August 29, 2024 • 39 mins
In this episode of Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success, we sit down with Brad Walser, the founder and CEO of Walser Technology Group, to uncover the remarkable journey of growing a successful Managed Service Provider (MSP) in the heart of small-town Salisbury, North Carolina. With over 20 years of experience, Brad shares his insights on how he transformed a side hustle into a thriving IT business, all while navigating the unique challenges of a rural market.
Brad’s story is a masterclass in strategic growth, resilience, and the power of a customer-first approach. From his early days in the energy sector to building an MSP that prioritizes happy customers and sustainable revenue, Brad reveals the key decisions that fueled his company's steady expansion. He discusses the importance of company culture in attracting and retaining top talent, even in a small town, and why sticking to core values has been crucial to his long-term success.
This episode is packed with actionable advice for MSP owners and employees looking to scale their businesses, improve customer satisfaction, and create a lasting impact in the IT industry. Whether you’re a seasoned IT professional or just starting out, Brad’s experience and wisdom will inspire you to think differently about growth and success in the MSP space.
Tune in to learn how a small-town MSP can compete with the big players, why culture is the backbone of any successful business, and what it takes to achieve steady, sustainable growth in today’s competitive IT landscape.c
Let us help you unlock your business's full potential.
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'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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
One, two, three, four .
I want to know that all of myemployees understand there are
only two corporate goals of WallStreet Technology Group Happy
customers and billing adequaterevenue.
Maximum revenue sometimesoffsets that number one priority
of a happy customer.
So if I can keep a customerhappy and we know we're billing
adequate revenue to make surethat our lights are staying on,
(00:20):
we can give raises, we can buynew tools, new products.
That's what I'm looking for.
Welcome to Now.
That's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Now, that's it.
Stories of.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
MSP success, where we dive into the journeys of some
of the trailblazers in ourindustry to find out how they
used their passion fortechnology to help turn managed
services into the thrivingsector.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
It is today.
Brad Walzer, welcome to the Nowthat's it podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Well, thank you, chris Massey.
I'm happy to be here, so alittle bit about you, introduce
everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Your tech journey began as an analyst at Carolina
Power Light.
Later you became director ofinfrastructure at CERC
Reliability Corp, overseeingenergy regulation in the
Southeast.
You have expertise in techarchitecture, secure solutions,
project management and more.
You've led Walser technologygroup for 20 plus years now and
(01:07):
you love aiming to enrich localcommunities with your msp.
You're located in historicdowntown salisbury, north
carolina.
My research of salisbury showsthat it's known for its historic
preservation five localhistoric districts and 10
national register historicdistricts but it's also the home
of cheer wine.
That is correct, chris home ofcheer wine.
(01:30):
If you are a barbecuer anddon't know cheer wine, you are
not doing yourself justice.
Just have some cheer wineshipped in like.
If you're not from the south,you probably haven't heard,
experienced cheer wine.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
It is delicious well, we actually have our annual
cheer wine festival coming upthis weekend.
They bring live music all dayand 80 to 100,000 people into
our town.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I love it Very good.
So, speaking of Salisbury,you've made a nice home and
business for yourself there.
That was very intentional.
Why was that?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, I'll say it was intentional, but I'll say it
happened a little bit byaccident.
I grew up in Salisbury, bornand raised in Rowan County,
rowan County native.
My wife is as well, and youknow, growing up in a small town
you think to yourself there'sgot to be more to life, there's
got to be a lot more outside theconfounds of this town, and
always told myself I want to goexperience big city life.
(02:23):
Out of high school went toAppalachian State University.
My wife and I both went upthere.
I was an information systemsgraduate, which was kind of a
last minute change for me, withmy advisor.
I was a business managementmajor until my fourth year and
after Boone I loved it at AppState.
I ended up in Raleigh and soright here where you guys are at
(02:44):
your Enable headquarters.
But here in Raleigh I workedfor a large energy company that
you just mentioned, carolinaPower and Light.
But I was one of thousands onthat IT team, and one of
thousands is a good thing and abad thing depending on which
side of the fence you want tolook at.
But it gave me some greatexperience.
I was able to really helpsupport all of the power plants
(03:05):
in North and South Carolina butI worked on what was called the
FOSSGen team Kind of a weirdname, but fossil generation
FOSSGen just meant anythingnon-nuclear, so if it was a
non-nuclear plant it was done bycoal or hydro and it was a
FOSSGen plant.
I was on the Fosgen side of thesupport house and I got
(03:26):
assigned to I think it was sixpower companies within or power
generation plants in North andSouth Carolina and so every time
we needed updates or I was onthe road I can even remember the
days of the Melissa virus I wasworking for Carolina Power and
Light had to go touch every oneof the machines across these
power plants got a call onSaturday that I needed to be on
the road and literally was onthe road that weekend looking at
(03:47):
all of our assets.
So Raleigh was great.
I loved the experience and had agirlfriend at the time now wife
, but girlfriend was living inSalisbury and I talked to my
management team and said I'dreally like to see we're opening
a power plant in Salisbury, inRowan County, can that be one of
my power plants?
And they said, sure, we'llassign you that plant, but I
(04:09):
can't necessarily base you there.
I still need you based out ofRaleigh so at least it got me
home on some weekends.
I could do Friday visits to theplant.
And my manager at the time cameto me and said well, I've got
this super secret project and wedon't know a lot about it, but
it's going to be in theCharlotte area and they're
taking applicants to people thatcan come help this start this
(04:30):
new company.
But he's like I don't know awhole lot as a manager.
All I can tell you is I'm happyto put your name in the hat.
So I put my name in the hatwith a few hundred other people
to go start this new company andI was hired onto this new
company as employee number two.
That company was calledGridSouth Transco.
Gridsouth Transco was for thederegulation of the energy
(04:51):
market in the southeastern US.
I got some great exposure atthat new company.
We spent $90 million starting anew company.
It was formed by three largeenergy companies South Carolina
Energy and Gas, duke Energy,carolina Power and Light, which
was at that time Progress Energy, had a recent merger with
Florida, so, going on to thatproject, it was an Accenture run
project.
I was managing projects withAccenture and then IT was being
(05:14):
run by IBM Global Services.
I was one of four guys on theIT team and we all were really
doing a lot of projectmanagement, contract review,
vendor management and designingthis completely redundant system
.
It put a 90,000 square footfacility together in Fort Mill,
south Carolina.
We were building this facilityto take functional control of
(05:34):
all transmission assetstrillions of dollars of assets
in North and South Carolina anda few years after starting down
that road they decided guesswhat?
We're not going to deregulatepower in the Southeast.
We shut the doors to thefacility.
I had already moved to SouthCharlotte Ballantyne area and
decided you know what?
I don't want to move back toRaleigh, I don't want to go back
(05:54):
to my home company.
I'm going to do some consulting.
I had a regulatory company thathad come to us as part of that
GridSouth team.
They asked us for a little bitof help.
They said, hey, we're going todesign this new compliance
system.
We're getting all these datapoints from all these energy
companies in the southeastern USand we need a better way to do
it than spreadsheets and justemailing things around.
(06:15):
So I wrote them a proposal.
I got accepted.
I started doing some consultingfor that company.
I think there were 13 people.
They were based out ofBirmingham, alabama, and I
started as an independentconsultant in the world of IT,
had some great experience fromthat project of starting a new
company.
I had some great enterpriseexperience of working on an IT
team with thousands supportingall these energy companies and
(06:37):
our energy plants, and so asix-month contract turned into a
six-month contract and then aone-year contract.
I did a lot of work within thatindustry for that company for
over 18 of my 20-year career andit was a lot of fun at the time
.
When it's a 15-person company,you have a lot of say in what
goes on.
You get a lot of input intomeeting with the board of
(06:58):
directors, meeting with theexecutive team.
We moved them out of Birminghamto Charlotte.
We went to three differentoffices in Charlotte.
Now they're up over about 140employees.
As much as I enjoyed thatexperience, I am very happy to
say I am out of that bigenterprise world.
In parallel of doing a lot ofthis energy consulting I've done
for 18 of the 20 years I've runWalser Technology Group.
(07:20):
I had Walser Technology Groupon the side group.
I had Walser Technology Groupon the side.
Well, I didn't get you back tothis simple question of how do I
get to Salisbury.
You know I'm coming full circlehere.
When I started doing energyconsulting, my wife was coming
out of Ballantyne, driving toLexington every day, and she
looked at me and said, look, I'mgoing an hour and a half each
way.
You can live anywhere in theSoutheastern US.
(07:40):
Why don't we go back toSalisbury, our hometown?
And at the time I was like,well, I've lived in Raleigh and
it was fun, a lot of traffic,pretty expensive.
Lived in South Charlotte.
It was fun, kind of expensive,a lot of traffic.
And I was like I guess we cango back to Salisbury.
Sure, let's go find a housethere.
So we moved to Salisbury and Igot to tell you, running a small
(08:06):
business, raising a family,it's given me a great
appreciation for living in asmall town that I never had.
Growing up in Salisbury,growing up in the small town,
you just you want the biggercity life.
But after living the biggercity life, it gives you that
great appreciation for it.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
That's great.
So at some point, right, youdecided I'm going to take a loan
out, right, and you took a loanout to start your own business.
And you added an employee atsome point, but you were still
working for the regulatorycompany.
So what was that like?
You were wearing a bunch ofhats, balancing a bunch of
different roles, had a littlebit of a side hustle.
(08:38):
That was feeling more like areal business.
What was that like to sort ofwear all these different hats?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well, it was very interesting and that's a good
way to put it, as all smallbusiness owners know, wearing
lots of hats and I will say thatwe, for that regulatory company
, built a very nice complianceregulatory system.
And when we got to maybe thethird president I worked for at
that company, the thirdpresident came to me and said
(09:06):
Brad, we've built such a greattool.
I want you to go to all theother subregions in the US and
sell them on our tool so we'llnever have to learn their tool.
And I looked at him and said OK, if that's what you want me to
do.
I said do you want me to makethe calls?
He said nope, I'm going to callall the other executives.
All I said do you want me tomake the calls?
He said nope, I'm going to callall the other executives.
All of North America was brokeninto eight sub-regions and we in
(09:28):
the southeast were one of thosesub-regions.
Well, I went on the road andwent and talked to every one of
those sub-regions over the nextfew weeks.
While it was a great experienceand while I was on the road, I
actually got six of the eight tosign up to use our system.
So that started me going on theroad and training them on our
system, working with thedevelopment team we had chosen
out of California, and I told mywife.
(09:49):
I said look, I don't mindtravel, but I don't know if I
can do this long-term.
I don't want to live out of asuitcase.
And that's ultimately where Iknew I wanted to start a
business early in my career ofdoing this enterprise consulting
.
And well, I had something kindof fall in my lap where a
customer I knew someone on aboard that was asking me to give
(10:10):
a proposal to a country cluband this country club.
We gave a proposal.
We got it accepted.
They were having a hard timefinding qualified people to come
put systems in and whenever Igot that proposal I was still a
one-person technology shop.
So I part-time hired a personfrom college that I knew she
came in to help.
I also had someone's resume endup on my doorstep that weekend,
(10:32):
so I hired that person for aquick job and we went.
We delivered a great system andthought to myself well, this is
what it's like doing smallbusiness.
Now I'm focused back on energyconsulting.
And as we went down those roadsI had a few more people in our
town ask hey, are you going tostart doing technology work?
And my answer was no, I reallyam just doing a lot of
consulting.
Well, the person I hiredpart-time called me and said hey
(10:56):
, I really want to come work foryou.
If you'll do this full time,I'm about to take a position
that's going to put me in anon-compete.
So if you think there's anychance you'll start a company in
the next little bit, I'd lovefor you to go ahead and do it.
If not, I'm going to takeanother job, but then I'm not
going to be able to come workfor you on this non-compete.
So I talked to my wife thatweekend.
I had just gone through aleadership class, got to know
someone with the center of ourdowntown, released a building,
(11:17):
hired somebody part-time andWalser Technology Group was born
.
But yes, I took a $10,000 loanfrom my savings at that time to
buy our first rack of equipment,went and bought a NAS back when
NASs were a thing with Dell.
It was a Dell server.
Nas had an RV82 router.
(11:40):
Back in the early days we evenhad some rev drives that we were
backing up data to when the NASwas full and we got into doing
some offsite storage as one ofthe very first services that we
did for customers in our smalltown.
But it was a personal loan of$10,000 and a need to want to
get off the road and not have totravel so much.
That really had me start WalserTechnology Group.
(12:00):
But the interesting part ofWalser Technology Group is we
have done some work as a serviceprovider, but about 75% of my
time has always been to somelarge national customers that
deal with this regulatorycompliance and, like I said, for
one of them it was over 18years.
The other one was probably 12years and go back about three
years.
Those customers are now phasedout and I have a sole focus on
(12:23):
SMB and it is refreshing, it iswonderful.
I love the small customers thatwe slowly built in our market
over that 20 year run at WalserTechnology Group.
The enterprise is great andagain, I don't want to say
anything bad about it, exceptwhen you're in an enterprise and
you go in there to do managedservices, it's really hard to
get a team of 100 to adapt allof your policies and procedures.
(12:46):
They're usually asking you toflex your policies and
procedures and adapt theirs.
And what I've learned whenyou're dealing in the space that
we like to really play in,which is five to 25 employees.
They really don't have policiesand procedures.
They want to adopt yours, theytake your standards, they take
the things as they come and itmakes it so much easier to
support, as you know, when youcan have standardization on your
(13:07):
tools, your products, your techstack.
So it's given me a greatappreciation for the SMB world,
as opposed to that enterpriseworld.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
That's neat, and you are.
You're not alone.
I've heard a lot of MSPs reallylove that, that target customer
, and the fact that you'd beenon the enterprise side and you
know what it's like it gives youanother level of appreciation
to your point.
That's great.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yeah, the budgets are a lot bigger, but the headaches
are a lot more plentiful.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
So for those that don't know the area Salisbury's,
outside of Charlotte whichCharlotte's definitely grown
quite a bit in the last severalyears, but you guys are still
very rural.
So what's really fueled thegrowth of the Walser Technology
Group?
I know you said it's sort ofslow and steady, but how have
you guys grown?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Well, that's a very accurate statement.
Over 20 years we've had slow,steady growth.
I can remember back when Istarted the company.
I had a part-time person thatworked maybe three days a week
and as we continued to grow alittle bit, added a few more
customers, we got that person tofull-time.
I then got my next person, whowas an employee, that helped on
(14:15):
the tech side, and then I reallyhad a referral to somebody that
could come in and help us dosome office work.
Because I'll tell you, as muchas I love tech managing my files
and folders, making sure thebills are paid, all of the
quarterly taxes are withheldthose are the kinds of things
that wasn't so much fun for me.
I love the tech, I love therelationships, but doing the
(14:35):
back end office administrationwork was a bit of a burden.
So I hired someone part-timefor two days a week.
I'm happy to say 17 years latershe's still with the
organization.
She's a lot more than two daysa week now, but she handles
everything non-technical for ouroffice and has been wonderful
(14:57):
and probably 10 years ago, ifnot a little bit more.
As you always look for talent,talent is one of the hardest
things to find in this industry,someone who actually knows what
maintenance services are,someone who knows and wants to
learn about these tools andproducts, with the RMM tools
from Enable, the, you know, cove, data protection, the, whatever
it may be.
Finding somebody who reallyenjoys learning these tools and
being a sysadmin is hard.
So 10, 12 years ago, whilelooking for someone to keep
(15:19):
growing and adding to our staff,I found someone in Salisbury
had a small break-fix IT shopand he only had a couple of
commercial customers, was mainlydealing with residential and
was able to talk to him about.
You know what.
I'd like to work for a largerteam and he closed up shop, sold
us over.
His commercial customers cameto work for us and so we did our
first small acquisition about12 years ago and that added some
(15:42):
customers and, I'm happy to say, some of those.
There were only a fewcommercial customers, but
they're still customers today aswell.
I don't know if I mentionedthat very first country club we
did back when we started isstill a customer of ours today,
very proud of that fact that welike happy customers.
That is one of our corporategoals that we'll, I'm sure, talk
about a little bit later, butgrowth happens through me as
(16:02):
just organic word of mouth,keeping happy customers, and
we've acquired a firm 12 yearsago and two years ago we
acquired another firm.
Same type thing happened.
We had a large customer call us.
I always ask why are youcalling us?
How did you hear about us?
And during that conversation itwas a pleasant back and forth.
You know, you never know whatyou're going to hear about the
(16:23):
previous IT company or IT person.
Oh, they're terrible.
They didn't know what they'redoing.
We got ransomware.
They didn't understand security.
They would never call us back,it just.
You know you hear all sorts ofthings on why we're now at the
table to have theseconversations and the
conversation was pretty pleasant.
It was like, well, no, we loveour IT guy, he's great, but
we've grown exponentially thelast five years.
(16:44):
This is a large automotivedealer.
They're opening their secondbranch and they said we've grown
.
Unfortunately, our IT companyhas not.
And so when we can get him here, we love him, he's great to
work with.
But it can take weeks sometimesfor him to come in and talk to
us about projects and things wewant to do and with that
information we offloaded fromthat that customer, or offloaded
(17:04):
from that IT company, broughtour customer on board and I went
and just asked my engineer hey,how's it been working with this
other IT guy?
Oh, he's been wonderful, he'sgreat to work with.
So, as I'm ready to hire anotherin person, I just was having
one of those kind of think outof the box moments one evening.
You know what, why don't I justcall this other tea company
owner and see if he wants tocome work on a bigger team?
It worked for me 12 years ago.
(17:25):
Let's see if it works now.
And so when I called him up, Isaid you know, hey, I'm not sure
if you know who I am, but we'rethe ones that you just
off-boarded your customer too.
And I wanted to know if youwant to come work on a larger
team.
We're getting ready to hire,you know, we have a lot of
advantages we can offeremployees.
And he told me look, he said Iknow you don't know me well and
(17:47):
I don't know you well, but wehad a great, just open
conversation and the gist of itis he was just like a lot of
other business owners, 14 yearsinto running this break-fix IT
company, just starting to dabblein managed services, but not
quite sure how to get his feetwet what to offer where the
price points need to be.
And he went on vacation with hisfamily two young children, he
and his wife on vacation at thebeach.
(18:07):
And the first day on vacationat the beach one of his
customers got a SQL injectionattack on their website and he
worked all vacation trying tohelp remediate that, bring this
customer back online, because hehas a small IT shop.
He appreciates his customers,they appreciate him.
But he worked all vacation andhe told me just point blank, as
much as fun as it might becoming to work for you, I really
(18:29):
I promise my wife I'm doing acareer change.
I'm selling my business to afriend.
I am going to work for one ofmy largest companies that has
been my customers and as much asI appreciate the call, I just
don't think it's right for meand my family.
And we just went on our merryway, had a great conversation,
ended it with if anythingchanges, let me know In a few
weeks.
I got a call.
He actually came in.
(18:50):
We gave him a rundown of theshop, told him all about how we
do things and he still stuck to.
I think I'm going to have tojust, you know, try this career
change.
And in another week we got acall that said hey, would you
like to buy all my customers?
Where I was going to sell mybusiness is not quirk working
out like I thought.
I'm getting lots of terms andconditions, I'm locked out of
(19:10):
working in IT for many years.
And so he sent me all of hisemployees or not of his
employees all of his customers.
He sent me all of their numbersand he redacted all the names.
And that weekend I put aproposal together, ran it
through my attorney on Monday,got him a proposal he liked and
we ended up buying anotherbusiness.
So two years ago we acquiredabout another 150 business
customers from a neighboringtown that had a 14-year
(19:33):
break-fix IT company that wassupporting them.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Wow, had a 14-year break-fix IT company that was
supporting them.
Wow.
So neither situation, neitherof your M&A deals were you
necessarily looking to expandthat way, but it happened.
Right, you were looking forthat talent.
I'm looking for talent, exactly.
That's great.
So let's stay on the talenttopic for a second.
Talk a little bit about how youdo attract talent.
I know it's been difficult,especially in rural Salisbury,
(19:57):
but how do you attract talentwhen it isn't through
acquisition?
And, more importantly, how doyou retain talent at Walsertag?
Speaker 1 (20:04):
That's a great question, chris, because I'm
sure that's something everybusiness owner has to put some
time and energy into.
Once you get them on board, howdo you retain them?
How do you keep them?
So I will tell you many yearsback I used to look in about a
one to one and a half hourradius of Salisbury and found
some great people hired somegreat technicians and they would
(20:28):
commute in over an hour eachday and that unfortunately did
not work out like I'd hoped itwould.
I think anyone, if they reallylook at their quality of life.
If you can take a two hourdrive out of your daily commute
or out of your daily life andget that back in your life, then
that's certainly something thateveryone's interested in doing.
So as much as I love some ofthose technicians, as much as
(20:49):
they love the company unless Iwas willing to put them at a
hundred percent remote, which iskind of hard when you're
delivering projects, deliveringservers I get that they had to
end up resigning to go work forsomewhere five minutes from
their house, because whowouldn't want a five minute
commute versus a two hourcommute?
So I had to rethink things andwhere we've always been very
technical in the past, we'vealways had very technical
(21:11):
proctored interviews because Iwas always hiring tech talent,
tech talent, tech talent asimportant as that is.
About seven years ago, wedecided to define our culture at
our company and the culture wasa culmination of everyone in
our conference roombrainstorming what's important
to them, who are the kind ofpeople they want to work with,
(21:32):
what do they want out of thecompany, what do we want out of
our customers, and webrainstormed for a few hours.
We put everything on the boardand I took that data and came
back and defined our culture asan organization.
So now when we do interviews,we actually talk more about
culture than we do tech talent.
Now, tech can be taught.
It's really hard to changepeople's underlying
(21:54):
personalities.
So hiring and firing and evenholding each other accountable
to our culture is something thatwe do at the organization and
we're very proud of it, but itis the true core of what we do
in interviews.
Talk about culture.
How do people relate to ourculture, ask them for examples
of the culture, and if they havethe tech and they want to learn
(22:14):
the tech, we can teach that.
But, like I said, it's reallyhard to change people's
personalities.
So finding talent now we try tofocus on local talent of people
that fit our culture, that wantto learn the tech piece.
We are fortunate to have somegreat educational institutions
in our local area, so we'veworked some interns and that's
worked well finding localtalented people that fit our
(22:35):
culture, that want to learn thetechnology piece.
The other piece of the puzzle asa business owner how do you
keep people within the companyto keep looking elsewhere or not
look elsewhere?
And I am told every year by ourinsurance provider we pay 100%
of health care benefits for ouremployees.
We're one of the very few inour area that pay 100% of the
(22:57):
health insurance.
That's something that I feelimportant.
Employees we're one of the veryfew in our area that pay 100%
of the health insurance.
That's something that I feelimportant about.
We also do a 401k match.
We reimburse them every monthfor their cell phones.
We reimburse them for theirtraining or certificates.
If they feel like, for this job, function with us, they need
this certification.
So there are things we do tohelp retain talent.
We do annual reviews witheveryone.
(23:17):
They have a lot of control astechnicians over their destiny,
of their salaries, which areasof the organization they want to
move between, and I've foundthat getting them involved in
that career path decision, aswell as offering a lot of those
benefits that help keep peopleput, helps us retain that talent
at our organization.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Really really good.
I love hearing that, Brad.
I love hearing you talk aboutculture.
I think that's one of thedifferentiators with the MSP
industry versus sort of thatcorporate world, because I
worked in the corporate world aswell and you punch a clock
every day and you're doinghowever many hours you're
putting in and you rarely buildrelationships with people when
(23:57):
you're at this largeconglomeration of a large
organization.
But when you work in an MSPit's a family Right, and if you
have the right people there,you're not going to want
somebody to work on theirweekend.
You're going to want to helphelp it out.
So they can, you can.
You can split the load and workthe load.
You talked a little bit aboutsort of company values and your
initiatives load.
(24:18):
You talked a little bit aboutsort of company values and your
initiatives.
Talk a little bit about what isimportant to you that sort of
every employee has to buy intofrom a culture perspective or a
company value perspective.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Well, it's very important for everyone, like I
said, to live the culture.
We have what we call acelebration lunch.
That happens one time a month,and one time a month we do an
all hands on deck meeting wherethe whole company gets together
and we celebrate anyone'sbirthday, maybe their work
anniversary, maybe a recentcertificate they've just got.
We also do surveys.
(24:49):
You know the net promoterscores.
So as we send those back, weask for feedback, constructive
or positive, and we get a lot ofattaboys.
Oh my goodness, we get a lotand we share those.
We actually will give all theattaboys that came in that month
at the celebration lunch.
So we can, all you know, patthe knock team on the back or
pat the person on the back thatjust delivered that project.
(25:10):
So it's important to us to makesure that we all live the
culture, that we even I'veoffered some gift cards.
If you can stand up and recitethe eight culture items, we let
them pull out of the gift cardbasket, and that's a standing
challenge we have, and quite afew have taken it where they get
them right and it's just one ofthose things that we reiterate
every month.
So living the culture is soimportant to us as a
(25:33):
organization.
But also there's two realcorporate goals that we've had
from day one and the corporategoals that we've had that are
very important to me.
I know that there's a lot ofcompanies that have 20 corporate
goals.
They may have 30 corporategoals and I feel like, if it
can't be something that you canjust easily live, it's really
hard to say that you understandthe company values and company
(25:55):
goals.
So our culture is somethingthat we talk about literally
every month, really every day,within the organization.
But the two corporate goals wehave are pretty simple we like
happy customers and we likebilling adequate revenue, and I
want to know that all of myemployees understand there are
only two corporate goals of WallStreet Technology Group happy
customers and billing adequaterevenue, and I use the word
(26:18):
adequate very strategically.
You, a lot of times, as abusiness owner, want to know
you're getting maximum revenue.
Maximum revenue sometimesoffsets that number one priority
of a happy customer.
So if I can keep a customerhappy and we know we're billing
adequate revenue to make surethat our lights are staying on,
we can give raises, we can buynew tools, new products.
That's what I'm looking for andas we put people in the right
(26:39):
positions to help makecompany-based decisions.
I want to know that they'restrategically thinking about are
we keeping happy customers?
Are we billing adequate revenue?
So to me, they're two verysimple things that have been the
core of how we've started andgrown Walser Technology Group
all these years.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Very good.
So let's talk about those happycustomers.
You've been in business for 20years.
How have those customers sortof needs evolved?
And then, consequently, howhave your services evolved over
the 20 years?
Speaker 1 (27:12):
That's a great question.
I feel like we might be alittle bit of an anomaly, chris,
and we're a little bit ofanomaly.
We started, like most companiesdid, 20 years ago, as a
break-fix organization or valueadded reseller selling Dell
equipment, selling Dellswitching and SonicWall routers
and we're certainly the guysthat can sell it to you.
We come, put it in and then wewalk away from it and just wait
(27:34):
on a call the good old fashionedbreak break fix model.
When it's broken we get a calland then hopefully it's not on a
Friday afternoon wheresomebody's working a weekend or
something of that nature.
As things have shifted in ourindustry to where we can be a
lot more proactive as opposed toreactive, we've tried to keep
up to date with all of those andwrap services around them.
(27:55):
Up to date with all of thoseand wrap services around them.
The word managed service frommany years back.
I always heard that term earlyin my career like what the
heck's a managed service?
You know what is it.
And again go back 20 years agobefore the word managed service
providers really was out, ormanaged security providers.
It's out now.
These words we use today were anew term, new terminology 20
(28:16):
years ago and as we startedlooking at, well, we're already
doing some offsite backups andreally we're using this special
software.
We're actually checking thelogs, we're giving them the
storage location for it.
Technically this is a managedservice.
So back when we just didoffsite data storage, we didn't
realize that that's really anoffsite backup service.
As we're doing antivirus.
(28:37):
Well, the early versions ofantivirus would still tell you
when it found a flag of somesort, where do those flags go?
Who's actually looking at them?
If it's a small company, theydon't have anyone that
understands how to read theseflags coming in from the
antivirus.
So, hey, why don't we startmonitoring those too?
So our managed services evolvedover the years to where, as
we're doing things, you know,you're really just taking a
(29:00):
piece of software, a little bitof labor and the know-how to
make it run and wrapping it intoa managed service.
The know-how to make it run andwrapping it into a managed
service.
Now I'll say six years ago I hada service delivery manager at
the time that was reallyfollowing some all-in-seat price
models and that all-in-seatprice is something we tried.
(29:22):
And I will say in our market,as we mentioned, it's a tertiary
market, it's very relationshipdriven.
I do work with you know five to25 is our sweet spot of
employees.
But I work with you know 5 to25 is our sweet spot of
employees.
But I work with some globalmanufacturers, some local
manufacturers, with some doctors, dentists, some lawyers.
It really doesn't matter ifthey have a need for technology.
The application that runs theirbusiness is really just a
widget to me.
(29:42):
I'll work with theirspecifications, I'll figure out
what kind of server they need.
Or now, that widget iscloud-based but guess what?
Nobody from that service willactually manage your router, set
up your endpoints, secure yourendpoints, things of that nature
.
So we tried an all-in-seat pricemodel many years back.
We floated it by a lot of ourgood customers that have been
(30:02):
with us many years and we had afew people take us up on it many
years.
And we had a few people take usup on it and I will tell you
that it was okay.
But we now maybe have three orfour still in that model that we
are slowly phasing out.
And what I learned during thattime was that I like being very
flexible and I don't wantflexible to mean we support
(30:22):
anything, we do anything,because I think it's very
important for a business todefine what is our specialty.
What do we do when we have atech stack?
We like sticking to ourtechnology stack, we like our
standards, but there are a lotof differences in businesses
like mine that work in a lot ofdifferent verticals.
A veterinarian practice is somuch different than a dental
practice.
One deals with HIPAA, onedoesn't.
(30:44):
Well, that's some changes thatthey need to do fundamentally on
the backside, the car dealerhas a very different network
than the plastic surgeon and youknow it's just by needs of the
nature of their business.
So we have some bundles andpackages we built specifically
for different industries and allof them start off with some of
(31:04):
the just cyber hygiene basics.
You know you need good patchmanagement, management, no
matter which industry you're in.
You need good asset managementwhich machines are on your
network, how old are they?
Are they under support?
We also knew that you need agood antivirus or now a good EDR
product, and so really justgetting through those baselines.
That's our bundle, one package.
It doesn't matter whichindustry you're in.
(31:25):
We have a bundle for yourendpoint, because a lot of
companies these days don't haveserver infrastructure.
They have endpointinfrastructure.
They may have a corporateoffice, but 50% of the people
actually work from home officesor vacation homes or from the
hotels.
So it's different today,understanding and adapting.
We've put so much more focus onendpoint management, endpoint
(31:48):
security services than we wouldhave many years ago.
So it's just evolving withtimes and making sure that we
can be flexible withorganizations.
To go back to that, to that allin seat price, we have phased
ourselves out and are reallylooking at just having three
different bundles.
But once we talk about yourendpoints, let's talk about your
servers servers, if they exist.
Let's talk about your network.
(32:08):
Just about everyone has anetwork.
Then let's talk about yoursupport options and if you need
consistent support, we havescheduled visits.
See it's.
I remember when we bought intoenable many years ago, the RMM
tool, and when we bought into itit's probably been 1516 years
ago that we've been usingable.
You look at how manytechnicians can this tool help
(32:29):
replace.
You don't have to roll a truckfor everything, and that is a
wonderful piece of the puzzlebeing able to do things remote.
But I still have customerstoday that have been with us 12,
15 years that, like atechnician showing up on a set
schedule, they like knowing that, hey, I can build that
relationship.
I can give them a list ofthings when they get here, and
so we still do scheduled visitswith a lot of our older
(32:51):
customers and some of our newercustomers are requesting it as
well.
And you know what?
I know it's not cost effectivefor me to roll a truck, but if
they understand, I'm paying forthose hours.
I want to see somebody andthat's what keeps them happy in
the relationship going.
So be it.
That's what we'll do on thesupport side.
Very good.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
That's how.
That's how walls are.
Tech differentiates.
I love it.
So what would you tell youngerBrad that you know about just
starting his IT career?
What advice would you give himthat maybe you've acquired over
the 20 plus years?
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Oh goodness, I have certainly learned a lot, as
every business owner will tellyou, over this 20 year career.
I will tell you that if anyonewould have told you how hard it
is day one starting a company, Imight not have started the
company day one.
I can remember a lot of earlychallenges, but I will also tell
you the reward is usually worthit.
Getting through thosechallenges, I truly think, make
you a stronger person.
But I can remember times that Iwould wait to cash my paycheck
(33:48):
just to make sure everythingelse finished and cleared out of
the checking account.
I can tell you that early in ourdays we tried to do a lot of
things for a lot of people andwe learned real quick.
We can't make everyone happyand that was a very hard lesson
for me to learn because I amvery much the relationship
builder.
We we build this business ongood relationships.
(34:09):
But it's okay, and I've had tofire a few customers over the
years and I've just had to cometo the realization.
As much as I want to try toplease everybody, you just can't
.
We don't want to be a websitedesign company, but I can't tell
you how many times people haveasked us can you please do this
for me.
And my answer is no, but I'mvery happy to refer you to
somebody else or someone thatcan.
So finding what you're good at,sticking to what you're good at
(34:32):
, having your standards andknowing it's OK.
You've got challenges in frontof you that you're not the first
one.
I think joining some of thepeer groups here that we've done
with Enable has been invaluableto me to just bounce ideas off
of other people that truly arepeers that have been down these
roads.
So challenges are something Ilook at on a daily basis as a
business owner, but I got totell you it's still fun getting
(34:55):
out of bed every morning,showing up every day to get work
done.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
So I bet it is.
You bring that passion to everyday, like just with everything
that you do, the conversationsyou have about the business,
your people, your personal life.
You're a very passionate leaderand I think a lot of people
love that about you, Brad.
That's great.
So what does the future holdfor Walser Technology Group?
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Great question.
Future is really, I hope, slow,steady growth.
You know, when I was looking atthat all-in-seat price model, I
was pretty pumped up back thento think, all right, we can, you
know, take over this wholeregion.
We can do things to where I'mhiring people in other markets.
We've got a sales team knockingon doors.
We're doing all these itemsthat you know we're.
We're trying that explosivegrowth.
(35:38):
And I'll say I learned a lotfrom that experience.
That, nope, that is not what Iwant as a company Slow, steady
growth to me.
I have a grandfather who was anentrepreneur, who was in the oil
industry, and I didn't get toknow him.
He passed the year I was born,but he was an oil distributor,
an oil jobber as they called it.
And he not only was an oiljobber and an oil distributor,
(36:01):
he decided that you know whatthe next step of this food chain
is having gas stations.
So he started and built himselfa network of gas stations
around three counties and hewould always tell my grandmother
, who had to go sign on the linewith them as soon as they're
mortgaging the house to get thatnext gas station, that next gas
station.
Well, you know, if you're notgrowing as a company.
You're usually shrinking as acompany and it's really hard to
(36:25):
just be complacent andcomfortable because we've lost
customers over the years to nofault of our own.
They just got acquired byanother larger company.
They consolidate in-house IT.
So I have the mindset that Iwant to see slow, steady growth
every year, because if I don't,I also don't want to start
shrinking every year, and Iunderstand it's very hard to
just stand still and becomfortable as a business owner.
(36:46):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
So the question I always like to ask members of
this podcast when did you know?
Speaker 1 (36:57):
now that's it.
So when did I know?
Now that's it.
I will tell you that I thinkfor me, I've always had a
passion for helping people.
I started my career as wantingto be a business management
major in Appalachian State andwhile I was going down that path
, you know the American dreamown a business.
And well, I switched over toinformation systems, started my
(37:17):
career through that real largeenterprise experience.
Well, now that I'm 20 yearsinto running a business, we've
got 15 of us on staff.
We ultimately are putting theright people in the right places
.
And I'll tell you, as most smallbusiness owners do, when I
would vacation early in mycareer, I used to have to travel
(37:38):
with a laptop.
You never know what call youmay get when you're on the road.
I'm very happy to say, over thelast few years I have tried to
write myself out of all of thepolicies and procedures at the
organization, focus a lot moreon strategic management.
And I'll say, for me, it's nowwhen I travel I can enjoy time
off and I don't have to travelwith the laptop.
I know if something does get tome while I'm on vacation, I can
(38:01):
forward it back to the officeand it's taken care of, and that
, to me, is worth its weight ingold.
I know I've got the rightpeople there that have the right
thought process, the righttraining to keep customers happy
.
While I can take a week off, bewith the family.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I love that, brad, so very good, and I'm sure a lot
of business owners hope to getto that point at some point in
their career.
Brad, thank you so very muchfor joining the pod this week.
It's always a pleasure talkingto you.
I can't wait to see the slow,steady growth over the next
couple of years of WalserTechnology Group, and I wish you
and your team the absolute bestof luck.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Well, thank you, chris, it was my pleasure to be
here.
One, two, three, four .
I want to know that all of myemployees understand there are
only two corporate goals of WallStreet Technology Group Happy
customers and billing adequaterevenue.
Maximum revenue sometimesoffsets that number one priority
of a happy customer.
So if I can keep a customerhappy and we know we're billing
adequate revenue to make surethat our lights are staying on,
(00:20):
we can give raises, we can buynew tools, new products.
That's what I'm looking for.
Welcome to Now.
That's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Now, that's it.
Stories of.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
MSP success, where we dive into the journeys of some
of the trailblazers in ourindustry to find out how they
used their passion fortechnology to help turn managed
services into the thrivingsector.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
It is today.
Brad Walzer, welcome to the Nowthat's it podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Well, thank you, chris Massey.
I'm happy to be here, so alittle bit about you, introduce
everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Your tech journey began as an analyst at Carolina
Power Light.
Later you became director ofinfrastructure at CERC
Reliability Corp, overseeingenergy regulation in the
Southeast.
You have expertise in techarchitecture, secure solutions,
project management and more.
You've led Walser technologygroup for 20 plus years now and
(01:07):
you love aiming to enrich localcommunities with your msp.
You're located in historicdowntown salisbury, north
carolina.
My research of salisbury showsthat it's known for its historic
preservation five localhistoric districts and 10
national register historicdistricts but it's also the home
of cheer wine.
That is correct, chris home ofcheer wine.
(01:30):
If you are a barbecuer anddon't know cheer wine, you are
not doing yourself justice.
Just have some cheer wineshipped in like.
If you're not from the south,you probably haven't heard,
experienced cheer wine.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
It is delicious well, we actually have our annual
cheer wine festival coming upthis weekend.
They bring live music all dayand 80 to 100,000 people into
our town.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I love it Very good.
So, speaking of Salisbury,you've made a nice home and
business for yourself there.
That was very intentional.
Why was that?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, I'll say it was intentional, but I'll say it
happened a little bit byaccident.
I grew up in Salisbury, bornand raised in Rowan County,
rowan County native.
My wife is as well, and youknow, growing up in a small town
you think to yourself there'sgot to be more to life, there's
got to be a lot more outside theconfounds of this town, and
always told myself I want to goexperience big city life.
(02:23):
Out of high school went toAppalachian State University.
My wife and I both went upthere.
I was an information systemsgraduate, which was kind of a
last minute change for me, withmy advisor.
I was a business managementmajor until my fourth year and
after Boone I loved it at AppState.
I ended up in Raleigh and soright here where you guys are at
(02:44):
your Enable headquarters.
But here in Raleigh I workedfor a large energy company that
you just mentioned, carolinaPower and Light.
But I was one of thousands onthat IT team, and one of
thousands is a good thing and abad thing depending on which
side of the fence you want tolook at.
But it gave me some greatexperience.
I was able to really helpsupport all of the power plants
(03:05):
in North and South Carolina butI worked on what was called the
FOSSGen team Kind of a weirdname, but fossil generation
FOSSGen just meant anythingnon-nuclear, so if it was a
non-nuclear plant it was done bycoal or hydro and it was a
FOSSGen plant.
I was on the Fosgen side of thesupport house and I got
(03:26):
assigned to I think it was sixpower companies within or power
generation plants in North andSouth Carolina and so every time
we needed updates or I was onthe road I can even remember the
days of the Melissa virus I wasworking for Carolina Power and
Light had to go touch every oneof the machines across these
power plants got a call onSaturday that I needed to be on
the road and literally was onthe road that weekend looking at
(03:47):
all of our assets.
So Raleigh was great.
I loved the experience and had agirlfriend at the time now wife
, but girlfriend was living inSalisbury and I talked to my
management team and said I'dreally like to see we're opening
a power plant in Salisbury, inRowan County, can that be one of
my power plants?
And they said, sure, we'llassign you that plant, but I
(04:09):
can't necessarily base you there.
I still need you based out ofRaleigh so at least it got me
home on some weekends.
I could do Friday visits to theplant.
And my manager at the time cameto me and said well, I've got
this super secret project and wedon't know a lot about it, but
it's going to be in theCharlotte area and they're
taking applicants to people thatcan come help this start this
(04:30):
new company.
But he's like I don't know awhole lot as a manager.
All I can tell you is I'm happyto put your name in the hat.
So I put my name in the hatwith a few hundred other people
to go start this new company andI was hired onto this new
company as employee number two.
That company was calledGridSouth Transco.
Gridsouth Transco was for thederegulation of the energy
(04:51):
market in the southeastern US.
I got some great exposure atthat new company.
We spent $90 million starting anew company.
It was formed by three largeenergy companies South Carolina
Energy and Gas, duke Energy,carolina Power and Light, which
was at that time Progress Energy, had a recent merger with
Florida, so, going on to thatproject, it was an Accenture run
project.
I was managing projects withAccenture and then IT was being
(05:14):
run by IBM Global Services.
I was one of four guys on theIT team and we all were really
doing a lot of projectmanagement, contract review,
vendor management and designingthis completely redundant system
.
It put a 90,000 square footfacility together in Fort Mill,
south Carolina.
We were building this facilityto take functional control of
(05:34):
all transmission assetstrillions of dollars of assets
in North and South Carolina anda few years after starting down
that road they decided guesswhat?
We're not going to deregulatepower in the Southeast.
We shut the doors to thefacility.
I had already moved to SouthCharlotte Ballantyne area and
decided you know what?
I don't want to move back toRaleigh, I don't want to go back
(05:54):
to my home company.
I'm going to do some consulting.
I had a regulatory company thathad come to us as part of that
GridSouth team.
They asked us for a little bitof help.
They said, hey, we're going todesign this new compliance
system.
We're getting all these datapoints from all these energy
companies in the southeastern USand we need a better way to do
it than spreadsheets and justemailing things around.
(06:15):
So I wrote them a proposal.
I got accepted.
I started doing some consultingfor that company.
I think there were 13 people.
They were based out ofBirmingham, alabama, and I
started as an independentconsultant in the world of IT,
had some great experience fromthat project of starting a new
company.
I had some great enterpriseexperience of working on an IT
team with thousands supportingall these energy companies and
(06:37):
our energy plants, and so asix-month contract turned into a
six-month contract and then aone-year contract.
I did a lot of work within thatindustry for that company for
over 18 of my 20-year career andit was a lot of fun at the time
.
When it's a 15-person company,you have a lot of say in what
goes on.
You get a lot of input intomeeting with the board of
(06:58):
directors, meeting with theexecutive team.
We moved them out of Birminghamto Charlotte.
We went to three differentoffices in Charlotte.
Now they're up over about 140employees.
As much as I enjoyed thatexperience, I am very happy to
say I am out of that bigenterprise world.
In parallel of doing a lot ofthis energy consulting I've done
for 18 of the 20 years I've runWalser Technology Group.
(07:20):
I had Walser Technology Groupon the side group.
I had Walser Technology Groupon the side.
Well, I didn't get you back tothis simple question of how do I
get to Salisbury.
You know I'm coming full circlehere.
When I started doing energyconsulting, my wife was coming
out of Ballantyne, driving toLexington every day, and she
looked at me and said, look, I'mgoing an hour and a half each
way.
You can live anywhere in theSoutheastern US.
(07:40):
Why don't we go back toSalisbury, our hometown?
And at the time I was like,well, I've lived in Raleigh and
it was fun, a lot of traffic,pretty expensive.
Lived in South Charlotte.
It was fun, kind of expensive,a lot of traffic.
And I was like I guess we cango back to Salisbury.
Sure, let's go find a housethere.
So we moved to Salisbury and Igot to tell you, running a small
(08:06):
business, raising a family,it's given me a great
appreciation for living in asmall town that I never had.
Growing up in Salisbury,growing up in the small town,
you just you want the biggercity life.
But after living the biggercity life, it gives you that
great appreciation for it.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
That's great.
So at some point, right, youdecided I'm going to take a loan
out, right, and you took a loanout to start your own business.
And you added an employee atsome point, but you were still
working for the regulatorycompany.
So what was that like?
You were wearing a bunch ofhats, balancing a bunch of
different roles, had a littlebit of a side hustle.
(08:38):
That was feeling more like areal business.
What was that like to sort ofwear all these different hats?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Well, it was very interesting and that's a good
way to put it, as all smallbusiness owners know, wearing
lots of hats and I will say thatwe, for that regulatory company
, built a very nice complianceregulatory system.
And when we got to maybe thethird president I worked for at
that company, the thirdpresident came to me and said
(09:06):
Brad, we've built such a greattool.
I want you to go to all theother subregions in the US and
sell them on our tool so we'llnever have to learn their tool.
And I looked at him and said OK, if that's what you want me to
do.
I said do you want me to makethe calls?
He said nope, I'm going to callall the other executives.
All I said do you want me tomake the calls?
He said nope, I'm going to callall the other executives.
All of North America was brokeninto eight sub-regions and we in
(09:28):
the southeast were one of thosesub-regions.
Well, I went on the road andwent and talked to every one of
those sub-regions over the nextfew weeks.
While it was a great experienceand while I was on the road, I
actually got six of the eight tosign up to use our system.
So that started me going on theroad and training them on our
system, working with thedevelopment team we had chosen
out of California, and I told mywife.
(09:49):
I said look, I don't mindtravel, but I don't know if I
can do this long-term.
I don't want to live out of asuitcase.
And that's ultimately where Iknew I wanted to start a
business early in my career ofdoing this enterprise consulting
.
And well, I had something kindof fall in my lap where a
customer I knew someone on aboard that was asking me to give
(10:10):
a proposal to a country cluband this country club.
We gave a proposal.
We got it accepted.
They were having a hard timefinding qualified people to come
put systems in and whenever Igot that proposal I was still a
one-person technology shop.
So I part-time hired a personfrom college that I knew she
came in to help.
I also had someone's resume endup on my doorstep that weekend,
(10:32):
so I hired that person for aquick job and we went.
We delivered a great system andthought to myself well, this is
what it's like doing smallbusiness.
Now I'm focused back on energyconsulting.
And as we went down those roadsI had a few more people in our
town ask hey, are you going tostart doing technology work?
And my answer was no, I reallyam just doing a lot of
consulting.
Well, the person I hiredpart-time called me and said hey
(10:56):
, I really want to come work foryou.
If you'll do this full time,I'm about to take a position
that's going to put me in anon-compete.
So if you think there's anychance you'll start a company in
the next little bit, I'd lovefor you to go ahead and do it.
If not, I'm going to takeanother job, but then I'm not
going to be able to come workfor you on this non-compete.
So I talked to my wife thatweekend.
I had just gone through aleadership class, got to know
someone with the center of ourdowntown, released a building,
(11:17):
hired somebody part-time andWalser Technology Group was born
.
But yes, I took a $10,000 loanfrom my savings at that time to
buy our first rack of equipment,went and bought a NAS back when
NASs were a thing with Dell.
It was a Dell server.
Nas had an RV82 router.
(11:40):
Back in the early days we evenhad some rev drives that we were
backing up data to when the NASwas full and we got into doing
some offsite storage as one ofthe very first services that we
did for customers in our smalltown.
But it was a personal loan of$10,000 and a need to want to
get off the road and not have totravel so much.
That really had me start WalserTechnology Group.
(12:00):
But the interesting part ofWalser Technology Group is we
have done some work as a serviceprovider, but about 75% of my
time has always been to somelarge national customers that
deal with this regulatorycompliance and, like I said, for
one of them it was over 18years.
The other one was probably 12years and go back about three
years.
Those customers are now phasedout and I have a sole focus on
(12:23):
SMB and it is refreshing, it iswonderful.
I love the small customers thatwe slowly built in our market
over that 20 year run at WalserTechnology Group.
The enterprise is great andagain, I don't want to say
anything bad about it, exceptwhen you're in an enterprise and
you go in there to do managedservices, it's really hard to
get a team of 100 to adapt allof your policies and procedures.
(12:46):
They're usually asking you toflex your policies and
procedures and adapt theirs.
And what I've learned whenyou're dealing in the space that
we like to really play in,which is five to 25 employees.
They really don't have policiesand procedures.
They want to adopt yours, theytake your standards, they take
the things as they come and itmakes it so much easier to
support, as you know, when youcan have standardization on your
(13:07):
tools, your products, your techstack.
So it's given me a greatappreciation for the SMB world,
as opposed to that enterpriseworld.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
That's neat, and you are.
You're not alone.
I've heard a lot of MSPs reallylove that, that target customer
, and the fact that you'd beenon the enterprise side and you
know what it's like it gives youanother level of appreciation
to your point.
That's great.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yeah, the budgets are a lot bigger, but the headaches
are a lot more plentiful.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
So for those that don't know the area Salisbury's,
outside of Charlotte whichCharlotte's definitely grown
quite a bit in the last severalyears, but you guys are still
very rural.
So what's really fueled thegrowth of the Walser Technology
Group?
I know you said it's sort ofslow and steady, but how have
you guys grown?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Well, that's a very accurate statement.
Over 20 years we've had slow,steady growth.
I can remember back when Istarted the company.
I had a part-time person thatworked maybe three days a week
and as we continued to grow alittle bit, added a few more
customers, we got that person tofull-time.
I then got my next person, whowas an employee, that helped on
(14:15):
the tech side, and then I reallyhad a referral to somebody that
could come in and help us dosome office work.
Because I'll tell you, as muchas I love tech managing my files
and folders, making sure thebills are paid, all of the
quarterly taxes are withheldthose are the kinds of things
that wasn't so much fun for me.
I love the tech, I love therelationships, but doing the
(14:35):
back end office administrationwork was a bit of a burden.
So I hired someone part-timefor two days a week.
I'm happy to say 17 years latershe's still with the
organization.
She's a lot more than two daysa week now, but she handles
everything non-technical for ouroffice and has been wonderful
(14:57):
and probably 10 years ago, ifnot a little bit more.
As you always look for talent,talent is one of the hardest
things to find in this industry,someone who actually knows what
maintenance services are,someone who knows and wants to
learn about these tools andproducts, with the RMM tools
from Enable, the, you know, cove, data protection, the, whatever
it may be.
Finding somebody who reallyenjoys learning these tools and
being a sysadmin is hard.
So 10, 12 years ago, whilelooking for someone to keep
(15:19):
growing and adding to our staff,I found someone in Salisbury
had a small break-fix IT shopand he only had a couple of
commercial customers, was mainlydealing with residential and
was able to talk to him about.
You know what.
I'd like to work for a largerteam and he closed up shop, sold
us over.
His commercial customers cameto work for us and so we did our
first small acquisition about12 years ago and that added some
(15:42):
customers and, I'm happy to say, some of those.
There were only a fewcommercial customers, but
they're still customers today aswell.
I don't know if I mentionedthat very first country club we
did back when we started isstill a customer of ours today,
very proud of that fact that welike happy customers.
That is one of our corporategoals that we'll, I'm sure, talk
about a little bit later, butgrowth happens through me as
(16:02):
just organic word of mouth,keeping happy customers, and
we've acquired a firm 12 yearsago and two years ago we
acquired another firm.
Same type thing happened.
We had a large customer call us.
I always ask why are youcalling us?
How did you hear about us?
And during that conversation itwas a pleasant back and forth.
You know, you never know whatyou're going to hear about the
(16:23):
previous IT company or IT person.
Oh, they're terrible.
They didn't know what they'redoing.
We got ransomware.
They didn't understand security.
They would never call us back,it just.
You know you hear all sorts ofthings on why we're now at the
table to have theseconversations and the
conversation was pretty pleasant.
It was like, well, no, we loveour IT guy, he's great, but
we've grown exponentially thelast five years.
(16:44):
This is a large automotivedealer.
They're opening their secondbranch and they said we've grown
.
Unfortunately, our IT companyhas not.
And so when we can get him here, we love him, he's great to
work with.
But it can take weeks sometimesfor him to come in and talk to
us about projects and things wewant to do and with that
information we offloaded fromthat that customer, or offloaded
(17:04):
from that IT company, broughtour customer on board and I went
and just asked my engineer hey,how's it been working with this
other IT guy?
Oh, he's been wonderful, he'sgreat to work with.
So, as I'm ready to hire anotherin person, I just was having
one of those kind of think outof the box moments one evening.
You know what, why don't I justcall this other tea company
owner and see if he wants tocome work on a bigger team?
It worked for me 12 years ago.
(17:25):
Let's see if it works now.
And so when I called him up, Isaid you know, hey, I'm not sure
if you know who I am, but we'rethe ones that you just
off-boarded your customer too.
And I wanted to know if youwant to come work on a larger
team.
We're getting ready to hire,you know, we have a lot of
advantages we can offeremployees.
And he told me look, he said Iknow you don't know me well and
(17:47):
I don't know you well, but wehad a great, just open
conversation and the gist of itis he was just like a lot of
other business owners, 14 yearsinto running this break-fix IT
company, just starting to dabblein managed services, but not
quite sure how to get his feetwet what to offer where the
price points need to be.
And he went on vacation with hisfamily two young children, he
and his wife on vacation at thebeach.
(18:07):
And the first day on vacationat the beach one of his
customers got a SQL injectionattack on their website and he
worked all vacation trying tohelp remediate that, bring this
customer back online, because hehas a small IT shop.
He appreciates his customers,they appreciate him.
But he worked all vacation andhe told me just point blank, as
much as fun as it might becoming to work for you, I really
(18:29):
I promise my wife I'm doing acareer change.
I'm selling my business to afriend.
I am going to work for one ofmy largest companies that has
been my customers and as much asI appreciate the call, I just
don't think it's right for meand my family.
And we just went on our merryway, had a great conversation,
ended it with if anythingchanges, let me know In a few
weeks.
I got a call.
He actually came in.
(18:50):
We gave him a rundown of theshop, told him all about how we
do things and he still stuck to.
I think I'm going to have tojust, you know, try this career
change.
And in another week we got acall that said hey, would you
like to buy all my customers?
Where I was going to sell mybusiness is not quirk working
out like I thought.
I'm getting lots of terms andconditions, I'm locked out of
(19:10):
working in IT for many years.
And so he sent me all of hisemployees or not of his
employees all of his customers.
He sent me all of their numbersand he redacted all the names.
And that weekend I put aproposal together, ran it
through my attorney on Monday,got him a proposal he liked and
we ended up buying anotherbusiness.
So two years ago we acquiredabout another 150 business
customers from a neighboringtown that had a 14-year
(19:33):
break-fix IT company that wassupporting them.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Wow, had a 14-year break-fix IT company that was
supporting them.
Wow.
So neither situation, neitherof your M&A deals were you
necessarily looking to expandthat way, but it happened.
Right, you were looking forthat talent.
I'm looking for talent, exactly.
That's great.
So let's stay on the talenttopic for a second.
Talk a little bit about how youdo attract talent.
I know it's been difficult,especially in rural Salisbury,
(19:57):
but how do you attract talentwhen it isn't through
acquisition?
And, more importantly, how doyou retain talent at Walsertag?
Speaker 1 (20:04):
That's a great question, chris, because I'm
sure that's something everybusiness owner has to put some
time and energy into.
Once you get them on board, howdo you retain them?
How do you keep them?
So I will tell you many yearsback I used to look in about a
one to one and a half hourradius of Salisbury and found
some great people hired somegreat technicians and they would
(20:28):
commute in over an hour eachday and that unfortunately did
not work out like I'd hoped itwould.
I think anyone, if they reallylook at their quality of life.
If you can take a two hourdrive out of your daily commute
or out of your daily life andget that back in your life, then
that's certainly something thateveryone's interested in doing.
So as much as I love some ofthose technicians, as much as
(20:49):
they love the company unless Iwas willing to put them at a
hundred percent remote, which iskind of hard when you're
delivering projects, deliveringservers I get that they had to
end up resigning to go work forsomewhere five minutes from
their house, because whowouldn't want a five minute
commute versus a two hourcommute?
So I had to rethink things andwhere we've always been very
technical in the past, we'vealways had very technical
(21:11):
proctored interviews because Iwas always hiring tech talent,
tech talent, tech talent asimportant as that is.
About seven years ago, wedecided to define our culture at
our company and the culture wasa culmination of everyone in
our conference roombrainstorming what's important
to them, who are the kind ofpeople they want to work with,
(21:32):
what do they want out of thecompany, what do we want out of
our customers, and webrainstormed for a few hours.
We put everything on the boardand I took that data and came
back and defined our culture asan organization.
So now when we do interviews,we actually talk more about
culture than we do tech talent.
Now, tech can be taught.
It's really hard to changepeople's underlying
(21:54):
personalities.
So hiring and firing and evenholding each other accountable
to our culture is something thatwe do at the organization and
we're very proud of it, but itis the true core of what we do
in interviews.
Talk about culture.
How do people relate to ourculture, ask them for examples
of the culture, and if they havethe tech and they want to learn
(22:14):
the tech, we can teach that.
But, like I said, it's reallyhard to change people's
personalities.
So finding talent now we try tofocus on local talent of people
that fit our culture, that wantto learn the tech piece.
We are fortunate to have somegreat educational institutions
in our local area, so we'veworked some interns and that's
worked well finding localtalented people that fit our
(22:35):
culture, that want to learn thetechnology piece.
The other piece of the puzzle asa business owner how do you
keep people within the companyto keep looking elsewhere or not
look elsewhere?
And I am told every year by ourinsurance provider we pay 100%
of health care benefits for ouremployees.
We're one of the very few inour area that pay 100% of the
(22:57):
health insurance.
That's something that I feelimportant.
Employees we're one of the veryfew in our area that pay 100%
of the health insurance.
That's something that I feelimportant about.
We also do a 401k match.
We reimburse them every monthfor their cell phones.
We reimburse them for theirtraining or certificates.
If they feel like, for this job, function with us, they need
this certification.
So there are things we do tohelp retain talent.
We do annual reviews witheveryone.
(23:17):
They have a lot of control astechnicians over their destiny,
of their salaries, which areasof the organization they want to
move between, and I've foundthat getting them involved in
that career path decision, aswell as offering a lot of those
benefits that help keep peopleput, helps us retain that talent
at our organization.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Really really good.
I love hearing that, Brad.
I love hearing you talk aboutculture.
I think that's one of thedifferentiators with the MSP
industry versus sort of thatcorporate world, because I
worked in the corporate world aswell and you punch a clock
every day and you're doinghowever many hours you're
putting in and you rarely buildrelationships with people when
(23:57):
you're at this largeconglomeration of a large
organization.
But when you work in an MSPit's a family Right, and if you
have the right people there,you're not going to want
somebody to work on theirweekend.
You're going to want to helphelp it out.
So they can, you can.
You can split the load and workthe load.
You talked a little bit aboutsort of company values and your
initiatives load.
(24:18):
You talked a little bit aboutsort of company values and your
initiatives.
Talk a little bit about what isimportant to you that sort of
every employee has to buy intofrom a culture perspective or a
company value perspective.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Well, it's very important for everyone, like I
said, to live the culture.
We have what we call acelebration lunch.
That happens one time a month,and one time a month we do an
all hands on deck meeting wherethe whole company gets together
and we celebrate anyone'sbirthday, maybe their work
anniversary, maybe a recentcertificate they've just got.
We also do surveys.
(24:49):
You know the net promoterscores.
So as we send those back, weask for feedback, constructive
or positive, and we get a lot ofattaboys.
Oh my goodness, we get a lotand we share those.
We actually will give all theattaboys that came in that month
at the celebration lunch.
So we can, all you know, patthe knock team on the back or
pat the person on the back thatjust delivered that project.
(25:10):
So it's important to us to makesure that we all live the
culture, that we even I'veoffered some gift cards.
If you can stand up and recitethe eight culture items, we let
them pull out of the gift cardbasket, and that's a standing
challenge we have, and quite afew have taken it where they get
them right and it's just one ofthose things that we reiterate
every month.
So living the culture is soimportant to us as a
(25:33):
organization.
But also there's two realcorporate goals that we've had
from day one and the corporategoals that we've had that are
very important to me.
I know that there's a lot ofcompanies that have 20 corporate
goals.
They may have 30 corporategoals and I feel like, if it
can't be something that you canjust easily live, it's really
hard to say that you understandthe company values and company
(25:55):
goals.
So our culture is somethingthat we talk about literally
every month, really every day,within the organization.
But the two corporate goals wehave are pretty simple we like
happy customers and we likebilling adequate revenue, and I
want to know that all of myemployees understand there are
only two corporate goals of WallStreet Technology Group happy
customers and billing adequaterevenue, and I use the word
(26:18):
adequate very strategically.
You, a lot of times, as abusiness owner, want to know
you're getting maximum revenue.
Maximum revenue sometimesoffsets that number one priority
of a happy customer.
So if I can keep a customerhappy and we know we're billing
adequate revenue to make surethat our lights are staying on,
we can give raises, we can buynew tools, new products.
That's what I'm looking for andas we put people in the right
(26:39):
positions to help makecompany-based decisions.
I want to know that they'restrategically thinking about are
we keeping happy customers?
Are we billing adequate revenue?
So to me, they're two verysimple things that have been the
core of how we've started andgrown Walser Technology Group
all these years.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Very good.
So let's talk about those happycustomers.
You've been in business for 20years.
How have those customers sortof needs evolved?
And then, consequently, howhave your services evolved over
the 20 years?
Speaker 1 (27:12):
That's a great question.
I feel like we might be alittle bit of an anomaly, chris,
and we're a little bit ofanomaly.
We started, like most companiesdid, 20 years ago, as a
break-fix organization or valueadded reseller selling Dell
equipment, selling Dellswitching and SonicWall routers
and we're certainly the guysthat can sell it to you.
We come, put it in and then wewalk away from it and just wait
(27:34):
on a call the good old fashionedbreak break fix model.
When it's broken we get a calland then hopefully it's not on a
Friday afternoon wheresomebody's working a weekend or
something of that nature.
As things have shifted in ourindustry to where we can be a
lot more proactive as opposed toreactive, we've tried to keep
up to date with all of those andwrap services around them.
(27:55):
Up to date with all of thoseand wrap services around them.
The word managed service frommany years back.
I always heard that term earlyin my career like what the
heck's a managed service?
You know what is it.
And again go back 20 years agobefore the word managed service
providers really was out, ormanaged security providers.
It's out now.
These words we use today were anew term, new terminology 20
(28:16):
years ago and as we startedlooking at, well, we're already
doing some offsite backups andreally we're using this special
software.
We're actually checking thelogs, we're giving them the
storage location for it.
Technically this is a managedservice.
So back when we just didoffsite data storage, we didn't
realize that that's really anoffsite backup service.
As we're doing antivirus.
(28:37):
Well, the early versions ofantivirus would still tell you
when it found a flag of somesort, where do those flags go?
Who's actually looking at them?
If it's a small company, theydon't have anyone that
understands how to read theseflags coming in from the
antivirus.
So, hey, why don't we startmonitoring those too?
So our managed services evolvedover the years to where, as
we're doing things, you know,you're really just taking a
(29:00):
piece of software, a little bitof labor and the know-how to
make it run and wrapping it intoa managed service.
The know-how to make it run andwrapping it into a managed
service.
Now I'll say six years ago I hada service delivery manager at
the time that was reallyfollowing some all-in-seat price
models and that all-in-seatprice is something we tried.
(29:22):
And I will say in our market,as we mentioned, it's a tertiary
market, it's very relationshipdriven.
I do work with you know five to25 is our sweet spot of
employees.
But I work with you know 5 to25 is our sweet spot of
employees.
But I work with some globalmanufacturers, some local
manufacturers, with some doctors, dentists, some lawyers.
It really doesn't matter ifthey have a need for technology.
The application that runs theirbusiness is really just a
widget to me.
(29:42):
I'll work with theirspecifications, I'll figure out
what kind of server they need.
Or now, that widget iscloud-based but guess what?
Nobody from that service willactually manage your router, set
up your endpoints, secure yourendpoints, things of that nature
.
So we tried an all-in-seat pricemodel many years back.
We floated it by a lot of ourgood customers that have been
(30:02):
with us many years and we had afew people take us up on it many
years.
And we had a few people take usup on it and I will tell you
that it was okay.
But we now maybe have three orfour still in that model that we
are slowly phasing out.
And what I learned during thattime was that I like being very
flexible and I don't wantflexible to mean we support
(30:22):
anything, we do anything,because I think it's very
important for a business todefine what is our specialty.
What do we do when we have atech stack?
We like sticking to ourtechnology stack, we like our
standards, but there are a lotof differences in businesses
like mine that work in a lot ofdifferent verticals.
A veterinarian practice is somuch different than a dental
practice.
One deals with HIPAA, onedoesn't.
(30:44):
Well, that's some changes thatthey need to do fundamentally on
the backside, the car dealerhas a very different network
than the plastic surgeon and youknow it's just by needs of the
nature of their business.
So we have some bundles andpackages we built specifically
for different industries and allof them start off with some of
(31:04):
the just cyber hygiene basics.
You know you need good patchmanagement, management, no
matter which industry you're in.
You need good asset managementwhich machines are on your
network, how old are they?
Are they under support?
We also knew that you need agood antivirus or now a good EDR
product, and so really justgetting through those baselines.
That's our bundle, one package.
It doesn't matter whichindustry you're in.
(31:25):
We have a bundle for yourendpoint, because a lot of
companies these days don't haveserver infrastructure.
They have endpointinfrastructure.
They may have a corporateoffice, but 50% of the people
actually work from home officesor vacation homes or from the
hotels.
So it's different today,understanding and adapting.
We've put so much more focus onendpoint management, endpoint
(31:48):
security services than we wouldhave many years ago.
So it's just evolving withtimes and making sure that we
can be flexible withorganizations.
To go back to that, to that allin seat price, we have phased
ourselves out and are reallylooking at just having three
different bundles.
But once we talk about yourendpoints, let's talk about your
servers servers, if they exist.
Let's talk about your network.
(32:08):
Just about everyone has anetwork.
Then let's talk about yoursupport options and if you need
consistent support, we havescheduled visits.
See it's.
I remember when we bought intoenable many years ago, the RMM
tool, and when we bought into itit's probably been 1516 years
ago that we've been usingable.
You look at how manytechnicians can this tool help
(32:29):
replace.
You don't have to roll a truckfor everything, and that is a
wonderful piece of the puzzlebeing able to do things remote.
But I still have customerstoday that have been with us 12,
15 years that, like atechnician showing up on a set
schedule, they like knowing that, hey, I can build that
relationship.
I can give them a list ofthings when they get here, and
so we still do scheduled visitswith a lot of our older
(32:51):
customers and some of our newercustomers are requesting it as
well.
And you know what?
I know it's not cost effectivefor me to roll a truck, but if
they understand, I'm paying forthose hours.
I want to see somebody andthat's what keeps them happy in
the relationship going.
So be it.
That's what we'll do on thesupport side.
Very good.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
That's how.
That's how walls are.
Tech differentiates.
I love it.
So what would you tell youngerBrad that you know about just
starting his IT career?
What advice would you give himthat maybe you've acquired over
the 20 plus years?
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Oh goodness, I have certainly learned a lot, as
every business owner will tellyou, over this 20 year career.
I will tell you that if anyonewould have told you how hard it
is day one starting a company, Imight not have started the
company day one.
I can remember a lot of earlychallenges, but I will also tell
you the reward is usually worthit.
Getting through thosechallenges, I truly think, make
you a stronger person.
But I can remember times that Iwould wait to cash my paycheck
(33:48):
just to make sure everythingelse finished and cleared out of
the checking account.
I can tell you that early in ourdays we tried to do a lot of
things for a lot of people andwe learned real quick.
We can't make everyone happyand that was a very hard lesson
for me to learn because I amvery much the relationship
builder.
We we build this business ongood relationships.
(34:09):
But it's okay, and I've had tofire a few customers over the
years and I've just had to cometo the realization.
As much as I want to try toplease everybody, you just can't
.
We don't want to be a websitedesign company, but I can't tell
you how many times people haveasked us can you please do this
for me.
And my answer is no, but I'mvery happy to refer you to
somebody else or someone thatcan.
So finding what you're good at,sticking to what you're good at
(34:32):
, having your standards andknowing it's OK.
You've got challenges in frontof you that you're not the first
one.
I think joining some of thepeer groups here that we've done
with Enable has been invaluableto me to just bounce ideas off
of other people that truly arepeers that have been down these
roads.
So challenges are something Ilook at on a daily basis as a
business owner, but I got totell you it's still fun getting
(34:55):
out of bed every morning,showing up every day to get work
done.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
So I bet it is.
You bring that passion to everyday, like just with everything
that you do, the conversationsyou have about the business,
your people, your personal life.
You're a very passionate leaderand I think a lot of people
love that about you, Brad.
That's great.
So what does the future holdfor Walser Technology Group?
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Great question.
Future is really, I hope, slow,steady growth.
You know, when I was looking atthat all-in-seat price model, I
was pretty pumped up back thento think, all right, we can, you
know, take over this wholeregion.
We can do things to where I'mhiring people in other markets.
We've got a sales team knockingon doors.
We're doing all these itemsthat you know we're.
We're trying that explosivegrowth.
(35:38):
And I'll say I learned a lotfrom that experience.
That, nope, that is not what Iwant as a company Slow, steady
growth to me.
I have a grandfather who was anentrepreneur, who was in the oil
industry, and I didn't get toknow him.
He passed the year I was born,but he was an oil distributor,
an oil jobber as they called it.
And he not only was an oiljobber and an oil distributor,
(36:01):
he decided that you know whatthe next step of this food chain
is having gas stations.
So he started and built himselfa network of gas stations
around three counties and hewould always tell my grandmother
, who had to go sign on the linewith them as soon as they're
mortgaging the house to get thatnext gas station, that next gas
station.
Well, you know, if you're notgrowing as a company.
You're usually shrinking as acompany and it's really hard to
(36:25):
just be complacent andcomfortable because we've lost
customers over the years to nofault of our own.
They just got acquired byanother larger company.
They consolidate in-house IT.
So I have the mindset that Iwant to see slow, steady growth
every year, because if I don't,I also don't want to start
shrinking every year, and Iunderstand it's very hard to
just stand still and becomfortable as a business owner.
(36:46):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
So the question I always like to ask members of
this podcast when did you know?
Speaker 1 (36:57):
now that's it.
So when did I know?
Now that's it.
I will tell you that I thinkfor me, I've always had a
passion for helping people.
I started my career as wantingto be a business management
major in Appalachian State andwhile I was going down that path
, you know the American dreamown a business.
And well, I switched over toinformation systems, started my
(37:17):
career through that real largeenterprise experience.
Well, now that I'm 20 yearsinto running a business, we've
got 15 of us on staff.
We ultimately are putting theright people in the right places
.
And I'll tell you, as most smallbusiness owners do, when I
would vacation early in mycareer, I used to have to travel
(37:38):
with a laptop.
You never know what call youmay get when you're on the road.
I'm very happy to say, over thelast few years I have tried to
write myself out of all of thepolicies and procedures at the
organization, focus a lot moreon strategic management.
And I'll say, for me, it's nowwhen I travel I can enjoy time
off and I don't have to travelwith the laptop.
I know if something does get tome while I'm on vacation, I can
(38:01):
forward it back to the officeand it's taken care of, and that
, to me, is worth its weight ingold.
I know I've got the rightpeople there that have the right
thought process, the righttraining to keep customers happy
.
While I can take a week off, bewith the family.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I love that, brad, so very good, and I'm sure a lot
of business owners hope to getto that point at some point in
their career.
Brad, thank you so very muchfor joining the pod this week.
It's always a pleasure talkingto you.
I can't wait to see the slow,steady growth over the next
couple of years of WalserTechnology Group, and I wish you
and your team the absolute bestof luck.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Well, thank you, chris, it was my pleasure to be
here.
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