speaker 1: 4:03

When you leave the comforts of a large company, you can't exactly call anyone for help. You're self-employed, whether it's nights and weekends or full-time during the day, and also just setting billable rates. I'd say we might be three times what I was charging back then today, and then it felt like incredible money that hourly rate I was charging as a side job. Back then. That was double what I was making in my day job. So it still felt like incredible money. And here we are today, our rates probably three times that.

Speaker 1: 4:33

And so I think when someone goes out on your own, whether it's a side job or full-time, during the day, you might not think you're worth that much. This is probably a common path. Or feeling entrepreneurs go through thinking, man, are you kidding, I can charge that much per hour and they just write a check or pay, they're fine with it. So that was, yeah, that was a neat experience to realize I had that kind of self-worth or self-value, and so it was rowing, as was my family. I have a wife and three kids today and I did that and so, yeah, juggling family and a growing side business was a lot 2008, I think, is the year, and that was a rough year for a lot of folks, a lot of Americans in particular.

Speaker 3: 5:15

It was known as the Great Recession, right For the United States. Some of the figures I saw domestic product was down 4.3%. Unemployment doubled to more than 10%. Home prices fell roughly 30%. It was not a good year, and you got stuck in the middle of that, didn't you, Matt? You were one of those casualties.

Speaker 1: 5:38

I was. I was still at that large Fortune 500 company whom I still love today. Great People, great Company. I told myself, chris, maybe I'd go out on my own someday. I don't know if I would have ever had the guts if I wasn't pushed out of the nest October 1st 2008,. Got laid off. Came home at lunch in the middle of the week. My wife's like why are you home? And I'm like funny story. The next day the front page of the Wall Street Journal listed that company I worked for with 600 of us. It mentioned 600 people were laid off from my employer, so it softened the blow a little bit, but I was happy I had the side work at that point.

Speaker 3: 6:13

So it wasn't obviously the end of the world, because you had the side work, which, again, you were able to pay your mortgage. So you had a decision to make, right, it was either go back and work for the man, find another job maybe a job not an IT or a job somewhere or go into business for yourself. So what were the conversations at home like Like, what were you thinking about when you made that decision?

Speaker 1: 6:38

My wife had seen the side work money. I'll never forget our first child's crib and furniture for her bedroom in 99 we paid for with side job money. Now my daughter's 24, so that tells me how far I've come. In 08, though the money was decent, it might have been 50% of my income on the side which we've used as bonus money, gravy money, use it for vacations or house furniture projects. And then I think I realized just the concept of networking, knowing people from my church, the community, some of these side jobs I had done, and once I was able to do it during the day, normal business hours, eight to five, not nights and weekends it really started to grow. Yeah, and it was awesome. I got a good accountant, made sure I paid myself properly tax wise and really continued to grow it.

Speaker 3: 7:24

Was the consulting work pretty steady when you were let go from the Fortune 500 company?

Speaker 1: 7:30

Wow, it's like you read my mind the fifth month I remember it was about May-ish or so the fifth month of being on my own full-time. I made enough that month to match my former Fortune 500 salary. I was like this is unbelievable. I don't have a boss not working for the man and I made just as much as I did working for someone else. That next month I made 20% of what I made the previous month. I was like, oh my gosh, totally feast or famine, and we'll get to the present day here eventually in this conversation. But it was ups and downs, yeah, totally sporadic, and so I think over time you started to realize you know what that server needs an upgrade. These people don't have antivirus and so you started to think more like a business owner. As you build up your network, you could get a little bit of IT work from many businesses, thus creating a consistent level of income per month.

Speaker 3: 8:20

That's awesome. So your IT tech consulting, fixing computers by the way, it was one of my favorite side jobs, but it was always the oddest times and the oddest jobs that you got called on. But then you say to yourself, man, like there's this opportunity to be able to create a service that is a bit more stable and something that I can rinse and repeat and maybe even automate. I mean antivirus back in the day obviously isn't what antivirus and EDR and everything like that is today. But even then, if you could resell an antivirus product and say, look, we're gonna keep you up to date, we're gonna make sure your patch is working, that was a lot more consistent than hey, just call us when your computer breaks.

Speaker 1: 9:02

And in the early days, thinking about that consistent income, not just hourly and you're right, it was just break fixed. I wasn't even thinking the term MSP back then or trying to sell me a service, but two consistent sources of income, although very small back then, were antivirus and server backups. I was like, eh sweet, I charged 100 or 200 a month on a server backup and my margins were amazing, as they are today on server backups. But that was nice, because one thing about being self employed, especially when you're a one man band, is if you don't work, you don't pay. If you took a week off work, there is no paycheck. You're not, you don't have an employer to give you benefits. And so, like a lot of small business owners, my wife's a teacher. She has incredible benefits and that definitely softened the blow being on her benefits and so to this day that helps us. I think a lot of small business owners, their spouse, might work for a company providing them.

Speaker 3: 9:52

Good advice to those of you starting a company make sure you have a spouse or significant other that has benefits to keep you healthy. Were you thinking to yourself, man, I'm stretched pretty thin here. I should probably think about hiring somebody or start to go that direction. What were some of the things that you were dealing with as sort of a one man shop back in the days?

Speaker 1: 10:16

Just totally varied, taking calls on nights and weekends. It took me five years of being self employed for my first employee. He is with me to this day and you have met him, chris, and he's been there 10 years. Amazing employee. And when you look back and I only brought him in part time, 20 hours a week, and, wow, within a few months I think he was full time. You look back like man. I should have done that earlier, like many small business decisions, because it frees you up. Here's a start that will blow your mind.

Speaker 1: 10:43

His first week of work, I was boarding a flight to Disney with my family and a law firm. We did the IT for the paralegal got ransomware with no backup and I'm like good luck at him, I'll be in Disney. And somehow he got all the data back. There was no data loss. It was a complete miracle and I still share that story with him and our employees. But that was neat because my family was in Disney. How am I gonna fix a ransomware for a law firm from Florida? And but that was obviously helpful to my mental health, knowing I'm not gonna try to take a call from six states away on vacation to fix a customer.

Speaker 3: 11:19

Awesome. So this that hiring Adam was less of a strategic hire, more of a necessary able right. Like you were stretched really thin and it was time to bring some help in.

Speaker 1: 11:33

Yes, and he I'll give a couple shout outs to Adam here. He found GFI at the time and then SolarWinds and then Enable and to this day you guys are just an amazing partner. I'll tell you more about that later. And then also he was pretty critical in convincing me of this concept of MSP. I was like well, hourly break fixed, you might be leaving money on the table. You know, joe, company here, abc company, mike, we might have a hundred billable hours that month but if you manage service you're only charging this amount. But obviously in hindsight we know it's great for many reasons manage service, for that consistent.

Speaker 3: 12:07

I know Adam well. Like you said, got to meet him in Austin a few months back, and he is every bit of talented, as you say is. Did you just get lucky with Adam, I mean?

Speaker 1: 12:18

yeah, he was, I would say, over qualified for the job, but it was actually just Craigslist. I don't even think Indeed was around. Yeah, I don't know if Super Creator was in 2013,. If they were, they didn't have the impact they do today for hiring small business employees and so total random half instance he and I joke about the tiny office we were in. It was like a janitor broom closet where I interviewed him Like we were almost knees to knees, oh, like you were close to each other. And then I hired him and, as I said, went out of town pretty early on that first week. But yeah, I think it was.

Speaker 3: 12:50

It was luck that I got someone so amazing Things like a business owner, it may have been luck that you you got an individual like that early on as your first hire and that he's still with you. But actually I don't think that's luck that he's still with you. I think you've. You've obviously done things over the past you know, 13 years or however long he's been with you to not only enhance him and encourage him to stay with you I mean, he's your COO now but what have you done? You sort of mentored him. You've shown him the ropes. You've shown him sort of what it takes to run a technology unit and think forward, and you know what are the types of things that you did to obviously keep out of him around and other employees that you have.

Speaker 1: 13:30

Yeah, as the company grew, I really wanted to keep his benefits and pay package on par for the Cleveland area. And then we, with regards to the business, kind of creating a template it might have been in our head and then on paper eventually for new techs how to troubleshoot problems If there's a stressful situation of a customer. Go through these steps one, two, three to get them back up and then onboarding customers, how to determine what's a good fit for a customer. That's only in recent years where we might be turning business away if they don't meet our company goals or objectives. But oh, picking vendors, that's huge. Let's say we have 20 to 30 products we sell. Now we're pretty picky.

Speaker 1: 14:10

Mostly it's me and you guys know if you or Chris, if you're very technical techs like geek products and they get excited about various products and like, oh, let's start selling this, this is so cool. But as the owner, you know that's a level of complexity you're adding having to pay another vendor, learning their products, getting all the techs up to speed on those products. It can be kind of time consuming. I'm really blessed that one of my very first partners was Enable and just how they view MSPs. I'm amazed and impressed at how you guys talk to us like you're in the streets with us out there selling to customers. Even though you're accompanying you know a thousand times bigger than me. You talk to us like we're on the same level. It's very cool.

Speaker 3: 14:49

I think it's cool to have people in Enable that have actually been in your shoes or at least worked for companies your size, and there's a number of us here I'm one that was at a 20% MSP that eventually became a 300% MSP. I don't know if that's your goal someday, Matt, but to be able to share my experiences, it's very rewarding. I love doing that with you and others. I mean it's a great job. So thanks for the shout out for sure.

Speaker 1: 15:16

You have extra street cred because you have worked it. You're at a big company now but you're at a smaller, ohio based MSP and you literally walk the talk, chris. It's great because you were on that growth track with that company and you know all the struggles. The technology's changed today, in this current year, but the people issues haven't. They'll probably be around forever and how to run a business, and so those things repeat themselves, regardless of the size of the company you work for.

Speaker 3: 15:40

So you obviously didn't stop with. Adam Iconium's continued to grow, both with the number of customers that you supported, but also the number of talented engineers. And so what are some of the ways that you're going out there and finding talented techs so that they're the right people on the bus, right the right people on the bus in the right seats on the bus? How are you doing that?

Speaker 1: 15:59

today, it's been informal networking on my own. I get resumes a couple of times a year. Most of the times I ignore them, but if they're a family, friend or someone I know, it has extra weight. One guy this is wild. His dad and I worked for that initial VAR or reseller in the 90s. We were in IT for that company and I hired a son like a year ago. It's pretty wild and that was obviously a word of mouth deal.

Speaker 1: 16:26

Another tech I'm friends with he was a friend of the family and this guy, his name's Matt. He sent me a resume. He's like you should really get this guy. Look he's amazing and he is amazing. I fired him and we want a certain baseline technical knowledge, of course, but the people skills are huge. We get compliments on our customer service. We still answer the phone directly. We have a voicemail system but you still get a live person answering the phone. But I kind of feel like I want kind of soft people skills, equal or more than tech skills, because you can train up a tech to learn the products but you can't really change someone's personality. You can't make an introvert an extrovert and so usually early on in an interview you kind of know what kind of people person they are.

Speaker 3: 17:08

How do you know when's the right time to pull the trigger and hire somebody else?

Speaker 1: 17:13

I'd say, looking at our capacity, if one or two techs are out, either sick or on vacation, how slam do we get? One answer I think probably a lot of MSPs give is if you just took on a new customer, there's one down the street from us. We're bidding an MSP proposal on For us. This is huge. They're actually an auto dealer 80, it'd be 80 devices, which is probably near the top of what we can currently handle today. That might be a decision that we'd have to bring on someone else.

Speaker 1: 17:39

We've sort of earmarked some techs are kind of like named accounts and they might support customer XYZ or ABC. We do a little co-managed service. We have some techs that are on site X amount of hours per month or week, mostly just placating the customer, making them feel happy. We have a handful of those. But I guess right now it's my gut feel I do have a solid PSA that I could, I'm sure, look at our utilization rates, which I'll do more. We're getting close to having a year of data with that current PSA we use, and so I could probably find the hard numbers answered to that question when are we busting at the seams from a utilization rate? But right now it's mostly my gut feel. What's the mood of the offer? People stress because we're taking on too much.

Speaker 3: 18:24

Is there a certain type of business that is really attractive to you or, even more importantly, a type of customer that your techs go? You know what? This is gonna be a great customer. They see the value. We're gonna do really well Like this is gonna really work out.

Speaker 1: 18:41

We're implementing traction and EOS here recently and we just had that round table discussion a couple of days ago. We tend to like or do well with accounting firms, law firms and nonprofits, specifically churches. I'd started with my own church and now we've got quite a bit of them and they seem to have a fair amount of steady revenue and income and the leaders at these nonprofits or churches are fans of technology and they're all managed service to this day. So those are some industries we like and they seem to be reasonable users, except accountants around April 15th. And then, as far as maybe profitable segments or specific business owners we go after, I guess once that really look at kind of at a 20,000 foot level of their business.

Speaker 1: 19:25

Some are growing at a breakneck speed and they recognize the value of technology and they don't nickel and dime us. I'm like, hey, if you want us to clean up your server and that's gonna be maybe a couple grand in the project fee, and like, fine, do it. When can you do it? And so you love customers that don't beat you up on every the minutiae of each price, and we do have a handful of those. You almost actually those are dream accounts, those are golden accounts where you kind of know any proposed that you give them they're going to approve, and so we have a couple of those. They're great and, yeah, we love those.

Speaker 3: 19:58

That's obsession with finding the right partners that may be rooted in a situation that resulted in him writing a handwritten letter to the owner of a vendor.

Speaker 1: 20:07

This story is wild what I'm about to tell. There's another software vendor we use, who we partnered and sold one of their products. Several weeks in, adam and I realized this is not a product that fits with our values. It was unusable. Our customers did not like it. I did sign a three year agreement and I regretted it instantly. I reached out to our salesman. He left the company. Whether he was fired or left on his own, that was frustrating. I was getting nowhere. I said can we maybe buy another product or can we just get a refund? We're only a couple of weeks into like a 36 month contract. I was getting nowhere. I talked to a director. I talked to a vice president. It was very frustrating. I gave up. I'm like, oh my gosh, looks like I'm paying X dollars a month for the next 36 months.

Speaker 1: 20:58

It was my business coach who suggested this is a long shot, matt, and this is a sizable vendor in the MSP space. My business coach said why don't you hand write a letter to the CEO? I did exactly that. I had it delivery confirmed so I knew when the envelope actually arrived at their headquarters. And it actually arrived on Saturday. This handwritten letter telling my story, pleading my case. Can we please get a refund? That Monday morning I had a credit on my account. I couldn't believe it, and the point of this story is that To this day, that is still a vendor I really don't like dealing with. I shouldn't have to hand write a letter to the CEO to get things done. And so today I feel like I have a spider sense, or a six sense, in determining early on is my customer's success rep going to bat for me? Are they just giving me a line of bolt or are they really giving me insight into how things operate it? And so, yeah, that was a expensive learning lesson, but had a happy ending in the end.

Speaker 3: 21:59

What are some of the red flags or things that set off your spidey sense? I?

Speaker 1: 22:03

think the quality of a product and their customer service experience can really make or break not just your own happiness, but the customers. When things are wrong, what is the process to make it right? Some companies have miles of red tape. Some make it right instantly, and that's kind of my philosophy for Iconium. When customers have issues, we try to fix them same day, whether it's business problems or tech problems, with us supporting them. But yeah, I probably have a couple bullet points in my head I go through when picking new vendors, not just cost but ease of use in dealing with them. What's it like getting support? How responsive is my customer service rep? And so that determines our pickiness, I'd say, in picking vendors.

Speaker 3: 22:46

Matt believes that his obsession for finding the right partners and being the right partner is credit for his growing network and, in part, his growing business.

Speaker 1: 22:55

The trust is huge. Chris, I'm in a networking group by Twitter called BNI. It's been a large reason for the growth of my business and one of their slogans is people do business with people they know, like and trust. And we are now to the point where it we have a couple of partners, local specialists in other industries, that I will bring in, specifically a VoIP phone guy my friend who owns a local VoIP company, and then network infrastructure and then even document specialist. The guy, a friend of mine, owns a copier company.

Speaker 1: 23:27

It might sound keff, fair to say this, but some of our customers the deal's already closed before I've even brought in my partners or friends. They're like if you recommend this phone guy, tell us how much and we'll do it. You like this copier guy, just bring them on in. And so you don't develop this kind of relationships overnight. You want them to know, like and trust you.

Speaker 1: 23:46

But once that trust level is high, it's great because you can provide more solutions to them with other trusted partners rather than them randomly Googling copier companies or VoIP phone providers in Cleveland and so you kind of get this momentum or it's like an avalanche. Once you do so many deals you can be like hey made my friend Darrell, we've done 40 phone deals together and they're like sign me up If you need any reference accounts. We've got 40 of them, same with the copier guy. And it's neat because I might not benefit directly financially from those deals, but it makes my customer happy because they're now partnering with another trusted local company who's got a proven track record for many reasons the quality of their product, their price, customer service, et cetera. And so, yes, it's wild and in some ways we can be jack of all trades to our customers.

Speaker 3: 24:36

I love it. I think of like what was it? The Miracuan 34th Street? It's kind of like the Macy's Gimbles thing, right, like they come to you and go, do you sell this? And you say no, but this place down the street does, and I really recommend them. And so when you're that trusted advisor and you can recommend another firm number one, you don't have to deliver that service out of your MSP and now you've got a fan that can send business back to your direction. So that's really new. When did you really begin to think about the future state of the business?

Speaker 1: 25:06

One of the bosses I had in the early 90s hooked me up with one of the most famous small business books of all time. It's called the E-Myth, revisited, I believe, by Michael Gerber, and that breaks down your hats you wear into three major categories Owner, manager and technician. I believe, and to well. First of all, when you're self-employed, you know you could be a dentist, you could be an IT person or a landscaper. You're doing the actual labor. You are the tech, whether it's cutting lawns, computers or fixing teeth. And then when you hire people, you have to be a manager. You're managing people and you might still be a tech, but we need to think of ourselves as owners. And that's a perfect dovetail into me partnering with Enable.

Speaker 1: 25:45

It wasn't until I met other MSPs at events you guys have hosted and become friends with these guys, that I really viewed it as this entity, this thing I've built over the last 15 years, that can stand alone, that has value Early on most business owners. Just think that you're a tech, that putting bread on the table and you've created one job with one paycheck. But talking to these other MSPs, it's really neat because some are older or younger than me, some have higher or lower sales than me. It I never even thought about. You know, private equity, exit strategies, the value of the company, and so it's been wild to think I've kind of built this thing over the years and it's the standalone entity that is beyond just Matt Hunter.

Speaker 3: 26:28

I'd love for you to maybe share a little bit about what you do today compared to what you did just a few years ago. When it comes to looking at your finances.

Speaker 1: 26:37

It was a book I read by a, believe it or not. The author of this book was a former MSP owner. His name's Michael McHalewetz, I think. He's located in New Jersey and the book he's written maybe seven or eight and or more. His breakaway bestseller was called Profit First. And it's really really neat, chris. Like a year or six months I'm like, wow, this sounds amazing. I'll get around to it later.

Speaker 1: 27:00

I got invited to a local networking event. It was actually a women's business owner event and he spoke at the event. I knew some of the ladies there. They invited me and when I shook his hand and talked to the owner, he's like, hey, what do you do for a living? I'm like I own an MSP. And he's like that was my first business. And I'm like, oh my gosh, could I have a bigger sign in front of me that says I need to do this? And I like that week it might be a stretch to say it makes all your money problems go away but boy, does it get closed.

Speaker 1: 27:25

You are giving up the income as it comes into the business into several buckets. When we first got married almost 30 years ago, we used the envelope system. You want to save up for a couch. Take part of your paycheck, put 20 bucks a week into this envelope. Before you know it, you have a thousand bucks for a new couch.

Speaker 1: 27:41

In a way, that is what Profit First is you are let me take a side note here If you've ever had a large tax bill you couldn't afford, many times it's because the business did so well and I didn't save enough money. But those problems go away. It is absolutely extraordinary. You're forcing yourself to funnel money into various accounts twice a month. You do this and the end result is never before. If I had so many piles of cash just laying around the business. It's so cool.

Speaker 1: 28:11

I don't necessarily need to do a deep dive into the different categories. You have one for the owner operating expense, just keeping the lights on running the business. You break them down into certain percentages and it forces you to be disciplined to have these buckets of money for expenses that'll come up in the future. And one other thing I still do to this day, which some people might think is crazy I still manually reconcile the bank accounts myself and I actually written article Wall Street Journal a guy that owns like a $50 million company and he has thousands of employees and he still does it because he likes having a pulse on the finances. And, of course, is accounting department, his bookkeeping department can do that, but it forces me to see the day-to-day expenses and, believe it or not, I have seven bank accounts, which is a lot, but it's part of that is because of Profit First. But it's wild. And today, today's actually the first day of the month, the day that the new bank statements come out.

Speaker 3: 29:05

The last thing on Profit First, that I thought was neat is most companies look at the revenue Like, ah, this is what I want this quarter's revenue to look like in next quarters and next years and everything like that. And you're looking at your profit, you have profit goals, right, and that's what you're thinking about.

Speaker 1: 29:22

It is so cool. In the book he forces you to take a tiny, tiny baby step and just carve out 1%. That sounds like a joke. That's a rounding error. What is 1%? But it's amazing, I don't know. I don't care how much you make, over time that 1% adds up and he's like I don't care how poorly your business is run, you can find a way to squeeze out 1% and that is one of the buckets or accounts you use. And then mine has grown beyond that 1% now and it's neat because it feels like free money. He actually encourages you every quarter to take half that money out and just go do something fun Go on a vacation with your spouse or do a home project, put a deck on.

Speaker 1: 30:02

Because the book starts out in the first chapter. It says too many of us are grinding it out day by day owning a small business and at the end of the year you have no profit and you're like how could this be Like? This is why am I doing this. I should go back to working man and over time that 1% could be 3%, could be 5% and it really does feel like found money because you're basically telling the rest of the business keep your hands off this account. This is my profit and before profit first. Some of us might say we are that disciplined to do that, but I think a lot of us are not, and the money just gets blunt in. Together it's one huge account and the expenses just fly out.

Speaker 3: 30:40

Around. The same time, matt began to turn his focus on his profit. He acquired another business and found another way to put his new found passion for business to use and this is a side story, but it does tie in.

Speaker 1: 30:53

I had my first and only M&A event. I acquired another MSP around that same time 2018, when I implemented profit first and I did take on some debt and it was very stressful, but as a result of profit first, those two kind of worked out together. I paid off that business very fast less than a year and just became extremely profitable. And then the pandemic was actually equally profitable for us. We grew cyber VPN teams, a lot of that remote work. Maybe I was a bad salesman or I wasn't pushing it that well, but each subsequent year during the pandemic we kept increasing revenue and profit year after year. And so but looking back, profit first really helped me pay off that MSPI acquired pretty quickly.

Speaker 3: 31:38

Along with implementing profit. First, Matt began to attend more events, including Enable's business transformation program.

Speaker 1: 31:45

I would say at this point I'd run through a brick wall for Enable the events. If you are a vendor for a business, you provide a quality product and you may get training on it. Could be a dentist, could be an MSP, could be a landscaper, but what Enable does is give us tips and tricks and huge things for running the business. Here's some specific examples Stephanie with all of her marketing expertise, like a lot of us, don't tend to take that seriously. You guys have webinars that I can do or virtual events from my own computer here in Cleveland and in-person events both that empower and some of these MSP gatherings at your offices.

Speaker 1: 32:22

We've done Things that really have nothing to do with day-to-day use of the technical products you guys sell to us, but ideas on how to grow our business, maybe how to expand a certain vertical market, how to fire bad customers that are not a good fit for you. Like I said, the market builder product and all that offering. Here's an amazing another seminar you guys have had just teaching us to get our customers in the habit of annual price increases. I might complain that my grocery bills are going up each month, but how dare I raise it for my customers? Some of these seminars specifically about Stephanie or other staff at Enable. They've helped us get our customers in the mindset that this is just a reality of life and you should prepare for it once a year.

Speaker 1: 33:04

But I would call those non-technical events you guys host that really help us grow our MSPs that have nothing to do with technical products. I'm 51 years old. I've kind of started to mentor smaller one-man or one-woman band MSPs in the Cleveland area and I recommend you guys for many reasons and it's neat because you all do walk the talk and I like that. A lot of you came from smaller organizations, like I guess you might have people that their entire career to enable, but I doubt it. Some of them or most of you probably worked elsewhere, so you have outsider experience which is useful, I think.

Speaker 3: 33:39

That's definitely true. Most of us have worked somewhere else, and there's a handful that have been with us for a long, long time, or have been with us and then left and then came back, because Enable is a great company, a great company to work for, and we love service in our partners as well. So thank you for that. For sure. No, you're great. So, matt, what's on the horizon for Iconium Network?

Speaker 1: 34:00

We just met yesterday with my EOS consultant, the entrepreneur operating system, and I had soft targets in my head, but we committed dollar figures and years and number of employees actually onto paper. And it's neat because for those of us, which is everyone who set goals, I think the wheels start turning. This particular goal we picked was 10 years out. It was an annual dollar figure that I think is just mind blowing. And then it was a number of employees, which I'll share is 30. Today we're at eight employees and I'm like that would be amazing to have 30 employees. And so I think the wheels, psychologically the wheels start turning.

Speaker 1: 34:35

When you set goals. It seems super far out, but, as I understand it, this EOS we're using, you're breaking it down into 90 day goals and then reviewing it often, and so if I was interviewed 10 years ago or 15 years ago, when I started the business and you told me what my revenue and number of employees would be today, I'd be like you're joking, I can't believe that, and so why not set one for the future? I'll be at an age that's probably close to when many people retire and so, yeah, we just set that goal yesterday actually.

Speaker 3: 35:07

Fantastic. I wish you the best of luck on that. All right, so I've got one more question for you. So I told you I was gonna ask this. So this is the Now that's it podcast, and the reason we call it Now that's it is we love partners telling their stories, like you have over the last hour or so, and I'd love to really hear if you think back and I know you've had a couple of them, I heard a couple of them in there but if you think back about that biggest inflection point or that thing that happened, like when did you know that that's it, Matt? Like that you did the right thing by, you know, not going back and working for the man again and starting your own business, when did you know that was it?

Speaker 1: 35:45

I would say only in the last few years I was happy chugging along as a one-man band than hiring Adam. But I think over time now I think that when I leave the office for a week or more and the building doesn't burn down, I've hired a great team I can trust this entity can stand on its own. I'm still the leader, the owner. I'd give it direction and insight for the future. But it was pretty close to when I partnered with Enable learning that these MSPs are real standalone entities. They're a growing sector of the economy. Every business on the planet needs an MSP, whether they know it or not. And so when I still I realize most people do work for other companies, but it's really kind of a neat kinship or brotherhood or community meeting other MSPs because we can kind of share stories together. And so I'd say probably in the last five years maybe 2017, 2018, I realized kind of what I built here and it's really neat. Yeah, I'd say that's when it happened.

Speaker 3: 36:46

Matt, I want to thank you so much for chatting with me today. It is great hearing your stories, I love talking to you and I want to wish you and the Iconium Network team the absolute best of luck in the future. Thank you so much, matt.