Making Your Own Luck: Hywel Ifans' Highs and Lows as an MSP Owner

 Dive into the extraordinary journey of Hywel "H" Ifans, who turned his college side gig into a booming IT empire. In this episode, H, the brain behind BCCIT, reveals the critical moves and strategies that catapulted him from a tech enthusiast to a renowned Managed Service Provider (MSP) owner. Witness an entrepreneurial odyssey where determination fuses with savvy decisions, from pivotal management buy-ins to buy-outs, forging the path of a top-tier tech leader. Beyond business success, H shares frontline insights on navigating and overcoming ransomware attacks, highlighting the crucial role of cybersecurity in the digital era. This is more than a success story – it's a blueprint for resilience and innovation in the MSP landscape. Perfect for owners and executives seeking inspiration and wisdom in the fast-evolving world of IT services.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

One, two, three, four. Msps are the cybersecurity experts for many small and mid-sized businesses across the globe. In our latest episode, we dive deep into the compelling journey of Hugh Well H Ifans, a MSP owner who navigated through a harrowing ransomware ordeal himself and shines as a mentor to local schools today.

Speaker 2: 0:50

And it was a Sunday morning anyway, and I got a telephone call from one of the engineers saying we got a problem with the customer site. Do you mind if I go to site? You know a drip again. Yeah, yeah, go give me a shout when you're there. And he gives me a call and he tells me you know they've been ransomware. I said okay, how do we know? And he said well, there's a text file that clearly says they've been ransomware. So read me the contents of the file. And it wasn't the customer that was referenced, it was BCC that was referenced.

Speaker 3: 1:26

Welcome to Now that's it. Stories of MSP Success. We'll be diving to 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 1: 1:41

Hi. Hewell Evans, or H as most call him, is the managing director at BCCIT. Bccit is a multi-award-winning, dynamic, highly focused independent IT company specialized in supply, support, integration and maintenance of end-to-end commercial business IT and telephony solutions. H welcome to the Now that's it. Podcast.

Speaker 2: 2:06

Hi, nice to be here.

Speaker 1: 2:07

Yeah, I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule while you're here in beautiful Edinburgh. The rain came, which is exactly what I was looking forward to, so I'm glad you made it as well. Thanks, so much.

Speaker 2: 2:20

It follows me. I'm well, so it goes everywhere with me.

Speaker 1: 2:22

Yeah, you got it out there as well. Well, fantastic. So let's talk a little bit about you. You had, just, like a lot of folks, you were sort of right place at the right time early on, right? Yeah, I was just talking to you with computers in the 90s. Can you talk a little bit about how that was and how that happened?

Speaker 2: 2:41

how you got introduced to computers. Yeah well, I did two years of further education college, if you like, it's as close as I ever got to higher education, you know and it was easier to kind of do your work, the homework, the assignments, on a computer than write it. You could go and recreate and you could do somebody else's assignments for them by editing your own and then sell those assignments to them for 20 quid a shot, and that's what I did really. So that got me into understanding the use of PCs. Sure, I wanted to be an accountant for some reason I'm apparently the only trade that is more boring than an IT geek. But, and yeah, I got my first job inputting data all day long, and because I was confident in fixing computers or installing a computer, I kind of created a job for myself, and that's really how I got into IT.

Speaker 1: 3:40

Wow. So how did you come across BCC? You're obviously an accountant but dabbling a little bit in computers. But how did you get introduced to those guys?

Speaker 2: 3:50

Yeah, I never got that deep into accountancy, to be honest. It's purely punching figures in. But yeah, when you create yourself a job in the public sector, they tend to give you a boss, don't they? You know? And I didn't really get on with my boss, if I'm honest.

Speaker 2: 4:05

So I sent a lot of CVs out to people, one of whom was a company called Blinach Lee Computer Center. I know easy for me to say Right. So I sent them a CV and, a long story short, they picked me up as a technician and the kind of that. I was really the only technician they had. We had like workshop techs but we didn't have people that would install and go to site and fix and resolve and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 4:33

So that got me into the business and we had one guy there who was a sales guy, essentially, and we had an accounts guy and someone who owned the business. The owner of the business was the widow of the guy that set it up and he passed away a year before I joined and we had this feeling that at some point the woman who owned the business was going to move away and we'd all be out of work. So we managed to do a management buy-in and then the next year a management buy-out of the previous owner and really the rest is history. It's grown and grown from there. Can you talk a little?

Speaker 1: 5:15

bit about that. I mean, obviously, just how the buy-in, buy-out worked. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of technical folks that join a company and maybe are passionate enough and say, man, I'd love to be able to keep this around. Who did you else? Who else did you identify?

Speaker 2: 5:31

Was it all the folks at the time that you I think it was about six members of staff at the time and, to be perfectly honest, as you said at the start, right place, right time and the only credit I'll ever give myself is that I'll work hard, you know. So, as a technician, I was killing myself working. And the two guys who were the brains the sales guy, a guy called Neil, and the accounts guy, a guy called Derek, who still works with us I called Derek my business dad. He looks after me. They thought they'd buy in and, in all honesty, I think they offered me the opportunity of buying in with them because it meant that I was tied to the business and I wouldn't go elsewhere and they would have a technician.

Speaker 2: 6:20

So, yeah, I went home and asked my mum and dad if I could borrow some money, and he was a very small amount of money. He was about £5,000. So what's that in dollars? $6,500, $7,000 and we put that money together, bought into the business and, sure enough, the next year the previous owner did indeed want to move away and she was happy to be bought out. So we were back down to three and then, over the years, I bought those guys out as well.

Speaker 1: 6:49

So you were definitely more business focused at the time, not so much not just sort of agriculture and everything like that. When did you hit on this real estate option?

Speaker 2: 7:03

Yeah, so when I joined the business we were looking at switching from everyone consumers and home users and there was quite a few agricultural farmers basically that were needing to purchase PCs. It was that PC revolution time, you know. So they had a van and a trailer and they took this trailer around and demonstrate PCs to the farming community and that really piqued the interest in. We need to sell to business. It's much easier to sell to business than it is consumer. You can make money that way. So we kind of did every business and sold into everyone we could. And again, right place, right time. As you say, it's a story of my life really.

Speaker 2: 7:55

We did a few installs for this company. There was a real estate, an estate agent, as we'd say in this country and the softer company did what they do. They followed us in. So we installed all the hardware, then they'd follow us in and we make their job easy, basically because they would all be standard and all documented. And they asked us if we'd be their preferred hardware supplier in Wales and over the years that grew to be over the UK, you know, and as it also happened, the main competitor asked the same of us. So we were the preferred hardware company for the two main software suppliers into the real estate or estate agency market at the time that the property boom happened. So it went crazy and, yeah, that transformed the business really.

Speaker 1: 8:44

So right place, right time. You picked a new target customer, which I always love to talk to MSPs about. It was something that we did early on in our MSP in my past MSP. So you pick an MSP, you pick a target that you're going to go after real estate and then there's this housing explosion of real estate and you get to ride that and you guys grow.

Speaker 2: 9:07

Exactly, yeah, a business partner that brought into the business with me later on, steve, would go ahead of me by a couple of weeks, provide a court and you know, a project plan, and I'd get in a van literally on a Monday morning and say bye to the kids and I'd see them again on a Friday evening and that was it, you know.

Speaker 1: 9:29

So 2010, you take full ownership of BCC and you guys are growing. Was that about the time that the real estate market was taken off, or was there another reason that really the growth was fueled?

Speaker 2: 9:41

Yeah, that was towards the tail end of it, I think. And, yeah, you know, we totally switched the business by that point and we were willing to work anyway and we've always been based in extremely rural west Wales, you know. But we have a workforce that I'm very much a part of that will get to a site, a customer site, for 9 o'clock, wherever that is. So, you know, we were kind of flat out because we could undercut the city boys if you like, and we're willing to do it. We had people that would work and so, yeah, it was definitely a focus to the business and continual growth.

Speaker 2: 10:23

And I think you have to have a confidence. You know we were very confident that we could continue to grow and we weren't afraid of employing and employing to build, you know, and you have that safety net of the amount of customers. So one thing we have is a large customer base. So we have over 300 customers, which you know a lot of people, and it's very much a topic, isn't it? You can go with small number of customers and dedicate yourself to those customers of a certain size, or do you spread? And we've always been on the side of spreading, spreading if you like. But you know, yeah, I wouldn't say that's definitely the right business model, but it's a business model that we're comfortable and confident that we can support. So at the moment there is no plan to change that, but I know that the trend currently is.

Speaker 1: 11:21

Yeah, I mean MSPs have to. All businesses have to make a decision at some point. You know, do they want just a couple of really large customers, right? The risk of that is if you lose one of those large customers, that's a giant piece of your revenue. And I've seen a lot of MSPs just like yourself that have said you know, we're going to spread out our revenue across a larger number and we're gonna still work our butts off so that we don't have any churn. But if we do happen to lose somebody or they go through acquisition, it isn't felt so horribly.

Speaker 2: 11:51

Yeah, exactly yeah, and we've had a bit of luck with acquisitions as well. As it happens again right place and right time, we had a cheese manufacturing plant or factory literally on my doorstep you know my personal doorstep in about half an hour from the office, and that company we looked after. They got purchased by a multinational and we looked after that site and then every other site in the UK because we were willing to do so, and they had a disaster recovery scenario one day. That meant that we ended up working in their head office as part of the recovery team. I didn't sleep for three days and three nights. It was a massive, one of the biggest projects I've ever worked on. But that company then had us as their second line IT support worldwide, even though we based in the middle of nowhere in the UK. So, yeah, it's not, I suppose, hard work, please. You create your own luck to some extent, but you have to also take that luck.

Speaker 1: 13:00

You very much did. Yeah, make sure you give yourself some credit once in a while. You definitely did. So let's talk about go to market. How important are referrals to you now, or at least were to you, in growing your, in fueling the growth of your business?

Speaker 2: 13:16

Critical, absolutely critical. We've spent next to no money ever on marketing. We absolutely should, To the extent and I look back at this brief and I find it quite amusing. If I'm honest when we did decide we need to do a little bit of marketing, it was purely because some of our competitors were very good at their marketing. So we've always been the walk the walk guys. But other people can talk a talk better than us, a lot better than us, to be fair. And I felt that what we needed to do was reassure our existing customer base that we were just as good as anyone else and don't be fooled by this fancy marketing. And that was the brief Keep our customers happy and if we gain anybody, great. So yeah, it's always been referral and, in all honesty, I think in business it will always be referral.

Speaker 1: 14:13

Just about every MSP identifies referral as a huge piece of their go to market. The trick is doing it a little different, and I think you guys have done some unique things right. You're bilingual in Welsh, you love radio, you love radio programs and then the young entrepreneurs program. Why don't you talk about sort of those three things, how they helped you from a referral perspective?

Speaker 2: 14:36

Yeah, so yeah, I'm passionately Welsh. Everybody knows that. I can't hide the action, even if I tried my first language as well. So the company is naturally bilingual and it sounds strange. There's about 700,000 people, I think, that speak Welsh, so it isn't a massive market, but it is one that we are large in, to be honest. So, yeah, that's definitely a thing and it will always be very close to my heart.

Speaker 2: 15:10

Radio yeah, when we were talking earlier about getting into IT, I kind of skipped the fact that I was a radio presenter for seven months. It was a way of getting away from that boss that I didn't like and it kind of filled the gap. But I loved it and it's the best job I've ever done, if I'm honest, because, you may have noticed, I like to talk. It comes easy. So, yeah, I still do quite a bit of input into both English and Welsh language Radio programs as kind of an IT guy and mostly talking about how not to get scanned or something like that, and because I like to talk.

Speaker 2: 15:43

I guess I was approached a while ago to be a role model. I like saying that because it's the only time you can use model on me and how I look, apart from the before of a diet. But there they asked me to go. Would I go into schools and basically talk about entrepreneurship? And I said yes, and as far as they're concerned, that's what I do.

Speaker 2: 16:10

But if I'm perfectly honest, I get more out of bringing a bit of mental health awareness to young people, because I very much suffer of lack of confidence and I've done all the course of that. It's depression and everything else that most people go through these days, if we're honest about it and we open up about it. So the way I explain it to the young people that I talk to is in my life I kind of had an awful lot of luck, but I've had the guts to grab that luck when it comes is how I put it. And that's basically the difference between an entrepreneurial mindset and a mindset that isn't. And that doesn't make someone that doesn't have an entrepreneurial mindset wrong, it just means they have a different kind of mindset.

Speaker 2: 17:00

And from a mental health viewpoint, I always say if a fat, bold, middle-aged bloke with a broken nose can stand in front of you and talk about it, well, anyone can. So yeah, I get a lot out of it and I hope I give a little bit back to them and say look, if you don't like education and you just turn up to school today because you have to and you can't wait to get away, well, that's exactly how I was, and you don't have to work in a fat real life. There are opportunities out there and you can create your own opportunities.

Speaker 1: 17:31

I think that's really an amazing thing. You do H and really really inspiring to other business owners. I hope others think the way that you do that that's an opportunity for you to go back to where you were. I mean, you were in that spot years ago where you didn't know what you wanted to do with the rest of your life and you get to share look, here's a path and you can take it or go a different direction, but this is pretty neat. So I think that's really inspiring and I'm really glad for you to tell that story. Good thanks. So let's talk about something that maybe isn't a hot topic or at least an exciting part of your life. You're relatively a new enable partner right in the last year or so, and that's because you were a customer of another RMM and you'd been through that journey with them for a number of years, for a long time, and then, in the summer of 2020, you were hit with a ransomware incident right.

Speaker 1: 18:29

And hopefully most MSPs haven't experienced what you have, but I'm sure there are some that have. If you don't mind, can we go there for a moment and just talk us through a little bit about what happened that? I think it was that Sunday morning and just what that was like.

Speaker 2: 18:47

Yeah, I had a look up the date, to be honest, and I'm ecstatic that I'd forgotten the date because for the first few years it's three years ago that we joined enable, three years ago that this happened and yeah, it was a Sunday morning. I remember the time around it really well because we had and I'd hold my hands up and say we had made a mistake when COVID and lockdown hit the UK and we assumed that the right thing to do was to follow half our workforce. So we did, and then IT went mental because everybody needed to work from home. So actually we needed a double the workforce and not half the workforce. So those few months, you know, from March to June, when we were in the lockdown in the UK, was extremely hard and I was very much in and on the tools and I'd been in the workshop physically building and getting laptops ready and dispatching them and what have you for months.

Speaker 2: 19:53

And on that Friday night ahead of the weekend when this happened, I knew that was the last Friday. I needed to do it because from Monday the regulations changed and we could start bringing back some staff. So I was thinking like we've got there, you know, and it was a Sunday morning anyway, and I got a telephone call from one of the engineers saying we got a problem with the customer site. Do you mind if I go to site, you know? Great, again, yeah, yeah, go give me a shout when you're there. And he gives me a call and he tells me you know, they've been ransomware. I said, okay, how do we know? And he said, well, there's a text file that clearly says they've been ransomware. So he read me the contents of the file and it wasn't the customer that was referenced, it was BCC that was referenced. And you know, my heart instantly sank. And then I get a phone call from another guy, my business partner, saying that another customer was down and they had issues. And I instantly knew what those issues would be, of course, you know.

Speaker 2: 20:54

And one thing led to another and I was on the phone with like a team of guys that we had and I feel no shame in saying that those guys heard noises come out of me that you know they should never hear. My wife and my daughter were at home at the time and, yeah, it was pretty tough and I was, my daughter was 21. And I remember when I left the house to go into the office. She was looking at me through the window and, yeah, you know, I'm genuinely not sure I would have made it to the office if she hadn't been looking at me, you know. But anyway, we made it into the office.

Speaker 2: 21:35

We get on the phone instantly to our Endpoint Protection Provider of Choice. Unbelievably, they quoted us £400,000 for 90 days of their assistance, discounted down to about a quarter of a million, which we said thank you, but no thank you. And then we heard the ransom. We got in contact with the threat actor who gave us I think it started off at $2 million, as the ransom ended up about half a million US dollars and we assembled the team of technicians and we fought like hell on that Sunday night and into Monday morning and I think by three o'clock Monday morning we had our entire data centre back, thank God, from San snapshots. So I can't tell people enough, have snapshots as well as backups, obviously. And yeah, by seven o'clock in the morning most of our customers were up and running and then obviously we had to fight to get the rest up. So that was the toughest week of my life, to be absolutely honest.

Speaker 1: 22:55

You've shared that, so it sounds like you acted very quickly. It was all hands on deck and thankfully, you had a disaster recovery plan in place, should something happen. This happened to be through sand snapshots Going back in time. Thankfully, everything worked out the way that you had hoped it would, at least outside of a very stressful weekend, 24 hours, 48 hours. Is there anything looking back and I know it's hard to do, but is there anything that you would do or would have done differently to just change things?

Speaker 2: 23:36

Yeah, it would be a missed opportunity if you didn't look back at it. It took longer than anything else ever in my life to get to the point that you could look back at it, because the scarring was very real To the extent that the RMM provider that we had at the time, who I suppose we shouldn't name the best feature they had, in fairness, was that every single remote session was videoed so we could see exactly what the threat actor had done, and that enabled reverse. You know, the reverse engineering is a down sight easier when you've got that. It isn't complete, but it gives you a good idea and it also gives you an idea where they've not hit but where they've run scripts against and you can reverse the scripts. So yeah, sorry, referring to the mental side of it, I still haven't watched one of those videos. These guys that I work with I have and they've told me what they contain, but I started watching one and I just couldn't, and I'm not sure I could now, three years on.

Speaker 2: 24:47

So anyway, yeah, looking back at it and what you would do, yeah, you know, having those snapshots, because the first thing they do, obviously, is try to get rid of any backup. You have to maximise their opportunity of you paying a ransom, which we never did. So, yeah, agapping those backups is critical, having layers of security. It's everything we all know. It's everything we tell our customers, and there'll be a few MSPs on here now saying, yeah well, we do that, we do that. We do it, of course we do, do you? You sure, everywhere. So, yeah, it is all the things that we tell our customers to do, but you need to do it and you need to do it everywhere. You know your account system, your HR system, your knowledge base, so that you know how to get at these things. So, yeah, we very much become a security first in the way we think and propose and evolve our systems.

Speaker 1: 25:53

You just alluded to this. But what would you share? What would you tell an MSP owner that's never gone through what you went through that weekend? What would you share with them now, just to prepare them for it?

Speaker 2: 26:06

It's difficult because, let's be honest, the biggest thing that we don't have as MSPs is time, but role-play it, seriously, invest the time and role-play it. And where do you go? What team do you have? One of the things it's such a small thing and such an obvious thing, but we have a WhatsApp panic group now you know of the senior engineers. Obviously, we can communicate and we do communicate with each other every day and frequently outside hours as well, but everyone in that panic group, when they see that what's that group light up, it's instant. You know more or less, and those that can't know that the others will. So little things like that. You know and play it out and think right, where do I go If that's not available? What is plan B and what is plan C? And also communication.

Speaker 2: 27:05

You know that we did not lose one customer through this and you know I can't thank our customers enough. There's a big, big chunk of me hopes they're not listening to this if I'm honest, but you know we have a great relationship with our staff. We have a great, great relationship with our customers. We don't lose either, really, and no customer that was affected in any way left us, you know, and we looked after them and in one case we needed to. They needed to re-import data that they thankfully had on paper and at the end of the day, you know, if you've got paper, you've got the information, you can re-enter it. So we picked up the tab of their overtime for doing that as a gesture. You know, at least we could do. So, yeah, have that relationship with your customers.

Speaker 2: 27:56

Front it, don't hide. We're in Scotland and one of my friends who is Scottish he was one of the first guys I phoned and the call went something like do you want to buy an MSP? Because now is the time to make me an offer. I don't know why. I was trying to be funny in that situation, but the advice he gave me is hey, front and centre it, don't hide away. Speak to your customers, get to them before they get to you and you tell them what's happened. You know, don't lie. I can't lie for Toffee anyway. I never remember what I said. So, yeah, you know, I don't know if that's an answer, chris.

Speaker 1: 28:36

I've gone down tangent.

Speaker 2: 28:37

So that's what I do.

Speaker 1: 28:39

I think that's great advice. H. I've seen companies, businesses across the world experience these sort of things and they make one of two choices they are very transparent and open with their partners or they try to push blame somewhere else. The fact that you were very clear and open with your partners is probably a big reason why they all stayed and you've obviously built that relationship. They're almost partners.

Speaker 2: 29:06

Yeah absolutely.

Speaker 1: 29:08

You're helping them with IT, but they look at you as a key piece to the success of their business. So the fact that you helped them through their you paid for their overtime. You did everything that you could possibly do in that period of time. I commend you for that and I really hope that nobody has to experience what you had to experience, but I really commend you for getting through it.

Speaker 2: 29:29

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 29:30

And so then you calmed down. It took you some time, but you knew you had to make a change, and so you did a proper procurement. And what was that like when you started to evaluate vendors and look at different tools?

Speaker 2: 29:43

Well, because we were using the same provider for the PSA and I didn't know what a PSA was and at the time, you know, at an art event. So we were kind of sent. Like you know, we gone. There was a few vendors in the embassy that we felt very let down by the endpoint protection provider, in particular Obviously the PSA and RMM provider. You know, because we picked up a phone to these guys and we go right, we need help and we don't need help in a week and I don't need the guy selling help to me, I need the help, you know. And we didn't get it and we didn't waste time arguing, we just said we're on our own and we've got to be.

Speaker 2: 30:22

You know, we had some assistance from authorities, police and stuff, but you kind of, in all honesty, felt that you were training the police as well, because they don't see these incidences and when they do see them, they normally come to companies like us to help them.

Speaker 2: 30:39

So you know, every time we had a call with the police or the National Crime Agency or the National Cyber Security Centre, we were telling them how far down the road we were, and they were five steps behind us at all times, you know. So it was very assuring that they were there and you felt that their masking to do it meant that you had done the right things, you know, and little things like keeping the attacker talking, you know that's critical and I knew the tricks like get him to type something that contains an S in British English and a Z in our organisation in American English. I didn't try and try and time zone it as well, you know, and we pretty sure that it was stateside, that it was not the way you'd expect it. Maybe, you know, and that's played out because they've actually had a call with the FBI, you sense. So yeah, it's a nearly definitely stateside. Sorry question, chris. I thought we had to so.

Speaker 1: 31:38

Post the security event you had a chance to calm down and then you decided you and the team decided to do sort of a proper procurement and look at a bunch of different tools, not just the endpoint, but also your RMM and even your PSA. Can you share just a little bit about that process?

Speaker 2: 31:55

Yeah, sure, the staff that we have in the company. I always say you know your staff don't work for you, you work with your staff. You know we have some guys in there these days that if you look back five years you wouldn't expect that to be a critical role. You'd add the many roles that you know are basically they enable the technical staff. But these days, with everything becoming cloud and what have you, I'm finding that team is actually growing faster and faster and faster. And the guy that heads up that team, a guy called Joe, you know he's great at pulling together a proper procurement process.

Speaker 2: 32:37

So we have a brainstorming session of like, what do we want our RMM, our PSA or whatever to include, okay, and you kind of brainstorm that and then maybe come back to it a few days later. So you think of things when you drive in and you add those in, and then what we do then is prioritize those. So what are deal breakers, what are very important and what are nice, you know, and we categorize those and hopefully you end up with only two or three deal breakers, you know. And then it's like, okay, who's in the market? And contact those companies, set up demos, make it very clear to them that we will have all types of people in there as well. So you know you'll have execs, but you'll also have techs who will want to talk to techs and you'll want people that talk about the money you know. So if you can get all of that in one session, it's great. So you need time and that's what we did.

Speaker 2: 33:36

And we went out to market and we found SolarWinds slash Enable as it was at the time, you know, and for us a nice. So how it was categorized was we can move the PSA and our amount of the same company. It wasn't a critical and it wasn't a deal breaker. And you know we decided, okay, we will leave the PSA where it is with that provider and we still with that provider. And we came to Enable and there were a few things that you know were critical to deal breaking for us that Enable may not have live at that point in time but, in fairness, they were willing to give us beaters and alphas even of releases to tick those boxes.

Speaker 1: 34:24

Was that one of the main reasons of picking a provider like Enable? That you almost felt like you were part of the development process, right, and you said these are things that are critical for us.

Speaker 2: 34:34

Yeah, it's relationships, isn't it? You know you identified earlier that our customers are partners. You know, and they very much are. It's how we operate and we want that feeling from our suppliers as well. You know we pay all our suppliers way ahead of their terms to maintain a relationship. So we kind of put the effort into it and we expect the suppliers to treat us the same. So you know, if something's not working, don't let us just tell us and we'll work together to try and fix it. So we had the feeling that we could do that with Enable. And you know I'm here today because tomorrow we do the business transformation event. It'll be the second one that I've attended in person, the third one with you, and you know things like that the value adds are critical to the development of that relationship.

Speaker 1: 35:21

Yeah, that's great. I was just going to follow up on that with the business transformation programs. Obviously there's a lot of vendors out there trying to do things sort of in addition to the tool or the service that they provide, and one of the things that we do is we run these business transformation programs. You had the pleasure of joining us in NACE, which was a blast earlier in the year, and then you're here in Net and Bro this week on a growth program Can you talk about just obviously you haven't gone through this program this week, but the program earlier in the year what was the value you got from attending something like that in person?

Speaker 2: 35:58

It was hard two days of work, wasn't it? And you had to open up and share, and we had a room full of people that were willing to buy into that as well, and some people I think there were two or three members of staff in their organizations and some were slightly larger than us, so you had a good cross-section and it's always surprising, and also geographic spread as well, and once we're all in Europe and I know, maybe for the end of the States, europe is just Europe, but it is. It's a lot of different countries, a lot of different legislation, political differences, and it is a complex place, but it's surprising. At the end of the day, we sell the same stuff and we employ the same type of person to service that selling. So what we do is very similar, and actually it was quite similar when we were looking at percentages, with the US as well, weren't we Looking at the markup, from what staff cost to what you sell for the percentage about the same worldwide, it would appear.

Speaker 2: 37:06

So stuff like that it's reassurance, I think, was the big word I took away from it which what we're doing seems to be in keeping with other people, and it's a tough time to be in MSPs, aren't it? We've gone from a profit margin and net profit margin to cloud based, with a very different profit margin, and that's not easy and it's easy to panic. So reassurance is critical. So that was good, definitely, and the willingness to share data and be transparent and open about it and also to kind of go OK, where should the focus of the business be? Where are we weak compared to others and are we confident that where we are weak we need to be stronger? That's the right place to focus. So, yeah, it was an opportunity to focus, I'd say.

Speaker 1: 38:03

I thought it was neat. I mean, Europe is obviously a small place in comparison. I know, when we were in London, one of our partners. They could say, well, I could throw a rock and hit a competitor over there and a competitor over there and competitor over there. But when you came to Nice, I don't think you or anybody looked at the folks in the room as competition, did you? No, no, you looked at it as peers right.

Speaker 2: 38:29

Yeah, exactly, I only knew one company ahead of that, I only knew one company in the room and I wouldn't say that they were competitions. So I think in the MSP industry, particularly in this country anyway, we do get on. At the end of the day we kind of accept there's enough work there, there's enough customers there and it's much easier. You know, it's the old saying. You know, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I wouldn't say you know our competitors are our enemies, but you know it's better to get on with them in it.

Speaker 1: 39:07

So let's talk about BCC. What's next for BCC? What are you looking to do? What do you see the future in the future?

Speaker 2: 39:16

I think we're in a transition phase and have been for the few years, with everybody going from on-prem to cloud. It's stating the obvious. But you know what comes next there. We kind of got more to our customers now to embrace, slash, put up with the fact that they have to pay monthly subscriptions, because we still have customers that just want to spend a big chunk of money now and then not look at it for we'd say three years and they say five years. You know that model. So the worker transitioning, I think, is coming to an end. And then it's about you know the value add that goes with that, and that value add is very much changing. I think you know One of the biggest things we've had to do with our customers is get them to accept that not seeing us is a good thing. That's right. It's mind blowing, isn't it? You know we haven't seen you. Why do you want to put the service contract up this year? We haven't seen you.

Speaker 1: 40:19

That's right.

Speaker 2: 40:21

Well, one, it's a good thing you haven't seen us and two, we don't need to come to the site to fix it anymore. You know it's very different. So I think it's getting the customers to come with us on the next phase of that journey. To be honest, what that looks like, it's a hell of a tough question. I haven't heard anyone who I've heard asked it give an answer. That has been a click answer. It's been one of those waffler and I know that mine is exactly the same. There's a waffle there because, you know, we don't really know where the next thing is. But yeah, definitely for us.

Speaker 2: 41:00

We've embraced home working For half the team, the service desk team. That works great. We have office space for those guys that like to be in and you know it's good to have them in. And what we're finding is that having the sales team and I'm not one of those guys that pretends to not have a sales team, but everybody said everyone has a sales team. They just say they don't, you know. But anyway, the sales team, the provisioning team and the admin team, they seem to be more in the office. Your service desk techs and field techs working from home seem to have embraced it. So that works for us. And, yeah, our target customer base is shifting a little bit as well. So right back at the start I was saying you know we have a widespread of customers. We're actively looking for that slightly larger customer base. We feel that our size as a company enables us to look after them properly and obviously, frankly, it's easier to look after one larger customer than five smaller customers.

Speaker 1: 42:10

That's great. You know, the thing I really respect about you is you've had some success. You've you call it luck, but I know it's very much. You've positioned yourself and set yourself up for that. You went through a tumultuous period that could have really ruined a lot of companies, but you didn't let that happen. You continued to fight through that and even today, you continue to work on your business. You're out here in Edinburgh to be with some of your other peers to learn about growing your business and what other opportunities there are, and so you're always saying you know what I can do more, I can look at others, and I really respect that, that you have that sort of ambition to constantly be improving. So so thank you for being here. So here's the last question I always love to ask this one. This podcast is called the Now that's it podcast and it's all about you know, when was that point in time when you realized that this is it, that I had done the right thing, I had made the right choices? When did you realize this was it?

Speaker 2: 43:12

That's a tough one, eh, for me. I think I've always been led by job security. You know, if you look at it, I kind of created myself a job in IT initially, and then buying into the business was really to make sure we had a job, and then the business brain. You know, if you're being crude, you'd say the greed kicked in a bit later. For me so and I know this may sound cheesy and it certainly sounds old-fashioned now with the need to be environmental and people working from home but genuinely one of the measures of success, if money ever is success and I really don't think it is for me was that when you look out in the car park outside the office and there are nice cars parked there, you know, and there's more cars, and so the amount of people we employ and what we pay them, the fact that we can give them a good life, for me that was very much a driver and it remains a driver.

Speaker 2: 44:24

We had one of the guys that I mentioned earlier. You know, when he joined us he did an advocate, he turned up on a bike. Now, you know, in the city, fine, but when you live in the sticks it doesn't really work like that. So you know, and he didn't have a home and he was sharing a flat and what have you so to be able to do that and create that and go into schools and maybe inspire the next generation to do it? So, yeah, that for me, I think, is so it's an ongoing thing. My son now works in the business as well. That's a son that I really didn't see when, you know, I was working away from Monday to Friday for years on end. So I see him now nearly every day and I've created a relationship with my daughter and my wife. So, yeah, you know, I'm happy and, in a nod way, getting through the tough times makes it worthwhile, you know.

Speaker 1: 45:19

That's a beautiful answer. I love it, one of the best ones I've heard, and I really appreciate you sharing that one.

Speaker 2: 45:26

You won't get a short answer from me. You know that. Yeah, I didn't expect it no problem, let's see your friend to buy me a beer.

Speaker 1: 45:31

That's right Later so, h. I really thank you so much for being here today sharing your story. I wish you and the rest of the BCC team the best in the future and hope to see you again soon.

Speaker 2: 45:44

Good. Thank you, Chris.