From $10M+ MSP to Exit: Knowing When You've Won w/ Trey Miller

Welcome to the $10 Million MSP Podcast. This podcast is where I dive into the real stories of MSP leaders who have gone beyond $10 million in revenue, how they built their teams, created scalable systems, and turned their businesses into valuable wealth-building assets. I'm Brian Hoppe, strategic coach to MSPs. I work with MSPs generally in the $5 to $50 million in revenue range. In each episode, I sit down with leaders who have built MSPs beyond $10 million in revenue to unpack the inflection points that truly matter. From the personal stories behind their journeys to the fundamentals like culture, operational maturity, and driving profitability. This isn't another MSP podcast about tools and tech. On the $10 Million MSP Podcast, you'll get behind-the-scenes conversations with leaders who've built thriving MSPs, their biggest wins, their toughest lessons, and the practical takeaways that you can take back and use right now. If you're an MSP owner who knows that growth starts from within, that mindset, leadership, and strategy align to create both wealth and meaning, then this show is for you. New episodes are released every other week. So let's jump in. All right. Welcome to another episode of the $10 Million MSP Podcast. I'm excited today to be joined by Trey Miller, um, and excited for you guys to hear his story and, um, and, and what he's been able to do in the industry. So Trey, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks for having me, Brian.

Absolutely. So, um, hey, so I, I usually like to open with a, with a question. So when you think about, um, your, the, the decision to sell, um, and, and I know you've talked to a lot of MSP owners about, about potentially selling, what do you think most MSP owners get wrong about making that decision to sell?

Um, my guess is they probably wait, uh, way too long to start planning for the transaction. Um, we, I was fortunate because I, um, merged my local MSP with another local MSP in 2021. So I had what turned out to be 3 years to prepare, uh, myself and the team, my partners for our eventual transaction and really got started on that preparation like 3 months after we closed the merger, um, and spent about 3 years thinking pretty seriously. Not number one priority, but how can we be ready if and when the time comes to get the best result possible?

Right, right. So, do you think it's— I mean, so you had a unique situation in which you guys— I mean, you merged with the plan, presumably, to sell again after a while. What about the folks who aren't doing that kind of a thing? Do you think that And I would say the people that I come across, far fewer are prepared or even preparing. Do you think it's mostly a timing issue? Do you think it's an awareness issue? Like, what do you think? Why do you think that is?

It's probably a combination of those things. It may be that they just haven't thought about an exit of any kind. call it the first 15 years of slowly building an MSP, it just never even crossed my mind that it might be something worth selling. I'll call it the first 10 years. And then, a company approached me maybe 12 years into my journey and was interested in buying. And I was fortunate to have a friend who had been an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and kind of knew how to assess deals. And from day one, he just said, I don't like this opportunity for you. He said, I think you have way more opportunity to grow and build a business. And at the time, I had a really small company and, you know, it was just obvious in retrospect, it was obviously not the time to sell my business. Right. But until then, I hadn't even really thought about the possibility that I might have something worth selling. So I think maybe some people are, I'd say in this environment, it would be pretty hard to be running an MSP for more than 3 to 5 years or really any business. and not be aware of what's going on in the M&A side of really any industry. And I think that's probably become more the case as time goes on. But that's probably part of it. There's probably a little bit of ignorance in terms of what it takes to sell anything and get a good result. And I say ignorance not as a value judgment, just like the absence of good, reliable knowledge based on true and accurate information. We're all ignorant of all kinds of things, and that's a great starting point for getting smarter, right? So, I think a lot of people— I'm sure— I think M&A folks hate comparisons to real estate, but until you bought your first house, you didn't really know what was involved. And so, smart people hire a real estate agent and use a closing attorney to do the title work and all that kind of thing. Yeah. And, um, you know, again, I'm sure most people don't like the analogy, but there are a lot of connection points between selling anything like a house and selling a business.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, it makes total sense. Um, so let's back up for a minute because I want to, I want everybody to get kind of a context of where you came from and stuff. So you even mentioned just a little bit ago, you kind of did, you had a, you know, a local MSP. You merged with a couple of other MSPs, maybe just like walk us through that story and, and kind of like, yeah. And then to bring us up to, bring us up to speed up to today.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, on February 6th, 2006, uh, my wife and I were about 3 or 4 months away from having our first son. And, uh, I got a call into my boss's office. She had just been laid off and she was letting me know that I was being laid off along with her. And, you know, I remember the date. Obviously, it's on my calendar. I text her every day, every year still on February 1st. We kind of think of it as Independence Day. Yeah. You know, for half a day, I was pretty scared. By the next day, I feel like I had a pretty clear plan of what I was going to do and how I was going to start a business instead of going out to interview for other jobs. And, you know, I kind of tell people, like, if you wonder whether you're entrepreneurially oriented, whether you kind of have what it takes to to build and grow a business. Are you the kind of person who gets laid off 3 months before your first kid is born and thinks starting a business sounds like the lowest-risk opportunity? I don't— it's just like, take it for what it is. That's how I felt. I was like, it will take me longer to find a job that pays roughly what I was making than it will to at least start something. And it may not succeed, but then 6 months down the road, if I have to interview for jobs and tell people what I learned, by failing to launch a business, that's a story.

Yeah.

So, I just kind of grinded it out for probably the first 10 years. I was coming out of an enterprise IT environment and honestly knew that I didn't want a career in enterprise IT. So, again, getting laid off was kind of a gift. But I just sought out from day one to kind of bring a level of service and support to the small and medium business that Draws on what I know from enterprise IT and applies it to the, at the time, maybe 5 to 50 employee organization. Was really fortunate to learn a lot about, mostly about customer service along the way. And by 2012, I had moved with my family down here to Greensboro, North Carolina, and really went from a solo practitioner in 2012 to just slowly building a team and building an actual business that scales beyond the number of time hours I have. in any given week to give to it. Yep. So that went reasonably well. A lot of the, all the common mistakes and pitfalls along the way. But in 2021, or actually right at the end of 2020, so like kind of as COVID is starting to stabilize and we are getting our feet back under us as a race, a human race, a local friend here locally who was also running an MSP approached me about putting our business together. And, you know, again, pretty easy. Yes, I knew and respected him and his wife. The two of them were partners in the business. They had a great reputation. I think we had a pretty good reputation around town. And it just felt like a really easy thing to say yes to. Hmm. We didn't really go into it with a plan to sell in the short term, but their reason for wanting to merge was driven by this large client that they had. So, they'd been supporting a private equity-backed veterinary roll-up for, at the time, probably 8 or 9 years. So really from the inception of that platform, it was a 3-location veterinary hospital group when my partner started supporting them. And it was about 450 locations by the time we merged. So call it roughly 80% of their revenue was coming from this one client. And their thought was if we could combine, if they could combine with us and add some really stable local MSP clients to the client base, we may lose the big client, but at least we'd have a decent and healthy regional MSP to fall back on. And I think it was a great plan. I think I have no regrets about putting the business together. I had 2 wonderful partners in Harvey and Tamara McClendon, and I think we built a really great team together. They had a great team. I had a ragtag team of misfits that, you know, wonderful people to a person, but I was like, you know, the classic entrepreneurial manager who can't manage. And so, I had these great folks who were doing the very best they could under pretty mediocre at best management. But through the merger, I got access to a team of managers and really that was where I got introduced to Evolve and SLI and managing to what good looks like and was able to— the way I think of it is like I was able to put some really good people in the hands of some really good managers and kind of get out of their way of success and help them thrive. And I think it was good for our clients overall, good for our people. And again, I think we wouldn't have been as motivated to sell the business if we hadn't gone through an RFP with that big client in late 2020, 2023, that client who'd been a client for probably 10 or 12 years at that point, their owners just required them to put all their vendors through an RFP process kind of across the board. And so, what we always knew was a theoretical risk of losing that client suddenly became, you know, very real, kind of felt existential. Yeah. You know, we had probably 70 employees at the time. Well over $10 million in revenue and just thought, if we don't retain this client, we are probably laying, you know, 60 people off right after New Year's, you know, or in the first 3 months of 2024.

Yeah.

Fortunately, we won the, we won the RFP. We had really good partnership and relationships with that client and—

Good.

We were able to make the case that we're the best partner for them going forward and And kind of survived that. But, you know, first partner call of 2024, I just, I got Harvey and Tamara on the phone or, you know, we were on our kind of monthly partner call and I said, look, we like, good for us. We won the, we won the contract. We deserved it. We earned it. We should be proud of ourselves and proud of the team. We can never ever go through something like this again for our employees' sake, for our own sake, for anybody's sake.

Yeah.

And so, I said I'd been spending probably the, at that point, probably the prior 2.5 years talking to everybody within Evolve and just trying to get a clear understanding of who's out there and who's interested in what. Had been through Arlan's, at the time it was called the M&A Peer Group. I think it's IT Nation Grow now, but I'd been actually twice through that. So, I went in, I think it was maybe only the 3rd or 4th time they had done that meeting. Wow. I went in, I say I could spell EBITDA and I knew what M&A stood for, but beyond that, I was pretty wet behind the ears. And we had done a merger. We hired Reed and his team at IT Valuations to walk us through the merger to help us make sure we weren't, neither Harvey and Tamara nor I, were doing anything crazy in putting these businesses together. So, I'd been through a transaction and learned something in the process, but— I knew I had to get a lot smarter if I was going to, if we were going to have a good result. So, 2 years through that. And so, by early 2024, I knew there was really, having talked to everybody out there, I knew there was one serious buyer in Thrive. And we worked with actually the same ex-Goldman guy who advised me years earlier not to sell my business when it was, you know, 3 or 4 employees or whatever. We engaged with him. He's a local friend and he helped us, you know, again, make, hopefully avoid making any huge mistakes. And honestly, I think we got a tremendous result in the transaction as far as, you know, preserving the enterprise value that we had built, putting our employees and team in a great place. And I think honestly taking really good care of our clients, especially our larger client. You know, 80% of our revenue was, was, was with this client. You know, I wouldn't know the exact number. It's, you know, well under 10%, maybe under 5% of Thrive's revenue went to this one from, came from this one client. So a really good result all around.

Good, good. That's great. Okay. So, so, and, and what was the, the time period between when you merged and when you ended up selling? How long was that?

We merged March 1st, 2021. So, first conversation was November of '20, and about less than, like, a little over 4 months later, we had closed the merger.

Okay.

Just to give you an idea of how thorough the due diligence process was. We weren't— we were, all 3 of us as partners were pretty very trusting, and our trust, I think, turned out to be well-founded. It was a great partnership. But by comparison, I was talking informally with folks for well over a year, maybe 2, 2 and a half years about what might be possible if and when the time comes that we need or want to do a transaction. So yeah, March 1st, '21 was the close on the merger and then July 1st, '24, I guess that's 3 years and 3 months later. Yeah.

3 years and a bit. Okay. Yeah. So, and good results all around. So yeah, and it sounds like you guys ended up over $10 million, over 70-ish employees at that point when you sold. And what about after you sold? I mean, I know you joined Thrive for some period of time for a while after that. So what did that look like?

Yeah, honestly, in addition to that RFP, I think a big motivator for us was both my partners were starting to think about retirement or moving on to the next thing. Tamara in particular, you know, developed like a tremendous breadth and depth of skills during her time working with Longleaf before the merger. And then with our merged entity, you know, she did almost everything. I would say almost everything that wasn't technical, she's probably done it in an MSP. She was retired and then we got that RFP dropped in our lap. So she came outta retirement. She was retired and then we went through this transaction. So she came outta retirement and for her, like one of the few things she wanted after the transaction closed was like, can I just go back to retirement please? So she got that pretty quickly. Harvey spent about a year in the business. And for me, I, you know, I kind of went into it saying, if I can be helpful at Thrive, I want to be around as long as I'm helpful. And if I can't, I'll find something else to do. And Thrive was pretty good. Rob Stevenson was the CEO at the time, great guy. And I like Bill a lot too, Bill McLaughlin. But, you know, I worked with Rob for quite a while leading up to the transaction and then on the other side of it. And he'd, I think they'd done 22 or 23 acquisitions before us.

Right.

Which with that kind of track record, that's part of the way they got, I don't, I probably mentioned, didn't mention this, but We were, we signed our LOI the Tuesday after Memorial Day and closed on July 1st, which I think is like 35 days almost to the day. It was like a 5-week—

Brilliant.

Yeah. Yeah. So because Rob knows how to get things done and Ananta and the rest of the team at the time, you know, they, they, they know how to get things done. And I guess back to your question, they had seen, I'm sure, a number of owners come through and find or not find something to do. So going in, they were really clear, like, hey, you're going to have a year. We'd like a year of your time to really help us make sure this transition is smooth as possible. But, you know, and part of your work during that time is to look around and see if there's something going on here that you want to be a part of, something you think you can help with, something you think you can add value on. So I did that. And then I wound up spending another 6 months after that. So 18 months total, roughly. Wow! That last 6-month stint was working with, you, you probably know Ananta Hijibu, who's been around the Evolve world for a while. Good friend of mine from back when I lived in Maryland. He had already built out a lot of the M&A function at Thrive, and I, I thought, yeah, I could help him with that. That'd be fun. Continue to be involved with the Evolve peer community. But by the end of the year, it was kind of clear that You know, I, what I said to my boss right before I left is like, if I were you and I had Ananta and Trey, I would tell Trey, it's been good working with you, but why don't you go find something else to do?

Right.

Which is more or less what she did in a good way. Like, I, you know, I felt like there's plenty of other things I can do out there. So.

Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. Well, great. I mean, it's, you know, the path that we take afterwards is, you know, it's always interesting. I mean, after I sold, I stayed for a little over a year as well. And, you know, and I realized I was not so good at having a boss of any kind and that kind of a thing. And so that's when I started, you know, doing what I do now. But, you know, but I always emphasize like, hey, you've got to know what you're, you know, after you're selling, you've got to know what you're going to. Right. You know, I know, you know, for you, you've kind of, you kind of taken a little bit of, a little bit of time off and you're kind of reentering slowly, which is great. Because, yeah, I mean, you know, that's, and part of that's like, you've earned that, right? So, so that's, that's, it's always interesting to me to hear, you know, to hear those stories and like, okay, how did that all work out for you and everything? Yeah. So, Yeah. Love it.

Yeah.

So, yeah. So, oh yeah. Did you have something to add to that?

You know, I was just gonna, I was thinking about, I think the thing that often comes up in, in when you think about what do you do next? And Arlen Sorensen has been beating this drum for ages. It's like, if you don't know, the way I've thought about it for 30-plus years is like, I want to have as clear a possible picture of who I am, my identity, why I'm here, my purpose, and what difference I hope to make when I'm gone, kind of the meaning or identity, mission, and vision, something like that. So, I've been hacking away on those 3 ideas for, like I said, 30-plus years. And I won't say I have a perfectly clear picture of how to answer those 3 things for myself. But I would say, having spent quite a while thinking about it, I felt probably better positioned than maybe most entrepreneurs who are fortunate enough to exit their business. But it was still like an adjustment. There's still a process after the fact of kind of, okay, I've been saying for years and years that my identity is not tied to being an owner, being a CEO, being a boss, you know, whatever that is. Now I'm not. So, you know, this is where the rubber hits the road. So I just stopped working for a while. Thought, right, I'll just see what happens when I— which is tricky. You know, I mentioned my, as you know, I've been on sabbatical since mid-January. I really like, I kind of had one goal going into that, which was I want to not commit to the next thing, whatever that is, until at least July. Mm-hmm. maybe mid-August after Evolve in Denver. Like, that was kind of my goal. Like, if I can get through Evolve in Denver without really committing to the next thing, like jumping in with both feet on the next thing, I will feel like that the sabbatical was worthwhile. And I knew that from talking to a number of people who had had a chance to do a similar thing. You take a few months off between whatever and whatever. to a person, like everybody I talked to who's had an opportunity like that said, I wish I had, I wish I'd waited longer to jump into the next thing, you know? Hmm. And so I thought, I'm gonna try to learn from their, their mistakes and, or at least take their advice and, and try to, and I think, you know, 6 months was a good long time. There were definitely some days in March, April where, you know, it, where it just, you feel kind of gross from, from actually, from like literally doing nothing all day. And, and I, I kind of felt like now I didn't do nothing every day, but there were some days there where I did almost nothing and felt like this is what I, this is the feeling I thought I needed to get to in order to feel like now it's time to start looking at what might be next. So, um, it was, you know, learned a lot. Um, you know, in the end, when I think I'm, I'm, I'm doing now what I probably would've guessed in January I might be doing, which is, you you know, kind of exploring the possibility of a consulting practice, which is, you know, which is probably what you would've guessed if I'd asked you, what do you think I'm working on?

Right. Yeah.

But I feel like the way I got here, it was a good— I feel like I took an interesting and educational, at least for myself, like I did a lot of exploration, not only introspection, but also asking a lot of people a lot of tough questions and Um, worked my way through a book list and, um, had some good mentors to spend time with along the way. And, uh, it was good. I called it, uh, I've got my working title for the first half of the year was, uh, 6 Months of Sundays. My goal was to have, uh, yeah, like feel what it's like to take a real long stretch of time off.

Quick pause. Let me ask you a question. If you stepped away from your MSP for 90 days, would the business keep getting stronger? Or would it slow down? Your answer tells you a lot about the operational maturity of the business. I created a short MSP maturity assessment to help you identify what's working, what's breaking, and what might be capping your growth. You can take it at brianhoppe.com/assessment and the link is in the show notes. All right, back to the episode. Yeah, I love it. I love it, man. Well, and that's, yeah, it sounds like that's part of what you've needed now. And it's interesting, the 3, you know, the 3 things that you mentioned and And I think this is worth probing into because, you know, I think there's that. And for me, like, I, you know, I tell the story often, which is like, I knew what I wanted to do after I sold from like a long time ago because I had a coach when I was pretty young in the industry. And I was like, man, this is like so life-changing.

Yep.

That I'm going to do this one day. And it was, you know, it took 10, 10+ years to go through the whole process of, of building and building the MSP, but, uh, buying another one, going through the sale process, working for the buyer and all that before I started. Um, but, you know, I think, I think there's that, that legacy piece, right? There's the values piece. And then like, for me, I don't know if, uh, if you're familiar with the concept of ikigai.

Which is, uh, I was just talking about this morning with a group of— yeah.

Oh, really?

I think you mentioned it when you were talking to Clay and, and my, my executive coach that I worked with during the sabbatical.

Okay.

Yeah. Took me through an exercise. Sorry to cut you off, but really—

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. So like, so, and people know it's not like a gross dude, it's I-K-I-G-A-I. So, but, but it's like, but it's figuring out, okay, like what the, what's the intersection of the things that you love? What the world needs, what you're good at, and what you can actually be paid for and what's in the middle of all those concentric circles. And that's what that reminded me of when you were talking about that. And I totally forgot I mentioned it on the Clay episode as well. So, yeah.

No, I think it's worth bringing up almost every time, right? Because I think that's what you're— a lot of what you're about is sort of what we can learn from each other's experience building a business, maybe selling a business, But I think it's like what's beyond that is where things start to get really interesting.

Yeah, for sure. And then, you mentioned the 6 months of Sundays. And I think we were on a panel together and you mentioned also Saturdays. So, what's the distinction there?

Yeah. I realized pretty quickly, and I don't know where this phrase 6 months of Sundays came to mind, but I think Sabbath and sort of the The Jewish tradition, sabbatical. I think the word has the same root. And what I realized and yeah, what I mentioned on the panel is in order to get to your 6 months of Sundays, in my case, I had to get through almost to the day, 6 weeks of Saturdays, which was basically from middle of January till end of February. It was just like every day I thought I woke up thinking, okay, sabbatical starts today. And every day, I'm like, there is a list as long as my arm of stupid, like getting this paperwork to the accountant for taxes or like getting my car registration renewed. Or like, it just felt like day after day after day of like stupid administrative minutia that I've been putting off. I don't know where it came from, why it accumulated. And, you know, honestly, a little bit of— Yeah. You know, I went on a trip with my wife and I went on a trip with some friends and Um, you know, a little bit of Saturday stuff, but it really was, it was like end of February by the time I really felt like, okay, I'm into Sunday now. And then the next thing that struck me was, um, I have, you know, I have a personal, you know, set of commitments to what Sunday looks like. And it's chiefly about rest and, um, and, and, and I know I, you know, doing it for decades, I kind of know how to rest on a Sunday. I'm not saying I do it perfectly or do it every Sunday, but like, I know what it looks like. When you wake up on a Tuesday and you're in the middle of 6 months of Sundays, what does a Sunday look like on a Tuesday? You know? And then even weirder is like, what does an actual Sunday look like on Sunday? You know, I don't know if we're spiraling into meaninglessness here, but, you know, for me— No, not at all. You know, Sundays are worship and rest and time with friends. And so, I can keep going to church on Sundays all through Sabbatical. But beyond that, it's like, oh great, another day to rest. Now what?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and from, you know, from everything that I've, you know, I've talked to a lot of people, I've heard a lot of things, I've, you know, a lot of stories and everything. And no matter, no matter what, like, you're, you know, there's going to be some finite period of time where the Saturdays, and even if, even if those Saturdays are like I'm golfing, I'm fishing, I'm doing all of the fun things that I want to do. There's only so much time that that's going to be fulfilling for until it's like, oh, well, now what do I do? And that's when you hear the stories.

No, that's a really good point. I remember the guys who sold Instagram saying, we thought we'd put in our time at Facebook and then Just go snowboarding for a year. And it was like, when it got to the snowboarding for a year part, we did it for like a week and we're like, no way we could do this for a year. You know? I mean, it's like, yeah, there's even the fun stuff. We weren't made to eat ice cream all the time, you know?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So anyway, so I think, I think that's worth everybody sitting with and saying, okay, you know, because there's going to be, for almost everybody listening that owns an MSP, there's going to be some some point in time where you're not running your MSP anymore.

Right.

And so what does life look like at that point? And I, and I, uh, my clients, they, they, they know who they are. I give them a pretty hard time about it because I'm like, uh, you know, and even if they're not thinking about selling right now, I'm like, okay, what is, what does the next chapter look like? Because there's going to come a time and now is a better time to think about it than, well, when, when a sale is imminent and you're thinking about all kinds of other stuff. So anyways, I think that was a thing worth spending time on.

I think so. I mean, like, I'll just, I'll drill in a little bit more on it because I think it's so important. It's just so easy to put off thinking about these things until the time arrives. And then you're like, well, now what? And I would say a couple of things I did. I didn't know when the timing might— I didn't— there's no guarantee that I would have a chance to take some time off. But I started a list probably 3 or 4 years ago. Yeah, because my partners and I had said, one of our measures of success is we're going to reach a point in the business where we can take a month off, just totally walk away, and the business is going to be better off when we get back than when we were here. So, I just kind of started this list of if and when that time comes, how am I going to use it really well? And I started 2 lists, to-do and to-not-do. And, um, I put a couple of things on the list and no offense to all our, you know, co— all these MSP owners out there who own a plane and fly it. But I had heard enough about people buying planes and learning to fly. So I put on my list, like, do not buy a plane, do not learn to fly. You know, like, I just don't. If I ever get to the point where I think I might want to do that, look at my list and say, you know, And honestly, again, no offense, like we all have our ways of spending time that some people are like, how could anybody do that? I don't really understand. Like, I play a lot of golf. Like, that doesn't sound super exciting to me. So, I wrote, don't be the guy who just plays a lot of golf. Again, no offense to people who do. And actually, ironically— Yeah. I'm currently training to caddy for my nephew who has been on the PGA Tour, is competing to get back on the PGA Tour. So, there's an ironic sense in which I may not play a lot of golf, but I may wind up carrying a heavy golf bag around for a guy who does if things continue to go well. So, be careful what you put on your to-do list. Yeah. Very good. I know what that's a good one. I've been thinking for years about what kind of project, like intellectual projects, reading projects, stuff around the house, whatever. And so, when the time came, I think if the equivalent of time might be like, if I were choosing not to go back to work, how am I going to spend the next 10, 15, 20 years, whatever I have on earth in a way that's in line with my identity, purpose, and meaning?

Yes. But that's great. And yeah, it's a super important conversation that everybody needs to be thinking about. And there's folks that that specialize in, you know, helping you figure those things out for yourself, right? Like, what are, what are your personal core values? What are your, you know, what's your personal mission in life? Like outside of business and those kinds of things. And it's kind of like for those who run EOS, it's like, do you have like a VTO for yourself?

For your life? Yeah.

Your family.

Yeah. Do you have a mission, Brian? Do you have a mission statement?

Makes a lot of sense.

Do you have a personal mission?

Yeah, I do. Yeah. It's, um, it's, uh, to serve powerfully, embrace beauty, and live life to the fullest.

That's awesome. What was the— to serve powerfully?

Serve powerfully. Yeah.

Nice. I love it. I love it. You know,

it's, it's, it came from, yeah, it came from a church that I used to go to and, and I was like, it, it resonated so well. Um, and not, not that exact phrase. A similar phrase. And it's stuck with me. So, yeah, that's me. That's great!

Yeah, you know, you might have landed on your best.

What about you?

Well, I was going to say, I've had a few different iterations over the years. And it wasn't until this year— I don't know, it was probably at least indirectly a result of taking time off to just kind of think about things. But for years, I had worked hard on a mission statement that I couldn't remember. And it clicked for me this year. Like, if you're, if you can't remember your mission statement, it's probably too complex, too complicated, too something, you know? So I finally whittled it down this year to, um, uh, to love and serve my neighbors, enemies, friends, and God.

Brilliant. There you go. That's, uh, that's awesome. Yeah. So, I mean, everybody, to, to everybody listening, I mean, like, that's a I mean, that's powerful. I like your— obviously, I like mine. I like yours as well because it's simple and it's meaningful. And to me, like, for me and mine, it's what drives literally everything that I do at home, with friends, with family, with work, with the work that I do with all of my clients. Yep. Like, my goal is to serve is to serve powerfully and then live a full life and all of that. And

it's probably like 9 out of 10 things in your life are just effortlessly in line with your mission. And then, for me, I can remember a very specific instance right after, within a week of landing on this new mission statement, my wife and I are sitting on the porch enjoying some Saturday afternoon time. And a lady walks up who's run out of gas down the street. And, um, it was kind of like this, uh, you know, wink from above, like, okay, smarty, you've got this mission statement. You're supposed to love and serve your, your, you know, like the neighbor. And like, I take my neighbor from the, the parable of the Good Samaritan. Like, your neighbor is the person whose path you cross today. Yeah. And so, I'm like, well, here's somebody crossing my path and I forgot to add to the end of my mission statement, when I feel like it, or when it's convenient. And so, 9 times out of 10, we probably live our mission pretty effortlessly. And once in a while, we need to pause and say, if I'm living my mission, will I do this thing that I don't want to do or will I not do this thing that I don't want to do? So, that was my— That was my most recent experience with that.

Oh man. That's, yeah, yeah, it did. That's, that's meaningful as well. Well, for those of who have stuck with us this far, I mean, you guys are getting like the full, you know, the full intimate details over here. I do, you know, I do have some other, you know, questions for you and curiosities kind of on Some other topics and not that we can't go back to some of this thing, but, but I think like what I, what I'm interested in kind of hearing about is like when it just like the idea, because I know a lot of MSPs that have thought about merging and, and are, and, you know, and maybe are in the process. Um, so like, so maybe like, what is, what do you think when you think about that and your choice to do that? What, when do you, when people who are thinking about it, where do you, what advice would you have? Like, when does it make sense to merge versus go in organically by themselves? That kind of a thing.

Well, I, uh, again, to cite, well, you've said this repeatedly, but, you know, I think every entrepreneur needs a peer group, um, and needs a coach. What was the other? You, a local peer group to know the market. An industry peer group like Evolve to know the industry, a coach. And I think there's something else on your list.

A business operating system.

Oh, an operating system, of course, right? Yeah. You were talking to Clay about EOS. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I would say it's like, it's having the humility to admit you don't know everything about how to run an And help your business thrive is the first step in the right direction. And I think in that kind of coaching category, it's like you may never sell your business, but you would do really well to understand how to drive value and how to increase the value of your business for your own sake, for your family's sake. Even if your exit plan— I was talking to a friend this morning who, you know, whose daughter is in the business, who has another couple of children, and the conversation in the family is like, how do we handle this asset? What do we do with this thing? They may never sell the business to a third party, but it would be helpful for the 2 that aren't in the business as well as for the ones that are in the business to really understand what are the habits and disciplines that we can practice as we run the business to increase the value of this thing for everybody involved? And that, you know, a very long way of saying, get an advisor, you know, not hire an investment banker because you're going to sell this thing in 3 to 6 months, but find somebody who's been down the road at least once or twice before you and can help you, you know, do and ask the things of your business that'll That'll help you increase the value. I mean, this is what, this is what your whole podcast is about, right? Is building value. I would just say, like, do the research to understand the levers that drive enterprise value. And part of that research should be talking to folks who know.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. And so, yeah, obviously, like, there's a lot of people in the industry that are, you know, in And they hang out around Grow, which you, you know, IT Nation Grow, which you mentioned earlier, um, and all of that. And, and I know you, you got, you hired when you were looking at merging, hired somebody to, to help as well. Um, you know, I, I hear about these where these deals where it's like, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna merge, you know, um, in the morning and then, and then sell, uh, in the afternoon, you know, as a, as a combo or that kind of a thing. Right. But like, yeah, I don't know what, what, I mean, your experience merging was really more for, you know, a kind of, well, it was a diversification move for the folks that you merged with. And for you, like, what made you, what made you think, oh yeah, this is a great idea? Yeah, that's a great question.

In my, so in the case of our merger, I'll say starting from my point of view, I was, like I said, maybe 12 employees, totally flat organization. I was starting to, I had, I had asked one guy in our business to start to lead some of the folks in the business. But, um, but I think if I looked at the org chart, I think everybody still reported to me and Randy, God bless him. You know, Randy started leading and managing a few people on the team, but I don't even know if they were like in the payroll system reporting to him. I don't, I honestly don't remember, but I did know like I hadn't been to Evolve yet. This was COVID. Like, I was going to join Evolve in 2020 and then COVID hit and I was like, well, not this year. So I really didn't know what good looks like yet. But by the end of 2020, I was like, I know I'm in for like 1 to 3 years of really hard work on building out the systems, processes, management layer, all the things that are going to take us from kind of, you know, basically like the, like a 12-person trunk slammer almost, you know, like we were, I mean, we had, we had, we had, we had some things right. I don't want to say we were doing it. We, we were good at customer service. We had a really good client base who loved us. Um, we just weren't an MSP and we didn't have a lot of the things in place that would make us an MSP. So for me, uh, this was an easy button and a shortcut to getting all those things in place and like handing my team to a bunch of managers and an organization that had done the hard work to figure that out. I was like, it's not impossible. I don't think I'm definitely going to fail at trying to build that out on my own, but I sure would love to have partners in doing it. And they're 3 or 4 years ahead of me and love to just benefit from what they've figured out. So, that was a big part of it for me.

Right.

My partners, like I said, they wanted to trade some of the risk. that was associated with their client concentration for some of the stability that comes with having a, you know, a broader base of local clients. Um, and, and I think, and, you know, honestly, I don't think they ever had whoever, like who, like, you know, 9 out of 10 MSPs aren't great at selling. I happen to be, you know, I would say like a slightly above. No, I was like an average owner-led sales guy. I wasn't, you know, any owner learns how to sell. And then figures out how to do it better and better over time. But anyway, that was a piece they never really had to develop because they had this client that was growing so fast that they just couldn't keep up. Even if they were selling, they couldn't outpace the growth of their client. So, you know, I think I brought— you know, I know that our team, we brought some talented, hardworking people. We brought some great clients, and I brought an ability to sell locally. I never quite delivered on— I think we all knew it was a chance, like, can we build out a sales organization? I think that was something I never quite figured out how to do at any meaningful scale. But hopefully, they would say it was a good partnership. I know I would. And maybe partly all's well that ends well a little bit, but I'd say I'd say, you know, overall, well, yeah, I think it was a, I think it was a very good partnership and I enjoyed working with

them. Gotcha. Okay. So, and what did you find any significant conflicts when you guys merged?

I'm sure there were some. I'll say one thing we did, this was Tamara's suggestion and she did a lot of the real, really all let's just say 90% of the work on it. There was a book, still is a book called The Partnership Charter that she and Harvey, I think, had recently read. It's probably somewhere back on my bookshelf. So, we read that and then we just sort of drew up our own version of that, which the idea behind it is basically, it's sort of the plain— maybe I haven't used this analogy before, but it's almost like in AI terms, it's like the prompt that you would give your attorney. for them to write you an operating agreement. So, it's basically plain English. Our document wound up being probably 20 pages long. But it's like, here's what we want out of the partnership. Here's what Harvey thinks he brings. Here's what Harvey needs. Here's what Harvey's not good at. Here's what Tamara. Here's what Trey. So that before we even get together, we all have a really clear picture of how we expect the partnership to work. It has some basic stuff like What happens if we lose our biggest client? Which all this stuff is the— these are the kinds of things that you contemplate in a good operating agreement anyway. But drawing that out together and coming up with some things in plain English that we could agree on was a really good, helpful basis for it, for the partnership. I would say, I know you asked about hard things, so I'm going to go through a couple of other things that I think worked really well and then probably come up with something that that was tough. I would say, you know, we had a 50/50 partnership, which they say is the one ship that never floats. But I honestly think, I honestly think 50/50 either works great or it works terribly. And in our case, it worked great. And I would say 2/3 of the reason it worked great is because Harvey and Tamara were great partners. Maybe close to a third of the reason is because of me. I'm sure there were some other reasons in there, but I think we had a structure. I'll just kind of describe our structure that Tom Fafinski at Virtus Law helped us draw up. And I can't remember whose idea it was, but basically, let's just use easy numbers. If my business was worth $1 million when we merged and theirs was worth $2 million when we merged, that would imply like it should be kind of a 30/30, you know, like we should just own it in thirds.

Yeah.

It was important to me that I have an equal vote with this married couple that I'm getting into a partnership with. I didn't really want to be in a situation.

Right.

And I, it was tough. Like I didn't really know how to breach or broach. I didn't know how to bring that up with them without, you know, I didn't want to blow up the deal, but here's evidence that they're great partners. They were like, yeah, that makes sense. That sounds great. But I certainly didn't feel fair. I didn't feel like it would be fair for them to own half and me to own half when their business was worth more going in. So, the way we did it was in the operating agreement side, we each owned half. Technically, their holding company owned half and my company owned half. of the business. And we made all decisions on kind of a 50/50 basis. And part of the reason for that was if something— we wanted to figure out a way to agree on everything. And if we couldn't agree on it, then we needed to agree that it was a big enough deal to blow the partnership up. And I feel like that's one of the benefits of a 50/50 partnership. And we certainly—

Yeah.

That's— it played out well for us that way. But on the So, everything was equal on the ownership and distribution side. But when we set up the books, we have these capital accounts, right? Because we each put in the value of our businesses. And all we did on the capital account side was, again, like if my business was worth $1 million and theirs was $2 million, our opening balance on those capital accounts was $1 and $2 million just to use those easy numbers.

Yeah.

And what we agreed to was, look, every time we take a distribution, we're going to— it's a little more complicated than this, and I'm not going to get into the weeds on how we did distributions for a while. But I think even that was evidence that they were really not just fair, but generous and like really well-intentioned partners and kind of how we managed distributions for the first couple of years. But basically, the deal was we each own half of this business. But if we come to a point somewhere down the road where we sell the business, obviously, the first money out is going to be to clear the capital accounts. And because they put $2 million in and I put like, they're going to get more out on the sale. And then everything beyond that, we're going to split 50/50.

Okay.

You know, it feels like when I describe it, it seems like devilishly simple, but I, and I'm not saying no one else has done it that way. I'm sure many people have done it that way, but a lot of times when I describe it, People are like, hmm, that's, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of it.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I hadn't thought about that either. So that's, and that's once again why you hire the experts to help you with those kinds of things. Right. So that's, yeah, that's really cool. Yeah. Cause I would have assumed it would be a third, a third, a third. Right. But, but there's plenty of different ways to do it. And, and it does sound like you, you found some very, some really, really good partners.

Yeah, for sure.

So, But, but so, so were they so good that nothing went wrong?

No, of course things went wrong. I would say, but I'll say, I'll tell you this. They were so good that when I did like anything I can think of that I did that was kind of like, and almost all of it would fall under the classic visionary kind of running around, you know, scrambling all the papers on everybody's desk, not on purpose. Like most visionaries are not malicious. But I was, you know, I was definitely that guy coming into the partnership who just, and you could probably ask my early employees, you know, they were just such benevolent people that worked with me that they were just like, they managed to get their work done even though it was like a different idea every day. And how about this? And what about that? You know? So I would say, I'll just speak for myself. Like, I know a lot of the consternation and heartache that I brought to really to Tamara in particular, because she was our integrator for a lot of the time. She would just have the depth of patience and the willingness to sort of like stick with me through my crazy ideas and remind me to bring it back to the, you know, when we have our next check-in, let's talk about it. We're gonna put it in the idea drawer. And, you know, I would say most of like the things that stand out are like me, you know, just being a visionary and not being able to kind of keep my visionary tendencies in check and, you know, obviously a little bit of undiagnosed ADD in there. And so, you know, it was, it was, it was a lot of patience on Tamara, Harvey and Tamara's part that helped us get through.

Gotcha. No, I love it, man. Hey, it's, it's so interesting because like for all, for all of that, like I can, I can point to you, like I had a very successful partnership, 50/50 partnership. And, you know, of course my business partner was silent and, you know, very silent in the business. But then I can point to also, you know, plenty where it was like, you know, and if he's listening, he would know. But he's— but a friend, good friend of, or peer from the old HDG days did a merger and his, you know, his— he eventually ended up having to undo it, you know, buy out the other partners. And he was like, whatever happens, never do a merger. Just don't do a merger. Do an acquisition. You know, like, because, you know, if you're trying to, if you're always trying to figure out, okay, well, let's just take the best idea, then it's going to be a very long path to actually get integrated. And then you're going to, uh, yeah, you're, you're just going to have problems. Right. Um, so. But I'm glad for you that it was a, that it was a smooth process. So, okay. So I kind of want to go, well, yeah, we, we have just a few minutes left. So I always like to ask this, which is, you know, which is like, hey, what do you think was the biggest mistake that you made as, as a leader along the way, or that you have made as a leader so far? Because you'll probably make more bigger ones, as I know I probably have as well. Yeah, I'm not.

I'm not exaggerating when I say there are way more than I could count or come up with if I had an hour to sit here and make a list. But maybe I'll just say, of course, I've made some people mistakes where I wish I had made a different call one way or another. The 2 things that come to mind are, number one, it took me way too long to learn how to say no to a bad opportunity. I said yes to just about anything that looked like revenue in the early days, up to and including— now, I was supposed to be an IT services provider, but I said yes to a project where I was going to build out a video recording and playback system for a local— they do like focus groups. Okay. And I was like, sure, I could figure that out. And first time through, had everything set up, everything set to go the way it did. And it just didn't record. And they had spent, you know, I don't know, thousands and thousands of dollars bringing in a facilitator, like a focus group facilitator and bringing people in to, you know, all this stuff. And at the end of the night, they got nothing to show for it. And, you know, I was like— Wow. I felt terrible. You can't just not charge people for the work. Like, that's the first step, but you can't get back all the work they put into making that focus group happen. And you can't, you know, it was just disastrous. But I learned, I think pretty soon after that, I learned to say no to stuff that was just not, that was just not what we do. So I'd say, you know, there's a bunch of stuff in that bucket that I should have said no to. much sooner. And then, you know, maybe my more broadly, my regret is like that I didn't, you know, I was ignorant for a long time. I didn't know that peer groups existed. I didn't know what a peer group was for a long time, but I probably should have gotten involved in Evolve, you know, 3, 4 years sooner than I did. But that's a cliché. It's true, but it's a cliché.

I mean, no, it's, it is, it is what it is. Right. Yeah, I mean, I always, it's just one of the most outsized investments you can make in time and money, in my opinion, is an industry-specific peer group especially. So, okay. So I like to finish off with some rapid-fire questions. So, hey, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

Put that on your rapid-fire list. I'll tell you exactly how much we sold the business for. Just put that on the end of your list.

Oh, okay. Go.

Oh, you wanted to do that first?

Are you serious?

Yeah. I'm always happy to tell people. Enough.

Okay.

And that gets back to an earlier topic. Like, you know, if you don't know what you're about and why you're here and what difference you hope to make, like you also won't recognize enough when it, when it comes across your plate, you know? And I think that's, I think it's important. I think it's important to know what enough looks like. And I've, I'm very, very fortunate to be at a place where, boy, I don't know if this sounds like, I don't know what this sounds like, but, but my lived reality is like, we are very blessed. We're very fortunate to have what we have. And I feel like even less would be, would still be enough, you know? And I don't want less, but I'm not out like scraping for more every day either. And that's that. It feels like a good place to be. Sorry, I was going to, I was going to go last on that one, but, but hit me with your—

No, that's perfect. I mean, I, you know, that, that is, uh, I think it goes along with kind of the theme of this podcast. Um, you know, because, because it is, uh, that is somewhat a somewhat philosophical answer to the question, but everybody, everybody listening, if you own an MSP, you should know what your number is and what is enough. And you having been in Evolve, I mean, essentially you're forced to come up with a number regardless of if you, if you want to or not. Like, because like, if, if, you know, at some point if you've already won the game and why are you still playing? Yep. Right. And I mean, that's one of the reasons, but also like, what is it, what does it look like for you to To achieve that, that big goal. So thank you for sharing.

Oh, sure. Yeah.

Appreciate it.

And I know why I'm still playing. Same reason you're still playing is we love what we do, right? I mean, now we get to do essentially only what we love to do as much as we want to do it, you know, which is pretty sweet. That talk about your geeky guy.

Yes.

That's us.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Awesome. Okay. So rapid fire. You've listened to the podcast. You know what these are. Okay. Something, what's something you've been curious about lately?

Okay. Everybody says AI, but I would say that the way I'm pursuing my curiosity around AI is that I'm trying to expand my imagination around what's possible when we have access to these incredibly powerful tools. And so like, I feel like every day really probably kicked in in March or April when I started thinking maybe it's time to start thinking about what's next? It's like every day I'm trying to be more imaginative about what I can do and create because of these tools that I wouldn't even bother to do or create without them.

Love it. Okay. And then what's something you can't live without in your daily routines?

Coffee feels too easy, but, you know, I need like, I need my 30 to 60 minutes in the morning, no screens, just kind of sitting, And kind of meditating and contemplating, maybe reading a little bit to get ready for the day.

Yeah. Beautiful. Okay. And then, what is your go-to way to unwind maybe on the weekend or the evening or not that you're all wound up? Oh, right, exactly. If I'm wound up, I've been doing this wrong.

No, yeah, there's a few. I try to walk Probably 3 to 6 times a week, you know, like good 3, 3.5 miles. Um, I think I, um, that's like helpful in unwinding. Bike ride on the greenway. Uh, you know, not like with the tight pants and the, you know, aero, whatever, but just like a nice easy bike ride on the greenway. But, you know, sitting with my wife on the porch and talking through the day or, um, hanging out with friends.

Yeah. Beautiful. And then what's a book or idea or a piece of advice that has shaped you the most?

I would say this year in particular, and maybe this will get back to the first question too, I read a book by Andy Crouch called Playing God. And I think the subtitle is something about redeeming the gift of power, I think is the subtitle. So I went into that book thinking, I'm not super excited about power. I think of power as kind of a negative thing. But the book really did a lot to kind of reshape my thinking around the reality that we all have power in some measure. And so, it's not a question of whether we have power or not, it's a question of how we steward the power that we have and use it for the good of other people and for the good of the world and especially for the good of the people around us. And actually, towards the end of that book, there was a chapter or two. I listened to it on audio, so I can't quite tell you how much time. But anyway, he went into this idea of Sabbath and sabbatical, which I was already on my sabbatical as I was reading it. So, it was kind of good timing, but it also helped me shape and frame some of the ways that I spent the rest of the time. Playing God by Andy Crouch.

Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that, man. And thanks for all of this. This has been great. And I would say one of the most meaningful conversations we've had on the podcast, in my opinion. So yeah. Hey, if somebody wants to get ahold of you, where can they find you?

I am on LinkedIn. I think it's just /trey-miller. Or Trey-Miller. I don't know the difference. I know an M-dash. I know an M-dash. But I think it's just a regular dash. Trey-Miller. And my new consulting practice lives at adaliaadvisors.com. That's A-D-A-L-I-A-advisors.com.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Trey, much appreciated, man. I'm glad we got to have this conversation. Um, and yeah, this, this has been great. So, um, and then we will see everyone else on the, uh, you know, on the next episode.

I look forward to seeing you in person in a few weeks.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks again, Trey.

Brian, thanks for having me, man. It's a real treat.

Absolutely. Thanks for listening to this episode of the $10 Million MSP Podcast. If this conversation got you thinking about growth, profitability, or What might be holding your MSP back, I invite you to take my MSP maturity assessment. It's a short assessment designed to help you identify what's working, what's breaking, and where the biggest opportunities in your MSP may be. You can take it at brianhoppe.com/assessment. And again, that link is in the show notes. I'll see you next time.