The $18M MSP Bottleneck Was The CEO w/ Clay Harris

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. Well, hey, welcome back, um, to the $10 Million MSP Podcast. Uh, my guest today is Clay Harris. Um, I've known Clay for a long time. We were in peer groups together back in, I don't know, starting in like 2010 or something like that. Um, Clay is, uh, has since, um, exited MSP and is an EOS implementer. Um, excited to have a conversation today. Clay, man, welcome to the show.

I don't— thank you, Brian. It's a weird thing to think that, uh, that was that long ago. It feels like yesterday, but—

I know, right? It just means like we're getting old or something. Nope. Nope.

Nope. Nope.

Okay. I mean, we're not getting old.

My youngest daughter likes to joke with me that, uh, she's only 6 years away from, uh, going to college. And I tell her that that's not allowed. So we'll see.

That is a no. Yeah, that's a no. So, okay. Awesome, man. Well, well, so, so I want to start with a question for you. Um, and, and the, that question is like, what do you think that most, um, MSP owners get wrong about growing their MSP?

Start with a hard one. Is that the plan? Start with a hard one?

No, yeah, yeah. Start. No, that's an easy one. That's a, that's a, that's a slam dunk. It's a softball.

Well, hmm, what do they get wrong? I think, uh, I, I'm actually going to answer it with, with 2 answers. Uh, one of them is they create a little bit too much chaos in their business, right? Like it's like a ready, fire, aim kind of approach. And they, they're just kind of like, whether it's week, day to day, hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month, they're Changing tools, changing invoices, whatever, like too much chaos. And the other side of that coin are the, are the people who are running MSPs who are doing the opposite, which is ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, right? And they, they kind of never get to a point where they're making a decision.

Mm-hmm.

And so like with the, with the With the work that I do now in EOS, it's, I see both of those and it, and it plagues all business owners. So I would say finding that balance is the thing that's, that we're all chasing of making the right decision in the right amount of time. Uh, but I see, to answer your question, that's the thing that I wish people could like course correct a little bit better on.

Yeah, no, totally makes sense. That's, that's good. Yeah. And we can, we can definitely, um, You know, dive into some of that. I think, um, you know, what I want to do before we do that is just give people a context of like where you came from. Like, um, you know, obviously you grew an MSP, you've been, had multiple, held multiple positions inside that MSP. So like maybe just take us on your journey of like, how did you, how'd you start? How'd you grow it? Where did it get to? Um, how'd you leave it? You know, all of that.

Yeah, for sure. I, uh, sure. My, uh, I went to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, um, which means I'm a Tar Heel, famous alumni. Mike, me and Michael Jordan went there.

Um, right, right on the same par, obviously.

Yeah, of course. Um, and, uh, my senior year of college was 2001, which post-Y2K, but also right when the dot-com bubble was bursting. Like, we were probably, we were doing this all around the same time, right, Ryan? But Yeah. Um, and we didn't have any, you know, job prospects were kind of a little bit hard to find. And one day, uh, one of my good friends said, hey, I met a couple of guys and they're going to try to start an IT company. It was a different kind of company back then, but I was like, I got nothing to do. Let's figure it out. I'm happy to play along. And, uh, that summer we had, I don't know, there's probably 20 of us, all of whom didn't have anything else to do that summer because of internships that had fallen through or jobs that had fallen through. Started working this, working on this idea that, that idea didn't pan out, but we made a quick kind of pivot to providing IT services to small businesses in 2000, summer, fall of 2001. And that's where WorkSmart was born. We, uh, started selling really quickly recurring revenue. And like as scheduled proactive visits, like, you know, and I found a postcard the other day that we used to knock on doors and hand people and it said $40 an hour. And, you know, so that's— Wow.

Amazing.

Yeah. That's how old I am.

This was like circa 2001?

Yeah.

Circa 2001. Nobody was doing, nobody was doing, uh, by, by the month at that point, pretty much. I mean, or like, you know, it was just like, or, or recurring or anything like that. Right.

That's, yeah. I mean, who, you know, the, the business originally was kind of based around real estate. So we were kind of addicted to the idea of getting people paying us a monthly fee. Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, so we were selling scheduled visits and that worked really well. And we hired, uh, none of us were technical. We were all kind of business school students or non-technical people. And, uh, that caught on. People wanted it. And so we sold a lot of it and then we hired another technician and sold a lot of that and just kept going. And anyway, so that was 2001, 2005, 2006. I remember Your listeners will appreciate this. I was sitting at one of the first ever ConnectWise conferences. Now it's like whatever, you know, like ridiculous multi-day, millions of dollars, I'm sure. But back then it was me and probably 40 or 50 other people sitting in a banquet room at a hotel in downtown Tampa or Orlando.

Yeah.

And Arnie was on stage the whole time and it's 2005, 2006. And he kind of unveils the MSP connector that would allow ConnectWise to talk with Enable and Kaseya or whatever it was.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And this is so, this was so early in the business, in the work, in the WorkSmart world that it was like $5,000. And I remember thinking like, we could never afford that.

Right.

And so I went up to Arnie afterwards and I was like, hey man, I need to just call my business partners to make sure like we're good with this. He was like, you know what you need to do? You need to grow up or something. He said something like to tell me to like just make a decision.

Man up and do it, man.

Yeah. And there was more bad words in there, but I don't know what this podcast is rated, but—

There you go.

Anyway, so we started doing the managed services stuff. Fast forward, grew throughout the years, joined HTG. We were in an HTG group and ultimately grew that business through the years. When I left the company in 2024, it was $20, $22 million of top line revenue. Okay. Uh, 100 and something employees, you know, 100, 110 employees. And, uh, you know, really fun run along the way. I, you know, as I'm, I don't remember kind of when you got out of the day-to-day of running an MSP, but that run from 2020, from COVID to a few years later was awesome and hard.

Yeah. Yeah. Intense for sure.

And so I was kind of burned out. I was ready to be done. I was, you know, bluntly not making like the best decisions that I could have made for the company. And it was time for me to like get out. And so my partners bought me out and I've been Uh, living the life without employees for a couple of years.

No employees. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. You know, my kids are on the payroll, but that's about it.

That's it. Yep. Okay. Love it, man. Okay. And then, and then maybe like, so, so let's just real quick for everybody. I think for most of that time you were like, you were kind of in leading service, right? You were in like the COO type role, right?

Yeah, we got lucky. There was 3 of us ultimately. You know, I said there was like 18 or 20 of us at the beginning who were just kind of throwing ingredients into the pot to see what we could make work in terms of the business. But after that summer, it kind of whittled down to 3 of us and we just kind of fell into our natural roles. So Ron kind of fell into this. He was the CEO and led the company and did the sales and marketing effort. And Ricky was our big brain guy and was the CFO, ran the finances. And I You know, I took whatever was left over and, and, and ran service for, for a very long time. For a very long time.

Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Awesome. And then, and then you were, uh, you were CEO kind of near the end?

Yeah. Starting in 28, for the last 6 or so years. Yeah. Ron had some other opportunities that he took. And, and so I stepped into the CEO role and, and led the company through that crazy— I was actually the other day, I found a video from like March 18th, 2020, where we were like 3 days into remote work. And that video, and so I recorded a video and sent it out to the team and was like, you know, hopefully in a couple of weeks we'll get back to it.

Those fateful words.

Yeah, apparently.

Oh my goodness. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. So, um, and then you guys grew, uh, you know, over the years, both through both, both organically and through acquisition.

That's right. Yeah, we, we always had, you know, the origin story of the business is that we were good salespeople. Like we were hustlers. Like we did, man, I can't tell you how many office parks I got kicked out of for soliciting, right? Knocking on doors and trying to get people to pay us $40 an hour. And, um, so we were always kind of on when it came to sales. We knew how to sell and we, we did a good job of kind of organic growth through, you know, we never found the magic bullet for sure, but we always had a strong sales effort. And then because the company was healthy financially, because we had, um, great relationships with our bank and with lenders and things like that, we were able to do a number of acquisitions over the years. So we, we bought, I think over the course of 10 or 11 years. 8 or 9 companies that, okay, kind of, uh, we integrated into WorkSmart. And, um, and so that was another really big, important part of our growth story over the years too.

So yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. Um, and then, you know, what I'm, uh, so I'm curious about is like how, you know, because I talked to a lot of MSP owners and some are, some are like, hey, I want to You know, I want to sell the company. Others are like, hey, I want to, you know, I'm going to continue to own the company and kind of be like a board member, that kind of a thing. Like, you, I know, I mean, you, you have kind of a unique story where I think a lot that a lot of owners haven't been through. Um, I mean, how, like, if somebody's thinking, hey, I don't want to, I don't necessarily want to sell, I still want to own the company, but I want to bring in professional management, uh, a professional CEO. Like that kind of a thing. What kind of things should they be thinking about in that scenario, do you think?

It's a good question. And I think before you even get there, you have to really kind of hold up the mirror, right? Because when I hear that conversation, what I hear is a little bit of a— I'm going to use a hyperbolic word, a little bit of like an identity crisis, right?

Yeah.

Like, I don't mean that to be like pejorative or mean-spirited or anything, but before you even consider that, and I would encourage the folks who are in that place to be really contemplative about what they want the rest of their life to look like. So, um, so that's one thing. Another thing that I would say is there is nothing that distinguishes a company that is built to run exceptionally well from a company that is built to maximize transaction value. Right? And so I think sometimes we get wrapped around the axe. Does that make sense? You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Well, if I can paraphrase, I think you're saying like, hey, a well-run company is also a company that's going to get a high valuation. It's basically the same thing as— Yeah. Right. At the end of the day, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm just making sure.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And so, what, so the first thing is like, make sure, uh, you know, know and love yourself. Second thing is, uh, I think sometimes we get wrapped around the axles, like, should I build this company to sell or should I build this company to like, just make me a lot of money, whatever? And the answer is that, that, that doesn't, that's not a distinction. That's the same thing. Right. And so that's why the first question is so important. If, if you want to, there's a bunch of pride and all these sorts of things that come with owning a company that go away when you sell.

Right.

And, and you can tell people that you had a positive exit and that's cool. But like, there's something real that comes from owning a thing. There's also something real that comes with a bunch of money in your pocket. Right.

Yeah.

And, and so you just have to know, uh, Anyway, so that was a long answer that doesn't actually address your question.

Yeah, but I think it's important. So I do want to come back to that, but yeah, continue.

But the other thing is like, hey, you know your business really well. You know what good looks like. Once you know that, and I hate, you know, you said it earlier, I'm an EOS implementer. So like, you know, everything looks like an EOS—

Shaped problem.

Tool, yeah. But the answer is in the accountability chart, right? Like, uh, if you have a really clear accountability chart, accountability chart is the EOS esoteric language for org chart. But if you have real clarity on who's accountable for what, what good looks like when they're doing a good job, what the rhythms are of the business, whether they're daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly rhythms of the business, that is assignable.

Mm-hmm.

That can be handed to someone. The mistake that I see is that people are like, I'm done. I'm just going to hire somebody. Here's a mess for you. Right. And if you hand off the mess, oh man, I'm talking a lot. I don't want to like kind of—

No, please.

Yeah. So there's just this thing that I think of often when I'm talking with business owners, MSP or not. We all, and I bet this happened to you, it certainly happened to me. We all have this view of the business and the world. That it's a little bit easier than other people make it out to be.

Right.

And that's because it's not, not true. It is easier for us. Like we have, we own the checkbook. We have, uh, the history of all the mistakes that we made living in our brain. We have, uh, a different, we command a different level of respect or interaction when we're working with our clients or vendors because we have this title of founder and CEO. That when you literally take anyone else and put them in that seat, they don't have all of that.

Right.

And, and so like, there's this— when I, when I'm talking with business owners who are making this decision, they can sometimes think, well, like this, you know, I know it's a little bit messy, but you just have to do it and you can figure it out. And anybody could come in and figure it out, but those people aren't going to come in with the same power, the same history, the same relationships. And so, it's the mess compounds a little bit if you don't clean up first. And to call back to where I started, which is clarity on who's accountable for what, what good looks like, what the rhythms are of the business. Once you get clarity on that, the rest of it becomes much easier.

Yeah. It kind of starts to fall into place.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay.

So, another thing that, and this comes up relatively often, And with MSPs I'm talking to, um, you know, for instance, you've got a, you know, you come to a $15 million MSP and it's like, I'm like, it's been one guy. He's been just running. He's been running and cranking forever. And it's like, it's like, dude, you need, um, you need a second in command. You need an integrator. You need somebody who's going to like actually help to hold and carry the, carry the load here. Do you, do you see that? Um, in, I mean, or have you seen that? And what's kind of your thoughts from that perspective?

Integrator is a very EOS-centric word. So you feel like everybody listening knows the integrator?

Yeah, for the most part, a second in command, somebody who's gonna— yeah, but you can, I mean, by all means define it as well, if it makes sense.

The short answer to your question is that a great integrator gets stuff Done. And the second answer, the second part of that answer is that, and they are only as successful to the degree to which the founder is willing to let go.

Oh yeah. Right. Yep. Yeah.

And so, big one.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so again, holding up that mirror, what do you want your life to be? If you want your life to be chaotic and you, I'm not saying that with any judgment, by the way. Chaos. Some people love and thrive, thrive in chaos. All right. Like no judgment. If you want to be answering the phone call on Saturdays, if you want to be rebuilding the server on Thursday night, if that's what you love and want to do, do it. Don't, don't fall victim to like everyone else is telling me I should do this crazy, I should do something different. Like if that's what you love, do it. I would pay attention to your health, right?

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Obviously, like we can't crawl under desks when we're 50 the way we could when we were 20.

Right.

But, um, or maybe you can and you're doing, doing it better than me. But, um, first of all, know yourself. Second of all, be willing to let go. And it doesn't matter if you're a $15 million MSP, a $3 million MSP, a $100 MSP. This plagues all leaders. The ability to kind of like identify the things that you shouldn't be doing anymore. than trusting someone to take them over. It doesn't matter if it's the P&L, it doesn't matter if it's the help desk triage or the— I'll share a personal story. WorkSmart was an $18 million company. I want to see if I get this right. Doing like $2, $2.5 million a year of equipment sales, like servers, workstations, firewalls, that kind of stuff, right?

Mm-hmm.

And until 2022, I was the one doing all of that ordering. Like literally. Wow.

Wow. Because, okay.

Yeah.

Purchasing. Awesome.

Well, I mean, it sounds crazy now, but, but I could always find a reason when COVID hit and there were shortages of computers and you had to like do a bunch of crazy stuff.

Yeah. Yeah.

I was like, I want to be in the middle of that. I like craved the, uh, and also like when I could find an extra half a point, of margin on a server deal, I was like, oh, that was the juice, man. Um, and then at some point the team was like, dude, you're the bottleneck. Like when we have to wait for you to order stuff at 10 o'clock at night, that's not, we're missing stuff. Right. And so, yeah, that was one of those things where like, I loved it. I thought I was pretty good at it. I had all my keyboard shortcuts memorized, you know, like I was really efficient at it.

Yeah.

Uh, but I was holding onto it like for me, not for anyone else. And so letting go of that, of course, the next year when we're $22 million and doing $4 million of hardware sales, I was very happy to not be doing it anymore.

Yeah.

But, uh, but it was hard to let go of. So.

But you realized at some point, like you realized, hey, this is not what's best for the company, right? For me, holding onto this is not the the best thing for the company. I gotta let it go. And the problem that I usually see is like, oh, okay, you know, all right, I'm willing to let that go. You know, I'm an owner, I'm willing to let it go. But then the second that somebody does something that I wouldn't do, then I take it back. That happens so much. And so it's like letting it go and really, really letting it go, even when somebody messes something up. And it's going to happen.

That's right. And that's, and you asked about second in command integrator stuff.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is a, just to normalize it for the folks who are feeling that in their life right now. This is just normal for every founder. You go through a phase where what was working stops working as well. Maybe it doesn't fail. It just stops working as well. And that feedback can come in a lot of different ways. It can come from your physical body. It can come from your team. It can come from your partner. It can come from your friends saying like, dude, Or do that. This isn't working, right? And so you got to figure out what to do. And like, letting go is an important task. I think an important thing you asked about second in command, and I think sometimes we think about that from like a purely operational point of view or purely like a sales point of view or like a very functional point of view in the, in the EOS world, at least. You named it as integrator, is a person who like isn't a functional head of something else. They're literally there to make sure that all of those teams are working well together at scale.

Yeah.

With velocity, right? So like when, when you hire an integrator, you aren't, or you aren't hiring someone who's like great at ops and is going to sit in a meeting with some other people. You're hiring a person who's there to execute the vision on your behalf on the ground. And that means making sure all of those teams work harmoniously together, eliminates any barriers that pop up, all that kind of normal EOS stuff.

Mm-hmm.

That thing that you said where it's like, hey, listen, you have 90% of the power except for the 10% of the power that matters the most. Mm-hmm. Doesn't work. It's, it's an, it's a, it's like an unfunded mandate from Congress, right? Where it's like, isn't this a great idea? But there's no money in the budget for it, but please do your best.

Yeah.

And you have, you have to do both. You have to clearly define what it means and also fund it with the power and resources to actually make it work. And then you have to watch.

Yep.

And it's really hard, but it's powerful when you can do it. Yeah.

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. And I think that's, I, I think that's the big thing that I, that I come back to as well is like, uh, you know, with my clients and stuff, I'm like, you can't, you, you, if you, if you hand it off, you truly have to hand it off and you are, you're not looking over their shoulder. You're not second-guessing anything that they do. You're, you may, you might create a couple of boundaries, like, you know, at first you can't, you can't hire and fire people without, without talking to me or whatever. But beyond that, they get, you actually have to delegate the decisions that are made. Otherwise, if decisions still have to come to you, you're still the bottleneck.

How, how much of your coaching that you're doing is like kind of centered on this?

Well, I might be asking you these questions because Because hopefully one of my clients will listen to this and be like, okay, yeah, I really do need to do that. Right. No, I mean, no, there's, you know, we, we talk about this stuff a lot. Right. Um, and, and there's, uh, you know, there's, because it's the common stuff that comes up. And so there's going to be a whole group of people that are listening to this that are like, okay, yeah, I really do need to do that. And may, I mean, maybe this will be the thing that kind of like pushes them over the edge. So who knows?

But yeah.

Um, but that's, that's, that's great, man. Well, I want to, I want to pivot for a minute to, well, actually, I want to go back to something you said because, um, cause I think this is really important. It's like the, the idea that you have to know what you want as the owner. Um, and I think this is when I was, you know, kind of asking about potentially hiring an outside CEO and holding onto the business and, and, and all of that. And I think you kind of got into like, well, it ha— I mean, it has something to do with your identity as the owner. And then knowing what comes after and all of that. And there's this whole idea of like, you can't retire from something, you have to retire to something. And so, you know, I'm curious like to get more of your thoughts on that because you've gone through that even, you know, relatively recently and decided, hey, I want to be, you know, I want to do this EOS life, right? And so, right, isn't that a thing? EOS life?

Yeah, right.

There's a hashtag.

And so, um, but, uh, but yeah, so I'm just curious, like, what are, what are, what do you, what do you see in, in those places?

Uh, that's intensely personal, right? And it's, uh, and to be frank, like, I think about this part of my career as like my second act, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe you have a similar feeling, but, um, uh, let's see, what's the question that you're asking? It is for me, um, a bit of a, like, I had a mentor once that told me like, man, life, it wouldn't be like nice if life was like really straightforward and like all the answers came to you. And I'll, I'll be frank, like there's a part of me that, that wishes I had like made exactly the right decisions all the time and was leading a $50 million MSP. Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, that I had started in 2020, in 2001. And, um, and so there's still a part of me that does that. And so there was a period of time after I left the day-to-day of the company where I was still an owner, and that didn't work for me personally. Like, in my brain, it was really hard for me to do the stuff I just said people should do, which is like, let go, right? So we had a, uh, professional CEO doing great work and all sorts of things. It's just really hard for me personally to kind of Not be in the middle of it. And so that's why I decided to like completely get out and to not be distracted. It didn't work for me. My business partners aren't active. Uh, my former business partners aren't active day to day in the business. They still own it.

Yeah.

And that works for them. It didn't work for me. So again, hold up the mirror.

Yeah.

And, and like, you know, life is just a series of small experiments. You're never gonna get it right the first time. Try the thing. React, adjust, do the best you can with the next decision. Um, I don't know if that answers your question. You've got me, got me introspective. I feel like I'm on a Barbara Walters interview.

Oh goodness. Yeah. No, well, well, think about it this way for, like, for people that you work with, um, and, uh, you know, and, and, and I'll, you know, for all, maybe I'll give an example of, uh, it's like, hey, you know, somebody's, one of my clients is like, hey, I want to, you know, we're going to, we're going to start, we're going to start going through a process to sell, right? This, this year. And I'm like, okay, that's great. What's next? Right? So it's business partners. One of them wants to retire, you know, he's in his 60s. The other one's in his mid, you know, early mid-50s. And he's like, yeah, I'm not going to retire. I'm going to do something else. And I'm like, well, what? You know, like, because if you just, if you sell your company and there was, I was at this conference a couple weeks ago and somebody was telling this story. He's like, I sold my company. I had so much time and so much money on my hands. You know, like I went to where I usually, like the Monday after I went to where I usually sat down to do work and I had sat there and I had nothing to do and I just bawled my eyes out.

Yeah.

I had nothing to do. And he was like, what am I going to do? Go to my friends and be like, I have so much money and so much time on my hands. Don't, and I don't know what to do. Like feel sorry for me. Right. I don't think so. You know, so the question is like, how, how do we, how do we think about finding that, you know, what, what to retire to or what to, you know, sell into as opposed to, and, and you've found something, I've found something, but I'm just curious as to your thoughts on that and, and what you see.

Ah, yes. Okay, cool. So one of the things that Gino writes in Traction is that as entrepreneurs, and my guess is that most of us who are listening to podcasts are entrepreneurially minded at the very least.

Yeah, for the most part.

The thing that unites us all is that we love solving problems. We love having that thing where we're helping something get better. And so for me, what I kind of came to the realization of was that like, man, I really loved building a leadership team. I really love building a team that ran this business with or without me. I loved that work. That was like super fun. It felt both connected to the day, to day-to-day and kind of strategic. It was just, it, it, it scratched all the itches for me. And so when I was looking for the second act, that's what I wanted to do. I love working with teams. Like, I, I'm—

Mm-hmm.

One-on-one is awesome, but I'm not a coach. Right? Like, I'm good at like grepping a system, understanding it, like figuring out how the parts fit together. Like, that's my thing. And so whatever it is, whatever the problems are that you love solving, like in the business, do them, right? Like, for example, you know, my life right now is full of US implementers. So we're all very similar. But one of my clients is running a business, you know, it's an 8-figure business, high 8-figure business, healthy margins, doing great. He's not needed at work at all. And what he loves is golf. That doesn't mean he's playing like 36 holes a day. Like, I'm sure he is some days, but he's also figuring out how to use that.

Yeah.

Uh, he's doing charitable work, like helping kids learn how to play golf. He's found his thing. And he's figuring out how to take his energy and passion and putting them into the— and my guess is that all of us have that somewhere.

Yeah.

Right. And it's not, I don't think any of us who are wired to be entrepreneurs are the type of people who are going to get a big check and then want to do and be happy doing nothing.

Right.

I just, I just don't think that that's true. It's just about aligning. passion with your day-to-day so that you can kind of feel invigorated for whatever's next. And yeah, does that answer the question?

Yeah, no, it absolutely does. Yeah. And, and that's my— and that's kind of where I was, where I was getting at, right? Because it's like we all have something. And, and, and this for me, like, I'll— I mean, I, I knew that I was going to be a coach at some point, like back, I don't know, 2011, 2012, when I got my first coach. In the, in the MSP space. And I'm, I worked with, I worked with Hardin for a year or two and I was like, okay, I'm going to do this one day. And, and so for me, like after, you know, I exited, um, I was like, okay, you know, the, the, if, if I choose to do this, it's going to be really hard to get started, right? Like most, most people who decide they want to be a coach, it's like, you know, they go 2, 3 years and then they're like, yeah, and I'm earning, earned hardly any money. I've got nothing to show for it. And luckily that's not been my story, but when I think about it, I think about, okay, like the process I went through was something like, hey, I'm going to find my personal core purpose, right? So what is my purpose for being on this earth? I'm going to find my personal core values. And then I'm going to find like, what is the thing that is in the middle of my values, what I'm passionate about, what the world needs, and what I can get paid some money to do. And I'm gonna try and find what's in the middle of that and then go do that thing. Because if that's, if that can happen, then I'm doing what I love to do already. I'm helping other people. And that, that's like the concept of ikigai, I-K-I-G-A-I. You know, it's a, I think a Japanese concept. But that's like finding the center of that. And so anyways, I hadn't planned to talk about this, but I, but I think it's like, it's very pertinent because I'm having a lot of conversations along these lines.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, this, the MSP industry is at that age. Yeah.

Yeah.

Where we're all kind of like passing the baton, whether it's to like the 25-year-old folks from private equity, you know, or our, or our, our next in line, whatever, but That you mentioned #EOSLife, and I love all the stuff that you said, but here's what the EOS Life is. Doing the work that you love with the people you love, making a huge impact, being compensated appropriately with time for other passions. That's the EOS Life, right? And I think that's kind of similar to what you were just saying, which is—

Absolutely.

Which is what we're all chasing. And I'm here to just say, like, it doesn't require an exit. You can do that as the whole, as, as an owner of the company. You can do that after exiting a company. I think to go back like way earlier in the conversation, uh, you asked me a big mistake and man, so many of the MSP owners that I've talked to are just fixated on valuation and exit. And, uh, and I love that for them. And also there's also a world in which companies are generational.

Yep.

Companies are still closely held. And neither of those, just like I said, neither of those like distinctions matter when you talk about whether it's a great company. Neither of those distinctions matter as much when you think about running a great life. It's just a choice. It's just a choice that you make. And then you have to like, just like when we started our MSP, I'm knocking on doors, cold calling, literally like one day we were cold calling. I taped a phone to my head to like save the—

Anyway, like.

Like, we did all that crazy stuff. You have to bring that same spirit into this phase.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Whatever. Like, we were gonna succeed no matter what.

Yeah.

And that's true for you and your coaching business. It's true for me and my EOS business. It's true for everyone I know. You remember Brian and Eric? They were in our peer group. Shout out Brian and Eric.

Absolutely. I just, I just saw Brian a couple of weeks ago in person.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they took completely different paths after their exit. And they're both so happy because they're doing the work that they love. And so, uh, it doesn't look the same from person to person, but if you keep that center, uh, I love what you said, that combination of our, my purpose, the thing that I'm really good at doing, the thing that people need, the thing that I can get paid to do also. Yeah, man, if you find that, that's magic, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, Well, and on that note, I mean, I want to give you a chance to kind of talk a little bit about, like, I mean, obviously EOS had a big, you know, a big piece of the success that you guys had as a business. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't be doing what you're doing right now. Like, how did you guys get, right? Otherwise, if you were like, ah, EOS sucks, you wouldn't be doing what you're doing now.

So, like, what—

so how'd you guys get into it? And what did you feel like it did for your business?

Yeah, for sure. Um, this might have predated you joining our peer group, but maybe not. I don't quite remember the dates, but it was January 2013. Earl Edmond from KDV in Minneapolis walked into the meeting and handed everybody a copy of Traction. And And he said, this changed our business. It'll change yours. And so we read it, devoured it. A week later, I was having lunch with a local EOS implementer, a guy by the name of Brent Sprinkle here in North Carolina, and loved everything he was saying and brought him in to talk to my partners. And the next thing you know, we're off to the races implementing EOS.

Yeah.

The reason that we were all reading that book then is because You know, we started the business 2000— started the business in 2001. It's 2013. Um, we were in that 12 years had gone from zero to around $5 million of revenue, 30 employees. So like, you know, it took a minute. And, uh, but we were, we were certainly kind of stuck there, uh, feeling like the pain of like not sure what to do next.

Mm-hmm.

Part of that pain was We had expanded geographically. And so, man, they were running things differently in Charlotte than we were in Durham. Every— it was a little chaotic because wild, wild west. The other thing was that we kept saying to the team, all right guys, let's grow. Come on, more growth. And they would be like, what? To where? Like, what is— where are we headed? And so we were feeling, feeling all of the pains that the EOS system is meant to address.

So.

Uh, I'll share a quick story. When we implemented EOS, I still have the first, uh, VTO, which in the EOS world is like the strategic plan. And it was June of 2013.

Right.

And we had, uh, around $330,000, $340,000 of monthly recurring revenue, MRR, right? And, um, uh, you know, we thought we were pretty cool. That was pretty good. Took us 12 years, but we were there. And, uh, and we set a goal for December 31st, 2020 to be at $1 million a month of MRR.

So, yep.

And, and half the time that it took to get to $300,000, we were going to triple it in the next 6 and a half years. And, and we still have it and we did it.

Yeah.

We did it. And so anyway, all of that is to put a little bow on like, what did the EOS mean for us? One, It created like a clear alignment around the important stuff that created space for the non-important stuff to fall off. It gave us a vocabulary to prioritize the most important stuff, whether it was a 10-year picture or the next week's to-dos.

Yep.

It created a paradigm in which we could make easy decisions or faster decisions. Remember, I started the podcast by saying ready, fire, aim. It eliminates that because you gotta aim. And it also eliminates the ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim forever because we have goals to hit.

Yeah.

And so, for us, it was the bullseye of aligning the 3 of us who owned the company to get us on the same page, created clarity for our team around where we were headed, and did it in a way that it was compelling so that everyone on the team wanted to make it come true. It wasn't the 3 of us who own the company kind of pulling them along, hoping that they would one day get it. They started pushing us and saying like, hey, you guys said you were going to do this. Are you going to do it or not? And that kind of force multiplication effect is just really impactful when you're, you're growing a business where, uh, we're all making it up as we go. We don't know. There's not, there's not a magic formula.

Yeah.

Or a book in the back that you get when you found, like, when you register your LLC with the state, they don't send you a playbook on here's how to do it. You still had to figure it out.

Yeah.

And so EOS was that for us. That's what EOS meant for us. And it was, uh, one of many factors. We were lucky, we were smart, we were hardworking, we hired great people. All those things mattered. EOS was the framework within which we did it. And I'll, I'll say, like, what I tell people is, Uh, to be a happy and healthy entrepreneur, you need 3 things. You need a great peer group. You have to have a great peer group. And I always like kind of add a thing that says like, you need a local one so you understand what's going on in your market and you need an industry one so you understand what's going on in your industry. So maybe 2.

Yeah.

A peer group. You need a system. I happen to love EOS. There's hundreds of them out there. You need one system. Not 80, run one system. And you need a great coach. You need someone one-on-one to kind of kick you in the butt when you need it and pat you on the back when you need it. And if you have those 3 things, I had those things, you had those things, great peer group, a great system, and a great coach. It's like adding, uh, additive into the engine to make it rev a little hotter without breaking anything. You know what I'm saying?

Absolutely. Well, and, and usually I'm the one who has to say all those 3 things. So like, it's the same stuff. That I always say that it, that was kind of that, like, took me from having no clue what I was doing, like absolutely no clue to, okay, we know how to do this thing and move forward. So I love that, man. So yeah, and I'll, I mean, I'll always, I'll echo all of the stuff you said. I think it's like just having the system and the framework in which to Make sure that all of the things that are getting done to get to the goal that we set out to get to, it makes all the difference in the world. As opposed to a lot of the companies that I come into where everybody's like, I have no idea where we're going. I, you know, I'm just gonna kind of do whatever work comes in front of me and hopefully that'll get us kind of where we want to go. That doesn't work, right? We, and we've learned that, right?

So.

Yeah.

I mean, well, I'll amend that to say it can work, but it'll also burn you out real fast.

Very fast.

Yeah. And so it can work, but you got to pay a tax.

Yeah, no doubt. Okay, awesome, man. Well, hey, I want to, as we wrap up, I like to do a couple of things. So one, I want to hear what is the biggest mistake that you ever made as a leader?

Biggest mistake. Oh man, the list is long, my friend. The biggest mistake I ever made as a leader, I think, man, I don't want to be a broken record, but the biggest mistake I made as a leader was when I had a leadership team that was high functioning, thinking that my gut was better than their intelligence.

Ooh.

And that is the the thread of like a bunch of bad decisions, right? I thought that like my instinct or mine, my own inside my brain kind of experience or whatever was more relevant than what they were telling me. So I wish I would have listened to them faster and more often. Uh, I think that that would be the biggest thread through all the mistakes that I made.

Okay. That's awesome, man. Okay. And then this last part is rapid fire. Okay. So first thing that comes to mind. All right. You got 5 of them. So first, What's something, what's like a belief that you've changed your mind on?

Belief that I've changed my mind on. Rapid fire. Holy cow. This is very philosophical. A belief that I've changed my mind on, a belief that I've changed my mind on is that simplicity is the answer to most every question. I used to think that if I could make it more complex, I could understand it better, but the answer is actually simplicity.

Love it. Okay. What's something you've been curious about lately?

AI.

Okay. Yeah. What's something that you can't live without in your daily routine?

I mean, I got podcasts, man. Podcasts and an iPhone. Half of my business is done on the iPhone. I don't even need a computer really anymore. iPhone.

Yeah.

Okay.

Love it. And then, and then what's your, what's, what's your go-to way to unwind?

Putting my hands in dirt or picking up a book.

Love it. Okay. And, and on that note, what's the book or an idea or a piece of advice that has shaped you the most?

Oh man, a book or idea that has shaped me the most. Well, I have recency bias here. I've been reading it. I am. And actually, I don't know, I think I might have taken it back to the library, but I've been reading a bunch of historical fiction. Bear with me. Um, all based in North Carolina because, uh, it's a mirror.

Uh-huh.

Uh, to call back to earlier in the conversation, it's important for me As like, I work with companies that are hundreds of millions of dollars. I work with companies that are millions of dollars all across. I need to remember that I am of— I'm, I'm in the place where my feet are. And so contextually, I'm reading now to kind of help me stay grounded and rooted in where I am and not get worried and lost in comparison or what's good or bad, but rooted in like being confident and humble and— Of this, of now, not of past, not of future, but of now. Yeah. Anyway, that was philosophical. I'm sorry.

No, I love it. Hey, this is good. It's deep stuff. So, well, man, yeah, I know we're up on time, but before we go, like, hey, if somebody wants to get ahold of you, where can they look you up?

Yeah, I'm all over. I'm active on LinkedIn, Clay Harris. Easy to find. I'm the good-looking one if you've— I'm just kidding. Or you can go to clayharris.com. That's where I post a bunch of stuff too.

Okay. Awesome. Awesome. Clay, man, really appreciate it. Yeah.

I'm proud of you, man. This is awesome. Thank you for doing this.

Oh, absolutely. I love it. And I'm just thankful that it can be of service to people. That's my number one thing is to serve powerfully. And so, That's why I do this. And, um, yeah, really appreciate you being a part of it, man. And, um, and we'll, we'll, we'll see everybody next time.

All right. Bye, everybody.

All right.

Bye-bye.

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.