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
Self-Employed to Business Owner: Lessons from Boyd Smith of TechKnowledgey
In this episode of Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success, we sit down with Boyd Smith, the founder and president of TechKnowledgey, to explore his incredible journey from being self-employed to becoming a successful business owner.
Boyd shares his unique perspective on the crucial differences between being self-employed and owning a business, highlighting the importance of building a reliable team and creating robust systems. Discover how Boyd navigated the challenges of the Great Recession, managed financial struggles, and built a trusted client base that has stayed with him through thick and thin.
Tune in to learn:
- The pivotal moments that shaped Boyd's entrepreneurial mindset
- Strategies for transitioning from a break-fix model to managed services
- Insights on financial management and the importance of knowing your numbers
- The role of trust and relationship-building in client retention and business growth
- Boyd's approach to hiring the right people and fostering a strong, cohesive team
Boyd's story is not just about business success; it's about resilience, grit, and the relentless pursuit of excellence. Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale your existing business, this episode is packed with valuable lessons and practical advice that you can apply to your own journey.
Join us for an engaging and inspiring conversation that will leave you motivated to take your business to the next level.
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.
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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.
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.
there is a big difference between being self-employed and being a business owner and a lot of small business people. They go into it that they just really want to be the best them they can be. They want to be the best salesman they can be, they want to be the best technician they can be, they want to be the best coder they can be, and they actually own their job. A business owner, in contrast, has a totally different mindset. It's all about the team that you build. It's all about the team that you built. It's all about the systems that you build. It's all about the integration.
Speaker 1:And if you want to really know the difference between a self-employed person and a business owner, you know. If a business owner leaves for a week, you know are people still serve? If a business owner leaves for a month or three months or whatever the case is, are the customers still cared for? Does the income still come in? Are people still served to a high level? Or, if you're not working, does the income quit, does the service quit? Does the people you're serving suffer? And that's the big difference between a self-employed and a business owner.
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.
Speaker 3:All right, boyd Smith, welcome to the Now that's it podcast. So you're the founder and president at Technology a hybrid cloud solutions, integrated IT services and managed print services. Thank you so much, man, for being here. This is long overdue. I've gotten to know you over the last couple of years and you're such a great guy. You do such great work for your partners and you have a great team behind you, so thanks for being here today.
Speaker 1:Thanks, I've been looking forward to this and I've enjoyed getting to know you too.
Speaker 3:I love the term. Adversity breeds opportunity. Right, and so for you I think you said it was your freshman year you know that ultimately led like where you are today and just like good IT folks, there's a broken computer. Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I went to college in the dark days of the last century, you know, late, late nineties, and it would have been my freshman year at Grace College. I had a computer which was unusual to have that in your dorm room back in the mid nineties and my computer broke. I had no money to fix it, so I just started ripping it apart, figured it out and I managed to get the old thing up and running. So that was kind of my first opportunity there. And then after that there was this new thing called the internet and one of my professors said that we had to turn in the group project in HTML format, and so I didn't feel like going to the library to do research, I didn't feel like writing papers, so I said, yeah, give me that, I'll try and figure that out. So then that was kind of a second head and you know, those two things got me to switch from international business to a double major of management of information systems and business administration.
Speaker 3:When you were in college, you were already thinking like an entrepreneur, though, weren't you? I mean, you started to begin that. You know I want to own a business someday. Is that right?
Speaker 1:I knew that was a distinct possibility. My senior year of college, I actually wrote a business plan, right you know, with some life goals in it, and so I knew that that was a distinct possibility. So that was something that was on my heart, but it would take a while for that to grow into fruition If I remember this correctly, I think you said your first job out of college was with a value-added reseller.
Speaker 3:What was that like and what did you learn while you were at the bar?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've got a really short adult resume. I worked about eight years at the bar and then I opened up my own shop in my late 40s now. So it's a short resume and what I learned with the bar was sales. I learned commission sales and that was a really good spiritual, emotional training ground because $3 out of $4 that I earned was based on my performance. Out of four that I earned was based on my performance. So that was a really great way to train on my spirit, you know, to get used to the bigger risk that would come of starting a business and dealing with everything that comes into that and disciplining myself. And I also learned that the business to business sales world was a world that is really a high trust world and in some ways that high trust world of B2B sales set me up for some really failures as an entrepreneur, because not all things in a business are that high trust world of B2B sales set me up for some really failures as an entrepreneur, because not all things in business are a high trust environment.
Speaker 3:Awesome. So what motivated you to leave the secure job working for the man, as they say and start your own business?
Speaker 1:I hit a ceiling there. I did all that I could do and I approached my employer. I said, hey, could I buy into the business? You know, basically he smirked and just about laughed me out of his office and I just knew that there wasn't anything more to that journey. At that point we put down roots. We live here in a little town called Goshen, indiana, a town of about 35,000 people in Northern Indiana, about 45 minutes outside of South Bend, and my wife grew up north of here, about 15 minutes outside of South Bend, and my wife grew up north of here, about 15 minutes north of here, a little town called Middlebury. I grew up in Cincinnati, ohio, and when we got married she said the Goshen was halfway. So I got trained in marital compromise pretty quick. And so you know we weren't going to move. So I had to figure my own thing out, and that was. I knew that this was the path for me. That was going to be the crucible that would turn me into the man that I was meant to be.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. So we have all kinds of different listeners to this podcast. Some of them are business owners, Some of them are technicians, maybe soon to be business owners just trying to hear other people's stories. For those that have not started their own business, what is that process?
Speaker 1:like Boyd. Do not underestimate how hard it is To be a first-generation business owner. It's pretty rare. The first thing that I think people mess up when they go into business is we have bad language around different, the best them they can be. They want to be the best salesman they can be. They want to be the best technician they can be. They want to be the best coder they can be, and they actually own their job. A business owner, in contrast, has a totally different mindset that it's all about the team that you build, it's all about the systems that you build, it's all about the integration, about the integration.
Speaker 1:And if you want to really know the difference between a self-employed person and a business owner, you know if a business owner leaves for a week, you know are people still served? If a business owner leaves for a month or three months or whatever the case is, are the customers still cared for? Does the income still come in? Are people still served to a high level? Or, if you're not working, does the income quit? Does the service quit? Does the people you're serving suffer? And that's the big difference between a self-employed and a business owner. I know here in the Enable community we have plenty of self-employed people and we have plenty of business owners too, and we got great self-employed people in our community. We got great business owners in our community. But spiritually and emotionally, I just think those are very different animals and that's the first lesson that I tell anybody considering going into businesses you know which animal are you? They're just different than business owners. It's a very different journey.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's really good, Boyd. I appreciate you going into detail on that, and I hear a lot of business owners not understand that early on, right, and so that's really good that you clarify that. So you mentioned Enable the amazing company that I work for. How about where and when did you come across us in your journey?
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know if the marketing team is going to like this or not. So I first came across Enable. It was late. I've been a late bloomer my whole life and you know that's okay. We always get there and that also keeps us young. I first came across Enable that I was looking at acquiring a book of customers, a customer list, from somebody that was getting out of the game, and I noticed there's this thing called SolarWinds on the list that they were doing At the time we were doing block hours, we were doing some resale stuff the only managed service that we had was managed print at the time and so I started digging into that and I started pulling on that thread and then that led me to coming across SolarWindsRMN, as he has been known at the time. So that was the initial thing. I placed an initial order to figure out okay, who are these people? Why do I want to pay them a piece of everything that I do for every customer that I serve? What do they bring to the table? And I went out to the Scottsdale conference, if I remember right. What was that? 2018-ish, 2019-ish and I brought my wife with me there. The main reason that I went to that conference was.
Speaker 1:I'm a relational guy. I double down on people. At the end of the day, if you can't trust people, you don't got anything. If you don't have good people to deal with, if you don't have trustworthy people to deal with, you're never going to get anywhere, because business moves at the speed of trust.
Speaker 1:My mission of going out there obviously I had some business with y'all because I got the email that hey, we have this event. So I went out there and I remember meeting weeks out there. I remember seeing bags from the stage. I remember meeting several people there and I just kind of had a comfort in my spirit that okay, these are good people. You know these are trustworthy people, that they have their partner's interest in mind as well as their own. They're dialed in.
Speaker 1:You know, I came across Kieln pretty good and coming out of that event, I went ahead and jumped in and started loading up and you know, luckily I was late to the game so I didn't have to try and fail at something. I just got to get something that works right away and we ran with it. It wasn't too far after that I got asked to be on partner advisory council and that was a real critical part of the journey to start getting in a relationship with other MSPs. Since that time my business has doubled and bottom line is quadruple. This stuff really is good business to double down on people and love people well.
Speaker 3:Number one. We're so happy for you because that's what we want to see happen to all of our partners Double, triple, quadruple, if that's what they're looking for. And the other thing, too. We really appreciate your input, boyd. We need to hear from our partners that this is working or this isn't working, and we want more of this and we want less of this, and you've been a great advocate for that. So let's go back to your early days again of your MSP. You were operating during sort of the Great Recession, right? I mean, how did you navigate and challenge the economic downturn?
Speaker 1:It took everything I had. I mean, looking back on it. I opened my doors in 2007. By the end of 2008, the Great Recession hit northern Indiana really hard that one out of four people in my neighborhood had no work at all. Fear ruled the day. Four people in my neighborhood had no work at all. Fear ruled the day and I had to.
Speaker 1:The way I got through those days is I just decided I was not going to be afraid and I had to really discipline myself. I had to shut off the news because there wasn't anything good on it. You know, I depended on my friends, I depended on my faith and I drained out my savings to get through pay for my early rounds mistakes and it would just shoot through sheer grit and determination. I was just too stupid to quit. We were going to see this through and see this through the other side, and survival is a wonderful defense mechanism. Survival is a wonderful motivator, right, I mean the early.
Speaker 1:Oh, chris, I could write a book about the mistakes that I made in the early days of the business. I didn't know how to interview people. I didn't know how to hire people. My HR management was horrible, where, on the other hand, in sales I've always done well, but that's a high integrity exchange that if I deliver what I say, you're going to deliver and you pay me. Business sales is this high integrity, high trust game. That is not the game of early employment, especially when you don't have much money to pay people. It's the game today, but it didn't start that way.
Speaker 3:I love that term grit too, boyd because I think it's about, and I'd say it's a Midwest thing, but I see tons and tons of business owners and entrepreneurs have this grit mentality of just figure it out. Whatever it's going to take, I'm going to continue to push on and, you know, almost like the Titanic, I'm going to go down there with the ship if I have to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that'll get you to a certain point, right, but the real trick is not getting the business up and running. The real trick is sustaining it. Okay, how are you going to do this for five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years? That's the hard part. You know everybody focuses on startup. You know, congratulations, you started a business. Now the hard part begins and nobody really talks about that. You know, everybody's always talking about startup or. You know we always look to the wrong sources of inspiration.
Speaker 1:If I ever hear about another business book from a billionaire that's so far out the outside of the bell curve that their experience is real, they're, they're great, you know, but they are so far out of the bell curve that their experience is real. They're, they're great, you know, but they are so far out of the bell curve. They're either so smart or so lucky, or a one-time event, or you know, whatever the case is, you could study them all day long and there's nothing that Elon Musk does that I can apply to my life. That's sustainable and duplicatable. Where, if I, you know, back down and I say, okay, what do people at the 95th percentile do? You know, this is where the business transformation events really help.
Speaker 1:Okay, you know people that are playing a high game, that 95th percentile, you know kind of cut that 1% out. Now, all of a sudden it's a totally different game. Now there's stuff that I can learn, I can sustain, I can do, I can be in community with people to help figure this stuff out. I can serve them. It's a totally different game and those are some of the early lessons that I had to learn that you have to just kind of let go of so much. I mean, I can't stress enough how running and building a business is an ego crushing activity. You have to be willing to die to the ego if you're going to see this game through.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you went through some tough times with your first couple of clients as well. Some of those clients are still with you today. What was that like?
Speaker 1:I'm thankful. Just yesterday afternoon we're doing a big fiber backbone upgrade for that first managed services client. They're still a client today. I think that it wasn't because I was a trustworthy business We've got a culture of trust, that is really our super sauce but it was because they saw the potential and they knew. Obviously I'm going to pick on Rob here a little bit. He's still the president of that company and Rob trusted me with that network because somehow he knew that I wasn't going to come up short.
Speaker 1:You know, I was a new business. I didn't have a track record, I didn't have the team, I didn't have the systems. But in the early days it was people buying into me. And then as the business grew you have to grow, everything has to be beyond yourself as a business owner. Everything has to be all about the team and the systems and the processes and the business. But early on, to get to that first half million in sales or whatever the market is, people are buying you. But later on it's not about you, it's about the business. That's been built.
Speaker 3:That's right. How did those experiences shape your approach to financial management and growth going forward?
Speaker 1:Great question. Debt was never my friend. My testimony about debt in the early days of the business is it allowed me to make bigger mistakes and carry them further, because debt spends just like real money until the bill comes due. And so you know I never got into debilitating debt. I never had trouble making payments. I've always run a fiscally sound house, but debt was not my friend.
Speaker 1:You have to solve business problems as you go and I've noticed that a lot of small business people they think their business is running really good but then if you account for the debt it is not running really good. You know, even when I see the benchmarking that Enable has people in peer groups go through it's like you know there can be some really good benchmarks but then you don't know what the debt load is and you put that debt load in there. You know those benchmarks aren't really good because you can make any numbers look anywhere. If you get to hide, you know something somewhere else and that's what data is.
Speaker 1:So early on I came across one of my mentors from afar was Dave Ramsey and his entre leadership program. That's been a business community that I've been part of for over a decade now and about five years into the business. You know, I spent a week with him and his senior leadership team at one of their events in Texas and to get to know them, I actually ramped up and ran a half marathon. I ran from three to 13 miles inside of four weeks and I've kept that up since. But that kind of inspiration right. And so today technology is completely debt-free business, real estate and everything. Being a debt-free business is rare. The cashflow is different for a debt-free business, but you've seen my benchmarks. The business speaks for itself and other people have. I'd say that being a debt-free business is definitely one of the main things, that discipline is one of the main things, that we're a top 20% MSP according to the enabled benchmarks.
Speaker 3:You know. One of the things that has impressed me so much about you is your financial knowledge. Like most IT guys that start a business don't have this sort of business work ethic and you've really built that over the years. I've been really, really impressed with number one how you run your business by the numbers. You know. You joined the benchmark just to make sure that you could compare yourself against others, but you knew what your numbers were. You knew when to hire, when to make changes.
Speaker 1:Surprised that somebody actually knew their numbers before sitting at the benchmark. That's right, yeah.
Speaker 3:From our experience yes, it was a rare thing. But you guys have grown pretty significantly over the years here and I guess my follow-up question to that is what strategies or decisions did you think were crucial during that growth spurt, especially in the competitive MSP space?
Speaker 1:So there's three big decisions that fueled our growth. One we already talked about, which was the financial commitment to run in a good business and the discipline to run in a deafery business. Two was the strategy, and the strategy is anything that is not directly customer facing. There's probably somebody else out there that can do it better, you know. So that's where Enable comes in. Enable helps me grow my capability and capacity. It's why we outsource our firewall management. It's why I've got a 24-7 knock that looks after our endpoints. So if it's not directly customer facing, I source with other businesses. I've got a great outsourced accounting and billing team. You know they work out of Clearwater Florida. I've prospered working with them. But anything that is customer facing we keep in-house. So that's a key strategy there to make sure to know what do you do in-house, what's the value you bring in-house and what can you hire somebody else to do as good as or better, to give you other capability.
Speaker 1:And then all of that is based on our culture of trust, and we've actually codified the culture of trust. We actually train on that. We talk on this in every sales call. We talk on this on every hire. We talk about this. This is our troubleshooting checklist. You know this is how we deal with our vendors. It's understanding what goes into being trustworthy in a day. Let's face it, these are times of low trust. Right, people are mismanaging trust. Left and right, people are dividing and conquering Everybody's hungry for trustworthy people and it just seems like we live in untrustworthy times. So if you can show up as trustworthy in that kind of background as untrustworthy times, that is a legitimate competitive advantage.
Speaker 3:That's awesome, boyd. So you mentioned that you were sort of late to the game in your transition to, maybe, managed services. How did you transition this and what were the changes you had to make to really bring this model into the fold for you?
Speaker 1:Well, first it was offering it. You know, building the systems, building the team, having to write people on the bus, and then the early customers. We were able to transition the block hours over. That at least I was not late to the recurring revenue game, you know. But we bucketed it different. You know there's customers that used to buy 25 hours a month of block hours that maybe today they only buy five hours a month of block hours and then the rest of that spend went over to managed services. So that's a huge help there. And then, of course, we don't do anything now that's not on managed services. We will not service any customer that's not on a managed services contract, because that's the commitment we need to keep healthy things healthy, give every customer appropriate level of security and make sure things are backed up. And if customers don't want to take care of the basics and execute on the basics, well, you just can't serve them. They have to be able to make those basic commitments if you're going to bring them on as a customer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're taking on a ton of risk too when you take on a customer, and so the beauty of managed services is you can go in and say you know, these are the things that we need to do to right your ship, and then, by the way, you're going to see things run so much more smoothly and we're going to ensure that they continue to run smoothly. When you do that break fix model, the wheels fall off all day long and you can't predict when they're going to fall off. Yeah, you're right, it's a tough pill for new customers to swallow. This idea of. Well, I'm going to pay you every month, whether I think I need you or not, into this. You're paying for uptime, right? You're paying for us to keep you online and safe, and, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're paying for reliability, that's right. You're paying for capability and reliability. Yeah, capability and reliability. You can't. Yeah, the old days. I'm still amazed. You know, occasionally, like you know, last last week, I was on a sales call and, like you know, this customer had some people working out of their garage doing IT stuff on a side basis. You know they were looking for a more consistent product and I'm I'm still amazed that I will go on sales calls and still see customers doing things like we did it seven, eight years ago. That's a long time ago in IT.
Speaker 3:You know what I've seen and this is probably for another podcast, but I've seen MSPs go backwards as a way to attempt to differentiate themselves. Well, everybody else is selling this reoccurring model, but we're not going to do this, we're going to only and it's really like is that how you want to run your business? And to me it's not, but to some it is, and so it's a. It's an interesting conundrum, that that we've created for ourselves, but I'm glad to see that you, you saw the light even early on in the in the MRR model, because MRR is is King, right, it's a gift that keeps on giving.
Speaker 1:Until I got to MRR. I was just trying to outrace my expenses. Well, that's a horrible business model, so let's try and outrace our expenses and keep up with everybody's needs. That may or may not come and you don't have any way to judge the quantity or quality of the request and you have to have a structure to take care of.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so when you grew your business by the way, speaking of taking care of people as you grew naturally you needed to hire some more people, and you're not a huge team, but you are a very, very solid team. You've hired the right people, but you struggled at first, didn't you? As?
Speaker 1:a boss. Yes, I did.
Speaker 3:You talk a little bit about those sort of early hiring, some of those mistakes you made.
Speaker 1:There's so many of them, there's, there's, so, there's so many. So the the first thing that I did was I made the mistake of hiring people from my church community and I'm still part of a great church, still part of the same church community. But you know something that that was, that was, that was a horrible, horrible decision, because I wasn't a very good boss, they weren't very good employees and I went through a number of people early on and in those days that money really mattered. You know, I didn't have very many, I didn't have very many bullets in my shotgun going hunting, right, you know, I mean you know so every, every round you expended, you know every. You know that that hurt, right, you know, and eventually you end up empty. So so I got beyond that.
Speaker 1:Then I started it was really Entree leadership to really help me dial in the hiring process that I used to hire people based on community relationships and recommendations, and now I don't hire somebody until they've been through five or six interviews. The first interview is just a get to know you conversation. The second interview just to see if there's a conversation we have. The second interview then is more of a traditional job interview. Then we put people through one or two personality tests you know, disk profiles or working genius profiles. Then, based on that, we come back, we have a team interview and then, finally, if a person has somebody significant in their life, it's a social dinner with my wife and I you know, my wife doesn't work in the business but just to just to see, okay, do we all like each other? Cause you know my, my plan, and in in the early days, in the, in the in the early days, I didn't have much money, you know, and so better people deserve to get paid, and so one of the things that I love to be able to do is pay my people well and have profit sharing and, you know, take care of all that stuff. And in the early days I just didn't have the cashflow to do it, so we just had to make, do so, and you know, now we've got strong, very strong employee retention, we've got a really great team and we've learned how to figure out what kind of path somebody's walking on before we ask them to join up with their path. So it's my job to know my path as a business owner, it's my job to know the courses I'm piloting in this plane, right, you know. But I have to figure out what course is somebody doing? If we're not on parallel courses, if they're flying over here and I want to fly this direction, we can't hire that person. You know, selfishness will kill a team.
Speaker 1:The number one thing that I look for in a job interview is selfishness. We all have our self-interest. I'm not worried about that. My job is to take care of my employees' self-interest. I mean, we all have families to take care of, we all need to get paid, we all need to have a great work environment. We all need that. That's my job is hopefully a good employer to show up and create that culture. But I can't have selfish people that I'm serving because they will destroy a team, and I've had some real selfish people over the years.
Speaker 1:One of the things that just right before I came across Enable I had a technician that was so selfish that he thought, hey, I'm going to be a business genius here. I'm going to negotiate a deal working for one of my customers and I'm going to take what they're paying in technology along with my own pay and I'm going to be a business genius. Look at this raise that I got and then had it out the door and left a poison pill behind. I mean that was horrible. And then, and then you know he executed on that while I was out of state doing an install, because I didn't want to take. This was years ago, you know, but I didn't want to take him away from his young kids. You know I was trying, you know I you don't want me doing your install, but you know, if you tell me what to do, I can go ahead and do it. I'm not a tech, but you know it was a. It was a job that I could, you know, be a boots on the ground for anyway.
Speaker 1:And and to have people do stuff like that to you, that's what you sign up for as a business owner. You want to love everybody. You want to be trustworthy. You want people to be trustworthy with you. But along the way there's going to be people, there's going to be people that screw you along the way and we all have those wounds. And in the way that I can tell a real business owner from somebody that's a wannabe business owner, or somebody that's actually played the game from somebody that doesn't want to play the game is, I'll look them in the eye and I'll say tell me about the first time you paid $10,000 or more for somebody else's mistake. That's where it was.
Speaker 1:As a good employee, as an account manager, I was used to taking care of my own mistakes. If you're a business owner, if you're going to take care of having a team, if you're going to love people, well, you are signing up to make everybody's mistakes right to the extent you can make it right to maintain trust. Whether it's an employee's mistake, customers that wasn't able to pay you, a vendor that failed, you know, maybe maybe somebody had some trouble with some logins or something like that, you know it doesn't matter where the failure is. You need to make that right as a business owner to maintain trust, and sometimes that costs money. A business owner and they attain trust and sometimes that costs money and those were very harsh lessons in the early days because I couldn't imagine purposely experienced somebody. But other people do it as a day-to-day way of life.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah. And, by the way, I know like you're just a good guy and obviously you're part of some great communities. You have a religious community, Like you're part of some great and like you have a religious community like you, you you're part of some great and like sections of of the of the population, and trust is so important and trust has always been so important. You talk about the pillars of trust and and how important those are to your business. You've already give us some, given us a couple examples, but talk about why the pillars of trust are just so critical to the, to critical to your MSP, and really how those affect client relationships.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. Well, let's step through them. So we've got six pillars of trust that we train on. So the first pillar of trust is mutual concern. You know you got to care about the other person's needs as equivalent to your own. You know if you don't care about the other person, you shouldn't be doing anything. You won't do anything to serve them. You know if you don't care about the other person, you shouldn't be doing anything. You won't do anything to serve them. You know that's that selfishness we talked about.
Speaker 1:Second pillar of trust is personal value. Do you care about who people are or you just care about what they can do for you? You know so, showing genuine interest in their family, in them as a person. You know hobbies, what are they trying to get? You know seeing the movies and the other person's head. You know understanding their perspective.
Speaker 1:The third pillar of trust is integrity. You know the words and actions matching up, and I'll give you a long list of people that I consider to be high integrity I don't trust. There's a lot of people out there with high integrity that I don't trust. You know and I think integrity is where people really get off the rails that you know a lot of vendors will focus on integrity, you know, and everybody will jam integrity through. Great, you know. So you said you did what you said you're going to do. That doesn't mean you're trustworthy, you know.
Speaker 1:Next pillar of trust, then, is capability. Does somebody have the necessary skill? You know I'm not capable. If you want to hire me run your thousand PC network, I don't have that capability, not capable. If you want to hire me run your thousand PC network, I don't have that capability. You can't trust me for that. I will do an excellent job running your hundred PC network and we'll do that all day long. And plus, tell them please share that with all your friends. You know we'll, we'll take care of them too. You know we are very capable in that space.
Speaker 1:And then the next thing beyond capability, which is the necessary skill, is capacity. Does somebody have the necessary resources? Do you have the time? Do you have the bench? Do you have the money? Do you have? You know whatever, whatever is needed, you know to make sure you have the capacity to carry that out, that there's a lot of people, especially in the business world. You know that. You know we're dealing with extremely capable people, even you know that self-employed person we were talking about that we might run into at a conference. They are extremely capable, but unless you build out a team, unless you build out systems, unless you have, unless you build a business around it, your capability will, your capacity is going to give out way before your capability ever does. And that's, and that's what enable really brings to me is capacity and capability.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, reliability. You know, do you keep your promises over time? And then, personally, I underpin all that with a healthy dose of grace, because somewhere along so long in the way, it's going to get messed up. It doesn't always go right all the time, and so you got to budget for that $10,000 mistake. You got to leave some grace that we're dealing with humans, we're dealing with imperfect situations. There are things that could go wrong and blow a crap load of trust. They're completely outside of your control and you just have to do these other things day in, day out, week in, week out, year in, year out, to make sure that that bank of trust is built up to survive that tough day, because everybody's gonna have a tough day eventually.
Speaker 3:That's super powerful boy. Thank you so much for sharing that. I always love when you you get really passionate about that and I know it's important to you and it's important to your business as well. So thank you.
Speaker 1:And that helps us. That helps us with everything in the business. So you know if we're deciding what product to bring in, you know we run it through the list. If there's something going on squirrelly with a client, we run it through a list. If there's something squirrelly going on among the team, we run it through the list. This is our troubleshooting decision-making checklist, and codifying trust is one of the big things that it is. I'd say that's the number one thing that we did add the most recent extra million in revenue.
Speaker 3:That's awesome, man. So you, speaking of adding revenue, you still play a really key part, a key role, in sales. Why have you chosen to maintain that hands-on approach and how has that benefited your business?
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh gosh, it's because I like it. I mean, honestly, it's the only thing that I do. That's an employee of the business. I mean I've got a great service manager that runs the day to day. I've got great. I guess I guess I made a living long enough.
Speaker 1:I go in that category. Instead of doing that we play money ball that I've got a customer success person. It's also my personal assistant, helps out with the renewals, the price increases, taking care of that. You got a marketing guy on staff that takes care of a lead generation and helps out with that, and then basically they bring me in to I just deal with the new stuff and broken stuff. Then basically they bring me in to I just deal with the new stuff and broken stuff. So if it's a crazy client situation, I'll come in and I'll fix it.
Speaker 1:And then nowadays it's not like the old days that it was a blue ocean out there that everybody was getting an MSP for the first time. There's still plenty of business like that, but a lot of the businesses we're getting is somebody some other MSP screwed up. You know, somebody broke trust or or some internal IT guy quit and it's just that I found that the best customers were earning in the last you know, 18 months or so. It's been breakdowns of trust. And you know, by by making myself a student of trust and genuinely believing that this is the way to take care of people, in my heart of hearts, you know, I kind of feel like a trust doctor.
Speaker 1:You know I going in there and figuring out, okay, where was trust broken, how can we heal this up? And you know I I feel like I'm half counselor in in most sales situations anymore. And and and just to know, you know there's, there's a lot of hurting people out there that are really good people but they've been beat up and damaged along the way. And and you know, if we can come in and help make them whole through giving them world class IT services and helping them be relevant and having them free from fear, that's that's worth showing up to work. And I don't have to replace myself in that role quite yet, that that that day's coming. So you know some someday I'll meet some young kid that will replace me in that, but you know, for for now, I don't mind doing it.
Speaker 3:I still suspect you'll still be involved, even if it's at the very beginning or the very end to, because I think you said it earlier, right, like they're most of your partners, most of your customers are buying a piece of you. Right, they look and they go. You know, boyd, this guy, I, I trust him and I trust that his team are the ones that are going to be able to deliver what they say they're going to deliver, and not to say that a salesperson couldn't do that. But it's something about like this is your blood, right, like this is your soul. You know that that built this company and and when you say you're going to do something, you're, you're going to do something. So I think it's, I think it's important that that you, as the owner, always have your your finger on the pulse and continue to even handshake Hello, I want to. I'm going to hand you over to somebody, but you're going to always want to probably be involved.
Speaker 1:Oh, a hundred percent. And in the early days people were buying me, you know. So the first million it was all about me. You know the second million it was all about and, and that's a really really good feeling and, and and. The millions after that are going to be all because the team. That and the millions after that are going to be all because of the team. That doesn't help. Hopefully my team keeps me around and they enjoy having me. But yeah, but it's not. Yeah, but in the early days it definitely is about the owner. But you got to. It'll only take you so far.
Speaker 3:So you mentioned business transformation earlier. That's obviously how you and I got to know each other through a couple of the programs that Robert and I were running a couple of years ago, and I think you've been to just about all of them so far. There's one more I'm going to get you to. We're going to do that at the end of the year. Yep, talk a little bit about. Can you elaborate a little bit about how that impacted you and maybe your approach to sort of growth and sales?
Speaker 1:Oh for sure, Business transformation in general. So the thing, the big missing part of the business, if I look back, you know, five years ago, compared to today, is community. I was not running in community with other MSPs. I was running in good business community. I was running in good local community, but I was not running in community with other people that do what I do. So the business transformation events and how you guys curate that group you didn't just let anybody come into the group and you guys do a good job of you know trying to join the right people, right people together. That that unlocked tremendous things to be able to talk shop with people that do the same thing that I do in non-competitive markets. That you know it's really iron, sharpening iron. You know that old, that old saying that, that, that, that was really really good. And then the specific knowledge, the business security there are products you guys introduced me to that are part of our portfolio today.
Speaker 1:And to be able to have those conversations, cultures more clearly, be able to have the much richer conversation around cyber insurance, you know being able to, you know, tell customers. You know, okay, if you have this policy, this is how this is going to work and on your worst day we will be not able to help you until this instant command team comes in. And this instant response team is going to come in and they are paid for by an insurance company. They are not on my team, I'm not so sure they're on your team either. And then once the judge and jury of the instant response team, you know, does their deal, then we can all get to work. That's what you're signing up for when you buy cyber insurance. And oh, by the way, to take care of this, you know here's all the stuff you have to buy to be compliant with it. You know that's a very rich conversation. That's a hard conversation for a rookie. You know brand new sales kid to have, you know with another business owner and you know because the risk management and you know how does all that work. So that's just one example of it.
Speaker 1:You know the most recent one or I'm sorry it wasn't the most recent one, but it's all. You know there was a, there was a revenue growth one and just being able to hear from other people on the team that you know we completely changed up how we do our workstation replacements, that we used to do that as hourly professional services and by exchanging notes with somebody else in the room, I just kind of borrowed their homework and now we've got a here's the checklist and here's the flat rate, and then adding another tool to it and just taking the friction out of the most mundane old. I mean it's the most basic thing in IT is lifecycle management. You just got to replace the old machine. There's nothing sexy about it. You just got to go do the work and make it as easy for everybody involved, from the customer to the technician installing it. And so we were able to pick up some ideas there and just Dell's shipping them in by the palatable. So you guys aren't on Dell's team, but they're happy for the work that you did.
Speaker 3:Great yeah. Number one I loved having you at these. You've always been such a huge advocate for us because you found value. In the first two-day session that you joined, you were like let me know as soon as a new one comes out, and so I really appreciate it. I'm glad you've been able to take away a bunch of these strategical nuggets.
Speaker 1:Strategical. I like that, yeah, strategical.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I make new words up as we go on the podcast, so in Prague, you were making up some new words too. I'm sure I was so. So. So, boy, what are your? What are the plans for the future of technology?
Speaker 1:Yeah, keep doing what we're doing. We want to be an ever more trustworthy company. So you know. So if you look me up about three years from now, you're just going to see as bigger and better what we're doing. Medium term plans I realized I won't be technology's last president.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to be the last guy that runs technology. So I'm going to develop somebody else to be able to run the company someday. You know, coach the right person up, bring them in, and then you know after that, you know, maybe, you know I've, I've, I've got time, you know I just now got good at it. So it's a lot of fun. I want to go to work every day still, but you know, and then you know after, after I raise up somebody else to completely run the business every day and I'm just, you know, in the background as a business owner, maybe. Maybe then at that point you know, you know one of the other. I won't have to do that because I've got a business that runs without me and you know I'll just continue to take care of a leadership team that takes care of my customers, and you know. But you know that's that's, that's the near term and long-term plans for technology.
Speaker 3:Right, that's awesome and, and just out of curious, what, what, how do you define success at your, at your MSP and like, are there any milestones that you're that you've been really proud of?
Speaker 1:Customer retention. I mean customer retention. You know we only lose like one customer a year. You know I can honestly look you in the eye and say that. You know, if I look at, we have 95% customer retention at a five-year mark. And so just just taking care of that, I mean sometimes things go wrong. You're not always dealing with trustworthy people, sometimes things just go off the rails. But you know, for the most part is that customer retention is the success. Employee retention is another success that you know.
Speaker 1:I want to keep my team, I want to see them grow. You know, making sure that you know what you want to know, what keeps me up at night. I'm the old guy at technology and I've got these young guys. Got these young guys. You know 25 to 35, you know mid twenties to mid thirties no-transcript cause they're like, you know, I've got a ton of stuff going on. It stuff's working. Forgive me, we just don't need to talk to you right now. That's success, right, it's now. Eventually they got to book the appointment because we got to attend to some stuff. But when, when, when customers put I mean, what a great compliment would customers put you off because they got real problems to solve and and their tech stuff is just running. That's that's a compliment, isn't it? So that's, that's not an offense. That's, that's a compliment.
Speaker 3:That's really good, and I know you're I mean, I know both your customers and your employees appreciate that you are kept up at night thinking about them. So I can't wait to the point when you can sleep a little easier and you aren't thinking about them, because it runs by itself and I'm sure it won't be too, too long.
Speaker 1:Chris, if you don't love people, you shouldn't play this game. That's right. I mean, if you don't love people, there's no helping you, there's no helping you. So if you don't love people, there's no helping you, there's no helping you, you know. So if you're in business to make money, please quit. You know, you know the money will take care of itself. If you serve people well, you know you don't have to worry about a thing. You know take care of other people and you'll be cared for just fine.
Speaker 3:All right, I, I, I love asking this question to everybody. It's this is the now podcast void, and so I'd love to know when did you know? Now, that's it.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say the benchmark. You know when, when I opened up my, when I opened up my business to people that knew the industry and knew that and didn't have a vested interest in giving me a pat on the back or you know, you know whatever, whenever I benchmarked and you know, and the evidence, the judge ruled that the evidence was good and you know, you're, you're, you're doing a good job to that level that that was a moment for me, that was the most recent moment to know that, that that really put me in the myself, to know that you were doing the right things and carry on, keep doing them.
Speaker 3:That's awesome, Boyd, and I'm so glad that you knew you were doing a good job. But getting that assurance and the other part of that too, is the vulnerability you show right, Like your numbers are with everybody else's numbers Now, they don't know who you are, but someone can go hey, an MSP that's the same range of mine that's doing really, really well. Like that's pretty powerful to be able to share that information, and I love that you acknowledge that as a recent turning point for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, in the early days, if you want to go back. You know, in the early early days, you know those early struggles. You know where we're going to make it, what was going through. I was convinced that. You know, people in the Kiwanis club were taking bets to see if this young kid was going to make it through. And now, but you know, in the middle of that, you know, when Google was launching their Google workspace they call it Google apps for business Back in the day, somehow the Google community found me and they sent a film crew out to our place and I got featured in a Google commercial. Is that it? I don't think they care about small businesses anymore, but at the time they did, and so that that was an early validation too. It's like, okay, well, if Google's coming to visit, you know, I'm happy to see you know, carry on.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, and you and I have become good friends over the years, not just vendor partner. It's been really good to get to know you. Boyd, I can't thank you enough for being part of the pod this week. I wish you, and will continue to wish you and the team, the absolute best of luck in the future. No-transcript.