Rebranding and Scaling: John Hansman’s MSP Success Story | Building A Profitable MSP with Chris Wiser

How do we get from 10 to 60? What did you guys.

I realized I had a limitation and the way I word it to my marketing company, I said, look, we're going to do a rebrand. I want you to make me the next Nike of it. I want it to look like a national company. I want people to question whether I'm a big company and not realize how small I am.

What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Building a Profitable msp. I am your host, Chris Wiser. Hope you guys are having a great day. I'm here with a very special guest here at Fort Lauderdale at our Q4 Live event. Got Jon Handsman with me. How you doing, sir?

I'm doing great.

That's good. John, give us a little intro to yourself, your MSP, etc.

Yeah, so my name is Jon Handsman. I own a company called Truitt. Truitt. We. Funny, our branding's been around for about a year and a half.

But you rebranded, right?

I remember you joined our program. But I've been around in the industry seven years, three of it I worked moonlighting as a MSP slash tech guy after hours.

So you were like what they, I guess would call a trunk slammer. Yeah, totally.

That's how I got started.

Okay, that's cool.

That's.

What was your full time job? I didn't even know this.

Yeah, so I worked in the home security industry.

Oh.

And I ran a 24 hour monitoring center for about 12 of my 20 years at that office.

And then Moonlight Moonlit I guess did.

Yes.

Was it your own deal or was it somebody else's deal?

Oh, well, the, of course I worked for a company. I did my own.

Okay, so you kind of started your MSP that part time way?

Yeah.

Building your book of business, all those different things up. Okay, that's cool. I, I didn't actually didn't know that until right now.

Yeah, it's crazy. I, I'm talking about it even tomorrow. But what's cool is I, I just, I knew I was at a dead end. I just had no way out. And I had a friend of mine who was a pastor who, who went through a journey where he was at the end of his time doing, doing ministry and he was asking the same questions I was asking, like, hey, I've been doing this for 20 years, I've never done anything else. What am I going to do? And he, he's now works for Blue Origin as a rocket engineer. He launches rockets.

Wow, that's cool.

Pastor to rocket engineer. And as he was doing that journey, it made me go, well, wait a minute, if he's not stuck, I'm not stuck.

Yeah.

And something triggered in my mind because.

It'S a pretty big risk to go take your, take that jump. Did you, did you, did that trigger happen while you were moonlighting or was the, was that the cause? Okay, so that's, that's what got you.

I was already doing, you know, like a lot of us self taught guys, I was already programming people's VCRs when I was a little kid.

Just like me. I like tech, right? Yeah, Yeah.

I was always tinkering. So I at that point had saw requests on Facebook for people needing support. So I was doing residential support, helping a couple really small businesses with their tech. So I was already working for people without a license or any of that. And then when I went and saw career counsel because my friend did, and it TR we went through and they gave me like three options. They said, you can be an entrepreneur because your personality, you can become a tech because technology. Like, you know, go work for a company and become a tech. Or the weird one that was obscure and odd was you could become a newscaster.

Actually, I could, I could actually see that in you. I could totally see that in you. I probably wouldn't be. I was a radio DJ for a while, so I'm not a whole lot different than that.

A lot alike.

I'm kind of. That's really weird. It's like literally the three things that I probably could do too.

I was just telling somebody that you and I have a lot of personality similarities.

Yeah, I don't disagree.

A lot of family similarities.

I love this story. This is pretty cool. So. So you've been truett on your own. You moonlit your security company. When did you bounce out on your own as true?

Three and a half years after I started moonlighting, I sat down, I had a coach that was helping me who was a corporate coach for a different industry. But he was in the area and he said, I really want to help you. So we sat down and looked at my budget, how much I was bringing in part time, looked at what my salary was, and we hit this point where he looked at me one day, said, john, do you realize you're bringing in part time what you're bringing in full time?

Just working for the man at that.

Point, he did what a lot of good coaches do. He looked me in the eyeballs and said, when are you going to quit? Give me a date.

Wow.

And so I picked September of 2019 and quit my job.

Oddly weird timing with COVID right after that.

Of course, I didn't know it was coming.

No one knew.

Yeah. So I at the time was a company called. I think I was at that time, Hands on Technology Solutions. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, is it hands on.

Okay.

Okay.

I see we're getting to see the logo later.

Pick up what you're doing.

But we. So I did that and then Covid happened. I started to convert to another company called Otech Guys, which is. I lived in Olympia. Another play on words, actually.

My, My. My CPA is o Tax only tax.

Oh, fun.

So he's up there in Olympia also.

Oh, cool. Yeah, I might even know him. But. So I. I ended up just starting that company and Covid really pushed us into being more of a break fix repair shop.

Okay.

My. I was to grow my msp at the time. I was literally going door to door to businesses. And naturally that stopped. That just came to a complete halt.

Yep, Absolutely.

And I had to figure out really quickly, what am I gonna do? I had no clue how to. Like, I was in that spot where my phone stopped ringing. Everybody was in their houses.

So let's talk about. This is actually a really good transition. So what did you do? How. How did you get from that? Because what's kind of. I mean, Covid sucked, obviously it was not fun, but it was kind of good for our industry because it made sense. MSP massively relevant. Right.

So what did.

What did you see was your real catalyst?

My catalyst was actually moving. I slowed down the MSP growth and I actually had so many people calling me to do computer repair. Like I. It was crazy. About two and a half, three weeks in, my phone was not. It was ringing non stop. Best Buy was closed. One of the other large computer store.

Stuff that was there were gone. And you became relevant.

So I laugh at it today because how crazy it was, but I literally had people call me like, hey, can you do. Can you fix my computer? Can you fix this? And I'm like, yeah, sure. So I had an upstairs office in my apartment. I literally had a cleaning station in my garage that I created. And I was. For about six months.

I was hazmat suit going full on.

For like six months. I was taking in repair and then fixing it in my doing in my garage.

And did that kind of launch you into MSP or how did you end up doing some.

So I had landed a 25 workstation property management company right out the gate. I had negotiated it while I was part Where I was part doing it part time and gave them my drop dead date. And they said, great. When you, when you quit, your contract starts with us. Had them all signed.

Wow.

All of that lined up perfectly. I worked for that corporation that I was working for to finish out some projects for about six months. They gave me a contract, so that helped supplement and, and I picked up a couple other small MSP clients. But I really didn't launch my MSP like full bore until we got so big with repair that I ended up having to get a commercial space because people, people are weird. They show up at any time of the day looking for like to fix my computer on Saturday, Sunday, whatever.

Yeah, yeah. There's no, there's no line in the center. No. Okay, so let's fast forward a little bit till to now.

Yeah.

So coming out of COVID had your commercial space, what was your MRR then, would you say in the single digits?

Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, it was just me. I was, I probably got it up to maybe.

Maybe.

Yeah, it was probably between 10 and 12.

10 and 12,000amonth. Okay, so. So where do we sit now? And then I want to talk about kind of what has happened to get.

You a thousand a month right now.

Okay, that's great. Congratulations on that. That's really good. Yeah. And I believe you're kind of mobile too, right?

Yeah, we are working on two markets, so we live in Olympia, Washington and we love the eastern Washington, Idaho area. And so we were like, well, if you're entrepreneur, you either, you, you either have to like sell your business in one area or you have to grow. So we decided, well, why don't we just grow into another market? So we decided the best way to do that for us was to buy an RV full time, live in that.

You don't even have a house, an apartment, you don't have a house. You live in your RV full time. You and your wife, you got kids too, right? Not yet, no.

We have one coming on.

Okay. Yeah, I knew that. Okay, that's what it was. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

So you're like small. It's 40, 41ft.

So it's a kid.

Yeah, yeah.

No, that's great. I've seen pictures of your iv. I've seen your little office in your full set up there. So that's pretty cool. So pretty solid business now, mobile, what things have gotten you. You know, let's talk about the, the building, your profitable MSP player. What things have, what cornerstones have you put in to make you Guys profitable to get from that break fix.

Yeah.

Single digit. 10 maybe 10k mrr. How do we get from 10 to 60? What did you guys.

Yeah. So two big giant things I did before I even met you was one I realized with my Oli tech guys brand I had a limitation of two things.

One, your brand was.

My brand was very constricting down to the. The regional area. Okay. And larger companies looked at me as a repair shop and a really small entity. So they were like well, I don't if I wanted this little repair shop doing my it for me. I had actually somebody who was an international business.

She already been thinking about that, that brand expansion away from just Olympia. Right. Okay. I like that.

And I wanted and, and the way I, I worded it to my marketing company that I was using that I still use. I said look, we're going to do a rebrand. I want you to make me the next Nike of it.

That's good relevant up in the upper north.

I want it to look like, like a Internet, like an international company. I want people to question whether I'm a big company and not realize how small I am.

Yeah.

And that goes back to how I started my business. When I was working part time. I had a phone system. Like the day one I had a phone system. I had QuickBooks. I literally had. Press one if you want to talk to a technician. Press two if you want to talk to a.

So you were acting big from day one.

All roads led to me. Yeah. But no one had to know that I had a ton of people who when I announced that I quit my job, they were like I thought you already, I thought you were already full time.

That's good. Okay. So I think one thing you mentioned obviously that growth mindset, that branding getting, you know, rebranding yourself and creating yourself thinking like you were already there.

What.

What's another couple.

So another couple things we really focused on and I think this is where my recent group coaching has helped with seven figure is just know who you're targeting. So I knew true it was going to be really good at targeting larger businesses. So I picked like I'm trying to go for larger businesses.

So when you say a larger business just for our audience, what does that mean?

Yeah. So when I before I was 1, 2, 3, now I'm 5 to 10 or more. So I'm looking for law firms and I'm looking at business.

But. But not 500 plus. No, not 500 PL away from the onesie twosie. So you made a conscious decision And I think this is a really important one to think about. You made a conscious decision that we are going to go for bigger clients. Correct. And it doesn't mean that it has to be a hundred person shop or 200 or 500 person company. But you went for. Just consciously said okay, I'm going to go after. Not onesie twosie. Correct. I'm going to go after 10, 20, 30, 40, 50.

And one of the other things that I've done recently has been if they're not a good fit, they're not a good fit. And that's okay.

That includes, that's a, that's a he. That's a head thing. Huge big head thing.

And even recently it's been like I took on a really large client. Like my. One of my first ones was you know, 17,000, they're now 25. So we doubled our income this last year.

That's great.

But we only doubled it because I happily lost a few. I lost probably about six grand worth of rmr. That was people that weren't a great fit anyways. They were high maintenance. They were price.

It was just interesting is you don't know this but all the interviews I'm doing here at the live event in Fort Lauderdale, everybody is saying a very similar thing of I got rid of some high work, crappy clients which has allowed me to open up. And that's a, that is a huge factor because you start getting into profitability. It seems to me like profitability comes back towards how much time you have not killing yourself working for a dime for Right. Just client. Just because you have that and just.

Being okay with that.

Yeah.

Like you have. You have to come to a point where when someone pins you down at a number that you know is not realistic for what's good for their business, you just say we're not the right fit. And that's. That's totally okay.

Yeah. It's okay to say no. We about embracing your no in the, in the program and I think that's key. So. Okay, so we got a couple of really good points. What's one more that we could take away that you felt has made you very profitable?

One of them has been to standardize, standardize, standardize. So that could be multifaceted. Standardize your sales process, standardize your marketing, standardize your stack.

I like all three of those because.

If when you standardize your mark your any of those things. Two things. I'm not there yet for hiring people but I know that I can bring somebody in to a sales position and I can put them through training, I can do marketing, put them in through training. Cause I could just tell them this is what the expectation is.

You have a process that you adhere to.

And now I have a stack where while we still have a couple loose cannons that we're solving, we are primarily all one part. And I literally have a guy as we speak this week with a Excel spreadsheet with all of our clients and he's going line by line to make sure everybody fit fits. Anybody who doesn't fit on the full stack is getting a call from me this week to schedule time to look at their risk level.

Yeah, I love that. And one of the things that we focus on in the seven figure MSP program is leading with cyber security, leading with risk management, risk discussions. You came out of my keynote this morning with you know, some tasks of here's what I want you to do. If you feel like you're up against a wall or not, you know, maybe need to bounce back to fundamentals. Here's some things to do. Any of that stuff you're going to try to deploy on yourself?

Here's what I'll say. Yes. One of the things that stuck with me this morning that you said was really talking about having to really double down on action and this is an area where if you were to ask me the well what haven't gone very well I can tell where I've not had a lot of action and I need to adjust. And that's an area where I'm going to double down on, on specific sales related, marketing related things.

Make that your. I'm going to tell you right now, I want you to come back here and meet with me in Q1.

Yep.

At we're going to be Phoenix in Q1 and I want to do another one of these and I want you to tell me that this is now your super.

We'll give you a tour of our rv. Cuz we're going to be there with the rv. We're going to, we're going to stay in the RV because we'll have a baby.

Then you're going to take that all the way down to Phoenix.

I'm taking it everywhere.

Damn bro. Okay, I like that. So I love. Maybe we'll just sleep in. John, you're going to get a roommate, buddy. So I want you to make that your superpower because if there's one thing that I really work on and I work on with my team a lot, I want them to make something their superpower. And one of the things that I'm really good at, and you've probably seen this the last couple of years is I have an idea and we go, we go, go, go, go, go. That's why we're sitting here at this live event. And you've watched it kind of grow over the last few years, so I think that's really key. So, okay, I think we're pretty much out of time, but any parting words that you'd have for our audience, maybe something that they can take and really implement or execute on.

Here's what I'll say. I hear this a lot as I, as I'm watching the industry change really quick. We have to kind idea that things are going to be the way they always have been and we have to be ready for change. The world is rapidly, rapidly changing. And I've heard it from three different people, not just in this group, that if you are not focused on risk management and as an msp, you probably won't be around in three years.

Yeah, I agree with that year even really, really great advice because I think.

It'S so key and so if you're not doing that and you're making every excuse to steer away from it, it's time to really look at what you're doing.

Yeah. That push yourself to that area of discomfort.

It was one of the greatest decisions in the last year that we made from trying to have a stack to really focusing on cyber security.

Yeah. I love it.

The best decision. It's not just changed my, my clients. I've got clients who say I had one who is my largest and I emailed this week say we believe in security because you're here.

Yeah.

And we're.

It's funny how that becomes what they start to understand and realize. Right. Like a lot of. A lot of. And I know we just said that we have a couple minutes left, but it's such good topic. A lot of you guys as msps are in this world where you're like, oh, my client said this. Stop letting your client dictate everything. You have to be the one that says I am a security expert. And if you're not a security expert, partner with like, I don't even think most. Like, don't take this wrong. I don't see you personally as a security expert, but you have multiple vendor partners that are 100%. That's a huge factor now. And you need to be the one that says, no, Mr. Client, we're going to focus on security because that's where you should be. Yeah, I think that's so key.

What's crazy is they're reaffirming that is that email had nothing to do with security and had everything to do with a really big hardware order they're going to do. And they just said, oh, by the way, I was meeting with the executives of the company, and we reaffirmed that security is really important to us, so we're gonna keep on chugging along with you.

I love it. I love it. Okay.

Yeah.

So many good tips. Jon Hansman, thanks for being with us today. Congrats on True. Congrats on the baby. Congrats. Congrats on the rv. I want to see you back here with me. We're going to be second week of February. We're doing Phoenix. We're gonna do another episode, and I want to hear you tell us your progress and where we sit. Okay, buddy? All right, everybody watching. Thanks again for being with us on the Building a profitable MSP podcast. My name is Chris Wiser. We'll see you guys next time.