Addressing the Elephant in the Room: Live Stream with Alex Farling!

Remember Impact Cyber. We broke barriers, defied the norm, and educated the gatekeepers of the digital realm. Well, the game has changed. Meet Empath. We're just getting started.

Of everything out there in MSP and cyber, nothing gets me more excited than Empath.

The future is Empath. Are you ready to level up? Alex Farling, you little devil. You didn't tell us you were on that video.

I wonder if anybody's actually put that together yet.

Oh man, we, uh, that was fun making. One of my good MSP friends told me, uh, Wes, that is the most pretentious, dumbest video I've ever seen, and I love it.

And I'm like, thank you, that's accurate.

Let me peel this music down, it's a little loud right now. Uh, man, it's great to have you. So, um, thank you for everyone joining us today. This is going to be a really fun live stream. Um, if you guys did not see the news that came in yesterday that CRM dropped. The one and the only Alex Farling is joining Impath Cyber as one of our co-founders, which means you've been here from, you know, the beginning when we kind of redid the vision of Impath. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But before we do any of that, Alex, I think most probably there's got to be the one person on the livestream that doesn't know you. So can you do a little intro for us?

Yeah. Yeah. So my name is Alex Farling. I was an MSP like most of the folks I talked to. For about 16 and a half years. I sold my MSP in 2020 in the middle of a pandemic, which was kind of wild and crazy. But before I sold it, I had started this little company called Lifecycle Insights that kind of took off, kind of, kind of struck a little rocket fuel there and then turned into quite a, quite a popular VCIO and account management platform that now is part of Scalepad. And I exited Scalepad earlier this year, and here I am hanging out with my good buddy Wes, making content and talking to people and trying to, trying to lift up an industry.

So I love that. And, um, you know, that's— I met you through the LifeCycle journey. I'll never forget the day I sat on a call with you. I think LifeCycle was brand new and Perch had just moved into our new office, and I was walking to you on my phone all the way up, and I was like, I don't know who this Alex guy is, but I love the conversation and loved what you were doing. And I'll be honest, I didn't fully understand what a QBR was even back then. Um, and, and, you know, fast forward to where we are today, it's, it's, man, it's just awesome to see, um, I don't know, your journey, to see, um, you know, just to have a great friendship with you. I think you were one of those that's always been on my bucket list of like, I think there will be a day that you and I will do something together. And you know, I don't think people recognize sometimes just the stars have to align for sometimes for these things to work, right? Just to be honest, between non-competes, non-solicits, between, um, just, you know, folks, I'm too busy solving this journey, this mission, I can't do something now. So like, for the things to align, it's like miraculous almost. And I'd say that's kind of what happened here, wouldn't you?

Yeah. And when it does, you kind of have to— it's— there's something to be said about preparation, right? Or being prepared enough that when it happens, you can jump and you can go do a thing, you know? And I'm blessed to be in a place where I could go help somebody build a startup and, you know, do a thing that isn't going to make any money for a while and just have some fun doing it and, you know, get out here and get back at the ground level and get my hands dirty.

So I love it.

The fun part of building something, right?

And we'd be remiss if we didn't brag on Scalepad for a minute, right? I mean, what an awesome company in terms of like, not only do they see the vision for what Lifecycle was going to be, but, you know, really kind of supporting you and your mission. I know you'll still be very involved with the Scalepad folks, right?

Yeah. I mean, in fact, we were just scheduling some time earlier this week and we'll be— I don't know if I'm allowed to say it, so we're going to break the news right here. We're going to be going back and visiting them on one of their Friday workshops here coming up soon. And so, you know, all good things, great, great folks. They're continuing to work on the platform. And, you know, I think one of the best things about leaving a company is knowing that, you know, that the product is going to survive. It's not going to become shelfware somewhere. And it's at the one organization where they will continue to build it and continue to make it into something. And that was important to me.

Well said. And, you know, I think, I think, That's the way it should be done, right? Like that, that in my mind, that is the way that we should be able to like make sure that our leaving and our exit, you know, is really done in such a way that, you know, we can all be mature about it. We can all continue to help each other. We're all still a brotherhood and a sisterhood of friendship in arms together. Right. And so I love that you're not really leaving the Scalepad folks. They're just such amazing people. And, you know, they're still in really great hands. So I just wanted to say that. I know that wasn't even part of our—

It's funny, as a competitor, I got to say that. At them a lot and make fun of them a lot. And then I got to know them all and I was like, oh, I was kind of a jerk to you guys. I should have been nicer.

Why are you such a jerk?

Right? I was all in good fun. We had a lot of fun with them. I love it.

So, you know, when you, when you have had some time off, right, many of you that follow you on LinkedIn were laughing at your, you know, get off the lawn types of videos and your poor, sad retirement. What are you going to do? Sad Alex. I think there's a lot of wondering where you're going to go. And I know, I know you don't like me saying this, but I know for a fact because I've talked to people there's been pretty much every vendor out there has reached out to you and wanted you to come on board. I know that's flattering.

It's the most humbling thing in the world. Well, you know, to have gone from 3.5 years ago running a small MSP, you know, it was reasonably successful. We had a good exit. It was a good business, but we weren't the $100 million MSP that's really absolutely killing it these days, right? To have built a product and seen such wide adoption And that was, that all by itself was humbling, right? The impact we were able to have on MSPs and to have people, I mean, we were sitting at a table with somebody just Tuesday who said, Lifecycle saved me 75% of my prep time in getting ready for a QBR. Like that alone, super humbling. But then to leave there and have, you know, 8 or 9 vendors just come knocking on the door going, hey, I have a job, will you take it? Not will you come interview for it, but please come work here. Like just, we'll find a spot for you. Super humbling in an industry that has so many smart and talented people. To be somebody who was sought after was really cool.

Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned humbling. I can just return the favor and say, you know, I felt like, you know, from my perspective, you talk about humbling, you know, you could have gone anywhere. You could have made some serious bank with some amazing vendors. And instead you chose to come and do this thing with me at Empath and make $0. So what, what makes a guy like Alex Farling decide decide that, you know, Empath is the thing for him, especially at the high and mighty price of $0 a year.

Right, right. I love, I love having equity in something that's worth zero. It's just amazing. No, but, you know, I've said this more than once. Lifecycle became— it was a product to start with. And we have this discussion on the vendor side over here quite often. And MSPs, you probably don't hear this a lot, but we talk about, Is this a product or is this a company? Right? And it was a product that then we got our partners involved and they told us what to build next and what to do next. And, and it became a company and it became a real company. But then along the way, it kind of became an education company that, oh, by the way, we also sell a product. And I got so addicted to the education part, to the taking the, you know, 20 years of knowledge and getting it back out to folks and helping folks have a different understanding of what sales process looks like, what account management can look like. Like how to engage with customers and build know, like, and trust, and some of the things that, that I just happen to be fairly good at. And it's funny, you know, I said a little bit ago, it's really humbling to come out of a small little MSP and realize that, hey, I spent 4 years focused on one little part of MSP and that account management and quarterly business review function, and I really at this point have a really firm handle on it. And we were able to teach and uplift so many people the ability to be involved in something that's going to teach and uplift even more people across all parts of the MSP space. Right. And that was part of your rebrand that we should talk about next. You know, that the opportunity to be part of that was worth all of $0. Right. I just, I couldn't not be involved.

I love it. At any price. Yeah.

Yeah.

The whole— yes, the, like we said, the mighty price of $0 is really hard to turn down apparently. But no, right.

Mission.

It is. And that's, I think that's what we've, you and I have, you know, formed a fast friendship literally over that, that topic of, of let's be educators. I don't have to sell, I can educate. And if I educate you and I make you better and you make me better, we're going to work together and we're going to find success and revenue is going to grow. And, you know, I've seen that, you know, the Perch days and really ever since we started it. And I love how you just sort of said, you know, I came from, you know, but humble means and I mean, just to continue to go down the humble pie train, I mean, I'm no different, right? I came from a small bank and, you know, Perch was a bunch of— we like to say we mistaked our way into success. We didn't know what we were doing. There's no playbook. There's no, like, you know, sage advice that, you know, we were just— there's Eric Bowles popping in. Eric was just saying the last meeting we were in, you know, there's no coaches. There's no— well, there's coaches, but there's no, like, gurus around here. We're just sort of mistaking our way to get this thing going. So we have that mantra, right? And I think that's part and parcel to MSPs too. MSPs are boots strap folks, you know, they're like, I'm going to figure this thing out. I know I can make the world a better place. I want to do something on my own, reward myself with hard work. And that's, that's the journey of an MSP.

Well, they're the only guys we know who will, you know, quit a 37.5-hour-a-week job to go work, you know, making good money to go work 80 hours a week, barely getting by. Right. And it's a great community. They're in my mind, they're integral to the, to the cybersecurity defense of our country. So if there's something that I can do to help educate and make sure these guys are in a better place and are making better money and are actually getting paid for the, for the incredibly hard work that they do. I mean, I'm sold. I love that.

I love that. So you wanted to talk a little bit about Empath's rebranding and kind of really who we're emerging into, you know?

Yeah.

You know, I don't follow— I'll say this— I don't follow the normal book, the normal procedure of how you build a company. Right. And there's multiple ways you can do this. Right. And one of those ways is, you know, you have this concept, this idea.

You know, before you go there, let's, let's tell the story. Like, you called me. Me, I think it was like January.

Okay.

I said, hey, I think I'm gonna build this thing.

I do remember this.

And, uh, and I'd like your opinion. And I was, I was flattered that Wes Spencer wanted my opinion on anything. And I said, you know, Wes, I love the idea, I love the concept, but what did I tell you?

You told me no one needs yet another platform.

Yeah, nobody needs another portal to log into. Portal. And, uh, and, and I think that goes to where you're going because you were like, well, I can't figure out a way to do it without that, so we're gonna have to build a portal and figure it out, right?

I'll be honest, because we're good friends and you told me that, it was kind of a little knife to the heart, a little bit of like, I think maybe I'm making a mistake here. But what was so good about you challenging me on that was it made me think, okay, then what can we do? What problem can we solve? And are we sure enough that it is enough to get someone to have another portal, right? Because that is the reality. And, you know, I was just talking to a startup yesterday. They said, we have 67 tools that we have in place and yet we're not even a year in business. Oof, right? So like, do I really want to be another one of those? Is that really it? So yeah, so that kind of gets back to what we were just chatting about is like the normal way people start something is they say, I have this idea in mind, maybe they go through an accelerator, but ultimately what they do is they take some funding, they lose their skin in the process, they lose a lot of control of the company, and then they build, build, build in stealth. And what we mean when we say stealth is we're just doing this, you know, quietly. Yes, it does allow for SSO, at least the one we're building. Brett, I hear you, brother. And that is we're not going to be on the SSO tax It's an MVP requirement. Yes, exactly. But yeah, you build, build, build in stealth and then you hope that at some point when you release this thing, it's going to work. I just don't believe that works in the channel. I believe MSPs need to be walking with you in lockstep along the way. And, you know, we did this at Perch. You did that at Lifecycle. And so we built, we built Empath Cyber in a platform that I knew would not be the long-term home for it, but it could at least let me get started and it could at least let me get some MSPs that wanted to join the journey with us and I could litmus test and figure out, is this going to work? Is this not? What's a good idea? What's a bad idea? And I've learned a lot through all of that. And that's really what became Empath is where we're going down this journey, right? You want to chat about that a little bit?

Well, yeah. I mean, well, just take a step back. Like our lead developer told us 2 years after the fact that at IT Nation, the first year we launched Lifecycle, that we were selling vaporware. And if not for our partners sitting down around us and going, hey, like, here's all the other cool things it can do. Um, there wouldn't be a company from that small little product. And so I think that's the mantra that— or the kind of the methodology that you've picked up and that you did at Perch and that we did at Lifecycle and that we're going to do again here, which is like, let's start to build the community, coalesce the community, bring people around it. They'll tell you what to build if you're— if you can have a little bit of humility and go ask them instead of coming to them and telling them. And there's way too many vendors out here in this space that have told MSPs how to run their business for years. Um, and how has that worked? Well, right now 30% of MSPs aren't profitable and a good chunk of them, their average profit is what, like 6%? So, you know, that has not been the rocket fuel model that MSPs need.

So there's a hot take, but it's a correct one.

So there's gotta be a better way. And so, so far, as best as we can see, the better way is come up with your grand master plan and, you know, your BHAG and let the MSPs kind of tighten up the, nibble around the edges and tighten things up for you, right? And I think that's the, the, uh, the message there is that we're going to build something. We have a lot to show off in the next, in the next few, uh, few months. We're going to build something really cool, and it's coming out to be really gorgeous. We're starting to see some graphics from it these days. And, um, but, but we're going to need help. We're going to need MSPs to coalesce around us, tell us where their strengths and weaknesses are and how we can supplement those. And I think, uh, You know, my point to all of this would be we need to hear from you. We need to hear what, what it is that moves the needle, what it is that makes you better, because that's the content we want to create.

Yep, that's exactly right. And you did say nibble, and you also said BHAG, Big Hairy Audacious Goal, in case no one knows what the heck—

if you're not a Jim Collins nerd.

Yeah, yes, exactly.

I clearly am.

Yeah. So, so awesome. So that's kind of where I love the mantra, right? And I think MSPs deeply respect that mantra, because if there's one thing I've learned from MSP friends, and they've taught me it's not that they're not tolerant of mistakes. They have no problems with us making mistakes. They don't have tolerance for us not listening. And that's the key differentiator, right? It's fine to make a mistake. It's a different thing to make a mistake because I just simply wasn't listening. And, you know, that's what we're all about. It's what I think the lesson we both learned. And so do we know exactly where— you know, I was just talking to you about this yesterday. I have no idea. In a year exactly. How about this for humble pie, right? And just transparency. I have no idea what Empath is going to look like a year from now. Zero clue. But there are some things I think we both know that we want to help solve for MSPs. And one of those I'd love for you to unpack a little bit more is just how important it is for MSPs to be moving together in lockstep, to be doing the same things together, to make sure there's standards, to make sure that there's clean and clear efficiencies in how they're growing and what they're doing and where their time is invested in. To become more consistent in what they're doing regardless of the role in the MSP, right? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Well, I think we've seen it a lot of different places, right? We had one of the great examples is what Andrew Morgan's doing over at the Cyber Call, right? The average MSP that comes on that call is significantly more mature today than they were 18 months ago. And then the average industry is the average MSP in the industry. Lifecycle Insights partners, the average partner comes in You know, they're taking 4, 5, 6, 7 hours to prepare for a QBR. Then by the time we get done with them at Lifecycle, they're spending 45 minutes. They're delivering a better, better business review. They're making more money at it. They're, they're reducing risk for their customers. So there is a power in getting all those people together. They didn't get that from buying a piece of software that can make them magical. They got that from sitting on Friday workshop calls and, you know, all the different community things that we did. That brought them together to learn from their peers. So, and we just, we saw this just an hour ago on your AMA, like the peers will speak up and they are so good and so talented. There's so many smart people in this industry and some of them are like me where they're smart in one little teeny tiny space of the industry. But if they can talk to that teeny tiny little space, they can lift up a lot of people somewhere where they have a pain. And all the other places where I'm not the expert, there's somebody else that is. Who can step in and really drive the conversation. And, you know, that, that's where we can be powerful with Empath is by bringing in those folks who have their expertise in their little corner of the industry and allowing them to teach and allowing them to educate so that when an MSP goes out and hires a new employee, we can drop them in the platform, get them started on a, on a learning pathway that takes them from Starbucks superhero to help desk superhero, you know, in, in as short a time as possible.

I love it. So you mentioned something that you kind of dropped here that we got to come back to a little bit more. So you talked a bit about others in empath, right? And when the CRN article came out yesterday, one of the things I thought was great about it, the way they sort of— the way CJ sort of— one thing that captured CJ was, and I think she even led with this on the title, sort of like a Switzerland, right, for education, right? Talk to us about, like you and I have both said from the beginning, this is not the Wes show, the Alex show. This is not at all, never has been. There are so many people with a voice that need to be able to use it, that need to be able to have a platform to speak, that can share their wisdom and their lessons learned in the areas they are uniquely qualified, infinitely more than you or me. Right. Can you kind of share a little bit more about that mission and mantra?

Well, you know, there is a— I think that started off as— and we've played with a few iterations of this, but the first words that were said that really rang home to everybody was decentralize. Centralized thought leadership, right? There is, there is so much, and we were kind of laughing about this on our 2 o'clock call with your folks in Empath, that, you know, if you go out and put thought leader in your name tag on LinkedIn, then you're probably not a thought leader, or at least you're the only one who thinks you are, right? But there are a lot of folks in this space who are tucked away with a great little bit of knowledge, and if we can bring them in and allow them to teach something in the platform, they'll lift everybody else up. And so if we can decentralize some of that thought leadership and take it out of the hands of the, the big crazy vendor whose only job is to teach you something so that you can buy more licenses and deliver it back in a way that is really just designed to teach you something for the sake of teaching you something that improves your business, then everybody knows where you're— where your goals are. Everyone knows where you're coming from. There's alignment, right? The goal of education is education. The goal of education is not to get you to buy an extra license. And that's the problem with our industry, is that all of the education is led by someone who has a purpose. And so they don't have to teach the entire educational track. They don't have to teach it from start to finish, nuts to bolts. They only have to teach you how to sell something. They don't have to teach you how to deploy it. They don't have to teach you how to implement it. They don't have to teach you the philosophy behind it, the understanding of the control that it solves for. Just have to teach you the magic words to say to get a customer just scared enough that they'll buy it and spend 2 more bucks on one more license. And that's not to rag on vendors like they're They are in business to make money, and they're in business to make money with their products, and their product is not education. And that's why there's such a need for a company who is unapologetically here to educate and, and with no other goal and no other, uh, no other bias.

And it, it's— I'm seeing this all culminate, and I think it's really exciting, right? Like, um, examples of this— I'll just brag. I like to brag on folks that are doing it the right way. Um, let's take Pax8 for a minute, right? I saw the article come out. My good friend David Powell— I've been friends with David forever— and, and they're doubling down hard on education. And we know why, because Pax8 has figured out if we can do a great job educating folks and like literally teaching the, the man or the woman to fish, then they're going to be able to catch more fish than, than otherwise, right? Like, it's so simple, but it's so powerful. Same with Huntress, right? Like, I, I just did a really great roadshow series with the folks at Huntress, and I can tell you, because I was involved in the content, we weren't pitching Huntress. We were just literally talking about security journey and, you know, how to get buy-in and great, like, lessons that we can teach around, like, storytelling. And we got great feedback from it because people are like, "I came and this is awesome. It was helpful. We had great discussion and we learned." Those are the things that make the needle better. And I think we're all zooming into this fact that as our industry, MSP and MSSP, grows and becomes more capable, not only are we continuing to hire more and more and more and we're onboarding more and more folks, but we have a problem that we've got to solve for, which is when we bring those people in, we've got to get them up to speed way quicker because if we're not, then we're not going to have impactful, meaningful conversations with clients. We're going to hit roadblocks when the client says, well, I'm not paying for that. I'm not a target. No one cares. What do we say about that? How do we do it? Maybe you listen. I know how to answer that question, but does every single person in your MSP— can they answer the question? I'll wager no. I've never met an MSP or a vendor or anyone else that every single person can answer those questions, right? So this all comes back to— this is part of the huge mission and means behind what we're doing at Empath is to help MSPs get better at that as they're growing and their need to be able to share and communicate cyber at all levels in the organization, not just the VCs. So not just the owner, but even an account manager and even someone that's brand new, helpdesk level 1. They can, they can understand these concepts and not just cyber, but talk to us about all the other areas that we're going to be focusing on, like finance, operations, revenue, right? All those kinds of things too. Can you talk about that?

Oh, I can. As soon as you said it, I just thought, man, I wish when I was in 2004, when I started my company, I had somebody to teach me the difference between a P&L and a balance sheet and how to read the two. Like, I feel like that would have saved me a lot of pain in 2008. But, you know, I think these are things that as accidental entrepreneurs, so often we just, you know, we focus on the skill set that gets the bills paid, right? We don't focus on the skill set that makes sure that we're solvent and that we're making money and that everything is kosher in the business. So There are a lot of things that just aren't taught in our space. And these are things that really need to, to be prevalent across the entire industry. Every business owner in this space needs to understand how to read a P&L or balance sheet. They need to know how to budget forecast. They need to know how to run a business. And these are the things that are just plain missing. And every single job in the industry is missing that. Like, where do you go in this space to get training to be a dispatcher or a service manager or even any kind of mid-level management. Where do you go to get basic managerial training? It doesn't exist. And this is the reason that we need to teach some of these things, because no vendor is out there teaching them. It's not in their— it's, it's not in their wheelhouse. It's not in their best interest. It's just not in their DNA. So we need to build a company where it is in our DNA, and we can teach those things that are, that are missing that keep people from climbing up the career ladder here in the MSP space.

When I— let's brag on someone for a minute. Let's brag on Net Lynch. She doesn't even know. She's probably not even on this webinar right now. But when I think VCIOs, there's no one on earth probably more— not probably— there is no one else more qualified to teach that than Lynch. Why? Because she's literally a VCIO with how many? How many VCIOs are under her?

I think about 50.

Okay.

And I believe her title today is CISO.

But okay. But oh, there you go. So the CISO at VC3, who's got 50 VCs, VCs, VCs under.

Yeah.

Who could be better to teach that than someone like Nat? No one. Right. So that's my view is like, I'm not going to go try to like repeat what Nat says. I'm just going to say, Nat, would you love to— we would— it would mean the world to us if you had a platform and you could teach the amazing things that are up in your brain and get those out for others to make the world a better place. And Nat Lynch is just the kind of person that's going to say, yeah, I would love to do that. That sounds exciting to me. Right. So just this is an example of what you're saying, right, is, is in what we're saying is like this is decentralized, not the Alex and Wes show. It can't be. We'll fail from the beginning if we try to do that. We're not the sources of all knowledge. And, and you do see some of that gatekeeping, not just in the MSP space, but any industry you look at, you look at some of the gatekeepers and, you know, what, you got to come to us if you want all the answers to all of this. Reality, that's why we don't see the success that we need.

Yep, 100%. And I think, you know, the, the goal that we have here to make this accessible to everybody is really— it shouldn't be, shouldn't be amazing to anybody that this is a thing, that there's a business behind education. This should have been done a long time ago, but sometimes it just takes the right people having the right opportunities and the right— like you said, kind of everything just has to line up. Up, right? Everybody has to be in a place in their life where they can make this journey and make it work.

Yep, exactly. And Steve, I love what Steve Taylor— I mean, you guys are all in the comments just killing it, right? But I love what Eric said. I'll just call Steve out. You know, today there it doesn't— it's baptism by fire. It's literally off. Here you go. You know, I was talking to Eric Woodard at Build It just a couple of days ago, and Eric said something incredibly insightful. He said, you know, for our— from our perspective, this is a critical need for us because when we bring new people in, he's like, did you know that we have I don't even want to know the number, 40, 50 portals or more that, you know, we have to log into to go find, to learn how to do something.

We—

he's like, I literally have no standardized way to do this. It's all sort of like when I have the time to coach someone up, oh yeah, I should probably tell my folks about this. Oh, I got a new employee over here, should probably teach them this thing. There's no standardization in any of it. And it's not because Eric doesn't know that he needs it. He knows he needs it. He doesn't have the time and the hours in the day to do it. And it's so varied and so diverse everywhere.

So we talked to an MSP today who's trying to build that in SharePoint on their own. Like, think about that lift. Imagine being an MSP and going, I have to build an education product because one doesn't exist for me. I mean, that is just, that is, that is a problem that needs to be solved and every MSP should not go it alone.

Yeah, that's exactly right. So I'll tell you one thing that's staggering to me by some of the latest data that I can see. I've kind of got it written over here.

Steve said, "Every portal is my single source of truth." I love that. It's a single pane of glass, Steve. Single pane of glass. It should give you the truth. Yeah.

I think his slash S was missing on that one, maybe.

That's so great. I love it.

Or maybe it's the truth.

No, right? I love it.

Oh, that's awesome. So some data from the 2022 Training Industry Report published in November estimates that U.S. U.S. training expenditures total more than $100 billion annually. So when we just look at this word training and just U.S. expenditure, $100 billion per year. Another study showed globally $358 billion, but North America $194 billion. So it's almost double that. So that's different sources, but we're still talking about $100 billion to $200 billion of budget goes into— maybe Wes Spencer goes into training. And yet, how effective is this across the board? This brings up the conversation of training versus education. This has been a rabbit hole I've been deep down into lately and will continue to go down. When we look at how many dollars we put into training across the board, not just the MSP space, but literally anything from the folks that pave the roads to the doctors that practice health— healthcare, on and on and on and on. How effective is that $200 billion that's been spent per year in training?

Well, I will say, you say training, and the first thing I thought of was the video that I sent one of my buddies last night of my dog pushing a button so he could get a treat. Yep. Right. And I can train him to do that. I can't train an employee to have a culture of cybersecurity, and that's the difference. You know, we can't build a culture of cybersecurity by throwing somebody a biscuit every time they behave correctly. So education is about enabling people to think for themselves by giving them the tools to have the right, the right thought process. Where training is, you know, push button, get banana, as we like to say, right?

Yeah, I love that, right? Because there's a— there is a huge difference between the two, right? And so often I think we just lean into training because it's what we do, right? So go into this platform and learn these 4 things. And it doesn't tie into things that change my life. It doesn't tie into things that make me better at what I do. It's just literally required compliance-driven types of ye shall do these things, right? And you just said it, it's Pavlov, right? Training is Pavlov. I can get a dog to drool by ringing a bell all day long. I can get an employee to just like click a certain button and answer something when I need to. But I think what we're really driving at is, is education. To me, education is— it makes my life better, right? I come from Kentucky. And I can't tell you how many folks that I know who, you know, come out of coal mining and literally destitute, no ability to get out of that until they get through some new education. I remember we did some work with Eastern Kentucky Community College and they spun up a cyber program. And I remember seeing some of those folks come literally out of the coal mines, wash off their hands, spend 2 years in a, like, an associate's program for cyber and walk out making $60,000 to $75,000 a year. Double what they made in the coal mines, infinitely more safe and healthy, and changes their life. That is education, right? And I'm not saying that we're trying to become a university, but I'm saying that's what education is about. It literally impacts our livelihood for the better. And I think that's what we're after, not just with what we're trying to do with Empath, but that's what MSPs are after, is education, not training. There's a huge difference between the two.

Yeah. Well, I think MSPs understand the gap in education, right? Because they're not hiring the, the guy who they just stole away from Google or Facebook or, you know, CrowdStrike, right? Um, like I always say, they're hiring the guy from the Starbucks store. I hear you say all the time they're hiring the guy from the AT&T store. Um, and they really are, right? They're, they're out here hiring the, the nicest, friendliest human they can find who they think they exhibit some skills that they can upskill into somebody who can, can survive on their service desk. And this is— the MSP is a business of margin. It's a business of scale, and you have to scale, and you have to scale your lower, less expensive employees in order to, in order to be a profitable business. So, you know, this is a business where it's worth it for the MSPs to bring people in at the bottom, build their own little talent factory, and upskill those people and, and get them to a productive place in their life and in their career and in their help desk so that they can help the business make money. That's just the math problem for this business. It's the honesty, a very honest opinion, but I think that's the business that we live in. So in a world where we have to upskill internally because we can't hire from Facebook, education is king.

Yep, exactly right. Dustin, we'll get to that answer in just a second that you just chatted with us. Henry, thank you for the kind words, my friend Henry. If you guys don't know Henry from Phantom, I mean, just an amazingly awesome person and tech degenerate.

It's just, you know, you don't know Henry from Phantom, you've never been to a trade show because he's at all of them.

That's about to say, yeah, he literally— he's the one guy that's on the road 10 times more than me. I love that. Thank you, Henry, it's very kind of you, especially coming from you. So, you know, one of the things I think is a challenge in education is, um, a few things stand out to me. One is a lot of times when we don't see success in this, it's not because we don't have the want-to, it's that we, we lack the how to. And what I mean by that is, you know, if we want our folks to— like, if you're a business owner listening to this today, right, and you're like, yeah, I'm behind this, I want my folks to be educated, I want to just train them, I want them to be better. Um, well, the next question is, well, then how are we doing that? Are we actually allowing for our folks to do that, right? I've run into some innovative MSPs that are doing things like, you know what we're doing, we actually have an education service board or an education ticket that we push into the PSA, and I mandate from myself and everyone else down that we're accountable to each other. We do an hour a week or whatever that is, and we actually fill that ticket out. So now we've actually made time in the workday. Because a lot of times when we say I don't have time for something, what we're actually saying is it's not a priority for me. And that's okay. There's only 24 hours a day that each of us are granted. That is an immutable law that cannot be bypassed until we get time machines. And so because of that, we have to do some things to be accountable to one another, right? So I think that's a valuable thing that I think we have to think about, right? But I wanted to pull out a little quote. There's a, there's a book called Peak Secrets It's from The New Science of Expertise. And one of the things they talk about in that book is in order to be successful in education, you have to practice, you have to reflect, you have to try again, and then you repeat. And it's a process. Practice, repeat, try again, repeat over and over and over until you develop the expertise. And when you think about it that way, you're like, yeah, I don't think that's actually that innovative at all. Like, that's literally how we do everything in life. If I want to get good at a new skill that I've never done before, that's what I do. I practice, reflect, try again, repeat until I build good mechanics at it. Public speaking— no one's born as a good public speaker. You have to literally do this over and over and over, then pause, reflect. What could I have done better? Let me try again. And that's the key. So I think that's a big part of this, this capability to get better at this world.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think it, it reflects back to, to kind of where I came from, right? I just started in this business going, we got to talk about budgets and we gotta, we gotta deal with our customers and a different way. And having spent 4 years just focused on quarterly business reviews and account management, all of a sudden I'm like, damn, I'm pretty good at this. I understand this. This is the part of the business I understand. And it has to do with that. Education doesn't have to be because somebody smarter than you is standing there lecturing you about it, right? School of hard knocks is a real thing. If you spend a significant amount of time focused on that one thing, you're going to get better at it, or you're gonna get tired of smashing your head against the And that's a— that's really what the difference is between education and training, right? Education— training is literally, you know, teaching your dog the same repetitive thing over and over to get a result. And I love Robert— practice.

Yeah, if you guys don't know Robert from MSP Dog Show, you really do need to. One of the things that Robert does I think is awesome is he literally gets you into the practice of having conversations over and over and actually trying and role-playing and I can't tell you how important that actually can be. It can be insanely difficult and hard and awkward, but it's one of the most—

it's so awkward. So I hate it. It's so awkward and it's so necessary. In my sales career, I've done a lot of it and I still hate it. But, but it's so, so good and so valuable. And Robert doesn't hate it and he's working really hard to make it.

He's literally built a community. Robert, go check out what Robert's doing with the MSP Dojo. You literally just click on his name and it'll go right in there. Dustin, to answer your question, So what we're really focused on is it is the D category, right? I think there's different mixes, right? I'm not as heavily focused. We are not as heavily focused in customers, but we do have a lot of like customer-focused content. We try to do that on a monthly basis. But yeah, no, we really are. It starts with the owner and the operator for sure, and then it goes to employees. We're really focused on role types, right? We love to see, you know, the future of Empath, you know, having great content around learning pathways that are tied to objectives and outcomes. Outcomes. So, for example, I want to be a VCIO. What does it look like for me to have a learning journey, assuming that I'm starting at nothing? What's the requirements, the key inputs, and the skills required, and the outputs that I need to objectively be able to show along that? Let's design that journey. Let's build content around the way. That's what we're doing, right? So, it's across a lot of those different areas.

Well, and I think it's important to point out there that, you know, we're not just building education around those categories. But we're also building in some accountability. And one of the places we understand that accountability is broken in the education space in the MSP is at the top. If you're an MSP owner here in the building, if you're listening to, if you can hear this voice, I'm calling you out, right? Because I was that guy and I ran through my help desk and I went, you get training and you get training and you get training. And I assigned everybody some classes and I built a lab and, you know, I said, we're gonna give everybody time to train. And then I went out and sold a couple more deals and a month went by and I came back and I went, went, "How's everybody doing on their training?" And they went, "What training? We've been doing trouble tickets. The phone rang. We stopped. We stopped training." And so, you know, as a leader, I failed to set aside time. I failed to carve out that time so that my team could be successful learning. That learning didn't happen because I failed my team. And we want to be able to call that out for you. So long-term, you know, we're gonna help you guys set goals that are reasonable for your team so that they can dedicate some time to training. We're gonna teach you best practices. Processes to— on how to document that time, how to account for that time. And then we're going to call you out when you don't allow your team to dedicate the amount of time that you promised them to get them their training and their upskill. Because at the end of the day, this is about career pathing for your team. This is about making your folks better than they were yesterday so that you really are in control of the talent that's in your building, as opposed to just hoping that somebody will come knock on the door and ask for a job that's freaking amazing. Love it.

Love it, love it, love it, love it. So I think that is a great place to end in terms of like what we're doing, what we're building, what we're thinking about. But before we leave you, there's one last thing we wanted to show you as part of just the kickoff week of what we've been doing in Empath and the announcements. Yes, we did have Shooter McGavin join us yesterday or today on a, on a really cool video. Go check that out on my LinkedIn channel, telling me thanks. Man, Shooter, what a great guy. And by the way, I do have to go meet him on the green at 9 tonight. I didn't, and he told me to wear my best, so I'm looking forward to that. If you have no idea what Andrew's talking about, go look at my LinkedIn channel, you'll see it. But one other thing we wanted to share with you before we leave, that we're going to leave you off with, is we— part of the mission of Empath Cyber is all about making sure that we give a voice to the voiceless, that we make sure that we give a platform to those who need it, that we make sure that content is king and queen, and that people everywhere have the ability to share something, right? That's part of who we are. And so one of the things we've done is we have created, and this is the very first time anyone's going to see this other than it being mentioned yesterday, we have something new called RejectionCon, and we're pumped to be talking about this. It's rejectioncon.com. This is brand new. It is un— it basically, it's as new as new can be, uh, December 12th through 14th. And here's what's so cool about this. Have you ever talked, submitted a talk to Black Hat or to BSides or to, I don't know, DattoCon, or anything in between, or even a local conference and you got rejected, man, it hurts, doesn't it? You kind of feel like this little robot guy right here. Oh, so sad, right? I didn't make it. We have a conference for you. This is a virtual conference. And what's so exciting about this is we are excited to bring and resurrect some of the best talks that have never been heard. So we want you guys to check this out, rejectioncon.com. If you have a talk that you are ready to share, you want others to see and be aware of, of, please, please, please let us know. We're going to have a JotForm coming up soon where you can get in on this. If you're a vendor today and you're interested in sponsoring this, reach out to us, let us know. And then more than anything, one of the things we also wanted to say is we're actually going to be doing good while we do this. Every single, every single registration fee, literally every single one, is 100% going to the Rural Tech Fund. That is a 501 charity. It is focused on helping students in rural areas grow in STEM. We've always talked about this hiring talent and the hiring gap that exists. Rural Tech Fund is all about fixing that. So I want to show this to you. RejectionCon, the waitlist is right here if you want to get in on it, in on the know. Join into this, rejectioncon.com. Sponsors coming soon. Literally the very first time we've ever talked about it, here it is. Wanted to share that with you fine folks and let you guys all know that that is coming up and hope to see you guys there. What else, Alex? Anything else you want to carry us out on? Anything?

I don't, I don't think you can leave it any better than we're gonna make a bunch of money for charity by letting folks give their amazing talks that, that have never been heard. So yeah, by all means, come register for that, come check it out, and keep an eye on what we're building at Empath because it's gonna be amazing.

Love it. Alex, thanks for joining me today. More than anything, thank you for joining us in the journey with Empath. I can't tell you how excited excited I am to finally have been able to announce and release your name. Um, and, uh, man, we just are going to be so much better because of you. So thank you so much.

It's gonna be a great ride.

Thanks, brother.

Thank you.