Innovation, Resilience, and Leadership: Carl Mazzanti's Journey in IT

Episode Transcript
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Anthony Carrano (00:06):
Welcome to the IAMCP Profiles and Partnership.
The podcast that showcases howMicrosoft partners and IAMCP
members boost their business bycollaborating with other members
and partners. I'm your co-host,Anthony Carrano. And in each
episode, I'll be talking to someof the most innovative and
successful partners in theMicrosoft ecosystem. The

(00:26):
International Association ofMicrosoft Channel Partners,
otherwise known as IAMCP, is acommunity of Microsoft partners
who help each other grow andthrive.
Members can find and connectwith other partners locally and
globally and access exclusiveresources and opportunities.
Whether you're looking for newcustomers, new markets, or new
solutions, IAMCP can help youachieve your goals. We'll hear

(00:50):
their stories, learn from theirexperiences, and discover the
best practices and strategiesthey use to increase customer
loyalty and grow revenues.Whether you're a new partner or
an established one, you'll findvaluable insights and
inspiration in this podcast. Wehope you enjoy this podcast and
find it useful and inspiring.
If you do, please subscribe,rate, and review us on your

(01:11):
favorite podcast platform. Anddon't forget to follow us on
social media and connect with uson our website,
www.profilesinpartnership.com,where you can find more
information, resources, andopportunities to partner for
success. Thank you forlistening, and now let's get
started with today's episode.
But before we dive into ourinterview, let me ask you a

(01:34):
couple of questions. As aMicrosoft partner and member of
the IAMCP, how are you investingin the continuous learning and
development of your employeesand customers as a way to grow
your business?
And how do you build and deliverthe right solution to help you
achieve that? These are some ofthe questions we'll explore in
this podcast with the help ofour guest, a P2P Americas and

(01:56):
worldwide finalist for theAdviser Awards. He'll share
stories, challenges, andsuccesses, and give you
practical tips and advice on howto build for success. Are you
ready to join us on thisjourney? Then stay tuned because
we have a great show for youtoday.
Our guest is Carl Mazzanti, thepresident and CEO at eMazzanti
Technologies, a four-timeMicrosoft partner of the year

(02:20):
award winner in CISSP servicingclients worldwide since 2001 as
an outsourced IT consultantfocusing on security first.
Let's hear what he has to
say. Welcome, Carl, to thepodcast today. Thank you for
joining us. We really appreciatehaving you.

Carl Mazzanti (02:39):
Thank you, Anthony, for having me.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, let's start
off. Tell us a little bit aboutyourself and your role in the
company.

So, 24 years ago, Jennifer Shine, my, business
partner and best friend, had anidea that we could we could
service the community in a waythat would really pay attention
to them, inspire, and, you youknow, be cost effective, help
our customers achieve theirgoals. It was her idea that been

(03:08):
trying to help, build on thatvision, now for twenty four
years. I can't believe it's beentwenty-four years.

Wow.

I was, coming out of an inner circle, partner,
Cole Systems, in the dynamicspace. And while I knew CRM and
ERP really well, we were both inthe World Trade Center Towers
when the first plane hit. Itreally solidifies your security
first mindset when things likethat happen, and we pivoted, we

(03:36):
pivoted to being a securityfirst, company that, was gonna
do infrastructure. So instead ofdoing ERP and CRM, which was my
pedigree, we had a lot of peoplein the New York Metropolitan
Area that were in need ofopening up office space, getting
their businesses restored, andthat was a focus. We grew

(03:58):
tenfold. I mean, it was just,amazing times, trying to restore
and get everyone back up andrunning. And we were doing a
good job, and people were votingwith their dollars. Twenty-four
years later, we've seven out ofthose first ten accounts. It's
just the neatest thing ever.

(04:19):
And one of those accounts is ourarchitect. And I mentioned to
her all the time that I I'vespent way more with her than she
ever did in the twenty-fouryears. But, it's been a fun
journey.

Yeah. Twenty-four year life cycle.
That's, that's gotta boost upthose, retention and renewal
numbers. That's great. That'sgreat.
Now, when did you join IAMCP?

Probably within the first three years. So in
2003, we won our first Microsoftaward. And believe it or not,
Bill Gates was there. Isn't thatjust amazing?
That, you know, that's so longago. Anyway, we were at, Comdex,
if people can even rememberthat. And we had just gotten in,

(05:06):
Channel Magazine and, you know,Redmond Magazine and stuff like
that where we're all starting topay attention to us because we
were making waves. So it wasjust so neat. So I joined IAMCP.
That's, really when we startedto understand the power of
partnership.

Well, so that's also really fascinating, it's
interesting as we were, doing alittle bit of research, I heard
through the grapevine that,you're a walker.

I am.

You've, you've walked, all six continents?

I have, and gone to school in three of them.

Get out.

Yeah. I went to, Chinese University of Hong Kong,
during handover. I chose that Ichose to go there over, going to
Oxford because, there wereliterally tanks lining up at the
border, and I thought that wouldbe such a pivotal moment to take
Hong Kong from a Britishterritory to a Chinese managed

(06:09):
territory. Everyone was sofreaked out at the time, and it,
you know, it was world historyat the time. So it was nice to
be at the school, during thetransition and to see Prince
Charles, you know, fly off. Andliterally, like I said, the, you
know, the changing the guard,took place so quickly.

Wow. So I can imagine, I mean, I've got a few
questions here. I know we'regonna get to the partner story
here, in a minute, but, reallyfascinating. So what, in
walking, you know, sixcontinents, I got a few
questions. One, what, whatprompted you to to start doing
that?

Well, I feel like that you come up with really
good ideas. You come up with thegreat ideas while you're you're,
you know, putting two feet infront of each other. And, you
know, I'm super Italian. So, youknow, my, when I meet with
people, I like to put legsunderneath the table and and
clearly some nice food orsomething, in front of both of
you to facilitate an opendialogue in a safe place. And

(07:09):
then with my management team andcustomers and some of the staff,
I take them on walks.
You know, that's where reallysome of the ideas start to flow.
You know, I think hiking earlyage and and the like, just began
that. Now that the fact that youhave mobile and AirPods off,
it's awesome. You could just beout and about doing other things

(07:31):
and and working.

You know? Listening to podcasts. Right?

Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's one
continent, though, I haven'tbeen to yet, and that's
Antarctica. And I've, finallymapped out, how that trip's
gonna go because I don't wannajust walk on Antarctica or run
on Antarctica or bike onAntarctica or climb on
Antarctica. I wanna go to theSouth Pole.
And there's less than 500 peoplea year that go there, maybe less

(07:57):
than 5,000 in the history of ushaving knowledge of the
continent, who've ever donethat. To put that in
perspective, when you're, at theSouth Pole, the closest humans
are, in the International SpaceStation. It's really just such
such a next level item and alogistical challenge. So, for

(08:18):
us, innovators and and Microsoftpartners on here, we're so used
to talking about things that runon Microsoft, but this one is
just so neat, right, to to getthere and and to have that
experience.

What have you learned, in your journeys, in
your in your hiking acrossthese, six continents?

Well, I think diversity is a really big one.
If you are in our office, it'slike being in the United
Nations. Everyone speaksmultiple languages. So, yo habla
espanol, you're probablyItaliano. You know, I find that
people speak differentlanguages.
They have to find ways to solvea problem faster. So if you look
just a couple years ago, AIwasn't even a thing. We were

(09:01):
talking about robotic processautomation, but it wasn't really
a consumable, customer item. Itwas something we would sit with
a customer, and we would say,hey, we could use computers for
some digital labor, but, itwasn't in their- it wasn't in
their pocket.
It wasn't someone, sitting thereand writing and redoing their

(09:22):
resume. It wasn't someone, youknow, you know, composing their
emails or something like that tobe more effective. So I feel
like our staff are really fast,and our customers pay us for
speed. Many of our services, youknow, either through Microsoft
partners, like, you know, thatmany of the listeners on this
call or direct to a customerthat, will engage us because

(09:45):
they called. One of the goals isthey wanna get from point A to
point B, and we try and get themthere as fast as humanly
possible.

Mhmm. One more question about the hiking. So
what was your biggest, eithersurprise or moment, in your
journeys?

Well, I had said that I've, you know, I've lived
in a bunch of differentcountries or states. So I was
living in France at the time,and I was going to school
between France and Italy. And Iwas, in Mont Blanc, camping on
the side of a cliff face when itstarted to rain and our tent
poles gave out, we slid down themountain. When we got out, we

(10:28):
were just a few feet from goingover. And then and even, you
know, the middle of the nighttrying to hike up, tent down
with a stream of water goingthrough the center of the tent,
your body's cold.
You're super afraid. You've noidea the conditions. I do not
speak French, and, there's nohumans anywhere around. So you

(10:53):
have to solve one problem, thensolve the next problem, then
solve the next problem.
I would describe that as goinginto space. I'd describe that
going into submarine and reallyjust running the business is
kind of the same thing. Whateverthe issue that comes up, you
just have to solve the nextproblem, solve the next problem,
solve the next problem. And Ifeel like from the hiking,

(11:15):
experience I have, any of thewalking, it's a lot of it. You
can get caught off guard.
Like, you could be in Arizonawhere it's super hot and dry and
arid. And then if it starts torain, you're in a torrential
tsunami where you could be wipedaway and just gone in a second
because the land doesn't absorbthe water. It just flows, and it

(11:38):
massively amplifies. So I have adeep respect, for changing
conditions and, a little bit ofparanoia that's probably kept us
going in the right direction fora long time.

Well, indeed, you have 24 years. So that's
fantastic. Really appreciate yousharing, some of those stories,
Carl. I definitely, you know, asa fellow Italian, we'll
definitely have to get togetherand, you know, get some food and
wine, and, we'd have a goodtime.

Agreed. That offer pretty much stands for
anyone on this call. You wannacome and visit the office, I
have a nice cappuccino waitingfor your arrival.

Fantastic. Fantastic. So you've actually
shared just a lot about yourpersonal background. So I really
appreciate you sharing that.Tell us a little bit about,
eMazzanti Technologies, youknow, areas of specialization.

Well, we try and do a few things and and do those
very, very well. So we try andbe one or two in the market
place, so I'll take GroupWise. Imean, it's amazing that
GroupWise is still around, butwe've moved 1.2 to 1,400,000
mailboxes to Office 365, andMicrosoft pays us. I mean,
that's really kind of one of thetestaments. I feel like there's

(12:52):
only three providers left, andone of them just announced that
they're just not gonna do theservice any longer.
It wasn't worth keeping some ofthe staff and evolving the
product. But in 2018, I bought,one of the software packages
and, all the intellectualproperty around it. We've kept
that, infrastructure running offof Azure to stream confidence,

(13:19):
give telemetry into the movingof the data to Office three
sixty five, and then so manyother services come out of that.
But you have those tool setswhere you can monitor and see
visibility into it. We can doreporting.
We can now apply that to thingslike Copilot. So, like, that's
on a ton of our communicationsthat goes outbound to start

(13:39):
doing privacy flags and figureout, you know, where's your
data, where the leaks, you know,are there are there, you know,
shares out there, justvisibility into unstructured
data. You know, the trying totame that, figure out the rot
and the like. That brand, youknow, serves largely enterprise
customers because the ones thatwere made with group buys are

(14:00):
not the 50 user shops anymore,someone with five or ten users.
Their municipalities, theirfinancial institutions, and the
like that, have a team that'sbeen supporting it.
They just, they're loud andthey're proud on on Novell
NetWare. You know, beyond that,I mentioned a security first
mindset. You know, the ITindustry is an unregulated one.

(14:25):
If you look at the credit cardindustry, you've got PCI.
If you look at the health careindustry, you've got, HIPAA. And
in the IT industry, we make therules. So so there's no
oversight. And and at any givenmoment, like, on this call,
there'll be one quarter of thelisteners that are losing money

(14:46):
in their ear going out ofbusiness. There'll be a quarter
of the users that are losingmoney, but they may be a
lifestyle, they'll flip flopbetween making money one year
and not making money that year.
It's just a lifestyle. And therewill be a quarter that are best
in class that are taking off.They've built a better
mousetrap, and they're doingwell. Well, if two thirds or

(15:07):
three quarters of the group aremarginal, they typically aren't
spending on informationsecurity. So it exposes all the
people that they service.

Mhmm.

Because there's just there's no regulation out
there. When the person walks inand they say, "Hey. I'm gonna
install your new computer," or"I'm gonna do that server to
manager Microsoft three sixtyfive," even though Microsoft as
a corporate may have policies,maybe their CSP accounts are
exposed.
If there was an IT firm inNorthern New Jersey that was
servicing an entire county ofmunicipalities, one, they're

(15:40):
they had a shared admin accountacross all of municipalities. So
all the municipalities in asingle week were hit.

Wow.

All of them. You know, the things like that just
happened.
So I feel like we get phonecalls from other partners when
the proverbial shit has hit thefan, and we try and pull them
out with as little stink aspossible. The first time that
happened was in Joplin,Missouri. Joplin John Motazedi
called us up, and he he was noteven really speaking English. I

(16:10):
mean, he was saying to me, wouldyou like me to show you the
video? Like, he was drivingaround.
There were dead bodies around.There was laptops that had hit
walls at 200 miles an hour werecrushed. And his email in the
system wasn't working. There wasno power. And I said to John,
"We're gonna get you up andrunning."
We set up a hosted exchangeserver, got all of his staff

(16:32):
into email, got email filteringup and running and and restored
all of his services that sameday and and got him back on his
feet. Some of it was justbusiness coaching. You know?
Because who else do you callwhen everything has gone
sideways? If you look a numberof years later in 2012,
Hurricane Sandy came and hit.

(16:53):
Talk about the power power ofIAMCP. We had 500, 800 servers
go down and so many customers.And where when it started, where
it was just coming up the coastand we just started to see the
alerts. It was like literallysitting back there and knowing

(17:13):
it was gonna get you. There wasno way around it.
I was sitting in my apartment,and I watched as cars started to
float outside. The lights whenthe water hits the battery
packs, the lights just start tocome on, and it's eerie because
it's under the water. And it'sjust approaching your home, and
there there's nothing you knewabout it. There all the roads

(17:33):
were closed. Police stoppedeverything.
All the sandbags were out, andyou just start to pray. I was
doing an exchange migration forsomeone, and the power went out
in my home in the middle ofmigration. Just everything
flickered out, and that was it.It was over. Then you start to
lose cell phone towers in thearea.
Well, the power of the partneris I brought in five other IT

(17:57):
firms from different areas,including Joplin John from
SNC Squared in Missouri to helpus out, and we had every
customer restored in seventy twohours.
Give you a funny little story.When I hit my low, point twice,
during that time, I was walkingaround in sewage, and I was

(18:18):
using baby wipes because therewas no running water. And I
didn't realize the sewage wasacidic, so my toenail came off.
Gives you how how disgustingthis scenario was.
The I had a staff member who, wewere carrying servers on our
heads trying to get out of thewater, and he stepped on a nail,

(18:38):
went through his foot.
Just give you an idea of howdedicated our team is. He went
off the ambulance, and I said,oh, I'm not gonna see him again.
You know what I mean? Becausethe ambulance picked him up,
took him to the hospital. Hecame back to the job site with
his shoe wrapped in tape. He hadthe shot.

Wow.

He kept helping us. You know, the Sammy Lopez,
he's he's been with me for overtwenty years. The he's nearing
retirement, and I almost can'timagine a day not having Sammy
around. You know, every hero atone moment has a section.

Yeah. I wanna jump in on that, though. So what
do you I mean, obviously, youhave, obviously, you know,
great, you know, employeeloyalty, obviously, about
customer. What do you attribute,on the employee side? What do
you attribute that to?

Well, we try and do right people in the right
seat. When you put the rightperson in the right seat,
they're generally very happy.That would include myself. I'm
always surprised that people payus.
You know, the fact that they dois great because I would do this
for free. I just I love it somuch. The fact that they'll
compensate us or do something,you know what I mean? It's

(19:52):
great. The second item out ofthat is, we spend we're really
running a university.
If you had to look at a corecompetency of our of, eMazzanti
Technologies is we're a school.So we understand the concepts
that our customers pay us forspeed. And as people join us,

(20:12):
we're educating them on on theeMazzanti way of delivering
items. So, like, we're SOC2compliant. We did our SOC2 type
one and passed the attestationsand everything else, and then
continue to evolve our process.
So from one customer to the nextcustomer, it just keeps getting
better.

Mhmm.

And then in that school, when people join us,
there's just people studyingaround, and it's a culture of
continuous learning, and youeducate the others as you learn
things, and you're never alone.You know, we live our core
values on a regular basis that,never alone in helping out
others, you know, thattranslates into the IAMCP

(20:51):
community. I'll take a phonecall from anyone on the planet.
I really don't think there's anycompetitors.
I think there's annoyances.There really is no competitors,
and we're helpful for them. Evenin transitions, because, like,
people will decide to move onfrom us, we service our
customers very well to the verylast day, and we'll give ideas

(21:14):
to the next person who's comingin. Then, you know, I think we
do a solid. So very rare, willyou know, more than one customer
ever leave us and go to a samesupplier more than once.
You know what I mean? That'sjust, very rare. But, in the
community, we, you know, we'vejust helped out. I'll even call,

(21:34):
I'll call another company. I'llsay, "Hey. I wanna let you know
your customer is looking athiring us. You know, if you
wanna hold on to them, I thinkif you do this or that, you
probably do it." But if, youknow, if you've come to a point
you don't wanna service themanymore, we're gonna put in a
bid. And and most of the owners,I'll get surprising reactions.

(21:54):
Well, we'll be like, oh, thatjerk. Absolutely take them. I
don't want them.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's a question of whether I wanna
service them myself, but it's aclassy way of handling the
community.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think some of our competitors walk into,
walk into other places. Theysay, "Hey. You're using
eMazzanti. You're really lucky."

Mhmm.

You know? And they'll speak positively about
us.

Well, on that note on, you know, the part
about with running a universityand the emphasis on continuous
learning, I think it's a greatsegue into the partner story
where you guys, you know, werenot only, you know, The
Americas, but also worldwidefinalist, for the Adviser Awards
and about your MasterClassseries.

Sure. So we, in 2020, we chose this concept of
thought leadership. I kept 100%of our bench where other people
were declining out and weren'tsure whether they're keeping
some of the staff or they weredoing riffs or furloughs. We
kept 100% of them. We use thestaff to call our customers and
educate them on what waspossible, and then we thought we

(23:01):
started our thought leadershipseries.
So that became theMasterClasses. There's one or
two sessions every week, and theones we probably advertise the
most now are Microsoft Copilot.Even though we do, securities
agents, robotic processautomation, automation in
general, vertical items forlegal manufacturing, nonprofits,

(23:23):
The Copilot's, classes are byfar the most attended. They're
hands on with people who dodialogues, where we do breakout
rooms, and they get to see someof the best, the best ways to
use stuff. And it's even so coolwhile we're doing
demonstrations.

Mhmm.

Like, new features are still being lit up
by Microsoft along the way. Youknow, we're happy. Like I said,
we give back to the community.So there probably are, all sorts
of IT firms that join for thesessions.
And, you know, if you if youhave a customer where you're
trying to map something out, Ifeel like we speak Copilot
Studio and and can help you withPower Automate, Copilot Studio,

(24:02):
one of those to help yourcustomer achieve the goal. You
don't have to be an expert inevery Microsoft technology. You
just need to find a partner inIAMCP that can help you along
the way. That's really what thisis all about.

Rudy Rodriguez (24:16):
So, Carl, I've got a question there. So, you
know, you won this award inAmerica's, for partnering with
SkyKick. Can you tell us alittle bit about what that
solution was and how thatevolved into your MasterClass as
well?

So we, I mentioned back, a few minutes
ago that in 2018, I bought thisgroupized migration platform.
Well, one of the items was,let's say, an Office 365 O2O
migrations, or, we're doingGmail to Office 365 outside the
web space. We engage withSkyKick to figure out a way to

(24:53):
not only do the migration, butdo the long term backups of
customers. You know, thecustomers never care about a
backup until you have to do therestore. They really care about
the restore.
You know, can we get your data,and how fast did you get it?
That's really how you'remeasured. So, you know, 2020
when they're doing all theriffs, all the lawsuits start

(25:14):
coming up. You know, there was,people who were upset about how
they're being handled. There wasso fear and all this other
stuff, so it happens. You alsohad a lot of people who are now
sitting at home with idle, andthey start to compete against
their own customer. They theystarted to compete against their
own employers. You know? Theywere sitting at home, and you

(25:35):
saw an incredible number ofsmall businesses take place, but
you had data loss, theft, andand, well, a whole bunch of
businesses go out. So, SkyKickwas just a great partner of ours
from inception, all themigrations, the ongoing care and
feeding of our our customerbases, as backups, they've just
been great along the way.

So I've got a question about the MasterClasses
because, one of the things thatI wanted to to find out about.
So what are what's the profileof the of the people that come
into the classes? Are they moremore office workers? Are they
admins? I'm sure you're doingdifferent ones. And so can you
tell us a little bit aboutthose?

I'll tell you about one of my favorite
restaurants in Hawaii. It'scalled Zippy's. And the,
executive assistant came intothe class for the CEO. And then
all of a sudden, seven otherpeople around the firm, after
this one took it, joined thenext class. You know?
So it's so neat because peoplefind the value, and then they

(26:37):
turn around and they tellothers. So we see a lot of the
same companies come. You know?The like, one person will come,
then they'll tell the rest ofthe the neighbors or other
people around them, and then itspreads from there. And just
like you're talking about it, onthis call, it's nice that
there's this open dialogue.
On the day of, we get 100% moreregistrants on the day of the

(27:02):
event than we do even the monthsleading up to it. So, like, it
because people start to say,"Hey. I'm on it," or "I'm going
to this today," and it just itupticks like a rocket ship in a
way I've never seen before forsomething that's being done
virtually. Anyway, the goal isjust, you know, give away as
much of the secret sauce itemsas you possibly can, and and the

(27:25):
participants who come just loveyou for it. They feel empowered.
They learn something, and someof them keep coming back.

No. I like the story because it talks about
your culture as well, that wholelearning environment. And that's
all that's always great ingrowing a company is building
that culture where everybodylearns and is dedicated towards
helping customers. So reallyappreciate the story. So I've
got one more question.
So how long are these classes?How much time commitment is

(27:55):
required of your customers whenthey come in?

Hour and a half.

Hour and a half? Okay.

Yep. Ninety minutes. We try and get it all
done in ninety minutes.

And then how did your team, I mean, you talked
about, I read the story that youcreate a simulated environment.
How much work is required byyour staff to create the
simulated environment or, youknow, how exactly are you
building those? Because,apparently, you're doing
different different scenarios,so I know that's work.

We are. It's, well, it's not it suddenly works
for the ongoing care andfeeding, but it evolves. So you
have to stay current. Like,every couple weeks, the product
is so different. You know?
Some like, if you look, we haveone coming up next week and then
one coming up the week afterthat. And the sessions are

(28:44):
different. Even just in sevendays. They're different from
each other or nine days in thisscenario. You know?
So, we try and keep evolving andstaying, current. And if, you
know, some Microsoft lights upsomething else, you know, we
start to talk about that. So ifsomething's happening in Planner
or Dynamics 365 or beyond thethe the ones that we love, like

(29:06):
Copilot and the the normalOffice apps that you're used to,
like Word, Excel, and the like,we'll bring something up about
it.

And is it dedicated staff that do these
MasterClasses, or do youincorporate a lot of your techs
into this?

We use our techs to do the presentations because
those are the same people thatare gonna be in front of our
customers. There's no thirdparties that come and join us.
It's, 100% focused on, you know,the the same staff you would see
every day.

Oh, that's great to hear. It's, like I said, I'm
very familiar with that wholelearning environment, having run
an organization that did that.And we used to do it for the
military. So I know whatchallenges you go through.

Yeah. What military were you in?

Well, we did a lot of work. Company I used to
own, we did a lot of DOD work.We'll just say that. And so, one
of the things that we did was,like, being out at Fort Hood,
which is, you know, small base,or small small organization,
only 70,000 troops. And we hadto incorporate Microsoft
technologies into how they usedit in their battlefield

(30:12):
communications. And so one ofthe things that we did was we
taught them how to buildbattlefield networks. So we
would dismantle all theequipment, put it in a tent,
dismantle it, go now, reassembleit. You got ninety minutes to
put it back together again. Andso you'd have different
technologies in there, so you'regonna laugh at these.
But you'd have ArcNet, Ethernet,and token ring on all and now

(30:36):
put it back together. And so wehad you know, when you're
teaching 18 year old boys how todo all this stuff, it was
challenging. It was challenging.

I was born on Philadelphia's naval base.
That's why I asked the question,you know, to a lieutenant
commander. Thank you for, youknow, for your service and and
what you've done for everyone. Iwonder how many people listening
to this are have some militaryexperience.

Oh, I'm sure there's quite a few because we
run into those in the techcommunity quite a bit. And I
worked with 25 colleges anduniversities where we built,
training Microsoft and Cisco andLinux training programs to get,
you know, troops that were beingthat were coming out of the
service and using VA benefits toget them educated and help them

(31:22):
get jobs.

They make for great staff. I try and hire,
ex-warriors all the time. Youknow, I mean, anyone who's got
service, they tend to, do greatthings for for those they serve
and especially the ones thatchose to serve.

Yeah. It's a great level of commitment.
That's for sure.

Yeah. That's for sure.

Anthony, have you got some other questions?

Yeah. I do. So question I have, like, going
back to, like, with yourpartnership with, SkyKick, did
you have any challenges, during,you know, that engagement? And
if so, what were they, and howdid you guys work together to
overcome those?

Well, they were recently purchased out by
ConnectWise, so there's always,there's always things that
happen during that time frame.And, you know, over fifteen
years, because they were fundedby external parties, they would
grow very rapidly and thencontract and grow very rapidly
and contract. And, as a partner,you can feel the funding rounds.

(32:25):
You know, the, if the fundinground went very well, all of a
sudden, we get some features andstuff that we wanted. If the
funding round didn't go well,you'd have six or nine months of
no attention or worse.
You might lose the people thatwere gonna pay attention to you.
I think over the period of time,we rose to the top. So that that
helps out. When you choose to doa few things and do those very,

(32:50):
very well, you can almost writeyour story. And I feel like that
happens with some of ourpartners that we work with.
You know, we're, WatchGuard'sfive time worldwide partner of
the year, and we're a platinumpartner. There's only 11 in the
globe. So when something's goingon with a WatchGuard deployment,

(33:12):
we walk into any environmentthat has it, I know we can make
an improvement. We're just sogood. But it's you know, I'm
able to get the CEO of theorganization on the phone and
say this is happening out in thefield and then get the support
we need.
So that's led to retail storesin a couple hours having new
replacements because somethingdied. It's a firmware update

(33:35):
that all of a sudden stoppedwireless in the middle of a
shopping season, and then a fewhours later, that patch being
pushed out to all the devices.You know, I describe the IT
industry like, you know,CrowdStrike where it takes
everyone out. The planes arecrowded. I mean, it happens. If
those things didn't happen, wewouldn't have jobs.

Mhmm.

The so, you know, if you can rise to the top and
service only a few and be anexpert in those few things you
do, you can anticipatecustomers' needs that they love
you for. Seven out of ten, thosecustomers still twenty four
years later.
It's just an amazing item. Youknow, you know, to still have

(34:15):
sitting out there. Now I think Iprobably need to start raising
their rates or do something likethat. You know? Because we
haven't raised their rates intwenty four years. So, twenty
four years.

Wow. That's fantastic. That's fantastic.
Rudy?

So, Carl, you know, in in reading the the
story you submitted, I know thatyou have great customer
satisfaction. I think I saw apercentage like 97%. Are you
tracking any growth in revenuefor some of those companies, or
do you talk about that with inyour quarterly business reviews
with business owners?

Yep. By the way, we flipped to TBR's, technology
business reviews, because someof the smaller customers just
don't want quarterlyinteractions. There's just not
enough that happens with them.So we went with TBR's, and I'll
give that out to the community.The next item is our our
customer base is generallygrowing at 5% without us doing
anything.
You know, well, on some of theupticks years, it'll grow at 12,

(35:12):
but the standard customer baseis growing somewhere around 5%
on the corral because we havesuch a high retention of it. If
we just say back and do nothing,we're gonna grow. It's a really
nice position to be in. Thatsame concept is, we get to
choose our customers. We're notfunded by anybody else.
So if a IAMCP member calls meup, it's our choice to do

(35:34):
something with them. We don't,we're not forced by any external
parties, to, you know, to tomake one choice or another. The
next one is we're always addingnet new logos. So we now add to
our our internal goal is two netnew logos a week no matter what,
and we probably average betweenthree and four. The, you know,

(35:57):
the minimum of two net new logosa week is, you know, that
baseline is probably too low forus at this point.
That started off when Microsofttold us when we joined at the
time, it was the Exchange OnlineAccelerator Program. Oh my god.
I'm so old. You had to add 50net new customers a year. And if

(36:22):
you lost a customer, you neededto replace the customer in order
for you to stay within theprogram.
I remember walking in the officegoing, how are we gonna do this?
At the time, we had, like, ahundred to two hundred
customers. And I was thinking,well, you know, if you have just
a percentage that drops off,it's not just 50. You really

(36:42):
need to be at, like, you know,75, a hundred net new customers
a year because you're gonna getthis little flower shop that
opens up with a couple usersthat turns around and says, "I
don't wanna run flowersanymore," or "I'm allergic to
the ballad."
So, so that's where we built ourengine, you know, to to add net

(37:04):
new people, and there's stillgreat referrals that are coming
in. So we're all happy about thenew logos that come back. We're
always happy with theengagements and the choices, but
the existing customers are theones we love and we pay the most
attention to.

That's great to hear. You know, again, so much
of this just relates to theculture of your organization.
And in fact, I was talking withanother customer this week. We
were just talking about they'rejust hitting their tenth year
right now and how importantculture is. So they're having
their first town hall for forwith other employees and
bringing them in from across theworld. So it's pretty exciting.

(37:43):
Are all your employees locatedthere in in the Philly area, or
where are they are they locatedacross the country?

So, if you worked for, in 2019, there there were
almost all the New York, NewJersey area. And then in 2020,
by April or May, peoplescattered all over the place.
All new hires come out of ofHoboken, New Jersey, you know,

(38:10):
where our corporate headquartersis.

Okay.

And, we try and keep them in the corporate
office for two years, and we dothat because we're really, we're
running a school. So it showsyou the way of doing the service
delivery, put you in the field.We have you come in on Saturdays
and Sundays, do some projectsfor customer migrations, moves,
something like that while it, soit doesn't impact the customer

(38:32):
during the course of the week.You can make improvements ahead,
and then it gives, you know, itgives people great insight. Then
kind of after that second yearand you've learned the Imazanti
way of doing things, if youwanna move out to another area,
like, we've guys in DominicanRepublic.
We have a huge concentration inFlorida, Washington State, now
Texas. You know, the New YorkMetropolitan Area is super easy.

(38:55):
Guys have moved to Philadelphiabecause they didn't really wanna
pay New Jersey sales the statetax any longer. You know? It's
like an 8% raise just by movingacross the border, so they do
it.
You know? Then they buy theirfirst home out there. So we'll
go all the way out throughLancaster, Hershey, the sweetest
place on Earth. You know, dowe'll do those things. But, one

(39:19):
of our our goals was a hundredmillion dollars in revenue
between New York, Philadelphia,and Washington, DC.
And we've been picking customersup everywhere in between, and
then we get theseborn-on-the-cloud customers that
are across The United States,whether it's municipality, a
construction company, you know,someone that wants to use us as
their Microsoft innovator. Andthen for whatever it is, I guess

(39:42):
people start to retire inFlorida. We just have such a
huge corral between Tampa,Sarasota, Orlando, and then a
whole bunch of retail in Miami.

So full transparency. I first heard your
name back in 2003 from twopeople that you know.

Get out.

It's Jeff Goldstein and Howard Cohen.

Oh, yeah. Love them both. They, you know, they
could never retire. They have tocontinue to work. When you tell
them, you remind them of that.
Jeffrey helped me so much on ouron Solomon. I've a bunch of
customers that we've done withhim because, you you know, Q
Associates, Jeffrey's business,is the best at Dynamic Solomon.

(40:26):
And, I'm so happy what he's beenable to do with some of our
customers. But and then evenjust, on some of the BCGP items,
you know, because it pops up inour customer base.
Right? They're they wanna staywith Microsoft, so they pick up
Dynamics. He's been fantastic.And then Howard as a writer, I
mean, voraciously, I've beenreading him for so long. I only

(40:47):
wish I could bike as often as hedoes. You know?

I'm good friends with both of them. So we've been
IAMCP members forever, it seemslike forever. And so it's, I had
to let you know about thembecause I said, "Hey. I'm gonna
talk to Carl."
"Oh, really?" And so Tom saidhi. So hello from both of them.
Anthony, I'll turn it back overto you.

Yeah. That was, that's fantastic. What, what a
small world. Well, as we wrapup, Carl, I just got really just
two questions. One is, I knowyou had remarked, you know, at
the start of the podcast justabout our books in the
background.
What are you reading and why?

Yeah. So my son actually, this was our dinner
conversation last night. Mybookshelves are filled with
nonfiction, functional items.The really, like, right now,
conditional access is so high onmy priority list, and autopilot,

(41:48):
you know, for our customer baseand really tweaking out, items
so you just don't have to toucha device any longer, but you can
really drive, compliance. Sothat's actually in my bag.
I carry that around, and I tryto apply that to the customers
that I go and visit. There's allsorts of other books there. So
Antarctica, clearly. Right? I'vegot like, I'm looking to the

(42:11):
right of me, and there's a wholebunch of-

Anthony Carrano: Yeah, you have to get ready (42:13):
undefined
for that.

Yeah.
Well, you know, it's it was socold this winter that I got a
chance to just drive north andget to -20 because you'll get
-40 wind chill in Antarctica.And what I did is I actually
mapped out every 10 degrees whatI needed to do. So I started 60,

(42:36):
50, 40, and I went all the waydown. And I wrote what I need to
do to change layers so that myhands and feet were fine. But
when you start to get into these-20 or -40 degrees, if you
sweat, like, if you sweat onyour your feet and stuff, then
sweat will then refreeze, andit'll crack the skin.

Oh, wow.

Then your skin will start to bleed. Like, you
get into all these otherlogistical problems when you get
into these really, really,really, arctic cold, scenarios.
So it was so cool to be able todo those things, this winter,
you know, ahead of really I'mtargeting the end of this year
to go to Antarctica and and makethat happen. Anyway, so the rest

(43:21):
of the books, I mean, there's aBible sitting next to me. So
God-fearing guy.
I have, some old books, becauseI feel like, you know, if you
look the Western canon, there'sabout 1,500 books that make up
most of the writers. And if yougo through the Western canon,
you can kind of figure out wherethe rest of the things go. So I

(43:42):
try to read some of those. Thenthere will be, you know, tax
changes or other things, thatI'll try and go through just so
when I'm sitting in front of acustomer, well, I'm not their
accountant. If I can find waysof saving them funds, do they
turn around and reinvest intheir business?

Mhmm.

And and then do we become really the trusted
adviser because we talk to themabout marketing and business
growth. We talk to them abouttaking an applicant tracking
system and deploying it for themso they could put the right
people in the right seat at theright time. You know, just all
the things that you can do from,a lens of being a great
consultant.

Mhmm. So I say I only have two questions. I
actually I'm gonna sneak one inthere. It's kind of a- because
one of the things I foundfascinating about, you know, our
time together is as you weretalking about, like, with
building up your firm and, justwith the level of, you know,
customer experience, employeeretention, all that, just such
an emphasis on culture. Sowhat's what's a resource,

(44:44):
whether it could be a book, awebsite, etcetera, something
that you would recommend to theother owners out there
listening?
Yeah. You know where I'm goingwith this.

I know where you're going with this. So I
said this, earlier, that we wentfor SOC2. I think everyone needs
to choose a framework. You know,Microsoft used to have these ads
where they would show a guyclimbing up a mountain and
Microsoft called them partnerguides.
You know, that was their guideto lead you through, you know,

(45:15):
case studies to do yourmarketing and then the like to
try and activate the community.Well, if you choose a framework
and you deploy that inside ofyour organization, it gives you
a little bit of the road map. Soit for us, we chose EOS, the
entrepreneur operating system.And, you know, based on traction
in those books, so like, whenyou ask for some of the books,

(45:38):
we hand them out for our staff.
Oh my god. Look at you reachingback, and you've got one on your
shelf. That's so cool. Look atthat.
Yeah. But I don't see enoughpages folded over. Oh, come on.
You know? You know?
Some highlights and tacked onthe wall, but, EOS was quite

(45:59):
good. We thought so highly aboutthat that at our twenty-three...
we run an event every year, ourmajor in person event, typically
around September. It's, youknow, and it's last year, it's
twenty three years learning. Thenext one will be Twenty four
years of learning, so it's anannual event. We had an EOS
speaker open up, really try andhelp our customers put a roadmap

(46:21):
in front of them.
I had a customer it's actuallythe neatest thing ever. We, you
know, this one is early uses ofCopilot. She had her laptop open
and had Microsoft Word recordingevery single thing the person
said. And then when it ended,she had Copilot turn into
slides.

Wow.

You know? So she could end the summary that she
could bring it back to theirteam. It was such a neat idea.
Anyway, so, if people leave thecall and they just take this
concept of choose someframework, you know, SOC in The
United States, Sarbanes Oxley's,any of those, HIPAA, PCI, any of
any of them. NIST, you know, youchoose some framework that you

(47:02):
start to, strive to in whateversegment of your company is
important.
You'll find that that that'llgive you the framework for
repeatable business that reducesa lot of the stress and, you
know, makes it fun again.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Excellent. And last question is,
how can people find out moreabout you?

So you can always email me, you know,
CMazzanti@eMazanti.net. Thatworked for twenty four years. So
c like Carl, then Mazzanti, mylast name, m-a-z-z-a-n-t-i at e
like electronic, and thenMazzanti, my last name, .net.
I'm most certainly on LinkedIn.I've been on LinkedIn so long.
That's LinkedIn slash,cmazzanti. How cool is that?

(47:45):
Right? Because everyone's got,like, numbers and other stuff
now, but mine is my actual name.
That tells you how old I am.Then, most certainly, a phone
call away. So, (201) 360-4400,and I'm extension 4410. You
know, I'm happy to take a callfrom anyone. The only time I

(48:05):
don't answer is when I'msleeping. Which is never. Right?
Seems like it's never. You knowyou know what that's called?
Teams, you schedule the messageto go out, and you do the same
thing in Outlook to keep onguessing.

That's it. That's it.
Well, excellent. Well, this wasfantastic. Carl, really
appreciate, your time with us,And, we look forward to kinda
connecting and getting thatItalian food and some, some vino
together at some point.

Standing offer for cappuccino. Anytime you
want.

Alright. Excellent, Carl. Well, you have
a great rest of the day.

Great visiting with you, Carl. Take care.

Cheers.

Well, that was a fantastic episode. I really
enjoyed having Carl on, veryconversational. We got a lot of
really great side stories,between, planning trips to
Antarctica to, just some of thethe origins, you know, behind
that behind the company as wellas dealing with some of the
disasters that have hitdifferent parts of this country

(49:04):
and how they've been involved.So what a lot of great insight
and perspective on things.

Oh, absolutely. I really enjoyed all his side
stories.

Made it fun for sure. But I also got a lot of
really good, you know, nuggetsfrom it. I know there was one
thing in particular, when theywere just talking about, you
know, just about their company.And there was a line that he
shared that really resonatedwith me, and that is when he
talked about choose to do a fewthings and do them very well,

(49:36):
then you can write your story.And I just thought that was
just, you know, so profoundbecause there's you know, today,
especially in tech, there's somany opportunities.
There's so many things that youcan do. But just the point of,
just a reminder, just to reallyfocus, specialize, and excel.
And then you you can positionyourself to be able to do, you

(49:58):
know, what you really, you know,love doing. And I thought that
was just a great reminder.

Oh, absolutely. You know? And, you know, going
along with the that comment, youknow, the thing was that that I
picked up on it was theorganizational culture that
they've built at that company,and it's built around continuous
learning and for employees aswell as customers. And so in one
of his little side stories, whenwe you were talking to him about

(50:26):
being a walker, you know, hesays sometimes he just takes a
walk with employees, and that'show some of the best thinking
comes through. And that's soimportant that, you know, if you
share knowledge with youremployees, that it's going to
help build and and people startunderstanding because that's one
of the great failings of a lotof leaders is they keep

(50:47):
everything to themselves andthen expect people to pick it up
through osmosis.
And the thing that our listenerswill pick up in this was how
much Carl shares on what it howimportant learning is to them.
And in fact, they have an annualevent, that they're that they're
planning for already. They justconducted one in September, 23

(51:09):
years of learning. And now thenext year is the next twenty
four years of learning. Andthat's important because your
customers as well as youremployees need to to understand
how the company is evolving andwhat you're learning and how you
share that information.
And that leads to satisfactionat both the employee and the
customer level. So I found thatvery important and very

(51:31):
enlightening that he does somuch there. That to me was was
near and dear to my heart,really, having come to the
environment I came from.

Yeah. Yeah. That was that was really good.
It was also I really appreciatedwhat he just talked about, just
how the the power of the partnerand the partnering community.
And when he shared, you know,about the story with around,
Hurricane Sandy and how it justit wiped out so many businesses.

(52:01):
And I think there was somethingcorrect me here, Rudy, is he
said they had to replace, like,500 servers or something like
something to that effect.

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. But how through you know, as he made
calls out to the partneringcommunity, they were actually
able to get, you know, him andthe partners, every customer
restored, you know, from thatwithin seventy two hours. So
that's just remarkable, youknow, just to see how, you know,
partners can come together in,you know, the face of, you know,

(52:31):
just, you know, a naturaldisaster and, you know, really
come together to, you know,improve, you know, the lives of
these business owners and makethat impact, through partnering
together. So that was fantastic.

Yeah. I'd found that story really amazing
because I remember whenHurricane Sandy hit the East
Coast and and how many peoplewent through significant
challenges during that and theflooding that happened
everywhere. It wasn't justisolated. It was everywhere
along the Eastern Seaboard,Upper Eastern Seaboard. So great

(53:05):
story.
Great story from Carl. Well,folks, I hope you enjoyed this
this podcast. And I know you'regoing to enjoy it. It was really
enlightening. So we wanna thankyou all of you for joining us on
this episode of IAMCP Profilesand Partnership powered by
Dunamis Marketing.
We hope you find this podcastuseful and inspiring. I know I

(53:25):
did. If you did, pleasesubscribe, rate, and review us
on your favorite podcastplatform. One of the best ways
to partner for success is tojoin IAMCP, a community of
Microsoft partners who help eachother grow and thrive. IAMCP
members can find and connectwith other partners locally and
globally and access exclusiveresources and opportunities.

(53:47):
Whether you're looking for newcustomers, new markets, or new
solutions, IAMCP can help youachieve your goals. To learn
more, visit the website atwww.iamcp.org.

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