Building a Profitable MSP with Chris Wiser: Insights on Scaling with John Tippett, COO of Cytracom

I actively kind of say to msps, stop worrying about being a CISSP and all this other stuff. Let your partners like Citricom do that. You partner with them. Master sales. Any thoughts on that from you?

I think exactly right. And this idea of ain't broke, don't fix it. The challenge we have nowadays is the malicious actors and the technology is moving. So if as an msp, you're not moving, by definition, you're falling behind.

Hey, everybody, this is Chris Weiser. Welcome to another episode of building a profitable MSP. Super pumped to be here live in Fort Lauderdale at our Q4 event. Also pumped to have a good friend of mine, John Tippett, COO of Citricom, here with us today. Good to see you, brother.

Yeah, good to see you. Glad to be here.

Thanks for being on with me today. So you and I go pretty far back, actually. We go. We met Comptia days.

Yeah. Long time ago.

Probably eight, ten years ago at this point.

Yeah.

So it's kind of cool to. To watch this mutual maturation, you know, growth with different companies, growth with different stuff going on. And our topic of the podcast, you know, what we always talk about is building a profitable msp. So I was an MSP owner, you were an MSP owner. We both. You sold yours, right?

Yes.

Yeah, I wasn't sure off top of my head, but we both sold. So we've both been kind of down this path, both on the vendor side now, so it's kind of cool. Let me just maybe do a little quick intro of where you're at now, your role, what Citracom does, et cetera, for all of our listeners.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, as a former msp, I did move over to the vendor side, as you said, and it's a ton of fun because we met at Comptia. Part of the commonality is Comptia is a nonprofit organization where you just go share information and freely.

Right.

It was like free open, freely, free open exchange, you know. So we've always both had this idea of, in addition to running the business, like, what can we teach? What can we learn? How do we stay connected? So that took me to the vendor side is realizing that you can help more MSPs by actually creating services. My journey led me through a couple of companies, including some time at Datto. That was a lot of fun. And now with Citricom. So Citricom was founded also by a former MSP running a managed services practice, initially entering in the voice space, saying there's not a good solution for msps. It needs to be packaged and built differently. And that has grown to where I joined recently.

It's still running really well. In fact, I don't even know this. My wife opened a Medspot. We put a Citricom phone in for through our MSP that works for us in. In my wife's med spa.

So yeah, that's great. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, thank you. And, and it's been really well and we've grown and expanded the business now, you know, a lot of employees and I joined as the chief operating officer to help scale the business and you know, a natural progression on the unified communication side was into connectivity and SD wan. With the changes that are happening in the market, we just went full bore and launched a complete SASE solution with hardware and software that connects devices together. And so that's part of why I joined is to help scale and grow.

I think you gu are kind of the only one that have taken from the voice side. Correct me if I'm wrong on that, but gone from the voice side to that full connectivity. And when you and I talked about it, it was really interesting to me because I was an MSP owner but I wasn't like this super hardcore tech. I was more of a sales type, focused marketing guy. But now to see it, it makes such a natural, like you realize how important connectivity all the way through the entire. It's all one, you know. So Unified Communications is actually real now.

Absolutely.

It was a buzzword for a while. Now it's like there.

That's right. Yeah. No, and it's interesting that from the outside you sort of think how would you get from telephones and connectivity? But when you think about it like the people that control the connectivity are the AT&T Verizon level 3. Like it is communication. And you know, at Citricom, you know, the founder is also an engineering oriented person. So we build our own tech writer on code. So we do this stuff already with our data centers and our employees. And so it's a natural progression not only for the technology, but it's in our DNA to build solutions. So that's how we got here.

Yeah, it was really cool. And John just literally came off stage about 20 minutes. So I watched his whole presentation because I was on right after you. And it's really great to see how the product has matured from my standpoint and kind of see how good you guys are doing. And it brings up a really good point. We were kind of talking about this like a little pre discussion here how much, you know, If I flip back to when you and I were both MSP owners, how much we were pretty much expected as an MSP to run everything and where, and I want your feedback on this too. Where I see this, like where the network or where the market is going now is the MSP is almost becoming more of a broker. Maybe broker's the wrong term but you know, instead of you actually running every single thing, you are managing relationships, managing vendor relationships. I feel like that's where Citricom is really coming, coming into play as well. Thoughts on that?

Yeah, no, I completely agree that to your point, you know, early days with managed services it was important to understand the technology and the secret sauce. You know, way back in the COMPTIA days we were debating what managed services is and how do you sell it as a recurring service.

I believe that was actually a committee community topic back in the day.

Absolutely. We would debate it. Right. And you know, it, it was all around tech and businesses couldn't get access to tech, they couldn't run their software and so it was mostly technical. And to your point, it's pivoted to where MSPs are as valuable as ever. But the access of businesses to the tech SaaS applications, the ability to connect remotely is actually quite easy. It's which solution do I use, how do I use it, how do I control cost and make sure that I can maximize efficiency of the business? Yeah, those are the new questions to the msp. Where are the threats? How can I gain efficiencies?

Well, and it's kind of really interesting too. We talk about this in our 7 figure MSP community a lot which is it's the best time ever to be in this industry. I've never seen money making potential industry like we have now. You have. And I want you guys that are watching this and listening to realize if you are an MSP doing things the way that you've always done it, you need to step back a second and look at the big picture and say I don't need to be in the trench. I know you want to be the tech, I know you like control, but there's not money in that. You can't scale that. And the mid market, which is I think an opportunity that has completely, you know, we talk about building a profitable MSP, right. The mid market, which MSPs could kind of never, I'm like I, you couldn't touch. But they had their own IT teams, blah blah blah, all this and we had IT guys or RT staff and all this other stuff. Now we have access to tools like Citricom that the, that staff has no access to.

That's exactly right.

So you have just this huge, massive mid market opportunity that nobody's touching.

Yeah, well said. And, and it's a combination of matching that tech. But to your point, in house tech, you said earlier, like those who aren't at this event, who aren't hearing and seeing this in house tech doesn't even know what these events are. 100 they work in one location with one solution stack with one boss. MSPS has access to dozens of businesses and thought leadership.

Well in more shows like this you go to like I encourage msps like hey, if you're not going to come to my show, that's fine, but get out of your office and get out of your city, get out of your state. Go to Community.

You don't realize how much you learn. Oh my word, you learn so much.

It's crazy. I mean I, a year ago I didn't know what Sassy was.

Right?

I mean how many MSPs are like. I actually, it's funny, we did a road show in Vancouver a month and a half ago. I mentioned Sassy on stage. They didn't know what I was talking about.

We got it wrong too. When we launched Control One on our launch content, launch video, we were so excited. We'd been using MSPS for, you know, months, several years behind the scenes and we came out and said we built an amazing SASE platform for MSPS and MSPS are just.

What?

What is that? Yeah, like nothing. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah. So we've pivoted and now at this event, actually this is a good point. At this event one of your members came up and you know, asked us a little bit about it and said back to me, so this is essentially a SASE platform. Right? And that's. Is that not up here? And I was like, okay, good point.

We're getting there now.

Exactly. And he knew intuitively like this stuff equals Sassy. So it's a big pivot in a.

Short period and I think, I don't know, I'm tooting my own horn a little bit on this. But our members are a little bit ahead of the curve because we've been talking about cybersecurity for. I've been actively selling cyber security first at the 300 per seat goal number.

Right.

Any market for four year, five years.

Right.

So they're like, oh, okay, that's different. Versus most of the community that's out there. They are still doing the And I want to get your feedback on this one because from what I see, the non, non educated is the wrong term. But the guys that don't go to shows like this.

Yeah.

They're still doing the same stuff they were doing.

Absolutely. Ain't broke, don't fix it.

Yeah. Which I think is really, really dangerous. So we got a couple of things that I want you guys that are listening to think about this. First of all, looking at that mid, you know, from a profitability building, a profitable MSP standpoint, looking at that mid market, we got a huge opportunity in IT MSP right now. We also brought up partnering with a company like Citricom.

Right.

To do the work versus you have like a great example is actually, I want to get your take on this. I actively kind of say to msps, stop worrying about being a CASSP and all this other stuff. Let your partners like Citricom do that. You partner with them. Master sales.

Right.

Any thoughts on that from you? Because I think that that's something we actively.

Yeah, no, I think that's, I think it's exactly right. And then I'll, I'll connect to what we're just saying. This idea of like, ain't broke, don't fix it. The challenge we have nowadays is the malicious actors and the technology is moving.

Yeah.

So if as an msp, you're not moving, by definition you're falling behind anymore. And so come into these, growing your diet 100% and there's no option. So to your point, the positive pressure you put on the community of like, do better, work harder, go faster is so relevant because otherwise, like, the business will die. Like in technology, you cannot sit still.

And it's kind of interesting because, because the vendor community, we all kind of talk a decent amount because we see each other at the shows every quarter. Like you and I see each other not only here, but at some of the, the other bigger MSP shows as well. And then those guys continue to get further and further and further behind because they're not changing, they're not evolving. And I totally know that you like doing things that worked. I know that you like doing things that are comfortable. But there becomes a time, and we talked about this on, on stage during my keynote yesterday, how much you have to start establishing yourself as the expert and not backing down from that because that's something that the MSP industry really.

Keep it absolutely right on. Yeah. So to your point about vendors, you know, we are fortunate. We run businesses in partnership with msps and we have access to These resources and, you know, like the CISO that we have on staff, you know, an MSP can't get that type of resource.

Nor do you really want one.

Exactly. You can't justify it. It makes no sense. But the interesting thing to your point is the vendors that are involved in this community love the partnership. Like we love engaging, love sharing, and.

They'Re really good at what they do.

Yes. So talk, Talk to everyone you're buying anything from. What can they do for you? How can they help you? We're all trying. We're all willing and definitely do that.

Yeah. And I think it's really key. I had an MSP message me. I think you're in my big Facebook group that I have. We're going about 23,000 MSP members in there.

And this is also amazing. The energy and the interest there is accelerated.

Crazy grown up in the last few years here. But it's. I got a direct. I do somewhat polarizing posts kind of by design to get response, but I got a direct message from somebody about three weeks ago, maybe four weeks ago now that basically said, don't tell me that I can't build my own sock. I built help desks for years. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but the MSP that thinks, and I want, I say this stuff a lot, but I wanted to hear from a CEO at a security, networking, security company how relevant this is. The MSP thinks spinning up a fully managed sock is like spinning up a help desk. I know, I know. We spin up help desk. Before I had one. You had one?

Yeah.

Is that even remotely feasible for what kind of numbers are we looking at? How realistic is that to think you can just spin up a fully managed sock on your own?

Not only I agree with you is it not at all feasible. It's. It's pointless. And I think it comes to the challenge you put on these folks of like, what is the purpose of your business? Like, is it a hobby? Are you actually trying to grow your business? And the folks that enjoy building a sock for the sake of building a sock not only are not going to have a functioning solution, you cannot compete with these options that are available for you in the marketplace. You can't scale it. But you're also doing a disservice to your market. Like, it's not a superior solution.

You know, you just hit on something that is so key because we talk about this a lot in my coaching program, which is really. At what point are you actually becoming negligent to your clients? Because you're unwilling to evolve when you think. And the biggest flack that I get is stop telling me to rip my clients off by spending. By charging them 300.

Yes.

Okay. But you're selling it at $20. You can't even deliver a good service at that number. So how are like, it doesn't make any sense to me.

And then you're not ripping anyone off. It's a free market.

Yeah.

Like deliver quality service and charge for it and use your.

What you're chargin saying take your $20 deliverable and jack it up to 300 bucks.

Correct.

And where I really have really, like, really pushed on this with my community and the MSP community as a whole is get rid of your good, better, best. Sell a single stack. That is the best. That's what you should be selling as a cybersecurity expert now.

Yes.

Put 80% margin, best effort on top of that. Hey, if you get 60%, you get 40%. That's fine.

Right.

But sell the best stack. Apply that across all of your clients.

100.

And then instead of it being negligence, you're doing and if they decline it, okay, then it's on them. But you got to show them that.

Yeah. And if they're honest, it's a scary thing. Is the reason not to do a.

Lot of these MSR 100 agree with you.

They. They lean on that argument. But the reality is they're scared to fail.

Yeah.

And, you know, like you said, you have to push. We learned it ourselves in the msp. We go through that period. And you're like, oh, I don't want to.

Well, one of the reasons I was honestly very nervous about cyber security, I saw what was coming, and I had an opportunity to sell. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna tap out on that because I'm not a security guy. And I realized that's your point.

Now, it's a sales opportunity is the thing. This is the channel that understands it and connect business needs to technical solutions. And so now to your point, it's an amazing opportunity.

Yeah.

And you don't have to be a security expert. You have to understand.

And I, I fully believe you got to understand the concepts, understand what it does.

Exactly.

Partner with firms like Citricom to say, here's what we should be doing. Here's who we should partner with. I don't need five CASSPs on stack and a seat on staff and all this other. They have it. They have a partner that I, I can work with.

And I Can and then serve your local market with those solutions that you can reach through the channel.

Like, we got a guy in our program that's in now 14 states. So, in fact, we just had Jordan Belfort here on stage with us, and. And he came up to the mic and said, hey, is it okay to sell these people remotely? And Jordan's like, if it works for you, everybody's used to selling remotely now, so go, expand, grow, you know, And I think that's such a key. So.

Yeah, I agree.

Okay. I think we're almost at time here, but any. Any parting words?

Well, I think get involved and, you know, I'll tell you again as friends, but being here, this is a great community. And you're right, the msps that are here, they're more mature in nature, but they have good, positive pressure to perform and do better.

That's what we're doing. So thank you for that.

Yeah. Just. But. But move forward. Try it. Do it. Go like, no MSP is successful and looks back and says, I'm successful because I didn't evolve. I didn't change. The ones that are up on the stages are the ones that stayed in touch with the market and constantly innovated and pushed to figure out how to deliver good solutions.

It doesn't have to be perfect, out of the box.

Keep trying to improve every day.

I actively say the only thing better than perfect is done right. All right, John Tippett, COO of Citricom, thanks so much for coming on with us.

You're welcome. Glad to be here.

Everybody else, we'll see you on another episode of Building a Profitable msp. Take care.

It.