June 9, 2025 • 40 mins
On this episode of the Sell Me This Podcast, Keith Daser talks with Tim Thomson, former MSP founder, business coach, and the creator of Cyber Trends. After scaling his managed services company to over $7 million in revenue, Tim learned the kinds of lessons that rarely make it into conference keynotes or LinkedIn posts.
They dig into the real challenges MSPs face as they grow, what separates those that scale from those that stall, and why the jump from $1 million to $7 million often requires a total shift in mindset. Tim also shares how AI is reshaping IT service delivery and what smart providers are doing now to stay ahead of the curve.
Whether you're running an MSP, advising one, or just looking to build a stronger service business, this episode delivers practical insights from someone who's lived it—and now helps others do the same.
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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
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I was never a numbers guy so I always avoided the
finances until I went from 3.2million to 2.6 10 years ago and
I'm like, okay, I need to figureout where the deficiencies are.
So you've got to have thoseuncomfortable conversations with
yourself to figure out whereyou can utilize somebody like
you and I in a conversation tohelp them get into that
boardroom program.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
On this episode of Sell Me this Podcast, we sit
down with Tim Thompson, formerMSP founder, business coach and
the man behind Cybertrends.
After scaling his previous MSPto over $7 million in revenue,
tim faced the kind of hardlessons that most people only
talk about behind closed doors.
Today, he's using thatexperience to help other MSPs
(00:46):
grow faster, smarter and moresustainably.
We'll get real about what ittakes to go from 1 million to 7
million, why most MSPs stall outand how AI is changing the game
for IT service delivery.
If you've ever wondered whatseparates average tech providers
from true strategic partners orhow to break out from the same
year on repeat trap, thisconversation is for you.
(01:08):
Let's dive in.
All right, tim, we are soexcited to have you here today.
Thank you for making the tripdown from or, I guess, up from
Kelowna.
Up from Kelowna yeah, how longhave you been in town for here?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Just a couple of days .
Came in on Sunday, so headingback after this, but super
excited to be here.
I've been following your showfor a while and Robbie put you
out and a few others aroundthere that I know.
So excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
When I told my wife this morning that someone was
actually coming in for the show,she didn't believe me, so
she'll have to watch the episode, I think, to prove that it's
real.
Yeah, but super grateful youmade the trip.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Tell me a little bit about yourself, tim and here.
So yeah, I started an MSP backin Calgary back in 2003.
I bootstrapped it to $7 milliona year in revenue.
So very grateful, I had theopportunity to do that.
But I also had the opportunitythat it didn't go very well at
the end, and so one of thethings that I've been doing in
the last couple of years isreally focusing on helping other
MSPs grow on scale and do thethings that they need to do.
So one of the things they sayis IT people start IT companies
(02:08):
to solve IT problems.
They don't have business acumento get them from that million
to three to five, to seven to$10 million, and so I work with
a lot of MSPs out of aroundNorth America and just really
help them avoid the pitfallsthat I went through.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
You talked about 7 million and I think for anyone
listening, 7 million is a verylarge MSP and you probably know
the stats more than I do.
That would probably put you inthe top percentile of MSPs
globally.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, so there's 300,000 of them in the world and
90, no, 85% of them are under$3 million.
Wow, so the effort and energyit takes to get to that level.
It's not a lifestyle company atthat anymore, right?
It's actually like you're nowdoing full-on business decisions
and you have the right team andthe right people and the right
bus, and so it was a journey andunfortunately, it didn't end
(02:58):
very good, and that was thefirst time I've actually told
anybody this publicly.
But due to some very baddecisions and poor mistakes and
some lack of trust, things wentsideways and Dan Martell talks a
little bit about your greateststory.
You need to talk about yourdarkest times and make it that
your story to help everyone else.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, and that's a really brave way to open up as
well, Cause I know we've talkeda little bit about this
privately, but I think some ofthose battle scars as well
probably just A make you 100times stronger going forward.
So, as you're coaching some ofthese folks, whether it be
through growing their business,whether it be through navigating
their own partnerships or theirown ecosystems, I'm sure
there's just a different levelof story and advice you can give
(03:37):
from that gained experience.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
It is, and one of the things when I got into the
mentorship program it's we buildfundamentals of the business
and the business needs to havethose to scale from that one to
three to five to seven million,and back when I was scaling it
every million dollars, there wasa change in how we do
processing or how the processeswork within the business, and so
now, with all of the technologyand everything that we have now
(04:00):
, we should be able to build afoundation now at a million
dollars, which Dan Martellcalled the pain line, and then,
once we have that foundation inplace, then we can layer on and
scale as fast as we want.
But a lot of people don'tunderstand.
You'll see a lot of mentors onLinkedIn and it's all about
sales, it's all about marketing,but if the whole ship doesn't
(04:21):
move with it, you're never goingto get there.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, and you need to build those solid foundations
in order to actually be able togrow and scale and build those
sustaining ecosystems.
You deal with so many differentMSPs at different stages.
If you were to put two MSPs infront of you right now, one that
was doing everything correctlyand one and I recognize this is
going to be a very declarativeexample one that they're doing
(04:45):
everything right, and the secondis that exact example you're
talking about in the negative,where they're struggling,
they're having a hard time.
It just feels like so much work.
Are there a couple ofobservations you'll usually have
right away of that company thatfeels like everything is just
like rolling the boulder uphill,like rolling the boulder uphill
.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yeah, it's the same conversation.
It's hey, I can help you scaleand grow.
Great idea.
I'm working 80 hour weeks.
I don't have time to figure outhow to work with you for one
hour a week and it's.
This is where I come in, and Iuse again, like some more of the
buyback principles around atime energy audit to determine
where you're wasting time, so wecan start focusing working on
the business and not in thebusiness, and they just.
(05:24):
It's easier to gravitate to theblinky lights and the shiny
things as it is to actually lookat a balance sheet or a P&L
statement or whatever it is thatyou need to work on the
business to help get it to thenext level.
And so a lot of times the MSPswill throw in oh, we need
cybersecurity, we need VCIOservices, we need more and more,
but more is not always better.
(05:45):
Let's figure out the packageand the plan and get really good
at it.
Focus on focus is follow onecourse until success, but
they're just running 100 milesan hour and they can't get out
of their own way, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
There was a video that I saw the other day that
talked about this challenge thata lot of entrepreneurs face,
where they just feel likethey're reliving the same kind
of nine months over and overagain, Whereas as soon as you
get to that friction pointwhether it's you have this great
idea, you have this.
Maybe it's a new securityservice, maybe it's a new
offering they rush, they bringit to market, maybe they sell a
couple of them, they get someinternal reinforcement, but then
(06:20):
, when it starts to get hard,they pivot.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And then maybe they leave it on the shelf and just
start doing something else, butthey relive the same six to nine
months over and over again.
Is that something that you'reseeing a lot in that space as
well?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah.
Yeah, people don't stay thecourse long enough to figure out
what success looks like.
It's easy to go okay, let's gothrow in AI now.
Let's go throw in cybersecurity.
Let's pivot here because we'vegot a little bit of traction.
But I got to get good at.
Operational maturity levels haveto be defined in order to go
from that one to three to $7million, and I learned that my
(06:51):
first key hire was a fantasticoperations manager and that just
took everything off my plate.
And then I can figure out howto move into larger contracts.
With more operational maturitylevels, you have the ability to
approach bigger customers todeliver on SLOs and SLAs, and
the biggest customer that I hadwas $92,000 a month here in
(07:13):
Alberta, 52 locations, 1800staff across Canada.
Sorry, but I had to build aservice desk and then I ripped
it apart after three months andI had to rebuild it again and
they brought in a proper, a guythat ran a service test for a
long time to help me build outthe maturity level to define how
to build that thing home.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And I know we both kind of have our battle scars in
different ways from buildingout some MSPs, and you
definitely have to reinvent thewheel every couple of hundred
kilometers as you're buildingthat bus.
But you also mentioned that AIis now changing the game for a
lot of business leaders and soobviously, when you built your
MSP and when I was in the MSPworld, those tools didn't exist
(07:52):
in anywhere near the samemeaningful way.
No, how has the playbookchanged for some of these folks
that are now building their MSPs?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
It's changed, the ones that are interested in
adopting AI.
So the way I look at this nowis, if they're trying to scale
to a million dollars, it's notthat hard to do.
In this day and age, we cancreate as much marketing and
sales material as we need.
However, the MSP has to adoptthe AI process in readiness
within their organization butthen also have the thought
(08:23):
leadership to go to theircustomers and understand their
pain points from their workflowsand different things, so that
they can go in and speak to theownership group and say here's
what we can do.
We can implement an AI strategyto integrate your SaaS
applications that are nottalking right now, and we can do
it on pennies on the dollar.
But you're creating a newrevenue stream.
(08:45):
But you're also creatingbusiness advisory leaderships,
rules, mentalities and thoughtleaderships.
So the QBRs and the monthlymeetings that you're going to
have become a lot moreinteresting to talk about,
because now you have the abilityto solve real business world
problems and not just throw afirewall in.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, and so I feel like you opened up a can of
worms here that I'm going to die.
I'm going to.
I'm going to bite on thefirewall versus business
problems comment.
This is something that I hearover and over again is I wish my
MSP was a strategic partner inthe business.
Almost every MSP that I talkedto at the same time wishes that
they were at that table andthey're saying I wish I was in
(09:23):
the conversations, I wish I wasinvited to the board meetings.
Where's the disconnect?
Speaker 1 (09:28):
The relationships when I was when I were Hockey,
canada was our first customer.
I was in the boardrooms.
I knew when Scott Smith and BobNicholson were working early
mornings.
I was in there at 6 am on everyTuesday and every Wednesday
fixing their computers or justtalking to them, built a
relationship.
Nhl had a lockout period in2004.
And I said to Scott Smith I go,does anybody know anybody at
(09:51):
the Flames?
I'm going to go offer myservices for 50 cents on the
dollar.
He introduced me to the CFO.
I was there for 12 years.
So it's building thatrelationship.
It's understanding the businessand how to solve those problems
.
Yeah, and having the ability totalk to either your direct
contact or the CEO or thepresident.
But a lot of these MSP owners,well, they'll just go in and
(10:13):
they'll have their monthlymeeting.
Or they won't have it orthey'll just screw around on a
quarterly business review.
But the quarterly businessreview is around defining where
the business is going andsolving problems, as opposed to
oh, we just need another accesspoint down the hall.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, and so many businesses that that exact QBR,
and they're all lookingbackwards as well, right, like
none of them are enabling there.
Yeah, here's all.
Here's how many times yourswitch died.
Here's how many times weupdated your antivirus, how many
tickets.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
How many tickets the executive or the assistant?
Yeah, antivirus.
How many tickets the executiveor the assistant open?
There's a gentleman named Adam.
Adam Walter owns Humanized IT.
He's all over LinkedIn and he'sbuilt an operational maturity
platform for MSPs and he speaksvolumes about utilizing a SWOT
analysis framework to get inthose rooms with those decision
(11:02):
makers and have that smartconversation, pump them up.
What are you great at?
Define what the weaknesses are,create opportunities out of
those weaknesses to solvebusiness problems, to create
better outcomes which create abetter experience.
But the IT owners or the MSPowners don't take the time to
figure out how to get into thoseconversations or have the
(11:25):
business acumen to do that.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So if I'm an owner of an MSP that will say, is right,
in that kind of that small spot, I'm a million dollars or maybe
just knocking on the door of it, I'm wanting to figure out how
to actually do this.
How do I take those first stepsto be able to even unlock the
skill?
Maybe they don't have the skillset, maybe they don't have the
confidence.
Maybe they don't have the skillset, maybe they don't have the
confidence, Maybe they don'thave the tool set.
How do they start to unlockthose things so they can bring?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
that to their customers Get out of their own
way.
Unfortunately, ego gets in theway of a lot of things.
And so having the time to workwith somebody like you and I
that have 25 years of experiencein doing this right and so
taking the lead on understandinghow in doing this right and so
taking the lead on understandinghow to have a sales
conversation with, throughtonality and the proper
connection, questions orutilizing a SWOT framework to go
(12:12):
out and say, to figure out howto solve problems for them, and
so the challenge, like one ofthe biggest things, that my
biggest hurdle in my MSP.
I was never a numbers guy so Ialways avoided the finances
until I went from 3.2 million to2.6 10 years ago and I'm like,
okay, I need to figure out how,where the deficiencies are right
(12:32):
.
So you've got to have thoseuncomfortable conversations with
yourself to figure out whereyou can utilize somebody like
you and I in a conversation tohelp them get into that
boardroom.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
That makes total sense, and so how can I feel
like I'm picking on this alittle bit, but how can someone
start to even look in the mirrorand have those conversations?
Is there ecosystems?
Is there conversations?
Is it talking to their dog?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
I think what they have to do is they have to
decide when they're ready totake their IT MSP company from a
personal based company versusan actual business you convert
it into.
Because one of the things I wastalking to an MSP and he goes
oh, I got a great engineer.
He's been with me for 10 years.
I gave him a management roleand he sucks at managing people.
(13:14):
I'm like no shit.
He sucks at managing peoplebecause he's good at solving
engineering problems.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
We have a, I think, a mutual connection, that is, it
always is referred to the ideathat if you promote your best
engineer, or even your bestsalesperson, for that matter,
into a management role, they'renot getting a promotion, they're
getting a new job.
Yes, and you're functionallystarting a brand new job with no
experience.
Right Like it is a clean slateat that point.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Right and yeah.
So you got to the biggestbreakthrough that we got to at
2.3 million.
I ended up hiring a rainmakersalesman here in town and then
he converted into the CEO andhim and I converted from 3.2 to
6.95 million in three and a halfyears.
That's incredible and it was alot of work, like it's chaos.
But I guess the message of thatis that I knew, I know where
(13:59):
I'm good at, but I'm not therainmaker salesman and I'm not
necessarily a CEO as good as hewas.
So we work together.
So you it kind of goes back tothe replacement ladder and the
VIVAC principles is that youfigure out your time, energy on
us and then you move throughoperations and the sales and the
executive leadership role.
And just because you're anowner, it doesn't mean you're a
great CEO.
Some of the CEOs that are theowners of MSPs that I talk to
(14:23):
they would rather put infirewalls, fill your boots, but
you have to have look in themirror and really understand
what you're good at and where doyou want to take your business.
Is it a lifestyle business oris it going to be a true
business with a 10-year exitstrategy?
And here's what we need to doto build that team and when I
(14:44):
went through portions ofpotentially an acquisition, we
needed that.
We needed a CEO with experience, we needed proper sales, we
needed structure, we neededmaturity levels because the
group that was looking at us,they had similar size clients
and they wanted to make surethat how we deliver and how we
grew the business is in the samepath right.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, so I don't want to jump on the Dan Martell
excitement quite yet, but I knowwe've talked a lot about some
of the principles from his bookand buy back your time.
I've recommended it to probablya hundred different people.
I know.
When you and I first met, thatwas one thing that we connected
over.
Yeah, are some of thoseprinciples.
If I'm an MSP owner, where do Istart with even dissecting some
of those things?
Because it sounds like a lot ofthose principles are tied to
(15:31):
your coaching frameworks and howyou're giving advice to MSP.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I built my coaching around it.
I wish I had.
I told you that.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
I wish we had that book 20 years ago.
I'm still new to it and it's anincredible book.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, I've got it.
Mine's all marked up andwritten.
But what I suggest to anybodyis just read that book and you,
when he talks about scaling andgrowing in different like
300,000 to 700 to a million inthe pain lines, you can resonate
with it, like it.
Just when I read it I'm like,damn, I wish I had that at that
point.
And so, again, you have to be asan ownership.
(16:04):
As an owner, you have to bewilling to open up, check your
ego at the door, figure out whatyou don't know and solve that
problem Right, Cause you're goodat something and I'm good at
something, it doesn't mean wecan do it together.
It's better to compliment eachother than it is to you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah, and I think that it's evolving as well, like
even in our business.
I'm going through some of thosesame realizations right now.
Where do you want to play?
Yeah, where are you helping?
Where are you in the way?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, and it's always an evolving conversation.
With the work that you're doingwith MSPs.
What are some of the roadblocksthat you see over and over
again?
I know you mentioned theprocess side of things.
Is that the big problem that alot of these organizations run
into?
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah, it's again.
It's getting them to focus onworking on the business, right.
So buying back time figuringout like if you want to
implement AI and you don't knowhow to do that, then you got to
find some time to figure out howto do that Right.
And but the other thing too iswe can now optimize operations
(17:07):
10 times faster.
So it was like when I had aservice desk.
We wanted our service desk guysto do 15 tickets a day, right,
and then they just cherry pickeda little hanging fruit.
Now I'll just create an AIagent that'll do all anything
under 15 minutes passwordchanges, printers installs to
solve those problems quickly.
So the operational maturitylevel that MSPs need to build
(17:27):
into growing into biggercustomers, because everybody
wants the $25,000 a monthcontracts right, but they're not
always the most profitable.
But if you want to continue togrow and scale, you're going to
have to move from the $1,000 to$5,000 to $10,000 to $20,000 a
month contracts to get to that$5 million mark.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, the AI agent example you just talked about is
something that I believe a lotof businesses are talking about
and how they consume services,but also a lot of MSPs, I think,
are uncertain with how tonavigate and how a lot of these
emerging technologies are reallygoing to shape what service
delivery looks like.
How are some of thesetechnologies going to change the
face of service delivery andwhat does that make MSPs look
(18:09):
like in the future?
I realize this is a giantquestion.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
And it's a great question, because who's the CEO
of NVIDIA?
The director of IT is justgoing to be an HR manager for.
AI agents Jensen Wong yeah, yeah, that's him, yeah, and so you
still have to have I stillbelieve you're going to have to
have some human interactions.
But just think about this Ifyou have a client that's billing
(18:33):
, you're billing them time andmaterial and you're talking to
them every month about bills.
Right, you could just give theman AI agent portal and have
them ask those questions to findout the answers to what's going
on, as opposed to sending anemail to the director of IT.
The director of IT goes to thefinance department.
The finance department comesback right, so there's a whole
different.
Like you just improve thoseoperational efficiencies.
(18:55):
And the other thing too likemost MSPs are bootstrapped with
employee, we don't have 15people sitting on a bench like
Longview and other ones.
If you can take 80% of the15-minute quick fix tickets off
of a human's plate and solvethem through AI, then I can take
(19:15):
that individual and I can applythem to a billable project,
because when I was running at $7million, I had $1 million of
projects that I was backloggedbecause I could never get to it.
$7 million, I had a milliondollars of projects that I was
backlogged because I could neverget to it.
I can use AI to optimize andslipstream tickets, but then I
can then utilize the resourceson other projects and other
delivery mechanisms that we need.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
And so how far do you see that going?
Because I think it's aninteresting thought experiment
when you start to say, as someof these AI agents get smarter,
as the data sets get larger, assome of these AI agents get
smarter, as the data sets getlarger, as permissions start to
change, what is the role of theMSP in the future?
And I think it becomes a reallyinteresting discussion because
I think there's some really coolpossibilities here.
But is there anything thatstands out to you in terms of
(19:57):
what changes if we're lookingfive to 10 years down the line?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, great question.
So we're moving from MSP 1.0 to2.0, which is your standard RMM
stuff, and then you get intothe cloud and security to 3.0.
And when I talk about thisquite a bit, it's having the
business acumen to get tosolving business problems.
So the MSP needs to lead as athought leader to solve business
(20:26):
problems and implementtechnologies and not just go and
sell hardware anymore.
A lot of times now we just weneed.
When I ran my MSP I knew my keycustomers Flames, hockey Canada
.
I knew all of their technicalchallenges inside and out and
every year budget season came inI had to load it up with budget
.
But that's how you have tothink.
At Hockey Canada they dropped.
They had a whole 300 USB drivesof old World Junior footages.
(20:47):
At the Father David Bauer ArenaSomebody dropped a USB off the
counter and it broke and theylost all the video.
Oh my gosh, it wasn't anythingcrazy.
But the point of that was is Iwas out with my key contact and
we were having lunch and he said, yeah, this happened.
The video person's all upsetand how do we solve, how do we
fix that problem?
I'm like, just leave it with me.
So I went and put together anEMC Isilon storage unit for
(21:10):
$600,000.
There you go so relationships,understanding business problems,
coming up with solutions tosolve it.
They didn't care if it was HP,emc or Cisco, they didn't give a
rip.
We solved that problem.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
And I think that's the gap that a lot of folks miss
.
It's not like they'll get stuckin the what's the best
technology for this use case,not what's the story around the
use case.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, like you got to have Cisco access points
throughout you.
But it doesn't matter, as longas it solves whatever problem
you're looking for.
But that's the differencebetween a technical owner of an
MSP going well.
I'm just a Fortinet guy, sowe're just going to put Fortinet
in here, versus putting in afull on cybersecurity solution
with a SOC in there.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, so let's talk about security a little bit as
well.
So you've mentioned security.
I know that this is an areathat you feel incredibly
strongly about.
Security and MSPs haven'talways fit hand in hand.
In fact, security and IT areeven at a little bit of an
impasse sometimes.
What's that relationship like,and how do you see, in a
Shangri-La state, those twothings fitting together?
Speaker 1 (22:13):
That is a very deep conversation in the boardroom.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
We're about to get philosophical here.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah, but it's a tougher.
Msps have to take on thoseroles and responsibilities.
The problem that I see withMSPs now is they tell everybody
they got a cybersecuritysolution.
Okay, we all got EDR and we allcan do vulnerability scans.
But when I look atcybersecurity, I'll talk to MSPs
and I'm like, okay, where'syour VCIO services?
We don't have one because itcan't afford it.
(22:41):
Vcio is up here.
Compliance is the next phase.
So VCIO drives compliance,compliance drives the tools and
technology.
So if you're trying to scaleand grow as an MSP in the
security space, you need to beable to fill all three of those
and you're in the driver's seatif you're making the decisions
at the top.
Now the problem is we havesecurity people on one side of
(23:02):
the fence and then we have theinfrastructure team on the other
and everyone's fighting forpower.
So it's almost it's almost alittle bit like a soap opera,
where you're trying to figureout how to manipulate somebody
to get their way.
It's like having a developmentteam to build, like you've got a
development team for softwaredevelopment.
They'll have full access towhatever they want on their
software servers, but they don'tget.
They don't get anything inproduction.
(23:23):
Then they get pissed off.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yeah, and I feel I'm curious on your opinion on this
as well that there's also thiswe'll call it battle between
technical IT and operational ITas well.
I was at a round table theother day around some of the new
critical controls act that'shappening with our oil and gas
energy sector here, and one ofthe really interesting ahas that
I didn't realize there was thismuch friction around was that
(23:47):
battle between we'll call itcorporate IT, which is here's
our standard controls, andoperational IT, which is here's
how the world works in the field, here's how the world works in
our minds and here's whathappens if you put in place
these controls and how itimpacts our revenue.
I recognize that most of theconversation we're having is
around MSPs, but how can MSPsplay a role in guiding their
(24:08):
customers through some of thesethings that are really delicate
conversations that require somuch business context?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yeah, and you get into the IoT stuff right.
So you've got differentnetworks for different things
and different valves andcompression units, and it's the
again it really comes down tothe business acumen to
understand.
As an MSP owner, I should knowall of the nuances of whatever
client or vertical that I serve.
So if I'm an oil and gas, Ineed to know all of that, I need
to understand IOT, I need tounderstand the difference in
(24:37):
networking, the security, all ofthat stuff that goes together.
And so, again, it comes down toreally creating that
relationship because they'regoing to look to you to provide
those guidance and thatrecommendation to bring it all
together because you're going tohave those battles battle over
power.
Everybody wants to have controlright.
So again, you need tounderstand.
You got to understand yourmarket, you got to understand
(24:58):
your customers, you got tounderstand their problems and
you have to have relationshipsto speak to those problems.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense If you were to give
some guidance to a customerthat is evaluating an MSP based
on their security posture youmentioned.
There's a couple of red flags,even on the VCIO front.
If I'm an end customer and I'masking someone, how do I
separate good from bad, how do Iseparate the sales material
from practice, what are somequestions that you would ask or
(25:24):
what are some rocks that youwould turn over that'll help
them uncover that?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
It's around the maturity practice, like how are
you delivering?
Okay, so I'm in oil and gas.
How are you delivering thesetypes of services to others?
Take me through your complianceframeworks and your solutions
that you deliver on that, andagain it's not a vendor specific
, it's how are you delivering oncompliance?
What does your reporting looklike, your maturity look like?
(25:49):
And again you get down to tools, tools or tools whether it's
Sentinel one or whatever it isor Windows Defender or Microsoft
Defender.
It really comes down tounderstanding the business and
how the maturity of the deliveryof those services come.
So the challenge when you havea smaller MSP, that is starting
to scale.
If I'm the client, I'm lookingat their customer base to see
(26:11):
what other customers that aresimilar in size and similar
requirements, similar to the RFPthat we talked about, that we
worked on and so that they candeliver on, they can provide
information that they'vedelivered on in the past, and so
do you think that industryspecialization is super
important as we get further andfurther down some of these,
(26:31):
we'll say niches aroundcompliance, around security,
around industry, or do you thinkjust that relationship is the
key thing?
Speaker 2 (26:38):
It's both.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Like in the States right now with CMMC.
It's a huge grab for MSPs rightnow.
So not only are they going tobe able to deliver on it, but
they also have to have therelationship.
So it's still I always like.
The only reason I built $7million a year business is
because I built relationshipsaround it.
I was never a cold caller.
So I build relationships, Ibuild trust and then I deliver
(26:59):
on business solutions that Ineeded to deliver on.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, as much as it's technology, it's still a people
business.
Yeah, so you shared aninteresting stat with me before
we got started here, so Iusually am the one that touts
that.
There's a really interestingstat about Calgary, which is we
have the highest MSPs per capita, I think, globally, and you
said you shared a number, Ithink the amount of MSPs in
Florida which might rivalCalgary here per capita.
(27:22):
What was the- 1,664 MSPs.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
So I've got a client in Florida.
So I was doing some research onAI with Proximity or Proxima or
whatever it's called, and I'mlike how many MSPs in Florida?
Speaker 2 (27:34):
1,664.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Give me the top 10 services that they deliver and
give me the vertical spacesRight.
So we're trying to figure out away to niche out a delivery.
It was medical lawyers andaerospace in Florida, and so
we're trying to do the researchon that, but there's 1,664 MSPs.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
That is a lot of MSPs .
If I'm a customer in Floridaright now, or really across the
board, there's a lot of noise.
For someone to pick one ofthese 1,664 MSPs, how do I start
?
If I'm the CEO of a midsizefurniture retailer, we're 20
million bucks a year how onearth do I go about starting to
(28:15):
pick one of these, thesepartners?
Cause there's so much noise outthere and there's so many
people that are clamoring forattention.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I love this question.
Okay, I love it Because it's Ihate this cause it's.
If you go to a hundred MSPwebsites, they're all the same
thing.
Yes, we don't talk geek speak,we got good contract, blah, blah
, blah.
We got to figure out an MSP 3.0land is how to differentiate
yourself, and Produce8 is adigital work analytics platform
(28:43):
that's built for MSPs to helpdefine and help their customers
show where productivitydeficiencies are.
And so one of the MSPs signedup and was bidding on a number
of different proposals, and intheir proposal, the
differentiating piece wasthey're leveraging AI and
digital work analytics toprovide business value to you as
(29:06):
a customer.
That stood out for two or threeof their major wins.
So it's again.
It's like how do we sound?
We deliver the services, buthow do we differentiate yourself
?
We want to be thought leaders.
We need them to be thoughtleaders.
We need to be able to go in andsolve those problems, create
better outcomes.
But you got to have a betterstory right.
Like I can go in with produceeight and I can manage.
(29:28):
I could run reports on 500teams and I can see how many
meetings they're wasting a week,how much time they're over over
time they're working theirsentiment scores.
But it's a different story,it's?
I can now go in and say, hey,keith, you got 25 staff.
You guys are like you seem tobe a little top heavy here now.
And how do we, how do youresolve that?
(29:49):
So back in the day, we'd alwayshave timesheets.
Oh, I'm so busy.
We need more staff, I need morestaff, but you don't have
anything real true raw data,right?
So the Produce8 digital workanalytics piece, along with AI,
is just a really greatdifferentiating story to have
those conversations with.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
So are we seeing, because I feel like there was a
time and this might have beenabout five or six years ago
where MSPs started to, we'll say, meld together and they all I
feel like the narrative thatyou're talking about I resonate
with completely they're allstarting to say they're all
starting to use one of three PSAtools, they're all starting to
use one of three RMM tools,they're all using one of five
EDR platforms, and literallyevery single MSP is starting to
(30:30):
look exactly the same from atool set, from a delivery, from
a best practices standpoint.
Do you feel, in this MSP 3.0world that you're referring to,
that we're starting to branchout again and starting to have
these MSPs find their ownidentities once again, to
differentiate from?
Speaker 1 (30:46):
I think so, but it's going to be the more the ones
that are that three to $5million a year revenue, the more
maturity again, right, theyhave time to think about how to
work on the business, but theyagain having a differentiating
story because you're going tohave we all know the same
billing practices.
We had the one guy at a anotherguy at a floor that had 10,000
(31:06):
MSPs as clients and built allthe exact same websites because
I had it too, yeah, and so youget commoditized very quickly.
But now you're starting to startto see these conversations
around AI and differentiatingstories and we got to get back
to solving business problems.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Do you think so?
In your opinion, then it soundslike the key differentiator is
the ability to understand,articulate and solve for those
business challenges.
Now that, like a lot of the, ifthey have their house in order,
from a technology standpoint,right, yeah, you can you have to
have the ability to stand outin.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
There's a lot of MSPs in the world, there's no doubt
about it, and everyone's doingthe same thing.
And it all like technology istechnology, right, yeah, how do
you differentiate yourself so?
And it all like technology istechnology right, yeah, how do
you differentiate yourself?
Speaker 2 (31:53):
So you have to be a thought leader in how to be a
better partner to your customer.
So there's a lot of folks thathave MSPs right now and I think
that a lot of the people that wedon't need to have the same
narrative and conversation thatexisted before, which was do I
need an MSP or do I need anin-house IT person.
I feel like that conversation'smatured a lot, yeah, but
there's a lot of people that Italk to that seem to be settling
, and they're settling for whatI would call good enough right
now, and that fear of somethingelse is keeping them where they
(32:16):
are, but they're probablyranking at a 6 out of 10 on
their satisfaction scale.
Are there simple things thatyou can recommend to a customer
to be able to turn that 6 out of10 to an 8 out of 10?
Are there nudges or things thatyou're seeing and how customers
interact with their MSPs thatare shooting themselves in the
foot?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yeah, they've got to set the boundary or the standard
that they expect from the MSP.
Yeah, and if you go back toticketing right, so all of a
sudden, like for me, I alwayshad VIP contacts from each
customer in my PSA so that ifthe CEO called I knew we had a
priority sequence on that.
And so you've got to be able todeliver a maturity model to
(32:57):
those customers.
But the customer has tounderstand what they want.
If it's an architectural firmor it's a engineering firm, what
is their requirement?
Is it an SLO?
Is it an SLA?
And then you have to demand.
You have to demand demand is astrong word, but demand the
requirements that the MSP has todeliver on.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Do you think that customers are good at
identifying that?
Speaker 1 (33:20):
No, and I think that's why guys like you can
help solve that problem.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
I realized I'd, so I did not intentionally team
myself up there for a golf ball,but I feel like but it's true
though.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
But you got to remember when you brought up
outsourcing MSPs or do you bringit in-house?
What I always said is that you,as a business Hockey Canada
you're a nonprofit sportingorganization.
You're not in the IT business.
That's my job.
Stay in our lanes and we'lljust work on your thing.
But the problem now is that,because technology is changing
so fast that they need partnerslike you and others and me to
(33:53):
help guide them through some ofthose decision-making processes,
to understand where they'retruly their business is at and
where it's going to go, I feellike I'm going to blush now.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I've never had this turn on me here, no, and I
obviously totally agree with you, but I think that you mentioned
Hockey Canada a few times andobviously I think there would be
.
You'd be remiss to find anyonethat didn't know who they were.
What about that relationshipmade it so special for you?
It was like cause they're allhockey guys, just because it's
(34:22):
cool, it's your childhood dreamscoming true.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, you got to be around it, you got to see it.
Bob Nicholson's an amazing man.
He works for the Oilers now andit was like, and there was like
eight or 10 at the executivelevel.
It was kind of like the oldboys club, so it was never.
It was always about the visionof hockey and it was as opposed
to a business and a grind.
And so, yeah, it was my firstclient and we had him for 15
years and it was a, it was anamazing experience.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Outside of the fact that most people would just love
to be in the orbit of HockeyCanada, be in the orbit of the
Flames, were there things thatthey did as a customer that made
you working with them evenbetter?
Outside of the fact that theywere cool and did cool work?
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah, like I got, I did a lot of Christmas parties
with Hockey Canada and I got Ihad I was fortunate to get some
tickets for the Flames and justbeing a part of the community.
And so the other thing that wedid too at NSI is we bought into
a lot of nonprofit stuff, so wedid sponsorships for hockey
tournaments and we did some seatsponsors for Winsport, which is
another one of our biggerclients at the time.
We bought stuff from the Flamesso we wanted to try and give
(35:25):
back as much as we could.
Or if they went down to thefood bank to volunteer, we would
go with them.
So I felt like we were a partof the organization, even though
we were just an outsourcedpartner.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
But you felt like they brought you into the
organization and even before youalluded to the fact that you
were in their board meetings,you were in there at 6am with
the team and so being part of itthere, yeah it was just a great
experience and so many goodmemories, so many good people,
and everything has to come to anend at some point, but fair
enough.
Yeah, you couldn't ask for twobetter.
(35:56):
First, clients.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Right, they were your first clients.
Yeah, it was my first, and thenthe Flames was my second.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
I feel like that sets the bar to.
I still remember my firstcustomer when I first started my
career, which was made for aday on 33rd Avenue.
I don't know if they're stillin business, but you always
remember your first customer.
So, before we run out of timetoday because I feel like we
could keep down this track for awhile I do want to take a tiny
bit of time to talk aboutCybertrends and the work that
you're doing, sure, so why don'tyou explain a little bit about
the work that you're doing, themission that you're on and the
(36:23):
challenges you're solving forMSPs today?
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Perfect.
So Cybertrends, yeah, we talkeda little bit about it.
We started it off as athree-day training corporation
preparedness for cybersecurityto help corporations prepare,
and then, through COVID, thingschanged.
We pivoted a little bit andthen, when I exited out of NSI,
I just dove headfirst intorealizing there's a lot of MSPs
(36:47):
out there, and even securitycompanies and technology
providers in general, that justdon't have business fundamentals
.
And that's not a bad thing,like nobody goes to gets their
MBA to go start an MSP.
Let's be honest here right, yousolve a problem.
You start at a company to solveproblems.
So for me, it's the passion ofgiving back to the MSP community
.
I don't believe it's that hardto scale to a million dollars
(37:10):
with today's technology, with AIand everything else that's
going on.
But you have to have theframework and the fundamentals
and you have to have someone onyour side that's done it.
And so for a small investmentto put a 12-week framework
program together to get you onyour way from mission vision all
the way down to financials andtechnology, to look at your
business inside and out, I thinkgoes a long ways, because I
(37:33):
know when I was at 250,000,500,000, a million, two and
three and five, so I wish I hadsomeone that I could talk to.
I remember saying that to my dad.
I'm like my dad was successfulbuilding an insurance company.
He's like I don't understandyour business.
So the opportunity for me togive back to the community of
the MSP world, that's where I'mreally get excited about.
(37:53):
I used to teach for Microsoftand I love public speaking and I
love teaching.
So this is just.
Every time I get on a phonewith an MSP, I can just see
quickly, at a high level, how tosolve some of these low hanging
fruit problems.
That'll just changes the game.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
It's really clear how much you love it and how much
you're passionate about thistopic.
If someone wanted to get intouch with you, either they want
to sign up immediately for yourprogram or they want to dive
into one of the variety oftopics that we've covered today.
What's the best way to get intouch with you?
Speaker 1 (38:20):
You can find me on LinkedIn under Tim Thompson at
CTI.
One of the things that I amdoing and I'd like to let people
know if they're watching is I'mcreating a similar type podcast
, but what I'm doing is I'minterviewing MSPs to showcase
their talents at all thedifferent levels why they
started the business, what makesthem successful, what's their
why, and then what I'll do forthat.
(38:41):
It'll be a 30 minuteconversation and I'll just cut
up the content and then helpthose MSPs post that on social
media, and one of the biggestchallenges that I see is in
social media.
It doesn't even spin around,but it's still fairly new.
Not everybody likes to talk totheir phone, right, and so we me
as a mentor and a coach I seeso many MSPs not doing anything
(39:03):
on LinkedIn.
People buy from people.
They don't buy from companies,right, and so we're in the day
and age that we need to buildour brand, which is what you do,
which is what I do, and so I'mreally pushing the MSPs that I
talk to to think about that,right.
So, where they are, where dothey want to go and how do they
want to get there, and theaverage person won't buy from
anybody and they'll watch themfor six months a minimum of six
(39:25):
months on social media beforethey engage with the buyout.
So for me, giving back andhelping them, as an MSP owner,
understand the nuances of thepower of social media and
helping them grow and scale, andthat's why I think we can I can
scale MSPs a lot faster thesedays.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
I love it.
Thank you so much for coming onthe show, tim Perfect, and
really appreciate making thetrip from Kelowna and I hope you
have safe travels back home.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Awesome.
Thank you so much for having me.
It was great, phenomenal.
Thank you.
I was never a numbers guy so I always avoided the
finances until I went from 3.2million to 2.6 10 years ago and
I'm like, okay, I need to figureout where the deficiencies are.
So you've got to have thoseuncomfortable conversations with
yourself to figure out whereyou can utilize somebody like
you and I in a conversation tohelp them get into that
boardroom program.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
On this episode of Sell Me this Podcast, we sit
down with Tim Thompson, formerMSP founder, business coach and
the man behind Cybertrends.
After scaling his previous MSPto over $7 million in revenue,
tim faced the kind of hardlessons that most people only
talk about behind closed doors.
Today, he's using thatexperience to help other MSPs
(00:46):
grow faster, smarter and moresustainably.
We'll get real about what ittakes to go from 1 million to 7
million, why most MSPs stall outand how AI is changing the game
for IT service delivery.
If you've ever wondered whatseparates average tech providers
from true strategic partners orhow to break out from the same
year on repeat trap, thisconversation is for you.
(01:08):
Let's dive in.
All right, tim, we are soexcited to have you here today.
Thank you for making the tripdown from or, I guess, up from
Kelowna.
Up from Kelowna yeah, how longhave you been in town for here?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Just a couple of days .
Came in on Sunday, so headingback after this, but super
excited to be here.
I've been following your showfor a while and Robbie put you
out and a few others aroundthere that I know.
So excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
When I told my wife this morning that someone was
actually coming in for the show,she didn't believe me, so
she'll have to watch the episode, I think, to prove that it's
real.
Yeah, but super grateful youmade the trip.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Tell me a little bit about yourself, tim and here.
So yeah, I started an MSP backin Calgary back in 2003.
I bootstrapped it to $7 milliona year in revenue.
So very grateful, I had theopportunity to do that.
But I also had the opportunitythat it didn't go very well at
the end, and so one of thethings that I've been doing in
the last couple of years isreally focusing on helping other
MSPs grow on scale and do thethings that they need to do.
So one of the things they sayis IT people start IT companies
(02:08):
to solve IT problems.
They don't have business acumento get them from that million
to three to five, to seven to$10 million, and so I work with
a lot of MSPs out of aroundNorth America and just really
help them avoid the pitfallsthat I went through.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
You talked about 7 million and I think for anyone
listening, 7 million is a verylarge MSP and you probably know
the stats more than I do.
That would probably put you inthe top percentile of MSPs
globally.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, so there's 300,000 of them in the world and
90, no, 85% of them are under$3 million.
Wow, so the effort and energyit takes to get to that level.
It's not a lifestyle company atthat anymore, right?
It's actually like you're nowdoing full-on business decisions
and you have the right team andthe right people and the right
bus, and so it was a journey andunfortunately, it didn't end
(02:58):
very good, and that was thefirst time I've actually told
anybody this publicly.
But due to some very baddecisions and poor mistakes and
some lack of trust, things wentsideways and Dan Martell talks a
little bit about your greateststory.
You need to talk about yourdarkest times and make it that
your story to help everyone else.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, and that's a really brave way to open up as
well, Cause I know we've talkeda little bit about this
privately, but I think some ofthose battle scars as well
probably just A make you 100times stronger going forward.
So, as you're coaching some ofthese folks, whether it be
through growing their business,whether it be through navigating
their own partnerships or theirown ecosystems, I'm sure
there's just a different levelof story and advice you can give
(03:37):
from that gained experience.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
It is, and one of the things when I got into the
mentorship program it's we buildfundamentals of the business
and the business needs to havethose to scale from that one to
three to five to seven million,and back when I was scaling it
every million dollars, there wasa change in how we do
processing or how the processeswork within the business, and so
now, with all of the technologyand everything that we have now
(04:00):
, we should be able to build afoundation now at a million
dollars, which Dan Martellcalled the pain line, and then,
once we have that foundation inplace, then we can layer on and
scale as fast as we want.
But a lot of people don'tunderstand.
You'll see a lot of mentors onLinkedIn and it's all about
sales, it's all about marketing,but if the whole ship doesn't
(04:21):
move with it, you're never goingto get there.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, and you need to build those solid foundations
in order to actually be able togrow and scale and build those
sustaining ecosystems.
You deal with so many differentMSPs at different stages.
If you were to put two MSPs infront of you right now, one that
was doing everything correctlyand one and I recognize this is
going to be a very declarativeexample one that they're doing
(04:45):
everything right, and the secondis that exact example you're
talking about in the negative,where they're struggling,
they're having a hard time.
It just feels like so much work.
Are there a couple ofobservations you'll usually have
right away of that company thatfeels like everything is just
like rolling the boulder uphill,like rolling the boulder uphill
.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Yeah, it's the same conversation.
It's hey, I can help you scaleand grow.
Great idea.
I'm working 80 hour weeks.
I don't have time to figure outhow to work with you for one
hour a week and it's.
This is where I come in, and Iuse again, like some more of the
buyback principles around atime energy audit to determine
where you're wasting time, so wecan start focusing working on
the business and not in thebusiness, and they just.
(05:24):
It's easier to gravitate to theblinky lights and the shiny
things as it is to actually lookat a balance sheet or a P&L
statement or whatever it is thatyou need to work on the
business to help get it to thenext level.
And so a lot of times the MSPswill throw in oh, we need
cybersecurity, we need VCIOservices, we need more and more,
but more is not always better.
(05:45):
Let's figure out the packageand the plan and get really good
at it.
Focus on focus is follow onecourse until success, but
they're just running 100 milesan hour and they can't get out
of their own way, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
There was a video that I saw the other day that
talked about this challenge thata lot of entrepreneurs face,
where they just feel likethey're reliving the same kind
of nine months over and overagain, Whereas as soon as you
get to that friction pointwhether it's you have this great
idea, you have this.
Maybe it's a new securityservice, maybe it's a new
offering they rush, they bringit to market, maybe they sell a
couple of them, they get someinternal reinforcement, but then
(06:20):
, when it starts to get hard,they pivot.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And then maybe they leave it on the shelf and just
start doing something else, butthey relive the same six to nine
months over and over again.
Is that something that you'reseeing a lot in that space as
well?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah.
Yeah, people don't stay thecourse long enough to figure out
what success looks like.
It's easy to go okay, let's gothrow in AI now.
Let's go throw in cybersecurity.
Let's pivot here because we'vegot a little bit of traction.
But I got to get good at.
Operational maturity levels haveto be defined in order to go
from that one to three to $7million, and I learned that my
(06:51):
first key hire was a fantasticoperations manager and that just
took everything off my plate.
And then I can figure out howto move into larger contracts.
With more operational maturitylevels, you have the ability to
approach bigger customers todeliver on SLOs and SLAs, and
the biggest customer that I hadwas $92,000 a month here in
(07:13):
Alberta, 52 locations, 1800staff across Canada.
Sorry, but I had to build aservice desk and then I ripped
it apart after three months andI had to rebuild it again and
they brought in a proper, a guythat ran a service test for a
long time to help me build outthe maturity level to define how
to build that thing home.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And I know we both kind of have our battle scars in
different ways from buildingout some MSPs, and you
definitely have to reinvent thewheel every couple of hundred
kilometers as you're buildingthat bus.
But you also mentioned that AIis now changing the game for a
lot of business leaders and soobviously, when you built your
MSP and when I was in the MSPworld, those tools didn't exist
(07:52):
in anywhere near the samemeaningful way.
No, how has the playbookchanged for some of these folks
that are now building their MSPs?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
It's changed, the ones that are interested in
adopting AI.
So the way I look at this nowis, if they're trying to scale
to a million dollars, it's notthat hard to do.
In this day and age, we cancreate as much marketing and
sales material as we need.
However, the MSP has to adoptthe AI process in readiness
within their organization butthen also have the thought
(08:23):
leadership to go to theircustomers and understand their
pain points from their workflowsand different things, so that
they can go in and speak to theownership group and say here's
what we can do.
We can implement an AI strategyto integrate your SaaS
applications that are nottalking right now, and we can do
it on pennies on the dollar.
But you're creating a newrevenue stream.
(08:45):
But you're also creatingbusiness advisory leaderships,
rules, mentalities and thoughtleaderships.
So the QBRs and the monthlymeetings that you're going to
have become a lot moreinteresting to talk about,
because now you have the abilityto solve real business world
problems and not just throw afirewall in.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, and so I feel like you opened up a can of
worms here that I'm going to die.
I'm going to.
I'm going to bite on thefirewall versus business
problems comment.
This is something that I hearover and over again is I wish my
MSP was a strategic partner inthe business.
Almost every MSP that I talkedto at the same time wishes that
they were at that table andthey're saying I wish I was in
(09:23):
the conversations, I wish I wasinvited to the board meetings.
Where's the disconnect?
Speaker 1 (09:28):
The relationships when I was when I were Hockey,
canada was our first customer.
I was in the boardrooms.
I knew when Scott Smith and BobNicholson were working early
mornings.
I was in there at 6 am on everyTuesday and every Wednesday
fixing their computers or justtalking to them, built a
relationship.
Nhl had a lockout period in2004.
And I said to Scott Smith I go,does anybody know anybody at
(09:51):
the Flames?
I'm going to go offer myservices for 50 cents on the
dollar.
He introduced me to the CFO.
I was there for 12 years.
So it's building thatrelationship.
It's understanding the businessand how to solve those problems
.
Yeah, and having the ability totalk to either your direct
contact or the CEO or thepresident.
But a lot of these MSP owners,well, they'll just go in and
(10:13):
they'll have their monthlymeeting.
Or they won't have it orthey'll just screw around on a
quarterly business review.
But the quarterly businessreview is around defining where
the business is going andsolving problems, as opposed to
oh, we just need another accesspoint down the hall.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, and so many businesses that that exact QBR,
and they're all lookingbackwards as well, right, like
none of them are enabling there.
Yeah, here's all.
Here's how many times yourswitch died.
Here's how many times weupdated your antivirus, how many
tickets.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
How many tickets the executive or the assistant?
Yeah, antivirus.
How many tickets the executiveor the assistant open?
There's a gentleman named Adam.
Adam Walter owns Humanized IT.
He's all over LinkedIn and he'sbuilt an operational maturity
platform for MSPs and he speaksvolumes about utilizing a SWOT
analysis framework to get inthose rooms with those decision
(11:02):
makers and have that smartconversation, pump them up.
What are you great at?
Define what the weaknesses are,create opportunities out of
those weaknesses to solvebusiness problems, to create
better outcomes which create abetter experience.
But the IT owners or the MSPowners don't take the time to
figure out how to get into thoseconversations or have the
(11:25):
business acumen to do that.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So if I'm an owner of an MSP that will say, is right,
in that kind of that small spot, I'm a million dollars or maybe
just knocking on the door of it, I'm wanting to figure out how
to actually do this.
How do I take those first stepsto be able to even unlock the
skill?
Maybe they don't have the skillset, maybe they don't have the
confidence.
Maybe they don't have the skillset, maybe they don't have the
confidence, Maybe they don'thave the tool set.
How do they start to unlockthose things so they can bring?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
that to their customers Get out of their own
way.
Unfortunately, ego gets in theway of a lot of things.
And so having the time to workwith somebody like you and I
that have 25 years of experiencein doing this right and so
taking the lead on understandinghow in doing this right and so
taking the lead on understandinghow to have a sales
conversation with, throughtonality and the proper
connection, questions orutilizing a SWOT framework to go
(12:12):
out and say, to figure out howto solve problems for them, and
so the challenge, like one ofthe biggest things, that my
biggest hurdle in my MSP.
I was never a numbers guy so Ialways avoided the finances
until I went from 3.2 million to2.6 10 years ago and I'm like,
okay, I need to figure out how,where the deficiencies are right
(12:32):
.
So you've got to have thoseuncomfortable conversations with
yourself to figure out whereyou can utilize somebody like
you and I in a conversation tohelp them get into that
boardroom.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
That makes total sense, and so how can I feel
like I'm picking on this alittle bit, but how can someone
start to even look in the mirrorand have those conversations?
Is there ecosystems?
Is there conversations?
Is it talking to their dog?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
I think what they have to do is they have to
decide when they're ready totake their IT MSP company from a
personal based company versusan actual business you convert
it into.
Because one of the things I wastalking to an MSP and he goes
oh, I got a great engineer.
He's been with me for 10 years.
I gave him a management roleand he sucks at managing people.
(13:14):
I'm like no shit.
He sucks at managing peoplebecause he's good at solving
engineering problems.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
We have a, I think, a mutual connection, that is, it
always is referred to the ideathat if you promote your best
engineer, or even your bestsalesperson, for that matter,
into a management role, they'renot getting a promotion, they're
getting a new job.
Yes, and you're functionallystarting a brand new job with no
experience.
Right Like it is a clean slateat that point.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Right and yeah.
So you got to the biggestbreakthrough that we got to at
2.3 million.
I ended up hiring a rainmakersalesman here in town and then
he converted into the CEO andhim and I converted from 3.2 to
6.95 million in three and a halfyears.
That's incredible and it was alot of work, like it's chaos.
But I guess the message of thatis that I knew, I know where
(13:59):
I'm good at, but I'm not therainmaker salesman and I'm not
necessarily a CEO as good as hewas.
So we work together.
So you it kind of goes back tothe replacement ladder and the
VIVAC principles is that youfigure out your time, energy on
us and then you move throughoperations and the sales and the
executive leadership role.
And just because you're anowner, it doesn't mean you're a
great CEO.
Some of the CEOs that are theowners of MSPs that I talk to
(14:23):
they would rather put infirewalls, fill your boots, but
you have to have look in themirror and really understand
what you're good at and where doyou want to take your business.
Is it a lifestyle business oris it going to be a true
business with a 10-year exitstrategy?
And here's what we need to doto build that team and when I
(14:44):
went through portions ofpotentially an acquisition, we
needed that.
We needed a CEO with experience, we needed proper sales, we
needed structure, we neededmaturity levels because the
group that was looking at us,they had similar size clients
and they wanted to make surethat how we deliver and how we
grew the business is in the samepath right.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, so I don't want to jump on the Dan Martell
excitement quite yet, but I knowwe've talked a lot about some
of the principles from his bookand buy back your time.
I've recommended it to probablya hundred different people.
I know.
When you and I first met, thatwas one thing that we connected
over.
Yeah, are some of thoseprinciples.
If I'm an MSP owner, where do Istart with even dissecting some
of those things?
Because it sounds like a lot ofthose principles are tied to
(15:31):
your coaching frameworks and howyou're giving advice to MSP.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I built my coaching around it.
I wish I had.
I told you that.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
I wish we had that book 20 years ago.
I'm still new to it and it's anincredible book.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, I've got it.
Mine's all marked up andwritten.
But what I suggest to anybodyis just read that book and you,
when he talks about scaling andgrowing in different like
300,000 to 700 to a million inthe pain lines, you can resonate
with it, like it.
Just when I read it I'm like,damn, I wish I had that at that
point.
And so, again, you have to be asan ownership.
(16:04):
As an owner, you have to bewilling to open up, check your
ego at the door, figure out whatyou don't know and solve that
problem Right, Cause you're goodat something and I'm good at
something, it doesn't mean wecan do it together.
It's better to compliment eachother than it is to you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah, and I think that it's evolving as well, like
even in our business.
I'm going through some of thosesame realizations right now.
Where do you want to play?
Yeah, where are you helping?
Where are you in the way?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, and it's always an evolving conversation.
With the work that you're doingwith MSPs.
What are some of the roadblocksthat you see over and over
again?
I know you mentioned theprocess side of things.
Is that the big problem that alot of these organizations run
into?
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah, it's again.
It's getting them to focus onworking on the business, right.
So buying back time figuringout like if you want to
implement AI and you don't knowhow to do that, then you got to
find some time to figure out howto do that Right.
And but the other thing too iswe can now optimize operations
(17:07):
10 times faster.
So it was like when I had aservice desk.
We wanted our service desk guysto do 15 tickets a day, right,
and then they just cherry pickeda little hanging fruit.
Now I'll just create an AIagent that'll do all anything
under 15 minutes passwordchanges, printers installs to
solve those problems quickly.
So the operational maturitylevel that MSPs need to build
(17:27):
into growing into biggercustomers, because everybody
wants the $25,000 a monthcontracts right, but they're not
always the most profitable.
But if you want to continue togrow and scale, you're going to
have to move from the $1,000 to$5,000 to $10,000 to $20,000 a
month contracts to get to that$5 million mark.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, the AI agent example you just talked about is
something that I believe a lotof businesses are talking about
and how they consume services,but also a lot of MSPs, I think,
are uncertain with how tonavigate and how a lot of these
emerging technologies are reallygoing to shape what service
delivery looks like.
How are some of thesetechnologies going to change the
face of service delivery andwhat does that make MSPs look
(18:09):
like in the future?
I realize this is a giantquestion.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
And it's a great question, because who's the CEO
of NVIDIA?
The director of IT is justgoing to be an HR manager for.
AI agents Jensen Wong yeah, yeah, that's him, yeah, and so you
still have to have I stillbelieve you're going to have to
have some human interactions.
But just think about this Ifyou have a client that's billing
(18:33):
, you're billing them time andmaterial and you're talking to
them every month about bills.
Right, you could just give theman AI agent portal and have
them ask those questions to findout the answers to what's going
on, as opposed to sending anemail to the director of IT.
The director of IT goes to thefinance department.
The finance department comesback right, so there's a whole
different.
Like you just improve thoseoperational efficiencies.
(18:55):
And the other thing too likemost MSPs are bootstrapped with
employee, we don't have 15people sitting on a bench like
Longview and other ones.
If you can take 80% of the15-minute quick fix tickets off
of a human's plate and solvethem through AI, then I can take
(19:15):
that individual and I can applythem to a billable project,
because when I was running at $7million, I had $1 million of
projects that I was backloggedbecause I could never get to it.
$7 million, I had a milliondollars of projects that I was
backlogged because I could neverget to it.
I can use AI to optimize andslipstream tickets, but then I
can then utilize the resourceson other projects and other
delivery mechanisms that we need.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
And so how far do you see that going?
Because I think it's aninteresting thought experiment
when you start to say, as someof these AI agents get smarter,
as the data sets get larger, assome of these AI agents get
smarter, as the data sets getlarger, as permissions start to
change, what is the role of theMSP in the future?
And I think it becomes a reallyinteresting discussion because
I think there's some really coolpossibilities here.
But is there anything thatstands out to you in terms of
(19:57):
what changes if we're lookingfive to 10 years down the line?
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, great question.
So we're moving from MSP 1.0 to2.0, which is your standard RMM
stuff, and then you get intothe cloud and security to 3.0.
And when I talk about thisquite a bit, it's having the
business acumen to get tosolving business problems.
So the MSP needs to lead as athought leader to solve business
(20:26):
problems and implementtechnologies and not just go and
sell hardware anymore.
A lot of times now we just weneed.
When I ran my MSP I knew my keycustomers Flames, hockey Canada
.
I knew all of their technicalchallenges inside and out and
every year budget season came inI had to load it up with budget
.
But that's how you have tothink.
At Hockey Canada they dropped.
They had a whole 300 USB drivesof old World Junior footages.
(20:47):
At the Father David Bauer ArenaSomebody dropped a USB off the
counter and it broke and theylost all the video.
Oh my gosh, it wasn't anythingcrazy.
But the point of that was is Iwas out with my key contact and
we were having lunch and he said, yeah, this happened.
The video person's all upsetand how do we solve, how do we
fix that problem?
I'm like, just leave it with me.
So I went and put together anEMC Isilon storage unit for
(21:10):
$600,000.
There you go so relationships,understanding business problems,
coming up with solutions tosolve it.
They didn't care if it was HP,emc or Cisco, they didn't give a
rip.
We solved that problem.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
And I think that's the gap that a lot of folks miss
.
It's not like they'll get stuckin the what's the best
technology for this use case,not what's the story around the
use case.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, like you got to have Cisco access points
throughout you.
But it doesn't matter, as longas it solves whatever problem
you're looking for.
But that's the differencebetween a technical owner of an
MSP going well.
I'm just a Fortinet guy, sowe're just going to put Fortinet
in here, versus putting in afull on cybersecurity solution
with a SOC in there.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, so let's talk about security a little bit as
well.
So you've mentioned security.
I know that this is an areathat you feel incredibly
strongly about.
Security and MSPs haven'talways fit hand in hand.
In fact, security and IT areeven at a little bit of an
impasse sometimes.
What's that relationship like,and how do you see, in a
Shangri-La state, those twothings fitting together?
Speaker 1 (22:13):
That is a very deep conversation in the boardroom.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
We're about to get philosophical here.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah, but it's a tougher.
Msps have to take on thoseroles and responsibilities.
The problem that I see withMSPs now is they tell everybody
they got a cybersecuritysolution.
Okay, we all got EDR and we allcan do vulnerability scans.
But when I look atcybersecurity, I'll talk to MSPs
and I'm like, okay, where'syour VCIO services?
We don't have one because itcan't afford it.
(22:41):
Vcio is up here.
Compliance is the next phase.
So VCIO drives compliance,compliance drives the tools and
technology.
So if you're trying to scaleand grow as an MSP in the
security space, you need to beable to fill all three of those
and you're in the driver's seatif you're making the decisions
at the top.
Now the problem is we havesecurity people on one side of
(23:02):
the fence and then we have theinfrastructure team on the other
and everyone's fighting forpower.
So it's almost it's almost alittle bit like a soap opera,
where you're trying to figureout how to manipulate somebody
to get their way.
It's like having a developmentteam to build, like you've got a
development team for softwaredevelopment.
They'll have full access towhatever they want on their
software servers, but they don'tget.
They don't get anything inproduction.
(23:23):
Then they get pissed off.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yeah, and I feel I'm curious on your opinion on this
as well that there's also thiswe'll call it battle between
technical IT and operational ITas well.
I was at a round table theother day around some of the new
critical controls act that'shappening with our oil and gas
energy sector here, and one ofthe really interesting ahas that
I didn't realize there was thismuch friction around was that
(23:47):
battle between we'll call itcorporate IT, which is here's
our standard controls, andoperational IT, which is here's
how the world works in the field, here's how the world works in
our minds and here's whathappens if you put in place
these controls and how itimpacts our revenue.
I recognize that most of theconversation we're having is
around MSPs, but how can MSPsplay a role in guiding their
(24:08):
customers through some of thesethings that are really delicate
conversations that require somuch business context?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yeah, and you get into the IoT stuff right.
So you've got differentnetworks for different things
and different valves andcompression units, and it's the
again it really comes down tothe business acumen to
understand.
As an MSP owner, I should knowall of the nuances of whatever
client or vertical that I serve.
So if I'm an oil and gas, Ineed to know all of that, I need
to understand IOT, I need tounderstand the difference in
(24:37):
networking, the security, all ofthat stuff that goes together.
And so, again, it comes down toreally creating that
relationship because they'regoing to look to you to provide
those guidance and thatrecommendation to bring it all
together because you're going tohave those battles battle over
power.
Everybody wants to have controlright.
So again, you need tounderstand.
You got to understand yourmarket, you got to understand
(24:58):
your customers, you got tounderstand their problems and
you have to have relationshipsto speak to those problems.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense If you were to give
some guidance to a customerthat is evaluating an MSP based
on their security posture youmentioned.
There's a couple of red flags,even on the VCIO front.
If I'm an end customer and I'masking someone, how do I
separate good from bad, how do Iseparate the sales material
from practice, what are somequestions that you would ask or
(25:24):
what are some rocks that youwould turn over that'll help
them uncover that?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
It's around the maturity practice, like how are
you delivering?
Okay, so I'm in oil and gas.
How are you delivering thesetypes of services to others?
Take me through your complianceframeworks and your solutions
that you deliver on that, andagain it's not a vendor specific
, it's how are you delivering oncompliance?
What does your reporting looklike, your maturity look like?
(25:49):
And again you get down to tools, tools or tools whether it's
Sentinel one or whatever it isor Windows Defender or Microsoft
Defender.
It really comes down tounderstanding the business and
how the maturity of the deliveryof those services come.
So the challenge when you havea smaller MSP, that is starting
to scale.
If I'm the client, I'm lookingat their customer base to see
(26:11):
what other customers that aresimilar in size and similar
requirements, similar to the RFPthat we talked about, that we
worked on and so that they candeliver on, they can provide
information that they'vedelivered on in the past, and so
do you think that industryspecialization is super
important as we get further andfurther down some of these,
(26:31):
we'll say niches aroundcompliance, around security,
around industry, or do you thinkjust that relationship is the
key thing?
Speaker 2 (26:38):
It's both.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Like in the States right now with CMMC.
It's a huge grab for MSPs rightnow.
So not only are they going tobe able to deliver on it, but
they also have to have therelationship.
So it's still I always like.
The only reason I built $7million a year business is
because I built relationshipsaround it.
I was never a cold caller.
So I build relationships, Ibuild trust and then I deliver
(26:59):
on business solutions that Ineeded to deliver on.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, as much as it's technology, it's still a people
business.
Yeah, so you shared aninteresting stat with me before
we got started here, so Iusually am the one that touts
that.
There's a really interestingstat about Calgary, which is we
have the highest MSPs per capita, I think, globally, and you
said you shared a number, Ithink the amount of MSPs in
Florida which might rivalCalgary here per capita.
(27:22):
What was the- 1,664 MSPs.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
So I've got a client in Florida.
So I was doing some research onAI with Proximity or Proxima or
whatever it's called, and I'mlike how many MSPs in Florida?
Speaker 2 (27:34):
1,664.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Give me the top 10 services that they deliver and
give me the vertical spacesRight.
So we're trying to figure out away to niche out a delivery.
It was medical lawyers andaerospace in Florida, and so
we're trying to do the researchon that, but there's 1,664 MSPs.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
That is a lot of MSPs .
If I'm a customer in Floridaright now, or really across the
board, there's a lot of noise.
For someone to pick one ofthese 1,664 MSPs, how do I start
?
If I'm the CEO of a midsizefurniture retailer, we're 20
million bucks a year how onearth do I go about starting to
(28:15):
pick one of these, thesepartners?
Cause there's so much noise outthere and there's so many
people that are clamoring forattention.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I love this question.
Okay, I love it Because it's Ihate this cause it's.
If you go to a hundred MSPwebsites, they're all the same
thing.
Yes, we don't talk geek speak,we got good contract, blah, blah
, blah.
We got to figure out an MSP 3.0land is how to differentiate
yourself, and Produce8 is adigital work analytics platform
(28:43):
that's built for MSPs to helpdefine and help their customers
show where productivitydeficiencies are.
And so one of the MSPs signedup and was bidding on a number
of different proposals, and intheir proposal, the
differentiating piece wasthey're leveraging AI and
digital work analytics toprovide business value to you as
(29:06):
a customer.
That stood out for two or threeof their major wins.
So it's again.
It's like how do we sound?
We deliver the services, buthow do we differentiate yourself
?
We want to be thought leaders.
We need them to be thoughtleaders.
We need to be able to go in andsolve those problems, create
better outcomes.
But you got to have a betterstory right.
Like I can go in with produceeight and I can manage.
(29:28):
I could run reports on 500teams and I can see how many
meetings they're wasting a week,how much time they're over over
time they're working theirsentiment scores.
But it's a different story,it's?
I can now go in and say, hey,keith, you got 25 staff.
You guys are like you seem tobe a little top heavy here now.
And how do we, how do youresolve that?
(29:49):
So back in the day, we'd alwayshave timesheets.
Oh, I'm so busy.
We need more staff, I need morestaff, but you don't have
anything real true raw data,right?
So the Produce8 digital workanalytics piece, along with AI,
is just a really greatdifferentiating story to have
those conversations with.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
So are we seeing, because I feel like there was a
time and this might have beenabout five or six years ago
where MSPs started to, we'll say, meld together and they all I
feel like the narrative thatyou're talking about I resonate
with completely they're allstarting to say they're all
starting to use one of three PSAtools, they're all starting to
use one of three RMM tools,they're all using one of five
EDR platforms, and literallyevery single MSP is starting to
(30:30):
look exactly the same from atool set, from a delivery, from
a best practices standpoint.
Do you feel, in this MSP 3.0world that you're referring to,
that we're starting to branchout again and starting to have
these MSPs find their ownidentities once again, to
differentiate from?
Speaker 1 (30:46):
I think so, but it's going to be the more the ones
that are that three to $5million a year revenue, the more
maturity again, right, theyhave time to think about how to
work on the business, but theyagain having a differentiating
story because you're going tohave we all know the same
billing practices.
We had the one guy at a anotherguy at a floor that had 10,000
(31:06):
MSPs as clients and built allthe exact same websites because
I had it too, yeah, and so youget commoditized very quickly.
But now you're starting to startto see these conversations
around AI and differentiatingstories and we got to get back
to solving business problems.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Do you think so?
In your opinion, then it soundslike the key differentiator is
the ability to understand,articulate and solve for those
business challenges.
Now that, like a lot of the, ifthey have their house in order,
from a technology standpoint,right, yeah, you can you have to
have the ability to stand outin.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
There's a lot of MSPs in the world, there's no doubt
about it, and everyone's doingthe same thing.
And it all like technology istechnology, right, yeah, how do
you differentiate yourself so?
And it all like technology istechnology right, yeah, how do
you differentiate yourself?
Speaker 2 (31:53):
So you have to be a thought leader in how to be a
better partner to your customer.
So there's a lot of folks thathave MSPs right now and I think
that a lot of the people that wedon't need to have the same
narrative and conversation thatexisted before, which was do I
need an MSP or do I need anin-house IT person.
I feel like that conversation'smatured a lot, yeah, but
there's a lot of people that Italk to that seem to be settling
, and they're settling for whatI would call good enough right
now, and that fear of somethingelse is keeping them where they
(32:16):
are, but they're probablyranking at a 6 out of 10 on
their satisfaction scale.
Are there simple things thatyou can recommend to a customer
to be able to turn that 6 out of10 to an 8 out of 10?
Are there nudges or things thatyou're seeing and how customers
interact with their MSPs thatare shooting themselves in the
foot?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yeah, they've got to set the boundary or the standard
that they expect from the MSP.
Yeah, and if you go back toticketing right, so all of a
sudden, like for me, I alwayshad VIP contacts from each
customer in my PSA so that ifthe CEO called I knew we had a
priority sequence on that.
And so you've got to be able todeliver a maturity model to
(32:57):
those customers.
But the customer has tounderstand what they want.
If it's an architectural firmor it's a engineering firm, what
is their requirement?
Is it an SLO?
Is it an SLA?
And then you have to demand.
You have to demand demand is astrong word, but demand the
requirements that the MSP has todeliver on.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Do you think that customers are good at
identifying that?
Speaker 1 (33:20):
No, and I think that's why guys like you can
help solve that problem.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
I realized I'd, so I did not intentionally team
myself up there for a golf ball,but I feel like but it's true
though.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
But you got to remember when you brought up
outsourcing MSPs or do you bringit in-house?
What I always said is that you,as a business Hockey Canada
you're a nonprofit sportingorganization.
You're not in the IT business.
That's my job.
Stay in our lanes and we'lljust work on your thing.
But the problem now is that,because technology is changing
so fast that they need partnerslike you and others and me to
(33:53):
help guide them through some ofthose decision-making processes,
to understand where they'retruly their business is at and
where it's going to go, I feellike I'm going to blush now.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I've never had this turn on me here, no, and I
obviously totally agree with you, but I think that you mentioned
Hockey Canada a few times andobviously I think there would be
.
You'd be remiss to find anyonethat didn't know who they were.
What about that relationshipmade it so special for you?
It was like cause they're allhockey guys, just because it's
(34:22):
cool, it's your childhood dreamscoming true.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, you got to be around it, you got to see it.
Bob Nicholson's an amazing man.
He works for the Oilers now andit was like, and there was like
eight or 10 at the executivelevel.
It was kind of like the oldboys club, so it was never.
It was always about the visionof hockey and it was as opposed
to a business and a grind.
And so, yeah, it was my firstclient and we had him for 15
years and it was a, it was anamazing experience.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Outside of the fact that most people would just love
to be in the orbit of HockeyCanada, be in the orbit of the
Flames, were there things thatthey did as a customer that made
you working with them evenbetter?
Outside of the fact that theywere cool and did cool work?
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah, like I got, I did a lot of Christmas parties
with Hockey Canada and I got Ihad I was fortunate to get some
tickets for the Flames and justbeing a part of the community.
And so the other thing that wedid too at NSI is we bought into
a lot of nonprofit stuff, so wedid sponsorships for hockey
tournaments and we did some seatsponsors for Winsport, which is
another one of our biggerclients at the time.
We bought stuff from the Flamesso we wanted to try and give
(35:25):
back as much as we could.
Or if they went down to thefood bank to volunteer, we would
go with them.
So I felt like we were a partof the organization, even though
we were just an outsourcedpartner.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
But you felt like they brought you into the
organization and even before youalluded to the fact that you
were in their board meetings,you were in there at 6am with
the team and so being part of itthere, yeah it was just a great
experience and so many goodmemories, so many good people,
and everything has to come to anend at some point, but fair
enough.
Yeah, you couldn't ask for twobetter.
(35:56):
First, clients.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Right, they were your first clients.
Yeah, it was my first, and thenthe Flames was my second.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
I feel like that sets the bar to.
I still remember my firstcustomer when I first started my
career, which was made for aday on 33rd Avenue.
I don't know if they're stillin business, but you always
remember your first customer.
So, before we run out of timetoday because I feel like we
could keep down this track for awhile I do want to take a tiny
bit of time to talk aboutCybertrends and the work that
you're doing, sure, so why don'tyou explain a little bit about
the work that you're doing, themission that you're on and the
(36:23):
challenges you're solving forMSPs today?
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Perfect.
So Cybertrends, yeah, we talkeda little bit about it.
We started it off as athree-day training corporation
preparedness for cybersecurityto help corporations prepare,
and then, through COVID, thingschanged.
We pivoted a little bit andthen, when I exited out of NSI,
I just dove headfirst intorealizing there's a lot of MSPs
(36:47):
out there, and even securitycompanies and technology
providers in general, that justdon't have business fundamentals
.
And that's not a bad thing,like nobody goes to gets their
MBA to go start an MSP.
Let's be honest here right, yousolve a problem.
You start at a company to solveproblems.
So for me, it's the passion ofgiving back to the MSP community
.
I don't believe it's that hardto scale to a million dollars
(37:10):
with today's technology, with AIand everything else that's
going on.
But you have to have theframework and the fundamentals
and you have to have someone onyour side that's done it.
And so for a small investmentto put a 12-week framework
program together to get you onyour way from mission vision all
the way down to financials andtechnology, to look at your
business inside and out, I thinkgoes a long ways, because I
(37:33):
know when I was at 250,000,500,000, a million, two and
three and five, so I wish I hadsomeone that I could talk to.
I remember saying that to my dad.
I'm like my dad was successfulbuilding an insurance company.
He's like I don't understandyour business.
So the opportunity for me togive back to the community of
the MSP world, that's where I'mreally get excited about.
(37:53):
I used to teach for Microsoftand I love public speaking and I
love teaching.
So this is just.
Every time I get on a phonewith an MSP, I can just see
quickly, at a high level, how tosolve some of these low hanging
fruit problems.
That'll just changes the game.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
It's really clear how much you love it and how much
you're passionate about thistopic.
If someone wanted to get intouch with you, either they want
to sign up immediately for yourprogram or they want to dive
into one of the variety oftopics that we've covered today.
What's the best way to get intouch with you?
Speaker 1 (38:20):
You can find me on LinkedIn under Tim Thompson at
CTI.
One of the things that I amdoing and I'd like to let people
know if they're watching is I'mcreating a similar type podcast
, but what I'm doing is I'minterviewing MSPs to showcase
their talents at all thedifferent levels why they
started the business, what makesthem successful, what's their
why, and then what I'll do forthat.
(38:41):
It'll be a 30 minuteconversation and I'll just cut
up the content and then helpthose MSPs post that on social
media, and one of the biggestchallenges that I see is in
social media.
It doesn't even spin around,but it's still fairly new.
Not everybody likes to talk totheir phone, right, and so we me
as a mentor and a coach I seeso many MSPs not doing anything
(39:03):
on LinkedIn.
People buy from people.
They don't buy from companies,right, and so we're in the day
and age that we need to buildour brand, which is what you do,
which is what I do, and so I'mreally pushing the MSPs that I
talk to to think about that,right.
So, where they are, where dothey want to go and how do they
want to get there, and theaverage person won't buy from
anybody and they'll watch themfor six months a minimum of six
(39:25):
months on social media beforethey engage with the buyout.
So for me, giving back andhelping them, as an MSP owner,
understand the nuances of thepower of social media and
helping them grow and scale, andthat's why I think we can I can
scale MSPs a lot faster thesedays.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
I love it.
Thank you so much for coming onthe show, tim Perfect, and
really appreciate making thetrip from Kelowna and I hope you
have safe travels back home.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Awesome.
Thank you so much for having me.
It was great, phenomenal.
Thank you.
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