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
Thinking Bigger: Alex Stanton on Leadership, Innovation, and the Future of IT
In this episode of Now That’s IT: Stories of MSP Success, we sit down with Alex Stanton, a seasoned entrepreneur and industry innovator, to explore his remarkable journey from a teenage web developer to the founder of one of the largest MSPs in the Inland Northwest. Alex shares candid insights on scaling a business, navigating industry shifts, and the lessons learned while building a legacy in IT.
We dive into the challenges MSPs face today, from rising cyber insurance costs to the evolving expectations of tech-savvy clients. Alex offers his perspective on how MSPs can move beyond commoditized services to become strategic partners for their clients. Plus, he introduces his latest venture, Think Purple, and its mission to solve organizational challenges through human-centric digital transformation.
Whether you’re an MSP owner navigating growth, a tech leader seeking inspiration, or simply curious about the future of IT, this episode is packed with actionable insights and thought-provoking ideas.
N-able also produces Beyond the Horizon. Hosted by industry veterans, this podcast delves deep into the findings of the annual MSP Horizons Report, providing actionable insights to transform your IT business. Listen & Subscribe Wherever You Get Your Podcasts.
'Now that's it: Stories of MSP Success,' dives into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn Managed Services into the thriving sector it is today.
Every episode is packed with the valuable insights, practical strategies, and inspiring anecdotes that lead our guests to the transformative moment when they knew….. Now, that's it.
This podcast provides educational information about issues that may be relevant to information technology service providers.
Nothing in the podcast should be construed as any recommendation or endorsement by N-able, or as legal or any other advice.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Views and opinions expressed by N-able employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of N-able or its officers and directors.
The podcast may also contain forward-looking statements regarding future product plans, functionality, or development efforts that should not be interpreted as a commitment from N-able related to any deliverables or timeframe.
All content is based on information available at the time of recording, and N-able has no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
One, two, three, four. The lag time of industry and innovation to the education side of things allows for someone like me to be successful, whereas I could never have done this in any other industry in any other time in history. Basically, yeah, like I love building things and creating and you know, taking something that didn't exist and making it exist. Taking an idea and taking it from something you just talk about to something that's tangible, even if that's just an application or a website. 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 2:Our guest this week is a driven, visionary speaker and founder, a strategy consultant and digital transformation evangelist with a passion for humans. He was the founder of one of the largest MSPs in the inland Northwest. He's a sailor, advanced scuba diver, mountaineer, ultra runner, photographer and world backpacker. Alex Stanton, welcome to the Now that's it podcast. It's great to be here, Chris, I know you from a couple of those. We were in Nice together and I saw the ultra runner. I think your day off was a 50-some mile run through the mountains of Nice. That's ridiculous. And then recently, Mountaineer impressive.
Speaker 1:You know, you got to work your way up to these things.
Speaker 2:Love it All right. So, like many entrepreneurs, your story starts watching your dad juggle multiple businesses, some which didn't entirely take off. How did the experience shape your mindset as a kid?
Speaker 1:I didn't really know anything else. You know I grew up with life and business all happening at the same time. You know it was like you get off school, you go down to the shop, the phone's ringing, it's probably a customer and this kind of work and life just existed together.
Speaker 2:Were there moments where you thought I want to do things differently, or is this what I want to do? How well do you know?
Speaker 1:me I was probably 12 before I tried to tell my dad how to things he should be changing in his business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sounds right. So you mentioned technology has always been around growing up and your dad would be, you know know, cursing at the computer trying to upgrade it and you remember feeling, hey, I get this tech stuff right no, a little, not really no he was more the guy who got it.
Speaker 1:I remember very specifically two moments in life one, I was probably eight and he bought 16 gigs of ram to upgrade his I'm pretty sure it was a 486. So he could run the newest version of QuickBooks and TurboTax Right, and this is like in the nineties. And then I was there when he bought his first 10 gigabyte Maxter hard drive and his e-machine upgrade. So he was always pretty technical. He built a database for a bookstore that he ran for a while, like you know, built his own database to keep track of all the books and where they came from, what he paid for them. So when someone asked, do you have this? He knew right where it was. What was the first project you tackle? As a kid my dad had bought into a multi-level marketing scheme website development, WYSIWYG thing and I built a website Wow Scheme.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean we'll call it Okay, it was a legit business, you know, because you were young, yeah. And so, at 14, though, most of us guys are focused on girls and surviving school, and you're filing for a business license for ex-Babylon yeah, what was it like to get people to take you seriously, as a kid, I mean?
Speaker 1:people kind of took me seriously as a kid, I think. I think people gave me that benefit of the doubt. There was a number of people in my life who I would not be here if it wasn't for the fact that they were, like you know, interested and willing to, you know, to support me. In fact, in 2021, I celebrated in September 2021, x Babylon hosted a big anniversary party because it was our 20th anniversary from September 2001, when I filed the business license, and my very first client, who cut me the very first check, and his wife were there. Wow, and still customers today of the firm I founded. So that's kind of cool.
Speaker 2:That's really cool, Alex. So you've had a lot of fans and a lot of people that have taken you seriously, but have you ever faced skepticism from clients or even family members?
Speaker 1:Not family members. Clients yes, especially in the early years. Tech worked for me during that time period. You know, in a lot of ways people were more interested in hiring you because you were young and you probably knew how this shit worked you know yeah and people would give you probably more credit than you deserved.
Speaker 1:But there was definitely a period of time where it was fake it till you make it a little bit, you know, and that was both real and perceived. So there was plenty of times where I in I don't know that I didn't have the trust, but I definitely felt that the need to work really hard to earn it.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, you speak very confidently about yourself and I would never call it arrogance, but there may be some that do. But what I think is amazing about you is you're always one to say, hey, if you don't agree with me on this, let me know. Let me know, like, let's chat it out. Let's talk it out, let's work through this. So I think that obviously shows some humility and obviously some vulnerability to be able to talk through things. But you always come across as a very confident, very positive person too, which I think is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1:There was a lot of humility that had to be learned. There was plenty of skin knees and bloody noses and some mentors who took time to tell me hey, Alex, you don't, you don't have to cut this, you don't fucking know everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. So early on, I think you said you're probably using hacked versions of Dreamweaver or something like that. Yeah, and you're creating websites. What drove you to push through all these challenges instead of just being a regular teenager?
Speaker 1:I mean, for one, I think I loved creating things. I know this about myself now. Yeah, like I love building things and creating and you know, taking something that didn't exist and making it exist, taking an idea and taking it from something you just talk about to something that's tangible, even if that's just an application or a website. I liked design. I was never an artist, but web design and computers and UI it allowed me to have some artistic output, you know. So I liked that. And also I grew up really poor and there was definitely a I am going to make something work Like I am. I'm. This is there's no choice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so was there a specific moment early on? Obviously, you're doing these things, you like doing this, you're a kid, you file for a business license, but was there a point when you realized that what you were doing with websites and tech it's more than just a hobby Like this, is a career for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. I kind of saw early on. I remember talking when I was like a junior in high school. My plan for college was always to go get my MBA and dual major with computer science, because I just knew that there was a gap. Gap in the world where you have all these people building and coding and doing stuff but they don't really understand, like business and operations, and I think there's a I want to do both.
Speaker 2:I mean, I didn't want to do that from the time I was young, so so speaking of college, you chose not to go to college because you were already deep into building something real. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Choose is a strong word strong word.
Speaker 2:Yeah, looking back, was it a tough choice or a tough decision? It kind of just happened.
Speaker 1:Like delaying my first year and getting the deferral was easy, easy story. Like I'm working for this software company, you know I have equity, I'm you know it's right out of high school, that's what I was doing and so it was an easy thing to be like we'll just see what happens in a year. I remember telling the Dean Dean's office like this is what I literally had to drive over and sit down in their office and I was like, look, I'm doing exactly what I would go to school and graduate to be able to do, hopefully, like I'm going to keep doing this. And you know Western really supported me in that. And then a year later it was the same story. And then when everything kind of fell apart with the startup, that fall it was too late. So then there was like a year of you just kind of survive and the goal and but then by then I accidentally built the company and we were making money and life kind of just took over.
Speaker 2:So Was there ever a moment you thought maybe I should be doing this college thing?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, it really hit me hard, Probably by the time I hit my mid-20s, because by then every business meeting you're in the question is by then, you know, the clients were real. Well, I wasn't just building websites, we were taking on, you know, infrastructure for well-established businesses you know who were doing quite well and cutting us big checks In 2009 to 2012,.
Speaker 1:We were starting to get big accounts and taking on the entire IT ecosystems and in those moments of course the question is like oh, where do you go to college and what's your sports team? And you know. And so you're, you're sitting there going yeah, I didn't, you know, I can't relate to that. And then my peers in business you know who who didn't get their degrees. They had certain skills that I didn't you know. So it was a lot of self-education, like thank God for things like MIT and Harvard putting everything online. Like you know, it wasn't accredited but you could watch. If you wanted a course on some advanced business concept or a programming concept, you could take it. Right, you could watch the lecture at least. And so that kind of allowed me to self-educate, but it was hard. There was a moment where it was a lot of extra self-education work to catch up to some of my peers, even though in many ways the whole thing let me leapfrog Right it also there was a moment of grinding to get through the slog in the middle.
Speaker 2:I think IT is a unique industry. Obviously there's several, there's trades out there, but the IT industry is pretty interesting because you don't need a college degree to even get started right in IT and there may be some point where you go well, I want to go back and get my business degree, but what do you think it is about IT that you know opens up that opportunity for really just anybody to get?
Speaker 1:started. That's why I love it, that's why I love it, that's why I love the internet. I mean, I think it's because things are just moving too fast, you know, and innovation and the pace of it is one you know. I'm learning PHP online from online courses, right, and it was, you know, more or less obsolete less than 10 years later. Yeah, you know and don't get me wrong for those that code in PHP you're not obsolete, but I'm just saying that there's the changes and the innovation happen at a pace that colleges even struggle. I advise my local community college with their cyber and IT program curriculum and just the time scale of having the conversations, adjusting the curriculum, getting the curriculum approved, waiting for the process with really committed educators. It takes time. So the lag time of industry and innovation to the education side of things allows for someone like me to be successful, whereas I could never have done this in any other industry in any other time in history.
Speaker 2:Basically, a big part of, but it didn't pan out right and so you returned to X Babylon, your I think you called it your hacker's name. That was what you came up with, the title or whatever. What was that like emotionally when you had this things are going great and now they're not, and now you're back to it was kind of it was exciting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it was a new world. It was like a new challenge. Okay, here we go. Like you know yeah, it was an opportunity to you know, to do something new Did it feel like the natural next step? From where you were? I didn't understand the tech culture you know of, say, the Bay Area or other opportunities like that that I wasn't deeply aware of. Those you know more than just peripherally. So I think for me it was really a survival decision to just take the next rung of the ladder that was in front of me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So talk a little bit about the evolution of X Babylon, because it wasn't just a web development company anymore, right?
Speaker 1:No, I mean, we built websites even early on, though we were really building web applications. We built websites.
Speaker 1:Even early on, though, we were really building web applications. Our websites were advanced content management systems before CMS was a word. E-commerce and fulfillment for a big magazine company. These are the types of projects that I worked on. They weren't just brochure websites, they were real applications, and that was what I worked on in the startup was application development and product design, and you know web-based GUIs for back-end Linux mail, email, you know filtering platforms and the.
Speaker 1:So these things were all like well beyond that to start with, and then, when we got into IT, it was because we were doing what we would call today, you know, devops. It was really like, hey, we can do systems integration and we can take data that's stuffed away in a database and we can help do interesting things with it. It was like business intelligence. Before we called it business intelligence, you know, just helping businesses with things or building a custom app on top of whatever they had, because everybody had data right, but they maybe needed something to do this or a piece of middleware. So that's how we kind of got into the networks, and then we started seeing that nobody was managing anything, and then we became an it company and then that made a lot more money than the custom applications and then nobody needed that anymore as we moved towards SaaS and the cloud and this need kind of waned for custom in, baked in home, home brewed apps. And of course now we're full circle where DevOps is matters again right, really deeply matters to the IT industry.
Speaker 2:Let's talk a little bit about this growth spike, or growth spurt, that you had at X Babylon. So you started working on defense contracts in 2004. That's pretty intense stuff right, especially for someone pretty young, yeah, yeah, what was the most challenging part working in that space and how did you change to become a leader?
Speaker 1:So that space was I had a great. So that space was I had a great. I'll call him a mentor. Technically he was a customer, but he also really took time. He was in the defense contracting space. He was the guy that kind of believed in us and said, hey, here's a project and you know, allowed us to both fail our way to success. And then, once we got that success, he helped us, kind of fed us some more. My real leadership skills probably started coming into play. Well, after that, Really, when I had, when I got to the point where we had a team that needed leading, which ebbed and flowed size-wise until I guess it was probably 2012 on that, our team size got to the point where I really had to start honing my skills. That's great.
Speaker 2:Were there any projects or any sort of exciting breakthroughs with X-Bob Babylon that made you take a step back and go wow, we're really doing this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there were a couple. I think the big one was we had one big client win in the healthcare space and that was pretty significant. And then we got a second. But it was about that time that we had started working with Upmarket a little bit. We had started working and I had really meshed and connected with some CIOs and some CISOs and we had been getting hired and working in some much larger organizations than a quote MSP would usually ever play. And it wasn't long after that that we got selected.
Speaker 1:I got a phone call from somebody in economic development saying hey, washington State Department of Commerce has a grant. We think you're qualified for an economic gardening workflow where they basically brought in consultants, tore us apart. I volunteered, of course, jumped on it and they literally shined a mirror up and did what any good consultant does and they said hey, this is what you're good at. You know, this is what we're looking at under the hood. You should do more of this. It was really working in those bigger accounts, working in co-managed working in complex and regulated industries and environments. You know the hard stuff, not the easy stuff, and it turns out we were good at that. So that was our real inflection point that next year we were Inc 5000. And for the next three years after that. Then we became Best Places to Work and you know the whole snowball effect started happening.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, alex. So at some point later on you saw this opportunity to bring X Babylon into New Charter.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that had to be an enormous decision for you. What made you feel like that was the right thing for you and the company?
Speaker 1:How much time do we have? I should go back to that. January. Covid happens. Everybody hunkers down.
Speaker 1:I had been building out and just got lucky with an amazing leadership team and it was common for me to take huge chunks of time off in the 20 teens, travel all over the place, do stuff, let my team handle things while I was gone, even go off grid for a few weeks at a time. And when I got to the COVID moment, it was like my partner and I were going back to the early startup days again. Right, 12 hour days, six day weeks, just all hands on deck. And we grew, like many MSPs did. But we grew through that period right.
Speaker 1:You were in pure instinctual survival mode, thinking any moment some big you know hammer's going to drop, your clients are going to fail, go bankrupt, the world's going to fall. So you're in. Just take all the work you can get, work hard right, look around every corner. So 2020 was that. And then, like most small business owners, sometime around Christmas, every year between Christmas and New Year is that lull of a week where you really sit down and you have time to think.
Speaker 1:You think about the year past, you think about the year ahead. Maybe you had a budget planning cycle or you had a formal process, you know, in the quarter before it doesn't really matter. You're still really really deeply analyzing what's coming and I saw just a swath of changes happening in the industry. Our cyber risk insurance cost. We carried a $4 million policy and it doubled. The renewal was twice and it had doubled the year before that and I knew that cyber risk insurance was going to be tough to carry. I also knew a lot of our competitors didn't carry it, but it wasn't something I was willing to not protect our clients with right.
Speaker 1:With secondary party coverage, which is expensive. Microsoft had been doubling year on year their requirement to stay a direct CSP partner and that was pretty critical to our business model. Everything about the industry was just becoming much more challenging. And we were 40 employees at the time not small, and it's still.
Speaker 1:I saw no path that we could just keep grinding away. You know 10, 20% year on year growth. It was going to take us forever to get to the scale that we needed. So I sat my partner down and I said, okay, we need to either invest deeply over the next three years, like, I mean, plow everything back into this business and grow it like mad and really scale, or we need to find a partner. And so we put all the options on the table and we explored all of them and when I had the invite from New Charter to go to Denver and meet with at the time there were, I think, six or seven real partners at the time in that ecosystem. They had a guy there talking about, you know, the Microsoft practice and all the stuff that was coming at us and if we don't do something we're going to get crushed. And I was like that's literally what I've been saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know they were talking about risk and finance and all the same things that I was paying attention to that group was paying attention to. So ultimately that was the best home for my team.
Speaker 2:That's great. What did your day-to-day look like after joining Nuve Charter and how'd your role evolve, and what were you most passionate about contributing to the platform?
Speaker 1:It was completely anticlimactic because in that ecosystem there's no, you know, significant structural changes to anything right, everything keeps working exactly how it worked. You know, before and after you technically close. The transaction started to help with the CTO CIO work at the platform level, not just inside my own operating company, my own business, x Babylon. So as I transitioned and did more and more work there which was just a ton of fun I got to work with some of the best minds in the industry. Right, I mean Mitch Morgan spending ridiculous amounts more time than he should have with me, working on really cool projects and seeing things like the digital transformation framework come to life, seeing things like the advancement of some of the blue sky surveys and some of the data in the front runner stuff that New Charter shares. Being able to be part of that was just a ton of fun. So, yeah, it's an amazing group.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. So let's fast forward a little bit. You've left New Charter in the last, I think, 12 months or so, and you started a new venture called Think Purple.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Feels like a fresh chapter. What was the driving force behind that decision, and was there something specific that made you think I think it's time to start something new now?
Speaker 1:The thing that I've loved the most is being able to solve organizational problems, not just in business, but it could be government nonprofit.
Speaker 1:I love taking organizations that have structural problems, organizational problems, or just want to be better or want to do something new, and then pairing it with traditional organizational structure or policies and processes, but also using technology and really using technology to improve the lives of the people that work at these organizations. And the idea behind Think Purple is to be able to do digital strategy work that goes a layer deeper than what an MSP can do, because MSPs can only do a certain, they're only empowered usually to do a certain go, a certain distance and a certain depth in a business. And you've heard me talk, you know that I think the future, what a future of an MSP is, is to be more of a business consultant, you know, than just a technology, you know, trusted advisor. But as we go down, for right now, as I go down this path, as we go down for right now, as I go down this path, the idea behind Think Purple is to go deeper in the business than what you can traditionally do as an MSP.
Speaker 2:Leadership coaching too right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Does that feel pretty different from what you've been doing in the past?
Speaker 1:It's not like I'm, you know. I didn't wake up and say I think I want to reinvent myself and do something I haven't done. These are things that are pretty natural for me and I love doing it. When I would speak at events, I would always tell one of my favorite manufacturing associations when I go to talk. They were like, okay, well, we've got this and that, and I'm like can I talk on people and culture? Do I have to talk on technology again? You know I want to go talk about what it means to build great teams, what it means to build a business that puts the human side first, or a technology digital transformation plan that actually takes into account the people that use it on both sides. So no, it feels pretty natural. This is stuff I love to do Awesome.
Speaker 2:So let's talk a little bit about sort of personal philosophy and leadership. You've talked a lot about the importance of balance and letting your team step up. Was there a specific moment when you realized you need to take a step back and let others lead?
Speaker 1:When they've hit me over the head with a stick and said get out of my way. I mean multiple those humbling moments where somebody on the team and there's so many of these- right.
Speaker 1:I learned so much from the team at X Babylon Some of those just celebrated their 15 year anniversary at the company and so much from the amazing partners that I got to work with at New Charter right, who had all built great businesses too. But I think for me it's about those moments have been when my team said, hey, alex, I've got this. Or when I've overstepped and I've said you, you know, I've overstepped and I've said you, you know, you should know this or you should do this, and somebody goes well for one, no. And realizing that my approach, what works for me personally isn't necessarily what works for everybody, and letting people build their own path to that success is sometimes actually way better.
Speaker 2:So, as a young guy you're still a young guy. You've seen the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. What's a lesson that you learned early in your career, something you'd like to pass on to other young entrepreneurs, or even the 14-year-old Alex Never give up, never surrender. Awesome, that's a good one. And talk about your shirt. You got a good one there. That's a good one. And talk about your shirt you got a good one there. That's a pretty good. Work hard and be nice.
Speaker 1:Simple, simple plan yeah.
Speaker 2:You're a simple guy, right Like, just do your job, be really nice to people. So talk about the future a little bit. What's next for you? And think purple.
Speaker 1:Well, spending some time here with you guys learning from this event and where the industry's at try to give back where I can to the MSP community as a whole. I think there's an opportunity to do some big things in a lot of ways. I'm not in a hurry, but I'm going to be piloting some concepts. I think the futurist in me, the eternal optimist, futurist that says this can happen. Some of the things I'd love to see come to fruition, not just in my own firm but, I think, in the industry as a whole I'd like to say that they can happen in one to two years. Awesome, I think.
Speaker 1:The reality is because I've been, I'm trying to temper this because of my previous optimism of how quick adoption can happen. We could be five years out, but the truth is the inflection point in this industry is here and there's just enormous need for digital strategy, not just thinking as a CIO or a CTO or a CISO, but actually at the CEO level. I think CEOs everywhere, in every industry, are going to have to become digital strategists in some way. So I'm optimistic.
Speaker 2:You talked a little bit earlier, and you've shared this with me a lot that the MSP industry is evolving in a certain way you want to unpack that a little bit.
Speaker 1:Well, it's commoditized, um, and it it will become more and more commoditized, meaning the the daily blocking and tackling the things that we used to sell as things that we did, um, you know, think about, like the original MSP ad right, net 24, seven, network monitoring, antivirus, you know, firewall management, like uptime monitoring I mean backup right, these are all like, these are all very well oiled processes and things that can be delivered In modern ecosystems. They're very simple and easy to deliver and they can be priced very cheaply. In the small business sector. We have a massive demographic shift happening of who. We have a retiree group, right, you can call it the boomers retiring. You can call it the silver tsunami retiring. You can call it the silver tsunami. Whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1:The truth is MSPs are small businesses serving small businesses, right, and these small businesses are disproportionately owned by retirement age founders. I don't care if it's a manufacturing business or a law firm or, fill in the blank, they're looking, just like many MSP owners, by the way, they're looking at their next chapter, they're looking at retirement, they're eyeballing it and they're looking at opportunities. You know, msps are right now losing customers or having to deal with M&A in their customer base all the time, because successful businesses are making decisions to sell their business or merge their business or do something with it. Right, something's changing the changing agard happening. At the same time. We have millennials rising up taking on senior and executive leadership roles. Because they are digital natives. Right, they do feel very comfortable with technology. They have expectations of how technology works. Their expectations as leaders is very different than the expectations of the leaders that in place before. Right, they're going to have a much higher trust level of, let's say, cloud or SaaS applications, a much higher appetite for subscription and reoccurring models versus I'm going to buy it and try to own a server for 10 years. Right, differences in leadership style, changes in our stakeholders. And, as that happens, msps are going to have to step up in a really big way.
Speaker 1:Because a 20-seat account that used to be money for many MSPs. They can just buy AppleCare for $10 a month and have everything they need and it just works. And if you look at what Apple sells with their Apple Business Plus plan or Business Essentials, it's literally what an MSP does for you know, $20 a month, like you're not gunning. They don't need you. So in order for an MSP to be needed or any business you have to solve a problem right, and so MSPs have to go upmarket because the smaller accounts just don't need an MSP because their technology at that size is SaaS-based. You buy a Microsoft 365 package or an Apple Business Essentials package and it takes care of it for you in the micro-business space.
Speaker 1:So businesses at 20 to 30 employees plus start needing MSPs, maybe even 50 employees and the leadership at those companies. They expect their technology to be just as simple at the office as it is at their house, right, and they don't need to call Geek Squad anymore to set up a router, like all this has changed in the last, even five years. So, as our customer is more technically savvy, higher expectations, you have CEOs that will just, you know, millennial CEOs that will just crank out Power BI and just fire it up and do stuff and if your MSP can't, you know, even help them. That's going to be a challenge, right? So I think that's why I say that I think the industry has to continue to move up market, continue to evolve its offerings to become more business centric. Still do the blocking and tackling of the tech stuff Agreed, but realize that that's not where their core value probably lies.
Speaker 2:Yep. So looking back at everything, alex, from building websites as a teenager to leading multiple businesses, when did you know now?
Speaker 1:that's it. It probably has nothing to do with my professional life. Okay, it probably has nothing to do with my professional life. Okay, I think that moment for me came a couple different times in life, but over the last year it really came, as I've evolved personally in this world, to realize what my value is and that it's not necessarily in the things that you do, but it's in the legacy that you build while you do it power flocks.
Speaker 2:You really are a friend. It's been great to get to know you over the last couple years. I love having you on stage with me and co-presenting and co-hosting and all those sort of things. I really look forward to all of your success in the future and I wish you the absolute best of luck, alex.
Speaker 1:Super lucky to call you friend and able to be here hanging out with us today. Thanks, Alex, Thanks Chris.