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
Small Town Growth: Brad Walser on Building Walser Technology Group
In this episode of Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success, we sit down with Brad Walser, the founder and CEO of Walser Technology Group, to uncover the remarkable journey of growing a successful Managed Service Provider (MSP) in the heart of small-town Salisbury, North Carolina. With over 20 years of experience, Brad shares his insights on how he transformed a side hustle into a thriving IT business, all while navigating the unique challenges of a rural market.
Brad’s story is a masterclass in strategic growth, resilience, and the power of a customer-first approach. From his early days in the energy sector to building an MSP that prioritizes happy customers and sustainable revenue, Brad reveals the key decisions that fueled his company's steady expansion. He discusses the importance of company culture in attracting and retaining top talent, even in a small town, and why sticking to core values has been crucial to his long-term success.
This episode is packed with actionable advice for MSP owners and employees looking to scale their businesses, improve customer satisfaction, and create a lasting impact in the IT industry. Whether you’re a seasoned IT professional or just starting out, Brad’s experience and wisdom will inspire you to think differently about growth and success in the MSP space.
Tune in to learn how a small-town MSP can compete with the big players, why culture is the backbone of any successful business, and what it takes to achieve steady, sustainable growth in today’s competitive IT landscape.c
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.
One, two, three, four. I want to know that all of my employees understand there are only two corporate goals of Wall Street Technology Group Happy customers and billing adequate revenue. Maximum revenue sometimes offsets that number one priority of a happy customer. So if I can keep a customer happy and we know we're billing adequate revenue to make sure that our lights are staying on, we can give raises, we can buy new tools, new products. That's what I'm looking for. Welcome to Now. That's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Now, that's it. Stories of.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2:It is today. Brad Walzer, welcome to the Now that's it podcast.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, chris Massey. I'm happy to be here, so a little bit about you, introduce everybody.
Speaker 2:Your tech journey began as an analyst at Carolina Power Light. Later you became director of infrastructure at CERC Reliability Corp, overseeing energy regulation in the Southeast. You have expertise in tech architecture, secure solutions, project management and more. You've led Walser technology group for 20 plus years now and you love aiming to enrich local communities with your msp. You're located in historic downtown salisbury, north carolina. My research of salisbury shows that it's known for its historic preservation five local historic districts and 10 national register historic districts but it's also the home of cheer wine. That is correct, chris home of cheer wine. If you are a barbecuer and don't know cheer wine, you are not doing yourself justice. Just have some cheer wine shipped in like. If you're not from the south, you probably haven't heard, experienced cheer wine.
Speaker 1:It is delicious well, we actually have our annual cheer wine festival coming up this weekend. They bring live music all day and 80 to 100,000 people into our town.
Speaker 2:I love it Very good. So, speaking of Salisbury, you've made a nice home and business for yourself there. That was very intentional. Why was that?
Speaker 1:Well, I'll say it was intentional, but I'll say it happened a little bit by accident. I grew up in Salisbury, born and raised in Rowan County, rowan County native. My wife is as well, and you know, growing up in a small town you think to yourself there's got to be more to life, there's got to be a lot more outside the confounds of this town, and always told myself I want to go experience big city life. Out of high school went to Appalachian State University. My wife and I both went up there. I was an information systems graduate, which was kind of a last minute change for me, with my advisor. I was a business management major until my fourth year and after Boone I loved it at App State.
Speaker 1:I ended up in Raleigh and so right here where you guys are at your Enable headquarters. But here in Raleigh I worked for a large energy company that you just mentioned, carolina Power and Light. But I was one of thousands on that IT team, and one of thousands is a good thing and a bad thing depending on which side of the fence you want to look at. But it gave me some great experience. I was able to really help support all of the power plants in North and South Carolina but I worked on what was called the FOSSGen team Kind of a weird name, but fossil generation FOSSGen just meant anything non-nuclear, so if it was a non-nuclear plant it was done by coal or hydro and it was a FOSSGen plant. I was on the Fosgen side of the support house and I got assigned to I think it was six power companies within or power generation plants in North and South Carolina and so every time we needed updates or I was on the road I can even remember the days of the Melissa virus I was working for Carolina Power and Light had to go touch every one of the machines across these power plants got a call on Saturday that I needed to be on the road and literally was on the road that weekend looking at all of our assets. So Raleigh was great.
Speaker 1:I loved the experience and had a girlfriend at the time now wife, but girlfriend was living in Salisbury and I talked to my management team and said I'd really like to see we're opening a power plant in Salisbury, in Rowan County, can that be one of my power plants? And they said, sure, we'll assign you that plant, but I can't necessarily base you there. I still need you based out of Raleigh so at least it got me home on some weekends. I could do Friday visits to the plant. And my manager at the time came to me and said well, I've got this super secret project and we don't know a lot about it, but it's going to be in the Charlotte area and they're taking applicants to people that can come help this start this new company. But he's like I don't know a whole lot as a manager. All I can tell you is I'm happy to put your name in the hat. So I put my name in the hat with a few hundred other people to go start this new company and I was hired onto this new company as employee number two.
Speaker 1:That company was called GridSouth Transco. Gridsouth Transco was for the deregulation of the energy market in the southeastern US. I got some great exposure at that new company. We spent $90 million starting a new company. It was formed by three large energy companies South Carolina Energy and Gas, duke Energy, carolina Power and Light, which was at that time Progress Energy, had a recent merger with Florida, so, going on to that project, it was an Accenture run project. I was managing projects with Accenture and then IT was being run by IBM Global Services. I was one of four guys on the IT team and we all were really doing a lot of project management, contract review, vendor management and designing this completely redundant system. It put a 90,000 square foot facility together in Fort Mill, south Carolina. We were building this facility to take functional control of all transmission assets trillions of dollars of assets in North and South Carolina and a few years after starting down that road they decided guess what? We're not going to deregulate power in the Southeast. We shut the doors to the facility.
Speaker 1:I had already moved to South Charlotte Ballantyne area and decided you know what? I don't want to move back to Raleigh, I don't want to go back to my home company. I'm going to do some consulting. I had a regulatory company that had come to us as part of that GridSouth team. They asked us for a little bit of help. They said, hey, we're going to design this new compliance system. We're getting all these data points from all these energy companies in the southeastern US and we need a better way to do it than spreadsheets and just emailing things around. So I wrote them a proposal. I got accepted.
Speaker 1:I started doing some consulting for that company. I think there were 13 people. They were based out of Birmingham, alabama, and I started as an independent consultant in the world of IT, had some great experience from that project of starting a new company. I had some great enterprise experience of working on an IT team with thousands supporting all these energy companies and our energy plants, and so a six-month contract turned into a six-month contract and then a one-year contract. I did a lot of work within that industry for that company for over 18 of my 20-year career and it was a lot of fun at the time. When it's a 15-person company, you have a lot of say in what goes on. You get a lot of input into meeting with the board of directors, meeting with the executive team. We moved them out of Birmingham to Charlotte. We went to three different offices in Charlotte. Now they're up over about 140 employees. As much as I enjoyed that experience, I am very happy to say I am out of that big enterprise world. In parallel of doing a lot of this energy consulting I've done for 18 of the 20 years I've run Walser Technology Group. I had Walser Technology Group on the side group. I had Walser Technology Group on the side.
Speaker 1:Well, I didn't get you back to this simple question of how do I get to Salisbury. You know I'm coming full circle here. When I started doing energy consulting, my wife was coming out of Ballantyne, driving to Lexington every day, and she looked at me and said, look, I'm going an hour and a half each way. You can live anywhere in the Southeastern US. Why don't we go back to Salisbury, our hometown? And at the time I was like, well, I've lived in Raleigh and it was fun, a lot of traffic, pretty expensive. Lived in South Charlotte. It was fun, kind of expensive, a lot of traffic. And I was like I guess we can go back to Salisbury. Sure, let's go find a house there. So we moved to Salisbury and I got to tell you, running a small business, raising a family, it's given me a great appreciation for living in a small town that I never had. Growing up in Salisbury, growing up in the small town, you just you want the bigger city life. But after living the bigger city life, it gives you that great appreciation for it.
Speaker 2:That's great. So at some point, right, you decided I'm going to take a loan out, right, and you took a loan out to start your own business. And you added an employee at some point, but you were still working for the regulatory company. So what was that like? You were wearing a bunch of hats, balancing a bunch of different roles, had a little bit of a side hustle. That was feeling more like a real business. What was that like to sort of wear all these different hats?
Speaker 1:Well, it was very interesting and that's a good way to put it, as all small business owners know, wearing lots of hats and I will say that we, for that regulatory company, built a very nice compliance regulatory system. And when we got to maybe the third president I worked for at that company, the third president came to me and said Brad, we've built such a great tool. I want you to go to all the other subregions in the US and sell them on our tool so we'll never have to learn their tool. And I looked at him and said OK, if that's what you want me to do. I said do you want me to make the calls? He said nope, I'm going to call all the other executives. All I said do you want me to make the calls? He said nope, I'm going to call all the other executives.
Speaker 1:All of North America was broken into eight sub-regions and we in the southeast were one of those sub-regions. Well, I went on the road and went and talked to every one of those sub-regions over the next few weeks. While it was a great experience and while I was on the road, I actually got six of the eight to sign up to use our system. So that started me going on the road and training them on our system, working with the development team we had chosen out of California, and I told my wife. I said look, I don't mind travel, but I don't know if I can do this long-term. I don't want to live out of a suitcase. And that's ultimately where I knew I wanted to start a business early in my career of doing this enterprise consulting. And well, I had something kind of fall in my lap where a customer I knew someone on a board that was asking me to give a proposal to a country club and this country club. We gave a proposal. We got it accepted. They were having a hard time finding qualified people to come put systems in and whenever I got that proposal I was still a one-person technology shop. So I part-time hired a person from college that I knew she came in to help. I also had someone's resume end up on my doorstep that weekend, so I hired that person for a quick job and we went. We delivered a great system and thought to myself well, this is what it's like doing small business. Now I'm focused back on energy consulting.
Speaker 1:And as we went down those roads I had a few more people in our town ask hey, are you going to start doing technology work? And my answer was no, I really am just doing a lot of consulting. Well, the person I hired part-time called me and said hey, I really want to come work for you. If you'll do this full time, I'm about to take a position that's going to put me in a non-compete. So if you think there's any chance you'll start a company in the next little bit, I'd love for you to go ahead and do it. If not, I'm going to take another job, but then I'm not going to be able to come work for you on this non-compete. So I talked to my wife that weekend. I had just gone through a leadership class, got to know someone with the center of our downtown, released a building, hired somebody part-time and Walser Technology Group was born.
Speaker 1:But yes, I took a $10,000 loan from my savings at that time to buy our first rack of equipment, went and bought a NAS back when NASs were a thing with Dell. It was a Dell server. Nas had an RV82 router. Back in the early days we even had some rev drives that we were backing up data to when the NAS was full and we got into doing some offsite storage as one of the very first services that we did for customers in our small town. But it was a personal loan of $10,000 and a need to want to get off the road and not have to travel so much. That really had me start Walser Technology Group.
Speaker 1:But the interesting part of Walser Technology Group is we have done some work as a service provider, but about 75% of my time has always been to some large national customers that deal with this regulatory compliance and, like I said, for one of them it was over 18 years. The other one was probably 12 years and go back about three years. Those customers are now phased out and I have a sole focus on SMB and it is refreshing, it is wonderful. I love the small customers that we slowly built in our market over that 20 year run at Walser Technology Group. The enterprise is great and again, I don't want to say anything bad about it, except when you're in an enterprise and you go in there to do managed services, it's really hard to get a team of 100 to adapt all of your policies and procedures.
Speaker 1:They're usually asking you to flex your policies and procedures and adapt theirs. And what I've learned when you're dealing in the space that we like to really play in, which is five to 25 employees. They really don't have policies and procedures. They want to adopt yours, they take your standards, they take the things as they come and it makes it so much easier to support, as you know, when you can have standardization on your tools, your products, your tech stack. So it's given me a great appreciation for the SMB world, as opposed to that enterprise world.
Speaker 2:That's neat, and you are. You're not alone. I've heard a lot of MSPs really love that, that target customer, and the fact that you'd been on the enterprise side and you know what it's like it gives you another level of appreciation to your point. That's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the budgets are a lot bigger, but the headaches are a lot more plentiful.
Speaker 2:So for those that don't know the area Salisbury's, outside of Charlotte which Charlotte's definitely grown quite a bit in the last several years, but you guys are still very rural. So what's really fueled the growth of the Walser Technology Group? I know you said it's sort of slow and steady, but how have you guys grown?
Speaker 1:Well, that's a very accurate statement. Over 20 years we've had slow, steady growth. I can remember back when I started the company. I had a part-time person that worked maybe three days a week and as we continued to grow a little bit, added a few more customers, we got that person to full-time. I then got my next person, who was an employee, that helped on the tech side, and then I really had a referral to somebody that could come in and help us do some office work. Because I'll tell you, as much as I love tech managing my files and folders, making sure the bills are paid, all of the quarterly taxes are withheld those are the kinds of things that wasn't so much fun for me. I love the tech, I love the relationships, but doing the back end office administration work was a bit of a burden. So I hired someone part-time for two days a week. I'm happy to say 17 years later she's still with the organization. She's a lot more than two days a week now, but she handles everything non-technical for our office and has been wonderful and probably 10 years ago, if not a little bit more.
Speaker 1:As you always look for talent, talent is one of the hardest things to find in this industry, someone who actually knows what maintenance services are, someone who knows and wants to learn about these tools and products, with the RMM tools from Enable, the, you know, cove, data protection, the, whatever it may be. Finding somebody who really enjoys learning these tools and being a sysadmin is hard. So 10, 12 years ago, while looking for someone to keep growing and adding to our staff, I found someone in Salisbury had a small break-fix IT shop and he only had a couple of commercial customers, was mainly dealing with residential and was able to talk to him about. You know what. I'd like to work for a larger team and he closed up shop, sold us over. His commercial customers came to work for us and so we did our first small acquisition about 12 years ago and that added some customers and, I'm happy to say, some of those. There were only a few commercial customers, but they're still customers today as well. I don't know if I mentioned that very first country club we did back when we started is still a customer of ours today, very proud of that fact that we like happy customers. That is one of our corporate goals that we'll, I'm sure, talk about a little bit later, but growth happens through me as just organic word of mouth, keeping happy customers, and we've acquired a firm 12 years ago and two years ago we acquired another firm.
Speaker 1:Same type thing happened. We had a large customer call us. I always ask why are you calling us? How did you hear about us? And during that conversation it was a pleasant back and forth. You know, you never know what you're going to hear about the previous IT company or IT person. Oh, they're terrible. They didn't know what they're doing. We got ransomware. They didn't understand security. They would never call us back, it just.
Speaker 1:You know you hear all sorts of things on why we're now at the table to have these conversations and the conversation was pretty pleasant. It was like, well, no, we love our IT guy, he's great, but we've grown exponentially the last five years. This is a large automotive dealer. They're opening their second branch and they said we've grown. Unfortunately, our IT company has not. And so when we can get him here, we love him, he's great to work with. But it can take weeks sometimes for him to come in and talk to us about projects and things we want to do and with that information we offloaded from that that customer, or offloaded from that IT company, brought our customer on board and I went and just asked my engineer hey, how's it been working with this other IT guy? Oh, he's been wonderful, he's great to work with.
Speaker 1:So, as I'm ready to hire another in person, I just was having one of those kind of think out of the box moments one evening. You know what, why don't I just call this other tea company owner and see if he wants to come work on a bigger team? It worked for me 12 years ago. Let's see if it works now. And so when I called him up, I said you know, hey, I'm not sure if you know who I am, but we're the ones that you just off-boarded your customer too. And I wanted to know if you want to come work on a larger team. We're getting ready to hire, you know, we have a lot of advantages we can offer employees. And he told me look, he said I know you don't know me well and I don't know you well, but we had a great, just open conversation and the gist of it is he was just like a lot of other business owners, 14 years into running this break-fix IT company, just starting to dabble in managed services, but not quite sure how to get his feet wet what to offer where the price points need to be.
Speaker 1:And he went on vacation with his family two young children, he and his wife on vacation at the beach. And the first day on vacation at the beach one of his customers got a SQL injection attack on their website and he worked all vacation trying to help remediate that, bring this customer back online, because he has a small IT shop. He appreciates his customers, they appreciate him. But he worked all vacation and he told me just point blank, as much as fun as it might be coming to work for you, I really I promise my wife I'm doing a career change. I'm selling my business to a friend. I am going to work for one of my largest companies that has been my customers and as much as I appreciate the call, I just don't think it's right for me and my family. And we just went on our merry way, had a great conversation, ended it with if anything changes, let me know In a few weeks.
Speaker 1:I got a call. He actually came in. We gave him a rundown of the shop, told him all about how we do things and he still stuck to. I think I'm going to have to just, you know, try this career change. And in another week we got a call that said hey, would you like to buy all my customers? Where I was going to sell my business is not quirk working out like I thought. I'm getting lots of terms and conditions, I'm locked out of working in IT for many years. And so he sent me all of his employees or not of his employees all of his customers. He sent me all of their numbers and he redacted all the names. And that weekend I put a proposal together, ran it through my attorney on Monday, got him a proposal he liked and we ended up buying another business. So two years ago we acquired about another 150 business customers from a neighboring town that had a 14-year break-fix IT company that was supporting them.
Speaker 2:Wow, had a 14-year break-fix IT company that was supporting them. Wow. So neither situation, neither of your M&A deals were you necessarily looking to expand that way, but it happened. Right, you were looking for that talent. I'm looking for talent, exactly. That's great. So let's stay on the talent topic for a second. Talk a little bit about how you do attract talent. I know it's been difficult, especially in rural Salisbury, but how do you attract talent when it isn't through acquisition? And, more importantly, how do you retain talent at Walsertag?
Speaker 1:That's a great question, chris, because I'm sure that's something every business owner has to put some time and energy into. Once you get them on board, how do you retain them? How do you keep them? So I will tell you many years back I used to look in about a one to one and a half hour radius of Salisbury and found some great people hired some great technicians and they would commute in over an hour each day and that unfortunately did not work out like I'd hoped it would. I think anyone, if they really look at their quality of life. If you can take a two hour drive out of your daily commute or out of your daily life and get that back in your life, then that's certainly something that everyone's interested in doing. So as much as I love some of those technicians, as much as they love the company unless I was willing to put them at a hundred percent remote, which is kind of hard when you're delivering projects, delivering servers I get that they had to end up resigning to go work for somewhere five minutes from their house, because who wouldn't want a five minute commute versus a two hour commute? So I had to rethink things and where we've always been very technical in the past, we've always had very technical proctored interviews because I was always hiring tech talent, tech talent, tech talent as important as that is.
Speaker 1:About seven years ago, we decided to define our culture at our company and the culture was a culmination of everyone in our conference room brainstorming what's important to them, who are the kind of people they want to work with, what do they want out of the company, what do we want out of our customers, and we brainstormed for a few hours. We put everything on the board and I took that data and came back and defined our culture as an organization. So now when we do interviews, we actually talk more about culture than we do tech talent. Now, tech can be taught. It's really hard to change people's underlying personalities. So hiring and firing and even holding each other accountable to our culture is something that we do at the organization and we're very proud of it, but it is the true core of what we do in interviews. Talk about culture. How do people relate to our culture, ask them for examples of the culture, and if they have the tech and they want to learn the tech, we can teach that. But, like I said, it's really hard to change people's personalities. So finding talent now we try to focus on local talent of people that fit our culture, that want to learn the tech piece. We are fortunate to have some great educational institutions in our local area, so we've worked some interns and that's worked well finding local talented people that fit our culture, that want to learn the technology piece.
Speaker 1:The other piece of the puzzle as a business owner how do you keep people within the company to keep looking elsewhere or not look elsewhere? And I am told every year by our insurance provider we pay 100% of health care benefits for our employees. We're one of the very few in our area that pay 100% of the health insurance. That's something that I feel important. Employees we're one of the very few in our area that pay 100% of the health insurance. That's something that I feel important about.
Speaker 1:We also do a 401k match. We reimburse them every month for their cell phones. We reimburse them for their training or certificates. If they feel like, for this job, function with us, they need this certification. So there are things we do to help retain talent. We do annual reviews with everyone. They have a lot of control as technicians over their destiny, of their salaries, which areas of the organization they want to move between, and I've found that getting them involved in that career path decision, as well as offering a lot of those benefits that help keep people put, helps us retain that talent at our organization.
Speaker 2:Really really good. I love hearing that, Brad. I love hearing you talk about culture. I think that's one of the differentiators with the MSP industry versus sort of that corporate world, because I worked in the corporate world as well and you punch a clock every day and you're doing however many hours you're putting in and you rarely build relationships with people when you're at this large conglomeration of a large organization. But when you work in an MSP it's a family Right, and if you have the right people there, you're not going to want somebody to work on their weekend. You're going to want to help help it out. So they can, you can. You can split the load and work the load. You talked a little bit about sort of company values and your initiatives load. You talked a little bit about sort of company values and your initiatives. Talk a little bit about what is important to you that sort of every employee has to buy into from a culture perspective or a company value perspective.
Speaker 1:Well, it's very important for everyone, like I said, to live the culture. We have what we call a celebration lunch. That happens one time a month, and one time a month we do an all hands on deck meeting where the whole company gets together and we celebrate anyone's birthday, maybe their work anniversary, maybe a recent certificate they've just got. We also do surveys. You know the net promoter scores. So as we send those back, we ask for feedback, constructive or positive, and we get a lot of attaboys. Oh my goodness, we get a lot and we share those. We actually will give all the attaboys that came in that month at the celebration lunch. So we can, all you know, pat the knock team on the back or pat the person on the back that just delivered that project. So it's important to us to make sure that we all live the culture, that we even I've offered some gift cards. If you can stand up and recite the eight culture items, we let them pull out of the gift card basket, and that's a standing challenge we have, and quite a few have taken it where they get them right and it's just one of those things that we reiterate every month. So living the culture is so important to us as a organization. But also there's two real corporate goals that we've had from day one and the corporate goals that we've had that are very important to me. I know that there's a lot of companies that have 20 corporate goals. They may have 30 corporate goals and I feel like, if it can't be something that you can just easily live, it's really hard to say that you understand the company values and company goals. So our culture is something that we talk about literally every month, really every day, within the organization.
Speaker 1:But the two corporate goals we have are pretty simple we like happy customers and we like billing adequate revenue, and I want to know that all of my employees understand there are only two corporate goals of Wall Street Technology Group happy customers and billing adequate revenue, and I use the word adequate very strategically. You, a lot of times, as a business owner, want to know you're getting maximum revenue. Maximum revenue sometimes offsets that number one priority of a happy customer. So if I can keep a customer happy and we know we're billing adequate revenue to make sure that our lights are staying on, we can give raises, we can buy new tools, new products. That's what I'm looking for and as we put people in the right positions to help make company-based decisions. I want to know that they're strategically thinking about are we keeping happy customers? Are we billing adequate revenue? So to me, they're two very simple things that have been the core of how we've started and grown Walser Technology Group all these years.
Speaker 2:Very good. So let's talk about those happy customers. You've been in business for 20 years. How have those customers sort of needs evolved? And then, consequently, how have your services evolved over the 20 years?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. I feel like we might be a little bit of an anomaly, chris, and we're a little bit of anomaly. We started, like most companies did, 20 years ago, as a break-fix organization or value added reseller selling Dell equipment, selling Dell switching and SonicWall routers and we're certainly the guys that can sell it to you. We come, put it in and then we walk away from it and just wait on a call the good old fashioned break break fix model. When it's broken we get a call and then hopefully it's not on a Friday afternoon where somebody's working a weekend or something of that nature. As things have shifted in our industry to where we can be a lot more proactive as opposed to reactive, we've tried to keep up to date with all of those and wrap services around them. Up to date with all of those and wrap services around them.
Speaker 1:The word managed service from many years back. I always heard that term early in my career like what the heck's a managed service? You know what is it. And again go back 20 years ago before the word managed service providers really was out, or managed security providers. It's out now. These words we use today were a new term, new terminology 20 years ago and as we started looking at, well, we're already doing some offsite backups and really we're using this special software. We're actually checking the logs, we're giving them the storage location for it. Technically this is a managed service. So back when we just did offsite data storage, we didn't realize that that's really an offsite backup service. As we're doing antivirus. Well, the early versions of antivirus would still tell you when it found a flag of some sort, where do those flags go? Who's actually looking at them? If it's a small company, they don't have anyone that understands how to read these flags coming in from the antivirus. So, hey, why don't we start monitoring those too? So our managed services evolved over the years to where, as we're doing things, you know, you're really just taking a piece of software, a little bit of labor and the know-how to make it run and wrapping it into a managed service. The know-how to make it run and wrapping it into a managed service.
Speaker 1:Now I'll say six years ago I had a service delivery manager at the time that was really following some all-in-seat price models and that all-in-seat price is something we tried. And I will say in our market, as we mentioned, it's a tertiary market, it's very relationship driven. I do work with you know five to 25 is our sweet spot of employees. But I work with you know 5 to 25 is our sweet spot of employees. But I work with some global manufacturers, some local manufacturers, with some doctors, dentists, some lawyers. It really doesn't matter if they have a need for technology. The application that runs their business is really just a widget to me. I'll work with their specifications, I'll figure out what kind of server they need. Or now, that widget is cloud-based but guess what? Nobody from that service will actually manage your router, set up your endpoints, secure your endpoints, things of that nature.
Speaker 1:So we tried an all-in-seat price model many years back. We floated it by a lot of our good customers that have been with us many years and we had a few people take us up on it many years. And we had a few people take us up on it and I will tell you that it was okay. But we now maybe have three or four still in that model that we are slowly phasing out. And what I learned during that time was that I like being very flexible and I don't want flexible to mean we support anything, we do anything, because I think it's very important for a business to define what is our specialty.
Speaker 1:What do we do when we have a tech stack? We like sticking to our technology stack, we like our standards, but there are a lot of differences in businesses like mine that work in a lot of different verticals. A veterinarian practice is so much different than a dental practice. One deals with HIPAA, one doesn't. Well, that's some changes that they need to do fundamentally on the backside, the car dealer has a very different network than the plastic surgeon and you know it's just by needs of the nature of their business.
Speaker 1:So we have some bundles and packages we built specifically for different industries and all of them start off with some of the just cyber hygiene basics. You know you need good patch management, management, no matter which industry you're in. You need good asset management which machines are on your network, how old are they? Are they under support? We also knew that you need a good antivirus or now a good EDR product, and so really just getting through those baselines. That's our bundle, one package. It doesn't matter which industry you're in.
Speaker 1:We have a bundle for your endpoint, because a lot of companies these days don't have server infrastructure. They have endpoint infrastructure. They may have a corporate office, but 50% of the people actually work from home offices or vacation homes or from the hotels. So it's different today, understanding and adapting. We've put so much more focus on endpoint management, endpoint security services than we would have many years ago. So it's just evolving with times and making sure that we can be flexible with organizations. To go back to that, to that all in seat price, we have phased ourselves out and are really looking at just having three different bundles.
Speaker 1:But once we talk about your endpoints, let's talk about your servers servers, if they exist. Let's talk about your network. Just about everyone has a network. Then let's talk about your support options and if you need consistent support, we have scheduled visits. See it's.
Speaker 1:I remember when we bought into enable many years ago, the RMM tool, and when we bought into it it's probably been 1516 years ago that we've been usingable. You look at how many technicians can this tool help replace. You don't have to roll a truck for everything, and that is a wonderful piece of the puzzle being able to do things remote. But I still have customers today that have been with us 12, 15 years that, like a technician showing up on a set schedule, they like knowing that, hey, I can build that relationship. I can give them a list of things when they get here, and so we still do scheduled visits with a lot of our older customers and some of our newer customers are requesting it as well. And you know what? I know it's not cost effective for me to roll a truck, but if they understand, I'm paying for those hours. I want to see somebody and that's what keeps them happy in the relationship going. So be it. That's what we'll do on the support side. Very good.
Speaker 2:That's how. That's how walls are. Tech differentiates. I love it. So what would you tell younger Brad that you know about just starting his IT career? What advice would you give him that maybe you've acquired over the 20 plus years?
Speaker 1:Oh goodness, I have certainly learned a lot, as every business owner will tell you, over this 20 year career. I will tell you that if anyone would have told you how hard it is day one starting a company, I might not have started the company day one. I can remember a lot of early challenges, but I will also tell you the reward is usually worth it. Getting through those challenges, I truly think, make you a stronger person. But I can remember times that I would wait to cash my paycheck just to make sure everything else finished and cleared out of the checking account.
Speaker 1:I can tell you that early in our days we tried to do a lot of things for a lot of people and we learned real quick. We can't make everyone happy and that was a very hard lesson for me to learn because I am very much the relationship builder. We we build this business on good relationships. But it's okay, and I've had to fire a few customers over the years and I've just had to come to the realization. As much as I want to try to please everybody, you just can't.
Speaker 1:We don't want to be a website design company, but I can't tell you how many times people have asked us can you please do this for me. And my answer is no, but I'm very happy to refer you to somebody else or someone that can. So finding what you're good at, sticking to what you're good at, having your standards and knowing it's OK. You've got challenges in front of you that you're not the first one. I think joining some of the peer groups here that we've done with Enable has been invaluable to me to just bounce ideas off of other people that truly are peers that have been down these roads. So challenges are something I look at on a daily basis as a business owner, but I got to tell you it's still fun getting out of bed every morning, showing up every day to get work done.
Speaker 2:So I bet it is. You bring that passion to every day, like just with everything that you do, the conversations you have about the business, your people, your personal life. You're a very passionate leader and I think a lot of people love that about you, Brad. That's great. So what does the future hold for Walser Technology Group?
Speaker 1:Great question. Future is really, I hope, slow, steady growth. You know, when I was looking at that all-in-seat price model, I was pretty pumped up back then to think, all right, we can, you know, take over this whole region. We can do things to where I'm hiring people in other markets. We've got a sales team knocking on doors. We're doing all these items that you know we're. We're trying that explosive growth. And I'll say I learned a lot from that experience. That, nope, that is not what I want as a company Slow, steady growth to me.
Speaker 1:I have a grandfather who was an entrepreneur, who was in the oil industry, and I didn't get to know him. He passed the year I was born, but he was an oil distributor, an oil jobber as they called it. And he not only was an oil jobber and an oil distributor, he decided that you know what the next step of this food chain is having gas stations. So he started and built himself a network of gas stations around three counties and he would always tell my grandmother, who had to go sign on the line with them as soon as they're mortgaging the house to get that next gas station, that next gas station.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, if you're not growing as a company. You're usually shrinking as a company and it's really hard to just be complacent and comfortable because we've lost customers over the years to no fault of our own. They just got acquired by another larger company. They consolidate in-house IT. So I have the mindset that I want to see slow, steady growth every year, because if I don't, I also don't want to start shrinking every year, and I understand it's very hard to just stand still and be comfortable as a business owner. That's great.
Speaker 2:So the question I always like to ask members of this podcast when did you know?
Speaker 1:now that's it. So when did I know? Now that's it. I will tell you that I think for me, I've always had a passion for helping people. I started my career as wanting to be a business management major in Appalachian State and while I was going down that path, you know the American dream own a business. And well, I switched over to information systems, started my career through that real large enterprise experience. Well, now that I'm 20 years into running a business, we've got 15 of us on staff. We ultimately are putting the right people in the right places.
Speaker 1:And I'll tell you, as most small business owners do, when I would vacation early in my career, I used to have to travel with a laptop. You never know what call you may get when you're on the road. I'm very happy to say, over the last few years I have tried to write myself out of all of the policies and procedures at the organization, focus a lot more on strategic management. And I'll say, for me, it's now when I travel I can enjoy time off and I don't have to travel with the laptop. I know if something does get to me while I'm on vacation, I can forward it back to the office and it's taken care of, and that, to me, is worth its weight in gold. I know I've got the right people there that have the right thought process, the right training to keep customers happy. While I can take a week off, be with the family.
Speaker 2:I love that, brad, so very good, and I'm sure a lot of business owners hope to get to that point at some point in their career. Brad, thank you so very much for joining the pod this week. It's always a pleasure talking to you. I can't wait to see the slow, steady growth over the next couple of years of Walser Technology Group, and I wish you and your team the absolute best of luck.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, chris, it was my pleasure to be here.