How Focus 'Took Net Friends' to $10 Million (Twice) w/ John Snyder

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. Uh, my guest today is John Snyder. Uh, he is CEO of NetFriends. John, welcome to the show, man.

Yeah, thanks, Brian. Appreciate you having me.

Absolutely, man. I'm excited for this conversation. We've gotten to know each other a little bit over the last couple of years, I guess. And, um, I'm excited for everybody to hear from you. Um, and so, so just to start, I always like to start with a, with a question. Um, when you think about, um, getting an MSP to $10 million, um, what's it, what do you think the difference is between an MSP that crosses over $10 million and then, and then one that can actually hold that and stay there?

Yeah. I think it's focus. You have to really want it. You have to say, I'm gonna set these targets and I'm gonna hit them. I'm gonna hold myself accountable, have the people around me that I really think about all the time, like wanting my success reflected back to me through their eyes. And so it's defining the target, saying you want to get there, vocalizing it. I'm gonna get there. Here's my plan. Have people, you know, harden up and strengthen that plan, but hold yourself accountable and, and stay focused on, on that target until you get it. Um, it, I mean, there's, it, it sounds kind of like, oh yeah, easier said than done. And yeah, true. But when you don't go out there and put yourself out there and, and, you know, with a failable, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to, you know, summit that mountain. If you don't say it, It's easy for the time to slip by. It's easy for you to just quietly not do it. Let's say, for instance, Brian, I wanted to write a bestselling novel, but I never tell you. If I don't do it, no one knows. And so I can quietly fail. You need to publicly fail and also just have the discipline to focus on achieving that target. Um, those 2 things together, I think the accountability and the focus are really, really key.

Yeah. I love it. I love it. Um, and so, yeah, man. And if you, if you had to say like, hey, where do you, where do you think it, where do you think it breaks? Like when, when people are on that track to $10 million or just, or just going over it, where do you think are the most common places where that, where that breaks?

Um, I mean, there's definitely these well-defined You know, valleys along the way. You know, the, it's really hard to get to that first million, really hard to get to the third million, the fifth million. And those are real ceilings I, I think about having bounced against and having to deal with the fact that, like, for instance, there was a period where we grew 40% year over year for 4 years straight, but I didn't think about the management layer at all. And so I ended up having 45 people directly reporting to me. And, um, you know, I was, I was justifying at the time, it was like, oh yeah, I'm running a low overhead, you know, operation here. But oh my gosh.

Flat organization.

Yeah. Yeah. Flat, open door policy, all that jazz. And, and, you know, what happened was, is I grew to a point where we couldn't hold, you know, that without the management layer, too many things were happening beyond my line of sight. And so, and since I was the only one really sitting in what would be the managerial seat, I couldn't pay attention to the things that were falling apart on the edges. And so what happens is, is like, it's like pouring concrete. You have to pour it over a particular area, you know, reinforce it with rebar, all the things, and let it set. And then you pour the next, pour the next. So if you want to expand and grow, you have to go through these phases. You can't just go from 0 to 10 and not crash through some, some of those really important gates where you You don't have enough capital because you didn't think about that, or you don't have enough management because you didn't think about that. Those are just very clear steps and stages along the way that experience teaches you. Um, but how did you get the experience? Well, you had to struggle. You had to deal with the failure to get it.

Yeah.

Uh, and someone like you can help people think through it and, and maybe there's a few shortcuts, but a lot of it is you have to go through that process. You have to deal with the pain of the cash flow crunch. You have to deal with the pain of not having the management layers in place that you really need, that can, that you can rest the next leg of your journey on.

So, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and there's all of the, there's so many lessons to learn in, in each of those phases, um, along the way. So thank you for sharing that. Um, uh, so what I would like to just, I'd like to just give you a chance to kind of talk about you, your company, where it's at today, just to get— just to kind of give people context. And then maybe some of the history as well, as far as like how you got here and what led you to be CEO of NetFriends and just kind of, yeah, like maybe just kind of introduce yourself and we can jump in from there.

Yeah, I'll keep it really short because I've heard a lot of these stories go on and on and on and you can ask me and I'll unpack Anything you want. I'm an open book. But the real quick story is I came into NetFriends after it had already been founded. So I was, I was like the 4th employee. We grew, I'd say we grew to about, um, that $3 million point. And then we actually had to split the company in 2. We can talk about that. Software development went one direction, services went another. Uh, literally right down the middle. We had about 30 folks and we weren't very profitable. So we went and we focused in our 2 different domains, then rapidly grew the business, bounced up against that, um, $5 million threshold. That's kind of what I was alluding to earlier. I didn't have enough management. Um, and it took a while after that to grow to the $10 million point. Um, it took, uh, because we had so many things that made our focus drift. We, we were trying to open offices in too many places. We were, we were trying to go after too many markets. We tried to be an MSSP, uh, you know, a security-focused, uh, enterprise-driven group at the same time trying to be an MSP to small businesses. I mean, we did lots of things along the way. And so that $10 million, when we first hit it, um, I think it was 2022, it didn't hold it because you couldn't we touched the sky and our, you know, got too close to the sun and our wings melted. And so now that we're back to 10 million, I can now have so much more confidence that I've learned a lot of those lessons along the way. And now I feel like we're hitting that threshold with pure-play managed services focused on a very clear market segment focused on a very clear set of operational, you know, mechanisms and whatnot that are, that are making me feel like, okay, I've really got a handle on this. And it's not, it's not like a dragon that I somehow, you know, captured and it's flying around and I'm kind of in control, but we all know that if it wants to go left, it's going left.

Right, right, right, right. It's like, uh, that if you're riding an elephant, where is, where's it, where's the elephant gonna go? Well, exactly where it wants to. Like, you can't You're not gonna be able to control that thing. Um, right.

So, okay.

And, and so about how many employees do you guys have?

So we have 42 employees now. And, um, and at one point we had 70, which was too many given the size we are. I think given the automation and AI capabilities that are now, I think, um, I think a 40, maybe to 50, depending on how you do things, is about the right headcount to be able to do a $10 million. That's up to debate. We can debate that if you want, but I think that's about the right headcount if you're focused and you have a pure play.

Right. Okay. Interestingly, well, I'm a big data guy and have a lot— well, I have access to all the service leadership data. And I happened to— it's one of the things that I look at. Last quarter, the best in class were doing about $279,000 per employee. And we're actually seeing that tick up over time as we're starting to see some gains with AI and those kind of things. We could talk for an hour about all the different data that we're seeing and how things are improving and all that. And I think that's— well, We might we might get into some AI kind of stuff, but you know, but I won't you know argue there as far as like I think I think probably you're not you're not far off as far as number of employees for that you know for that revenue threshold and then and then all that all affects your how much profit you're going to end up making and and all those kind of things too right so because as we know people are Generally speaking, the largest expense.

They really are.

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So I'm interested to hear, like, because you kind of talked a little bit about, you know, running different lines of business and, or different businesses and all of that kind of stuff. That it seems like that threw some wrenches in the gears, so to speak. Maybe talk a little bit about that. Like, what does it cost to, um, to try to run different businesses under the same roof?

Well, I mean, leadership headspace is the most limited, uh, valuable commodity in any business. A lot of people refer to it as your time is really valuable and stuff. I think of it as headspace. Different, different leaders can handle and compartmentalize things differently, but ultimately the stuff that really sticks, the stuff that grows in a business, has leadership behind it. Leadership understands what they're behind. So, it's not just like, yeah, I signed something that went off my desk and I never thought of it again, but leadership's repeating it. They're speaking of it. It's coming up in conversation. Leadership wants to be in the meetings where the strategy's set. You're clearly getting leadership mindshare. And what I saw was, as we were— was as I was trying to spread myself thinner and thinner over multiple initiatives, what was happening was, is, is I was— my leadership mindshare was, was actually not concentrated anywhere. No one could say with any certainty what I really wanted. If I was— if I had gotten to one of those binary things where, do you want option A or option B? And, and if people in your organization can't Channel what you want. They can't channel, yeah, John's gonna go after A because he's already spoken of this so many times. It's obvious choice, obvious option B. There's no way he might want that later, but not until option A is done. You know, if your organization doesn't know that, then that means that you're gonna have all these decision points that get stuck or they go in that the wrong direction. And then you later find out about it and you blow up and you're like, what in the world? This is not what I wanted. And so, that leadership mindshare has to be really solid because you have to keep beating that drum and setting the rhythm. And so, if you don't do that, and thus your people don't know how to channel you and your desires, then you really have constrained what the organization can really do, or you haven't constrained it. And then you're just like, you know what? I've just given up and I don't even know what we do anymore. I don't lead this place anymore. I just show up every day and hopefully it works out. But if you're leading, you're, it means that you're also, you know where things are going and you're helping, um, keep everybody focused on a, on a limited subset of, of initiatives and objectives.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I like that. I, I like your terminology there of, or of like, kind of like the leadership headspace. Um, because I do, I, I, I definitely see that in, in a lot of different contexts with my clients and. Um, where it's like, yeah, I, we, we actually tend to, it's, it's not necessarily the time, it's the focus. And it's, it's, it's what are we giving our attention to? Um, which is perhaps even a more scarce resource than time is our actual attention, right?

Your actual attention.

Yes. And so, so when, you know, and it sounded like you got, you guys ended up, well, you had 2 separate businesses under one roof and you, so you were just like, hey, We just have to split them completely in order for this thing to work.

We've done it multiple times. That's the downside too of a lot of these business lessons. You have to learn them more than once. And so the first lesson we learned was we had a software development group that we created. At the time, it made perfect sense and it was a good idea, right? I mean, people bought what we built. We created a product that went into over 1,000 clinics and hospitals worldwide. I mean, we built a thing that was awesome. However, it created this vision conflict because you couldn't tell what we were— what is our focus? Are we providing IT services and support? Are we managing cybersecurity initiatives? Or are we doing custom application development?

Mm-hmm.

And, and, you know, maybe there's a little bit of brackish space between them where we're hosting those apps and, you know, you need our IT chops to do it. And there's always, there's oftentimes at the time you can justify why you've got this multitude of focal points, but there gets to be a point where, at least what we've seen is on every time we, these initiatives start taking off, these, these brand new initiatives that are not related to IT service and support. They get to the point where there's a critical mass of people. Usually it's around a dozen, 15 people who are now dedicated full-time to supporting that initiative. And yes, you can create a department, you can get a manager over it, et cetera. But what NetFriends failed at each time was it was very clear that the leader— and first, the first mistake was David. The second mistake was mine. That was with the managed security services that we were doing. So I committed the same error that David, the founder of NetFriends, made here, which is we got encaptured by the narrative of that secondary diversion, division, and we basically started confusing the story of NetFriends as if it was that division's story.

story.

So we, we didn't— we neglected to speak to, we neglected to nourish the story of the main company that provides managed services.

Mm-hmm.

And how do you think that lands in the ears of the people who are grinding it out every day, working the tickets and trying to build out their services? It's, it's terrible. Um, and it, it, it's sad because the leader starts pursuing what, what is kind of the bright shiny object. But in both David's instance and in my instance, what was really happening under the— if you peel back that veneer, what was happening under it was it was the part of the business that was the most fragile. We were the most nervous about it, had the most risk associated with it. And so that's how it metastasized in our brain and took over because we were freaking out about it. It wasn't what we started out. It wasn't what we went into business for. But it became this bigger and bigger thing, and we didn't know how to deal with it. And so we talked about it way too much.

Mm-hmm.

That's what he did with software, and it freaked me out because I was on the service side, and I was like, I'm apparently on the losing end of what Netference is going to be. And then for the rest of the company with the security stuff, everybody wanted to be a security analyst. Why did they want to be a security analyst? Well, on one level, I was like, yeah, they want to make more money, but on the other, they wanted to be important. They wanted to be part of what the company seemed to be so hyper-focused on. And while you can say, of course, IT people need to know cybersecurity, for instance, yeah, except they wanted it to a point where it was like you could tell they didn't really know what they were wanting. It was just this like, I just want to matter. I want my work to matter. And I realized later that I was creating that dynamic all over again. And so it's an easy trap, I think, for leaders to fall into because they fall into it because they're freaking out. They're scared of this new thing that is kind of taking off and they don't know why, or they don't— they're afraid of where it's headed.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. And yeah, it's— well, I think we'll get more into that because I think there's— well, there's more of that coming down the road, right? So I actually want to dive in a little bit because you kind of alluded to it earlier and you've mentioned David. Um, and you, and you have kind of a unique journey from a lot of people. Um, and as far as like, you're, you know, you're not the original founder of the company. Um, and you, you mentioned yourself, you were, you were the number 4 employee. And so maybe take us into that journey a little bit, because I think some of the owners are listening to this or thinking, hey, maybe I'd like to transition my business to, um, You know, well, to somebody one day, perhaps to my employees, what might that look like? Um, so, so I think that, I think that'd be a really interesting story to kind of walk through for, for everybody, uh, here. So yeah, maybe give us some insight into that.

Sure. Yeah. So I'm sure everyone's story is unique, but there's also some parts of it that'll rhyme. Um, so my, my story with David was I, was happy being a tech, being a field tech, loved my clients, loved my customers. I did a few things in the early years that I was at NetFriends, and we're talking— I joined NetFriends in 1999, so we had all the fun with Y2K prep and all that. But by 2001, it was pretty clear that there were some crazy viruses going on. There was also some cybersecurity initiatives that were starting. NIST had come out with the 53-800 or 800-53 and all that. And so when we were primarily at a very large healthcare group here in Durham, Duke Medicine, and they wanted to be a HIPAA leader, and I created a recurring service that really was like one of the early MSP-like things. We rolled it out in 2003. And the idea was, is I was gonna commit to doing a key set of tasks for them every single day, every week, every month, every quarter, and every year. And, um, and I can rattle off what those are if you like. They're, they're weirdly still in my brain. Um, all the things. But we created a recurring revenue service model. We've been hourly support up until that point. So this is the first time we had recurring reliable revenue each month. And I was able to work on making it more efficient, et cetera. So I earned my opportunity to say, I would like to be an owner, 'cause I had done a lot of great work, grew our customer base in a big way at Duke, even though there was a lot of reasons for us to have lost Duke along the way as they became more and more mature operationally themselves. So I was able to become the premier IT group that we signed an exclusive deal with Duke in like 2008, that if you wanted anything that the Duke Health technology group couldn't provide, you had to go to NetFriends. Like, that was a pretty amazing get.

Yeah.

Plus I had the recurring revenue that never was broken, kept increasing, you know, was, was, uh, we never lost a customer, you know, all that stuff was going on. So Those things really helped propel me, um, into David's office and say, hey, I would, in lieu of compensation increase, I would like an opportunity to potentially be an owner. Um, I, I asked for that. I think I was like 27 or 28 when I asked for it. I think David was like, how old are you again? And I told him, he was like, you're a baby. You're a child. And I was like, you can't own my company. I know. And he said those words to you. And I was like, um, I, I find that a little offensive. I was like, I think, I think I'm probably your most productive child you've ever hired. Um, and, um, and so I could go on from there, but he, he did, it took him like, I don't know, it took him 18 interminable months to sort out his personal finance ties to the business because David had bought a building, as a lot of MSPs have bought the building that their main operations in, but he had, um, he had not set it up as a separate LLC.

Right.

And he didn't want to give me access to the building because he bought a building in downtown Durham off Main Street in 1998. And boy, by 10 years after that, it was worth a lot more than he paid for it. So he didn't want to give me that. He didn't want to, he didn't want to give me that software, uh, custom app business either. I didn't want it. Um, and so we had, he had to like decouple a lot of that stuff. I'll pause here because I don't want to keep going on and on, but there's definitely some period, some things we probably should talk about that happened during that 18 months that was pretty, pretty interesting. But yeah, anyway, I'll, I'll pause there in case you want to divert, go in a different direction.

Yeah, no, I mean, I, no, I think that's great. Um, so, so So that 18 months was kind of a waiting period. He had to do some work on all of that. And then, so essentially you were the one who said, hey, I want in, as opposed to him saying, hey, I'm looking to exit. Is this something you're interested in? So that's unique in and of itself. And then, yeah, and then kind of maybe take us from there. Like what happened? How did you get, you know, how did he come around? Um, how did you go about buying what you bought? Uh, all that kind of a thing.

Well, um, I got some great advice from one of my clients. Um, such a, it's such a neat thing. I can remember, uh, her name was Babs and she, so Babs was like the head general manager of this very large law firm that I supported. And Babs told me this story about how the head of that law firm brought in his first partner, and she told me how excited he was. He was bequeathing all this wealth and riches because now this guy was going to have access to the profitability of this very large law firm. And she told me that when he offered it to this now junior partner, He just got pummeled with all these nitpicky requests and questions, you know, wanting to get down into the, well, what happens in this scenario? And what about this? And what about that? And she said every question was like a paper cut, and it just ground down that, um, that experience for the, the person, you know, the, the senior partner offering this, this opportunity to the junior partner. So much so, she said that he came to her after it was all done and said, let's never do that again. That sucked. And so she told me this story and because she knew that I was, I was really hoping to get ownership. Um, cause I was, I just opened up to her. I was very, very, she's a wonderful lady and someone that, uh, uh, just felt comfortable sharing this with. And so she told me that story and what that, what I took from that was. I needed to be the most patient human being on the planet during this period of time where David had to sort things out. And when I say 18 interminable months, I didn't get updates. I mean, he said, yeah, okay, I'll consider it. And then he just kind of like a submarine sank beneath the waves. And I hope he's coming back.

I don't know.

I mean, there's no— there was nothing. And so the meeting where he decided that he was gonna split everything in, I wasn't even in that meeting. I found out 2 weeks after it happened from someone, from another employee who was in that meeting that said, congrats on the ownership. I guess it's now time to celebrate that with you. And I was like, what?

What?

And he's like, yeah, yeah, you got ownership, man. Good for you. And I was like, How do you know I was going for ownership? And he's like, oh yeah, you know, David mentioned it. And yeah, he said he's going to split the company and you're going to get that. I was like, he's okay. That's great. Good to know. And I, you know, wow. And so I reached out to David and he's like, oh yeah, I've been meaning to talk to you.

Yes. You're going to be an owner.

It's like, wow, man.

Cool.

Last to know. Good to know. Good, good stuff.

Holy moly.

Yeah, it was really weird because, you know, anyone who's doing it the first time, you're bad at it. He was, he was, I think, spectacularly bad at it. That, that does kind of take the cake. But, but I think I had enculturated him so much to not asking about it, right, that he had, he had kind of gotten used to not talking about it.

Mm-hmm.

But anyway, I know that seems kind of weird and sad, but I like took that story to Babs to heart and I was like, I'm not going to ask questions. I'm going to let David get through. Get to where he's going to get at the speed he's going to get there. I did put instead of asking questions, I did note things that I would do once I had ownership, just so he had an idea of what I was looking for and what I was going for, which he responded to positively. That's how I knew I was still in the running. That's how I knew it was going to happen eventually. But it took me being at Neffrens for about 10 years before I got Uh, that 2% ownership. Um, and I do wanna say that I, I didn't feel like, uh, and he gave it to me, by the way. That was, that was a surprise. He didn't make me buy in. He just said, here's 2%.

Mm-hmm.

Now, after I had that 2% ownership, I, we, uh, and the company split. So now I had 16 people, um, that were part of NetFriends, including myself. We grew 40% year over year for 4 straight years.

Wow.

And, and that's what focus can give you. It can really make you just, you know, instead of, instead of having all these discussions that are about half of the business versus the whole business, we were just all in and it was, it was fantastic. And I think that kind of growth can happen at any point in time with any MSP. There was nothing special about 2009 other than the fact that the Great Recession had just happened and there was no justification for a business to grow. But we grew like gangbusters after that.

And, um, wow.

And so point being is even in a period of, I think a lot of people called that a muddle-through macroeconomic thing, we were just taking off.

Wow. That's fantastic, man. Okay. And then, and so, so you ended up, so you had 2%, it was, and you guys split off, you grew significantly. Um, is, is he still involved with the business?

He was, he was still involved, but the way, so as 2009 started, I took over operations fully. So pretty much I was calling all the shots. Um, we didn't have a sales or marketing arm, so, you know, mostly I was out selling and winning new business. Um, my partner, my business partner, Neelash, he, um, we hired him in 2008. By 2010, he was really helping me sell.

Okay.

Um, and so I think a lot of those subsequent 40% growth years I attribute to Neelash more than I attribute to anybody else. And that's why he's my business partner, is because by the time, um, 2012 rolled around, when we'd done that 40% year-over-year growth, I mean, I could see so much of that growth came from Neelish's customer base, his, his book of business. And, um, and it wasn't until 2014 when I really formalized with David, like, this is my future business partner. So when you, when you exit, David, I'm going to want to be running this place with Neelish. Um, And so what had happened was, is by 2012, because of all that growth, David continued to gift me shares.

Okay.

So I got to 49% by 2012. So it was a very rapid progression from 2% up to 49%. That was unexpected and not part of a plan. David just did it because he's a big-hearted, good guy. And I do think I gave him a little bit of ribbing about how dark that period was when he was on his life quest, I guess, trying to figure out what he wanted.

Right.

So, yeah, the Neil story is its own story, but so I'll kind of finish mine up here, which is like David was involved in really just administrative decisions, and in my mind, I kept thinking of David as The, the guy who could write a big check if we needed it, right? He's the capital source. Um, and he was more hands-off, kind of like shifting away from that owner-operator into just an owner role with the admin staff. Really, um, they mostly directly reported to him, mainly because he became a serial entrepreneur after he gifted me these shares.

Hmm.

So he became— he bought a pizza parlor. He, He got his real estate license and bought a bunch of, um, condos and, and, and warehouses and facilities in and around the Durham area. He started a skincare business. He just did all these different things after. Um, and so he was, even if he was here, he was probably on the phone with somebody related to his other businesses.

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. Okay. And then, um, I thought it was interesting that, well, actually you're, so at this point, like today, where does it sit? Is it, um, David's completely out?

Completely out.

Okay. And it's you and Neelish, your business partner at this point.

Yeah. So yeah, the progression of ownership goes 100% David all the way up to 2009. I became 2% and then I like 10%, 25%. 49% very quickly. So now by 2012, David's 51, I'm 49. By 2016, I started giving 2% a year to Neelash up to a 10% vesting. So he— I went from 49% to 47% all the way down to 39%. And Neelash started adding 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. And then the next year after that progression, I, I had negotiated with David that it was time for his exit. This is the best time. It was right after COVID. I was like, you know, you're awesome. You helped us, you know, weather COVID. What a great highlight. It's, it's time to drive off into the sunset. He agreed readily. It was not messy. He was like, yeah, it's time.

Yeah.

I'm doing all these other stuff. I'm ready to move away from Durham even. You know, like he's, his, his wife was living by the coast. He was like, yeah, it's time.

Yeah.

So he drove off into the sunset and he, he did a really neat thing too for me in, in 2020, which was, you know, he's been gifting me these shares all along and we just came up with a strategy that would allow us to basically keep paying him. for like the next decade, if you will, in exchange for his shares. So it was more of like an easy peasy, just kind of keep my standard of living solid and I'm comfortable exiting the business.

Gotcha. Okay. Very cool. That's great. And I wanted to go back to something real quick, which was just that like 18-month period. It sounds like Um, you know, which is, which is kind of how, uh, when I walk into a lot of MSPs, it's, it's kind of like, uh, the books were a little messy and/or, and/or a lot messy. There's personal stuff running through there. There's, you know, a building where it shouldn't be, all of that. I mean, and what's, you know, I guess, uh, the question there would be, um, Well, I guess it's more of a statement, which is, hey, don't do that. And what I tell people all the time is it's like, hey, this is not your personal piggy bank, right? This is like a real business. And if you want to sell the business one day, well, why not have it ready to sell now as opposed to having to fix a whole bunch of stuff or answer a whole bunch of questions about your weird financials that have strange things running through them and all of that kind of a thing. But, and I'd imagine things look different, much different now than they did then. But yeah, what do you, do you have anything to add to that as far as like what the amount of work that had to go in there and the effect of that?

Oh yeah, it was a hot mess. So I think, I think David was probably in the more extreme end of enmeshment with his personal life and other things. It was, it was definitely It was a byproduct of something, a business coming out of the '90s. We didn't have that discrete personal email, business email stuff. Just imagine that on steroids on everything.

Yeah.

Um, the, the things I would add would be it took him and his accountants, um, a weird 3 extra months after he gave me ownership To deal with it, so what what had happened was is so Net Friends folks who were hired as of January first, two thousand nine, they ended up getting their pay stubs from a company called the RDU Web. For that was weird, and and so there were these overt you couldn't hide it weird aspects of the of the split and the change. He um. He had a lot of issues, uh, in that first year, even showing me a profit and loss statement. Like, it took me— so I was an owner for 10 months. So it wasn't until like October of 2009 before I saw my very first profit and loss statement. And, you know, you can get away with this when you give shares, right?

Yeah.

So like, I, I had a certain You know, if you were buying in, of course you wouldn't tolerate that. But I would ask, I was like, can I see the P&L? And he's like, oh, this RDU thing, RDU web thing, it's messing things up. I'll get it to you as soon as I can. I can't show you too much because there's too much, there's too much in there. And I was like, okay, I guess. Uh, never mind. I didn't know enough, like you can filter that or redact it or export it to Excel and do a little work. Um, but he never, I kind of accepted that.

Mm-hmm.

And, and it wasn't until October when I saw it. And, and by the way, the P&L that he shared with me was terrible. Um, we were not, we were not profitable. It was a hot mess. Um, I had inherited ownership and, and something that I, I think we ended 2009 with $14,000 of profit.

Wow.

And, and when you're a 2% owner, I mean, that's $280.

Yeah. Congratulations.

Congratulations. Lots of liability and exposure and stress for nothing. And, um, and so, you know, one of the things that was nice is we, I grew it and grew it and grew it. And we ended up, I think, I think by 2012, now granted I didn't have managers, but if memory serves, it was like 35, 38% profit.

Wow.

Way too much profit. 'Cause it was, I didn't invest in overhead, um, to make it sustainable.

Uh, that took another couple years to, to backfill and do that, but figure that out. Yeah.

But I mean, one of the things that David deprived me of during that 18 months was, was financial education. I went in as an ignorant owner. I went in unaware of our finances, unaware of what was moving the needle. He couldn't tell either, which wasn't good. Unaware of what our profits were, what, what drove profits, all those things. And I had to figure that out on my own without, without that, you know, foresight, which would have been nice for me to hit the ground running. Um, and, and obviously I did, I was operating blind for the first year of ownership, which isn't good.

No, no. And, and, and, uh, it's interesting too that, I mean, there's, there are so many MSPs that are, well, they, they're, they fly blind to this day, right? Like, uh, and they may be able to tell. Well, the biggest indication is how much cash is in the bank as to whether or not they're doing well. Thomas Davids. Yep.

How much cash is in the bank?

Yeah. It's like, okay, well we got cash, we're good. It's like, well, we don't have cash. What happened? It's like, well, we gotta go, we gotta back way up before that to understand why that's the case. And getting the numbers right, it's kind of like the, you know, it's the scoreboard. The finances are the scoreboard and they're the language of business. And so, Um, if, if you don't have your financials right, well, well, you got some problems. Um, and, and bonus, there's like, there's methodology for this across the industry. There's a normalized chart of accounts for, um, for MSPs, for instance, that you can, that you can use. And, and that way your numbers look like everybody else's, so you can be benchmarked and, and all of those kind of things. And, uh, a lot of, a lot of folks are missing that piece. So, um, Yeah. So, and I do want one more thing. I mean, you, you'd kind of mentioned, you, you know, kind of choosing your business partner and, and wanting to, you know, wanting to have a business partner. There's a lot of guys out there who are a lot of owners who want to go it alone. Like what made you say, yeah, I actually want to do this with somebody?

Well, I mean, whether it was true or not, it could have been a fiction in my head. I've been running NetFriends with David. So there had been, I'd felt a sense of partnership already, and I knew that I was part of David's succession plan, and I did not like the idea of me running it as 100% owner all by myself. Um, and I, I also just, just philosophically, I, I like the idea of someone who is my direct peer. who has similar stakes, similar need for this to succeed. It's their singular play. One of the things that made me drift from David more than anything was the fact that he was a serial entrepreneur and I wasn't. This is my one egg basket. And so when I was looking for a partner, I was looking for someone who was gonna be like-minded in a lot of different ways, And, and there were so many things about Neelash that made him such a clear fit as a partner. And some of it was we had kids similar ages and we had actually, without planning, we had ended up both joining a similar kind of preschool and it was a co-op. So the way you, you know, you basically paid for being in this preschool was with your time. You had to show up. You had to be a teacher to help out with these 3, 4, and 5-year-olds, and Neelish and I both did this, and we both were there, and his kids were there, my kids were there, and so for the longest time, my kids referred to him as Teacher Neelish, and his kids referred to me as Teacher John because those were the rules at school. And so we had a lot of deep personal ties, And that gave us plenty of opportunity to have conversations. And, and, and also he just earned it. He crushed it. When you, when you see somebody who understands how to make your business grow, that's someone you want to, you want to have as a partner. Because he, he gets what makes NetFriends get customers excited, get them to stay with us, get them to recommend us, get them to bring that hard-to-hear feedback because they care and they want us to make things better. He did all that. He was so good at that and is so good at that. And so when I saw that, I was like, that's the business partner I want. And it was really, I mean, we had this meeting in September of 2014 that I called, we have a Neilish problem. And, um, and that got David to the meeting because David was also famous for not going to meetings he didn't want to go to. But I knew he would be like, oh crap, there's a Neelish problem. I gotta have— I gotta be there for that. And my— it was a bit of a bait and switch because I was like, the Neelish problem is not current, but imagine if we don't give him ownership and he leaves. And, and I knew that one of the reasons David gave me ownership was also in his own head. This is a way to lash me to the post, to bind me to the business so I couldn't leave. Um, and, and so I knew that argumentation would work with him too. And, and I said, the way— the best way to solve the Neilish problem is to allow me— because David still was the majority owner, I needed, I needed the shareholder votes. Um, I needed him to, uh, allow me to complicate his succession plan by having another partner in the mix.

Yeah.

Which he was not keen on unless I could frame it in a way that I'm like, I'm mitigating a risk here. Um, I'm protecting the business from what would be a Neil-ish threat if he was on the outside, because I did not want to compete with that guy.

Yeah. Love it. Okay. That's awesome, man. Um, uh, in, in, in such a unique story, I mean, I think it's, it's something that's like, okay, you know, We often hear very similar stories, but I love what you guys have going on and everything. I wanted to pivot a little bit because we talked probably a couple of years ago and things were, you know, sales was a little slow and that kind of a thing. And, you know, you've made some changes and from what I understand, it's going pretty well.

Yeah.

What do you see as As, uh, yeah, what do you see as the, the shifts there and, and what's actually filling the pipeline? Because what was working before, um, well, it hasn't been working. Um, so what's been working for you guys and, and how are you, how are things going so well over there?

Yeah, I mean, the main thing is a system. We've got a really good sales system and a marketing system. Um, so we, we do sales and marketing in-house here, and I think that's important for a lot of businesses. Um, we've, we've done— we've, we've used outsourced, um, lead gen, outsourced marketing, you know, to, to fill in gaps. If you're scaling and you're growing, totally great, fill those gaps with a vendor. Um, but I remember someone telling me that You almost always have to rotate these every 1 to 2 years because they run out of their bag of tricks. Um, so you just gotta be aware that if you do bring in outside help or a vendor to help you with marketing your sales, chances are it is a short-term play, not a long-term play. The long-term play is in-housing it, cuz then you can really build and iterate and design a system.

Yeah.

Cuz, uh, cuz you can, Analyze what's working, what's not working, improve it, train your folks, change what you do. We put our systems in our ticketing system. We use Halo PSA, so everyone in marketing and sales uses all the systems in Halo. We have an integration with HubSpot. That's definitely our sales automation system and our marketing automation system, but all the workload, you know, who's gonna write that blog, who's gonna create the micrographic, You know, the, the sales opportunities that my team identifies, all that stuff needs to be in our ticketing system too, because there's operational pieces to do it. Um, what we— when, when you and I talked 2 years ago and we were struggling, we were systemless, and that was the problem.

Mm-hmm.

What we had done is we had hired a rockstar salesperson, we had rockstar account managers, and we didn't know how they did what they did. We didn't know how they converted. They, we just knew they did. And it was really nice when it worked.

Right.

Once it stopped working, we had no ability to help 'em. They had no ability to articulate what was going wrong. It was not good. And, and so after you and I spoke, we spent a, a good long season building up Our sales system. And, and that meant we're doing the same things every time, analyzing what we're doing, fixing and repairing what's not working, studying the wins, studying the losses. That's the difference. And it's just like, roll up the sleeves, do the work, watch all the sales meetings, take notes, you know, because our salespeople will always tell you the meeting was great. Such a good meeting. And then you go look at it and you're like, you talked 90% of the time. No wonder you liked it.

Yeah.

So, you know, you know, so we had to analyze everything and, and, you know, we did, we did use some outside help to help us analyze. Eric Simpson, for instance, great guy. He helped us identify a lot of things early in the path. And we brought in, uh, you know, Marketopia, Terry, uh, uh, he's great, you know. So we, we did use some outside help to help us Look at our systems from a systems perspective.

Yeah.

And, um, and that was very, very helpful. Yeah, I could go on, but I— yeah, that's the difference is like you, you got to get a system and stick with it.

Yeah. Well, and I think, I think in a lot of ways as you're growing an MSP, um, that is the word system and actually having a system is important in most every aspect of the business in order to actually scale, right? You grow with systems, not with just throwing people at problems, right? Um, so, so I'm curious—

Real fast, just, just to make sure that everyone understands, the system is, is like, we always do this in the first meeting. We always close that first meeting with this kind of a question, right? We go into the second meeting and we always bring the following into it. That's what I mean by system, just so people don't think it's like a big— we were like, We got to do these things every time.

Okay. Anyway, yeah, no, an actual sales process and then following that process. Here's meeting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Here's what you talk. Here's the gate to get into it. Here's the gate to get out of it. Here's the information you need to have by the time you leave. Like all of those kinds of things. Absolutely. And I've, I've, um, I've, I've put together something kind of like that for, for a lot of my clients that is, um, you know, that Could be helpful for— if anybody's interested in that, hit me up. I'm happy to share it. Um, but, uh, so, so yes. So a system like that. And then, and then what are, I mean, where are the leads coming from? Like, how are you, how are you bringing in leads where you couldn't before? Um, what is it, you know, what is it, what does the marketing piece look like even? What, you know, people are like, hey, I've been trying to do this thing. It's not working for me. What, what are you doing differently?

Yeah, I articulate this in a few marketing and sales podcasts I've been on. So I'll give the, I'll give the very, very short version, which is Back in 2000, late 2004, we decided we were going to do 2 things in parallel. We were going to do cold calling and we were going to really put a lot of energy into multiple marketing channels. Um, and, and like, for instance, we were going to record videos, get them like ready in like 30-second, you know, ads, and then put them on LinkedIn in a very specialized plan. Um, so, so we ran these 2 things in parallel and what we saw all throughout, all throughout, uh, 2025, we got multiple leads. I, I think our, our total lead count was, I don't know, 180, you know, first meetings kind of leads, right?

Mm-hmm.

And, and, um, we converted 24 clients, many of them really big.

Mm-hmm.

You know, like, you know, we had a 5,000 headcount client, um, you know, huge campus network. There were some really big ones in there. The, um, what we saw with those 2 things running in parallel, the best thing was, is the cold caller gave our salespeople the most times at bat.

Mm-hmm.

They were crappy leads if you look at 'em, but they kept us iterating on the first phases of our sales process. which is a critical part. Like, how do you get to that next meeting? That was really helpful for us in early 2025. Meanwhile, marketing is building because that's what marketing does. It just builds and builds. It gets those brand impressions and your name's out there and people are consuming little bite-sized pieces of your thought content. It's like they're starting to get it.

Yeah.

That going in concert meant that when the marketing lead started really swelling as the year went on, sales was much more ready for it. And so we converted so much more from May onwards. The first 4 months, we had a few wins that made it feel good, but it really picked up steam from May onwards. And that was— I think those 2 running in parallel helped us make sure that sales was ready when marketing started really producing more and more marketing qualified leads.

Okay. Yeah. And, and is that, I mean, you mentioned 2 things, the cold calling and the, in, in, in LinkedIn. Is that, is that the main source of your leads at this point?

I would say, I would say it goes in layers. So layer number one is probably your traditional email marketing. We find that, um, every converted lead, they are, they have been exposed as an organization to our emails. Somewhere between 20 and 300 times.

Wow.

So, so that's— so there's this like awareness level that comes from a traditional channel like email.

You—

and, and I think postcards would do it, something that can't— that's, you know, they're throwing it away, but they couldn't help but see it.

Right.

Um, and, and then, um, the cold calling and the LinkedIn ads I think are on par. They build on top of that. It's the second impression when they're a bit more ready to click on something. That came in next, um, as like sitting on top of that awareness. And then, um, we, we were out and about more this year. We're doing a lot more with events and we're gonna see how that plays out when I like analyze all the data at the end of the year.

Mm-hmm.

Because that's the newest layer we're adding. So in addition to the cold call and, um, the, the LinkedIn ad strategy, We're also doing event-driven strategy that's focused on our vertical that we're, that we're really digging into. So that's, um, that's a, a new open channel that I'm, I'm gonna be assessing and seeing how, how well that turns over the next 6 months.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Gotcha. Very, very cool. Thanks for sharing that. Um, hey, I'm always interested to hear like, where, where are those sales coming from? Where are those leads coming from? Um, I do. So, so just as we kind of like begin to wrap up, I'm, I'm curious as to your thoughts. I have my opinions on, on this or in data, right? But when you think about like, you know, an MSP at $10 million, um, what does good look like as far as profitability goes?

Um, I mean, I, I think Sleek has it right. I mean, 18% is, is the target. It's what you should hit. Um, that, that makes you best in class. Uh, you definitely have so many economies of scale because like tooling is very small portion of our budget. Um, you know, tools just don't cost that much. Um, I even, I mean, our token spend is actually really, really low, even though we use AI a ton, but it's really because we use AI in a way that's token conscious and, and, and we're using We're shaping the instruction set and the context window on all of our different tools as narrowly as we can. So, you know, you really do have a lot of automation and a lot of things and the ability for that automation and scaling to start really bringing in benefits.

Mm-hmm.

So yeah, I think, I think 18 to 20% is, is absolutely the target. I heard someone say that like 10% profit is break-even now. And just given the risks, given the threats that are out there, the fact that there could be, you know, like COVID, we saw that, we saw the Great Recession. I mean, there've been these moments of capital contraction.

Yeah.

And if you aren't maintaining a 10% profit margin, then you're Pretty vulnerable to that. And, and, and here's the thing, let's assume you're an MSP that is at 0%, 1%, 2% profit margin, and you're like, yeah, but I just can't, I can't get to that, I can't, uh, that, that's, that number's way too high. I've been in that headspace before.

Right, right.

I guarantee you there's a, there's an MSP that's half your size that would kill for your customer base Mm-hmm. And they could, they would swap with you in a heartbeat and they would, they would enjoy the profits that you're not willing to, to get. Like as a leader, you have to say, you have to budget for it and you have to, you have to determine that I'm gonna hit that profit number. And, and yeah, you're not gonna get there in a quarter. It's not gonna happen overnight, but you gotta make hard choices cuz any, Any amount of revenue that you have can be supported by a profitable operational apparatus under it.

Absolutely.

And you just have to, you have to recognize that if you're not willing to do what it takes to get to 15, 18, 20% profit, it's really because you're holding onto something. And, and I get it. I've been there. I've held onto stuff that was unprofitable because it's going to turn a corner or whatever, but you have to recognize what is your, What's your, what your duty as a leader is to make sure that the business is capitalized appropriately and is, has enough, is, is basically is in the black.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm not trying to, you know, make enemies or anything, uh, but, you know, you just gotta, you gotta look at yourself really hard in the mirror and say, why am I allowing us to not be profitable? What, why am I, why am I doing that? Why am I tolerating that?

Yeah.

Because it, because it, it's you, the leader, not Not anyone else.

Nobody else's problem, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And, and what, you know, it happens that we agree on this, uh, on this topic. So, uh, yeah. So yeah. And even this, you know, to kind of expand this last quarter, um, the best-in-class number, uh, for profitability according to Service Leadership Data was 23%. It was a little over 23 point something percent, right? So that's the midpoint of the top quartile of performers. To get into that top quartile, it was something like 17.3%. But then once you get there, the average was, was over 23%. Um, median somewhere around 11%, like the average of all MSPs. And then the bottom quartile basically breaks even.

Of all sizes in all metro areas. I mean, that's the thing. Like you can go to any metro area and you can find MSPs that are $1 million in gross. $3 million in gross, $5 million gross, $10 million gross, $50 million in gross. And they're all in that spectrum of being able to, to command those profits. Um, so it's not, it's not about your gross number. It's really about whether you've got the discipline to say, I'm going to hit this profit target and we're going to make it happen.

Yep, absolutely. Well, I would say that, and, and this was, this is like, this always upset me, like, like back when I was not best in class and running an MSP. That it was like, hey, it has nothing to do with anything, the size of your company, the geo, all of that stuff. It's really the skill of the management team, the skill of the ownership, and the ability to execute to a plan. And that just upset me. I was like, no, no, no, it has to be something else. It can't be me. It can't be my problem. I was like, no, no, it is. Right. And so it is.

So I have been, the leader of an unprofitable MSP for years. This is the only place I've been, um, you know, at an MSP and running an MSP. I've been here, gosh, over 27 years, and I can, I can point to the majority of my time as a leader. I budgeted to a loss like every year. If you, if you, if you want to be honest, I, I literally was like, yeah, let's, let's, let's go into next year. Let's lose some money. And, and enjoy it.

Yeah.

But, but no, we're not buying, we're not buying fun stuff. We're gonna grind it out. We're probably gonna have some tears.

Mm-hmm.

It's gonna suck. And let's do that. Let's do it. That'll be, that'll be great. And I did that year after year. And I mean, I would never have framed it that way at the time. Oh, we're investing in this. I had all sorts of spin, but the, if you boil down to what I was doing, I was like, yeah. Let's not be profitable again. Yeah.

Yeah. It's terrible. It's crazy. It's crazy what we do to ourselves. But the great thing is all of this stuff is learnable, right? And, and, and there's a model, there's a formula, there's a model I've, I've built out. I've got a model that, uh, I'm happy to share with folks of like, hey, here's exactly what it looks like in your financials to be best in class. And, uh, and, and the great thing is it's all learnable. Um, and, and it's, and it's been done before, and so you can do it too, right? Like, everybody can do it. Um, and so it's just, it's just making that choice and, and like you said, being, being willing to, uh, to execute to it. So that's right.

Um, your model is really good too, Brian. I mean, you, you really, yeah, you've got it dialed in. The hard part is, is it's simple to, to learn it, simple to see it, but it's really hard to then turn into your business and execute. That's where It's just, it genuinely is hard and I'm not trying to dismiss that. Um, but it is, it is completely within the power of whoever's leading an MSP to decide to today's the day I'm not going to continue to lose. I'm going to start winning.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, John, uh, like, I feel like we need to do a whole other episode because this, we didn't, we barely like are scratching the surface of some of the stuff I wanted to get to. Um, but I do want to, I always love to ask this before we wrap up and then, and then I've got like a, a rapid-fire round, but when you think about, uh, like over the years, what is the biggest mistake that you made as a leader?

Oh, such a long list. Um, I mean, the biggest mistake that I've made is, is not budgeting. A budget is the, the, and, and holding yourself to that budget. That's how you achieve what you set out to achieve. It, it It keeps you honest and true. And a budget is a promise to your future self and the rest of the team that I'm, this is my plan. This is what I'm gonna stick to. Um, that's probably my biggest— I, I went through years without budgeting or budgeting seriously. And, and I think a lot of the things I talked about here, they, they hang off the wireframe of a budget, a budget that has got an aggressive target that you're gonna go after that's achievable and that, and, you know, trying to be a best in class. And if you, if you budget to that, that's, that's the— I wish I had done that earlier. Once I started doing that, everything else got a lot easier.

Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely. Um, and so many people, uh, well, yeah, most, I would say, venture to say most MSPs, um, enter the year with no budget. Um, and then they wonder why they didn't hit their targets. Right. It's like, well, wait a minute. What target? Yeah, exactly. What targets are we talking about here? Well, John, this has been, yeah, well, yeah, and I think that's a great answer. And I'd go one further, which lives like at a foundation below the budget is to say, what kind of like a value creation model or a plan, right? Like what kind of value am I trying to create in this business and why and over what time period? And so like, that's like, The thing that the budget rests on top of that makes sure that you're actually going, the business is going where you want it to go from a financial perspective. And we could have a whole other conversation based on that. But yeah, so, okay. So as we wrap up, quick rapid fire here. Just first thing that comes to mind. What is a belief that you've changed your mind on Recently?

Oh gosh. Belief of— oh my gosh, that's a stumper. I would say that you need to have AI everywhere in your organization. I think it's— AI is good in some places, and deterministic outcomes still has a lot of value. And so don't just put AI into everything. Initially, I was like feeling like maybe it needs to be everywhere, but be more selective.

Okay. Okay. And what's something that you've been curious about lately?

Curious? I'm always curious. I'm curious And this is going to be definitely geeking out, but I'm curious when, like, quantum computing is going to create problems I have to solve.

Hmm. Interesting. We'll just, we'll just leave that one hanging in the air. What's one thing that you can't live without in your daily routine?

Exercise.

Okay.

That is precious.

Yeah. Okay. And then like after hours, weekends, what's, what's your, what's your favorite way to unwind?

Playing video games with my kids. I, my dad never played video games with me and I always wondered why, because like it's so much fun. And, and I was worried that when I would get older, I wouldn't want to do that. And it is such a great way to bond with your kids and And, you know, really share, like meeting them where they're at and we're all having fun. Like we play like Spider Heck together. We're 2 little spiders with big weapons trying to kill each other. So much fun.

That's great. I love it. I love it. Okay. And then what, what is, um, a book or an idea or a piece of advice that has shaped you the most?

Um, honestly, I'm an— I'm a big fiction, you know, fantasy guy. So, I mean, Um, you know, obviously I've read, you know, The Good to Great and, and Traction and lots of other business books, but the, the books that shaped me the most are, you know, the fantasy books that really get at like these truths that are, that take you on a story. So I'm like a huge Brandon Sanderson fan.

Oh, goodness.

Um, yeah, I love, I love the Way of Kings series, which is a, it's an undertaking, lots of pages.

It is.

It is.

So good.

Um, so, so those, those helped me like really sit back and think creatively and think about, cuz it's a world building thing. And I, I love world-building and it, anyone who's a leader and trying to be a visionary and think about the next thing, you need to have some world-building capabilities in your own head. How do you construct the future in your mind? And, you know, business books are good, don't get me wrong, but the stuff that I think I draw from the most, it, it is things that come from fiction novels and whatnot. So don't feel guilty reading a book for pleasure.

Yeah.

Um, it's, it's part of like giving you some, some additional inputs that come from, from nowhere. Like a lot of the business books, everyone's reading the same ones, but, um, your specific menu of fiction books is yours and yours alone.

There you go. We, I mean, and we rarely talk about fiction books, but I'm, I'm actually in the, uh, I think I'm on the near the end of the 3rd book, my 2nd time through. trying to make it through of the, of the Way of Kings series. So it's, I mean, worldbuilding is right. I mean, it's a whole thing.

Um, it's amazing.

It closes so strong. Oh, good. I can only imagine. I can only imagine. So, um, well, okay, John, thanks so much for taking the time. Um, and if somebody wanted to get ahold of you or whatnot, what would be the best way for people to connect with you?

Yeah, LinkedIn's great. I mean, um, on LinkedIn all the time. So, John Snyder. I'm the only one at NetFriends named John Snyder. When I was at school, there were 3 John Snyders. That was kind of weird. Got a lot of their mail. But, but yeah, so that— just reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm very eager to engage and, and we can, we can set up a meeting and continue the conversation anyway.

Nice. Love it. Love it. Awesome. Well, John, Thanks so much for sharing. Uh, this has been really great and, um, really appreciate your time, man.

Thank you, Brian. Thank you for all that you're doing to give back too. I, I think you, you know, with this podcast, through your business, you are doing such good work to, to bring the good word to so many MSPs that need it. So thank you. I, I really sincerely appreciate it. We all need to win. We all need to succeed, and you're making sure that happens.

That means a lot, man. Yeah, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm here to serve, uh, as in as many ways as I can. And, and this is, this is all part of that. And, and guys like you doing this are, are all a part of that. And that means a lot. So thank you for, for saying that. And, um, all right. And we will see everybody on the next episode. 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 Yeah. So take the assessment. It'll 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.