Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success
Now that's IT: Stories of MSP Success dives into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in the Managed Service Provider industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn Managed Services into the thriving sector it is today.
Every episode is packed with the valuable insights, practical strategies, and inspiring anecdotes that lead our guests to the transformative moment when they knew, Now, That's IT.
This podcast provides educational information about issues that may be relevant to information technology service providers.
Nothing in the podcast should be construed as any recommendation or endorsement by N-able, or as legal or any other advice.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Views and opinions expressed by N-able employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of N-able or its officers and directors.
The podcast may also contain forward-looking statements regarding future product plans, functionality, or development efforts that should not be interpreted as a commitment from N-able related to any deliverables or timeframe.
All content is based on information available at the time of recording, and N-able has no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success
Hitting the Right Notes: Luis Giraldo's Path to Advocating for MSPs
In this revealing episode of "Now That's IT," Luis Giraldo, Chief Experience Officer at ScalePad, shares his unique journey from a world-class musician to a revered MSP advocate, discussing cthe pivotal transitions and decisions that shaped his career and how his background in music provided a rhythmic foundation for his innovative approach to MSP advocacy.
Tune in as Luis provides actionable insights on navigating vendor relationships, leveraging personal experience to foster industry change, and advocating effectively for MSP interests. Whether you're an aspiring MSP owner or an established leader, this episode is packed with strategies to amplify your influence in the MSP ecosystem. Don't miss out on learning how to harmonize your business goals with industry dynamics, all while ensuring your voice is heard in the vendor landscape.
Join us to find out how you can also hit the right notes in your MSP journey with Luis Giraldo's expert guidance!
Hosted by industry veterans, this podcast delves deep into the findings of the MSP Horizons Report, providing actionable insights to transform your IT business. Each episode features in-depth discussions with experts, thought leaders, and successful MSPs who share their experiences and strategies for navigating the ever-evolving landscape of managed services. Listen & Subscribe Wherever You Get Your Podcasts.
'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.
Every episode is packed with the valuable insights, practical strategies, and inspiring anecdotes that lead our guests to the transformative moment when they knew….. Now, that's it.
This podcast provides educational information about issues that may be relevant to information technology service providers.
Nothing in the podcast should be construed as any recommendation or endorsement by N-able, or as legal or any other advice.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Views and opinions expressed by N-able employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of N-able or its officers and directors.
The podcast may also contain forward-looking statements regarding future product plans, functionality, or development efforts that should not be interpreted as a commitment from N-able related to any deliverables or timeframe.
All content is based on information available at the time of recording, and N-able has no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
One, two, three go. There's so much evolution happening right now. We'd be foolish not to be paying attention to see how we can adapt and change and, if I can get it across the many desks of scrutiny, it's super rewarding to then be able to go back to this MSP and be like, hey, this thing that you felt you needed, we did it, and that's, I feel, like the kind of trust that can last for years.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Now that's it. Stories of MSP Success, where 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 Luis Geraldo, entrepreneur, innovator, entrepreneur innovator, world-class musician and current chief experience officer at ScalePath and, most important in my book, just a great human being.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for being on the Now that's it podcast. Oh man, how do I even you know talk after that kind of intro? I appreciate you. First of all, you've been a big supporter and you do a great job, and the confidence that you have.
Speaker 2:And so just thanks for being my channel celebrity.
Speaker 1:That was never the objective, I don't think. I think as one gets older, your priorities start to become a little more clear At the same time. The more you know, the less you know At least I am more curious about things. Become a little more clear at the same time. You, the more you know, the less you know. You're more curious, at least I am more curious about things. I want to talk to more people, get a sense of their ideas more, and so I think along with that comes sort of this desire to just openly share knowledge and, and I think that translates perhaps into some of the things that that you're complimenting me on, but that's never the objective, and and I think people that just share openly and are generous with their knowledge and anything they've learned are generally the folks that we seem to see rising, and that's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always love how transparent you've been. You've always been very forward. You've shared your feedback, maybe sometimes when it wasn't wanted, but you always just definitely want to give that. Hey, I love what you're doing, but you could tweak this a little bit and we won't. We won't get on the path of the name of the podcast.
Speaker 1:But, anyway.
Speaker 2:So let's start out. We won't hit on this real long, but I think this is an important part of your life. You started out at 15 years old and you wanted to be a musician. Right, you're. You're a musician, you join a band. Talk about your like, like when you're young, as I was. I was in a band when I was young but but you took it pretty serious Like. You were a really good musician still are today. Talk about your early music career.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think it really came into view as a career until a little bit later. Yeah, you know, at age 15, it was. You know just how can I learn this Richard Marks tune that's on the radio?
Speaker 2:right now Van Halen for me, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I think it was just a bit of that you know crazed obsession that we have about everything that we get interested in at that age and music was kind of that for a little while. In high school I did end up joining a band with a few of my actually they weren't even classmates, they were all in the younger or one year below, but really talented guys and the band was called shade of black you know the the kind of things that you do. But we played mostly youtube covers and things like that and it was sort of that. We just love being in a band and playing together and it was just so much fun.
Speaker 1:And then that kind of transitioned into a university band that I ended up playing. It was a ska rock band and we did some radio contests and stuff like that and that was cool because we won some recording studio time. It was the first time we got to go into like a proper recording studio and that was exciting because I was kind of getting interested in audio engineering and things like that. And then when I was going to university I was in an industrial engineering major and then my university started this program. It was a kind of a full music major but with an audio engineering emphasis, instead of like a music performance or composition or anything like that. And I felt like that was kind of the the trick or the olive branch to convince my parents to let me switch into music careers, because it had this engineering thing, you know, and oddly enough my dad was the supportive one on this.
Speaker 1:I think my mom cried for a couple weeks when I told her I was going to get out of my industrial engineering major. But but eventually, like they both have always been great supporters and then through that university band, I actually ended up meeting the keyboard player in a rock band that was doing quite well nationally. They brought me into the band because he was leaving, the keyboardist was leaving to do his own solo career, and then when we went into the studio, the producers happened to be Shakira's bass player and guitar player at the time. And then sometimes, these coincidences, serendipity of things they had this tour coming up in Ecuador and the keyboard player was tied down with the theater gig and I got called in and I ended up doing six months of touring with Shakira on keyboards and background vocals.
Speaker 2:Amazing, I mean, and obviously I can tell I've had a chance to listen to your piano and obviously you have an. You have an album out on on iTunes. You know you're definitely a talented musician, but but tech was always sort of part of your life, right. Like you, you saw it as a as an opportunity pretty early on, right, and I think I I I heard that you were selling Macs or something like that.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it starts even earlier than that because, as a musician or as a keyboardist, specifically in the very early days of the creative Sound Blaster cards that had MIDI on your PC, the idea of being able to play something on the keyboard and see the notes transcribed in some software on the computer was mesmerizing back in the, you know, late 80s, and so that kind of stuff was cool and and I guess I was really into technology through the context of music.
Speaker 1:For all those years and later on I started to get more into recording and sound production and stuff like that, and so when I left university in Colombia I actually moved to Canada to do one of those vocational one-year audio engineering programs and I just found myself going back to music and just playing. I played in an orchestra, latin orchestra, playing salsa, merengue, that kind of stuff. I even toured with a Celtic rock band for a little while with a kid that was from Leven in Scotland and your cameraman is probably doing a little head nod recognizing yeah, leven, yeah, anyways, all sorts of interesting music experiences. And when I moved to canada nobody knew who shakira was because she was only kind of popular in south america or in spanish-speaking countries. Later on she had her breakout and now it's kind of funny that she's this world recognized figure that this comes up from time to time it's a fun conversation yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2:So you're. You also had a stint in the Colombian army, right? You were drafted. What was that like? I know we talked about this last night a little bit. I mean, as an American, that would be nerve wracking. It's a little bit different, right? Colombia has a little bit different culture. There's a couple of different parts to the military. Can you talk a little bit about your just your Colombian military experience?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, I mean, you know there's professional soldiers and these are the folks that are really sort of in the actual conflict.
Speaker 1:But Colombia has been a country that has always had its own challenges and conflicts going on at all times. When I was drafted and I was drafted to the presidential battalion, not too long before that, there had been a missile attack on the Palace of Justice in the downtown core there, and so there was a little bit of that sort of leftover anxiety about being in the army in a situation that could potentially unfold like that, and so, yeah, the guerrilla had overtaken to try and burn some files that were going to be, you know, bad for their particular you know legal case or what have you but and so, but nothing ever happened and I ended up actually auditioning for the marching band and playing trumpets and becoming the trumpet leader for the presidential marching band. So, yeah, it was kind of one of those things you just kind of navigate as you go through and but you do all the basic training, of course, in in your target practice and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's interesting you I always, I always love talking to you because I always find out something just completely off the wall that I didn't realize about you that you just have these amazing life experiences and you always seem to have a pretty positive outlook on it. You turn that into a, a, an opportunity for you right To again continue your music career, and just in a little different way. So that's pretty neat. I love. I love how you carry yourself like that.
Speaker 1:You know it's. It's interesting that in in the last maybe five years I've really started to notice how I'm more comfortable in the gray area, because what I notice is like people want to be either black or white on almost everything or any issue or any type of challenge that they're having. And there's like a lot of interesting things happening in the gray area, and not the least of which is the opportunity to change your mind on stuff, which I think is easier to do if you haven't dug your heels into a certain philosophy or idea. And I always go back to this Albert Einstein quote. It kind of is my little you know poke to not be so dug into specific issues or ideas, and it's that the sign of intelligence is the ability to change one's mind.
Speaker 1:And I always think back to that. It's like you know what I think? A lot of people, they get this idea in their head and they feel like maybe their persona will be challenged if they change their mind or they'll lose face in their community or their professional context or what have you. But I kind of see it the other way around. It's like, hey, there's here this opportunity and ability to change your mind, and if I understand it and I can see a path forward. Why wouldn't I? And so I think more and more. I kind of feel comfort in this gray area, for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast is obviously you're big on the channel space. You've been for a long time, but you've been an MSP owner. You started an MSP several years ago. Talk a little bit about why it was important for you, what the opportunity you saw and and just sort of your mindset at the time.
Speaker 1:I don't know that I am your, your typical. Hey, here's a business opportunity, I'm going to go build this thing, but rather I'm probably in the larger percentage of accidental business owners. Okay, and after I'd done a bunch of music on the cruise ships and had been traveling a bunch with that, I kind of got to this point where, hey, I think I want to put down some roots and, and you know, get off the cruise ships, because you kind of live this parallel multiverse life when you're on the cruise ships and it's really difficult to keep your societal, you know, belonging going. And so I remember this mac retail shop that I used to pop into all the time to kick the tires and, you know, touch every laptop and stuff like that. They offered me a job because somebody had left and they needed somebody who had some music experience. It was a big time around the garage band thing, apple had acquired Logic, the music production software, and so I was like, yeah, let's do it. I turned out to be a pretty good conversational seller in terms of, you know, people never felt pressured by me to buy, and this is kind of the eye-opening thing that I experienced during that time.
Speaker 1:And about a year later, when I got fired for insurrection which I always find funny is I kind of immediately, you know, saw this opportunity to do some residential consulting and I started doing setup and deliveries of computers and some of those folks brought me into their businesses and somehow this sort of little business was born and I think a lot of it was just the hustle you know keep busy, fulfill the schedule, find appointments, you go get referrals from the apple store that opened a few years later and you kind of get into this pattern of just busyness, I suppose. And then I had my first kind of M&a deal where I merged my business with fully managed, which is chris chris day's msp, and that was a real sort of turning point in in the mindset of msp business. And because you know, the other thing is in the early 2000s, like msp wasn't even a concept at this point there was still a lot of hey, we're trying to figure out this like recurring billing thing or fixed fee or the monthly, you know all you can eat type of thing, and so there was still a lot of experimentation with the billing models and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:But in that I spent about a year and a bit fully managed and ultimately I decided I just want to do my own thing and I left. But that leaving fully managed was forced me to only go back to doing things with contract customers only and that kind of was my pivot point to hey, I'm going to do a managed services model here. And then I kind of also removed a bit of the Mac focus which I had in the beginning and now we were just technology focused and business outcome focused, and even within the Mac space you know it was pretty early for the majority of the folks in that space to be talking about managed services. So it was an interesting trajectory and you know that that second version of the MSP was just a small, you know one person team for a year.
Speaker 1:I brought on a business partner, then two people for three years and we brought on a third business partner and it was just the three of us for another three years and then finally we started hiring. But it was always sort of this organic growth and that was kind of the thing that worked for us. It was what you'd call today a lifestyle business, but growth was good and we worked hard. With three business owners, you get, you know, three X the number of hours you know being put in in sweat equity because you know, I think, as you, if you're a single owner owner, you hire people. Sometimes it's a challenge to uh expect them to work the same hours the owners do, but when it's three owners, you know everybody puts in the hours, and so that helped us grow that's great.
Speaker 2:So, by the way, all great leaders have been fired once in their life. But how the heck do you get fired for insurrection?
Speaker 1:it's. It's a bit of a convoluted story, but it was something to do with. It was a technique. I got fired on a technicality that I had been asked, not I. I got excited one day and I I sent an email to the company mailing list about some news that I thought everybody should know about and I got slapped on the race. Oh you know, don't email the company mailing list unless you have approval from the manager.
Speaker 1:And then there was this sort of issue with how we were getting spiffs on printer sales and stuff like that, and I remember you know replying all to the whole company, and so it was just a little too turmoil creating, and but they were great. I think what's funny and ironic about that situation is that when I, when I left, I turned around and immediately offered them the set up and delivery service, and it's one of those things where you just kind of you cut your losses in that moment. And what is the opportunity? And do I need to hold a grudge here for the rest of my life? The answer is no, and neither did they, to my surprise, and somehow we ended up in this great relationship for many, many years afterwards. And so kudos to them for seeing the opportunity and just hey, we just can't have your level of turmoil inside of the organization, but we're cool with you as a contractor. And so there we were.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. So I've heard you speak on on a couple of podcasts and definitely at a couple of different industry events that we've been around too, and I've I've heard you I don't know if this is your term, but I've heard you use the term hero complex when you talk about MSPs and sort of the challenges that they go through when they are owning the business and trying to make decisions. What's that all about? What's hero complex all about?
Speaker 1:I think it plays a couple of interesting roles and I remember talking about this with Paul Dippel back when I was at Enable. We did this 90 minute interview during COVID where this came up, and I think part of the challenge is that when you're a small technical owner operator and your priority is helping people and you just love technology, sometimes the needs of the business are not the priority. And I think there's sort of an inflection point in which you know you either reach the glass ceiling of I can't work any more hours or I'm not making enough money, where you either re-evaluate, you know what are some of the priorities of the business, and those things show up in many different ways. One is I'm not charging enough for my services, and that could be a couple of things. It could be I'm not self-aware of the value of my, my business or my services, or I don't feel comfortable you know, charging what I should be, or you know I have imposter syndrome and and I went through the whole spectrum- of those things.
Speaker 1:And so I think it's, it's definitely an evolution, but there's so much like knowledge and and I guess, guidance out there now from people that it's I find that msps are having an easier time sort of collecting the information they need to make an informed decision, sort of making the move.
Speaker 1:And there's more urgency too now. I think what, what you could have done over the course of five years to try and evolve your business from you know the break fix hourly thing to a monthly managed services agreement is potentially now you know a two-year endeavor or one-year endeavor, because there's more urgency to try and succeed, anyways. So I think the hero complex is this idea that we are our own worst enemy or bottleneck in the you know pivot of the business into like an actual successful business model. But those things don't need to be in competition with each other, because I think, ironically and this is what Paul Dippel said during that interview is that the, the best performing MSPs are the ones that charge more money and are also, ironically, the ones with the happiest customers, which in turn, spend more money. And so it's an interesting sort of realization that, yes, you can deliver great service and charge accordingly and grow the business at the same time, but sometimes that takes a few years to sort of come into view.
Speaker 2:The interesting thing that I've, you know, I I of course worked at an MSP ran service delivery for a number of years. We got very involved early 2000, mid 2000s with peer groups. But that has, I've seen sort of the maturity of the MSP industry to where we're finally to a point where MSPs feel a bit more comfortable saying, hey, I don't have it all figured out, let me share my mistakes and some of my successes and when it helps you, it'll help you and you can help us sort of a deal. Do you agree? Are you seeing just sort of a shift into a bit more openness and community? I mean, we've definitely built a stronger channel, but do you feel like MSPs are getting more comfortable sharing with each other the types of struggles they've had and obviously some of their successes?
Speaker 1:Definitely. I mean this has been around in the peer group setting for many, many years.
Speaker 1:And what we're starting to see now is as some of these vendors get larger and they can run their own peer group organizations inside of their entire business. You know ConnectWise acquired HTG. Htg was this sort of operational peer group thing over here on the side, so that's now very much part of the, I think, the fiber of how ConnectWise runs. Same thing, same idea with PAX 8. You know they acquired C-level operations and Rex does an incredible job with the peer group stuff. And this is, I think, a key go-to-market thing of MSPs that want to grow is to get into the same room with people like them and understand where some of the failures are and how they can grow.
Speaker 1:And even outside of the MSP industry you look at things like are you familiar with Saster? So Saster Jason Lemkin, one of the things I remember hearing him on a podcast and he talked about like how do you build community? Right, and he had this interesting observation that you got to pair people up in either the same revenue range, which is super interesting. The cohorts of similarly sized MSPs tend to have similar problems which are easier to talk about as opposed to, like you know, a small MSP with a certain subset of issues versus a large one with very different, complex issues. And then the other cohort was this idea of operational focus, and so if you have service managers working together, you know they can solve a lot of issues by you know avoiding some of the mistakes that their peers have already made and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:But it's very collaborative and I find you know we work with ScalePad, we work with peer groups a lot, and it's always interesting how tight knit those groups are, how open and how much they're holding each other accountable to a very high degree, and I think that becomes your support system in that type of thing. The peer groups are great because you definitely sometimes want to remove a bit of the local competition, and so I think the idea that let's get together with my other local MSPs is great in principle, but sometimes you don't want to, you know, be overlapping with your same geographical region, necessarily, Sure.
Speaker 2:I've been really proud of. You know, we launched our peer groups about a year and a half ago and what they sort of were an outset of the of the business transformation programs that you've been a part of and and I love to see we come to an event like this and those folks that were in sessions two years ago or a year and a half ago are all sitting together networking. They hadn't seen each other in a while or in person, and to just continue the conversation now that they're in another industry event, it's pretty special yeah, yeah, for sure so let's talk a little bit about monkey box.
Speaker 2:So this is your another opportunity for you to start something. You saw. You saw a gap right around documentation and and you build a business around helping with that right helping with documentation. Talk a little bit about monkey box. Where was your, your mind at the time? You had just, I think, exited after fully managed, and this was something that maybe was in your mind for a while, or or yeah, I, I think it's interesting.
Speaker 1:You know the the path that documentation had to to become a real critical part of the tech stack was was like so many bumps along the road and for many years, like msps didn't really consider documentation a critical thing. There's this nice to have type of thing, but when I left fully managed in 2012 or something like that, I brought on a business partner in 2013 and it was really obvious right then and there how challenging it was to share information in a structured way. So I actually had hired this group of developers out of San Francisco and we did this proof of concept. I had done a proof of concept in FileMaker actually and then they helped build this, this basic app that was just going to be for our internal use and it was. You know the things that you see requirements in documentation today. You know password management and articles and links to devices and stuff like that. And you know when I'd show some of my peers the tool, they're like I need that. So it was sort of this idea I kind of started to to land of building out a multi-tenant thing and putting in a commercial module so we could actually sell it as a subscription, and so we started doing that and, and you know, slowly and organically it grew a couple hundred subscriptions over a few years. But then, you know, in parallel, chris day had started it glue and launched I think around 2014, and he was hyper focused on the msp market and the correct integrations to things like connect, wise, manage and stuff like that, and it glue started to go rocket ship. And that's when he approached me again, be like hey, be great to have your mxp experience but also a bit of this, having built a product on your own and to help us, you know, run the next phase of ITGlue, so to speak. And so it was great, it was, we were.
Speaker 1:I was at ITGlue for about three years and that was, you know, during the high what I call the high growth years of when this educational period was kind of transitioning. Chris, you know the first three, four years of Chris at ITGlue was really educating the market of the importance on documentation. And then there's a few attempts. You know BizDocs had come out and kind of had a little bit of a false start. It was just missing a lot of these things that Chris kind of had envisioned, and it was a fun time. It was a fun time and I was running the MSP at the same time. And that was kind of part of the understanding is that, you know, as the CEO of my own MSP, I couldn't just walk away from it and so we made that work and I think it was a very symbiotic thing. I would you know what the things I learned in the MSP I could bring directly to the way that we built that product in a great way for MSPs and vice versa.
Speaker 2:That's great. Obviously, most of the MSP industry definitely knows IT Glue now and that's great to hear that something that you had done was a piece of that and obviously, the work that you had done. There was a piece of that growth. That's great. So Enable you had a stint at Enable. Shortly thereafter we missed each other by a year or so, but talk about that opportunity. You had a chance to come over to the marketing side. So you know, luis the CEO, the software guy vendor, has a chance to come to the other vendor and be on the marketing side. What were you doing here and what was that like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was an interesting time, for sure it was right at the beginning of COVID.
Speaker 1:I'd left IT Glue Kaseya, and I remember Colin Knox, who had recently had his M&A deal with Passportal, was kind of starting to run the community thing at SolarWinds MSP at the time and you know he approached me and we started talking and as you do in the context of known people. You know I never submitted an application. It was just a conversation that started casually with Colin. He brought me in and I remember talking to Mike Cullen through the process, but then COVID hits. We started talking like in early March and I ended up getting hired at the end of April. But during that sort of COVID period, kind of the event thing came into question. I think there was a pause put on all spending related to community and events because of the obvious issue. But then Colin introduced me to Robert Wilburn there's a pause put on all spending related to community and events because of the obvious issue. But then Colin introduced me to Robert Wilburn and Robert and I started talking and I think you know he had this interesting challenge. He's like well, we want to try and work on our go-to-market positioning and things like this and we could do it one of two ways. I remember him saying to me we can either bring in a marketing person and try to teach them about MSP, or we can bring in an MSP expert or somebody who's been there, done that type of thing and try to show them a bit of the marketing ropes. And so obviously they went with the with the latter and brought me in and I think it was a super interesting time because, you know, I'm very opinionated about how, you know not fluffy things should be in marketing. And then obviously SolarWinds MSP did the spinoff and had this whole rebranding exercise. It's a new website, new positioning, new everything, everything. And so it was an interesting time Although I joined in the very beginning to continue building out this program that was called Market Builder, and Market Builder now today, run by Tracy Trier, is an incredible program because it gives MSPs a lot of that go-to-market capability of here's how to talk to prospects and customers about some of the services and things that you offer, and she's done a great, incredible job really continuing that.
Speaker 1:But in the beginning it was really, you know what is the how do we want to say certain things and setting a bit of the tone for, you know, not being super salesy or not sort of going over prospects heads in terms of technical terminology and stuff like that, and so it was a fun time. So we we built that out and handed it off and Tracy now runs that, and then the spinoff came and we did a bunch of that work, yeah, and then that kind of saw the end of my about year and a half that I was at Enable. We did some really cool work there. I love the people at Enable, obviously, and that was one of my takeaways is just how great the folks are and how much focus there is really on the partnership with MSPs.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad that you proved that hiring somebody from the MSP space and bringing them into marketing worked out, because I don't know that I'd be here without that and your fingerprint is still on a lot of the Enable videos and things. You're such a great interviewer. Like I said, I always when I was coming on board I'm like all right, this Luis guy, I got to really figure out how he does these interviews, because these are great, so well done.
Speaker 2:So one of the people that I know you came across at Enable was Mike Cullen. He was influential in so many people's lives. Unfortunately, we lost Mike just a few months ago. Can you talk a little bit about sort of the your experience working with Mike, what he meant to you in even in your time there and then after, and just what was Mike like?
Speaker 1:And so many things. Mike was one of the people I spoke with during the interview process and he's just a cool guy, you know. He just wanted to talk shop and we got into a bit of the industry. He asked me questions of like, where do I see this industry going and what are my thoughts on this or that? And you know, sometimes you haven't articulated answers to things like that and I think in those moments the vulnerability is super important and I remember sometimes some of the questions he asked me. You know I haven't thought about that, I don't think I have an answer for that just yet, but let me think about it and I'll get back to you in a few days, kind of thing. And it's possible that that was the answer that he was seeking in that kind of thing, because I think it's always challenging when people always have an answer, because sometimes it's really difficult to work with people that always have the answer and aren't curious enough or aren't trying to solve a bigger problem or challenge.
Speaker 1:Anyways, throughout my actual time at Enable, I came across Mike on so many different occasions to talk about so many different things. But one of the projects that we worked on was an internal segmentation thing, and it was kind of trying to change up a little bit of the view of it and really take into account, you know, the traits, characteristics of MSPs from an operational level, from a mindset perspective and and the one thing that I and I talk about this regularly, cause he taught me how to champion ideas, you know, outside of the meeting room or the boardroom. And so he would, he would prod me and be like, hey, go talk to so-and-so about this and ask them these questions, and I would, and I got great feedback. But what was happening at the same time was those folks were now in support of whatever that project was, and so when it came time to present this to a larger group, there's always this interesting support from the larger group for the initiative and the way we were doing it, because a lot of people had given their feedback, had been incorporated, and so on and so on. So it taught me a lot about championing ideas and not trying to blow up a meeting with a big announcement or a big idea that nobody's had a chance to, you know, give any feedback on.
Speaker 1:So I remember that so well, you know. And then he took a lot of interest in my music and you know we hung out at his house one time with Donna. We had steaks and he introduced me to Whistlepig rye and bourbon and we'd text often you know here and there how's it going. So he was just a guy that cared. You know deeply about people and that's the thing that I'm so happy to take with me.
Speaker 2:He's an amazing guy. I'm so lucky to have had the experience, to you know, work alongside him, again very similar to you. The reason I'm here is because of him. You know it was a phone call and you know, if that wouldn't happen, I don't know if I'd be where I am today, so I really appreciate you sharing that. So, after Enable, you joined ScalePad in your current role or I think it was your current role as the Chief Experience Officer. Luis, what the heck is the chief experience?
Speaker 1:officer. You know this is one of those things that Chris Day sees around the corner on because, you know, in the MSP ecosystem, I think it's obvious that we're kind of moving or evolving towards improving, you know, msp client experiences and helping their technology relationship improve, and so I think this was this interesting and the chief experience officer role or the experience role overall in SaaS is a fairly new discipline. Like you see, companies like Adobe have experience officers and stuff like that. Initially the role was kind of encompassing the partner success organization, a bit of the IT work and so on. As sort of our deepening of event strategy continues and we are at twice the number of events this year than we have in previous years.
Speaker 1:This experience role for me specifically has shifted a bit into the event strategy, the community. We built out a community platform at communityscalepadcom and it was one of the things that that I knew we wanted to get closer to msps, but not just with the public facing people that are at the events all the time, but find a way to bring other scale pad people engineers, our product managers, our marketing folks, our partner success managers into conversations with MSPs. And the community was the way to do it, because I think it's interesting, as we've evolved and we started as a single product, now we're six products and three services the conversations start to sprawl a bit. You know, some are in Slack over here, some are in Facebook groups over here, some are in Discord over there, and so this was sort of our attempt to bring it together and the way I see it is trying to create a little bit of a thread between marketing and sales and partner success and beyond, to try and deliver a bit of a consistent experience. That's great.
Speaker 2:As you mentioned, skillpad has definitely grown grown your product line up to six products now. What are you the most excited about right now at SkillPad? What's happening there?
Speaker 1:I think you know, from a product perspective, it's exciting that we get to fill this void that exists in some of those swim lanes, or domains as we call them, and, like I mentioned with IT Glue, that there was sort of this educational period of helping MSPs realize how critical this could be to their stack. I think we're going through a little bit of that educational phase on some of the products today, but they're already seeing the fruits, like I've had MSPs come up to me here at Empower already and tell me how backup radar has been a game changer for their business and they can't imagine not having that in their environment. You know, as they acquire a company and they come in with a whole other tech stack, you know they can easily abstract all the backup reporting and stuff like that. So that's just one example, but this happens day after day with every one of the products. We get an example like that from MSP. So I think it's really cool seeing how impactful the tools can be to those tech stacks and ultimately helping evolve operational growth and revenue and everything else.
Speaker 1:There's maybe a more abstract nuance that I am excited about, which is I think we're in this interesting phase of going back to a very consultative approach in the IT space. You know MSPs. I think we had our race to the bottom, a little bit commoditization and all that stuff, and I think we're starting to get more hyper-focused on how can I help businesses really achieve business outcomes and connecting applications and doing application consulting and deployment and services A lot of the things attached to actual line of business applications, and so that part is exciting because it's going to change a lot of the conversations for MSPs and their clients, nevermind, you know, cybersecurity and compliance and that whole space there. I think the whole dynamic is shifting over the next few years of how msps relate to their customers and what type of work they're doing for them. Yeah, we'll still be doing all the commodity stuff, but there's this whole other layer of opportunity and revenue that comes with that. That is really interesting to sort of see how it evolves that's exciting, so what?
Speaker 2:So what's next for you personally? I mean, you launched an album earlier and last year, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And obviously you've got the fantastic gig. You're kind of the guy that makes everybody meet each other and everybody has their food ticket. Whatever. You're that guy. What's next? What's next for you?
Speaker 1:No, I think the you know the ScalePad opportunity is really exciting. I'm looking forward to helping evolve that and just see where we, where we go. I you know, for, as a small MSP, I think I got really comfortable with the chaos early on in my life and so I think the the growth opportunity is cool. You know, if we do other acquisitions that'll'll be fun. I just love being out in the market in front of MSPs and having conversations. I think that's where I get the most fulfillment, if one could call it that and just seeing you know those relationships grow over time.
Speaker 1:It's a bit of the same thing that MSPs have amongst themselves and having been one of them I think I was having this conversation last night I feel like I I have a leg up in the sense that I can relate to MSPs in the market as one of them and I get a bit of that peer treatment, which is really cool. But now I get to advocate for MSPs and that's kind of what I see my role at Skillpad as is really MSP advocacy and helping make sure the organization understands the challenges that the industry is going through, and just keeping that ear to the ground, I think, is there's so much evolution happening right now that we'd be foolish not to be paying attention to see how we can adapt and change and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I think we're very similar in that case of being an advocate for MSPs as a former MSP and man, that's rewarding when you can get an MSP that just appreciates the fact that what you've shared from your learnings or an introduction you've made doesn't feel like work.
Speaker 1:I know it really doesn't.
Speaker 1:And there's little things too, like, for example, somebody might approach me at a conference, be like hey, you know, we, we love your tool quota, but it's missing, like I'm having a problem with this yeah and and I guess the trust that was displayed in that person coming to me to talk to me about it is something that I I feel really rewarded with, because now I get to go and make a business case for why we need to do what this msps is asking for and and if I can get it across you know the many desks of scrutiny it's super rewarding to then be able to go back to this MSP and be like hey, this thing that you felt you needed, we did it and we added that checkbox in the product, we gave you that field for that additional notification or what have you, and that's, I feel, like the kind of trust that can last for years. So, as long as we don't lose sight of those things and the importance of them, that's kind of where my happy place is.
Speaker 2:Love it All right, luis. You know, I always ask this when did you know? Now that's it.
Speaker 1:I think for me it was when I got my first managed services contract. It was kind of something that landed in my lap. It was super interesting. Somebody referred me to a small medical clinic. They'd never met me. The person that referred me had never met me.
Speaker 1:They just knew me by reputation. But that clinic was having some trouble with her IT provider and I remember I came in with my hero complex be like, oh, I wouldn't have done that this way. This is oversold. But somehow I created this thread of trust with the owner of the clinic and they right then and there fired their IT provider and hired me and said well, here's what we were paying them. Are you cool with this? I was like sure, and so I had to reverse engineer like how to build value into this number that they were going to now pay me per month. And so it was an interesting sort of process of you know, I dig this, I love that.
Speaker 1:This is really when I started thinking of value-based fees and value-based services and not just this hourly mindset, which is really difficult to sustain. So I think that was it. I think over the years that evolved, obviously, but that was kind of the one inflection point that I can you know point at and be like, yeah, that was kind of the the one inflection point that I can you know point at and be like, yeah, that was. That was kind of when that happened very cool.
Speaker 2:Well, luis, I thank you so much for talking with me today. As I mentioned, this was a real honor having you. You're just such a good guy and you're a really great resource to the to the msp community around the world. So I look forward to staying in touch with you and I wish you the best of luck going forward oh man, right back at you.
Speaker 1:I think you and steven are doing a great job with this. Now that's it. Podcast and I'm gonna go ahead and dig my heels in on that fight me in the comments, people right, but I think you do great work because I think bringing these stories to life and letting people tell a bit of of their own story is a great way to help other msps sort of see the different paths and opportunities they could take. So you know, kudos right back at you man, thank you, man Really appreciate it.