August 1, 2024 • 44 mins
In this episode of Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success, we sit down with Boyd Smith, the founder and president of TechKnowledgey, to explore his incredible journey from being self-employed to becoming a successful business owner.
Boyd shares his unique perspective on the crucial differences between being self-employed and owning a business, highlighting the importance of building a reliable team and creating robust systems. Discover how Boyd navigated the challenges of the Great Recession, managed financial struggles, and built a trusted client base that has stayed with him through thick and thin.
Tune in to learn:
- The pivotal moments that shaped Boyd's entrepreneurial mindset
- Strategies for transitioning from a break-fix model to managed services
- Insights on financial management and the importance of knowing your numbers
- The role of trust and relationship-building in client retention and business growth
- Boyd's approach to hiring the right people and fostering a strong, cohesive team
Boyd's story is not just about business success; it's about resilience, grit, and the relentless pursuit of excellence. Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale your existing business, this episode is packed with valuable lessons and practical advice that you can apply to your own journey.
Join us for an engaging and inspiring conversation that will leave you motivated to take your business to the next level.
Let us help you unlock your business's full potential.
N-able Business Transformation is Expert led and Peer informed.These valuable executive programs are tailored to provide effective guidance and a faster path to a scalable and successful business.
Book a Call with Chris Massey now to learn what Business Transformation can do for you!
'Now that's it: Stories of MSP Success,' dives into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn Managed Services into the thriving sector it is today.
Every episode is packed with the valuable insights, practical strategies, and inspiring anecdotes that lead our guests to the transformative moment when they knew….. Now, that's it.
This podcast provides educational information about issues that may be relevant to information technology service providers.
Nothing in the podcast should be construed as any recommendation or endorsement by N-able, or as legal or any other advice.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Views and opinions expressed by N-able employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of N-able or its officers and directors.
The podcast may also contain forward-looking statements regarding future product plans, functionality, or development efforts that should not be interpreted as a commitment from N-able related to any deliverables or timeframe.
All content is based on information available at the time of recording, and N-able has no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
there is a big difference between being
self-employed and being abusiness owner and a lot of
small business people.
They go into it that they justreally want to be the best them
they can be.
They want to be the bestsalesman they can be, they want
to be the best technician theycan be, they want to be the best
coder they can be, and theyactually own their job.
A business owner, in contrast,has a totally different mindset.
(00:21):
It's all about the team thatyou build.
It's all about the team thatyou built.
It's all about the systems thatyou build.
It's all about the integration.
And if you want to really knowthe difference between a
self-employed person and abusiness owner, you know.
If a business owner leaves fora week, you know are people
still serve?
If a business owner leaves fora month or three months or
whatever the case is, are thecustomers still cared for?
(00:41):
Does the income still come in?
Are people still served to ahigh level?
Or, if you're not working, doesthe income quit, does the
service quit?
Does the people you're servingsuffer?
And that's the big differencebetween a self-employed and a
business owner.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Welcome to Now that's it stories of MSP success,
where we dive into the journeysof some of the trailblazers in
our industry to find out howthey used their passion for
technology to help turn managedservices into the thriving
sector it is today.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
All right, boyd Smith , welcome to the Now that's it
podcast.
So you're the founder andpresident at Technology a hybrid
cloud solutions, integrated ITservices and managed print
(01:29):
services.
Thank you so much, man, forbeing here.
This is long overdue.
I've gotten to know you overthe last couple of years and
you're such a great guy.
You do such great work for yourpartners and you have a great
team behind you, so thanks forbeing here today.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Thanks, I've been looking forward to this and I've
enjoyed getting to know you too.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I love the term.
Adversity breeds opportunity.
Right, and so for you I thinkyou said it was your freshman
year you know that ultimatelyled like where you are today and
just like good IT folks,there's a broken computer.
Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, so I went to college in the dark days of the
last century, you know, late,late nineties, and it would have
been my freshman year at GraceCollege.
I had a computer which wasunusual to have that in your
dorm room back in the midnineties and my computer broke.
I had no money to fix it, so Ijust started ripping it apart,
figured it out and I managed toget the old thing up and running
(02:23):
.
So that was kind of my firstopportunity there.
And then after that there wasthis new thing called the
internet and one of myprofessors said that we had to
turn in the group project inHTML format, and so I didn't
feel like going to the libraryto do research, I didn't feel
like writing papers, so I said,yeah, give me that, I'll try and
figure that out.
So then that was kind of asecond head and you know, those
two things got me to switch frominternational business to a
(02:45):
double major of management ofinformation systems and business
administration.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
When you were in college, you were already
thinking like an entrepreneur,though, weren't you?
I mean, you started to beginthat.
You know I want to own abusiness someday.
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
I knew that was a distinct possibility.
My senior year of college, Iactually wrote a business plan,
right you know, with some lifegoals in it, and so I knew that
that was a distinct possibility.
So that was something that wason my heart, but it would take a
while for that to grow intofruition If I remember this
correctly, I think you said yourfirst job out of college was
with a value-added reseller.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
What was that like and what did you learn while you
were at the bar?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, I've got a really short adult resume.
I worked about eight years atthe bar and then I opened up my
own shop in my late 40s now.
So it's a short resume and whatI learned with the bar was
sales.
I learned commission sales andthat was a really good spiritual
, emotional training groundbecause $3 out of $4 that I
earned was based on myperformance.
Out of four that I earned wasbased on my performance.
(03:45):
So that was a really great wayto train on my spirit, you know,
to get used to the bigger riskthat would come of starting a
business and dealing witheverything that comes into that
and disciplining myself.
And I also learned that thebusiness to business sales world
was a world that is really ahigh trust world and in some
ways that high trust world ofB2B sales set me up for some
really failures as anentrepreneur, because not all
(04:06):
things in a business are thathigh trust world of B2B sales
set me up for some reallyfailures as an entrepreneur,
because not all things inbusiness are a high trust
environment.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Awesome.
So what motivated you to leavethe secure job working for the
man, as they say and start yourown business?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
I hit a ceiling there .
I did all that I could do and Iapproached my employer.
I said, hey, could I buy intothe business?
You know, basically he smirkedand just about laughed me out of
his office and I just knew thatthere wasn't anything more to
that journey.
At that point we put down roots.
We live here in a little towncalled Goshen, indiana, a town
of about 35,000 people inNorthern Indiana, about 45
(04:39):
minutes outside of South Bend,and my wife grew up north of
here, about 15 minutes outsideof South Bend, and my wife grew
up north of here, about 15minutes north of here, a little
town called Middlebury.
I grew up in Cincinnati, ohio,and when we got married she said
the Goshen was halfway.
So I got trained in maritalcompromise pretty quick.
And so you know we weren'tgoing to move.
So I had to figure my own thingout, and that was.
I knew that this was the pathfor me.
(05:00):
That was going to be thecrucible that would turn me into
the man that I was meant to be.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
That's awesome.
So we have all kinds ofdifferent listeners to this
podcast.
Some of them are businessowners, Some of them are
technicians, maybe soon to bebusiness owners just trying to
hear other people's stories.
For those that have not startedtheir own business, what is
that process?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
like Boyd.
Do not underestimate how hardit is To be a first-generation
business owner.
It's pretty rare.
The first thing that I thinkpeople mess up when they go into
business is we have badlanguage around different, the
best them they can be.
They want to be the bestsalesman they can be.
They want to be the besttechnician they can be.
(05:48):
They want to be the best coderthey can be, and they actually
own their job.
A business owner, in contrast,has a totally different mindset
that it's all about the teamthat you build, it's all about
the systems that you build, it'sall about the integration,
about the integration.
And if you want to really knowthe difference between a
self-employed person and abusiness owner, you know if a
business owner leaves for a week, you know are people still
(06:10):
served?
If a business owner leaves fora month or three months or
whatever the case is, are thecustomers still cared for?
Does the income still come in?
Are people still served to ahigh level?
Or, if you're not working, doesthe income quit?
Does the service quit?
Does the people you're servingsuffer?
And that's the big differencebetween a self-employed and a
business owner.
I know here in the Enablecommunity we have plenty of
(06:32):
self-employed people and we haveplenty of business owners too,
and we got great self-employedpeople in our community.
We got great business owners inour community.
But spiritually and emotionally, I just think those are very
different animals and that's thefirst lesson that I tell
anybody considering going intobusinesses you know which animal
are you?
They're just different thanbusiness owners.
It's a very different journey.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah, that's really good, Boyd.
I appreciate you going intodetail on that, and I hear a lot
of business owners notunderstand that early on, right,
and so that's really good thatyou clarify that.
So you mentioned Enable theamazing company that I work for.
How about where and when didyou come across us in your
journey?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Oh, I don't know if the marketing team is going to
like this or not.
So I first came across Enable.
It was late.
I've been a late bloomer mywhole life and you know that's
okay.
We always get there and thatalso keeps us young.
I first came across Enable thatI was looking at acquiring a
book of customers, a customerlist, from somebody that was
getting out of the game, and Inoticed there's this thing
(07:32):
called SolarWinds on the listthat they were doing At the time
we were doing block hours, wewere doing some resale stuff the
only managed service that wehad was managed print at the
time and so I started digginginto that and I started pulling
on that thread and then that ledme to coming across
SolarWindsRMN, as he has beenknown at the time.
So that was the initial thing.
I placed an initial order tofigure out okay, who are these
(07:54):
people?
Why do I want to pay them apiece of everything that I do
for every customer that I serve?
What do they bring to the table?
And I went out to theScottsdale conference, if I
remember right.
What was that?
2018-ish, 2019-ish and Ibrought my wife with me there.
The main reason that I went tothat conference was.
I'm a relational guy.
I double down on people.
At the end of the day, if youcan't trust people, you don't
(08:16):
got anything.
If you don't have good peopleto deal with, if you don't have
trustworthy people to deal with,you're never going to get
anywhere, because business movesat the speed of trust.
My mission of going out thereobviously I had some business
with y'all because I got theemail that hey, we have this
event.
So I went out there and Iremember meeting weeks out there
.
I remember seeing bags from thestage.
I remember meeting severalpeople there and I just kind of
(08:37):
had a comfort in my spirit thatokay, these are good people.
You know these are trustworthypeople, that they have their
partner's interest in mind aswell as their own.
They're dialed in.
You know, I came across Kielnpretty good and coming out of
that event, I went ahead andjumped in and started loading up
and you know, luckily I waslate to the game so I didn't
have to try and fail atsomething.
I just got to get somethingthat works right away and we ran
(08:59):
with it.
It wasn't too far after that Igot asked to be on partner
advisory council and that was areal critical part of the
journey to start getting in arelationship with other MSPs.
Since that time my business hasdoubled and bottom line is
quadruple.
This stuff really is goodbusiness to double down on
people and love people well.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Number one.
We're so happy for you becausethat's what we want to see
happen to all of our partnersDouble, triple, quadruple, if
that's what they're looking for.
And the other thing, too.
We really appreciate your input, boyd.
We need to hear from ourpartners that this is working or
this isn't working, and we wantmore of this and we want less
of this, and you've been a greatadvocate for that.
So let's go back to your earlydays again of your MSP.
(09:39):
You were operating during sortof the Great Recession, right?
I mean, how did you navigateand challenge the economic
downturn?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
It took everything I had.
I mean, looking back on it.
I opened my doors in 2007.
By the end of 2008, the GreatRecession hit northern Indiana
really hard that one out of fourpeople in my neighborhood had
no work at all.
Fear ruled the day.
Four people in my neighborhoodhad no work at all.
Fear ruled the day and I had to.
(10:09):
The way I got through those daysis I just decided I was not
going to be afraid and I had toreally discipline myself.
I had to shut off the newsbecause there wasn't anything
good on it.
You know, I depended on myfriends, I depended on my faith
and I drained out my savings toget through pay for my early
rounds mistakes and it wouldjust shoot through sheer grit
and determination.
I was just too stupid to quit.
We were going to see thisthrough and see this through the
(10:31):
other side, and survival is awonderful defense mechanism.
Survival is a wonderfulmotivator, right, I mean the
early.
Oh, chris, I could write a bookabout the mistakes that I made
in the early days of thebusiness.
I didn't know how to interviewpeople.
I didn't know how to hirepeople.
My HR management was horrible,where, on the other hand, in
sales I've always done well, butthat's a high integrity
(10:51):
exchange that if I deliver whatI say, you're going to deliver
and you pay me.
Business sales is this highintegrity, high trust game.
That is not the game of earlyemployment, especially when you
don't have much money to paypeople.
It's the game today, but itdidn't start that way.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I love that term grit too, boyd because I think it's
about, and I'd say it's aMidwest thing, but I see tons
and tons of business owners andentrepreneurs have this grit
mentality of just figure it out.
Whatever it's going to take,I'm going to continue to push on
and, you know, almost like theTitanic, I'm going to go down
there with the ship if I have to.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Yeah, and that'll get you to a certain point, right,
but the real trick is notgetting the business up and
running.
The real trick is sustaining it.
Okay, how are you going to dothis for five years, 10 years,
15 years, 20 years?
That's the hard part.
You know everybody focuses onstartup.
You know, congratulations, youstarted a business.
Now the hard part begins andnobody really talks about that.
You know, everybody's alwaystalking about startup or.
You know we always look to thewrong sources of inspiration.
(11:55):
If I ever hear about anotherbusiness book from a billionaire
that's so far out the outsideof the bell curve that their
experience is real, they're,they're great, you know, but
they are so far out of the bellcurve that their experience is
real.
They're, they're great, youknow, but they are so far out of
the bell curve.
They're either so smart or solucky, or a one-time event, or
you know, whatever the case is,you could study them all day
long and there's nothing thatElon Musk does that I can apply
(12:15):
to my life.
That's sustainable andduplicatable.
Where, if I, you know, backdown and I say, okay, what do
people at the 95th percentile do?
You know, this is where thebusiness transformation events
really help.
Okay, you know people that areplaying a high game, that 95th
percentile, you know kind of cutthat 1% out.
Now, all of a sudden it's atotally different game.
Now there's stuff that I canlearn, I can sustain, I can do,
(12:36):
I can be in community withpeople to help figure this stuff
out.
I can serve them.
It's a totally different gameand those are some of the early
lessons that I had to learn thatyou have to just kind of let go
of so much.
I mean, I can't stress enoughhow running and building a
business is an ego crushingactivity.
You have to be willing to dieto the ego if you're going to
(12:59):
see this game through.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Yeah, you went through some tough times with
your first couple of clients aswell.
Some of those clients are stillwith you today.
What was that like?
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I'm thankful.
Just yesterday afternoon we'redoing a big fiber backbone
upgrade for that first managedservices client.
They're still a client today.
I think that it wasn't becauseI was a trustworthy business
We've got a culture of trust,that is really our super sauce
but it was because they saw thepotential and they knew.
Obviously I'm going to pick onRob here a little bit.
(13:29):
He's still the president ofthat company and Rob trusted me
with that network becausesomehow he knew that I wasn't
going to come up short.
You know, I was a new business.
I didn't have a track record, Ididn't have the team, I didn't
have the systems.
But in the early days it waspeople buying into me.
And then as the business grewyou have to grow, everything has
(13:51):
to be beyond yourself as abusiness owner.
Everything has to be all aboutthe team and the systems and the
processes and the business.
But early on, to get to thatfirst half million in sales or
whatever the market is, peopleare buying you.
But later on it's not about you, it's about the business.
That's been built.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
That's right.
How did those experiences shapeyour approach to financial
management and growth goingforward?
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Great question.
Debt was never my friend.
My testimony about debt in theearly days of the business is it
allowed me to make biggermistakes and carry them further,
because debt spends just likereal money until the bill comes
due.
And so you know I never gotinto debilitating debt.
I never had trouble makingpayments.
I've always run a fiscallysound house, but debt was not my
(14:36):
friend.
You have to solve businessproblems as you go and I've
noticed that a lot of smallbusiness people they think their
business is running really goodbut then if you account for the
debt it is not running reallygood.
You know, even when I see thebenchmarking that Enable has
people in peer groups go throughit's like you know there can be
some really good benchmarks butthen you don't know what the
debt load is and you put thatdebt load in there.
(14:58):
You know those benchmarksaren't really good because you
can make any numbers lookanywhere.
If you get to hide, you knowsomething somewhere else and
that's what data is.
So early on I came across one ofmy mentors from afar was Dave
Ramsey and his entre leadershipprogram.
That's been a businesscommunity that I've been part of
for over a decade now and aboutfive years into the business.
(15:21):
You know, I spent a week withhim and his senior leadership
team at one of their events inTexas and to get to know them, I
actually ramped up and ran ahalf marathon.
I ran from three to 13 milesinside of four weeks and I've
kept that up since.
But that kind of inspirationright.
And so today technology iscompletely debt-free business,
real estate and everything.
Being a debt-free business israre.
(15:41):
The cashflow is different for adebt-free business, but you've
seen my benchmarks.
The business speaks for itselfand other people have.
I'd say that being a debt-freebusiness is definitely one of
the main things, that disciplineis one of the main things, that
we're a top 20% MSP accordingto the enabled benchmarks.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
You know.
One of the things that hasimpressed me so much about you
is your financial knowledge.
Like most IT guys that start abusiness don't have this sort of
business work ethic and you'vereally built that over the years
.
I've been really, reallyimpressed with number one how
you run your business by thenumbers.
You know.
You joined the benchmark justto make sure that you could
(16:19):
compare yourself against others,but you knew what your numbers
were.
You knew when to hire, when tomake changes.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Surprised that somebody actually knew their
numbers before sitting at thebenchmark.
That's right, yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
From our experience yes, it was a rare thing.
But you guys have grown prettysignificantly over the years
here and I guess my follow-upquestion to that is what
strategies or decisions did youthink were crucial during that
growth spurt, especially in thecompetitive MSP space?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So there's three big decisions that fueled our growth
.
One we already talked about,which was the financial
commitment to run in a goodbusiness and the discipline to
run in a deafery business.
Two was the strategy, and thestrategy is anything that is not
directly customer facing.
There's probably somebody elseout there that can do it better,
you know.
So that's where Enable comes in.
Enable helps me grow mycapability and capacity.
(17:10):
It's why we outsource ourfirewall management.
It's why I've got a 24-7 knockthat looks after our endpoints.
So if it's not directlycustomer facing, I source with
other businesses.
I've got a great outsourcedaccounting and billing team.
You know they work out ofClearwater Florida.
I've prospered working withthem.
But anything that is customerfacing we keep in-house.
So that's a key strategy thereto make sure to know what do you
(17:33):
do in-house, what's the valueyou bring in-house and what can
you hire somebody else to do asgood as or better, to give you
other capability.
And then all of that is based onour culture of trust, and we've
actually codified the cultureof trust.
We actually train on that.
We talk on this in every salescall.
We talk on this on every hire.
We talk about this.
(17:53):
This is our troubleshootingchecklist.
You know this is how we dealwith our vendors.
It's understanding what goesinto being trustworthy in a day.
Let's face it, these are timesof low trust.
Right, people are mismanagingtrust.
Left and right, people aredividing and conquering
Everybody's hungry fortrustworthy people and it just
seems like we live inuntrustworthy times.
So if you can show up astrustworthy in that kind of
(18:15):
background as untrustworthytimes, that is a legitimate
competitive advantage.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
That's awesome, boyd.
So you mentioned that you weresort of late to the game in your
transition to, maybe, managedservices.
How did you transition this andwhat were the changes you had
to make to really bring thismodel into the fold for you?
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Well, first it was offering it.
You know, building the systems,building the team, having to
write people on the bus, andthen the early customers.
We were able to transition theblock hours over.
That at least I was not late tothe recurring revenue game, you
know.
But we bucketed it different.
You know there's customers thatused to buy 25 hours a month of
block hours that maybe todaythey only buy five hours a month
(18:56):
of block hours and then therest of that spend went over to
managed services.
So that's a huge help there.
And then, of course, we don'tdo anything now that's not on
managed services.
We will not service anycustomer that's not on a managed
services contract, becausethat's the commitment we need to
keep healthy things healthy,give every customer appropriate
level of security and make surethings are backed up.
And if customers don't want totake care of the basics and
(19:19):
execute on the basics, well, youjust can't serve them.
They have to be able to makethose basic commitments if
you're going to bring them on asa customer.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Yeah, you're taking on a ton of risk too when you
take on a customer, and so thebeauty of managed services is
you can go in and say you know,these are the things that we
need to do to right your ship,and then, by the way, you're
going to see things run so muchmore smoothly and we're going to
ensure that they continue torun smoothly.
When you do that break fixmodel, the wheels fall off all
(19:47):
day long and you can't predictwhen they're going to fall off.
Yeah, you're right, it's atough pill for new customers to
swallow.
This idea of.
Well, I'm going to pay youevery month, whether I think I
need you or not, into this.
You're paying for uptime, right?
You're paying for us to keepyou online and safe, and, yeah,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, you're paying for reliability, that's right.
You're paying for capabilityand reliability.
Yeah, capability andreliability.
You can't.
Yeah, the old days.
I'm still amazed.
You know, occasionally, likeyou know, last last week, I was
on a sales call and, like youknow, this customer had some
people working out of theirgarage doing IT stuff on a side
basis.
You know they were looking fora more consistent product and
(20:25):
I'm I'm still amazed that I willgo on sales calls and still see
customers doing things like wedid it seven, eight years ago.
That's a long time ago in IT.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
You know what I've seen and this is probably for
another podcast, but I've seenMSPs go backwards as a way to
attempt to differentiatethemselves.
Well, everybody else is sellingthis reoccurring model, but
we're not going to do this,we're going to only and it's
really like is that how you wantto run your business?
And to me it's not, but to someit is, and so it's a.
(20:57):
It's an interesting conundrum,that that we've created for
ourselves, but I'm glad to seethat you, you saw the light even
early on in the in the MRRmodel, because MRR is is King,
right, it's a gift that keeps ongiving.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Until I got to MRR.
I was just trying to outrace myexpenses.
Well, that's a horriblebusiness model, so let's try and
outrace our expenses and keepup with everybody's needs.
That may or may not come andyou don't have any way to judge
the quantity or quality of therequest and you have to have a
structure to take care of.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yeah, so when you grew your business by the way,
speaking of taking care ofpeople as you grew naturally you
needed to hire some more people, and you're not a huge team,
but you are a very, very solidteam.
You've hired the right people,but you struggled at first,
didn't you?
As?
Speaker 1 (21:46):
a boss.
Yes, I did.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
You talk a little bit about those sort of early
hiring, some of those mistakesyou made.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
There's so many of them, there's, there's, so,
there's so many.
So the the first thing that Idid was I made the mistake of
hiring people from my churchcommunity and I'm still part of
a great church, still part ofthe same church community.
But you know something thatthat was, that was, that was a
horrible, horrible decision,because I wasn't a very good
(22:14):
boss, they weren't very goodemployees and I went through a
number of people early on and inthose days that money really
mattered.
You know, I didn't have verymany, I didn't have very many
bullets in my shotgun goinghunting, right, you know, I mean
you know so every, every roundyou expended, you know every.
You know that that hurt, right,you know, and eventually you
(22:38):
end up empty.
So so I got beyond that.
Then I started it was reallyEntree leadership to really help
me dial in the hiring processthat I used to hire people based
on community relationships andrecommendations, and now I don't
hire somebody until they'vebeen through five or six
interviews.
The first interview is just aget to know you conversation.
The second interview just tosee if there's a conversation we
have.
The second interview then ismore of a traditional job
interview.
Then we put people through oneor two personality tests you
(23:00):
know, disk profiles or workinggenius profiles.
Then, based on that, we comeback, we have a team interview
and then, finally, if a personhas somebody significant in
their life, it's a social dinnerwith my wife and I you know, my
wife doesn't work in thebusiness but just to just to see
, okay, do we all like eachother?
Cause you know my, my plan, andin in the early days, in the,
(23:22):
in the in the early days, Ididn't have much money, you know
, and so better people deserveto get paid, and so one of the
things that I love to be able todo is pay my people well and
have profit sharing and, youknow, take care of all that
stuff.
And in the early days I justdidn't have the cashflow to do
it, so we just had to make, doso, and you know, now we've got
strong, very strong employeeretention, we've got a really
(23:43):
great team and we've learned howto figure out what kind of path
somebody's walking on before weask them to join up with their
path.
So it's my job to know my pathas a business owner, it's my job
to know the courses I'mpiloting in this plane, right,
you know.
But I have to figure out whatcourse is somebody doing?
If we're not on parallelcourses, if they're flying over
here and I want to fly thisdirection, we can't hire that
(24:05):
person.
You know, selfishness will killa team.
The number one thing that I lookfor in a job interview is
selfishness.
We all have our self-interest.
I'm not worried about that.
My job is to take care of myemployees' self-interest.
I mean, we all have families totake care of, we all need to
get paid, we all need to have agreat work environment.
We all need that.
That's my job is hopefully agood employer to show up and
(24:27):
create that culture.
But I can't have selfish peoplethat I'm serving because they
will destroy a team, and I'vehad some real selfish people
over the years.
One of the things that justright before I came across
Enable I had a technician thatwas so selfish that he thought,
hey, I'm going to be a businessgenius here.
I'm going to negotiate a dealworking for one of my customers
and I'm going to take whatthey're paying in technology
(24:49):
along with my own pay and I'mgoing to be a business genius.
Look at this raise that I gotand then had it out the door and
left a poison pill behind.
I mean that was horrible.
And then, and then you know heexecuted on that while I was out
of state doing an install,because I didn't want to take.
This was years ago, you know,but I didn't want to take him
away from his young kids.
You know I was trying, you knowI you don't want me doing your
(25:11):
install, but you know, if youtell me what to do, I can go
ahead and do it.
I'm not a tech, but you know itwas a.
It was a job that I could, youknow, be a boots on the ground
for anyway.
And and to have people do stufflike that to you, that's what
you sign up for as a businessowner.
You want to love everybody.
You want to be trustworthy.
You want people to betrustworthy with you.
But along the way there's goingto be people, there's going to
(25:31):
be people that screw you alongthe way and we all have those
wounds.
And in the way that I can tella real business owner from
somebody that's a wannabebusiness owner, or somebody
that's actually played the gamefrom somebody that doesn't want
to play the game is, I'll lookthem in the eye and I'll say
tell me about the first time youpaid $10,000 or more for
(25:53):
somebody else's mistake.
That's where it was.
As a good employee, as anaccount manager, I was used to
taking care of my own mistakes.
If you're a business owner, ifyou're going to take care of
having a team, if you're goingto love people, well, you are
signing up to make everybody'smistakes right to the extent you
can make it right to maintaintrust.
(26:14):
Whether it's an employee'smistake, customers that wasn't
able to pay you, a vendor thatfailed, you know, maybe maybe
somebody had some trouble withsome logins or something like
that, you know it doesn't matterwhere the failure is.
You need to make that right asa business owner to maintain
trust, and sometimes that costsmoney.
A business owner and theyattain trust and sometimes that
costs money and those were veryharsh lessons in the early days
(26:36):
because I couldn't imaginepurposely experienced somebody.
But other people do it as aday-to-day way of life.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Yeah yeah.
And, by the way, I know likeyou're just a good guy and
obviously you're part of somegreat communities.
You have a religious community,Like you're part of some great
and like you have a religiouscommunity like you, you you're
part of some great and likesections of of the of the
population, and trust is soimportant and trust has always
been so important.
You talk about the pillars oftrust and and how important
(27:03):
those are to your business.
You've already give us some,given us a couple examples, but
talk about why the pillars oftrust are just so critical to
the, to critical to your MSP,and really how those affect
client relationships.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
A hundred percent.
Well, let's step through them.
So we've got six pillars oftrust that we train on.
So the first pillar of trust ismutual concern.
You know you got to care aboutthe other person's needs as
equivalent to your own.
You know if you don't careabout the other person, you
shouldn't be doing anything.
You won't do anything to servethem.
You know if you don't careabout the other person, you
shouldn't be doing anything.
(27:39):
You won't do anything to servethem.
You know that's thatselfishness we talked about.
Second pillar of trust ispersonal value.
Do you care about who peopleare or you just care about what
they can do for you?
You know so, showing genuineinterest in their family, in
them as a person.
You know hobbies, what are theytrying to get?
You know seeing the movies andthe other person's head.
You know understanding theirperspective.
The third pillar of trust isintegrity.
You know the words and actionsmatching up, and I'll give you a
(28:00):
long list of people that Iconsider to be high integrity I
don't trust.
There's a lot of people outthere with high integrity that I
don't trust.
You know and I think integrityis where people really get off
the rails that you know a lot ofvendors will focus on integrity
, you know, and everybody willjam integrity through.
Great, you know.
So you said you did what yousaid you're going to do.
That doesn't mean you'retrustworthy, you know.
(28:22):
Next pillar of trust, then, iscapability.
Does somebody have thenecessary skill?
You know I'm not capable.
If you want to hire me run yourthousand PC network, I don't
have that capability, notcapable.
If you want to hire me run yourthousand PC network, I don't
have that capability.
You can't trust me for that.
I will do an excellent jobrunning your hundred PC network
and we'll do that all day long.
And plus, tell them pleaseshare that with all your friends
.
You know we'll, we'll take careof them too.
(28:42):
You know we are very capable inthat space.
And then the next thing beyondcapability, which is the
necessary skill, is capacity.
Does somebody have thenecessary resources?
Do you have the time?
Do you have the bench?
Do you have the money?
Do you have?
You know whatever, whatever isneeded, you know to make sure
you have the capacity to carrythat out, that there's a lot of
people, especially in thebusiness world.
(29:04):
You know that.
You know we're dealing withextremely capable people, even
you know that self-employedperson we were talking about
that we might run into at aconference.
They are extremely capable, butunless you build out a team,
unless you build out systems,unless you have, unless you
build a business around it, yourcapability will, your capacity
is going to give out way beforeyour capability ever does.
(29:25):
And that's, and that's whatenable really brings to me is
capacity and capability.
And then, finally, reliability.
You know, do you keep yourpromises over time?
And then, personally, Iunderpin all that with a healthy
dose of grace, becausesomewhere along so long in the
way, it's going to get messed up.
It doesn't always go right allthe time, and so you got to
(29:45):
budget for that $10,000 mistake.
You got to leave some gracethat we're dealing with humans,
we're dealing with imperfectsituations.
There are things that could gowrong and blow a crap load of
trust.
They're completely outside ofyour control and you just have
to do these other things day in,day out, week in, week out,
year in, year out, to make surethat that bank of trust is built
(30:07):
up to survive that tough day,because everybody's gonna have a
tough day eventually.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
That's super powerful boy.
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
I always love when you you getreally passionate about that and
I know it's important to youand it's important to your
business as well.
So thank you.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
And that helps us.
That helps us with everythingin the business.
So you know if we're decidingwhat product to bring in, you
know we run it through the list.
If there's something going onsquirrelly with a client, we run
it through a list.
If there's something squirrellygoing on among the team, we run
it through the list.
This is our troubleshootingdecision-making checklist, and
codifying trust is one of thebig things that it is.
(30:44):
I'd say that's the number onething that we did add the most
recent extra million in revenue.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
That's awesome, man.
So you, speaking of addingrevenue, you still play a really
key part, a key role, in sales.
Why have you chosen to maintainthat hands-on approach and how
has that benefited your business?
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah, oh gosh, it's because I like it.
I mean, honestly, it's the onlything that I do.
That's an employee of thebusiness.
I mean I've got a great servicemanager that runs the day to
day.
I've got great.
I guess I guess I made a livinglong enough.
I go in that category.
(31:31):
Instead of doing that we playmoney ball that I've got a
customer success person.
It's also my personal assistant, helps out with the renewals,
the price increases, taking careof that.
You got a marketing guy onstaff that takes care of a lead
generation and helps out withthat, and then basically they
bring me in to I just deal withthe new stuff and broken stuff.
Then basically they bring me into I just deal with the new
(31:52):
stuff and broken stuff.
So if it's a crazy clientsituation, I'll come in and I'll
fix it.
And then nowadays it's not likethe old days that it was a blue
ocean out there that everybodywas getting an MSP for the first
time.
There's still plenty ofbusiness like that, but a lot of
the businesses we're getting issomebody some other MSP screwed
up.
You know, somebody broke trustor or some internal IT guy quit
(32:12):
and it's just that I found thatthe best customers were earning
in the last you know, 18 monthsor so.
It's been breakdowns of trust.
And you know, by by makingmyself a student of trust and
genuinely believing that this isthe way to take care of people,
in my heart of hearts, you know, I kind of feel like a trust
doctor.
You know I going in there andfiguring out, okay, where was
trust broken, how can we healthis up?
(32:33):
And you know I I feel like I'mhalf counselor in in most sales
situations anymore.
And and and just to know, youknow there's, there's a lot of
hurting people out there thatare really good people but
they've been beat up and damagedalong the way.
And and you know, if we cancome in and help make them whole
through giving them world classIT services and helping them be
relevant and having them freefrom fear, that's that's worth
(32:56):
showing up to work.
And I don't have to replacemyself in that role quite yet,
that that that day's coming.
So you know some someday I'llmeet some young kid that will
replace me in that, but you know, for for now, I don't mind
doing it.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
I still suspect you'll still be involved, even
if it's at the very beginning orthe very end to, because I
think you said it earlier, right, like they're most of your
partners, most of your customersare buying a piece of you.
Right, they look and they go.
You know, boyd, this guy, I, Itrust him and I trust that his
team are the ones that are goingto be able to deliver what they
(33:26):
say they're going to deliver,and not to say that a
salesperson couldn't do that.
But it's something about likethis is your blood, right, like
this is your soul.
You know that that built thiscompany and and when you say
you're going to do something,you're, you're going to do
something.
So I think it's, I think it'simportant that that you, as the
owner, always have your yourfinger on the pulse and continue
(33:46):
to even handshake Hello, I wantto.
I'm going to hand you over tosomebody, but you're going to
always want to probably beinvolved.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Oh, a hundred percent .
And in the early days peoplewere buying me, you know.
So the first million it was allabout me.
You know the second million itwas all about and, and that's a
really really good feeling and,and and.
The millions after that aregoing to be all because the team
.
That and the millions afterthat are going to be all because
of the team.
That doesn't help.
Hopefully my team keeps mearound and they enjoy having me.
But yeah, but it's not.
(34:14):
Yeah, but in the early days itdefinitely is about the owner.
But you got to.
It'll only take you so far.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
So you mentioned business transformation earlier.
That's obviously how you and Igot to know each other through a
couple of the programs thatRobert and I were running a
couple of years ago, and I thinkyou've been to just about all
of them so far.
There's one more I'm going toget you to.
We're going to do that at theend of the year.
Yep, talk a little bit about.
Can you elaborate a little bitabout how that impacted you and
maybe your approach to sort ofgrowth and sales?
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Oh for sure, Business transformation in general.
So the thing, the big missingpart of the business, if I look
back, you know, five years ago,compared to today, is community.
I was not running in communitywith other MSPs.
I was running in good businesscommunity.
I was running in good localcommunity, but I was not running
in community with other peoplethat do what I do.
(35:05):
So the business transformationevents and how you guys curate
that group you didn't just letanybody come into the group and
you guys do a good job of youknow trying to join the right
people, right people together.
That that unlocked tremendousthings to be able to talk shop
with people that do the samething that I do in
non-competitive markets.
That you know it's really iron,sharpening iron.
(35:26):
You know that old, that oldsaying that, that, that, that
was really really good.
And then the specific knowledge, the business security there
are products you guys introducedme to that are part of our
portfolio today.
And to be able to have thoseconversations, cultures more
clearly, be able to have themuch richer conversation around
cyber insurance, you know beingable to, you know, tell
customers.
(35:46):
You know, okay, if you havethis policy, this is how this is
going to work and on your worstday we will be not able to help
you until this instant commandteam comes in.
And this instant response teamis going to come in and they are
paid for by an insurancecompany.
They are not on my team, I'mnot so sure they're on your team
either.
And then once the judge andjury of the instant response
(36:08):
team, you know, does their deal,then we can all get to work.
That's what you're signing upfor when you buy cyber insurance
.
And oh, by the way, to takecare of this, you know here's
all the stuff you have to buy tobe compliant with it.
You know that's a very richconversation.
That's a hard conversation fora rookie.
You know brand new sales kid tohave, you know with another
business owner and you knowbecause the risk management and
you know how does all that work.
(36:29):
So that's just one example ofit.
You know the most recent one orI'm sorry it wasn't the most
recent one, but it's all.
You know there was a, there wasa revenue growth one and just
being able to hear from otherpeople on the team that you know
we completely changed up how wedo our workstation replacements
, that we used to do that ashourly professional services and
by exchanging notes withsomebody else in the room, I
(36:51):
just kind of borrowed theirhomework and now we've got a
here's the checklist and here'sthe flat rate, and then adding
another tool to it and justtaking the friction out of the
most mundane old.
I mean it's the most basicthing in IT is lifecycle
management.
You just got to replace the oldmachine.
There's nothing sexy about it.
You just got to go do the workand make it as easy for
(37:12):
everybody involved, from thecustomer to the technician
installing it.
And so we were able to pick upsome ideas there and just Dell's
shipping them in by thepalatable.
So you guys aren't on Dell'steam, but they're happy for the
work that you did.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Great yeah.
Number one I loved having youat these.
You've always been such a hugeadvocate for us because you
found value.
In the first two-day sessionthat you joined, you were like
let me know as soon as a new onecomes out, and so I really
appreciate it.
I'm glad you've been able totake away a bunch of these
strategical nuggets.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Strategical.
I like that, yeah, strategical.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah, I make new words up as we go on the podcast
, so in Prague, you were makingup some new words too.
I'm sure I was so.
So.
So, boy, what are your?
What are the plans for thefuture of technology?
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, keep doing what we're doing.
We want to be an ever moretrustworthy company.
So you know.
So if you look me up aboutthree years from now, you're
just going to see as bigger andbetter what we're doing.
Medium term plans I realized Iwon't be technology's last
president.
I'm not going to be the last guythat runs technology.
So I'm going to developsomebody else to be able to run
the company someday.
You know, coach the rightperson up, bring them in, and
(38:24):
then you know after that, youknow, maybe, you know I've, I've
, I've got time, you know I justnow got good at it.
So it's a lot of fun.
I want to go to work every daystill, but you know, and then
you know after, after I raise upsomebody else to completely run
the business every day and I'mjust, you know, in the
background as a business owner,maybe.
Maybe then at that point youknow, you know one of the other.
I won't have to do that becauseI've got a business that runs
(38:46):
without me and you know I'lljust continue to take care of a
leadership team that takes careof my customers, and you know.
But you know that's that's,that's the near term and
long-term plans for technology.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Right, that's awesome and, and just out of curious,
what, what, how do you definesuccess at your, at your MSP and
like, are there any milestonesthat you're that you've been
really proud of?
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Customer retention.
I mean customer retention.
You know we only lose like onecustomer a year.
You know I can honestly lookyou in the eye and say that.
You know, if I look at, we have95% customer retention at a
five-year mark.
And so just just taking care ofthat, I mean sometimes things
go wrong.
You're not always dealing withtrustworthy people, sometimes
(39:36):
things just go off the rails.
But you know, for the most partis that customer retention is
the success.
Employee retention is anothersuccess that you know.
I want to keep my team, I wantto see them grow.
You know, making sure that youknow what you want to know, what
keeps me up at night.
I'm the old guy at technologyand I've got these young guys.
Got these young guys.
You know 25 to 35, you know midtwenties to mid thirties
(40:13):
no-transcript cause they're like, you know, I've got a ton of
stuff going on.
It stuff's working.
Forgive me, we just don't needto talk to you right now.
That's success, right, it's now.
Eventually they got to book theappointment because we got to
attend to some stuff.
But when, when, when customersput I mean, what a great
compliment would customers putyou off because they got real
(40:35):
problems to solve and and theirtech stuff is just running.
That's that's a compliment,isn't it?
So that's, that's not anoffense.
That's, that's a compliment.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
That's really good, and I know you're I mean, I know
both your customers and youremployees appreciate that you
are kept up at night thinkingabout them.
So I can't wait to the pointwhen you can sleep a little
easier and you aren't thinkingabout them, because it runs by
itself and I'm sure it won't betoo, too long.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Chris, if you don't love people, you shouldn't play
this game.
That's right.
I mean, if you don't lovepeople, there's no helping you,
there's no helping you.
So if you don't love people,there's no helping you, there's
no helping you, you know.
So if you're in business tomake money, please quit.
You know, you know the moneywill take care of itself.
If you serve people well, youknow you don't have to worry
about a thing.
You know take care of otherpeople and you'll be cared for
just fine.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
All right, I, I, I love asking this question to
everybody.
It's this is the now podcastvoid, and so I'd love to know
when did you know?
Now, that's it.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
I'm going to say the benchmark.
You know when, when I opened upmy, when I opened up my
business to people that knew theindustry and knew that and
didn't have a vested interest ingiving me a pat on the back or
you know, you know whatever,whenever I benchmarked and you
know, and the evidence, thejudge ruled that the evidence
was good and you know, you're,you're, you're doing a good job
(41:52):
to that level that that was amoment for me, that was the most
recent moment to know that,that that really put me in the
myself, to know that you weredoing the right things and carry
on, keep doing them.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
That's awesome, Boyd, and I'm so glad that you knew
you were doing a good job.
But getting that assurance andthe other part of that too, is
the vulnerability you show right, Like your numbers are with
everybody else's numbers Now,they don't know who you are, but
someone can go hey, an MSPthat's the same range of mine
that's doing really, really well.
(42:23):
Like that's pretty powerful tobe able to share that
information, and I love that youacknowledge that as a recent
turning point for you.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Yeah, yeah, in the early days, if you want to go
back.
You know, in the early earlydays, you know those early
struggles.
You know where we're going tomake it, what was going through.
I was convinced that.
You know, people in the Kiwanisclub were taking bets to see if
this young kid was going tomake it through.
And now, but you know, in themiddle of that, you know, when
Google was launching theirGoogle workspace they call it
Google apps for business Back inthe day, somehow the Google
(42:55):
community found me and they senta film crew out to our place
and I got featured in a Googlecommercial.
Is that it?
I don't think they care aboutsmall businesses anymore, but at
the time they did, and so thatthat was an early validation too
.
It's like, okay, well, ifGoogle's coming to visit, you
know, I'm happy to see you know,carry on.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Yeah Well, and you and I have become good friends
over the years, not just vendorpartner.
It's been really good to get toknow you.
Boyd, I can't thank you enoughfor being part of the pod this
week.
I wish you, and will continueto wish you and the team, the
absolute best of luck in thefuture.
No-transcript.
there is a big difference between being
self-employed and being abusiness owner and a lot of
small business people.
They go into it that they justreally want to be the best them
they can be.
They want to be the bestsalesman they can be, they want
to be the best technician theycan be, they want to be the best
coder they can be, and theyactually own their job.
A business owner, in contrast,has a totally different mindset.
(00:21):
It's all about the team thatyou build.
It's all about the team thatyou built.
It's all about the systems thatyou build.
It's all about the integration.
And if you want to really knowthe difference between a
self-employed person and abusiness owner, you know.
If a business owner leaves fora week, you know are people
still serve?
If a business owner leaves fora month or three months or
whatever the case is, are thecustomers still cared for?
(00:41):
Does the income still come in?
Are people still served to ahigh level?
Or, if you're not working, doesthe income quit, does the
service quit?
Does the people you're servingsuffer?
And that's the big differencebetween a self-employed and a
business owner.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Welcome to Now that's it stories of MSP success,
where we dive into the journeysof some of the trailblazers in
our industry to find out howthey used their passion for
technology to help turn managedservices into the thriving
sector it is today.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
All right, boyd Smith , welcome to the Now that's it
podcast.
So you're the founder andpresident at Technology a hybrid
cloud solutions, integrated ITservices and managed print
(01:29):
services.
Thank you so much, man, forbeing here.
This is long overdue.
I've gotten to know you overthe last couple of years and
you're such a great guy.
You do such great work for yourpartners and you have a great
team behind you, so thanks forbeing here today.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Thanks, I've been looking forward to this and I've
enjoyed getting to know you too.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I love the term.
Adversity breeds opportunity.
Right, and so for you I thinkyou said it was your freshman
year you know that ultimatelyled like where you are today and
just like good IT folks,there's a broken computer.
Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, so I went to college in the dark days of the
last century, you know, late,late nineties, and it would have
been my freshman year at GraceCollege.
I had a computer which wasunusual to have that in your
dorm room back in the midnineties and my computer broke.
I had no money to fix it, so Ijust started ripping it apart,
figured it out and I managed toget the old thing up and running
(02:23):
.
So that was kind of my firstopportunity there.
And then after that there wasthis new thing called the
internet and one of myprofessors said that we had to
turn in the group project inHTML format, and so I didn't
feel like going to the libraryto do research, I didn't feel
like writing papers, so I said,yeah, give me that, I'll try and
figure that out.
So then that was kind of asecond head and you know, those
two things got me to switch frominternational business to a
(02:45):
double major of management ofinformation systems and business
administration.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
When you were in college, you were already
thinking like an entrepreneur,though, weren't you?
I mean, you started to beginthat.
You know I want to own abusiness someday.
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
I knew that was a distinct possibility.
My senior year of college, Iactually wrote a business plan,
right you know, with some lifegoals in it, and so I knew that
that was a distinct possibility.
So that was something that wason my heart, but it would take a
while for that to grow intofruition If I remember this
correctly, I think you said yourfirst job out of college was
with a value-added reseller.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
What was that like and what did you learn while you
were at the bar?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, I've got a really short adult resume.
I worked about eight years atthe bar and then I opened up my
own shop in my late 40s now.
So it's a short resume and whatI learned with the bar was
sales.
I learned commission sales andthat was a really good spiritual
, emotional training groundbecause $3 out of $4 that I
earned was based on myperformance.
Out of four that I earned wasbased on my performance.
(03:45):
So that was a really great wayto train on my spirit, you know,
to get used to the bigger riskthat would come of starting a
business and dealing witheverything that comes into that
and disciplining myself.
And I also learned that thebusiness to business sales world
was a world that is really ahigh trust world and in some
ways that high trust world ofB2B sales set me up for some
really failures as anentrepreneur, because not all
(04:06):
things in a business are thathigh trust world of B2B sales
set me up for some reallyfailures as an entrepreneur,
because not all things inbusiness are a high trust
environment.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Awesome.
So what motivated you to leavethe secure job working for the
man, as they say and start yourown business?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
I hit a ceiling there .
I did all that I could do and Iapproached my employer.
I said, hey, could I buy intothe business?
You know, basically he smirkedand just about laughed me out of
his office and I just knew thatthere wasn't anything more to
that journey.
At that point we put down roots.
We live here in a little towncalled Goshen, indiana, a town
of about 35,000 people inNorthern Indiana, about 45
(04:39):
minutes outside of South Bend,and my wife grew up north of
here, about 15 minutes outsideof South Bend, and my wife grew
up north of here, about 15minutes north of here, a little
town called Middlebury.
I grew up in Cincinnati, ohio,and when we got married she said
the Goshen was halfway.
So I got trained in maritalcompromise pretty quick.
And so you know we weren'tgoing to move.
So I had to figure my own thingout, and that was.
I knew that this was the pathfor me.
(05:00):
That was going to be thecrucible that would turn me into
the man that I was meant to be.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
That's awesome.
So we have all kinds ofdifferent listeners to this
podcast.
Some of them are businessowners, Some of them are
technicians, maybe soon to bebusiness owners just trying to
hear other people's stories.
For those that have not startedtheir own business, what is
that process?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
like Boyd.
Do not underestimate how hardit is To be a first-generation
business owner.
It's pretty rare.
The first thing that I thinkpeople mess up when they go into
business is we have badlanguage around different, the
best them they can be.
They want to be the bestsalesman they can be.
They want to be the besttechnician they can be.
(05:48):
They want to be the best coderthey can be, and they actually
own their job.
A business owner, in contrast,has a totally different mindset
that it's all about the teamthat you build, it's all about
the systems that you build, it'sall about the integration,
about the integration.
And if you want to really knowthe difference between a
self-employed person and abusiness owner, you know if a
business owner leaves for a week, you know are people still
(06:10):
served?
If a business owner leaves fora month or three months or
whatever the case is, are thecustomers still cared for?
Does the income still come in?
Are people still served to ahigh level?
Or, if you're not working, doesthe income quit?
Does the service quit?
Does the people you're servingsuffer?
And that's the big differencebetween a self-employed and a
business owner.
I know here in the Enablecommunity we have plenty of
(06:32):
self-employed people and we haveplenty of business owners too,
and we got great self-employedpeople in our community.
We got great business owners inour community.
But spiritually and emotionally, I just think those are very
different animals and that's thefirst lesson that I tell
anybody considering going intobusinesses you know which animal
are you?
They're just different thanbusiness owners.
It's a very different journey.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah, that's really good, Boyd.
I appreciate you going intodetail on that, and I hear a lot
of business owners notunderstand that early on, right,
and so that's really good thatyou clarify that.
So you mentioned Enable theamazing company that I work for.
How about where and when didyou come across us in your
journey?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Oh, I don't know if the marketing team is going to
like this or not.
So I first came across Enable.
It was late.
I've been a late bloomer mywhole life and you know that's
okay.
We always get there and thatalso keeps us young.
I first came across Enable thatI was looking at acquiring a
book of customers, a customerlist, from somebody that was
getting out of the game, and Inoticed there's this thing
(07:32):
called SolarWinds on the listthat they were doing At the time
we were doing block hours, wewere doing some resale stuff the
only managed service that wehad was managed print at the
time and so I started digginginto that and I started pulling
on that thread and then that ledme to coming across
SolarWindsRMN, as he has beenknown at the time.
So that was the initial thing.
I placed an initial order tofigure out okay, who are these
(07:54):
people?
Why do I want to pay them apiece of everything that I do
for every customer that I serve?
What do they bring to the table?
And I went out to theScottsdale conference, if I
remember right.
What was that?
2018-ish, 2019-ish and Ibrought my wife with me there.
The main reason that I went tothat conference was.
I'm a relational guy.
I double down on people.
At the end of the day, if youcan't trust people, you don't
(08:16):
got anything.
If you don't have good peopleto deal with, if you don't have
trustworthy people to deal with,you're never going to get
anywhere, because business movesat the speed of trust.
My mission of going out thereobviously I had some business
with y'all because I got theemail that hey, we have this
event.
So I went out there and Iremember meeting weeks out there
.
I remember seeing bags from thestage.
I remember meeting severalpeople there and I just kind of
(08:37):
had a comfort in my spirit thatokay, these are good people.
You know these are trustworthypeople, that they have their
partner's interest in mind aswell as their own.
They're dialed in.
You know, I came across Kielnpretty good and coming out of
that event, I went ahead andjumped in and started loading up
and you know, luckily I waslate to the game so I didn't
have to try and fail atsomething.
I just got to get somethingthat works right away and we ran
(08:59):
with it.
It wasn't too far after that Igot asked to be on partner
advisory council and that was areal critical part of the
journey to start getting in arelationship with other MSPs.
Since that time my business hasdoubled and bottom line is
quadruple.
This stuff really is goodbusiness to double down on
people and love people well.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Number one.
We're so happy for you becausethat's what we want to see
happen to all of our partnersDouble, triple, quadruple, if
that's what they're looking for.
And the other thing, too.
We really appreciate your input, boyd.
We need to hear from ourpartners that this is working or
this isn't working, and we wantmore of this and we want less
of this, and you've been a greatadvocate for that.
So let's go back to your earlydays again of your MSP.
(09:39):
You were operating during sortof the Great Recession, right?
I mean, how did you navigateand challenge the economic
downturn?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
It took everything I had.
I mean, looking back on it.
I opened my doors in 2007.
By the end of 2008, the GreatRecession hit northern Indiana
really hard that one out of fourpeople in my neighborhood had
no work at all.
Fear ruled the day.
Four people in my neighborhoodhad no work at all.
Fear ruled the day and I had to.
(10:09):
The way I got through those daysis I just decided I was not
going to be afraid and I had toreally discipline myself.
I had to shut off the newsbecause there wasn't anything
good on it.
You know, I depended on myfriends, I depended on my faith
and I drained out my savings toget through pay for my early
rounds mistakes and it wouldjust shoot through sheer grit
and determination.
I was just too stupid to quit.
We were going to see thisthrough and see this through the
(10:31):
other side, and survival is awonderful defense mechanism.
Survival is a wonderfulmotivator, right, I mean the
early.
Oh, chris, I could write a bookabout the mistakes that I made
in the early days of thebusiness.
I didn't know how to interviewpeople.
I didn't know how to hirepeople.
My HR management was horrible,where, on the other hand, in
sales I've always done well, butthat's a high integrity
(10:51):
exchange that if I deliver whatI say, you're going to deliver
and you pay me.
Business sales is this highintegrity, high trust game.
That is not the game of earlyemployment, especially when you
don't have much money to paypeople.
It's the game today, but itdidn't start that way.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I love that term grit too, boyd because I think it's
about, and I'd say it's aMidwest thing, but I see tons
and tons of business owners andentrepreneurs have this grit
mentality of just figure it out.
Whatever it's going to take,I'm going to continue to push on
and, you know, almost like theTitanic, I'm going to go down
there with the ship if I have to.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Yeah, and that'll get you to a certain point, right,
but the real trick is notgetting the business up and
running.
The real trick is sustaining it.
Okay, how are you going to dothis for five years, 10 years,
15 years, 20 years?
That's the hard part.
You know everybody focuses onstartup.
You know, congratulations, youstarted a business.
Now the hard part begins andnobody really talks about that.
You know, everybody's alwaystalking about startup or.
You know we always look to thewrong sources of inspiration.
(11:55):
If I ever hear about anotherbusiness book from a billionaire
that's so far out the outsideof the bell curve that their
experience is real, they're,they're great, you know, but
they are so far out of the bellcurve that their experience is
real.
They're, they're great, youknow, but they are so far out of
the bell curve.
They're either so smart or solucky, or a one-time event, or
you know, whatever the case is,you could study them all day
long and there's nothing thatElon Musk does that I can apply
(12:15):
to my life.
That's sustainable andduplicatable.
Where, if I, you know, backdown and I say, okay, what do
people at the 95th percentile do?
You know, this is where thebusiness transformation events
really help.
Okay, you know people that areplaying a high game, that 95th
percentile, you know kind of cutthat 1% out.
Now, all of a sudden it's atotally different game.
Now there's stuff that I canlearn, I can sustain, I can do,
(12:36):
I can be in community withpeople to help figure this stuff
out.
I can serve them.
It's a totally different gameand those are some of the early
lessons that I had to learn thatyou have to just kind of let go
of so much.
I mean, I can't stress enoughhow running and building a
business is an ego crushingactivity.
You have to be willing to dieto the ego if you're going to
(12:59):
see this game through.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Yeah, you went through some tough times with
your first couple of clients aswell.
Some of those clients are stillwith you today.
What was that like?
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I'm thankful.
Just yesterday afternoon we'redoing a big fiber backbone
upgrade for that first managedservices client.
They're still a client today.
I think that it wasn't becauseI was a trustworthy business
We've got a culture of trust,that is really our super sauce
but it was because they saw thepotential and they knew.
Obviously I'm going to pick onRob here a little bit.
(13:29):
He's still the president ofthat company and Rob trusted me
with that network becausesomehow he knew that I wasn't
going to come up short.
You know, I was a new business.
I didn't have a track record, Ididn't have the team, I didn't
have the systems.
But in the early days it waspeople buying into me.
And then as the business grewyou have to grow, everything has
(13:51):
to be beyond yourself as abusiness owner.
Everything has to be all aboutthe team and the systems and the
processes and the business.
But early on, to get to thatfirst half million in sales or
whatever the market is, peopleare buying you.
But later on it's not about you, it's about the business.
That's been built.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
That's right.
How did those experiences shapeyour approach to financial
management and growth goingforward?
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Great question.
Debt was never my friend.
My testimony about debt in theearly days of the business is it
allowed me to make biggermistakes and carry them further,
because debt spends just likereal money until the bill comes
due.
And so you know I never gotinto debilitating debt.
I never had trouble makingpayments.
I've always run a fiscallysound house, but debt was not my
(14:36):
friend.
You have to solve businessproblems as you go and I've
noticed that a lot of smallbusiness people they think their
business is running really goodbut then if you account for the
debt it is not running reallygood.
You know, even when I see thebenchmarking that Enable has
people in peer groups go throughit's like you know there can be
some really good benchmarks butthen you don't know what the
debt load is and you put thatdebt load in there.
(14:58):
You know those benchmarksaren't really good because you
can make any numbers lookanywhere.
If you get to hide, you knowsomething somewhere else and
that's what data is.
So early on I came across one ofmy mentors from afar was Dave
Ramsey and his entre leadershipprogram.
That's been a businesscommunity that I've been part of
for over a decade now and aboutfive years into the business.
(15:21):
You know, I spent a week withhim and his senior leadership
team at one of their events inTexas and to get to know them, I
actually ramped up and ran ahalf marathon.
I ran from three to 13 milesinside of four weeks and I've
kept that up since.
But that kind of inspirationright.
And so today technology iscompletely debt-free business,
real estate and everything.
Being a debt-free business israre.
(15:41):
The cashflow is different for adebt-free business, but you've
seen my benchmarks.
The business speaks for itselfand other people have.
I'd say that being a debt-freebusiness is definitely one of
the main things, that disciplineis one of the main things, that
we're a top 20% MSP accordingto the enabled benchmarks.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
You know.
One of the things that hasimpressed me so much about you
is your financial knowledge.
Like most IT guys that start abusiness don't have this sort of
business work ethic and you'vereally built that over the years
.
I've been really, reallyimpressed with number one how
you run your business by thenumbers.
You know.
You joined the benchmark justto make sure that you could
(16:19):
compare yourself against others,but you knew what your numbers
were.
You knew when to hire, when tomake changes.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Surprised that somebody actually knew their
numbers before sitting at thebenchmark.
That's right, yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
From our experience yes, it was a rare thing.
But you guys have grown prettysignificantly over the years
here and I guess my follow-upquestion to that is what
strategies or decisions did youthink were crucial during that
growth spurt, especially in thecompetitive MSP space?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So there's three big decisions that fueled our growth
.
One we already talked about,which was the financial
commitment to run in a goodbusiness and the discipline to
run in a deafery business.
Two was the strategy, and thestrategy is anything that is not
directly customer facing.
There's probably somebody elseout there that can do it better,
you know.
So that's where Enable comes in.
Enable helps me grow mycapability and capacity.
(17:10):
It's why we outsource ourfirewall management.
It's why I've got a 24-7 knockthat looks after our endpoints.
So if it's not directlycustomer facing, I source with
other businesses.
I've got a great outsourcedaccounting and billing team.
You know they work out ofClearwater Florida.
I've prospered working withthem.
But anything that is customerfacing we keep in-house.
So that's a key strategy thereto make sure to know what do you
(17:33):
do in-house, what's the valueyou bring in-house and what can
you hire somebody else to do asgood as or better, to give you
other capability.
And then all of that is based onour culture of trust, and we've
actually codified the cultureof trust.
We actually train on that.
We talk on this in every salescall.
We talk on this on every hire.
We talk about this.
(17:53):
This is our troubleshootingchecklist.
You know this is how we dealwith our vendors.
It's understanding what goesinto being trustworthy in a day.
Let's face it, these are timesof low trust.
Right, people are mismanagingtrust.
Left and right, people aredividing and conquering
Everybody's hungry fortrustworthy people and it just
seems like we live inuntrustworthy times.
So if you can show up astrustworthy in that kind of
(18:15):
background as untrustworthytimes, that is a legitimate
competitive advantage.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
That's awesome, boyd.
So you mentioned that you weresort of late to the game in your
transition to, maybe, managedservices.
How did you transition this andwhat were the changes you had
to make to really bring thismodel into the fold for you?
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Well, first it was offering it.
You know, building the systems,building the team, having to
write people on the bus, andthen the early customers.
We were able to transition theblock hours over.
That at least I was not late tothe recurring revenue game, you
know.
But we bucketed it different.
You know there's customers thatused to buy 25 hours a month of
block hours that maybe todaythey only buy five hours a month
(18:56):
of block hours and then therest of that spend went over to
managed services.
So that's a huge help there.
And then, of course, we don'tdo anything now that's not on
managed services.
We will not service anycustomer that's not on a managed
services contract, becausethat's the commitment we need to
keep healthy things healthy,give every customer appropriate
level of security and make surethings are backed up.
And if customers don't want totake care of the basics and
(19:19):
execute on the basics, well, youjust can't serve them.
They have to be able to makethose basic commitments if
you're going to bring them on asa customer.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Yeah, you're taking on a ton of risk too when you
take on a customer, and so thebeauty of managed services is
you can go in and say you know,these are the things that we
need to do to right your ship,and then, by the way, you're
going to see things run so muchmore smoothly and we're going to
ensure that they continue torun smoothly.
When you do that break fixmodel, the wheels fall off all
(19:47):
day long and you can't predictwhen they're going to fall off.
Yeah, you're right, it's atough pill for new customers to
swallow.
This idea of.
Well, I'm going to pay youevery month, whether I think I
need you or not, into this.
You're paying for uptime, right?
You're paying for us to keepyou online and safe, and, yeah,
yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, you're paying for reliability, that's right.
You're paying for capabilityand reliability.
Yeah, capability andreliability.
You can't.
Yeah, the old days.
I'm still amazed.
You know, occasionally, likeyou know, last last week, I was
on a sales call and, like youknow, this customer had some
people working out of theirgarage doing IT stuff on a side
basis.
You know they were looking fora more consistent product and
(20:25):
I'm I'm still amazed that I willgo on sales calls and still see
customers doing things like wedid it seven, eight years ago.
That's a long time ago in IT.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
You know what I've seen and this is probably for
another podcast, but I've seenMSPs go backwards as a way to
attempt to differentiatethemselves.
Well, everybody else is sellingthis reoccurring model, but
we're not going to do this,we're going to only and it's
really like is that how you wantto run your business?
And to me it's not, but to someit is, and so it's a.
(20:57):
It's an interesting conundrum,that that we've created for
ourselves, but I'm glad to seethat you, you saw the light even
early on in the in the MRRmodel, because MRR is is King,
right, it's a gift that keeps ongiving.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Until I got to MRR.
I was just trying to outrace myexpenses.
Well, that's a horriblebusiness model, so let's try and
outrace our expenses and keepup with everybody's needs.
That may or may not come andyou don't have any way to judge
the quantity or quality of therequest and you have to have a
structure to take care of.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yeah, so when you grew your business by the way,
speaking of taking care ofpeople as you grew naturally you
needed to hire some more people, and you're not a huge team,
but you are a very, very solidteam.
You've hired the right people,but you struggled at first,
didn't you?
As?
Speaker 1 (21:46):
a boss.
Yes, I did.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
You talk a little bit about those sort of early
hiring, some of those mistakesyou made.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
There's so many of them, there's, there's, so,
there's so many.
So the the first thing that Idid was I made the mistake of
hiring people from my churchcommunity and I'm still part of
a great church, still part ofthe same church community.
But you know something thatthat was, that was, that was a
horrible, horrible decision,because I wasn't a very good
(22:14):
boss, they weren't very goodemployees and I went through a
number of people early on and inthose days that money really
mattered.
You know, I didn't have verymany, I didn't have very many
bullets in my shotgun goinghunting, right, you know, I mean
you know so every, every roundyou expended, you know every.
You know that that hurt, right,you know, and eventually you
(22:38):
end up empty.
So so I got beyond that.
Then I started it was reallyEntree leadership to really help
me dial in the hiring processthat I used to hire people based
on community relationships andrecommendations, and now I don't
hire somebody until they'vebeen through five or six
interviews.
The first interview is just aget to know you conversation.
The second interview just tosee if there's a conversation we
have.
The second interview then ismore of a traditional job
interview.
Then we put people through oneor two personality tests you
(23:00):
know, disk profiles or workinggenius profiles.
Then, based on that, we comeback, we have a team interview
and then, finally, if a personhas somebody significant in
their life, it's a social dinnerwith my wife and I you know, my
wife doesn't work in thebusiness but just to just to see
, okay, do we all like eachother?
Cause you know my, my plan, andin in the early days, in the,
(23:22):
in the in the early days, Ididn't have much money, you know
, and so better people deserveto get paid, and so one of the
things that I love to be able todo is pay my people well and
have profit sharing and, youknow, take care of all that
stuff.
And in the early days I justdidn't have the cashflow to do
it, so we just had to make, doso, and you know, now we've got
strong, very strong employeeretention, we've got a really
(23:43):
great team and we've learned howto figure out what kind of path
somebody's walking on before weask them to join up with their
path.
So it's my job to know my pathas a business owner, it's my job
to know the courses I'mpiloting in this plane, right,
you know.
But I have to figure out whatcourse is somebody doing?
If we're not on parallelcourses, if they're flying over
here and I want to fly thisdirection, we can't hire that
(24:05):
person.
You know, selfishness will killa team.
The number one thing that I lookfor in a job interview is
selfishness.
We all have our self-interest.
I'm not worried about that.
My job is to take care of myemployees' self-interest.
I mean, we all have families totake care of, we all need to
get paid, we all need to have agreat work environment.
We all need that.
That's my job is hopefully agood employer to show up and
(24:27):
create that culture.
But I can't have selfish peoplethat I'm serving because they
will destroy a team, and I'vehad some real selfish people
over the years.
One of the things that justright before I came across
Enable I had a technician thatwas so selfish that he thought,
hey, I'm going to be a businessgenius here.
I'm going to negotiate a dealworking for one of my customers
and I'm going to take whatthey're paying in technology
(24:49):
along with my own pay and I'mgoing to be a business genius.
Look at this raise that I gotand then had it out the door and
left a poison pill behind.
I mean that was horrible.
And then, and then you know heexecuted on that while I was out
of state doing an install,because I didn't want to take.
This was years ago, you know,but I didn't want to take him
away from his young kids.
You know I was trying, you knowI you don't want me doing your
(25:11):
install, but you know, if youtell me what to do, I can go
ahead and do it.
I'm not a tech, but you know itwas a.
It was a job that I could, youknow, be a boots on the ground
for anyway.
And and to have people do stufflike that to you, that's what
you sign up for as a businessowner.
You want to love everybody.
You want to be trustworthy.
You want people to betrustworthy with you.
But along the way there's goingto be people, there's going to
(25:31):
be people that screw you alongthe way and we all have those
wounds.
And in the way that I can tella real business owner from
somebody that's a wannabebusiness owner, or somebody
that's actually played the gamefrom somebody that doesn't want
to play the game is, I'll lookthem in the eye and I'll say
tell me about the first time youpaid $10,000 or more for
(25:53):
somebody else's mistake.
That's where it was.
As a good employee, as anaccount manager, I was used to
taking care of my own mistakes.
If you're a business owner, ifyou're going to take care of
having a team, if you're goingto love people, well, you are
signing up to make everybody'smistakes right to the extent you
can make it right to maintaintrust.
(26:14):
Whether it's an employee'smistake, customers that wasn't
able to pay you, a vendor thatfailed, you know, maybe maybe
somebody had some trouble withsome logins or something like
that, you know it doesn't matterwhere the failure is.
You need to make that right asa business owner to maintain
trust, and sometimes that costsmoney.
A business owner and theyattain trust and sometimes that
costs money and those were veryharsh lessons in the early days
(26:36):
because I couldn't imaginepurposely experienced somebody.
But other people do it as aday-to-day way of life.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Yeah yeah.
And, by the way, I know likeyou're just a good guy and
obviously you're part of somegreat communities.
You have a religious community,Like you're part of some great
and like you have a religiouscommunity like you, you you're
part of some great and likesections of of the of the
population, and trust is soimportant and trust has always
been so important.
You talk about the pillars oftrust and and how important
(27:03):
those are to your business.
You've already give us some,given us a couple examples, but
talk about why the pillars oftrust are just so critical to
the, to critical to your MSP,and really how those affect
client relationships.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
A hundred percent.
Well, let's step through them.
So we've got six pillars oftrust that we train on.
So the first pillar of trust ismutual concern.
You know you got to care aboutthe other person's needs as
equivalent to your own.
You know if you don't careabout the other person, you
shouldn't be doing anything.
You won't do anything to servethem.
You know if you don't careabout the other person, you
shouldn't be doing anything.
(27:39):
You won't do anything to servethem.
You know that's thatselfishness we talked about.
Second pillar of trust ispersonal value.
Do you care about who peopleare or you just care about what
they can do for you?
You know so, showing genuineinterest in their family, in
them as a person.
You know hobbies, what are theytrying to get?
You know seeing the movies andthe other person's head.
You know understanding theirperspective.
The third pillar of trust isintegrity.
You know the words and actionsmatching up, and I'll give you a
(28:00):
long list of people that Iconsider to be high integrity I
don't trust.
There's a lot of people outthere with high integrity that I
don't trust.
You know and I think integrityis where people really get off
the rails that you know a lot ofvendors will focus on integrity
, you know, and everybody willjam integrity through.
Great, you know.
So you said you did what yousaid you're going to do.
That doesn't mean you'retrustworthy, you know.
(28:22):
Next pillar of trust, then, iscapability.
Does somebody have thenecessary skill?
You know I'm not capable.
If you want to hire me run yourthousand PC network, I don't
have that capability, notcapable.
If you want to hire me run yourthousand PC network, I don't
have that capability.
You can't trust me for that.
I will do an excellent jobrunning your hundred PC network
and we'll do that all day long.
And plus, tell them pleaseshare that with all your friends
.
You know we'll, we'll take careof them too.
(28:42):
You know we are very capable inthat space.
And then the next thing beyondcapability, which is the
necessary skill, is capacity.
Does somebody have thenecessary resources?
Do you have the time?
Do you have the bench?
Do you have the money?
Do you have?
You know whatever, whatever isneeded, you know to make sure
you have the capacity to carrythat out, that there's a lot of
people, especially in thebusiness world.
(29:04):
You know that.
You know we're dealing withextremely capable people, even
you know that self-employedperson we were talking about
that we might run into at aconference.
They are extremely capable, butunless you build out a team,
unless you build out systems,unless you have, unless you
build a business around it, yourcapability will, your capacity
is going to give out way beforeyour capability ever does.
(29:25):
And that's, and that's whatenable really brings to me is
capacity and capability.
And then, finally, reliability.
You know, do you keep yourpromises over time?
And then, personally, Iunderpin all that with a healthy
dose of grace, becausesomewhere along so long in the
way, it's going to get messed up.
It doesn't always go right allthe time, and so you got to
(29:45):
budget for that $10,000 mistake.
You got to leave some gracethat we're dealing with humans,
we're dealing with imperfectsituations.
There are things that could gowrong and blow a crap load of
trust.
They're completely outside ofyour control and you just have
to do these other things day in,day out, week in, week out,
year in, year out, to make surethat that bank of trust is built
(30:07):
up to survive that tough day,because everybody's gonna have a
tough day eventually.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
That's super powerful boy.
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
I always love when you you getreally passionate about that and
I know it's important to youand it's important to your
business as well.
So thank you.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
And that helps us.
That helps us with everythingin the business.
So you know if we're decidingwhat product to bring in, you
know we run it through the list.
If there's something going onsquirrelly with a client, we run
it through a list.
If there's something squirrellygoing on among the team, we run
it through the list.
This is our troubleshootingdecision-making checklist, and
codifying trust is one of thebig things that it is.
(30:44):
I'd say that's the number onething that we did add the most
recent extra million in revenue.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
That's awesome, man.
So you, speaking of addingrevenue, you still play a really
key part, a key role, in sales.
Why have you chosen to maintainthat hands-on approach and how
has that benefited your business?
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah, oh gosh, it's because I like it.
I mean, honestly, it's the onlything that I do.
That's an employee of thebusiness.
I mean I've got a great servicemanager that runs the day to
day.
I've got great.
I guess I guess I made a livinglong enough.
I go in that category.
(31:31):
Instead of doing that we playmoney ball that I've got a
customer success person.
It's also my personal assistant, helps out with the renewals,
the price increases, taking careof that.
You got a marketing guy onstaff that takes care of a lead
generation and helps out withthat, and then basically they
bring me in to I just deal withthe new stuff and broken stuff.
Then basically they bring me into I just deal with the new
(31:52):
stuff and broken stuff.
So if it's a crazy clientsituation, I'll come in and I'll
fix it.
And then nowadays it's not likethe old days that it was a blue
ocean out there that everybodywas getting an MSP for the first
time.
There's still plenty ofbusiness like that, but a lot of
the businesses we're getting issomebody some other MSP screwed
up.
You know, somebody broke trustor or some internal IT guy quit
(32:12):
and it's just that I found thatthe best customers were earning
in the last you know, 18 monthsor so.
It's been breakdowns of trust.
And you know, by by makingmyself a student of trust and
genuinely believing that this isthe way to take care of people,
in my heart of hearts, you know, I kind of feel like a trust
doctor.
You know I going in there andfiguring out, okay, where was
trust broken, how can we healthis up?
(32:33):
And you know I I feel like I'mhalf counselor in in most sales
situations anymore.
And and and just to know, youknow there's, there's a lot of
hurting people out there thatare really good people but
they've been beat up and damagedalong the way.
And and you know, if we cancome in and help make them whole
through giving them world classIT services and helping them be
relevant and having them freefrom fear, that's that's worth
(32:56):
showing up to work.
And I don't have to replacemyself in that role quite yet,
that that that day's coming.
So you know some someday I'llmeet some young kid that will
replace me in that, but you know, for for now, I don't mind
doing it.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
I still suspect you'll still be involved, even
if it's at the very beginning orthe very end to, because I
think you said it earlier, right, like they're most of your
partners, most of your customersare buying a piece of you.
Right, they look and they go.
You know, boyd, this guy, I, Itrust him and I trust that his
team are the ones that are goingto be able to deliver what they
(33:26):
say they're going to deliver,and not to say that a
salesperson couldn't do that.
But it's something about likethis is your blood, right, like
this is your soul.
You know that that built thiscompany and and when you say
you're going to do something,you're, you're going to do
something.
So I think it's, I think it'simportant that that you, as the
owner, always have your yourfinger on the pulse and continue
(33:46):
to even handshake Hello, I wantto.
I'm going to hand you over tosomebody, but you're going to
always want to probably beinvolved.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Oh, a hundred percent .
And in the early days peoplewere buying me, you know.
So the first million it was allabout me.
You know the second million itwas all about and, and that's a
really really good feeling and,and and.
The millions after that aregoing to be all because the team
.
That and the millions afterthat are going to be all because
of the team.
That doesn't help.
Hopefully my team keeps mearound and they enjoy having me.
But yeah, but it's not.
(34:14):
Yeah, but in the early days itdefinitely is about the owner.
But you got to.
It'll only take you so far.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
So you mentioned business transformation earlier.
That's obviously how you and Igot to know each other through a
couple of the programs thatRobert and I were running a
couple of years ago, and I thinkyou've been to just about all
of them so far.
There's one more I'm going toget you to.
We're going to do that at theend of the year.
Yep, talk a little bit about.
Can you elaborate a little bitabout how that impacted you and
maybe your approach to sort ofgrowth and sales?
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Oh for sure, Business transformation in general.
So the thing, the big missingpart of the business, if I look
back, you know, five years ago,compared to today, is community.
I was not running in communitywith other MSPs.
I was running in good businesscommunity.
I was running in good localcommunity, but I was not running
in community with other peoplethat do what I do.
(35:05):
So the business transformationevents and how you guys curate
that group you didn't just letanybody come into the group and
you guys do a good job of youknow trying to join the right
people, right people together.
That that unlocked tremendousthings to be able to talk shop
with people that do the samething that I do in
non-competitive markets.
That you know it's really iron,sharpening iron.
(35:26):
You know that old, that oldsaying that, that, that, that
was really really good.
And then the specific knowledge, the business security there
are products you guys introducedme to that are part of our
portfolio today.
And to be able to have thoseconversations, cultures more
clearly, be able to have themuch richer conversation around
cyber insurance, you know beingable to, you know, tell
customers.
(35:46):
You know, okay, if you havethis policy, this is how this is
going to work and on your worstday we will be not able to help
you until this instant commandteam comes in.
And this instant response teamis going to come in and they are
paid for by an insurancecompany.
They are not on my team, I'mnot so sure they're on your team
either.
And then once the judge andjury of the instant response
(36:08):
team, you know, does their deal,then we can all get to work.
That's what you're signing upfor when you buy cyber insurance
.
And oh, by the way, to takecare of this, you know here's
all the stuff you have to buy tobe compliant with it.
You know that's a very richconversation.
That's a hard conversation fora rookie.
You know brand new sales kid tohave, you know with another
business owner and you knowbecause the risk management and
you know how does all that work.
(36:29):
So that's just one example ofit.
You know the most recent one orI'm sorry it wasn't the most
recent one, but it's all.
You know there was a, there wasa revenue growth one and just
being able to hear from otherpeople on the team that you know
we completely changed up how wedo our workstation replacements
, that we used to do that ashourly professional services and
by exchanging notes withsomebody else in the room, I
(36:51):
just kind of borrowed theirhomework and now we've got a
here's the checklist and here'sthe flat rate, and then adding
another tool to it and justtaking the friction out of the
most mundane old.
I mean it's the most basicthing in IT is lifecycle
management.
You just got to replace the oldmachine.
There's nothing sexy about it.
You just got to go do the workand make it as easy for
(37:12):
everybody involved, from thecustomer to the technician
installing it.
And so we were able to pick upsome ideas there and just Dell's
shipping them in by thepalatable.
So you guys aren't on Dell'steam, but they're happy for the
work that you did.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Great yeah.
Number one I loved having youat these.
You've always been such a hugeadvocate for us because you
found value.
In the first two-day sessionthat you joined, you were like
let me know as soon as a new onecomes out, and so I really
appreciate it.
I'm glad you've been able totake away a bunch of these
strategical nuggets.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Strategical.
I like that, yeah, strategical.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah, I make new words up as we go on the podcast
, so in Prague, you were makingup some new words too.
I'm sure I was so.
So.
So, boy, what are your?
What are the plans for thefuture of technology?
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, keep doing what we're doing.
We want to be an ever moretrustworthy company.
So you know.
So if you look me up aboutthree years from now, you're
just going to see as bigger andbetter what we're doing.
Medium term plans I realized Iwon't be technology's last
president.
I'm not going to be the last guythat runs technology.
So I'm going to developsomebody else to be able to run
the company someday.
You know, coach the rightperson up, bring them in, and
(38:24):
then you know after that, youknow, maybe, you know I've, I've
, I've got time, you know I justnow got good at it.
So it's a lot of fun.
I want to go to work every daystill, but you know, and then
you know after, after I raise upsomebody else to completely run
the business every day and I'mjust, you know, in the
background as a business owner,maybe.
Maybe then at that point youknow, you know one of the other.
I won't have to do that becauseI've got a business that runs
(38:46):
without me and you know I'lljust continue to take care of a
leadership team that takes careof my customers, and you know.
But you know that's that's,that's the near term and
long-term plans for technology.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Right, that's awesome and, and just out of curious,
what, what, how do you definesuccess at your, at your MSP and
like, are there any milestonesthat you're that you've been
really proud of?
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Customer retention.
I mean customer retention.
You know we only lose like onecustomer a year.
You know I can honestly lookyou in the eye and say that.
You know, if I look at, we have95% customer retention at a
five-year mark.
And so just just taking care ofthat, I mean sometimes things
go wrong.
You're not always dealing withtrustworthy people, sometimes
(39:36):
things just go off the rails.
But you know, for the most partis that customer retention is
the success.
Employee retention is anothersuccess that you know.
I want to keep my team, I wantto see them grow.
You know, making sure that youknow what you want to know, what
keeps me up at night.
I'm the old guy at technologyand I've got these young guys.
Got these young guys.
You know 25 to 35, you know midtwenties to mid thirties
(40:13):
no-transcript cause they're like, you know, I've got a ton of
stuff going on.
It stuff's working.
Forgive me, we just don't needto talk to you right now.
That's success, right, it's now.
Eventually they got to book theappointment because we got to
attend to some stuff.
But when, when, when customersput I mean, what a great
compliment would customers putyou off because they got real
(40:35):
problems to solve and and theirtech stuff is just running.
That's that's a compliment,isn't it?
So that's, that's not anoffense.
That's, that's a compliment.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
That's really good, and I know you're I mean, I know
both your customers and youremployees appreciate that you
are kept up at night thinkingabout them.
So I can't wait to the pointwhen you can sleep a little
easier and you aren't thinkingabout them, because it runs by
itself and I'm sure it won't betoo, too long.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Chris, if you don't love people, you shouldn't play
this game.
That's right.
I mean, if you don't lovepeople, there's no helping you,
there's no helping you.
So if you don't love people,there's no helping you, there's
no helping you, you know.
So if you're in business tomake money, please quit.
You know, you know the moneywill take care of itself.
If you serve people well, youknow you don't have to worry
about a thing.
You know take care of otherpeople and you'll be cared for
just fine.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
All right, I, I, I love asking this question to
everybody.
It's this is the now podcastvoid, and so I'd love to know
when did you know?
Now, that's it.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
I'm going to say the benchmark.
You know when, when I opened upmy, when I opened up my
business to people that knew theindustry and knew that and
didn't have a vested interest ingiving me a pat on the back or
you know, you know whatever,whenever I benchmarked and you
know, and the evidence, thejudge ruled that the evidence
was good and you know, you're,you're, you're doing a good job
(41:52):
to that level that that was amoment for me, that was the most
recent moment to know that,that that really put me in the
myself, to know that you weredoing the right things and carry
on, keep doing them.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
That's awesome, Boyd, and I'm so glad that you knew
you were doing a good job.
But getting that assurance andthe other part of that too, is
the vulnerability you show right, Like your numbers are with
everybody else's numbers Now,they don't know who you are, but
someone can go hey, an MSPthat's the same range of mine
that's doing really, really well.
(42:23):
Like that's pretty powerful tobe able to share that
information, and I love that youacknowledge that as a recent
turning point for you.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Yeah, yeah, in the early days, if you want to go
back.
You know, in the early earlydays, you know those early
struggles.
You know where we're going tomake it, what was going through.
I was convinced that.
You know, people in the Kiwanisclub were taking bets to see if
this young kid was going tomake it through.
And now, but you know, in themiddle of that, you know, when
Google was launching theirGoogle workspace they call it
Google apps for business Back inthe day, somehow the Google
(42:55):
community found me and they senta film crew out to our place
and I got featured in a Googlecommercial.
Is that it?
I don't think they care aboutsmall businesses anymore, but at
the time they did, and so thatthat was an early validation too
.
It's like, okay, well, ifGoogle's coming to visit, you
know, I'm happy to see you know,carry on.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Yeah Well, and you and I have become good friends
over the years, not just vendorpartner.
It's been really good to get toknow you.
Boyd, I can't thank you enoughfor being part of the pod this
week.
I wish you, and will continueto wish you and the team, the
absolute best of luck in thefuture.
No-transcript.
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