How to Grow Managed Service Provider Businesses with The Authors of the Pumpkin Plan for MSPs

I left that company and started my MSP in 2007 with a partner and sold it in 2019. We built a $10 million MSP in 11 years.

December 20th, 2017 that I sold my company at 4:34pm if anybody's counting.

Yeah, that's a great story. Well, I am, as I said, just so excited to have you both here. Really enjoyed the book, really enjoyed concrete, actionable advice. It wasn't just recycling old content. It wasn't the same things you get in blog posts. It was insightful and here are steps you can take. Here are things you can actually do, here are downloads you can grab. I really like that part of the book. I wanted to start off and just provide a little background on your history and backstory because I thought that really adds a lot of insight and flavor to the book.

Neither one of us started out in technology. I'll let Sean tell his story, but my degrees are in pastoral ministries and education. I got into technology in the 90s, came through the dot coms, worked with some super smart people, determined I was not as smart as they were and went towards management and I figured out, you know, I know how to prioritize things and talk to people and not all these people know that, but I can't learn things as quick as they do. And that led to me working for.

A.

Consulting company in New York City right by ground zero and they were starting a a small business support group. They asked me to run it. After a few weeks I figured out if we didn't figure out how to make money that they were just going to get rid of us all. And within four years that was the biggest part of that business. And I left that company and started my MSP in 2007 with a partner and sold it in 2019. We built a $10 million MSP in 11 years. I started working with Sean in the end of 2020. I had some crazy life events happen in between there and we're off and running with Encore.

That's an understatement. But Sean Walsh, I actually, I did not start out in technology either. I actually started out as a police det, was a police officer, made it into detectives, was running the detective division, decided to go back to school, found I had an interest and a capacity for for it. Wound up changing my degree to business and and information technology. Started actually doing law enforcement software, working as a contractor for some software companies that did police records management on my days off. Then all of a sudden technology crept into my day to day job doing computer crime Investigation and forensics. And then I realized that I definitely was making a lot more money on my days off and in between started my company. My MSP originally is just a side hustle to keep my skills current. And finally my wife came to me and said, I don't care which career you pick, but pick one. Financially, it didn't make sense to stay in police. Gotten to where I wanted to be and, and I had this whole new world in front of me. So we, we, we went forward, never looked back. Started the company, went full time, grew it to locations in four states, had a lot of hard lessons along the way and got an offer that we couldn't say no to at the end of, at the end of 2017. And I, it was December 20, 2017 that I sold my company at, at 4:34pm if anybody's counting.

Yeah, that's a great story.

You know, and spent the holidays at home and hung out. And then I remember calling up my attorney and, and I said, hey, I need you to register this llc. I have an idea of what I want to do going forward here. And he just laughed at me and said, you couldn't even make it a month retired, could you? He said, nope, there's too many ideas bouncing around this head. So I started Encore and we started out doing direct consulting and peer groups for MSPs and for other professional services companies as well. And then Dave, when he sold his company and you know, after he had taken some time off, he came up to me at one point and said, hey, this is what I'm thinking about doing. I said, well, that blends in perfectly with what I'm doing. So why don't you just come on as a partner partner and we get to work together some more. And that's, that's where where Encore went. And you know, as far as my background out of the business side, you know, I got a, as I said, I got a information technology degree, a business undergraduate, and then I did a, and I did an MBA through LSU and just always learning, always reading, always trying to figure out new stuff.

Super interesting. I'm thinking as you guys are telling me your paths. Everyone I've talked to in the MSP space has an interesting how I got started in this story. I don't know if this is everybody I'm going to talk to is that way, if anybody's going to go, well, I wanted to start an msp. And then nobody said that yet. It's all really interesting paths in.

Yeah, I mean, let's face it, when we all got into it, everybody came from something else. Because when most of us were younger, there was no such thing as an MSP or even a small IT department. It was these big computer rooms with people in white coats. So the timing was we had a lot of opportunity, but we all came in from different backgrounds and different areas. But the common denominator is we all either got fired, got laid off, had a boss we couldn't stand, or something like that. That, that drove us to that entrepreneurial path.

So you find that like, the typical is that it's not typical, you know, that everybody really does have a story like that. I. We joke about it when we, when we speak on the road and we start, we start talk sometimes by going, you know, everybody gets in this industry the same way. They go to Wharton, they get a Harvard mba, they say, what kind of business should I start? I think I'll start an msp. And everybody kind of chuckles because nobody gets into this business that way. You know, it happens by accident. It happens just by trying to get paid to do tech work because you don't like working for somebody else or, you know, that's. That's how it goes.

Yeah, it is interesting. I talked with someone who, they had done several things, had been in the military, they had run in a bed and breakfast. When that didn't work out, they just went, I'll just go get some training and work like a very minimum wage type job at an msp. Ended up buying the company from their employer and now has a multimillion dollar msp. There's so many rich stories like this. Very entrepreneurial. From the standpoint of your business, your three biggest goals right now, or even just your top goals, what's driving you guys to contribute this way? Now that you've already established yourselves, what's causing you to go back, wade back into the entrepreneurial waters and serve more?

You know, I turned down good jobs when I started to get back into the industry. And there's a few reasons why I wanted to go into business with Sean. Number one, I'm just wired as a builder. I put one block on top of the other. You know, that's what we did in our msps. It's a business of nickels and dimes, right? You're building slow, building slow, building slow. And, and I just love, I love doing that. It was like writing the book. You know, it's the same kind of thing. But the other thing is that the reason we work so well together is we want to make money but that's not the primary motivation. Like, we both really get off on. On helping people and seeing them succeed. Like, I was doing that for free for a long time before I started doing it for money. You know, anytime somebody wanted to talk about a business they were starting or making a career change, I psyched. You know, well, let me take you to lunch. Let's grab a cup of coffee, let's go have a beer, whatever. Is just kind of a natural outgrowth of who we are, I think.

Yeah. And to follow up on Dave's point, you know, even with my police background and, you know, military background and, you know, before that, a firefighter, and I've always teached. Coaching has always come into play in everything I've done. I've taught college, I've taught high school. I, you know, I. I'm here in Aruba right now where Dave and I both live part of the year, and, And I work in a dive shop. You know, I used to be a police scuba diver. So I came to Aruba and I decided I'm gonna. I'm gonna teach scuba diving. So I. I just enjoy sharing knowledge. I like going deep on a subject, and I like seeing people take what I give them and running with it. And to Dave's point, you know, you know, seeing somebody succeed is a huge endorphin rush for me, you know, and, you know, we just had a member of one of our peer groups exit, and. And it's a person who had to rebuild their company from scratch at one point, and they did really well. And, you know, and to me, that just. That gets me excited. I mean, I had no stake in it. I wasn't getting a percentage of it. Doesn't matter to me, it's. It might as well have been my own. And I just like taking that. Those things that we've learned, and especially the lessons that we've learned the hard way and the really painful ones, it's really nice to be able to share that information with somebody and watch them avoid going through that pain firsthand.

So, yeah, it's like saying to one of your kids, listen, I really screwed up by doing this. Don't do that. You know, and when it works, it's a wonderful thing to see.

So for encore, right now, what's the biggest goal?

Last year was all about getting the book done. This year is all about blitzing the world and talking to everybody we can and get in front of as many people we can. And. And I. I really think the end of this year is an inventory with some, with some really solid, you know, business goals with metrics attached to them and everything else. But it's been so interesting having built a business from scratch. And like I said, we got the $10 million last year before he sold. And, and we're very much out of that startup Mode. We had 45 employees, you know, and to be back in that startup mode the last couple of years, there's this, there's this excitement about it. And there's also this, man, I used to have people to do these things for me. I need to figure out how to use this thing. I haven't touched in five years. And so it is, it's been a challenge, but kind of this challenge that's you feel, you feel like you're going back to school, you know, or you haven't picked up, you haven't taken the boat out in 10 years and you're getting it out on the water. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's really exciting to see what's happening right now. We went into this year super excited with the book coming out and a lot of things just looking up and I, I'm so blessed to be able to say four months into the year, like, it hasn't, the excitement hasn't ebbed at all. We're really psyched about what's going on right now.

Every engagement we have with the book, you know, we've got people lined up to talk to us and, and it's just, it's a lot, you know, as far as the goals for Encore, though, you know what? We, Dave and I sat down and eating our own dog food, we made sure we started the year. I tell all my clients, you need to start out the year with a written business plan, a written budget and a written marketing plan. And we started the year with that. And we sat down and I didn't hesitate. I said, my goal this year is that we're going to double the company. And we've already got a decent sized team for where we're at. You know, there's, right now we have eight people on the team. And, and so, you know, revenue wise and that size, the goal is to do, do 100% growth this year. We both know how to do it. It's, it's interesting, it's interesting to contrast doing it the second time versus the first time because you still make mistakes, but you catch yourself a lot faster and you go, oh, yeah, we shouldn't have done that. That was, you know, but it's funny how much faster you can hit the accelerator. And I guess it's the, the difference between maybe learning how to drive a car when you first start driving and maybe being a race car driver and moving from, from, from NASCAR to formula.

So that's interesting too though, because not everybody has that experience. I've, I've worked with a lot of founders that they had that first exit. Depending on the size of the exit, sometimes there's a little bit of overconfidence and they're, they try to run things like on autopilot. And what you just mentioned there was observing and kind of going through the learning loop and reflecting quickly. I don't know that everybody does that, but I agree when you do, it really does make a difference. So that's a, that's an interesting insight.

Yeah. And, and I, and that's an interesting analogy that you bring up because I have seen some people, they think that they've been through it. So I'll just hire other people to do it and stay on the outside and, and, and Dave and I are very much both hands on kind of people. So I'm having fun being back in the trenches of a startup. I don't want to stay there because I did the first time. I stayed in the hands on mode way too long, which is what we teach people to get out of. But it's fun being back there, and it's fun being back there with something that's a little bit different because there's new lessons to be learned. And as you said, we can cycle through that learning loop a good bit faster than we did the first time because back then we didn't know what you know, we didn't know what we didn't know. And now we're very aware when we have something that we don't know. And the other great thing is that we've both built up these fantastic networks that when we don't have the answer, which is still often, we don't know everything, but we sure know where to go get the answer and we know who to ask and we have those resources available, which is really kind of neat.

I like this idea. When we did some of the prep, you said, you know, we want to, we want to eat our own dog food here. And there's so much good information in the book on how to build up an actual business and take yourself out of the business. It's neat to hear. Yeah, we're enjoying that process, doing it for ourselves.

Yeah. I oversee. Sean alluded to me telling him what I was interested in doing. And I said, I think I can do recruiting for MSP because we got really good at it in our MSP and we learned some things I thought a lot of people hadn't figured out. And when I brought that to him, he said, oh, you know, I think that'll, that'll fit really well with what I'm doing. And you know, it really did take a year. I think he undersold. It took a year or two to really figure out how it all fits together because it really is very consultative. And I say all that to say this, that I went into that from the beginning saying we are going to build tremendous processes. From the very beginning. We're going to put together a manual. We have a 40 page manual on how we, how we do our recruiting. We have, it's very scientific. We have process, we have steps. And I just did my first interview with a candidate in two years the other day. I mean, like, like, so there are some things that we learned the first time around and that the coaching and stuff is really a lot harder to hand off. But there's certain aspects of the business that from day one we said we're going to do this the way it should be done, not, not the way, you know, we would have done it the first time around, which is to dive headfirst into everything and take it all on yourself until, until you just burn out and can't take it anymore and then go, ha, how do I get out of this? You know, so we, we have learned some stuff and there's, there's a lot. The confidence is a two way street, right? Because you can be overconfident but when you have had success, it, it definitely makes you not afraid to try things. I was trying something I hadn't seen somebody try before and, and I had the confidence to do it because our houses are no longer at stake. And, and, and you know, I've learned that when you think something is a good idea and you've got a good track record, why not try it? It won't always work, but it's part of being older and having had a successful exit is that you can try things, you can pivot, you can have, and you can do it all with a little bit of confidence and a lot less fear. Right. Gary Vee, I heard him speak one year at Build it and I would boil his whole speech down to this. If you go into every day of your career grateful and fearless, you have a percentage, over 99% of the people in the business world and we Try to do that.

That is inspiring. I really like that with all of the MSPs that you guys coach and I know you've got a goal of reaching a thousand. And with your experience in the industry, what's the one thing, if you had to pick out one thing that you see hold owners and CEOs back, what would that be?

I like that Sean and I had little different answers on this. I like to talk about the statistic that it's 4% of businesses in America that get over a million dollars in revenue. It's 21% of MSPs. I think it could very easily be 75% of MSPs if MSPs really embrace the fundamentals of the business. There's so few people paying attention to the business side of that business. You know, they're focused on technology tools and making clients happy. And they're really, they're really, they're not wired to look at how does this business become successful.

And often they're spending the time trying to make the wrong clients happy.

So, Sean, you've got a slightly different take.

Yeah, I mean, if I had to boil it down to one thing and it falls into what Dave's saying, and I just kind of narrowed it down a little bit more. But the numbers, I mean, it still shocks me how many people I walk into and they, they engage us for consulting or they come into a peer group and I ask them, okay, you know, what's, what's your profit this year? And, and last week I was just, I, I had to bite my tongue. The person said, well, I don't know, I haven't gotten my tax return back. I'm like, no, it doesn't work that way. You need to know your numbers every single day. You need to be running those reports every month. It amazes me try to run a business without a budget. And, you know, one thing that I learned along the way is that the most important report that I can run each month is the budget. To actual. As long as you have a well defined budget and sales forecast, if you look at that every month, you're going to know whether you're on track or off track. And if you manage to, that you're going to hit your goals. And there's no better tool that I have found yet that will, that will outperform that report for that thing. Because so many people, they go, yeah, we did a budget last year. And we, you know, and, and yeah, we kind of blew it. I'm like, well, what did you do with it? After you wrote the budget that, like, well, we looked at it at the end of the year to see how we did. And I'm like, yeah, no, you got. It's a. It's a living tool. You got to be using it all the time. But people just. They. They just go along and they're not watching the numbers. They don't know the basis for the numbers. They're not sure of the levers to pull, and they're kind of winging it. And, you know, when we bring on a new client and I ask, you know, what's your. What's your profitability? The other thing that kind of makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck is when they go, well, I think it's about. I'm like, I just cut them off right there. I'm like, okay, so you're telling me you don't know what your profitability is. So, you know, you're guessing, and you need to know those numbers. And, you know, there's all kinds of other things, as Dave said, that have to go into the picture, but first and foremost, you got to know what the numbers are, and everything else gets managed after that.

Yeah, both of those perspectives very much resonate with me. And this was my experience reading the book, you know, listening to the stories you guys told, and you guys, like, felt like bared all. But as we talk through these, I'm thinking about, you know, I've managed operations for companies at different times, and that was the biggest thing we would do in our monthlies and our quarterlies was let's look at the budget, let's look at the profit, let's look at the numbers and how we're performing before we get into anything else. Let's level set here. That was one thing. And then on the management side as well, though, Dave, this story you told about, I think it was you, Dave, because this fits with what you were just saying, that, like, the amount of work one has to do on oneself to say, what am I doing? What do I need to do to lead better. And some of the stories around that really resonated with me because occasionally my family tells me where they think I need to improve and reflect some things that may be seeping into how I'm leading or not leading and doing a poor job of it. Those things really resonated for me in the book.

That was mostly Sean, because it was so tied into, you know, he had a. His business story is. Is like a movie, you know, where everybody walked out on everybody.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, he Lost half his company.

Sorry I reversed that and, but I.

Got, I've got parallel stuff. I look back on the things I did in my business and some of it was just things I was ignorant about and didn't know and, and some of it was stuff that I, I did know and waited far too long to do anything about because I didn't want the conflict. I want to rock the boat. I didn't, I wanted to work on the things I like and not the things I needed to. And those are just, those are just things that you've, you've. Most MSPs are held back by the owner and channel confirmed this all, all day and all night. They get as far as they get because the owner's good qualities and they don't get any further because of the owner's bad qualities. And being able to work on those bad qualities and change them is, is a tremendous challenge. You can teach people and it's going to help. But ultimately the thing, the thing that keeps MSPs going for much further than they get is usually the owner.

I think that extends to businesses as well.

Go ahead.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, you know, if you're a business owner, if you're not willing to look in the mirror every day and go, you know, what, what am I doing wrong and what can I improve and where can I be better? Not just, not just as a business, a business person, but, but as, as a human being and as a leader and as a mentor, you're not going to go very far, you know, and, and, and not only that, but if you do those things and, and, and, and, and you come out in a good place in the end, you're going to be a lot happier and you're gonna, you're gonna have a lot more to show for it and you're gonna, you're gonna feel a lot better about just, you know, there was, there was a lot of self reflection that I, that I learned to do, you know, especially after the first couple of years because I was struggling and you know, you talked earlier about fear and you know, you think about it, I, I, I had had several years in, in a government job. I had a guaranteed, you know, I had a, I was vested in the retirement system. I had basically I was, I was the, I was the commander of the detective division. You stayed there and, and been comfortable and, but I gave up guaranteed benefits. I had a new house with a, that we had built with a new mortgage and a new kid, the third new kid on the way And I went to my wife and I said, I think I want to give up those benefits to, you know, to start this business. And she just said, that's what we want to do, that, that's what we're going to do, and we'll figure it out. And, and you know, so I had a ton of support from her, but there was a lot of pressure and, and there was a lot of fear. And I went into that like, failure is not an option here. And I allowed way too much of that fear to control how I managed and how, and how I viewed things. And managing from a standpoint of fear is not effective.

I wish that didn't resonate so much, but that so resonates. It is so true.

It is. I mean, it really is. And you know, I talk to clients all the time. I'm like, I get it, I completely understand, but it's not going to be effective, so let's figure out how to change it. You know, and learning how to let go and, and learning how to hire the right people, trust the right people makes it a lot easier to, to let go, give the fear and trust people that you, that you hand things off to, let me say. So, you know, you got to be willing to look in the mirror every day and, and, and you know, number one, if you, if your business has issues, start in the mirror in the morning. You'll get a lot further.

Yeah.

Yes.

That's what they tell you. You know, angel investing 101. You're not, you're not betting on an idea, you're betting on a person, you know, because the founder will make or break the company.

Absolutely.

When you see CEOs struggling, you know, we, we talked a little bit, you know, in the pre work, like, what do you see holding back? You guys mentioned not having a vision or a strategy and, or not communicating that vision of that strategy. What are some things, why do you feel it's important? And what can the CEO, the leader, owners of a, even a small msp, what can they do to overcome that challenge?

I'll jump in on that one because that one kind of hits home too, because when we were having the struggles with the company, one of the things that I remember very clearly was my wife coming into my office and closing the door. And she said, you know, there's no doubt in my mind you have an incredible vision for this company. And the problem is nobody out there knows what it is. And that really kind of hit home with me. And I just assumed everybody's going to get it through osmosis. I know what, I get it. Don't you see it? It's right there. And, and we do a lot of personality profiling. And one of the things that was really instrumental in my company changing was learning how to use personality profiling and communications tools. And that helped me with my own journey quite a bit. But if you know anything about like disk profiling, you know, most leaders tend to be high D and they're over here and I'm 100D natural and adaptive. Sharing with others is not my forte. You know, I'm very task orientated and I had to work to change that. But it was amazing when I started, when we started having regular meetings and we would start the year with an annual meeting and we would get the team together and I would spend an afternoon explaining what the vision was for the next year. The first time I did that, it was uncomfortable. I was moving out of my comfort zone. But I'll never forget the end of the first quarter, one of my managers coming up to me and saying, how'd we do? I go, what do you mean, how'd we do? He goes, you gave us this big speech at the beginning of the year and you set these goals. Are we hitting them or not? And I was like, wow, you really listened. And then I made sure that every quarter we gave updates and we checked in along the way. And it was amazing how much ownership the team took of those goals and made them their own. And that's when I really realized I can let go, I can delegate. But they have to understand why you need that, why they, you know, people don't just want to go to work to check a box every day. They want to go there with a purpose. And if you share that vision and you again, if you've hired the right people for culture fit and core value fit, they're going to embrace that vision with you. And, and wow, does it make it more fun to go to work when everybody's on the same page.

100%. You are, you are speaking my language there.

But you know what? That's, that's, there's still, you know, there's owners that I work with all the time that they have a really hard time sharing that and, and, and articulating what their vision is. And, and some of them don't even understand. They, they, there's something back there, but I don't even know that they can articulate it to themselves times and, and really taking steps to get that vision written out, clarified and, and, and cast in Stone so that you can present it to somebody else and say, this is where we're heading now. You can. It's now when you know where you're going, it's much easier to set a path to get there than if you're, than if you're just wandering around aimlessly, hoping to get to some place that you're not sure exists.

What were you going to say, Dave? Go ahead.

You.

You can't have a plan without a goal, right?

Yeah.

You have to know where you're, where you're going to have a plan to get there. It's like the, if you're driving and you say the, I don't know where I'm going, but I know how to get there.

Like that.

That doesn't make any sense. Right, but that's how a lot of MSPs operate. That's how my MSP operated for years and years. And I don't want to just talk like I'm smacking down everybody else.

First five years plus, I mean, we were just kind of wandering.

You want to turn everything into a gap analysis because once you know where you're trying to get to, it's just, how do we get there? What do we need to do this year? What do we need to do next year? What do we need to do the year after that? And then, and then you adjust as, as the realities of how things are going set in. But, but without that, it's hard to get anywhere by accident.

I'd love to know how quickly, once you got that clarity and started to emerge and you started creating those operating rhythms of checking back in with it, how quickly did you start to see changes? Whether it's in ownership people are taking or the results you were getting From a financial perspective, how quickly did that start to manifest?

That's a good Sean question. But I'll tell you one brief story. I ran some numbers. I have some online peer groups that I've done since late 2020, when I first started working with Sean. And there's 17 companies that have stayed in those peer groups the whole time. And I figured out that in 2020, when I started doing those peer groups, the average company age was 17 years, and they had an average of $1.3 million in revenue. And after three years of doing the peer group 2020 to 2023, that average of 1.3 million had doubled. 17 years to get to 1.3, three more to get to 2.6. And I really believe that a lot of that was just having the education in the community to have people say, here's where you're off track. Here's an idea, you know, and it doesn't take a lot of extreme intervention in some cases. It's just everybody has blind spots, right? We all do. And these guys, some of them go decades without having anyone point out, oh, here's something that you need to tweak and it'll change your whole business. And once you get that in your life, it's all. It's a whole different thing. Things can change pretty quickly. You know, I have had four companies in one peer group break a million dollars the same year. You know, the, the. So it's not overnight, but in a year or two, a lot can change.

Yeah, I, I would, I would agree with that. And it's, it's figuring out the right pieces. But when. When all of a sudden you get the pieces right, the chain, it's like flipping a switch. At least it was in my case. And there were three what I would consider transformational phases of my company and my growth and the company's growth. Number one was learning about personality profiling and communication styles and eq emotional intelligence. That got me out of being the bad boss and realizing and understanding how I was being interpreted because again, my wife, who's very intuitive, she and a very good leader, she came in to me and said, you realize everybody here is scared to death of you, right? I'm like, me, I'm a teddy bear. Who the hell would be scared of me, right? And I'm. And then I do this personality profile. I'm like, oh, my God, this is why everybody thinks I'm an ass. And, you know, and I. And all of a sudden I had this self awareness. And then, you know, I started working on bringing my EQ up and being aware socially and of myself, health, you know, that was number one. That was, that was. Changed my leadership style, changed the culture of the company for the positive, and made me better at leading it. The next phase that really kind of put fuel on it was bringing in a business operating system. I went to a Gazelle's Burn Harnish workshop, and then I got introduced shortly after to the book Traction and put those two together, because I don't know if most people realize it, but Traction really came.

Came out of.

Yeah, came from scaling up from Vern Harnish. And so when we implemented the business operating system and we had a process for making sure that things were moving forward and holding people accountable, that really did it. And the third phase was understanding how to push leadership down the organization. And the two books that I recommend to everybody on that is Turn the Ship around by David Marquet, who was the commander of a nuclear submarine and his second book. David's second book is Leadership as Language, which is where we as managers, often we have goals and we have the team, but the way we phrase things and the way we engage people sometimes sabotages our efforts. And how to make sure that we're not using language in a way that is detrimental to our goals. And what that did, that's all about creating leaders at all levels of the organization. And the short version is, if you implement this properly, instead of people coming to you and saying, what do you want me to do? How do you want me to fix this? They come to you and say, here's the problem I'm seeing and I intend to. So it's called intent based leadership.

Oh, I like that.

When we got those three things aligned and throughout our organization, everybody understanding their own profile and the profile of all their team members, understanding that we have a system for operating the business and understanding that we are not here to not make mistakes. We are here to achieve excellence, and that is everybody's job. We grew 400% in 18 months. It was like putting rocket fuel on the company. I mean, those three things just combined created such an effect that not only fostered growth, but created an environment that was fun to come into. I mean, and before I would have a problem and I'd have a knot in my stomach thinking, oh, crap, I got to go in and I got to solve this problem, thinking, it's all on my shoulders. But now a problem comes up and I go, I can't wait to see what the team comes up with to solve this. Because I realize now I have this whole team of people who are empowered to solve problems, and we do great doing it together because we all know how to communicate effectively. And all of a sudden, come on, bring the problems on. I defy you to throw something at us we can't solve because things were just clicking, and it was a fun thing to be part of.

I don't know if you realize it, but it's just a fundamentally different view of people and employees to approach your staff like that. You have to see tremendous potential and value in them to do that. Versus a lot of business owners just say, is, I need this thing to get done, so let me find somebody who knows how to get it done. If they're not getting done, I'll just get someone else who can get it done. And. And empowerment Is really the, the right word there. It's the word you used that it's a different view. It's a whole different view of, of people. It really is.

Really is. It really is. And I love that view as well. And I think you're right. I think we all know, you know, the adage, you people in the right seats. And I agree with that. But I think people can be. When they don't develop that emotional intelligence that you talked about or that self awareness, it becomes easy to just keep swapping people out, creating a treadmill of people versus going, wait a second, maybe, maybe I'm not being clear enough with our vision. Maybe I'm not managing and leading right. And I love that. There's also this idea of what are the steps we take, what's the language we use.

The nice thing now is knowing this stuff, going in and putting it in place. You know, this is where we're able to scale the new company so much faster. And you know, right now, I mean, we have our level 10 meetings with our team and I can't wait to jump into them because, yeah, I'm that way. The ideas that come up and people throw stuff out and again, the problem solving and the sharing and that's something that we had to build up to and learn how to do before. Now Dave and I have been down that road and we can impart that knowledge much faster in our team. And the team we have now just embraced it right out of the gate because they, you know, they didn't have to go through a bad phase while we learned stuff. So, so to them this is a really fun place to work. And you know, I have a new, we have a new person that we're onboarding and, and she's going to be doing finance and administration for us. And I'm trying to teach her the software and as I'm showing it to her, she's showing me things in it but that I didn't even know were there. And she's like. And I'm like, well you got to go over here and click this. She goes, well, no, actually you can do it this way. And it's a software that she's probably never, I don't think she's ever used before, but she's just super smart and intuitive and she feels comfortable saying to me, no, let me show you. Which before, an employee would never do that to me because of the way we were engaged. But now our team is so highly engaged they'll challenge me and Dave all the time. And we love it.

I think it's a must have.

The, there's an onboarding that we do when we take on a recruiting client. And, and the whole reason we started doing that for a couple of reasons. You know, number one, it was just to get the expectations aligned about the process. But, but the other thing that we found is that when we share core, core values with our clients and, and they believe in, in what we're doing, the engagement is going to go great, great. And, and if they don't, it's not going to go great. And we've just started saying no to more people. And when there's somebody that we're, that, that is kind of committed in principle, but we don't see it being played out in their, in their company. We're like, we're going to go through this with you. And we talk about the, the, the management mentality versus the mentoring mentality.

The.

One of the most successful MSPs I, I ever observed had six remote locations. People that ran those remote locations. Their, their title was actually mentor. They knew that the foremost part of their job was to make the people who work for them successful and to bring out their potential. And there's a whole mindset shift that takes place in an MSP when it becomes about the employees and not about the clients. You know, when it becomes about, I have to keep the clients happy. So you yell at the employees because they're not keeping the employees happy.

Happy.

The clients happy versus the. I'm going to build up these, these employees. I'm going to let them work on things they're naturally good at. I'm going to, I'm going to maximize their skills. I'm going to let them be creative in their jobs. I'm going to let them help design the processes that we run this business off of and they're going to have ownership like, like Sean had in his company. The clients are going to be happy. You know, you, you try to make the clients happy and, and the employees aren't happy. You're not going to have happy clients either. You try to make the employees happy and you do it the right way. A way that doesn't coddle them but builds them. And you're going to have happy employees and happy clients and it's going to be an easy business to grow.

There was a quote, there was a statement that I heard made that kind of stuck with me and I hope I'm going to get it right, but it was that your, your client's best experience is never going to Be better than your employee's worst experience.

Experience.

Following along the lines of Richard Branson, you know, who, who says, you know, your job is not to take care of your clients. Your job is to take care of your employees. And if you do that right, they'll take care of your clients.

Yeah, I, I've seen that play out. We've got a car dealership or a series of car car dealerships here in Dallas known as Sewell. It's a Sewell family, I think Sewell Lexus, like dealerships. Top, top performing Lexus dealership at first and now they're in other brands. But after I read about them and I'd heard about them, they're just known for outstanding customer service. And they're known for, if you need your car fixed or need work done on it, they'll treat you like a prince or princess because they know you're more likely to buy. So early in my career, I was like, go see, I got a Toyota. Let's see how they treat me. Me, sure enough was fantastic. Sure enough, I ended up buying a car there. But as I talked to the people there, because it is a incredibly wonderful customer service experience, as car dealerships go, every one of them just talked about how well they're treated and people stay there through their careers. And you had people who were former attorneys who just got tired of that rat race. And, and it just speaks to what a great experience you can create for your customers when you treat your people well. And then the other idea I really liked that you guys put forward is the idea of everybody should be core values aligned. We hear a lot about core values alignment with your employees, but also your customers, your partners. Everybody ought to be core value aligned.

I'm a good predictor of how things are going to go in the relationship.

When I was interviewing people for the book, one of the people that I interviewed was one of my very first clients who became an incredible mentor for me. And when I met him, the company was three people. We had three PCs and it was actually one of my competitors that sent him and told him to call me because he was too small for them. This is also, be careful about the ones you pass up on because as soon as I met him, I knew he had an amazing vision. And before long, we were managing over a hundred endpoints. We were managing offices in New Hampshire, Chicago and in China. And they were my number one client, revenue wise, for many, many years. But more importantly, I got a great mentor out of Bit and, and I told him, I asked him When I was interviewing him, I said, dave, I said, there were so many times when we were going through growing pains or I lost focus. And I said, you would call up and say, hey, we need to meet. And you'd pull me into your office and say, you're screwing up. You need to fix this or I'm going to be gone in 90 days. And you always gave me the opportunity to fix things, and you always taught me a lesson in the process. I said, so many other clients along the way just fired us or would never give us that opportunity, or they just disappear. I said, why did you take the time to help me fix it? Because that wasn't your job, was to fix my company. I said, but you always did that. And he said, I always appreciated that, and we always had a great relationship. And he answered without hesitation. He goes, that is simple. He said, we share values. He said, we run our companies the same way. We raise our families the same way. He said, you know, he goes, that is a more important alignment to me than anything you'd screw up along the way. And I can teach you. I can teach you to fix something in your business because I know business well enough. I can't teach you to be aligned with my values. I was like, wow, that's a great story. That's powerful stuff right there. You know, really powerful stuff. And, you know, and it made sense. And, you know, that's one of the things that we push with clients now, is that you not only have to look at the core value alignment of your team with you and the company, but you got to look at all your clients and say, are we really aligned? And, you know, it doesn't have to be 100% one to one, but you certainly can have clients that will challenge your core values or ask you to violate them and expect you to continue to do business about them.

I really like that, and I like the idea of. I mean, it was a little bit of a different spin on it, but, you know, if you are core values aligned, you can even be doing business with your competitors in a way.

They.

They become less your competitors. You're talking about getting a referral. Yeah, I. I love that idea. Very Go Give Ish. Makes me think of. Of Bob Burr's book that I know you guys also recommended two books that.

Every employee got when they hi. When they came to our team was the Go Giver and Patrick Lyncione Getting Naked.

Getting Naked. Okay, haven't I've read a bunch of his books, but not getting Naked.

But it's one of the older ones.

Okay.

And. But Dave and I. And that. I think that's why Dave and I, you know, decided immediately that we wanted to do business together going forward because we, we have both, Both had a go giver mentality. One of the things that, that Dave and I did for many years was to run the. We were facilitators for ConnectWise's regional groups. We actually did the first group, so we were the Northeast connectwise user group. We were the first ones. We were the test case. Dave and I were facilitators along with MJ Shore and, and Brett Chaffee. And, you know, one day somebody came up to me at that, at that meeting, and they said, oh, my God, what are you doing? I said, what do you mean? They said, you're up here on stage, you're sharing all your best practices and all your secrets, and these people are all your competitors in this room because, you know, they're all from the northeast area. I said, I'm not competing with you guys. I said, there's so much business out there for all of us. And I said, you know, the other thing is you don't have the secret ingredient. It. Like, what's that? I said, me. I said, I'm telling you my strategies. You can't just copy somebody else's strategy. You got to put your own spin on it, make it your own for it to really work effectively. So, I mean, if you want to copy my strategy, you might get something out of it, but it's not going to, you know, take you to the next level. So I said, I, I firmly believe that we get more from sitting in this room, sharing with one another and helping each other than we do by thinking that I'm going to keep something back because you're my competitor. In the office park where I had my office, it was office condo. So we owned the building. Well, we were Paradigm Computer Consulting and there was Parrot Computer Consulting, and we were four doors apart. So we constantly got each other's packages and things like that. But the owner of that company and myself were both on the board of directors for the condo association. We worked together for 10 years on the board. And people would come in and say, oh, my God, your competitor is right next door. That must be terrible. I said, are you kidding? I said, In 10 years, I've taken one of his clients, he's taken one of mine. We both tried to give him back.

So that's great.

We worked. We did more knocking on each other's door going, hey, I'm hitting the wall with something. Have you ever run across this or has one of your guys seen this before? And mean, we're four doors apart. We never, we never competed head to head in the same market. There's so much work out there for everybody. You know, your competitors are not who you think they are.

You, you have, you have a, a lot more friends when you see everybody as a friend. The. We were in financial services it in New York City, which is very cutthroat. And when we got. Got the first real serious offer to sell our business, we'd gotten a few. And, and over the years that never. We weren't ready at the end. We got a, we got a great offer from a company that we didn't like at all. There was no core values alignment. And over the years, we had gone to all our major competitors in financial services it and said, hey, let's grab some coffee, let's have some lunch, you know, talk shop. And, and, and there was one company that took us up on it. All of them, all the rest of them were like this. You think we're talking to you, you know, you're going to try and steal our salespeople, you know, whatever, whatever it was. And one company said, sure. So when we got that big offer from the company we didn't like, we went to that one company and said, you know, we've got this offer. We're. We are in a position where we think we're ready to sell the business, but we want to see our clients taken care of well, and we want to see our employees taken care of well, and we can't think of a better fit. You're the only ones we trust that know, you know, we know we'll do a good job. And, and that, that cup of coffee that they took us up on led to us selling our, our business to that company. You know, it, it's. You can get so much more from, from, from just being cool about things. No one's your enemy until they show you they are. I mean, that, that is like, like.

You feels like it came straight out of one of the Go Giver books.

Right?

I mean, just. I, I love that story. And maybe because it took me, I think in my career, it took me a long time to think that way. I don't know if it's a sports background or what, but it just took a long time. It was all, let's go, let's go, let's go. Let's push, let's let, let others push us to Be better, but that quickly spins negative and you miss opportunities. Right. You're not thinking abundantly. It's amazing the opportunities that come up when you change that mindset.

I think that the sports metaphor is a good one because you can have two people compete against each other and really, really want to win. You see this all the time. And my son got me into mma. You see this all the time in the MMA world where these guys are killing each other and, and afterwards, it's nothing but respect and admiration and, and, and affection. It's not all the fights, but it's a lot of them. And like, I don't, I want to kick everybody's ass, you know, Like, I don't, I don't see the two as, as in conflict. You know, I, I want to, I play my best friend in ping pong. There's nobody I want to beat more, you know?

Right.

He's not my best friend, you know?

You know, good comp, Good competitors make us all better.

Agreed.

Agreed. And that's the thing is, and same thing in sports, if you have a team that you can just go out and crush, the hell are you learning? You're not getting better. And the other thing too is right now especially, so many people want to buy msps. And I see so many of my clients say, I want to buy companies, I want to expand through acquisition. When I grew my company, we expanded through acquisition. We did six acquisitions. Every single one of them came out of my network. I never dealt with a business broker. I never, I never met, I never had a prospectus. It was all just through networking. I bought people who were in my peer group, just people. One of them came from somebody who I called them up for help and they said, hey, can you help me? And after we were done talking, the end result was I wound up buying the company. And it was just being out there and helping people returned opportunities back to me tenfold. I mean, is there somebody out there who. I mean, there's a couple of examples that I can think of where somebody used the information against me or took a client from us, but it was so minimal in the grand scheme. And like I say, half the time they were taking a client I was happy to have them take.

Right.

But there were so many more things that I got in the opportunities of the acquisitions or partnering with people or having strategic relationships with companies. I mean, it made. The negative part was so minuscule compared to the benefits of it.

I find that. Oh, go ahead, Dave. No, I was going to say the. I love capitalism. I love business and I love the mentality that goes along with it when it's being done in a healthy way. You know, the, the, the whole idea behind healthy capitalism is, is who wants pie? Because we can keep making pies, you know, like that. I don't need to fight you over that piece. Piece of pie. Let's go bake some pies. You know, like the, we can all help each other and, and that's the story of America. It's a rich, wealthy country, you know, with a high standard of living because we know how to make pieces. You know, we, I mean, the mentality.

Is people have to stop thinking the business is a zero sum game. It is, it is. Absolutely not if done correctly.

Completely agree. So, so one of the big ideas I got out of this, and you know, maybe it's projecting, but you guys have also said it, and it's also in the book, is just the importance of having a vision. I think people think of it as something ethereal that you can't sit down and do, but it's this idea of like, what do you want the business to look like when you're done with it? And maybe that's, maybe you're retiring from it, maybe you're selling it, whatever the case may be. But that's a core thesis you guys have, right? Know what you want your outcome to be and what do you want the business to look like so you can get that outcome? Am I saying that that accurately, do you think?

I think so, yeah, absolutely. You know, throughout the growth of the company, I, you know, every company goes through es and flows and you go through periods of, of, of plateaus and then you get out of it. And whenever I had a clear vision of what came next, we made it to it and then we'd plateau until I had the next vision of what it looked like. And, and I always remember that when the vision was clear, things moved a lot faster and they grew faster. And when things got fuzzy and I wasn't sure things would stagnate and plateau. And, and, and so I'm a firm believer that's not just, you know, something out there in the ether that is a, a target. It's a, it is a, it is a, a mild marker that you're aiming for and that you're going to achieve much clearer when you can see the marker.

How do you define entrepreneurial success?

We talk a lot in the book about how it's possible to win a business and lose it life and ultimately you want to win at business. So you can win at life.

Right.

So we say entrepreneurial success is prospering to the point where you have control over your time. Time and are in a position to help others. You know, a position to give back and because really, ultimately what you want is to make a great life for the people around you. To be able to control your own, your own life. You know, to have freedom and to enter and to be able to give back so that you have fulfillment, you have purpose. You know, that, that we want to get people all the way to the end, not just to a nice fat bank account because we know there's people who have nice fat bank accounts who are miserable.

Right.

Right. Your business should facilitate your dreams, not, not destroy them.

I love that you don't want to.

Lose yourself in the process.

And you've mapped out how to do it. Not, not make this all about the business owner, but actually lift everybody up as you go in the Pumpkin plan for MSPs. So it's one of my favorite things about the book. You've got it all in there.

There.

Well annotated, no less. With all your, with all the different books and things that, that you guys pulled from.

We had some good help.

There's a lot of big shoulders we're standing on.

Well, well done.

I used to teach high school, Sunday school, many, many years ago. One of the things I would tell the kids is 99% of the time, the thing that's the right thing to do is the also the thing that's going to make you happiest in the longest on. Right. So maybe not that day, maybe not the next day, but if you keep doing what's right, in the end, you're going to have a much better life. It's going to make you happy. And the same thing is true in business. Like why don't you, why don't you, you know, fight with your competitors? Because in the long run, it's really not going to leave you better off most of the time. I worked for a dot com one time that eventually went bankrupt that spent money to get a billboard truck to drive around their competitor and haunt them. I mean, like that. Where did it get them? Eventually it got them bankrupt. You know, like that's, that's not how you want to go that life.