ERP117 - Rethinking vCIO : Adapting The Role For Better Outcomes

With our customer, we should send a meeting agenda ahead of time to say, this is what I expect this time to be used for. And if there's something else that's important to you, give me some feedback, let's talk about what it is that we need to talk about. Because if I come to Todd and say, hey man, I want to I want to schedule some time for you and we're going to do podcasting and Todd says, okay, but you said something mean on LinkedIn that I want to yell yell at you about first. Those are two different things. Welcome to Evolve Radio, where we explore the evolution of business and technology. I'm your host Todd Kane. This episode is brought to you by Evolve Management training courses, a whole series of courses built specifically for your MSP training needs. There's a project management for MSPs 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.evolvedmgmt.com. Or look for a link in the show notes. Welcome back to the Evolve Radio podcast. In today's episode, I'm joined by Alex Farling from Empath. In the last episode, Luis Geraldo and I were talking about the VIO. Alex was listening to the episode and took up my challenge to fight us in the comments. Alex has lots of opinions and experiences in the VIO field having built one of the leading platforms for VIO out there. Interestingly, even Alex says he hates the term VIO and explains why. We also discussed firing clients, the critical role of communicating and maintaining positive relationships, agendas, or nuanced roles that are required in a smaller MSP. This is another episode packed with insights on the role of account management in the MSP space. So get ready to rethink the VIO role again with us on the Evolve Radio podcast. Alex, welcome to the Evolve Radio podcast. Todd, it's good to see you. Awesome to be here, thanks. So, I really appreciate you coming onto the pod for a specific reason. Obviously, I love chatting with you, you got tons of great value to add on the topic we're going to be covering today. But in particular, you actually took up the gauntlet that uh Luis Geraldo and I threw down around uh fight us in the comments. And you were very quick to jump into my LinkedIn feed and and say like, hey, like I've got an opinion on what you guys are talking about. And I want to note like that I actually really appreciate that because I often say to people, you know, if you have questions, let me know in the emails that I send out for my newsletter. I actively solicit feedback and I really enjoy it when people reply, I reply to every email that I get that of people that engage with me. So I really appreciate that you actually took that up as a sort of a a serious sort of discussion point. And said, hey, like I've got some opinions, let's talk about this. So. Anybody who knows me knows I have a lot of opinions, yeah, but. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but I also know like as a creator, it's hard, right? It's uh there's there it's hard creating content, it's hard to always have something new to talk about. So if somebody wants to pick something spicy and go poke a fight with you, it's going to be fun. So, you know, I always enjoy these kind of conversations and figured I'd I'd jump in there. Especially since Luis mentioned to me earlier in the podcast. I'm like, oh, that's like Beetlejuice. Like I have to show up now. So. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I felt some. Yeah, you were we we put it out there in the ether to to to call you. It was a a positive comment as well, so. I think Luis knows I'm a sucker and was like, he'll show up, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so we'll we'll start there with I think one of the like there's a bunch of things that we want to round out here and and go through. The one I think that that really was the first comment you made is is sort of the the distinction of what do we call this role? And Luis and I had talked about, you know, is this VIO kind of under a different name? Is it some type of client success role? And you kind of pointed out that client success is actually something totally different. So if we're going to call it that, we're further confusing what this role is. Do you want to build on that? I think client success is an outcome. And and not so much a position. Right? And and so there's a there's actually a t-shirt running around. Robert Chaffy's wearing a t-shirt somewhere that says CX equals CO plus CE, which is client success equals client outcomes plus client experience. And I think that we have to look at this and say, client success is a real thing. It's a role, it's a it's a function that we're trying to achieve. But client success means my client continues to pay me money, they don't churn, they don't run away. Client success is a left of churn function where we go, these are the guys we deploy to make sure our clients love us. Trust us, continue to want to do business with us, you know, those kind of things. And VIO is not the only role that that has some client success responsibility. But there is a real job whose seat is called client success, especially in like SAS businesses and in larger enterprise. The problem is as MSPs, we're smaller organizations, we don't have 60, 70, 100 seats. And room for somebody whose job is just to make sure every client renews. So as the average nine-person business, that is a shared hat. That is a shared responsibility. And that's something we don't talk about often enough when we get into these high-level discussions. We get into, oh, well, the sales job, or the account manager job, or the VIO's job, or the the account manager's job. Whatever, you take your pick, we've got five, six, seven, eight jobs that we all like to talk about and throw out names. We got the BDR and the SDR and the account manager and the technical account manager. Man, at most MSPs, that's one dude. He's got like nine hats. And he's just trying to to show up for a client on one day and have a strategic conversation. And on the day before he was trying to sell him a widget and the client doesn't know which hat he's showing up in. And it creates so much stress for this person. And quite often, early on, it's the owner. Yeah. Do you think we maybe do a disservice to the community in the way that we talk about these things in talking about sort of like the mid-market descriptions? Right, because you said like there's a lot of these large terms that are functions unto themselves. Uh but as you say, like my one of my favorite stats about the industry is is 90% of the industry is a sub $1 million MSP. So of course you're wearing a lot of different hats. Yet we talk about sort of all these separated roles. Do you think that do you see like as you talk to MSPs that creates confusion for them about how they're actually supposed to structure and engage the work? 100%. I sat down with a group of MSPs who they were all owned by copier dealers. So and they were they were good-sized MSPs, so they were somewhere between three and 20 million. And they were confused about it. The $20 million guys were confused about it. You know, they still had VIOs on on sales quotas and we got done talking and they went, oh my God, I've totally set my team up to fail. But I also think we do a disservice not just by talking to a million dollar MSP like they're a $30 million MSP. But by talking to MSPs like their customers are $30 million customers or $40 million customers. Like what was the average client at your MSP, at mine it was 15 people, 18 people? Yep. Yep. 20 to 50, I I sort of consider the sweet spot of of the MSP. Yep. Right, so if we're saying 50 is the highest. At what level does a does a customer bring in a CIO? At what point do they have the need for that or do they even know who that is? A 15-person company probably doesn't. Yeah, at a 15, 25, 50-person company, they're not thinking about a CIO. And here we are coming in talking about, I'm a VIO. Well, why do we use that term? Because some vendor told us to. Because they thought they could get us to sell more of their security products. This industry, we are so much the tail that wags the dog because the vendor told us to use a cool fancy new word. Like put a new another S and MSP and you'll be fancier and you can sell more of my security product. Yeah. We do ourselves a great disservice by not just stepping back and saying, what does my client really expect from me in this role? Yeah. What is the outcome I can deliver that they will look at and say, that delivered the exact experience that I was looking for while I was working with Todd. And now I as the customer can say, client success stamp applied, we win. Right. So and I and I think that that comes back to your to the previous point that I really want to expand on is is those multiple hats. And you noted which one are you wearing at what time and in what meeting and, you know, what stage of that meeting and, you know, also depends on like you said, a bit of that maturity of the client. You know, talking to, you know, a four-person architectural firm versus, you know, an 80-person logistics company, their needs and ability to engage in those conversations are dramatically different. Not to mention, you may be going from one sort of TBR, QBR meeting to another and, you know, engaging in a totally different uh uh sort of space. And the function and what you're talking about is going to be different as well. Like that that's a really difficult challenge for any business owner to figure out like what persona am I showing up as. In this meeting as I go to talk to this client, you have to be quite intentional about that. You have to be very intentional about it and you have to make sure that you define. What the meeting is, too many of us just go, I'm going to go meet with my customer for their check-in. And if the check-in is just the check-in, that's how we get our strategic conversation derailed with Billy was mean to Sally and I want to yell about it now. And we go in to have a strategic conversation and they're dealing with something that's immediately tactical that could have been solved in an email or a phone call. And didn't need the meeting that we've now now hijacked and and kind of taken in the wrong direction. So, you know, it's it's got to be very intentional. We have to go to the customer and say, hey, I'm coming in ahead of time. If you're an EOS shop, you're doing this internally, you should be doing with your customers. We don't have meetings without agendas. Yep. With our customer, we should send a meeting agenda ahead of time to say, this is what I expect this time to be used for. And if there's something else that's important to you, give me some feedback, let's talk about what it is that we need to talk about. Because if I come to Todd and say, hey man, I want to I want to schedule some time for you and we're going to do podcasting. And Todd says, okay, but you said something mean on LinkedIn that I want to yell yell at you about first. Those are two different things. And we probably should put LinkedIn to bed before we go have a podcast because we'll have a better conversation. Because that nastiness is out of, you know, out of the room. So there's a there there is a world where if we send an agenda out and the client reaches back out and says, well, you want to have a QBR, you want to have a strategic conversation about budget forecast and risk management and where we're going. And I want to yell about Billy and Sally. I need to as the strategic person in the room, I need to pick up the phone and go. Hey Mr. Customer, this is too important to wait. Let's deal with the customer satisfaction issue, let's make sure that when I walk into the room in two weeks, this is all done and gone. And we can focus on the stuff that's important to your business. Yep. Yeah, I think that's a really important point. I mean, agendas for meetings, I'm a huge fan as an operations focused person. Right. And and I think it's really important because as you say, not derailing and potentially sort of cutting those problems off at the past. Right, you want to go in, have a strategic discussion, but if you know that there's some burning issue in the background. Then you can kind of lob that over the fence first and say like, at the very least, you can say, here's the issue, I'm aware of it, here's the plan to fix that. Like, are we still good to talk about this? So you can kind of cut it off at the pass and and. At least like maybe they're like, yeah, okay, cool, then I'm I'm satisfied with that. Or, you know, worst case scenario is, let's delay the meeting for a week and talk about this instead. Right, you give that person that opportunity. And I think just simply presenting yourself that way appears so much more professional. It gives you a lot of grace with the client, but also, you know, makes you look like you're more competent, right? And the way you said that is so good because. All too often as as MSPs, we we might be a little low on the EQ and we'll just go into the customer and go, well, we can't have that meeting if that's what you want to talk about or we're not going to have a meeting if all the right people don't show up or whatever. Yeah, that's not why I'm here. Right. So some grace in the matter on our side will be get us some grace from our customer on the other side. And I think that's super powerful. You know, there's also the what did I come in for to this meeting for last time? If I send an agenda and it says, I want to talk about how I backed up all your backups and patched all your patches and antivirus all your antivirus. My customer my my their C-level team is going to go, hey, point of contact who also happens to sit at the front desk and answer the phones. Go to the meeting with the IT guy and come back and tell me if anything's important. If I tell them, we have to have a risk management discussion and talk about budget forecast and plan your spending for the next 36 months. They're going to go, oh, maybe the CFO should be there. Right. And so instead of having a QBR with one person, we're having a QBR with a leadership team. But it's because we came at that meeting intentionally with a strategic hat on. Not with a sales hat on, not with a not with a retention hat on, not with a security hat on, just a strategic hat. Right. Not here to sell you anything, I'm just here to show you what you've got to do for the next 12 to 24 months. All right, so uh you touched on sort of some of those categories, I think this is a perfect way to get into some of this. Um, so I'll I'll rattle them off and and if we get to all of them, great. Uh but I'm sure we're going to go down a couple of rabbit holes here. Of course. Um, so sales, strategy, security and retention. These are all engagement modalities that you're going to be working with your clients in. Um, one of the ones that I think was was really sort of well put when Luis and I were chatting. He pulled from I don't remember the gentleman's name that he was talking to. That called this white filling the white space. Mhm. And I see this as a real strong tension, right? Because recognizing there is a sales function to what we're trying to do. And I want to get your input on this the tension between ultimately we do need to sell them the things that are on the road map. I do need to fill my client matrix and make sure that everyone is utilizing all of the services and I'm able to cross-sell. And I've standardized my approach with my clients. Uh but that is also not a strategic discussion. So Luis suggested like at least having those as two separate meetings makes some sense. What are your thoughts on that tension between I do need to align my stack if I've not been prescriptive about it. But also I don't want to necessarily just present as, hey, I need to sell you a bunch of stuff and that's why we're having this meeting. Yeah. I think he's spot on to start with. It depends on how big the thing is, right? If we're talking about one and $2 widgets, then most of those get handled by the risk assessment. If I go through a risk assessment and just say, hey, you have exposure here, Mr. Customer, this is this is a problem. And we discuss that at a strategic level. Then the the the correct answer for the customer is and and I like to lay out a quarterly business review kind of in a couple of sections. We start with risk. Mr. Customer, if nothing changes, this is the risk you carry today and your business has to be okay carrying this risk forever. If we decide not to make any changes, here's the risk assessment. Now here's your budget forecast. If we want to tread water, here's the money I know you need to spend to tread water for nothing else to change. Now, I've cherry-picked a couple of things off your risk assessment that I think we should probably try and solve for. Let's talk about where those may fit in your budget forecast. I never talk about, will you buy my shit? The answer is, when do you want to buy my shit? When do you want to solve for the problem? Yeah. And this is how we go from strategy to from sales to strategy. Which is I always try and I I you know, I hate the word VIO. I've probably told you this, but. Because virtual means it's not really a thing and CIO implies that uh that that we're way bigger than we are and that we actually work for the customer and can't be selling them things. You know, imagine my C-level executive who goes to his organization and goes, we got to get rid of QuickBooks and buy Oracle. It'll only be a million dollars. Gets the industry gets the business to do it, walks out the door and Oracle hands him a commission check. Right. Right. That guy is in jail on Wall Street. Right. And rightfully so. So if we look at our VIO or if we look at how an internal CIO would operate, what he's going to say is to the rest of the leadership team. Here's my budget for IT to run my department and if I were to solve for these risks. Here's what I would need to do it and here's here's the order I would do it in. Then he would go to the leadership team and say, when do we make these changes or which of these are you comfortable carrying as acceptable risk? We get so tactical in our businesses, so concerned with white space that we forget to ask the customer. Are you okay carrying this risk? Is it all right for you to say? Likelihood of this happening is very, very small, the implications of it happening are reasonably cheap. It wouldn't cost me too much. And to deploy it would be expensive at a time where I really don't want to spend the money. Any regular business with internal IT would go, nope, not doing it. Um, as MSPs, we walk in and think, it's my way or the highway because I I run my own business and you don't get to tell me how to run my business. That that immediately puts us at conflict with the customer where the conversation really needs to be around, this is what you're doing today, this is what that costs. I'd like to see you do better and if I were to see you do better, here's the things I would do in the order I would do them. That's my sales pitch. That's it. Like I don't have to go in and sell sell it things, I just have to go in and say, here's the problems that we should solve for. In a perfect world, a large MSP, my CIO is not even going to present pricing for those. He's just going to go in and go, you know, this is probably a three or $4,000 project, problem, whatever. If you're ready to tackle it, I'll throw it over the fence to my internal sales team. Right. And then they're hands off of it and they can protect their strategic role by handing it off. It's interesting, right? Because like as you say that I I like this idea of of a bit of that segregation. And maybe it flies again against the the face of sort of what I would say is more common wisdom shared in the industry. Where people say, you know, come to those meetings with a prepared quote so you can get sign off on it. As a bit of a sales hack, like and you're sort of suggesting like a different approach. Is there a different circumstance where those are appropriate levels of doing that? Or would you side more on the on the separation of church and state there? I despise quotes and I aim for the world where my customer trusts me so much that we don't use them. Imagine the world where I sit down with their customer, we lay out the budget, Mr. Customer, here's the budget for the next 12 months. I see you have your big line of business renewal in April. That's going to cost you 50 grand. There's a big spike in the budget, we've inventory their their SAS applications, we know where they live. 50 grand in April. You've got to do this other project, you've got to get rid of some Windows 10 assets before Windows 10 is end of life and 11 is the only thing going, that's going to cost us 15 grand. I assume that doing that between now and April is going to back you into a really tight corner and it's probably the wrong time to do it. Should we wait and do that in July? And they go, yep, sure, July. Okay, that's 15 15 machines we got to get rid of, they're going to be 1500 bucks a piece, I'm going to need this much money in July. If I just go ahead and send you the invoice in on July 1st, are we good to go? We put it in their budget, we told them how much it was going to be, we had a strategic conversation. Quotes are not necessary. Okay. I see. Okay. No, so I I was going to push back and and say like, I don't know, like quotes feel like something you probably should be doing. But I do like this idea of the way I describe this in my course is like you're basically just running a program. Like I'm not here to sell you anything is I'm I'm here to keep you accountable to a strategy that we've previously agreed to. And like it sure, there's some salesmanship in that of originally selling that plan, but it does shift the the subsequent meetings that you have from, oh God, you know, Alex is here and he's going to try and try and scheme five grand out of me for whatever else he thinks is important this week. To, you know, hey, here's what we agreed to as a part of this budget, here's what needs to happen in the next two months. That does feel different, right? Yeah, and if if basically what we're doing is playing Canary in the coal mine. Our customers are used to the way I I like to tell this joke when I start my talk. How how does the typical MSP enter the room, knock knock, I need money. Right. And if we can avoid that entrance, which is kind of how we do it, we wind up in a better place. And so, you know, the it was I think it was Carl Bickmore who said he had a customer at one point who called him two buck Carl because they knew every time he showed up, he had bought a new shiny thing at a trade show. And he wanted $2 an agent more from them. We have to avoid being two buck Carl. And to do that, we have to be strategic, we have to think down the road and around the corner. And, you know, we were telling folks at life cycle insights in 2021. Hey, COVID happened. You had your biggest hardware year ever, probably, or one of them. Which means all your clients replaced a bunch of junk. Start talking now about 2024 and 2025. Because cyclically, all that gear is going to come do again. Yep. Traditionally, MSPs just come knock on the door in 2024 or 2025 with their hand out and go, knock, knock, I need money. But the mature ones, the ones that are winning are sitting down with their customer going, now this is going to come back to bite you again in 2024, 2025. Remember how bad it hurt in 2020. Should we start planning for leasing, should we start breaking the spend out and replacing a little bit of it early? What are we going to do, can we save money based on how we're financed or are we a government organization that has to spend everything we we encumber for the year? How does how does our finance work, how does money move through our company? And can we plan for and be ready for a big expense year that's coming? And that's why I think budget forecasting is so important. It's the most important thing that we don't do. Yeah. In our in our industry. Because we're the only ones who know all of the technology and everything that a customer would need to budget for. They couldn't possibly do it themselves and yet we just wash our hands from it and walk away. Um go back to your initial statement about the architecture firm that's got four computers. Versus the company that's got 50 employees. The architecture firm that's got four computers is going to want a different QBR and this is what Luis was talking about about maturity. They know, hey, Bob got a new computer last year, Sally's is two years old and somebody else is getting one that's three years old and we just replaced one every year and we just keep rolling forward and life is good. At 15 employees, you lose the ability to have visibility into who got a new one when, people start to forget, things get old and they start to fall out of grace and and then now we now we have a need to budget. So our clients are in different places, if I go to that four-person customer and go, here's your budget forecast. They're going to snicker and laugh and go, it seems like you're a little too fancy for me, Todd. Are you sure you haven't outgrown the ability to do IT for us? Yeah. And your big customer, if you're not coming in with those kind of things, is going to look at you and go, you're just a fly by night, you know, trunk slammer. And you're not really doing your job. So Luis's point is very valid, we have to present to the audience that we're that we're working with. And at some point, we have to decide or some of those small customers, are we still flexible enough that we can bring them along and and provide good service to them? Or have we really outgrown them to a point where we're willing to put that revenue at risk and ask them to to go find someone else to do their IT? I'm not a big fan of fire the customer. But, you know, it's a it's a valid question. Well, I mean, on that point, like I often say like uh firing a customer. It is a right of passage for an MSP. And I think like getting to the point of having that confidence of like, these guys just don't align with what we're trying to do in the future. Because like everyone starts their IT business crappy and they will pick up whatever revenue wherever they can find it. And that does not enable you in the future. So I think there is that distinction of like, don't just fire people like because. Um, but you know, like be conscious of is this a good alignment anymore, do they actually agree with the way that I want to do their their technology management in the future? And if that's not a good alignment and certainly if it's not profitable. Then I I I encourage people to have the confidence to fire clients as presuming that they they have a plan for growth and they're able to replace that revenue with better revenue in the future, I suppose, right? I I always tell everybody, before you fire the client, go back and look at your client list and say, how many more are there on the list that I want to fire? And if the number is more than one or two, maybe you're the problem. Right. This is the same issue of like we go into everything so hard knows that it's my way or the highway, they're only going to buy, you know, E5 licensing. And turn on all the security features and do all the things because I know it's the best thing for everyone. Yes, it is, but they still have to figure out how to run the cash register. And so if you want to fire all of your customers or half of your customers, you may be part of the problem. And there is a lowest common denominator, we've got to look in the mirror and go, am I just being so hard to deal with that I'm always going to be living a lifestyle business? Because I can't possibly generate those top tier customers who will let me turn on every security feature and every function and pay me $400 a seat. Yeah. So with the the MSP that I ran, uh every year I used to do top five, bottom five with the team. Carl's talking about this. I freaking love it. Yeah. Yeah. Who who are the bottom five clients? And it was like it was really just something that I kept in the back of my head. As like, if the bottom five showed up and they were on the bubble. Uh how hard would I fight for them and it helped me to zero in on like the top five, are we profitable? Bottom five, are we profitable? And if they're not profitable and the team hates them, then that's not a good fit. But if the team hates them and they are profitable, like, okay, maybe. And what was interesting is a lot of the time like I see this with consulting with clients as well. Is they they they struggle with a particular client. And and you often ask, okay, like X amount of money, if you lose that revenue, like obviously you care. But is it profitable, like what's your margin on that? And again, it's shocking how many people don't know off the top of their head. Even when they're getting into this discussion with themselves of should I fire them? Then you go and look at it, you're like, wow, it's actually tremendously profitable. I wouldn't have expected that, they're actually not as much of a problem as you think, right? Uh from a from a service perspective, but maybe there's a there's a values alignment issue. Communications problem, right? You know, we had a we had a customer that just they they changed who our point of contact was at that company. And they went from one of our favorite customers to somebody we just dreaded when the phone rang. Right. And so finally my team just was just venting about it and I went, you know, I'm going to get to the bottom of this because this was a really good customer for a really long time. They're still profitable. We just couldn't get along with them. And so I just reached out to the point of contact and said, I don't know where we failed you. But I would like to try and figure out how to reset things, can we meet for a half hour or 45 minutes every Friday until we have things back on track? And she said, yes. That is such a brave and vulnerable way to approach that. I love the way. What's the worst thing she was going to say to me? I don't like you. No. Okay, well then we're still where we are today. Um, but but but when she said yes, then I realized, all right, now I have an opportunity. So every Friday we would I would get my service manager and he and I would hop on the phone with her. And we'd go, here's the let's do a ticket summary and talk about the the tactical things that we've done for you the last week. Anything that was problematic, we're going to talk about it. If there was a security incident, we talked about it. If there was any kind of a project that was on hold or something didn't go right. We did this for eight or 10 weeks. And then at the end of one of the calls, she went and these calls were getting shorter and shorter just magically. And then at the end of one of the calls, she goes, you know, I think we're good, I don't think we need to do this meeting next week. Perfect. And then we so we went to bi-weekly, then we went to monthly. They went right back to being one of our favorite customers, she chilled out because she felt like she had a good relationship with my service manager and with me. And everything just got better and they were an incredibly profitable customer. So it was one of those things where she was new to the role, was trying to prove herself, didn't necessarily feel appreciated. She the only time you ever talk to the IT guys when something's broke, so there's a Pavlov thing there with like, Todd, I don't like you because every time I talk to you, I'm mad at a computer. We don't connect the two in our brain, but there's this like every time the dinner bell rings, I salivate every time the IT, you know, every time I call the IT guy, my blood pressure goes up. We don't even notice it, it's it's very subconscious. But being on the back end of that, we need to realize that as MSPs. Like that's who our that's what our customers dealing with. All the more important uh with that framing of creating occasions where we do have positive interactions, right? Like the necessity of those proactive engagements with that client that you created, right? And that that cadence of, let's work together in a positive fashion so that we can reset sort of how we see each other and engage. I think that's incredibly insightful. And and really instructive of of creating that positive engagement cycle. Yeah, and that's building a better client experience, making sure that we deliver client outcomes, which eventually ends up in client success. Right, this is this is the customer success role. So, you know, if you have a large MSP, large enough that you can afford to have a resource dedicated to this. I think every service department should have somebody dedicated to just reaching out and touching touching base with their customers and just saying, hey, you know, where are we? What's going on, are we are we where we need to be? Are we delivering on our promises? And there's a point in time to be able to say, look, we backed up all the backups, we patched all the patches, we antivirus all the antivirus, but that's not in our strategic meeting about budget forecasts and risk management and those kind of things. That's a one-on-one conversation with a service manager. Versus a, you know, strategic person in my organization talking to an entire leadership team or an entire board of directors or something like that. And the more we can start to force ourselves to look at these roles and say, the strategy guy goes and talks to the whole group of people. The retention person just talks to our point of contact and makes sure we're not missing the boat on anything and but builds the relationship and takes care of things. And the sales guy goes out and does the sales component and the security guy goes out and makes sure that security is all dialed in. Now we start to see all the the individual cogs that move, they come together to build a really great relationship. And then we go back to the average MSP that's nine employees. And then they have to figure out how to wear all those hats while they're still trying to get the day-to-day done. Mhm. Yeah, and I think uh again, like the separation of those meetings happening at different cadences and different and actually having an agenda that demonstrates this is a different style of meeting. This is more formal, we're going to meet quarterly, we're going to talk about these things on a strategic level. Versus, I'm just ringing it up to say hi, how are things going? And maybe you do that on a monthly basis. I think that that distinction of how you're engaging and when and being intentional about that does create an easier path for you to play these roles as they're necessary with the client, right? Somebody said to me at one point, like your client's never happier than the day they signed the contract. And they said it to me about the time we're signing a contract with our biggest vendor here at Empath. And I was thinking about that and I'm like, I don't really love this vendor. They're the least. Um unlovable of all the vendors we've talked to for this particular feature. So we're probably going to do business with them. And guess what? A year and a half later. I really don't like this vendor. And they weren't wrong. Like if if you have under delivered to a point, it's and then they you finally talk somebody into signing a contract, it's only gone down from here. If they absolutely love you the day they sign the contract, there's no world in which they love you a little more. After a bunch of shit's broken and they've called you when everything was broken. So it has to be really intentional that we continue to remind our customer what the things were. That caused them to know, like and trust us in the beginning, so that they want to work with us a year down the road, two years down the road, three years down the road. It's got to be intentional. Yeah. Yeah, it's a all sort of like the client relationship version of uh dating and marriage. Is like when you're first dating, you try really hard and maybe present yourself slightly differently than who you are. And then as you get more comfortable, you know, it slightly slightly degrades over time. And every once in a while you got to be got to check yourself and be like, hey, am I still trying? You know, like you can slip into those circumstances where you're busy with a lot of stuff and it just feels hard. And, you know, this is fine, I'll leave it this way. But, you know, you you got to be honest with yourself and reflect on, you know, am I phoning it in at this point? Like on a client by client basis, right? And and your clients could be the spouse that just goes, uh, maybe I'll do better on the second marriage. Right. And you know, we got to we have to be proactive against that and make sure that we don't put them in a place where they want to go look for their second marriage. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so the one we didn't touch on was security. And this one I want to frame this maybe in a particular way, there are are certain circumstances and conversations that we have to have that that are are are difficult. And I I think I'm interested in your perspective on this because you kind of touched on this earlier of about how prescriptive should you be? You know, does everyone require an E5 license and these things need to be enabled? And I like I am personally kind of a big fan of being a bit more prescriptive. I've seen this work really well for a lot of MSPs, recognizing it's not for everybody. It doesn't work in all circumstances, especially if you're smaller. But certain minimums of of client standards, right? Like saying, MFA is absolutely required and it is non-negotiable. I think that's a really strong point and protects both parties. And it should be something that you try to enforce. But then you see these circumstances, great example that comes up a lot for MSPs. Is anyone working in medical offices, especially dental offices? Where, you know, MFA is kind of a no-go despite the fact that it, you know, if you want hip compliance, you kind of need it. Yet every dentist will tell you, no, no, no, we don't do that. Like we need one login for every computer, everyone's going to share it. Right, so what are your thoughts on the just enough security? And what is the baseline that should be non-negotiable? I think that depends on your MSP and that is a terrible answer, but it's the right answer. Because. It's a consulting answer. It depends. But but back to the beginning, right, when you're a when you're a one-man show. And you're just trying to build a business, you're going to take some some folks who don't live up to the to the basics. Maybe you're not, maybe but but the bar is certainly lower, right? The more you mature, the more you can be prescriptive like that. But also, I think the more verticalized you are, the more you can be prescriptive. I think that in my mind, this comes down to, am I pitching security because of and insert a bunch of nerd words? Or am I pitching security because and now I can speak in the language of my customer to explain to them in their language, in their business. How and why this puts their business at risk? If I can talk about it in their business, then then I understand their business well enough to know that it's right for them. But I don't believe we can say that, you know, that the right security for a for an on-prem company that hosts medical records in their building is the same as the security for the sign company down the street that has two computers that run Photoshop and all they do is print graphics. Right, the security just doesn't need to be the same. The risk profile is different. Um, the compliance profile is different, the requirements are just different. And in this industry, we tend to just fall into this uh zeitgeist of all my big vendors told me so. And they're the only ones who educate, they're the only ones who tell me any better. Um, oh, it was easier to manage if everybody has the same license. That is a shitty answer. Mhm. That is a real that says. I'm being lazy, so I should make all my customers buy the right license. How about you just learn how to configure the other licenses? Yes, E3 and E5 have better security and certainly they're they're the right answer for most people. But that sign company who has two employees who does $100,000 a year in business or $200,000 a year in business, we're either going to just accept that they don't get an MSP. They can't pay for one. They can't afford one, we just if we if we say the minimum is $350 a seat, everybody gets all the securities, we we tie everything up, lock everything down. There's a certain amount of the business that just doesn't get protected now. Or we say. Enough security based on the client's risk profile and what would happen to them if they got breached. So. I almost feel like maybe this is a a good spot to insert the uh the beginning of the conversation, call call this back. Uh how prescriptive should we be as MSPs, fight us in the comments. Right. And and I but I think it's a great conversation because there will be somebody who comes back to and says, all of my customers are banks. Well, you know what, you damn well better be prescriptive. But I think it also speaks to the same point that I I feel like you're making is uh you've said verticalization is where this starts to make sense. And I think you're really bang on about that, right? Like if you're specializing in a certain area, I think it makes more sense to be prescriptive and what this goes to is being really clear on what is your client profile. Right, if you just say we do IT for everybody, we do IT for all businesses between 20 and 100 people. Like that's great from a prospecting standpoint, but it kind of sucks from building differentiation and what your actual tech stack is and how it benefits the customer. So being more specific about who you're trying to serve and how you go about that. I think really does help to zero this in. And I don't think most MSPs really know who their ideal client is. So that's a great exercise to go down and figure out who your ICP is, so you can turn your sales team loose going after a small group of accounts that they know would be valuable. Instead of this broad blast to anybody who'll pick up the phone and talk to me. Um, you know, do some more account-based sales, account-based marketing and and go chase the folks who are are exactly who you want to do business with. Or develop an offering that allows you to get close enough and deep enough and spend time in your customer's business to learn about a bunch of different businesses. And learn how they operate. Because in order for me to be prescriptive for someone who's not in my ICP, um, and if I'm not verticalized, well, guess what, I have to get in and learn that business. I have to learn where the crown jewels are, I have to learn where revenue is really at risk. Or where the business is at risk if they lost whatever is the thing that rings the cash register non-stop. And that's why I love the the question in in all of these strategic conversations. Mr. Customer, just walk me through how your business makes money. Yep. And just step back. Such a great question, Laura, the, you know, an order comes in over here, somehow sprocket and cog spits out over here and gets shipped. But talk to me about the the 30 steps that happened in between and maybe we'll find that Windows XP box chilling in the corner that is still mission critical. Or the person that literally like writes a form in. Like puts it into a like a copy machine to import it to their inbox and then they forward it off to somebody else. That stuff exists everywhere. It does. It does. There West talks about all the time, the the the bank he worked at. They would get an email, they would print the email, they would sign the email, they would go rescan it and email it back to themselves. Yep. And you know. Yeah, and he's like, I had no. He says, I failed you. And and this is the answer, MSPs need to say, I failed you, I should have learned more about your work process to figure out how to get you sign and save all this problem and make it go away. Like these are not hard problems to solve, we have the tools, we have the technology. But if we're just forcing square peg, square hole down on all of our customers, we never get that far. Yep. All right, so maybe one one question because I think it kind of goes again into this uh fight me in the comments type type question. Should MSPs be looking to verticalize? And I know that that it obviously the the answer is it depends. But is there a certain circumstance you think where like it does make sense for certain MSPs to look at specialization? At my MSP, we had kind of three verticals that we were really well versed in. I don't think you have to be the dental only MSP. Non-profits, for example, is a really wide vertical, you can do a lot in a non-profit space. And still have businesses that don't really align with each other and are way different from each other. Quick caveat, funded non-profits, not fundraising. Non-profits, right? That's that's what would be my preference. But you know, and if you work with non-profits, you're going to you're probably going to want to specialize in understanding how to help them write grants. And we got very good at that and we would help with grant writing and it made us a ton of money over the years. But that ability to write grants led us into municipalities. Because municipalities want you to write um SOPs and or not SOPs uh uh RFPs and there wasn't a very long stretch from writing RFPs to writing uh uh grant from grant writing. So we wound up in just this weird little niche where we did non-profits, municipalities and uh and K12s. And they're not all really related, but we got good at all three of them and could speak their languages and could live in their businesses and and we did really well with it. But my what I where I was going with that is your business may just one day tell you what your vertical ought to be. When you look around and go, holy crap, I get along really well with all these municipalities. They keep recommending me to their buddy. And so I would say don't rush to verticalize. When you're early, it's still okay to say, hey, I just need enough business to to make money and to uh to to feed my family. To hire some help, to to do all these things, but be on the lookout for those signs that there is a kind of customer. Who you just get along with really, really, really well and um make sure it's one that you're reasonably profitable with. You know, municipalities were huge profit centers for us. They were great. The K12 were incredibly profitable for us because they had 300 computers and 40% of them, 50% of them were lab computers. That if anything was wrong with them, we hit F12 three times and re-image them and walked away. Yeah. You know, it just once you learn those tricks for your vertical, you'll be better. You'll be better off. So I love verticalization, but I don't love backing ourselves into such a tight corner. That 2020 comes along and all of a sudden your vertical is dry cleaners. And none of them are doing any business because nobody's leaving the house. And bed sheets aren't getting used at the hospital and table cloths aren't getting used at the restaurant. And they're all out of business and so are you. So just understand the risk of verticalization too. It sounds great when we're when we're hearing our vendors talk about how they can we can sell more of their product when we verticalize. It has risk. And just do your own little mini risk analysis and go, what's the thing that could break my vertical? And and put me in a really bad spot. If you're verticalized in municipalities, it was great. Nobody's putting them out of business. You know, if I'm if I'm verticalized in in weed dispensaries. Life's a little different. There are some things that could go wrong there. Um, so I just I I would look at my my verticals, the ones I've chosen really carefully. And make sure it's something I understand, can talk to and can make money at. Because at the end of the day, my it depends is always followed with. Um, as long as it's reasonably profitable. Yeah. Yeah. That's good caveat. Well, Alex, uh this has been awesome. Always love chatting with you. And uh uh again, similar to Luis, we agree on a lot. But every once in a while, there's certain things where there's enough tension. Where I feel like I'm going to learn something. So I've definitely taken some from today. It's good to pick her and argue about those things. Like yeah, I feel the same way, like these are all conversations that make us all a little bit better. If we just go look at uh where we can improve just a little bit. Yeah, yeah, my favorite expression around this is strong opinions loosely held. Right. I I you and I, I think we both recognize ourselves as very opinionated people. But I'm not stubborn about it. Like I'm I'm totally open and very interested in someone sort of challenging my assumptions. Especially if they are they're very sort of pervasive assumptions in the industry. And they tend to get repeated a lot. And every once in a while someone goes, are you sure? Like think about it this way. You're like, huh. Yeah, that person might be right. I love those types of discussions. I do too and and I think the the proof that we need more of these kind of discussions. You don't have to look any further than the last SLI report because we talk about the fact that half of MSPs are either in the in the negative or making no money. If an industry, half of the people in the industry are not making money. The average way we go to market in this industry sucks. And we've got to fix it. We've got to do better. These guys have too much at risk, MSP is too risky an industry, the margins are too slim. They don't make enough money to be in such a risky business that half of them don't make money in a given year. It's absurd. We have to find a better way to do it. We have to challenge the status quo a little bit. Right. I appreciate everything you're doing to raise the tide as it were. So thanks for being here, Alex. Thanks for hanging out.