ERP101 - Growing a Mac focused MSP

always lean into your partner's 51% of the relationship. So whether that's a Windows PC or the Apple stores, it's actually brainstorming for them. Hey, partner, can we come over and help you? Can we help your team, you know, understand our industry a bit more? Understand what our product offering looks like. And just leaning into that relationship, just like normal human relationships. Those friends who are leaning in more than 51% are the ones that you're really going to value. Welcome to Evolved Radio, where we explore the evolution of business and technology. I'm your host, Todd Kane. This episode is brought to you by Evolved Management training courses. A whole series of courses built specifically for your MSP training needs. There's a project management for MSP's course, an MSP service manager boot camp, MSP security fundamentals and an IT documentation done right course. Check out the full suite of courses at training.evolvedmt.com. Or look for a link in the show notes. Today on the podcast, I'm joined by Lucas Acosta, CEO of Fuji. Fuji is an MSP that focuses on supporting Mac environments. As a long-time Apple fanatic, I'm always interested in people that were working in the Apple ecosystem. Lucas and I discussed how supporting Mac environments is a lot like supporting a stable Windows environment. This provides more opportunities to provide value to the customer. We also talk a bit about how Windows focused MSPs should think about the Mac fleets that they manage. We also talk about what Lucas attributes his company's growth to. Hope this is enjoyable and get you thinking about the opportunities that may exist in supporting some of the Apple infrastructure that's starting to pop up in your environments. And with that, here we go. Lucas, welcome to the Evolved Radio podcast. Todd, it's so good to to be here, man. I'm excited. I'm excited too. So, this is a an interesting way to give a little back story on an almost part of my life. I was interested in chatting with you because you run uh I guess what is not the typical MSP. uh primarily focused on Mac and Apple products. And you and I were chatting talking about coming on the podcast and relate a story that I was kind of this close to starting an Apple consulting business. So, you know, near and dear to my heart, all of my stuff is is Apple products. I've converted my whole family. And as a result, my tech support for the family has since dropped by probably 80%. So, amazing outcomes and I was interested to sort of hear the business side of this, right? So personally, I love the products and as I said, was kind of this close to starting an Apple consulting business. And I know a few friends that have and and do run them. So, kind of an interesting little niche in the market, I think. But as always, I I want to start with a bit of background. So, IT business owners, I'm always curious. How did you first get into computers? Sure. Well, man, it's funny. I I've asked a few MSP partners real quick just like I've noticed when they're using a MacBook Pro in a meeting, like, hey, you support Windows, you know, but you're using a Mac, like why don't you get into this business? And they're like, oh, we wouldn't make enough money supporting Macs. Which obviously we do, you know, like you can be sustainable. But yeah, I think you have to it just, you know, you're making revenue maybe in different ways or the same exact model may not work. But anyway, you're not the only one, you know, and so that's always a fun conversation. As far as getting into computers, you know, my my dad just happened to be one of the few people on the planet in the early 90s that had a Mac. They were beige back then. Apple was flailing. Really struggling. They even started cloning. They went after kind of the IBM and Windows model of licensing their operating system. So for a while, we had a few what what the industry called clones, you know. I sold a couple of clones back in the day, yeah. There you go. Okay. So I kind of I just had that at home and had, you know, PCs at school, like where we would learn and stuff. And I I was always kind of drawn to the creative side of it. And I could see that with one of my like the difference with my brother, for example, he's now a programmer. where I was drawn to like, oh, iMovie, you know, built in on the Mac, I could use a little USB webcam from the 90s that was a terrible resolution, probably below 100 by 100 pixels. And being able to to yeah, make creative projects, edit photos pretty easily straight from the Mac. So, it was the creative angle that kind of drew me into computers, being able to do something that I would normally just see on movies, you know. Um, so that's how I personally kind of used them, yeah, early on. So it's interesting. It actually kind of parallels what I think a lot of people sort of understand or assume about the Apple side of the world. It's like, well, yeah, it's good for, you know, art studios or if you're doing VFX or, you know, some some creative pursuit, then maybe it's useful. So, you know, obviously you've built a fairly decent business around this. Like what what would you say to sort of the people that say, well, you know, maybe some executives have it, but like Apple products in the business are not really a thing. Right. It is so so interesting um that Apple, I don't know, the word that comes to mind is pigeon hold, is pigeon hold into that category. When it was really just what the Adobes in the 90s that made those, you know, committed to developing on the Apple platform. But at the end of the day, it's all software, right? So the Mac can run Microsoft. The Mac has Cisco VPN or whatever flavor of VPN you want, the Mac can do it all. But stigma is the right term, you know, from the 90s where it's it's quote-unquote better suited for creative. But what's really interesting to go into the business side of it is our percentage of creative agencies at at our MSP Fuji. It's only 10% of our revenue. Interesting. Yeah. Our largest uh segment is law firms actually with 30%. And I think that'll, you know, kind of leans into the idea like you said of executives. Small law firms, they kind of have a lifestyle business. They want to use the Mac, you know, for work to run their cases. and again, at our particular niche, uh where we are usually, like most of our clients are 20 and under. We've got a few between 20 and 100. But law firms are are a big segment for us. And then the one after that is financial uh services, ranging from investment firms or real estate firms or realtors. That's 25% of our business segment. So it's it's interesting. I've I've tried to have a vertical that we specialize in, you know, as you're learning how to run this business and and grow, you hear that a lot to focus on a niche. and kind of choose that vertical, which I think is still great advice for some, you know, for a lot of people. But for us, we just always had um general small businesses just come out of the woodwork. And I think because at the end of the day, Apple or Macs in business are a a small market share, maybe we don't have the luxury to to focus on one vertical. We're already dealing with, you know, maybe a such a small part of of the population. I don't know the the number from the top of my head. I know Apple has a a decent percentage of new Mac sales. But yeah, you're right. In business, it's still pretty heavily on the Windows side. So I guess it kind of lends to the other question I wanted to ask is uh sort of my favorite question of IT shop owners is, what made you decide to start this business in the first place? Like, do you remember sort of like the the moment where you're like, you know what, I'm going to do this on my own. What did that look like for you? There were two kind of specific moments that that were kind of like pivotal in my decision for this career. The first was when I was in college, when I realized maybe like many of us here, I that's when I really learned that, hey, people my age need help with computers. It's not just young people before college, I just thought every kid like knew how to use their computer. But when I was helping like my classmates, you know, with their presentations or with networking, it was like the first, you know, I was taken back like, oh, this is like a valuable thing, I guess. So that was kind of the first indicator where maybe this could be my career. I I had a business major in college, so I didn't really focus on anything because I didn't know what I wanted to do. So then I I applied at an Apple store in college and ended up getting full-time to a point where I didn't finish college because Apple had these benefits and retirement and, you know, so I kind of pursued that track. So specifically, your question about like when I decided to make an IT company was three years after Apple when, you know, it took three years of seeing all these customers come through the door asking for house calls. And at Apple, there was like a non-compete really for like legal reasons. They didn't want Apple employees to go, you know, mess up other people's devices or lose their data or networks. So there was a a really strong rule there that we couldn't moonlight while we worked at Apple. And what I was doing at Apple was a a trainer. They had this in-store training program for for customers. And a lot of them were starting to ask me, hey, could I have you come over to my office or my house to to look at this as well? So, it was really kind of um a leap of faith. I think the reason that I decided to leave was out of like career satisfaction. At Apple, I was starting to get leadership roles and responsibilities. I had a team where I could create goals, but I was still limited. I I I started getting I guess told, sorry, we can't do that more often than not. So it's like my ambition, my excitement to to grow or to invest in the team was just seeing a lot of nos. And you know, it is at the time it wasn't the biggest company in the world, but it was still a pretty big corporation. And I started to kind of see I didn't consider myself an entrepreneur or anything like that, but I started to see how the economics work, like, okay, I'm capped at 40 hours a week, my income's not going to change, no matter what, how good I I perform here. Um, and I'm still like to keep the work life balance. I don't necessarily enjoy working more than 40 hours a week. But not being able to reap the rewards of of good effort was the reason where I started to look elsewhere of like, you know, could I do something that that I had a more direct relationship with the the uh spoils, I guess. Um, a more, yeah, direct input with with my income if I wanted to to do something. yeah, those my my desire to go elsewhere mixed with seeing kind of what was happening with the Apple customers coming into the store, led me to to start Fuji with a co-founder. Think, you know, we we didn't really have much of a business plan other than like around 100 bucks an hour. This was in 2008, you know, for reference for anyone listening, if you guys had PSAs or um RMMs at the time, they did not exist for the Mac. It was very break fix. Yep. And we were one of the pioneers in the MSP space for Apple, but that that didn't even happen for like three more years and I was very slow. So the the tools available for Mac shops are still very slim pickings compared to what what Windows MSPs have. But yeah, it was very much break fix and we had to go really against the grain to do an MSP model. Yeah, the I think uh the insight around sort of the leverage of the MSP model is what you noted. What I I think is really, really crucial. You know, you you can get bigger by just adding more hours and selling more hours. But the MSP model where you break, you know, the effort from the value created and what you get paid is is the real unlock, right? I think that's uh what I try to convince VARs when they're on that side of the the ecosystem. It's a it's a tough habit to break, but you know, this is this is where the value gets created when you extract that your your time input from the revenue that you can make for sure. It's so true and so eloquently put. Um yeah, where I you kind of do the math at some point of running your break fix fix company of like, okay, so to change my current life, whatever that is, or work, the only equation is hire more people, right? And it's a very direct relationship. The way I heard it at a conference once is like, yeah, your revenue is kind of like a heart attack. You know, in a in an uh what do they call it? an ECG monitor. And that's what it was. It was really hard to grow past four people, five people until we we were able to to increase our our monthly recurring revenue percentage. So, one of the other ones, and I say this partly in jest and partly not, is, you know, Max just work. So, you know, why do they need support? I think like this is this is actually sort of a natural assumption and and you know, people that use Apple products say say it sort of flippantly. But there is I suppose some truth to it. Like how do you build the value around a recurring revenue model for products that are notoriously well known for just being reliable. Yes. Okay, great, great question. Well, I'll start with the good news first, and then I'll go into the detail. So the good news is that we charge or can't, you know, we charge anywhere from 150 to 220 per person per month, okay, depending on what like stack is right for them. Now, I'm not I'm not necessarily up to date with every MSP out there. I I'm sure we could be doing something better, right? But just for reference, we are able to I I I think we're able to offer a comprehensive service and gain some pretty decent revenue. even though we're 100% Mac focused. And what we always say when someone asks that question, you know, kind of flippantly too, like, oh, you know, how how do you even have a business? Or I would never need you, you know, because Max never break. Um is that really we're here to support the people at the end of the day. And at a certain size organization, it's different for everyone, maybe it's four people, maybe it's 14 people, you need someone on the team who is maintaining security, maintaining network performance, maintaining business continuity like data retention for you. So, if you're thinking that all of these terms sound like the same terms you're using every day on the Windows side, it's because they are. Like we're doing the exact same thing, right? We're selling like Cisco Umbrella and we're Miraki partners. Um that's our flavor, you know, for networking. And well might be different is, you know, our backup our our endpoint backup for the Mac has always been different. I'm kind of jealous of of the Windows environment, how you guys can kind of clone stuff into the cloud. I'm not saying it properly. My my um my lack of knowledge is showing in this regard. But, you know, we we use a a product called Crash Plan, which is fantastic. But it just uses a different architecture of of backup than I think Windows does. So, we're still here to support the person. And our our rate for, you know, the the seat has kind of grown over the years, but there is still the rest of IT that happens outside of the operating system. Okay. Like I named again, uh like security, networking, backups. Now, even aside from that, like let's let's look at the operating systems, Windows versus Mac OS. Well, guess what? Mac OS still has software updates. They still have like zero-day exploits. And in fact, Apple comes out with a new operating system every 12 months now. Every time your iPhone has an update, there's a new Mac update. Uh for better or worse, you know, uh we have to to segment our clients so that certain clients don't get the updates right away. So, there is still, I guess, maintenance that needs to be done, even if I I still actually agree with that thought that Max don't break. That is totally true. We've got a lot of clients that are using five-year-old computers, seven-year-old computers where it's really their processor bottleneck or their graphics card bottleneck that we're having to tell them it's time to upgrade because they do keep working. The hardware keeps working. And it's just the maintenance part that that does need an IT company at a certain point. And so yeah, we're usually positioning to to clients of like, say, ideally five, but three or or higher when they start to see that value. And maybe that's why we've really grown in professional services. And I don't know what it's like on the Windows side, but creative agencies tend to not need us much. Like we have some creative agencies, but they like they're big DIYers. Right. For better and for worse. For better and for worse, right? They know how to connect to a synology like NAS and do basic troubleshooting themselves. So that's kind of why I think we don't see much demand from from that segment. But outside of that, yeah, people need help with just IT in general. So maybe I'll I'll I'll sort of position this as a a sort of a thought exercise, I suppose. In a well-run Windows environment, I think you're right. Like the desktops should be fairly reliable and you shouldn't be doing a lot of troubleshooting. Break fix in a lot of ways is an like kind of responsive support is or support is an indication that the the systems and the services are not reliable. And I think if you've built sort of a good Windows infrastructure, that can be the case too. And a lot of it then moves to the care and feeding for the environment, you know, security, governance, a lot of those other aspects. So like in a lot of ways, I suppose, like you guys are just jumping the necessity of having to configure and maintain a properly secure and reliable environment because, you know, some of the heavy lifting is done by the reliability of the infrastructure that you that comes out of the box, I suppose. Is that kind of equate? Do you think that makes makes sense? Yeah, actually, I completely agree with that. The Mac OS, for example, the their product called File Vault 2 for disk encryption is incredibly reliable. If you've ever heard any horror stories, that was from File Vault 1, which we all stayed away from. But yeah, the built-in encryption is phenomenal. So on the hardware level, yeah, security is a no-brainer. And then I don't know what what life is like with other RMMs, but if you want to remotely manage a Mac, instead of an RMM, you know, Apple uses what are called MDMs, which we're all familiar with on mobile devices. Well, when Apple kind of first started the MDM concept with iPhones, shortly after, they started those same MDM hooks, if you will, on on Mac OS as well. So, in an MDM, the one we use is called Kanji, but in any MDM, the Mac is just another type of device from an iOS device. However, if you're if you're familiar with, you know, using an MDM, even in tune on on iOS, it's very it's almost identical to the Mac. Obviously, there's different parameters for the Mac. You can go deeper on the Mac. And it's yeah, it's more configurable, but same basic concept. And that has allowed us to have that automation where before we didn't, you know, have RMMs as a as an MSP. You know, you've grown, what what's your top line revenue? Sure. So, last year, we just hit 1 million in revenue. And this year we're tracking at 1.2. So, decent sized business, like really really good growth. Like that's sort of that typical range of a lot of MSPs is that that first million dollar in annual revenue is that first hurdle that everyone's trying to to to cross, I guess. So you guys have gotten there with, you know, a Mac niche business. So I'm curious, what would you attribute a lot of your growth to? Is there a sort of a single aspect that you think you guys have done really well with or is it a collection of things? It is a collection and I think any business owner would would agree that I think the first ingredient is to experiment and be experimental and never let that kind of die. Because yeah, everything we've done has changed, you know, since we started 15 years ago. So always always experimenting. The next one was finding a uh like a reliable source of referrals. So, we call them strategic partners and a strategic partner for us is like a Windows MSP where there's complimentary services, right? Not competing, but complimentary. where we we can help each other out because we want to be great at the Mac, we want others to be great at Windows and that kind of lends to a complimentary relationship. We've also in our world, I don't know what it's like in Windows, but in our world, working closely with the Apple stores has been crucial. It hasn't been easy. I'm not saying like Apple stores send us leads every week because they don't. But, you know, to answer your question, what's been kind of what would we attribute our growth to? I think that's a component is like just finding that strategic partner and leaning in, I heard this once by an amazing like business development author, uh Mo Bunnel. He said, always lean into your partner's 51% of the relationship. So whether that's a Windows PC or the Apple stores, it's actually brainstorming for them. Hey, partner, can we come over and help you? Can we help your team, you know, understand our industry a bit more? Understand what our product offering looks like. And just leaning into that relationship, just like normal human relationships. Those friends who are leaning in more than 51% are the ones that you're really going to value and really kind of surprising. So, yeah, that's those two are big. And I guess you didn't say just one. But I think the the one that has kind of unlocked it for us most recently, like those kind of the first two carried our our growth throughout the years, but we had our our like years of plateaus for several years. was giving others on my team more responsibility to allow freedom, like my freedom to focus on what I deem important at that moment. So, like just, you know, as founders, we have ideas. Sometimes we just want to dig into a spreadsheet or make a spreadsheet to figure out this one metric. Or sometimes we want to dig into an operating system like feature, or we want to go to a conference for a week. But client work just gets in the way. And so by putting other people in management roles and doing that like intentionally, not just uh, hey, we'll get there one day, but but it was actually we thought it was a chicken and egg problem, but I learned in the past year that I actually need to put the the people there first and that will unlock your your your growth, your capacity, you know, for me to to spend time doing those things that inspire and kind of lead the company. Like the examples that I mentioned a second ago. So, Yeah, I love that idea. Just reminds me of one of the sort of the the little quips about management that I love because I saw this in in action in a lot of the corporations that I grew up in is the attitude we would use for future managers is act like you have the role until someone gives you the title. And I think like what you're noting is giving people sort of the freedom and the and the sort of the safety to test the barriers on that and and give them those challenges to to to spend a little time in in growing into that role. And the ones that really excel are the future leaders that will help step up, right? Right. You know, what if they don't succeed or they don't take the responsibility seriously. Like, well, they just find someone else. Um, and I say that like empathetically, you know, not like rudely, but it's not the end of the world if that person actually just would prefer to to keep their their responsibilities, you know, on the shorter side. That's totally fine. And they might be a fantastic team member in that capacity. Yeah. And it wasn't until like and I'm not a a micromanager. It's not like I was trying to hold on to power, not power, but just like control or anything. I just didn't think I was allowed to promote people without like a significant salary increase. And a a coach we were working with helped us realize that people really just want to they love responsibility and if they have an opportunity to improve their workplace, to improve their job, the right people will jump at the opportunity, even if they know like, hey, there's no salary increase right now because there is none to be had, like there's no extra money to go around. However, you get to be a part of the growth and and yeah, it's setting you up for leadership and you know, what comes with that down the road. So, that was the unlock for us or for I guess me specifically was realizing that I had to make that position change first, even though they had a dual role, still engineering and director of ops or still engineering, you know, and sales, before I could see any change. Right. Awesome. I love that. I love the sort of that that conscious growth of uh of the leadership and including people in the business. I think it's really significant. So one other thing I I want to get your input on is, you know, a lot of MSP focused or uh Windows focused MSPs uh have those smattering of Apple devices, the executives that have that have an uh a MacBook Air or something like that. What are sort of your suggestions for people that are maybe are not going to go full bore and do a lot of Apple support, but they have sort of that that small asset class of uh some devices that they do need to support. So what's what's sort of the things that they need to do, right? Because I think a lot of people struggle with this of like, how do I have my team know enough to be able to intelligently support the user? And how do I manage those devices when, you know, a lot of the tools and things that I that I use to support the rest of my fleet don't really work with those devices. That's a great question. And yeah, I I would would love it if more people had a a base understanding of the Mac. It is weird at first, but once you get into it, it's a very easy translation, I think, from your current experience. And just in the last year or two, Apple has really simplified where to go for training. And the one thing to remember is training.apple.com. What that'll do is show you two different sort of course tiers, if you will, or certification tiers. And just doing the first one, like having one person on your team do the first one, will give your bench so much information, even for like rolling out MDM policies, because that's usually the the issue is governance wants to make sure that, you know, X feature is applied everywhere. Well, how do we do that on these two Macs in in tune? And also, what are the ramifications if we check this box? Sometimes things in in in tune is easy. Like just it's one checkbox, but they have, you know, significant, I guess, consequences. So, training.apple.com, doing that first course, the courses are free. It's cool, like they I can tell they put a lot of money into this. It's just the exams, you know, through Pearson or something you pay for if if you guys want the exams or to be certified. And then the other community, I guess, that's really just a cornerstone of the Apple community is called Mac Mac admins, Mac admins.org. They have um an annual conference and they have a a slack channel as well. So, if there is someone on your team that's kind of the Mac person, they want to get more into it, that Mac community or the the slack community is massive and you can just select which channels you want to be a part of there. And then lastly, just from a a growth standpoint, if you are if you have a handful of Mac clients or you're wanting to grow in a certain maybe vertical, like point of sale or something that's very Apple-centric, you could also get certified with the Apple Consultants Network. One of the requirements is to have that first certification, by the way, that I mentioned. But, you know, then you could have that badge of um being on the Apple Consultants Network on your website. And you can get referrals from the Apple stores. And in addition to getting referrals from the Apple's online like locator. So, if if you're a specialist with databases or point of sale or whatever your vertical is, Apple's a pretty big company and a lot of Apple customers don't know where to start. They just go to apple.com. And so they put in their zip code and if from a growth perspective, you're ready to actually take on more, then yeah, it's called the Apple Consultants Network to get the badge and that's um consultants.apple.com. Just to learn about their their kind of equivalent to the Microsoft partner network or partner program, sorry. All right, so uh we'll look to wrap up here. This has been great, Lucas. I appreciate sort of your insights on on sort of the the other side of the MSP world, as it were. Any sort of parting words of wisdom, things that you've sort of picked up or learned in your in your growth in your organization that you would impart to other MSP owners? Oh man, there's so many directions I could go with this. Um, but I guess every every milestone that we've reached, you know, every new growth period that we've reached has been from an outside influence. You know, yes, it it takes the founder to to want to grow. And it takes the founder to be the one to be inspired to grow. And I would just encourage to always look for outside influence, whether that's a coach, conferences, and especially with the pandemic kind of still in our rearview mirror, I personally, if I'm not, I'm not like an extrovert like party animal where I have to go to conferences. My cup is easily filled, I guess, but if you haven't been to one in a while, that's where, you know, I find my inspiration. It's just always looking for someone to speak to it, whether that's a mentor. I've had mentors over the years and our most recent was like a coach that we just brought on for a couple of months. That coach was specifically around the EOS kind of framework, the entrepreneur operating system, which really worked for us. But, you know, regardless of the framework you're using or the coach you're using, I think you've got to get out of your own brain sometimes because it's easy for us to get stuck in the grind and to just not really see the next steps and fresh eyes have always done that for me. So, so yeah, that's what I would recommend. Uh and EOS and and kind of that framework has been the most recent eye opener for us that that told me that, yeah, we we need a management team here and then, you know, just having a coach to kind of help with those new questions for that, yeah, you're inevitably going to going to come across. That's awesome. I I think it's fantastic advice just seek external inputs, right? And uh a little help along the way. Don't be shy, right? That's awesome. Yeah. This has been great, Lucas. Uh really appreciate your inputs and hope you have an awesome week. Cool, man. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Part of the MSP Radio Network.