December 5, 2024 • 35 mins
In this episode of Now That’s IT: Stories of MSP Success, we sit down with Alex Stanton, a seasoned entrepreneur and industry innovator, to explore his remarkable journey from a teenage web developer to the founder of one of the largest MSPs in the Inland Northwest. Alex shares candid insights on scaling a business, navigating industry shifts, and the lessons learned while building a legacy in IT.
We dive into the challenges MSPs face today, from rising cyber insurance costs to the evolving expectations of tech-savvy clients. Alex offers his perspective on how MSPs can move beyond commoditized services to become strategic partners for their clients. Plus, he introduces his latest venture, Think Purple, and its mission to solve organizational challenges through human-centric digital transformation.
Whether you’re an MSP owner navigating growth, a tech leader seeking inspiration, or simply curious about the future of IT, this episode is packed with actionable insights and thought-provoking ideas.
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 .
The lag time of industry andinnovation to the education side
of things allows for someonelike me to be successful,
whereas I could never have donethis in any other industry in
any other time in history.
Basically, yeah, like I lovebuilding things and creating and
(00:20):
you know, taking something thatdidn't exist and making it
exist.
Taking an idea and taking itfrom something you just talk
about to something that'stangible, even if that's just an
application or a website.
Welcome to Now.
That's it.
Stories of MSP Success, wherewe dive into the journeys of
some of the trailblazers in ourindustry to find out how they
used their passion fortechnology to help turn managed
(00:42):
services into the thrivingsector it is today.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Our guest this week is a driven, visionary speaker
and founder, a strategyconsultant and digital
transformation evangelist with apassion for humans.
He was the founder of one ofthe largest MSPs in the inland
Northwest.
He's a sailor, advanced scubadiver, mountaineer, ultra runner
, photographer and worldbackpacker.
(01:08):
Alex Stanton, welcome to theNow that's it podcast.
It's great to be here, Chris, Iknow you from a couple of those
.
We were in Nice together and Isaw the ultra runner.
I think your day off was a50-some mile run through the
mountains of Nice.
That's ridiculous.
And then recently, Mountaineerimpressive.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You know, you got to work your way up to these things
.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Love it All right.
So, like many entrepreneurs,your story starts watching your
dad juggle multiple businesses,some which didn't entirely take
off.
How did the experience shapeyour mindset as a kid?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I didn't really know anything else.
You know I grew up with lifeand business all happening at
the same time.
You know it was like you getoff school, you go down to the
shop, the phone's ringing, it'sprobably a customer and this
kind of work and life justexisted together.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Were there moments where you thought I want to do
things differently, or is thiswhat I want to do?
How well do you know?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
me I was probably 12 before I tried to tell my dad
how to things he should bechanging in his business.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, that sounds right.
So you mentioned technology hasalways been around growing up
and your dad would be, you knowknow, cursing at the computer
trying to upgrade it and youremember feeling, hey, I get
this tech stuff right no, alittle, not really no he was
more the guy who got it.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I remember very specifically two moments in life
one, I was probably eight andhe bought 16 gigs of ram to
upgrade his I'm pretty sure itwas a 486.
So he could run the newestversion of QuickBooks and
TurboTax Right, and this is likein the nineties.
And then I was there when hebought his first 10 gigabyte
(02:56):
Maxter hard drive and hise-machine upgrade.
So he was always prettytechnical.
He built a database for abookstore that he ran for a
while, like you know, built hisown database to keep track of
all the books and where theycame from, what he paid for them
.
So when someone asked, do youhave this?
He knew right where it was.
What was the first project youtackle?
(03:17):
As a kid my dad had bought intoa multi-level marketing scheme
website development, WYSIWYGthing and I built a website Wow
Scheme.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Well, I mean we'll call it Okay, it was a legit
business, you know, because youwere young, yeah.
And so, at 14, though, most ofus guys are focused on girls and
surviving school, and you'refiling for a business license
for ex-Babylon yeah, what was itlike to get people to take you
(03:54):
seriously, as a kid, I mean?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
people kind of took me seriously as a kid, I think.
I think people gave me thatbenefit of the doubt.
There was a number of people inmy life who I would not be here
if it wasn't for the fact thatthey were, like you know,
interested and willing to, youknow, to support me.
In fact, in 2021, I celebratedin September 2021, x Babylon
(04:19):
hosted a big anniversary partybecause it was our 20th
anniversary from September 2001,when I filed the business
license, and my very firstclient, who cut me the very
first check, and his wife werethere.
Wow, and still customers todayof the firm I founded.
So that's kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
That's really cool, Alex.
So you've had a lot of fans anda lot of people that have taken
you seriously, but have youever faced skepticism from
clients or even family members?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Not family members.
Clients yes, especially in theearly years.
Tech worked for me during thattime period.
You know, in a lot of wayspeople were more interested in
hiring you because you wereyoung and you probably knew how
this shit worked you know yeahand people would give you
probably more credit than youdeserved.
But there was definitely aperiod of time where it was fake
(05:14):
it till you make it a littlebit, you know, and that was both
real and perceived.
So there was plenty of timeswhere I in I don't know that I
didn't have the trust, but Idefinitely felt that the need to
work really hard to earn it.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
I mean, yeah, you speak very confidently about
yourself and I would never callit arrogance, but there may be
some that do.
But what I think is amazingabout you is you're always one
to say, hey, if you don't agreewith me on this, let me know.
Let me know, like, let's chatit out.
Let's talk it out, let's workthrough this.
So I think that obviously showssome humility and obviously
(05:55):
some vulnerability to be able totalk through things.
But you always come across as avery confident, very positive
person too, which I think ispretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
There was a lot of humility that had to be learned.
There was plenty of skin kneesand bloody noses and some
mentors who took time to tell mehey, Alex, you don't, you don't
have to cut this, you don'tfucking know everything.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah, that's great.
So early on, I think you saidyou're probably using hacked
versions of Dreamweaver orsomething like that.
Yeah, and you're creatingwebsites.
What drove you to push throughall these challenges instead of
just being a regular teenager?
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I mean, for one, I think I loved creating things.
I know this about myself now.
Yeah, like I love buildingthings and creating and you know
, taking something that didn'texist and making it exist,
taking an idea and taking itfrom something you just talk
about to something that'stangible, even if that's just an
application or a website.
(06:54):
I liked design.
I was never an artist, but webdesign and computers and UI it
allowed me to have some artisticoutput, you know.
So I liked that.
And also I grew up really poorand there was definitely a I am
(07:15):
going to make something workLike I am.
I'm.
This is there's no choice.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, so was there a specific moment early on?
Obviously, you're doing thesethings, you like doing this,
you're a kid, you file for abusiness license, but was there
a point when you realized thatwhat you were doing with
websites and tech it's more thanjust a hobby Like this, is a
career for you?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Definitely.
I kind of saw early on.
I remember talking when I waslike a junior in high school.
My plan for college was alwaysto go get my MBA and dual major
with computer science, because Ijust knew that there was a gap.
Gap in the world where you haveall these people building and
(08:04):
coding and doing stuff but theydon't really understand, like
business and operations, and Ithink there's a I want to do
both.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
I mean, I didn't want to do that from the time I was
young, so so speaking of college, you chose not to go to college
because you were already deepinto building something real.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Choose is a strong word strong word.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, looking back, was it a tough choice or a tough
decision?
It kind of just happened.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Like delaying my first year and getting the
deferral was easy, easy story.
Like I'm working for thissoftware company, you know I
have equity, I'm you know it'sright out of high school, that's
what I was doing and so it wasan easy thing to be like we'll
just see what happens in a year.
I remember telling the DeanDean's office like this is what
(08:50):
I literally had to drive overand sit down in their office and
I was like, look, I'm doingexactly what I would go to
school and graduate to be ableto do, hopefully, like I'm going
to keep doing this.
And you know Western reallysupported me in that.
And then a year later it wasthe same story.
And then when everything kindof fell apart with the startup,
that fall it was too late.
(09:10):
So then there was like a yearof you just kind of survive and
the goal and but then by then Iaccidentally built the company
and we were making money andlife kind of just took over.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So Was there ever a moment you thought maybe I
should be doing this collegething?
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Oh, yeah, yeah, it really hit me hard, Probably by
the time I hit my mid-20s,because by then every business
meeting you're in the questionis by then, you know, the
clients were real.
Well, I wasn't just buildingwebsites, we were taking on, you
know, infrastructure forwell-established businesses you
know who were doing quite welland cutting us big checks In
(09:51):
2009 to 2012,.
We were starting to get bigaccounts and taking on the
entire IT ecosystems and inthose moments of course the
question is like oh, where doyou go to college and what's
your sports team?
And you know.
And so you're, you're sittingthere going yeah, I didn't, you
know, I can't relate to that.
And then my peers in businessyou know who who didn't get
(10:15):
their degrees.
They had certain skills that Ididn't you know.
So it was a lot ofself-education, like thank God
for things like MIT and Harvardputting everything online.
Like you know, it wasn'taccredited but you could watch.
If you wanted a course on someadvanced business concept or a
(10:35):
programming concept, you couldtake it.
Right, you could watch thelecture at least.
And so that kind of allowed meto self-educate, but it was hard
.
There was a moment where it wasa lot of extra self-education
work to catch up to some of mypeers, even though in many ways
the whole thing let me leapfrogRight it also there was a moment
of grinding to get through theslog in the middle.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I think IT is a unique industry.
Obviously there's several,there's trades out there, but
the IT industry is prettyinteresting because you don't
need a college degree to evenget started right in IT and
there may be some point whereyou go well, I want to go back
and get my business degree, butwhat do you think it is about IT
that you know opens up thatopportunity for really just
(11:21):
anybody to get?
Speaker 1 (11:21):
started.
That's why I love it, that'swhy I love it, that's why I love
the internet.
I mean, I think it's becausethings are just moving too fast,
you know, and innovation andthe pace of it is one you know.
I'm learning PHP online fromonline courses, right, and it
(11:43):
was, you know, more or lessobsolete less than 10 years
later.
Yeah, you know and don't get mewrong for those that code in
PHP you're not obsolete, but I'mjust saying that there's the
changes and the innovationhappen at a pace that colleges
even struggle.
I advise my local communitycollege with their cyber and IT
(12:04):
program curriculum and just thetime scale of having the
conversations, adjusting thecurriculum, getting the
curriculum approved, waiting forthe process with really
committed educators.
It takes time.
So the lag time of industry andinnovation to the education
(12:26):
side of things allows forsomeone like me to be successful
, whereas I could never havedone this in any other industry
in any other time in history.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Basically, a big part of, but it didn't pan out right
and so you returned to XBabylon, your I think you called
it your hacker's name.
That was what you came up with,the title or whatever.
What was that like emotionallywhen you had this things are
(12:55):
going great and now they're not,and now you're back to it was
kind of it was exciting.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yeah, yeah, it was a new world.
It was like a new challenge.
Okay, here we go.
Like you know yeah, it was anopportunity to you know, to do
something new Did it feel likethe natural next step?
From where you were?
I didn't understand the techculture you know of, say, the
Bay Area or other opportunitieslike that that I wasn't deeply
(13:22):
aware of.
Those you know more than justperipherally.
So I think for me it was reallya survival decision to just
take the next rung of the ladderthat was in front of me.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, yeah.
So talk a little bit about theevolution of X Babylon, because
it wasn't just a web developmentcompany anymore, right?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
No, I mean, we built websites even early on, though
we were really building webapplications.
We built websites.
Even early on, though, we werereally building web applications
.
Our websites were advancedcontent management systems
before CMS was a word.
E-commerce and fulfillment fora big magazine company.
These are the types of projectsthat I worked on.
They weren't just brochurewebsites, they were real
(14:08):
applications, and that was whatI worked on in the startup was
application development andproduct design, and you know
web-based GUIs for back-endLinux mail, email, you know
filtering platforms and the.
So these things were all likewell beyond that to start with,
and then, when we got into IT,it was because we were doing
what we would call today, youknow, devops.
(14:30):
It was really like, hey, we cando systems integration and we
can take data that's stuffedaway in a database and we can
help do interesting things withit.
It was like businessintelligence.
Before we called it businessintelligence, you know, just
helping businesses with thingsor building a custom app on top
of whatever they had, becauseeverybody had data right, but
(14:53):
they maybe needed something todo this or a piece of middleware
.
So that's how we kind of gotinto the networks, and then we
started seeing that nobody wasmanaging anything, and then we
became an it company and thenthat made a lot more money than
the custom applications and thennobody needed that anymore as
we moved towards SaaS and thecloud and this need kind of
waned for custom in, baked inhome, home brewed apps.
(15:15):
And of course now we're fullcircle where DevOps is matters
again right, really deeplymatters to the IT industry.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Let's talk a little bit about this growth spike, or
growth spurt, that you had at XBabylon.
So you started working ondefense contracts in 2004.
That's pretty intense stuffright, especially for someone
pretty young, yeah, yeah, whatwas the most challenging part
working in that space and howdid you change to become a
leader?
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So that space was I had a great.
So that space was I had a great.
I'll call him a mentor.
Technically he was a customer,but he also really took time.
He was in the defensecontracting space.
He was the guy that kind ofbelieved in us and said, hey,
here's a project and you know,allowed us to both fail our way
to success.
(16:05):
And then, once we got thatsuccess, he helped us, kind of
fed us some more.
My real leadership skillsprobably started coming into
play.
Well, after that, Really, whenI had, when I got to the point
where we had a team that neededleading, which ebbed and flowed
size-wise until I guess it wasprobably 2012 on that, our team
(16:31):
size got to the point where Ireally had to start honing my
skills.
That's great.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Were there any projects or any sort of exciting
breakthroughs with X-BobBabylon that made you take a
step back and go wow, we'rereally doing this?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yeah, there were a couple.
I think the big one was we hadone big client win in the
healthcare space and that waspretty significant.
And then we got a second.
But it was about that time thatwe had started working with
Upmarket a little bit.
We had started working and Ihad really meshed and connected
(17:09):
with some CIOs and some CISOsand we had been getting hired
and working in some much largerorganizations than a quote MSP
would usually ever play.
And it wasn't long after thatthat we got selected.
I got a phone call from somebodyin economic development saying
hey, washington State Departmentof Commerce has a grant.
(17:31):
We think you're qualified foran economic gardening workflow
where they basically brought inconsultants, tore us apart.
I volunteered, of course,jumped on it and they literally
shined a mirror up and did whatany good consultant does and
they said hey, this is whatyou're good at.
(17:52):
You know, this is what we'relooking at under the hood.
You should do more of this.
It was really working in thosebigger accounts, working in
co-managed working in complexand regulated industries and
environments.
You know the hard stuff, notthe easy stuff, and it turns out
we were good at that.
So that was our real inflectionpoint that next year we were
Inc 5000.
(18:12):
And for the next three yearsafter that.
Then we became Best Places toWork and you know the whole
snowball effect startedhappening.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
That's awesome, alex.
So at some point later on yousaw this opportunity to bring X
Babylon into New Charter.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
And that had to be an enormous decision for you.
What made you feel like thatwas the right thing for you and
the company?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
How much time do we have?
I should go back to that.
January.
Covid happens.
Everybody hunkers down.
I had been building out and justgot lucky with an amazing
leadership team and it wascommon for me to take huge
chunks of time off in the 20teens, travel all over the place
(18:58):
, do stuff, let my team handlethings while I was gone, even go
off grid for a few weeks at atime.
And when I got to the COVIDmoment, it was like my partner
and I were going back to theearly startup days again.
Right, 12 hour days, six dayweeks, just all hands on deck.
(19:20):
And we grew, like many MSPs did.
But we grew through that periodright.
You were in pure instinctualsurvival mode, thinking any
moment some big you knowhammer's going to drop, your
clients are going to fail, gobankrupt, the world's going to
fall.
So you're in.
Just take all the work you canget, work hard right, look
(19:40):
around every corner.
So 2020 was that.
And then, like most smallbusiness owners, sometime around
Christmas, every year betweenChristmas and New Year is that
lull of a week where you reallysit down and you have time to
think.
You think about the year past,you think about the year ahead.
Maybe you had a budget planningcycle or you had a formal
(20:01):
process, you know, in thequarter before it doesn't really
matter.
You're still really reallydeeply analyzing what's coming
and I saw just a swath ofchanges happening in the
industry.
Our cyber risk insurance cost.
We carried a $4 million policyand it doubled.
The renewal was twice and ithad doubled the year before that
(20:23):
and I knew that cyber riskinsurance was going to be tough
to carry.
I also knew a lot of ourcompetitors didn't carry it, but
it wasn't something I waswilling to not protect our
clients with right.
With secondary party coverage,which is expensive.
Microsoft had been doublingyear on year their requirement
to stay a direct CSP partner andthat was pretty critical to our
(20:46):
business model.
Everything about the industrywas just becoming much more
challenging.
And we were 40 employees at thetime not small, and it's still.
I saw no path that we could justkeep grinding away.
You know 10, 20% year on yeargrowth.
It was going to take us foreverto get to the scale that we
(21:07):
needed.
So I sat my partner down and Isaid, okay, we need to either
invest deeply over the nextthree years, like, I mean, plow
everything back into thisbusiness and grow it like mad
and really scale, or we need tofind a partner.
And so we put all the optionson the table and we explored all
(21:30):
of them and when I had theinvite from New Charter to go to
Denver and meet with at thetime there were, I think, six or
seven real partners at the timein that ecosystem.
They had a guy there talkingabout, you know, the Microsoft
practice and all the stuff thatwas coming at us and if we don't
(21:52):
do something we're going to getcrushed.
And I was like that's literallywhat I've been saying.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
You know they were talking about risk and finance
and all the same things that Iwas paying attention to that
group was paying attention to.
So ultimately that was the besthome for my team.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
That's great.
What did your day-to-day looklike after joining Nuve Charter
and how'd your role evolve, andwhat were you most passionate
about contributing to theplatform?
Speaker 1 (22:19):
It was completely anticlimactic because in that
ecosystem there's no, you know,significant structural changes
to anything right, everythingkeeps working exactly how it
worked.
You know, before and after youtechnically close.
The transaction started to helpwith the CTO CIO work at the
(22:52):
platform level, not just insidemy own operating company, my own
business, x Babylon.
So as I transitioned and didmore and more work there which
was just a ton of fun I got towork with some of the best minds
in the industry.
Right, I mean Mitch Morganspending ridiculous amounts more
time than he should have withme, working on really cool
(23:12):
projects and seeing things likethe digital transformation
framework come to life, seeingthings like the advancement of
some of the blue sky surveys andsome of the data in the front
runner stuff that New Chartershares.
Being able to be part of thatwas just a ton of fun.
So, yeah, it's an amazing group.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
That's awesome.
So let's fast forward a littlebit.
You've left New Charter in thelast, I think, 12 months or so,
and you started a new venturecalled Think Purple.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Feels like a fresh chapter.
What was the driving forcebehind that decision, and was
there something specific thatmade you think I think it's time
to start something new now?
Speaker 1 (23:53):
The thing that I've loved the most is being able to
solve organizational problems,not just in business, but it
could be government nonprofit.
I love taking organizations thathave structural problems,
organizational problems, or justwant to be better or want to do
something new, and then pairingit with traditional
(24:18):
organizational structure orpolicies and processes, but also
using technology and reallyusing technology to improve the
lives of the people that work atthese organizations.
And the idea behind ThinkPurple is to be able to do
digital strategy work that goesa layer deeper than what an MSP
(24:40):
can do, because MSPs can only doa certain, they're only
empowered usually to do acertain go, a certain distance
and a certain depth in abusiness.
And you've heard me talk, youknow that I think the future,
what a future of an MSP is, isto be more of a business
consultant, you know, than justa technology, you know, trusted
(25:01):
advisor.
But as we go down, for rightnow, as I go down this path, as
we go down for right now, as Igo down this path, the idea
behind Think Purple is to godeeper in the business than what
you can traditionally do as anMSP.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Leadership coaching too right.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Does that feel pretty different from what you've been
doing in the past?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
It's not like I'm, you know.
I didn't wake up and say Ithink I want to reinvent myself
and do something I haven't done.
These are things that arepretty natural for me and I love
doing it.
When I would speak at events, Iwould always tell one of my
favorite manufacturingassociations when I go to talk.
They were like, okay, well,we've got this and that, and I'm
like can I talk on people andculture?
(25:43):
Do I have to talk on technologyagain?
You know I want to go talkabout what it means to build
great teams, what it means tobuild a business that puts the
human side first, or atechnology digital
transformation plan thatactually takes into account the
people that use it on both sides.
So no, it feels pretty natural.
(26:03):
This is stuff I love to doAwesome.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
So let's talk a little bit about sort of
personal philosophy andleadership.
You've talked a lot about theimportance of balance and
letting your team step up.
Was there a specific momentwhen you realized you need to
take a step back and let otherslead?
Speaker 1 (26:20):
When they've hit me over the head with a stick and
said get out of my way.
I mean multiple those humblingmoments where somebody on the
team and there's so many ofthese- right.
I learned so much from the teamat X Babylon Some of those just
celebrated their 15 yearanniversary at the company and
(26:42):
so much from the amazingpartners that I got to work with
at New Charter right, who hadall built great businesses too.
But I think for me it's aboutthose moments have been when my
team said, hey, alex, I've gotthis.
Or when I've overstepped andI've said you, you know, I've
(27:09):
overstepped and I've said you,you know, you should know this
or you should do this, andsomebody goes well for one, no.
And realizing that my approach,what works for me personally
isn't necessarily what works foreverybody, and letting people
build their own path to thatsuccess is sometimes actually
way better.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
So, as a young guy you're still a young guy.
You've seen the highs and lowsof entrepreneurship.
What's a lesson that youlearned early in your career,
something you'd like to pass onto other young entrepreneurs, or
even the 14-year-old Alex Nevergive up, never surrender.
Awesome, that's a good one.
And talk about your shirt.
(27:49):
You got a good one there.
That's a good one.
And talk about your shirt yougot a good one there.
That's a pretty good.
Work hard and be nice.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Simple, simple plan yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
You're a simple guy, right Like, just do your job, be
really nice to people.
So talk about the future alittle bit.
What's next for you?
And think purple.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Well, spending some time here with you guys learning
from this event and where theindustry's at try to give back
where I can to the MSP communityas a whole.
I think there's an opportunityto do some big things in a lot
of ways.
I'm not in a hurry, but I'mgoing to be piloting some
concepts.
I think the futurist in me, theeternal optimist, futurist that
(28:33):
says this can happen.
Some of the things I'd love tosee come to fruition, not just
in my own firm but, I think, inthe industry as a whole I'd like
to say that they can happen inone to two years.
Awesome, I think.
The reality is because I've been, I'm trying to temper this
because of my previous optimismof how quick adoption can happen
(28:54):
.
We could be five years out, butthe truth is the inflection
point in this industry is hereand there's just enormous need
for digital strategy, not justthinking as a CIO or a CTO or a
CISO, but actually at the CEOlevel.
I think CEOs everywhere, inevery industry, are going to
(29:15):
have to become digitalstrategists in some way.
So I'm optimistic.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
You talked a little bit earlier, and you've shared
this with me a lot that the MSPindustry is evolving in a
certain way you want to unpackthat a little bit.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Well, it's commoditized, um, and it it will
become more and morecommoditized, meaning the the
daily blocking and tackling thethings that we used to sell as
things that we did, um, you know, think about, like the original
MSP ad right, net 24, seven,network monitoring, antivirus,
(29:56):
you know, firewall management,like uptime monitoring I mean
backup right, these are all like, these are all very well oiled
processes and things that can bedelivered In modern ecosystems.
They're very simple and easy todeliver and they can be priced
(30:16):
very cheaply.
In the small business sector.
We have a massive demographicshift happening of who.
We have a retiree group, right,you can call it the boomers
retiring.
You can call it the silvertsunami retiring.
You can call it the silvertsunami.
Whatever you want to call it.
The truth is MSPs are smallbusinesses serving small
businesses, right, and thesesmall businesses are
(30:42):
disproportionately owned byretirement age founders.
I don't care if it's amanufacturing business or a law
firm or, fill in the blank,they're looking, just like many
MSP owners, by the way, they'relooking at their next chapter,
they're looking at retirement,they're eyeballing it and
they're looking at opportunities.
You know, msps are right nowlosing customers or having to
(31:04):
deal with M&A in their customerbase all the time, because
successful businesses are makingdecisions to sell their
business or merge their businessor do something with it.
Right, something's changing thechanging agard happening.
At the same time.
We have millennials rising uptaking on senior and executive
(31:27):
leadership roles.
Because they are digitalnatives.
Right, they do feel verycomfortable with technology.
They have expectations of howtechnology works.
Their expectations as leadersis very different than the
expectations of the leaders thatin place before.
Right, they're going to have amuch higher trust level of,
let's say, cloud or SaaSapplications, a much higher
(31:49):
appetite for subscription andreoccurring models versus I'm
going to buy it and try to own aserver for 10 years.
Right, differences inleadership style, changes in our
stakeholders.
And, as that happens, msps aregoing to have to step up in a
really big way.
(32:09):
Because a 20-seat account thatused to be money for many MSPs.
They can just buy AppleCare for$10 a month and have everything
they need and it just works.
And if you look at what Applesells with their Apple Business
Plus plan or Business Essentials, it's literally what an MSP
does for you know, $20 a month,like you're not gunning.
(32:32):
They don't need you.
So in order for an MSP to beneeded or any business you have
to solve a problem right, and soMSPs have to go upmarket
because the smaller accountsjust don't need an MSP because
their technology at that size isSaaS-based.
You buy a Microsoft 365 packageor an Apple Business Essentials
(32:53):
package and it takes care of itfor you in the micro-business
space.
So businesses at 20 to 30employees plus start needing
MSPs, maybe even 50 employeesand the leadership at those
companies.
They expect their technology tobe just as simple at the office
as it is at their house, right,and they don't need to call
(33:13):
Geek Squad anymore to set up arouter, like all this has
changed in the last, even fiveyears.
So, as our customer is moretechnically savvy, higher
expectations, you have CEOs thatwill just, you know, millennial
CEOs that will just crank outPower BI and just fire it up and
do stuff and if your MSP can't,you know, even help them.
(33:34):
That's going to be a challenge,right?
So I think that's why I saythat I think the industry has to
continue to move up market,continue to evolve its offerings
to become more business centric.
Still do the blocking andtackling of the tech stuff
Agreed, but realize that that'snot where their core value
probably lies.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Yep.
So looking back at everything,alex, from building websites as
a teenager to leading multiplebusinesses, when did you know
now?
Speaker 1 (34:03):
that's it.
It probably has nothing to dowith my professional life.
Okay, it probably has nothingto do with my professional life.
Okay, I think that moment forme came a couple different times
in life, but over the last yearit really came, as I've evolved
personally in this world, torealize what my value is and
(34:29):
that it's not necessarily in thethings that you do, but it's in
the legacy that you build whileyou do it power flocks.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
You really are a friend.
It's been great to get to knowyou over the last couple years.
I love having you on stage withme and co-presenting and
co-hosting and all those sort ofthings.
I really look forward to all ofyour success in the future and
I wish you the absolute best ofluck, alex.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Super lucky to call you friend and able to be here
hanging out with us today.
Thanks, Alex, Thanks Chris.
One, two, three, four .
The lag time of industry andinnovation to the education side
of things allows for someonelike me to be successful,
whereas I could never have donethis in any other industry in
any other time in history.
Basically, yeah, like I lovebuilding things and creating and
(00:20):
you know, taking something thatdidn't exist and making it
exist.
Taking an idea and taking itfrom something you just talk
about to something that'stangible, even if that's just an
application or a website.
Welcome to Now.
That's it.
Stories of MSP Success, wherewe dive into the journeys of
some of the trailblazers in ourindustry to find out how they
used their passion fortechnology to help turn managed
(00:42):
services into the thrivingsector it is today.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Our guest this week is a driven, visionary speaker
and founder, a strategyconsultant and digital
transformation evangelist with apassion for humans.
He was the founder of one ofthe largest MSPs in the inland
Northwest.
He's a sailor, advanced scubadiver, mountaineer, ultra runner
, photographer and worldbackpacker.
(01:08):
Alex Stanton, welcome to theNow that's it podcast.
It's great to be here, Chris, Iknow you from a couple of those
.
We were in Nice together and Isaw the ultra runner.
I think your day off was a50-some mile run through the
mountains of Nice.
That's ridiculous.
And then recently, Mountaineerimpressive.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You know, you got to work your way up to these things
.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Love it All right.
So, like many entrepreneurs,your story starts watching your
dad juggle multiple businesses,some which didn't entirely take
off.
How did the experience shapeyour mindset as a kid?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I didn't really know anything else.
You know I grew up with lifeand business all happening at
the same time.
You know it was like you getoff school, you go down to the
shop, the phone's ringing, it'sprobably a customer and this
kind of work and life justexisted together.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Were there moments where you thought I want to do
things differently, or is thiswhat I want to do?
How well do you know?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
me I was probably 12 before I tried to tell my dad
how to things he should bechanging in his business.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, that sounds right.
So you mentioned technology hasalways been around growing up
and your dad would be, you knowknow, cursing at the computer
trying to upgrade it and youremember feeling, hey, I get
this tech stuff right no, alittle, not really no he was
more the guy who got it.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I remember very specifically two moments in life
one, I was probably eight andhe bought 16 gigs of ram to
upgrade his I'm pretty sure itwas a 486.
So he could run the newestversion of QuickBooks and
TurboTax Right, and this is likein the nineties.
And then I was there when hebought his first 10 gigabyte
(02:56):
Maxter hard drive and hise-machine upgrade.
So he was always prettytechnical.
He built a database for abookstore that he ran for a
while, like you know, built hisown database to keep track of
all the books and where theycame from, what he paid for them
.
So when someone asked, do youhave this?
He knew right where it was.
What was the first project youtackle?
(03:17):
As a kid my dad had bought intoa multi-level marketing scheme
website development, WYSIWYGthing and I built a website Wow
Scheme.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Well, I mean we'll call it Okay, it was a legit
business, you know, because youwere young, yeah.
And so, at 14, though, most ofus guys are focused on girls and
surviving school, and you'refiling for a business license
for ex-Babylon yeah, what was itlike to get people to take you
(03:54):
seriously, as a kid, I mean?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
people kind of took me seriously as a kid, I think.
I think people gave me thatbenefit of the doubt.
There was a number of people inmy life who I would not be here
if it wasn't for the fact thatthey were, like you know,
interested and willing to, youknow, to support me.
In fact, in 2021, I celebratedin September 2021, x Babylon
(04:19):
hosted a big anniversary partybecause it was our 20th
anniversary from September 2001,when I filed the business
license, and my very firstclient, who cut me the very
first check, and his wife werethere.
Wow, and still customers todayof the firm I founded.
So that's kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
That's really cool, Alex.
So you've had a lot of fans anda lot of people that have taken
you seriously, but have youever faced skepticism from
clients or even family members?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Not family members.
Clients yes, especially in theearly years.
Tech worked for me during thattime period.
You know, in a lot of wayspeople were more interested in
hiring you because you wereyoung and you probably knew how
this shit worked you know yeahand people would give you
probably more credit than youdeserved.
But there was definitely aperiod of time where it was fake
(05:14):
it till you make it a littlebit, you know, and that was both
real and perceived.
So there was plenty of timeswhere I in I don't know that I
didn't have the trust, but Idefinitely felt that the need to
work really hard to earn it.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
I mean, yeah, you speak very confidently about
yourself and I would never callit arrogance, but there may be
some that do.
But what I think is amazingabout you is you're always one
to say, hey, if you don't agreewith me on this, let me know.
Let me know, like, let's chatit out.
Let's talk it out, let's workthrough this.
So I think that obviously showssome humility and obviously
(05:55):
some vulnerability to be able totalk through things.
But you always come across as avery confident, very positive
person too, which I think ispretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
There was a lot of humility that had to be learned.
There was plenty of skin kneesand bloody noses and some
mentors who took time to tell mehey, Alex, you don't, you don't
have to cut this, you don'tfucking know everything.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah, that's great.
So early on, I think you saidyou're probably using hacked
versions of Dreamweaver orsomething like that.
Yeah, and you're creatingwebsites.
What drove you to push throughall these challenges instead of
just being a regular teenager?
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I mean, for one, I think I loved creating things.
I know this about myself now.
Yeah, like I love buildingthings and creating and you know
, taking something that didn'texist and making it exist,
taking an idea and taking itfrom something you just talk
about to something that'stangible, even if that's just an
application or a website.
(06:54):
I liked design.
I was never an artist, but webdesign and computers and UI it
allowed me to have some artisticoutput, you know.
So I liked that.
And also I grew up really poorand there was definitely a I am
(07:15):
going to make something workLike I am.
I'm.
This is there's no choice.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, so was there a specific moment early on?
Obviously, you're doing thesethings, you like doing this,
you're a kid, you file for abusiness license, but was there
a point when you realized thatwhat you were doing with
websites and tech it's more thanjust a hobby Like this, is a
career for you?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Definitely.
I kind of saw early on.
I remember talking when I waslike a junior in high school.
My plan for college was alwaysto go get my MBA and dual major
with computer science, because Ijust knew that there was a gap.
Gap in the world where you haveall these people building and
(08:04):
coding and doing stuff but theydon't really understand, like
business and operations, and Ithink there's a I want to do
both.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
I mean, I didn't want to do that from the time I was
young, so so speaking of college, you chose not to go to college
because you were already deepinto building something real.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Choose is a strong word strong word.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, looking back, was it a tough choice or a tough
decision?
It kind of just happened.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Like delaying my first year and getting the
deferral was easy, easy story.
Like I'm working for thissoftware company, you know I
have equity, I'm you know it'sright out of high school, that's
what I was doing and so it wasan easy thing to be like we'll
just see what happens in a year.
I remember telling the DeanDean's office like this is what
(08:50):
I literally had to drive overand sit down in their office and
I was like, look, I'm doingexactly what I would go to
school and graduate to be ableto do, hopefully, like I'm going
to keep doing this.
And you know Western reallysupported me in that.
And then a year later it wasthe same story.
And then when everything kindof fell apart with the startup,
that fall it was too late.
(09:10):
So then there was like a yearof you just kind of survive and
the goal and but then by then Iaccidentally built the company
and we were making money andlife kind of just took over.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So Was there ever a moment you thought maybe I
should be doing this collegething?
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Oh, yeah, yeah, it really hit me hard, Probably by
the time I hit my mid-20s,because by then every business
meeting you're in the questionis by then, you know, the
clients were real.
Well, I wasn't just buildingwebsites, we were taking on, you
know, infrastructure forwell-established businesses you
know who were doing quite welland cutting us big checks In
(09:51):
2009 to 2012,.
We were starting to get bigaccounts and taking on the
entire IT ecosystems and inthose moments of course the
question is like oh, where doyou go to college and what's
your sports team?
And you know.
And so you're, you're sittingthere going yeah, I didn't, you
know, I can't relate to that.
And then my peers in businessyou know who who didn't get
(10:15):
their degrees.
They had certain skills that Ididn't you know.
So it was a lot ofself-education, like thank God
for things like MIT and Harvardputting everything online.
Like you know, it wasn'taccredited but you could watch.
If you wanted a course on someadvanced business concept or a
(10:35):
programming concept, you couldtake it.
Right, you could watch thelecture at least.
And so that kind of allowed meto self-educate, but it was hard
.
There was a moment where it wasa lot of extra self-education
work to catch up to some of mypeers, even though in many ways
the whole thing let me leapfrogRight it also there was a moment
of grinding to get through theslog in the middle.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I think IT is a unique industry.
Obviously there's several,there's trades out there, but
the IT industry is prettyinteresting because you don't
need a college degree to evenget started right in IT and
there may be some point whereyou go well, I want to go back
and get my business degree, butwhat do you think it is about IT
that you know opens up thatopportunity for really just
(11:21):
anybody to get?
Speaker 1 (11:21):
started.
That's why I love it, that'swhy I love it, that's why I love
the internet.
I mean, I think it's becausethings are just moving too fast,
you know, and innovation andthe pace of it is one you know.
I'm learning PHP online fromonline courses, right, and it
(11:43):
was, you know, more or lessobsolete less than 10 years
later.
Yeah, you know and don't get mewrong for those that code in
PHP you're not obsolete, but I'mjust saying that there's the
changes and the innovationhappen at a pace that colleges
even struggle.
I advise my local communitycollege with their cyber and IT
(12:04):
program curriculum and just thetime scale of having the
conversations, adjusting thecurriculum, getting the
curriculum approved, waiting forthe process with really
committed educators.
It takes time.
So the lag time of industry andinnovation to the education
(12:26):
side of things allows forsomeone like me to be successful
, whereas I could never havedone this in any other industry
in any other time in history.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Basically, a big part of, but it didn't pan out right
and so you returned to XBabylon, your I think you called
it your hacker's name.
That was what you came up with,the title or whatever.
What was that like emotionallywhen you had this things are
(12:55):
going great and now they're not,and now you're back to it was
kind of it was exciting.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yeah, yeah, it was a new world.
It was like a new challenge.
Okay, here we go.
Like you know yeah, it was anopportunity to you know, to do
something new Did it feel likethe natural next step?
From where you were?
I didn't understand the techculture you know of, say, the
Bay Area or other opportunitieslike that that I wasn't deeply
(13:22):
aware of.
Those you know more than justperipherally.
So I think for me it was reallya survival decision to just
take the next rung of the ladderthat was in front of me.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, yeah.
So talk a little bit about theevolution of X Babylon, because
it wasn't just a web developmentcompany anymore, right?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
No, I mean, we built websites even early on, though
we were really building webapplications.
We built websites.
Even early on, though, we werereally building web applications
.
Our websites were advancedcontent management systems
before CMS was a word.
E-commerce and fulfillment fora big magazine company.
These are the types of projectsthat I worked on.
They weren't just brochurewebsites, they were real
(14:08):
applications, and that was whatI worked on in the startup was
application development andproduct design, and you know
web-based GUIs for back-endLinux mail, email, you know
filtering platforms and the.
So these things were all likewell beyond that to start with,
and then, when we got into IT,it was because we were doing
what we would call today, youknow, devops.
(14:30):
It was really like, hey, we cando systems integration and we
can take data that's stuffedaway in a database and we can
help do interesting things withit.
It was like businessintelligence.
Before we called it businessintelligence, you know, just
helping businesses with thingsor building a custom app on top
of whatever they had, becauseeverybody had data right, but
(14:53):
they maybe needed something todo this or a piece of middleware
.
So that's how we kind of gotinto the networks, and then we
started seeing that nobody wasmanaging anything, and then we
became an it company and thenthat made a lot more money than
the custom applications and thennobody needed that anymore as
we moved towards SaaS and thecloud and this need kind of
waned for custom in, baked inhome, home brewed apps.
(15:15):
And of course now we're fullcircle where DevOps is matters
again right, really deeplymatters to the IT industry.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Let's talk a little bit about this growth spike, or
growth spurt, that you had at XBabylon.
So you started working ondefense contracts in 2004.
That's pretty intense stuffright, especially for someone
pretty young, yeah, yeah, whatwas the most challenging part
working in that space and howdid you change to become a
leader?
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So that space was I had a great.
So that space was I had a great.
I'll call him a mentor.
Technically he was a customer,but he also really took time.
He was in the defensecontracting space.
He was the guy that kind ofbelieved in us and said, hey,
here's a project and you know,allowed us to both fail our way
to success.
(16:05):
And then, once we got thatsuccess, he helped us, kind of
fed us some more.
My real leadership skillsprobably started coming into
play.
Well, after that, Really, whenI had, when I got to the point
where we had a team that neededleading, which ebbed and flowed
size-wise until I guess it wasprobably 2012 on that, our team
(16:31):
size got to the point where Ireally had to start honing my
skills.
That's great.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Were there any projects or any sort of exciting
breakthroughs with X-BobBabylon that made you take a
step back and go wow, we'rereally doing this?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yeah, there were a couple.
I think the big one was we hadone big client win in the
healthcare space and that waspretty significant.
And then we got a second.
But it was about that time thatwe had started working with
Upmarket a little bit.
We had started working and Ihad really meshed and connected
(17:09):
with some CIOs and some CISOsand we had been getting hired
and working in some much largerorganizations than a quote MSP
would usually ever play.
And it wasn't long after thatthat we got selected.
I got a phone call from somebodyin economic development saying
hey, washington State Departmentof Commerce has a grant.
(17:31):
We think you're qualified foran economic gardening workflow
where they basically brought inconsultants, tore us apart.
I volunteered, of course,jumped on it and they literally
shined a mirror up and did whatany good consultant does and
they said hey, this is whatyou're good at.
(17:52):
You know, this is what we'relooking at under the hood.
You should do more of this.
It was really working in thosebigger accounts, working in
co-managed working in complexand regulated industries and
environments.
You know the hard stuff, notthe easy stuff, and it turns out
we were good at that.
So that was our real inflectionpoint that next year we were
Inc 5000.
(18:12):
And for the next three yearsafter that.
Then we became Best Places toWork and you know the whole
snowball effect startedhappening.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
That's awesome, alex.
So at some point later on yousaw this opportunity to bring X
Babylon into New Charter.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
And that had to be an enormous decision for you.
What made you feel like thatwas the right thing for you and
the company?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
How much time do we have?
I should go back to that.
January.
Covid happens.
Everybody hunkers down.
I had been building out and justgot lucky with an amazing
leadership team and it wascommon for me to take huge
chunks of time off in the 20teens, travel all over the place
(18:58):
, do stuff, let my team handlethings while I was gone, even go
off grid for a few weeks at atime.
And when I got to the COVIDmoment, it was like my partner
and I were going back to theearly startup days again.
Right, 12 hour days, six dayweeks, just all hands on deck.
(19:20):
And we grew, like many MSPs did.
But we grew through that periodright.
You were in pure instinctualsurvival mode, thinking any
moment some big you knowhammer's going to drop, your
clients are going to fail, gobankrupt, the world's going to
fall.
So you're in.
Just take all the work you canget, work hard right, look
(19:40):
around every corner.
So 2020 was that.
And then, like most smallbusiness owners, sometime around
Christmas, every year betweenChristmas and New Year is that
lull of a week where you reallysit down and you have time to
think.
You think about the year past,you think about the year ahead.
Maybe you had a budget planningcycle or you had a formal
(20:01):
process, you know, in thequarter before it doesn't really
matter.
You're still really reallydeeply analyzing what's coming
and I saw just a swath ofchanges happening in the
industry.
Our cyber risk insurance cost.
We carried a $4 million policyand it doubled.
The renewal was twice and ithad doubled the year before that
(20:23):
and I knew that cyber riskinsurance was going to be tough
to carry.
I also knew a lot of ourcompetitors didn't carry it, but
it wasn't something I waswilling to not protect our
clients with right.
With secondary party coverage,which is expensive.
Microsoft had been doublingyear on year their requirement
to stay a direct CSP partner andthat was pretty critical to our
(20:46):
business model.
Everything about the industrywas just becoming much more
challenging.
And we were 40 employees at thetime not small, and it's still.
I saw no path that we could justkeep grinding away.
You know 10, 20% year on yeargrowth.
It was going to take us foreverto get to the scale that we
(21:07):
needed.
So I sat my partner down and Isaid, okay, we need to either
invest deeply over the nextthree years, like, I mean, plow
everything back into thisbusiness and grow it like mad
and really scale, or we need tofind a partner.
And so we put all the optionson the table and we explored all
(21:30):
of them and when I had theinvite from New Charter to go to
Denver and meet with at thetime there were, I think, six or
seven real partners at the timein that ecosystem.
They had a guy there talkingabout, you know, the Microsoft
practice and all the stuff thatwas coming at us and if we don't
(21:52):
do something we're going to getcrushed.
And I was like that's literallywhat I've been saying.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
You know they were talking about risk and finance
and all the same things that Iwas paying attention to that
group was paying attention to.
So ultimately that was the besthome for my team.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
That's great.
What did your day-to-day looklike after joining Nuve Charter
and how'd your role evolve, andwhat were you most passionate
about contributing to theplatform?
Speaker 1 (22:19):
It was completely anticlimactic because in that
ecosystem there's no, you know,significant structural changes
to anything right, everythingkeeps working exactly how it
worked.
You know, before and after youtechnically close.
The transaction started to helpwith the CTO CIO work at the
(22:52):
platform level, not just insidemy own operating company, my own
business, x Babylon.
So as I transitioned and didmore and more work there which
was just a ton of fun I got towork with some of the best minds
in the industry.
Right, I mean Mitch Morganspending ridiculous amounts more
time than he should have withme, working on really cool
(23:12):
projects and seeing things likethe digital transformation
framework come to life, seeingthings like the advancement of
some of the blue sky surveys andsome of the data in the front
runner stuff that New Chartershares.
Being able to be part of thatwas just a ton of fun.
So, yeah, it's an amazing group.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
That's awesome.
So let's fast forward a littlebit.
You've left New Charter in thelast, I think, 12 months or so,
and you started a new venturecalled Think Purple.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Feels like a fresh chapter.
What was the driving forcebehind that decision, and was
there something specific thatmade you think I think it's time
to start something new now?
Speaker 1 (23:53):
The thing that I've loved the most is being able to
solve organizational problems,not just in business, but it
could be government nonprofit.
I love taking organizations thathave structural problems,
organizational problems, or justwant to be better or want to do
something new, and then pairingit with traditional
(24:18):
organizational structure orpolicies and processes, but also
using technology and reallyusing technology to improve the
lives of the people that work atthese organizations.
And the idea behind ThinkPurple is to be able to do
digital strategy work that goesa layer deeper than what an MSP
(24:40):
can do, because MSPs can only doa certain, they're only
empowered usually to do acertain go, a certain distance
and a certain depth in abusiness.
And you've heard me talk, youknow that I think the future,
what a future of an MSP is, isto be more of a business
consultant, you know, than justa technology, you know, trusted
(25:01):
advisor.
But as we go down, for rightnow, as I go down this path, as
we go down for right now, as Igo down this path, the idea
behind Think Purple is to godeeper in the business than what
you can traditionally do as anMSP.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Leadership coaching too right.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Does that feel pretty different from what you've been
doing in the past?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
It's not like I'm, you know.
I didn't wake up and say Ithink I want to reinvent myself
and do something I haven't done.
These are things that arepretty natural for me and I love
doing it.
When I would speak at events, Iwould always tell one of my
favorite manufacturingassociations when I go to talk.
They were like, okay, well,we've got this and that, and I'm
like can I talk on people andculture?
(25:43):
Do I have to talk on technologyagain?
You know I want to go talkabout what it means to build
great teams, what it means tobuild a business that puts the
human side first, or atechnology digital
transformation plan thatactually takes into account the
people that use it on both sides.
So no, it feels pretty natural.
(26:03):
This is stuff I love to doAwesome.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
So let's talk a little bit about sort of
personal philosophy andleadership.
You've talked a lot about theimportance of balance and
letting your team step up.
Was there a specific momentwhen you realized you need to
take a step back and let otherslead?
Speaker 1 (26:20):
When they've hit me over the head with a stick and
said get out of my way.
I mean multiple those humblingmoments where somebody on the
team and there's so many ofthese- right.
I learned so much from the teamat X Babylon Some of those just
celebrated their 15 yearanniversary at the company and
(26:42):
so much from the amazingpartners that I got to work with
at New Charter right, who hadall built great businesses too.
But I think for me it's aboutthose moments have been when my
team said, hey, alex, I've gotthis.
Or when I've overstepped andI've said you, you know, I've
(27:09):
overstepped and I've said you,you know, you should know this
or you should do this, andsomebody goes well for one, no.
And realizing that my approach,what works for me personally
isn't necessarily what works foreverybody, and letting people
build their own path to thatsuccess is sometimes actually
way better.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
So, as a young guy you're still a young guy.
You've seen the highs and lowsof entrepreneurship.
What's a lesson that youlearned early in your career,
something you'd like to pass onto other young entrepreneurs, or
even the 14-year-old Alex Nevergive up, never surrender.
Awesome, that's a good one.
And talk about your shirt.
(27:49):
You got a good one there.
That's a good one.
And talk about your shirt yougot a good one there.
That's a pretty good.
Work hard and be nice.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Simple, simple plan yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
You're a simple guy, right Like, just do your job, be
really nice to people.
So talk about the future alittle bit.
What's next for you?
And think purple.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Well, spending some time here with you guys learning
from this event and where theindustry's at try to give back
where I can to the MSP communityas a whole.
I think there's an opportunityto do some big things in a lot
of ways.
I'm not in a hurry, but I'mgoing to be piloting some
concepts.
I think the futurist in me, theeternal optimist, futurist that
(28:33):
says this can happen.
Some of the things I'd love tosee come to fruition, not just
in my own firm but, I think, inthe industry as a whole I'd like
to say that they can happen inone to two years.
Awesome, I think.
The reality is because I've been, I'm trying to temper this
because of my previous optimismof how quick adoption can happen
(28:54):
.
We could be five years out, butthe truth is the inflection
point in this industry is hereand there's just enormous need
for digital strategy, not justthinking as a CIO or a CTO or a
CISO, but actually at the CEOlevel.
I think CEOs everywhere, inevery industry, are going to
(29:15):
have to become digitalstrategists in some way.
So I'm optimistic.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
You talked a little bit earlier, and you've shared
this with me a lot that the MSPindustry is evolving in a
certain way you want to unpackthat a little bit.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Well, it's commoditized, um, and it it will
become more and morecommoditized, meaning the the
daily blocking and tackling thethings that we used to sell as
things that we did, um, you know, think about, like the original
MSP ad right, net 24, seven,network monitoring, antivirus,
(29:56):
you know, firewall management,like uptime monitoring I mean
backup right, these are all like, these are all very well oiled
processes and things that can bedelivered In modern ecosystems.
They're very simple and easy todeliver and they can be priced
(30:16):
very cheaply.
In the small business sector.
We have a massive demographicshift happening of who.
We have a retiree group, right,you can call it the boomers
retiring.
You can call it the silvertsunami retiring.
You can call it the silvertsunami.
Whatever you want to call it.
The truth is MSPs are smallbusinesses serving small
businesses, right, and thesesmall businesses are
(30:42):
disproportionately owned byretirement age founders.
I don't care if it's amanufacturing business or a law
firm or, fill in the blank,they're looking, just like many
MSP owners, by the way, they'relooking at their next chapter,
they're looking at retirement,they're eyeballing it and
they're looking at opportunities.
You know, msps are right nowlosing customers or having to
(31:04):
deal with M&A in their customerbase all the time, because
successful businesses are makingdecisions to sell their
business or merge their businessor do something with it.
Right, something's changing thechanging agard happening.
At the same time.
We have millennials rising uptaking on senior and executive
(31:27):
leadership roles.
Because they are digitalnatives.
Right, they do feel verycomfortable with technology.
They have expectations of howtechnology works.
Their expectations as leadersis very different than the
expectations of the leaders thatin place before.
Right, they're going to have amuch higher trust level of,
let's say, cloud or SaaSapplications, a much higher
(31:49):
appetite for subscription andreoccurring models versus I'm
going to buy it and try to own aserver for 10 years.
Right, differences inleadership style, changes in our
stakeholders.
And, as that happens, msps aregoing to have to step up in a
really big way.
(32:09):
Because a 20-seat account thatused to be money for many MSPs.
They can just buy AppleCare for$10 a month and have everything
they need and it just works.
And if you look at what Applesells with their Apple Business
Plus plan or Business Essentials, it's literally what an MSP
does for you know, $20 a month,like you're not gunning.
(32:32):
They don't need you.
So in order for an MSP to beneeded or any business you have
to solve a problem right, and soMSPs have to go upmarket
because the smaller accountsjust don't need an MSP because
their technology at that size isSaaS-based.
You buy a Microsoft 365 packageor an Apple Business Essentials
(32:53):
package and it takes care of itfor you in the micro-business
space.
So businesses at 20 to 30employees plus start needing
MSPs, maybe even 50 employeesand the leadership at those
companies.
They expect their technology tobe just as simple at the office
as it is at their house, right,and they don't need to call
(33:13):
Geek Squad anymore to set up arouter, like all this has
changed in the last, even fiveyears.
So, as our customer is moretechnically savvy, higher
expectations, you have CEOs thatwill just, you know, millennial
CEOs that will just crank outPower BI and just fire it up and
do stuff and if your MSP can't,you know, even help them.
(33:34):
That's going to be a challenge,right?
So I think that's why I saythat I think the industry has to
continue to move up market,continue to evolve its offerings
to become more business centric.
Still do the blocking andtackling of the tech stuff
Agreed, but realize that that'snot where their core value
probably lies.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Yep.
So looking back at everything,alex, from building websites as
a teenager to leading multiplebusinesses, when did you know
now?
Speaker 1 (34:03):
that's it.
It probably has nothing to dowith my professional life.
Okay, it probably has nothingto do with my professional life.
Okay, I think that moment forme came a couple different times
in life, but over the last yearit really came, as I've evolved
personally in this world, torealize what my value is and
(34:29):
that it's not necessarily in thethings that you do, but it's in
the legacy that you build whileyou do it power flocks.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
You really are a friend.
It's been great to get to knowyou over the last couple years.
I love having you on stage withme and co-presenting and
co-hosting and all those sort ofthings.
I really look forward to all ofyour success in the future and
I wish you the absolute best ofluck, alex.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Super lucky to call you friend and able to be here
hanging out with us today.
Thanks, Alex, Thanks Chris.
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