MSP Performance Management with Todd Kane

Explore the real-world challenges technical founders face when scaling managed services businesses with Todd Kane, founder of Evolved Management Consulting and a seasoned voice in MSP leadership. Drawing from years of operational expertise, Todd unpacks the critical gaps that often emerge as small, founder-led teams evolve into structured, process-driven organizations.

We dive into the transition from reactive firefighting to proactive service delivery, and the growing pains that come with hiring, delegating, and defining leadership roles. Todd shares why many technically brilliant founders struggle with operational maturity—and how that impacts everything from client experience to profit margins.

From the importance of cultural fit to the nuances of operational alignment, Todd offers a blueprint for what to look for in an MSP partner. Whether you're navigating your first hires or trying to level up your org structure, this conversation delivers practical frameworks and leadership insights to help you scale with intention.

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If you believe you deserve more from your technology partnerships – connect with the team at:
https://www.deliverdigital.ca/?utm_source=videodescription&utm_id=youtube

Sell Me This Podcast is brought to you by the team at Deliver Digital, a Calgary-based consulting organization that guides progressive companies through the selection, implementation, and governance of key technology partnerships. Their work is transforming the technology solution and software provider landscape by helping organizations reduce costs and duplication, enhance vendor alignment, and establish sustainable operating models that empower digital progress.

This episode of the Sell Me This Podcast was expertly edited, filmed, and produced by Laila Hobbs and Bretten Roissl of Social Launch Labs, who deliver top-tier storytelling and technical excellence. A special thanks to the entire team for their dedication to crafting compelling content that engages, connects, and inspires.

Find the team at Social Launch Labs at:
www.sociallaunchlabs.com

Sell Me This Podcast is brought to you by the team at Deliver Digital, a Calgary-based consulting organization that guides progressive companies through the selection, implementation, and governance of key technology partnerships. Their work is transforming the technology solution and software provider landscape by helping organizations reduce costs and duplication, enhance vendor alignment, and establish sustainable operating models that empower digital progress.

If you believe you deserve more from your technology partnerships – connect with the team at:
www.deliverdigital.ca

This episode of Sell Me This Podcast was expertly edited, filmed, and produced by Laila Hobbs and Bretten Roissl of Social Launch Labs, who deliver top-tier storytelling and technical excellence. A special thanks to the entire team for their dedication to crafting compelling content that engages, connects, and inspires.

Find the team at Social Launch Labs at:
www.sociallaunchlabs.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I wouldn't do management, I wouldn't touch
that with a 10-foot stick, and Ifound I absolutely loved it,
which was surprising and some ofthe reason why is I felt like
leading people and helpingpeople to develop their career
was a lot like systemsadministration.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to Sell Me this Podcast.
I'm Keith, and today we aretalking with Todd Cain, the
founder of Evolved Consulting, acompany helping IT service
providers increase profit withless stress.
From neighborhood tech supportto strategic business consultant
, todd's journey spans decadesin the IT services industry,

(00:37):
starting as a self-describedneighborhood nerd who built his
first consulting company beforegraduating high school.
Todd developed frameworks thattransformed multiple IT
organizations, tripling revenue,doubling headcount and
significantly increasing margins.
We'll explore the challengesthat technical founders face
when scaling their managedservice businesses, discuss the

(01:00):
evolution from five guys in aroom to structured organizations
, and share Todd's insights forfinding the right MSP partner.
Whether you're an IT serviceprovider or a business owner,
this conversation offersvaluable perspective on the
human side of technical servicerelationships.
Let's dive into the world ofmanaged services with Todd Cain

(01:21):
from Evolved Consulting.
Todd, welcome to Sell Me thisPodcast.
I'm so excited to have youtoday.
I'm going to dive right intothings.
Why don't you tell me a littlebit about yourself and a little
bit about how you got startedwith Evolved Consulting?

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Sure, so I'll give you a longer story since we have
some time here.
I have a familiar technicalbackground, I think, to a lot of
people.
I was basically theneighborhood nerd who got a
computer very early on when Iwas in grade school.
I vividly remember sitting onthe wet bar next to the box of
an IBM PC Junior, waitingdesperately for my dad to get
home from work so that we couldunpack it and set it up.

(01:57):
And I was absolutely hooked.
From there Basically got mystart in systems administration
by building boot disks so that Icould run different games and
software on the computer.
If you anyone old enough toremember boot disks in the
eighties of firing up yourcomputer, shout out to those
people.
And so that was my entry intounderstanding like how to
configure computers andunderstanding how they worked.

(02:19):
And inevitably neighborsstarted getting computers as
well.
So they would be like hey, callTodd, Like he's good with
computers, Maybe he can comeover computers as well.
So they would be like hey callTodd, he's good with computers,
Maybe he can come over and helpus.
So I started helping neighborsand then eventually they also
had businesses and they're likehey, Todd, can you help me work
with my computers as well.
I was like yeah, sure, so loand behold, before I really knew
what I was doing or had figuredthis out, I had a consulting

(02:40):
company before I graduated highschool, and this had pros and
cons, of course, because thepros were I would get called out
of math or social studies to gosupport the network systems in
the school.
Cons, I was sometimes going toclient sites after school and I
was wearing a tie to school.
So not the coolest thing in theworld.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, that probably doesn't go over super well yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
If you want to be called a nerd at school, wear a
tie.
Yeah, if you want to be calleda nerd at school, wear a tie.
Then, familiar, I grew up inCalgary.
I now live on the West Coast,but grew up in Calgary and this
was a heyday of oil was $200 abarrel and VMware was a brand
new thing.
So I got pulled up into thisreally fast-growing consulting
company, longview Systems, whicha lot of the local people that

(03:22):
listen to the podcast willabsolutely recognize, and I was
employee number number 30 orsomething.
So very early on they're likewell over a thousand people or
something now, and we wentthrough this explosive growth
period where we were literallyhiring 20 to 30 people a week
for a sustained period and thatis bananas growth for any type
of organization.
So we had to figure out how youscale leadership and the

(03:44):
operational side of the team,because we were getting all
these technical people to do thetechnical work but we were
constantly hitting the ceilingon leadership.
So the organization puttogether this leadership
development program and they'relike basically tapped me like,
todd, you want to be in?
I was like, yeah, okay, I guessI will never intended to be in
management, but that was mytransition from the technical
side of the IT side of businessto now into the operation side

(04:08):
of the business and I'd neverintended that Like I was one of
those people who was like, oh, Iwouldn't do management, I
wouldn't touch that with a 10foot stick, and found I
absolutely loved it, which wassurprising and some of the
reason why is I felt likeleading people and helping
people to develop their careerwas a lot like systems
administration, because I hateprogramming.
Anytime I try programming I endup throwing the book across the

(04:29):
room because I just get sofrustrated I can't find that
missing semicolon.
I know it's in there somewhere.
Why won't this work?
But with systems and withpeople you can continue to tweak
and tinker.
There's always something to try, there's a new system, a new
framework that you can try andapply and then inevitably, when
something locks into place,there's this really rush of

(04:50):
gratification that you get andhaving seen the changes that it
can create and set people on adifferent career path is
incredibly gratifying knowingthat you've altered the course
of their life.
Right, it's pretty wild.
So I went from there, did acouple of turnarounds for Bell
Canada, fixed up theirprofessional services division
and then ended up at anotherwell-recognized brand in Canada,
fully Managed.
And this was a post-mergerhangover of the two companies

(05:13):
that created Fully Managed andagain went on this wild ride
where we tripled revenue,doubled headcount, increased
gross margin by double digits.
And I learned I had this crashcourse on sort of the MSP side
of the business when previouslyI'd been on the VAR and
professional services andco-managed side previously.
So what I recognized throughthat kind of that story was the

(05:34):
things that I was doing, thesystems that I was applying in
all of these IT businesses werevery uniform.
There was no secret sauce.
There was nothing particularlydistinct about them aside from
great cultures, but thosecultures were unique to them,
not that there was a specificculture that was required.
And so I recognize like all thetools and systems that I'd
collected were very applicableto a broader base of business.

(05:56):
And the more I bumped intoother it organizations in the
ecosystem, especially back then,things have improved since that
time, but back then thematurity level was very low,
like shockingly low.
So I recognized there was ahuge need for people to learn
sort of these systems andframeworks to just run a better
business.
And that's what I've been doingfor almost 10 years now is just

(06:16):
helping IT companies increaseprofit with less stress.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Amazing, and so that kind of brought you to where
Evolved is right now and withoutgiving you too much of a
glowing review like we've hadthe chance to work together on a
professional level as well inthe previous world.
And it is incredible what youcan do when you have those right
frameworks, when you have theright lens to look at these
scale mechanisms with.
There's such a challenge that Isee and I think that you and I

(06:42):
have talked about this beforewhen you have these managed
service companies that aretechnical-led and that
transition you talked about withcoming up from the technical
side being the guy that wore thetie to high school and then did
tech support on the side andtransitioning that into a real
growing business, what are someof the challenges with these
kind of technical-led foundersas they start to have their

(07:05):
managed service organizationsbecome more real businesses?

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, it is an incredible transition and some
recognize it and some just don't.
And I think that's the firstparadigm shift that people need
to understand.
And so when you're small,you're just scrappy and putting
together an IT consultingcompany.
You're very obviously focusedon great technical delivery,
producing solutions for yourcustomers, a very high touch,
and that's great.
But it doesn't scale.

(07:30):
So I call this the five guys ina room strategy, where if
you're all kind of sitting inthe same place and you're
everyone's hearing what's goingon, you can point and talk to
people.
That's that works fairly well.
Once you hit 10 people, itcompletely changes.
So I have this, what I call thelaw of doubling.
Anytime your organizationdoubles in size, it feels like
you're fundamentally restartinghow you have to operate the

(07:51):
business.
So you need to be intentionalabout the way that you're taking
that direction.
So it works.
Five as soon as you hit 10,totally different paradigm.
And then you need to figure outhow to scale leadership in your
organization and then itbecomes much more of a people
centric business and a processcentric business than it is a
technical centric business, andthat's okay.
Some people may want to remaintechnical.

(08:12):
They need to find someone thatcan be an operator in their
business so they can focus onthe things that either they're
good at or they want to focus on.
But someone needs to beresponsible for leading the
charge and driving thecollective of that people and
that team in a particulardirection, because otherwise
it's just scattershot energy.
So the way I like toencapsulate this in a pithy way

(08:33):
is tools don't solve peopleproblems, and in the IT industry
we tend to look for tools tosolve whatever problems we have.
The other thing that drives mecrazy in smaller growing
organizations that haven't quiteunderstood this yet, they often
say to me or I hear them sayI'd like to hire an HR person
and thinking that like an HRperson would manage all of the

(08:53):
people and take all of that offtheir plate.
And I'm like that's not reallywhat they do and it's certainly
not what you should have them do.
Like HR has a place but it'snot leading your team.
That's management.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Sorry to say, yeah, those are very different
concepts and I think that wouldyou believe.
That's the reason that a lot ofthese MSPs they get a bad
reputation sometimes because asthey're growing, as they're
scaling through these phases, itcan be really clunky for their
customers as well and theirteams.
As the leaders are changing thewheels on the bus as it's
driving down the road, it can bea lot of change for someone as

(09:28):
they're trying to grow theirbusiness, as they're trying to
retain their staff and kind ofkeep what was existing and true
and awesome without having thewhole thing fall apart.
So what are some of the thingsthat you see as common first
steps or kind of indicators thatthese leaders should be looking
out for as they are growingtheir businesses?
Is it surely like headcount?
Is it 5, 10, 20, 40?
I'm not going to go past thatbecause at some point I'll

(09:49):
embarrass myself on the mathfront, but what should people be
looking for?

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, I think the first recognition is just when
you feel overwhelmed as an owner.
Right and again, like I takethis from like an IT service
delivery frame, but this isuniversally applicable in my
opinion.
Right, like the things thatwe're talking about, it doesn't
matter what business you'rerunning, especially in a
technical space, like all ofwhat I'm saying I think is
applicable.
So keep it in that frame ofmind.

(10:14):
So, at some point, like theheroing your way through the day
starts to become really arduous, right, and it doesn't matter.
Like I've met someentrepreneurs that have
incredible resilience to burnout, but like that's not a good way
to live your life, and eitheryou start to fray at the ends or
your life starts to fray at theends.
I've also seen an incrediblenumber of entrepreneurs that

(10:34):
have completely blown up theirlives and their family as a
result of just being too focusedon trying to hero their way
through the day.
Trying to hero their waythrough the day, and that is a
unsustainable and B is notnecessary, and that's, I think,
the part that people really needto understand is like, if you
change the way that youappreciate and understand your
role in the business as abusiness leader, or at least, as

(10:56):
I said, putting someone in thatrole.
It makes it so much easier.
Like you don't have to fightthrough these things.
I know people that are buildingand scaling Incredible
companies and they leave at theend of the day and go home and
have dinner with their family.
That is a practical reality.
Like it.
I think the hustle culture issomething that I've always
fought against.
I don't believe that it isnecessary.
It is a way to go about thingsand don't get me wrong, like I

(11:19):
work hard.
I know people that do work hard.
There's days that I voluntarilyput 18 hours into a business,
into the business, because I'msimply excited about something.
It doesn't mean you can't dothat and you shouldn't do that.
It just means it's not how youshould live every day of your
life.
So I think recognizing yourlimits and starting to recognize
, like how you actually lead andmanage the people.

(11:39):
So one of the things I'm reallyadamant about is running weekly
one-on-ones with all of yourdirect reports, and when I tell
people in growing companies thatthey should do this, they're
like I can't do that.
That's impractical.
I've got like 20 people.
How would I do a one-on-onewith each of them?
That's the problem.
Right.
As soon as you're past those 10direct reports, it's a law of
diminishing returns as towhether or not you can actually

(12:01):
impact, influence and directthem.
So again, we're looking forsomeone in that team that can
step up and start to play a bitmore of that managerial or at
least team lead role, to take onsome of those duties.
And what I think this allows is.
The second step of this is areyou able to spend the time
focused on the strategicactivities of the business,

(12:23):
whatever that is?
It's product development, it'saccount management, it's
outbound biz dev, whatever thosestrategic priorities are for
your business at that time?
If you feel like you don't havetime for that because you're
constantly interrupted with theday to day operation of the
business, that's a really goodindication that you need a
captain to be able to fieldthose things.
The way I described it ishaving someone as a firewall to

(12:45):
keep a lid on things and atleast contain a lot of those
questions.
So, instead of 12 people comingto you asking questions, one
person saves up all of thosequestions, eliminates eight and
then brings four to you at theend of the day to help sort
things through Much moresustainable approach.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
I feel like you know your audience well with the
firewall reference there.
Do you find some of thesefounders have challenges with
moving away from the tech?
I feel like a lot of the reasonpeople got into some of these
MSPs and some of these serviceorganizations is because of
their passion and their love forthe tech and really,
functionally, as theorganization grows, the
challenge isn't the tech anymore, it's the people, it's the

(13:22):
process, it's the leadership.
Do you find them having a hardtime letting go of those things
that they loved before?

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Absolutely, and it often comes from different
places, right?
So you also see this in people.
When they've initially tappedtheir first manager, like it's
either the long-term employee ortheir most skilled employee,
they're like you seem to haveyour stuff together.
Can you be a manager and helpeveryone else figure this out?
I'm gonna go do these otherthings.
High five, you're good later,right?

(13:48):
That's their training from aperson who has done muscle and
feel to find their way to thewhere they are, and then they
expect the other person, who isnot the owner of the business,
to figure things out as they go.
So first point is, if you'regoing to get some help in this
or look for someone to do thesethings for you, they need proper
training, right?
We talk about a move intomanagement as a promotion.
It's not.
It's a career change, becauseall of the things that led you

(14:11):
to be successful have verylittle bearing on whether or not
you're actually going to make agreat leader and a great
manager for that organization.
So the same can be said for theowner, right?
If this is not an area A thatyou want to spend time on or B
you're just fundamentally notgood at, then that's an
important recognition Like.
I know several owners of ITorganizations that they're

(14:33):
functionally a CEO but they actas basically a project person,
like this one guy.
He's very successfulorganization.
He has zero interest in theadministrative and people
leadership side of the business.
He's a great cheerleader Like.
He's full of energy, absolutelyloves what he does, but he's
happiest in the field doingdeployments and working on
projects.
That's where he spends his time.
So he has hired someone else todo the work of the sort of the

(14:56):
business administration and thebusiness management for him and
several other organizationssimilar Like they run the
organization but they spend moretime in the technical area.
So I think it's important.
Like I said, it's not alimitation.
If you want to spend time ontechnical stuff and that's
really the area that brings youjuice and keeps you motivated,
that's fine.
But just recognize that's notgoing to build the business for

(15:19):
you.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
So you work almost exclusively with managed service
companies.
Is that one of the things thatreally separates the ones that
are excellent from the ones thatare struggling and scraping by?
Is it really that leadership,or are there other things that
are separating some of those topperforming organizations with
the rest of the industry?

Speaker 1 (15:38):
I would say another big one is standardization,
right?
I often say standardization isthe strongest lever you can pull
in IT.
Right, because the more uniforman environment is, the more
stable it is and the easier itis to support for everybody.
So everybody wins it's easierfrom a tech support perspective,
it's easier for the users,there's less downtime, it's
better for both businesses,right, everybody wins.
So I think that's an importantpiece of especially MSPs,

(16:02):
because they have disparateclient environments and the low
performing or low maturity ITorganizations don't enforce a
uniform environment.
So they're like we use Sophosbut you guys have WatchGuard, or
we use Cisco and you guys haveSophos or whatever the situation
is, and they're just take onwhatever that organization has,

(16:23):
it's fine, we'll support youwhatever.
And they don't enforce thatlevel of standardization of look
, we got to rip out all thisgear and put ours in because we
know how it works, we know itworks well and there's going to
be less downtime because there'sa level of sophistication in
convincing a client that look,you have all this equipment but
you need our equipment, likethat's sometimes a difficult
conversation and leans more intosort of that sophisticated

(16:45):
sales of how are you sellingthem on replacing something that
in a lot of cases is functionalit's not like it's broken but
we don't support it so you can'tuse it.
So I think that is a majorcomponent of it is that
standardization.
And then the other half is justthe layers of maturity that you
see in these environments,cause you'll often bump into a

(17:05):
person that is running a one ortwo person it firm which has
been in business for 20 plusyears, and then you'll meet
someone who's started an MSP, isinto it five years and already
scaled to $6 million.
What is the difference betweenthese two people?
It's not the passion for theirbusiness.
Both of them care a lot andthat's how they pay their bills,
that's how they support theirfamily.
So one, I think, is just theinterest in scale and getting

(17:28):
bigger.
You have to be a littledangerous about this.
Another adage that I have isambition is a nuclear reactor.
It's incredibly powerful, itgives you all kinds of energy to
do the things that you need toget done, but if it loses
containment and it's not instasis of kind of meeting its

(17:48):
needs, then it can get reallydangerous to everyone around it.
So in, especially in the MSPindustry, sub $1 million, is
that first hurdle right.
If you can crack a milliondollars in annual recurring
revenue, you've done pretty well, like it's a very established
business and at this pointyou've grown up past that five
guys in a room strategy.
And then the one to 5 millionin annual recurring revenue is
what we call death Valley,because it's where everyone

(18:10):
either stalls out or collapsesor sells.
Right, because it's reallydifficult to scale past a
million.
If you don't figure these thingsout around people, leadership
and standardization and processmanagement and automation right,
like the things that make thoseother groups successful Then
once you crack past 5 million,you've escaped death valley,
kind of figured a lot of thesethings out, and then it becomes

(18:32):
different problems, right,you're still faced with the law
of doubling.
Every time your organizationdoubles you have to retool the
way that the organization worksand how the leadership structure
functions.
But generally you're going tofigure this out You're still
fighting problems, right?
One of the things that I thinkis really important for people
to understand as operatorswhether that's you as a business
owner or working as a sort ofthe lead manager or the COO of

(18:54):
an organization is you are chiefproblem solver and it really
bugs me when people say, oh,there's just so many problems in
this company.
It's who's going to solve thoseright.
That's up to you, man.
So I really want to stress topeople that are in operational
roles that you got to get a bitof juice from that right.
I think it's fun.
They're like these situationsare puzzles, and the beauty of
working on an organization thatis scaling is you have to be

(19:17):
general and a generalist and begood at a lot of things, because
then you have an opportunity tospend time on whatever kind of
interests.
You can spend time on serviceoperations.
You can spend time on people.
You can spend time onautomation.
You can spend time on some ofthe technology.
You can spend some time onaccount management, like.
All of these things arerequired in the business, and I
love that variety of being ableto dip your toes into all parts

(19:40):
of the business and keeplearning right.
I think that's one of thebeautiful aspects of this, but
that's a function of constantlysolving problems in the business
.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
That's one thing that I believe is a huge misnomer
that other people can elevatethemselves out of problems,
because as businesses grow, theproblems just get bigger as it.
As your team gets more capableat handling problems, the only
problems that actually maketheir way up to you are the
harder problems and the mostchallenge you just get the get
the final boss level of problemsversus the easy ones along the
way.

(20:08):
There's no escaping it that'swhat businesses either.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
You're solving problems for your clients and in
the meantime you're alsosolving problems for yourself,
right?
If this were easy, everyonewould be their own boss.
It's not like it takes acertain person to a throw
capital out and throw all of thesecurity out the window and
just be like I'm going to do myown thing, like that seems
insane to most people that sortof really value stability and

(20:35):
predictability in their life.
So first, like you're a uniqueperson to get into that.
And then you have to recognizethat your life will be met with
constant struggles, right, andit's not struggles as, oh my God
, my life is so terrible.
There certainly can be thoseevents in your business life.
It's not meant to be easy,right?

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, you and I have talked about this before too.
There's the people that runtowards the fire and away from
it.
Yeah, and if you're trying torun a business and also run away
from the fire at the same time,it's not going to be a very
long road in front of you maybeto extend the video game analogy
with it, I think is really aptfor, like the boss level
problems.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Anyone who has ever played a difficult game.
It's engaging, it keeps youcoming back to it as I gotta
solve this.
And if you ever like play agame like back in the day, you
would have cheat codes thatwould give you like god level
and then you would just gothrough and rip everything right
.
It was not challenging at all.
It's not fun like a fun gamethat you set on god mode where
there's no risk, no challengesto it.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
That's not interesting yeah, I did that on
street fighter once.
I lost interest very quickly.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
It's exactly that's the point right, I know I can
win, so why bother?

Speaker 2 (21:37):
yeah, all of a sudden you maybe learn a couple things
, but it doesn't.
Your attention span definitelydwindles.
So you've mentioned a reallyinteresting thing about those
stages of MSPs.
I think you said the one likesub-one million bucket, one to
five, five plus From a customerperspective.
Are there things that I should?
Are there matches that makesense from a customer
perspective for MSPs in each ofthose buckets?

(22:00):
Because I imagine that even aone to two-person shop
practically could support alarge organization.
They're just going to do itmuch differently.
But if I'm searching for an MSP, how do I pick the right bucket
for where I'm at in my journey?

Speaker 1 (22:13):
You're 100% right and I think it's a really good
question, because they're notall created equally and even the
ones that are similarly sizedmay not be the right fit.
So there is absolutely amatching that needs to go on
here.
I think at that lower levelthere are a lot of organizations
like just simple SMB businessesthat are perfectly fine with
what we call time and materials,which is just break, fix,

(22:36):
support, right.
So, like you, you call someoneor you create a ticket because
your outlook doesn't work or theprinter's jammed or whatever,
and someone will probably cometo the office or, hopefully,
remote into your machine and tryand fix that for you and then
they send you a bill.
So that's time and materials.
That's the old way that the ITservices industry functioned and
there are still some providersthat works for and this is

(22:57):
people that are very budgetconscious.
They don't want to spend.
Typical MSP sort of entry pointis around $2,500 or $3,500 a
month for support from one ofthese organizations.
If you go, oh my God, like I,only want to spend like $200 or
$300 a month on IT, then thoseare the people that you want to
work with.
Then, once you take yourbusiness a bit more seriously or
you have more complex needs,then working with a managed team

(23:20):
service provider that's whatMSP stands for if we haven't
clarified that and that is afixed fee engagement where you
pay X amount of dollars andbasically you can log as much
support as you need, right?
The beauty of this model is forbusinesses is that there's
aligned interests Time andmaterials like they make money
when stuff is broken versus amanaged service model.

(23:40):
They make money when stuff isworking, because the less time
they have to spend on yourenvironment, the more money that
their business makes.
So a lot of people would saythen I'm getting juiced for this
.
Is that fair?
And it's.
It absolutely is.
As long as the value is alignedwith what you pay and whether
or not your systems actuallyfunction to support the work of
your staff, it gets more intothat sophisticated space, that

(24:01):
sort of sub 1 million.
There.
There are some very good MSPsthat work in smaller client
environments.
If you're working in a largerorganization, you have more
sophisticated needs.
Your technology stack is a lotmore sophisticated, especially
if you have multiple sites orcomplex network configuration,
then potentially you needsomeone a bit more engaged and
the differences that you'lltypically see here is a lot more

(24:23):
proactive engagement right.
There are the basic MSPs whereyou pay an X amount per month
and generally the stuff works.
If things are broken or youhave questions, they will
support you and help you outwith that, but generally you
don't hear from them or see thembeyond that, and I would say
that's the majority of theindustry.
It's not necessarily a badthing, it's just, it's a again,

(24:43):
it's a match of needs, right.
If that sounds good to you,then fantastic.
And then there's that third tierand, as you said, like, this
can be a one or two manenvironment.
A lot of the people that I talkto that are smaller and want to
scale.
I'm often telling them, like,you guys are an outsourced IT
company, outsourced your ITneeds, so you, like one and two
man shops, can outsource theirsupport desk to onshore

(25:04):
solutions or global solutions,whatever that looks like, and
this is not the age old problemof I've been from all of our
jobs and farmed out to India andnow the support is terrible.
Like, a lot of these optionsare actually very functional and
you would not notice that it'san offshore solution, so that's
totally practical.
You can grow a business to avery large scale, just as a one
or two-man shop just focusing oninterfacing with the clients.

(25:27):
So that's how it looks.
Different is that hopefullythey're engaging with you, maybe
twice a year, even quarterly,and talking to you about your
business, and this is where thataccount management function.
The term that we use in theindustry that I know you hate
and lots of other people in theindustry hate is virtual CIO or
VCIO.
It's a meaningful term becauseit talks about a level of

(25:50):
engagement with a customer thatis unique, right Like you may
have no account management andthey just do support for your IT
infrastructure Great, backupswork, email works, job done,
versus.
Someone comes and talks to youand says I noticed you guys
don't have a CRM.
Can you tell me about yourworkflow and how you guys take
orders, how you think what, howdoes something happen from

(26:11):
purchase to invoicing, and walkme through that process and
maybe we can find someefficiencies?
And that's different right Now.
You're talking about VCIOfunction or just basic account
management of they spend timewith you to really understand
your business needs and try tomake sure that your stack is
aligned.
You guys have printer problemsbecause the network has these
issues and we replace thesethree things.

(26:33):
Here's how much that would cost.
It would reduce the downtime bythis much, right?
So I think a lot of it is basedon how you view technology,
whether or not it's a necessaryevil.
A lot of people really view itthat way.
I need stuff to print and Ineed email to flow.
That's it, versus.
I actually want to leveragetechnology.
Tell me about how an ERP couldhelp my business.

(26:54):
Tell me about how I can startto leverage AI with my business.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Those are the discussions that lean towards
more of a virtual CIO, andframework, and this is I really
want to spend some time here,because I think this is a huge
opportunity but also a hugepoint of frustration for a lot
of customers, because and Iprobably fall in this camp the
reason that I feel verypassionately about vCIO and the
framing around it is because alot of it has come across in the

(27:20):
industry as life cyclemanagement as a service or
really a new arm of accountmanagement.
How do I find a way tocreatively sell you more stuff?

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Exactly, yeah.
So I think this is where thisstems from right.
Vcio was originally a paidengagement in the industry where
you have your managed serviceprovider and they would pay X
amount of dollars for IT supportand then, if you were a
sophisticated customer, you'dpay, say, another $3,500 a month
for a virtual CIO and over timethe vendors started to push.

(27:51):
A lot of VCIO functions as away to scale your business
because the software vendors inour industry they make more
money if you sell more stuff andhave more seats to support.
So it's in their interest foryou to drive more sales into
your customers.
So there it drives me crazy asan operations person because so
much of the industry is focusedon sales as a result of this,
because it's a mutuallybeneficial way to push the

(28:14):
industry forward.
So I get that part, but I wouldmuch rather have a profitable
business than a high revenuebusiness, because they are not
the same thing.
Anyway, end rant on that one.
The VCIO where this went wrongis that you're dealing with
again.
We're talking about thesetechnical people that aren't
business people and don't have ahigh level of sales
sophistication in a lot of cases.

(28:34):
That's not universally true.
There are some very goodsales-led founders in MSPs and
they do quite well, but thetechnical-led founders really
struggle with these salesconversations.
So they go in talking aboutdoing VCIO and really what
they're doing is just accountmanagement and, in a lot of
cases, technical accountmanagement.
So these are very differentthings.
Technical account management iswhat you talked about and a

(28:56):
person on my podcast recentlydescribed this as filling in the
white space.
Right, so there's a stack thatwe need to deploy in your
environment and I need to make,I need to fill in all the boxes
to make sure that tech stack isdeployed, and that's filling in
that white space and that'sreally all they focus on.
You can't call yourself a VCIOIf you show up to a meeting and
say here's all the, here's allthe equipment that's coming off

(29:18):
warranty that you need toreplace and here's a quote for
that right.
They're like this is notstrategic engagement.
This is a sales exercise, lameone at that.
But again, this is driven bypeople thinking that the tool is
the solution.
Like having a VCIO process isnot having a VCIO tool, because
those things are limited by whatthe data they can collect.

(29:38):
You can tell a person when thewarranty expires on their
equipment or how many Windows 10machines they still have in
their environment that they needto upgrade, because that's very
visible.
It can be recorded through data, but just presenting that
information.
Another term that we use in theindustry is a virtual captain.
Obvious, right, thanks.
I knew that.
Like, how about we get to themore juicy stuff, the strategic

(29:59):
things that can help me in myenvironment?
So my point in this is wherethings went wrong is we continue
to call it VCIO, because that'swhat it's called in the
industry and in probably 80% ofthe cases it's just account
management, that's it.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
And so what are some of the red flags here?
Because I feel like you'velisted a bunch of them, but when
I think about a statement youmade earlier around even the ERP
side of things, I think this isa big friction point where MSPs
sometimes get a bad name.
Even the ERP side of things, Ithink this is a big friction
point where MSPs sometimes get abad name because in the effort
for the standardization side ofthings, there's this huge push
around service optimization,which is great, but then there's

(30:33):
this we'll call it the 20% overhere, which are the things that
are very unique to theirbusiness and kind of have to
remain that way.
They're custom applications,they're ERP and in this model
where a VCIO sticker gets stuckon something and it's really the
glorified technical accountmanagement, that 20% is the
piece that really goes away andcreates a ton of friction

(30:54):
between those two parties.
And so how do you advise someof your customers that are
building that out to addressthose needs of that 20%,
recognizing they need tostandardize, they need to scale
their business, but also thatthere's this unique component to
those businesses?

Speaker 1 (31:12):
that are really important.
I think it's again like to yourpoint of finding an IT provider
that matches your needs and thelevel that you want to engage in
, right?
So there's no point in having adigital transformation
conversation and trying to getsomeone to leverage AI in their
business If they they've.
They, they have a networkcabling room quote, unquote.

(31:32):
I'm using air quotes that has aswamp cooler in it and is
constantly alarming because thebackup battery has been dead for
six months and like we chuckleabout this stuff, but you and I
know this stuff existseverywhere, right?
This is the dirty secret of ITis that for so long, the
industry has said we'redifferent because we're
proactive.
Right, because originally wecame from this reactive support,

(31:54):
time and materials paradigm,and that's still not true in a
lot of cases.
No, you're not proactive, youjust say that you are.
Like, having a monitoringsystem deployed in your client
environment does not necessarilymake you proactive.
So it's about the level ofsophistication and matching the
provider with the client's needs.
Because everybody should befocused on standardization,

(32:16):
because, as we said, it's thestrongest lever you can pull to
make the environment work well,which makes clients happy, which
makes users happy, which makesthe IT support company happy.
So that should be the tablestakes of what you're engaging
in.
That should be a conversationyou're having with everyone.
The point is not to confusethat with a strategic level of
business engagement.
Right, like a real VCIO looksmore like a business analyst,

(32:40):
but if you try to have abusiness analyst conversation
with a five person retail shop,they're like what are you
talking about?
I've got stuff to do.
I don't understand half of whatyou're saying, but if you go to
a mining company that's 500people deployed across six
countries, they absolutely willlisten to you about how they can
better leverage technology andreduce costs, because costs

(33:02):
spiral out of control when thecomp and given the complexity of
that environment.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
That makes complete sense, and so to support that.
One of the things that I hearfrom the MSP side sometimes so
from the people that areactually delivering these
services and maybe trying tohave these conversations is they
have a hard time getting thatseat at the table and they want
to be part of theseconversations.
They want to be part of theboard meeting or the strategic
planning meeting, but they justcan't find themselves invited or

(33:28):
through those doors.
What advice would you have forcustomers consuming these
services around, including someof those folks in these
discussions?

Speaker 1 (33:44):
of that of coming from the customer side because I
think a lot of the conversationthat we have is from the IT
vendor side of trying to forceyour seat at the table Right,
and in a lot of ways you need tobe invited.
So there's some ways that youcan.
You can produce conversationswith a client in order for them
to be like huh, that'sinteresting, maybe you should
come to this meeting, right, soyou can position yourself that
way.
But for someone who's who hasan IT provider and they're
wondering are these guys a goodmatch for me?

(34:05):
I've never really thought aboutthis stuff in this way.
Test the waters and just ringthem up and say I'd like to talk
to somebody about my ITstrategy, and how they respond
to that question, I think willbe incredibly indicative.
Whether it's like you talk tothe owner and they're like
fantastic, let's set up ameeting and they're hot to trot,
they're ready to go, they'llhave that conversation with you.
Or if it's like okay, let mefind someone for you, and then a

(34:28):
day later someone else callsyou back and they're like so,
someone said you wanted to talkabout some strategy stuff.
Right, that's a really goodindication of the level they're
going to be able to engage youon.
But I think there is a priority, I think, on the client end, if
you want to be able to leveragetechnology in a way that
benefits your business, thoseare the conversations that you

(34:48):
should start inviting, and justinviting someone to a boardroom
meeting and just having thempresent what their options are
and then press them on it right,because a lot of vendors will
show up or sorry, a lot ofproviders will show up to these
meetings and, like we've said,we'll just spout a bunch of
technical nonsense and tell youlike here's how many spam emails
we stopped for you and this isthe number of support tickets

(35:10):
that we closed last month, andnobody cares.
Right, I pay you for that stuff.
That's table stakes.
But if you can get them intosome of those meetings and press
them around, what are thethings that I should be
considering over the next threemonths in my business,
especially if there's changes tobe made in your business, like
if you're doing any type of M&A?

(35:31):
The classic conversation thatwe talk about is we're acquiring
this business in Ottawa andit's about 80 people, they're
spread across two sites and theyhave a manufacturing facility
in Montreal.
So we're this is under NDA.
We're just exploring this, butI want you to be able to have
this something under your hat tothink about how we would engage
in this right.
Like, engaging a person earlyin that type of conversation

(35:51):
will produce massively differentoutcomes.
Similarly a story I had this guy, adam Walter, on my podcast
recently.
We were talking about VCIO andwhy this is a problem.
He had this fantastic storywhere he was more on the client
side and he worked in largecorporate and education
environments and they were doingan RFP and bringing in MSPs to

(36:12):
present on them potentiallyacting as a partner for this
large school district, and allof them came in and told them
why they're awesome and here'sall their plans for their
infrastructure.
And he's yeah, great, boring,don't care, all right.
And then they went through theselection process and he said
the crazy part was is no oneasked them about what the plans
were in the district.
So all of those providers misseda $4 million project

(36:35):
opportunity because they werebuilding a brand new school in
the district.
They had planned to do this inthe next two years, so, like
simple curiosity on the vendor'spart would take them a long way
to be able to help thatcustomer.
So it's like an interestinganalogy because how much should
you position with them, how muchhave they earned that

(36:56):
opportunity to sit at that tableand play a strategic role?
But I think it's fair tochallenge them with that and say
come to the table, let's seekind of what you're made of, and
I'm curious whether or notyou're up to par on what I
expect from a strategic vendor.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
I totally get that.
I think that one of my favoritequotes is to be interesting, be
interested, yeah, and reallyjust.
I think so many people,especially in some of those high
pressure scenarios where thereis a big contract on the line or
there is something that they'rethese are meaningful
opportunities for their businessas well, and they get so caught
off guard by the moment thatthey just go in and let me tell

(37:32):
you everything about me.
Yeah, yeah, and really to yourpoint, or to Adam's point as
well, the secret sauce is how,let me you tell me about you,
what are the challenges you'rehaving, what are the things you
have on the horizon?
And I feel like people don'task enough questions in any
stage, let alone the sales stage.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
I think that this is like key in sales, right, like I
know a lot I know enough to bedangerous about sales.
I'm not a sales person.
It's something that I've sharedwith you is like in a warm lead,
if we're bringing a client into talk about, like, closing a
deal, like I'm great in thatroom but like those initial
conversations, I'm still reallyrough with that because it is a
skill, it's a practice that youhave to spend time on, a craft

(38:10):
that you hone, and it's still,honestly, like as much as
logically and I know thesethings of ask more questions, I
still fall into that trap ofhere's what we could do for you.
It just so I don't know why thathas become so natural for us of
trying to win that person'strust and affection in some way.
But you're right, likequestions is absolutely key and
it's funny because, like I nowrecognize a really good

(38:33):
salesperson.
Sometimes it drives me a littlecrazy when they're too
questiony.
I've sat with some of thesepeople where, like, you can tell
the person's just tell me howmuch does this cost, I want to
sign this contract, and they'relike hang on, let's explore this
a little more.
And I'm like this guy's good,they know what they're doing,
they're asking all the rightquestions, so they can position
this back to the person whenthey actually drop a proposal.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
I know we've talked about this in the past as well,
but my favorite like firstmeetings, and my favorite cold
meetings are the ones where theywalk, they walk out of it and
they actually know nothing aboutme.
You leave something to followup on, there's a conversation,
there's a part two.
Right, you leave something onthe table, because the whole
process should never be aboutyou, it's about them, and so I
feel like that's a whole otherepisode.

(39:15):
But in terms of the MSP side ofthings, I feel like one thing
that is very true is that theamount of MSPs that exist are
continuing to grow.
Right, I heard a stat fromsomeone the other day in Calgary
Calgary actually has thehighest amount of MSPs per
capita in the world, which seemscrazy to me.
It does seem crazy, yeah, butyeah, it's a basis of the

(39:38):
population and the amount ofMSPs in Calgary that apparently
we have the highestconcentration per capita.
If I'm a business owner and I'mgoing out to search for someone
to support our business, Ithink you've given some
incredible tips around makingsure that fits correct.
But what are some of the thingsthat I should be looking out
for off the bat to really weedout maybe the 80% that might not

(40:00):
be a good fit for me and narrowit down to the 20% I should be
talking to and spending timewith?

Speaker 1 (40:04):
fit for me and narrow it down to the 20% I should be
talking to and spending timewith.
I think again it comes.
I would encourage people tolook at a prescriptive stack,
right, which means that theytell you how they're going to
make your business run betterand this maybe runs counter to
what we just said of beingcurious and understanding them.
I'll come back to that right,but they have a program that
they're going to deploy intoyour business that will make it

(40:26):
work.
I think that is a really strongposition, because they
basically have an opinion,they're taking a position on
what a good IT infrastructurelooks like.
So I think that is reallycritical, that they're not just
going to say, oh yeah, we workwith anybody.
No, there needs to be analignment around how they
actually appreciate yourbusiness and how they're

(40:46):
actually going to engage withyou as a customer.
Then the second piece is more ofthat cultural alignment, right,
because, as I said,differentiation is actually
really difficult in thisindustry because there's a lot
of people hate the term bestpractices, but there are, so
we'll use, maybe, frameworksinstead.
There are a lot of really decentframeworks that most of these
providers utilize, right.
So the differentiation betweenthem do you care how a person

(41:09):
solves your outlook ticket Notreally right, but that's 80% of
what you're going to beconsuming from them, so does it
matter?
No, so a lot of it depends onwhy they do what they do, and I
think that's a much moreimportant thing.
So if you're meeting with asmall vendor, a small MSP, are
you meeting with the owner, ordid you meet with the owner as a

(41:30):
part of that and asking themabout their business philosophy
and how they think that theycould work together as partners?
I think that's a much moreproductive conversation.
If you're meeting with a largeentity, does it feel just off
the shelf and does it feel likeit has a cultural core?
Does it feel like there's somelevel of alignment around how
you view technology and how youview it, can, it could be

(41:51):
deployed in your environment?
I think that's a much betterway to approach these things.
So looking for like a baselevel of sophistication around
how they're deploying technologyand then looking for that
values alignment to make surethat they're aligned with
utilizing technology in yourenvironment in the way that you
think it actually matches yourcompany.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
How important is proximity.
Obviously there's a lot ofinvestment in remote tool sets.
The technology has come a longway, but how important is
proximity in that decision?

Speaker 1 (42:19):
It's interesting.
It's a good question because Iwould say it's mixed.
I think there is a lot ofimportance to proximity from an
account and relationalstandpoint, right.
So, like, how often do you seethat person?
Do they show up at your office?
Can they make it?
Can they get to your office?
If something actually does needto be physically done, I think
there is some value to that.

(42:40):
The other side of this is Iknow some very successful MSPs
that there are 50 people.
They don't have two people inthe same state, let alone the
same city, right?
So, like it's not an imperativeby any stretch.
There are the modern technology.
There are certainly ways thatyou can build relationship with
people virtually.
I think a lot of this againcomes to your needs.

(43:02):
If you have a particularbusiness requirement that has
some on-site needs for it, likeyou have physical equipment that
sometimes has issues and needssome support with it, right,
maybe you need a field person.
But and if you're working witha company that is two provinces
away, is that problematic?
It could be.
It depends on response time,right.

(43:23):
If that's low priority and theycan deploy someone remotely
through utilizing some fieldservices companies like these
partner vendors, where you canget a local consultant to show
up and white label for you,right, and they just they're
intelligent hands, they'll go dosome things.
As long as you have 24 hoursnotice, that's not really a
problem.
But if something goes down andyou lose thousands or tens of

(43:45):
thousands of dollars per hourthat it's not working, you
should definitely have someonelocal.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
I want to pivot a little bit to getting more value
out of relationships in place.
We've talked a lot about thematching game, of making sure
that we match the right people.
We've talked a little bit aboutthe governance and the
strategic side of things.
But what about the scenariowhere things just aren't working
right?
Is there and there's probably ahundred different examples that
either you or I could sharearound what that feels like or

(44:11):
what those causes can be like?
But what are?
Are there steps that a businessleader can take to improve some
of those relationships?
Or is it, once it goes souththat it's tough to recover from
on the MSP side of things?
What's your perspective there?
I certainly don't think it'strue.
I goes south that it's tough torecover from on the MSP side of
things.
What's your perspective there?

Speaker 1 (44:26):
I certainly don't think it's true.
I don't think it's true thatit's unrecoverable.
So I think everything issolvable.
It depends on whether or notthe two people again have the
relational value and thealignment around what good looks
like, right?
So if there's a fundamentalmismatch around what they're
willing to do.
So good examples that I've seenis organizations be on site on

(44:50):
occasion and be visible and thisis an old school management
approach of I feel value in themoney I'm spending if I see the
people that I'm spending moneyon and there are absolutely
organizations that are like thatand if you're a remote first
organization and don't need togo visit their client site,
there's inevitably going to befriction.
So that is that alignment pieceof.
Can you convince that clientthat me going on site is not

(45:12):
necessary?
Maybe that's just apsychological or cultural
artifact that makes it amisalignment versus you can have
that conversation of look, stopsaving up all of your tickets
for the for Terry to show up onsite and then you guys mob him
with all of the issues thatyou've been saving for the past
three weeks.
Just log these tickets andsomeone will guaranteed resolve

(45:33):
this within an hour.
That's a much bettercircumstance for everybody right
.
So I think in a lot of cases itall comes down to maybe amping
up the level of interaction andcollaboration that you work on.
So you and I have seen thesecircumstances where there's an
emergency, a relationalemergency with a customer, and
you basically gather like atiger team together that focuses

(45:55):
on this for a very intenseperiod, where I've been in
circumstances where I talk to aclient or a president of a
client twice a day right througha really hairy situation and
just the act of doing thatdemonstrates that you care,
you're going to take the timeand attention to focus on them.
And then I'd go back to theservice team and be like
everything that comes in fromthese guys is now a P2, right,

(46:16):
and if it's really an emergency,then automatically P1, right.
So P3 is low priority, p2 ismedium priority, p1 is emergency
situation right.
So everything needs to be likea higher priority to really show
them the love.
And as you build more trust andyou find what was broken, where
was?

(46:37):
The misalignment of expectationsis often where this comes from
right, because it's often not acapability or capacity issue.
That's going to be evident.
And if it is one of thosethings, then either look, you
need to staff up in order to beable to support us.
That's a business decision thatis either a plus or minus.
It's going to happen or it'snot.
But in a lot of these casesit's often just that I think

(46:59):
that this should be happeningand I don't see it's happening
right.
That's really what we'refighting with.
So if you can increase thecadence of interaction with that
customer to push that alignmentaround expectations and then,
once it's aligned alignedeveryone starts to cool off and
then you can peel back from eachother, this works, yeah, it's
good.
And then you just you fade intothe background.
It goes back to the way that itwas working before.

(47:20):
In a lot of cases, I love that.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
So most of the challenges from your perspective
aren't even technical peoplechallenges aren't about the
organization's.
It's just around thatcommunication and that alignment
between the organization's yeah, I would say, like most things
in business are communications.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Right, You're hired for a job.
Either you can do it or not,right?
If the quality of the work isterrible, that's a different
circumstance.
Right, and maybe there's thisone person that in your
organization, whenever he workson our stuff, like we're really
unhappy.
That is maybe a people issue.
Potentially it's a technicalissue.
I doubt that there's a lot ofcircumstances like that, but in
so many cases it's just I onlywant to talk to Mark, right,

(47:58):
Like he's the only IT guy thatI'll talk to.
And if you dig deeper, likethere's nothing Mark is doing,
that's spectacular, other thanhe's a better communicator than
other people on the team.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
I feel like, once again, that could be an episode
in itself.
I recognize we're starting torun a little bit short on time
here.
I have one more question foryou in terms of the future, of
where things are going here.
So there's a lot of speculationand conversation around the
role of AI, the role oftechnology in the MSP industry
itself.
So you have a front row seat Infact, you might even be driving
the car in some of thesescenarios where you're getting

(48:30):
to work hand in hand with theseorganizations as they
incorporate technology intotheir offerings, into their
customer service, into theirgo-to-market.
What are some of the thingsthat customers can look to
expect in the next kind of threeto five years as this
technology specifically around,like AI and some of the other
security components, become morecommonplace?

Speaker 1 (48:50):
So I think one that is most evident to the customers
is I think you'll see a lotmore interactions with bots, and
this will be different than ourcurrent interactions with bots,
where it's like the bot rightnow typically it tries to
understand what you're lookingfor and then we'll just feed you
back knowledge base articles tosee if you can figure it out
yourself.
It's not great, right?

(49:10):
So this is a slightly betterequivalent of everyone mashing
zero or pound to get to theagent on a phone call.
So I think the bots will get alot smarter.
Where there is actually acapability for the bot to
understand your intent and toprovide either good direction or
, in a lot of cases, actuallyreach out and fix the
circumstance for you.
I think, even before that,there's going to be

(49:32):
circumstances where self healingactually works, and this is I'm
an old nerd, right.
This is something that has beenpromised to us since the mid
nineties.
Like I, I used to have physicalfloppy disks that were called
self heal, right.
So this is an old idea thatnever really worked that well,
but it absolutely will in thefuture, where it's a system uses

(49:52):
telemetry to call out toanother system and says I've
detected an error this and this,and then another system will go
in and actually remediate thatsituation on its behalf, right?
No one ever touched this, so wecan call this automation.
I think it's going to look likesomething different in the
future.
So I think that's the firstaspect that I think is going to
be changing here, and I think alot of this.

(50:13):
The other aspect of how itimpacts customers is
understanding sort of datahierarchy and data segmentation.
Right, Because once we startintegrating AI into all of our
platforms and into our workflows, we need to be very intricately
detailed, understanding exactlythe priority and the hierarchy

(50:34):
of the data that it touches.
So there's this classic adagethat we talk about of I fired up
an AI, I loaded it up and gaveit all our data.
Now the secretary can ask howmuch the CFO makes because it
doesn't care.
It does not segment or createor care about the
differentiation in that data.
So we need to be really carefulabout how the data actually

(50:54):
gets access to that informationand how that is shared back or
utilized with the rest of theorganization.
So that's that first steptowards AI consulting, which
will definitely be a thing, andthen, as we're seeing in the IT
industry.
That AI showed up as this weirduse case where we're just
throwing spaghetti at the wallto try and figure out use cases

(51:15):
for it.
We're actually finding reallygood use cases for it now and
this will start to show up in alot of client organizations
where your workflow has segmentswhere it gets handed off to an
AI and it does something with itand potentially either goes
direct to a customer or it goesto another person in another
department.
But I think we'll see a lotmore collaboration with agentic

(51:37):
AI in the future in a lot moreorganizations Do you think that
customers can expect any sort offinancial differences in the
models?

Speaker 2 (51:45):
and everything Because I think that's one
question that I've been gettinga lot, which is, as some of
these agentic approaches come inas some of the reduction of
requirement for maybe even someof the reduction of requirement
for maybe even some of theinfrastructure management, does
that change the financial modelsor is it going to be determined
still?

Speaker 1 (52:00):
It'll be an interesting question, right?
I won't go into my.
I have this whole AI timelineprediction model that I did with
a blog.
Someone asked me to repost this.
I need to go back and find thisand post it.
But more on the IT end of this,what I said is that five to 10
year timeframe, which, when Iposted this, was about two,
almost three years ago.
So we're two to three yearsaway from this where it'll start

(52:20):
to show up, where AI willactually start eating the jobs
in service desks.
Right, because what I talkedabout is those agents are going
to become a lot smarter and tiedwith self-healing.
There's simply going to be alot less support work to do,
right, and maybe we're lying toourselves about cause.
This has always been the promiseof the industry, who knows?
But I see this as a very realopportunity where, you know,

(52:44):
we're going to be decimatingsome service desks, like just
the help desk role in a lot oforganizations, I think is going
to start to become slimmer andslimmer on the lower end of
things, right?
So how do you get an entry pointinto a group that only requires
more sophisticated skill setsthat the AIs are passing up for
subject matter expertise orone-off errors, those sorts of

(53:05):
things.
That will be interesting, butwhether or not the cost savings
are passed on to the customer.
Interesting question Does itmean that agentic AI becomes so
expensive from a horsepower anddata consumption standpoint that
it's functionally equivalent ormarginally different in the
margins that are created for thebusiness?
Good question, but I have toimagine if you're a 50 person

(53:26):
MSP and you're able to reduceyour staff load by 15 people
because you have a reallyintelligent front endend AI
that's doing triage for you,it's probably cheaper, right?
So I think it's a very openquestion about how the business
model adapts to that and whetheror not the cost just shifts to
something else.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
Final question here If you could leave our audience
with one takeaway around MSPsand their role in business
success, what would that be?

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Good question.
I would say it's that this is avery real need and I think
people need to really understandthe role that an IT support
organization plays in thesuccess of your business.
Regardless of what you do, itcould be that sort of low
maturity guy that just helps youto keep the lights on and fix

(54:18):
stuff when it's broken.
That's still an important rolefor your business to function
and it scales up from there.
But I think the necessity ofhaving an MSP makes a ton of
sense because as a five personorganization, don't hire an IT
guy, right, because they'regoing to quit or they're.
They're going to be terribleand hit their limit on their
technical knowledge and you'repaying a ton of money for them.

(54:39):
So just outsource it.
It's going to be less money andyou're going to have a whole
army of people with technicalskillset to be able to apply to
your business.
That whole idea scales up right.
Like it makes no sense unlessyou're like an enterprise
organization that already haslike a 200 person IT department
and I've worked in thoseenvironments.
Right, outsourcing that to athird party, that would be

(55:02):
tricky, it's not impossible.
I've seen it done with likelargeourcing some of that
subject matter expertise and atleast the consulting aspect, to
stay current and make sure thatyour business is moving into the
future and properly leveragingtechnology, whether or not they

(55:24):
support it or not.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
I feel like you hit the nail on the head there and I
love that piece of advice.
Todd, as always, it's beenincredible.
Thank you so much for sharingyour expertise, your knowledge,
your wisdom, your stories today.
This has been a blast Forpeople that want to learn more
from you find you on theinternet, connect with you.
What is the best way to do that?

Speaker 1 (55:45):
Probably best place would be LinkedIn, so just
search for me.
Todd K-A-N-E, you can find meon LinkedIn.
If you want to hit up mywebsite, it's itisbusinesscom,
because we're not running acharity, it's a business people.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
I love it.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate you coming on andI hope you have a splendid rest
of your day.
Thank you, sir.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
It's great.