ERP032 - MSP Coaching w/ Richard Tubb

Welcome to Evolved Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. This week, the podcast is again focused on the managed service provider space and joining me today is Richard Tub, who is one of the best known experts in the global IT managed service provider community. His track record speaks for itself and he's launched and sold his own MSP before creating a leading media and consultancy practice. Richard is also the author of the IT Business owner's Survival Guide, available on Amazon and other book retailers. And today we're going to be chatting about why you may need coaching as a business owner, areas of the businesses that people tend to struggle with most. And how technology is impacting both IT companies as well as businesses at large. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast from. Also, be sure to check out the webpage evolvedmgmt.com/podcast for show notes, links to my guests and to check out previous episodes. Now, let's get started. Joining me today is Richard Tub, IT Business Growth expert. Welcome to the podcast, Richard. Thank you for having me, Todd. So this is something that you've been doing for quite a while. I suppose the best place to start is is really just start with your origin story and so can you tell us a bit about your background, the MSP that you owned and how you transitioned into the business that you're currently operating? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm I'm a massive IT geek, Todd, like a lot of MSP owners nowadays, I started off as a technician. My background was one of working in the corporate IT arena, so I worked for companies like Ernst & Young and the NHS, the National Health Service here in the UK. Um, and I think it was about 2001, although I'm an age now where it all the timeline start to get a little bit blurred here. But about 2001, I struck out on my own and I was your sort of typical, um, you know, computer guy crawling under desks, fixing ethernet cables and and doing stuff for for small businesses. Did that for a couple of years. And then really the turning point for me was I read a book that hopefully your listeners, your community will be very familiar with. If they're not, I would hugely encourage them to check it out, a book called The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Uh, it's a book that talks about systemizing your business and um, uh, automation. Uh, that was a life-changing book for me and I really went from being, you know, the IT guy, the one man band to building a business. Um, and that business grew fairly rapidly, and really got into the MSP, um, uh, the managed service idea and philosophy. Spent a lot of time in the US, um, with some really smart people who sort of gave freely of their time and experience to me, which I'm very grateful for. And um, grew the business to the point where I sold it at the end of 2011. Um, and I'd like to say, I really would like to say that I had a plan for what I was going to do next. But you know me a little bit now, Todd, so I'd be lying if that if I said that were the case. But what basically happened was during the time when I ran the MSP business, um, I used to write blogs and I used to stand up and talk in front of my peers at community groups. Just about the um, the the journey of being an IT business owner, you know, the mistakes that I made, the things that went well, what was good, what was bad. Um, and so what happened when I sold the IT business, sold the MSP business. Um, a few of my competitors in the UK picked up the phone to me and said, hey, now that you're no longer a competitor, would you come in and share some of the secret source with us? And I was like, okay. I was only going to sit around otherwise and, you know, just sort of twiddle my thumbs. Um, yeah, so I started doing that work. And after about six months, um, uh, realized that I really enjoyed helping other people, you know, develop their leadership skills. Um, develop systems for their business and um, ultimately helping them avoid all the many, many mistakes that I made when I was an MSP owner. Um, and that was what, seven years ago now and um, still doing it to this day. Still doing the blogging, I do a lot of public speaking, um, to conferences and user groups about running an MSP business and um, yeah, life treats me very well and I get a big kick out of doing it. That's it. So you you didn't, did you have a sense like you said there was no plan? But obviously you must have thought about what you would do after you sold. Did you plan, did you think that maybe you would retire or were you just waiting for inspiration to strike? Or what was what was the thought when you left? So. So I'll I'll be absolutely up front and honest with you and this is no word of a lie, um, when I sold the business, my plan was to sit around in my pants and eat pizza watching TV all day. Um, and people think I'm joking. That's the retirement plan. People think that, yeah, and I I thought no longer, you know, than about six months or whatever. I thought, you know, I'll sit around and I'll do that. Because I'll be honest, running an MSP is a stressful job. Um, you know, and I I just thought, um, before I move onto the next chapter of my life, I'm going to ease off a little bit. But actually, you know, I think it was three months in. Um, I was going out to lunch with people, people were buying me lunch and saying, hey, can I pick your brains and do some. I was really enjoying it. And then I realized fairly quickly, you know, I I could do this again and um, it's probably going to be healthier than me sitting around in my pants eating pizza all day. And um, yeah, so it so it developed from there, but genuinely I had um, no conscious thought about uh, MSP coaching. If we were to give it a tagline or a label. That being my next career, it just sort of um, organically developed that. Yeah. And the reason I ask is I I I I think a lot of the MSP owners as they, you know, they get into their their 10th year or so. Uh, some some even longer than that, they start to wonder like what would retirement look like. Uh, and there's a lot of talk in the industry about merger and acquisition. But part of the resistance to that is if I'm not doing this, then what would I be doing? So I think that that that conscious thought of, you know, what's the next stage of my life is is something that people may consider, yeah. Yeah, it's it's a fascinating one. I was speaking to my friend here in the UK, a chat called Mark Matthews, who runs um, an MSP called ATG IT. And and Mark is a a veteran of the IT industry. And has run it for many, many years, his MSP hugely successful. And um, Mark won't mind me saying this. He has developed his business to the point where, you know, I'm not going to say an MSP business is ever finished. But he is actually superfluous to requirements. Um, certainly his team would say that, but he's got a fantastic leadership team. He's got the business systemized, he's got it automated, he's got the best tools in place. And Mark and I were were sitting and chatting the other day, you know, he's in a good place and he's found new challenges um, outside the business to move on with. But he speaks to so many other MSP owners who have done the E-Myth thing. They've done um, you know, the leadership thing, they've read all the personal development books. So you never finished as a leader, you never finished as a business owner, but you know when there's a stage when actually the business doesn't need you that much. Um, you know, you're just uh, you're providing vision, you're providing high-level leadership. And there's a lot of people out there that struggle with that. Because they've got no plan to with what to do next. So I'm really lucky, I fell into it. You know, we've already established I didn't have have a plan to do that. But um, I I just wonder how many other MSP owners really need um, a bigger why or a justification for for how they're living their life once they've achieved a certain level of success with their MSP. It's an interesting one. Yeah, and I think that's a really perfect transition point in the conversation to to chat about um, maybe the stages of the the how and the why. If someone might seek a business coach. Uh, what I see is there tends to be almost this mental resistance around uh, feeling that it's it's a sign of weakness in some way. That they need to reach out for help. There's there's sometimes uh, a little bit of hubris in some, sometimes it's just pride or just a lack of of uh, of perspective around, well, if I can't figure this out on my own, does that mean that I'm failing somehow if I need to ask for help, uh, is that is that a bad thing? Um, and and it's what you touched on there is like, even someone who has a well-run business and is operating at a high level, there's there's still some value that they can find in seeking help from the outside. If it's simply perspective, if it's best practices, it's just uh, you know, a sounding board, someone to bounce something off of. Uh, maybe we can chat a bit about the the the early stages and maybe the later stages of what is coaching look like, why would someone seek out a business coach? Uh, if as an MSP owner, um, if this is their business, then shouldn't they be able to figure it out is is maybe the the the question that we could answer. Sure. And and it's a really good question and um, I I I absolutely agree with what you say. You know, a lot of the business owners that I see who need the most, um, who would benefit the most from uh, coaching or working with a mentor. Are the ones that are most resistant to it because they do see it as a sign of weakness. However, um, you know, I I alluded to the fact earlier that I've spent, I've been really fortunate to spend some time with some of the most successful people. Not just in the MSP industry, but in the in the wider IT industry, especially in the US. And every single person I've come across who has achieved any um, degree of success, however you define success. And success is different for everybody. But whoever I've spoken to has achieved a degree of success, has had mentors, has actively had coaches. So if these people at the top of their game are um, working with coaches, um, then why wouldn't anybody work with a coach? I mean, it's always been my philosophy to look at the most successful people around there, look at the people I want to emulate and and and pick the uh, the best things that they do, the best habits, the best tactics that they use and use them myself. Um, you know, it's a imitation, the greatest form of flattery and and all that type of thing. Um, so why anybody would try to do it on their own as opposed to using a business coach, a consultant or a mentor, um, sort of escapes me a little bit and I do think it just boils down to ego alone to be perfectly blunt about it, Todd. Yeah, no. I I think you're right, you know, you look at any other uh, pursuit in life outside of business, almost anyone has a coach. Teams have coaches, individual athletes have coaches. And they put an extreme value on the the the incremental shifts that that can bring uh, in their performance. Uh, and and even in the high levels of business, I think that's probably something that maybe doesn't get exposed as much. Um, but I I guarantee that as you say, people that perform well in business or running multi-million dollar businesses, they absolutely have had mentorship and they probably still have mentorship. Uh, even from people that are maybe not as successful as them in some aspect. Uh, but they that's that's almost not the point. It's more the perspective, it's more about the accountability. There's a lot of aspects that that that are are important to coaching independent of just the knowledge uh, that you may be able to acquire as well. Yeah, absolutely. And and I'll just share a a story, something that springs to mind um, on on that very topic. One of my great business heroes is the author David Allen, who wrote the book GTD, Getting Things Done. Um, I was uh, and I should say that's like E-Myth, that's another life-changing book for me. And if any of your community listeners, um, have not read GTD, drop what you're doing and go out and grab it. It's, you know, a fantastic book about productivity. Anyway, to the point, you know, I was fortunate enough to spend some time having dinner with David Allen recently. And he was sharing with me that he still does one-on-one coaching with um, specific clients. And without using any names, he he actually said that um, one of his clients, long-term clients, um, was one of the uh, the heads of the World Bank. Um, every month this guy would spend time with him, um, and every month this guy would bounce ideas and learn things and move forward with with things. Now, the World Bank, big organization. You know, and the uh, somebody who's near the head of the World Bank, that's crazy. You just think they've got it all sorted. And yet they've still got a mentor, they've still got a coach, um, albeit, you know, a world-renowned one. And so I think you're absolutely right right in what you say, I don't know anybody who achieves any degree of success in business, in politics, in um, sport, in anything. Who doesn't seek out and actively soak up the advice of um, of a mentor or a coach. Yeah, yeah. It's so true. Any walk of life, whatever you're trying to achieve, there's something you can learn from somebody, right? Absolutely. So what do you see as uh, the areas that that are of focus, maybe we can split this out into uh, sort of the two categories of more the emerging market, kind of those uh, five to 10 person uh, shops uh, or the smaller groups. And then the groups that are maybe 20 plus uh, staff, do you um, we'll start with the the lower end. What do you what do you find are the aspects that those groups tend to need a lot or that they really find value in when they're in conversations with you? So I think there's some similarities between the the two groups. I'll talk about specific differences that I see, but the the one thing that's the same across the board, um, is the need for the business owner to actually extract themselves from the day-to-day running of the business. Uh, I'll give you an example, you know, I was working with one MSP, uh, four members of staff. Um, the uh, you know, a growing business, uh, the business owner realized that they needed to extract themselves from the business because they were doing too much tech stuff. Um, and so I helped them down that road, I helped them systemize and um, automate the business. I helped them get stuff out of their head, um, and um, pass and delegate responsibility to others in the team. Um, and they've reached that stage and the the business is growing. But likewise, I've seen people who are in say a 20-person uh, business. And they are still the roadblock within their business, they're still the bottleneck within their business because they've got rid of the technical stuff, but say um, and I'm thinking of one specific MSP I spoke to, who is a multi-million pound MSP, really successful. But all the billing, all the invoicing within the business went through the business owner. So if the business owner, I mean, you and I were uh, we can see each other and we're nodding. Because anybody listening to this will immediately jump to the conclusion, well, what if that guy or girl's not available to do the invoicing? What happens to the invoicing? It's absolutely crazy. Um, and yet the business owner hasn't come to the realization. Uh, that they really need to delegate that, they need to systemize it, they need to hand it off to someone else. How much more successful could their business be if they actually got rid of that responsibility? If they delegated it, if they empowered somebody within their business to do that, and the flip side of the coin is, how terrifying is it that, you know, if that person gets knocked over by a bus or or whatever tomorrow. We we like to think these things don't happen, but they do. Um, where is the business going to go without that one person to do the billing? How much chaos is that going to cause for them to to go and do that? So I think there's there's a there's a lot of similarities between the small businesses and the big businesses of the challenges they face. Um, sorry, go ahead. Todd, yeah. I think uh, delegation is is a really key one. It's it's one that I tend to talk a lot about. Um, one of the areas I I tend to try to focus on a lot is is the management framework and the management skills. Um, the interesting part is you say there's similarities between the 10 and the 20 and it's absolutely true. The way I often describe this to people is once you start to hit 10 is you need to develop a management layer underneath you. It's that first growth pain. And then every time you double your company, you're basically starting over on that process. So without delegation, you're never going to scale your company. And I think the part that people miss in that is they they feel, okay, well, this is I need to remove myself from the business so I can focus on other things. Um, the other half that is maybe not as as visible to people is that's how you develop your staff and keep them actively engaged by giving them more and more responsibility and handing things off to them through that delegation process. People will remain loyal and that's how you get higher retention, more engagement from the staff. So it's it's sort of that dual pronged approach of why delegation and a management framework is so critical to the growth of your business. It's not just for you, it's for everybody else as well. Absolutely, could not agree with that more. And and one of the um, I'm going to categorize it as a leadership skill, um, uh, that I actually try and impart upon um, the smaller MSPs that I work with. Is that they need to not only lead by example, so they, you know, need to be seen um, uh, by their their staff, by the members of their team to be doing the right things. But to actually empower the people that that they're working with, um, to actually grow as individuals themselves. Because otherwise you're going to hit all sorts of um, you're basically going to outgrow the people within the business. Whereas if you're building a culture of personal development, of self-improvement, of delegation, of systemization, um, if you're building that into the culture. These people can grow with you within the business and they in turn can teach the new people who are coming in to do things in the right way. Otherwise you just hit the same issue again and again and again. And I see way too many MSPs, um, desperately trying to recruit people into their business. Uh, trying to um, uh, create resources for, you know, for a challenge that they really should have solved ages and ages ago. Instead of just, you know, making these random hires and trying to bring somebody through the door super quick, which rarely works to be honest. Yeah, absolutely. Well, what are some other aspects? We kind of touched on the management and a bit of the process pieces. Uh, any of the the technical aspects or the sales aspects? Um, you know, you you like to focus a lot on business growth as well, obviously that would have a a revenue addition component to it. Yeah. So I think for the for the smaller businesses, obviously they reach a certain point and uh, most businesses have grown through word of mouth. You know, sales and marketing is is something that most small businesses, it's like, oh, that that stuff just happens. Uh, you know, we're lucky if we uh, if we get some new leads through the door, we don't actively go seeking them. But of course, you can only grow to a certain level by that word of mouth and if you want to grow any faster. If you want to grow any bigger, you need to be taking the steps, that doing the activities, um, consistently to bring that in. So one of the first challenges is marketing, okay, how do we go about marketing? Um, so I uh, basically try to impart on people, you know, the mistakes that I made when I was trying to do marketing to uh, for my business to begin with. Uh, and some of the, you know, the really old-fashioned things that still just work. So business networking, for instance, is a huge one for small businesses, get out there as the business owner, meet people. People do business with people they know, like and trust. That was true 20 years ago, it was true 10 years ago when I was running an MSP. And I'm pretty sure it's going to be true in another 10, 20 years time. Yeah, that's an important one as well. Like not not to uh, uh, to hide too much behind the keyboard, the technical people, they tend to focus a lot on SEO and Facebook ads and things like that. And there's still that that uh, the the leg work of required in building relationships and developing that network and I think it's a really important point for people to to remember. Especially the technically minded folks, they they tend to default to those things that they're a little more comfortable with, right? Exactly, yeah. And it's about moving outside that comfort zone. And and and to that point, one of the big challenges that I see is perhaps once the um, the marketing is. And you've got a steady stream of new leads coming through, um, the business owner who often is a techie. Often not really comfortable with um, going into sales situations and stuff. Um, then uh, typically tries to make um, or almost often makes the mistake of abdicating responsibility for sales and what I mean by that is they will bring a sales person in and believe it's going to be like a magic wand that's waved and their sales problems go away. Whereas you and I and anybody who's ever who's listening to this, who's ever hired a sales person is knows those and this is no disrespect to sales people, but those people can be more trouble than they're worth. You know, um, if you can do the sales for yourself within the business for as long as you're able to do, perhaps forever. You know, if if you can do that, um, it's going to be a lot easier than trying to recruit sales people and bring them into the team. That is a huge effort and isn't something you can just say, right, we're going to get a sales person in and all our sales woes are going to go. That person needs managing, they need a process, they need, yeah. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I I I'm a big fan of principle led sales for as long as possible as as you touched on as well. Um, and again, not to disparage sales people, they're incredibly important and I don't think they people understand how hard that job is. Uh, so not to disrespect, but I do have a a tagline around around sales people is that the sales people are often best at selling themselves. Uh, so uh, just be be cautious. I I know many, many people that go through this process and trying to hire their first sales person and it is churn and burn for the first little while, they just they they really struggle to find that person that can uh, especially in MSP. Selling service-based contract, value-based contracts is actually way more difficult than selling boxes. Uh, so the transition for any type of sales person to to get keen to that is is difficult to begin with. Um. The other part is uh, I think if you're going to hire a sales person, assume that you're going to be partnered with them. They're going to shadow you for six months before they're really useful. And I'm talking about every meeting you go to, that person comes along with you and they're learning as they go. If you assume that you're going to hire a sales person and a month later they're hitting the street and bringing in deals, it's not going to be a good time, right? Could agree more and and and and you know, again, this feels like we're beating up sales people here. And how, you know, why not they can they can uh, put up with it, can't they, Todd? But typically, you know, six months in, they'll have a really powerful excuse for why the sales are not coming in. And how they just need another three months to do it. So uh, abdicating responsibility for sales is is not a good idea in my experience. Yeah, yeah. And as you said, we're it sounds a little like we're being a little rough on them. I think more more importantly, we're exposing the truth that more people will find in the business owners. That this is not, as you say, it's not a magic wand, you need to be prepared for hard work to enable them and get them set up for success. And that's not um, that like in management, it's not a discredit to the the individual, it's maybe a discredit to the uh, lack of training and structure. That that it's the process that causes the issue, not the person in a lot of cases, right? Yeah, and I'll just add, you know, a sort of a final point on on that that sales conversation there. I was definitely in that category of, okay, the sales needs doing, but I'm really not comfortable with doing it. And um, rather than abdicate responsibility and try and find a sales person, you know, wave that that magic wand. Um, I um, did the uncomfortable thing and put myself through sales training. Um, and you know, happy to share it, I went through a program called Sandler sales training, which um, lots of people um, are very familiar with. If you're not, you know, the idea behind Sandler is um, it's a consultancy based selling. It's it's not your traditional image of a hard-nosed salesman who's trying to find the clothes, which most of us in the IT industry are not comfortable with. Um, what it's basically doing is teaching you how to listen more than you talk. Which as you can imagine for somebody like me, Todd, who likes to talk a lot, that was a huge challenge to learn in the first instance. Um, but to then to ask the right questions, um, to build up trust and rapport with people. And anyway, to cut a long story short, what I found was, you know, that resistance I had to go into sales meetings because I was trying to make the sale. Once I'd done um, some sales training, Sandler in my instance. It wasn't a sales meeting I was going to anymore, it was like an opportunity to help somebody. It was a local business person who I could go in, sit down, listen to what they've got to say and offer assistance and help. And fundamentally, I think the vast majority of us in the MSP industry get into it because we want to help people. So if you can learn how to turn those sales meetings from being, you know, almost a confrontational, a traditional sales meeting into, how can I help this person? Then suddenly sales doesn't become a chore, it becomes something you actually really look forward to. Yeah, no. That's it's really well put. Um, I had a a previous guest on uh, Rob Malik and he has a book called selling more by selling less. And similar idea that, you know, you you're basically asking a bunch of questions to help them convince themselves that they need your help. Rather than you just uh, you know, the the traditional knock on on IT sales is it's the speeds and feeds, I'm going to tell you why this technology is amazing and here's everything I can do. And it kind of overwhelms people and makes them feel out of their element and if you just talk about their business problems and paint a picture of the future for them. The conversation changes dramatically. So let's talk a bit about more the um, uh, the the technology side of things as well. Since uh, MSPs uh, they they grow into the business, but they definitely start with the technology as you said. Um. What are your thoughts on, you know, how technology and its pervasiveness through all types of business is creating um, either disorder or opportunity for the MSP uh, business owners? And uh, the the technology stack uh, how they're delivering in those different verticals. I I think it's a really interesting broad topic and I've obviously I've seen some changes in, you know, 20 years ago. I was working in corporate IT and I brought a lot of the ideas from corporate IT. Which was um, standardization, scalability, I brought all those into the MSP space. Um, and implemented those and then, you know, spent 10 years in the MSP space. Uh, putting those ideas in and then everything changes. Because the standardization piece for instance, all of a sudden people are going out there's um, uh, bring your own device, BYOD. Um, you know, anybody nowadays goes out and just pretty much buys whatever hardware they want. So that idea of standardization, I'm not saying it's gone out the window because it's still a good idea. Um, in slightly bigger environments, but for for most small businesses that MSPs are dealing with locally. The owners just go and buy their own kit nowadays. Um, and so the challenges for MSPs has changed from being that standardization and scalability to how do we cope with all these various different pieces of hardware, how do we manage it? And of course, the common denominator in almost all of that is the people. So, okay, it goes from managing devices, managing um, uh, pieces of kit that that are out there. Although that's still a part of that. It goes to how do we manage the users, how do we manage the end users expectations? Um. We've got the cloud there now, so it, you know, uh, thankfully, uh, things have matured enough to really, I'm going to go out on the limb here and say it doesn't matter which device we're using. You know, the majority of the the actual um, well, the data is in the cloud and for a lot of cases, the functionality um, is in the cloud as well. Um. And so it comes down to how can we help the end users understand how to use that functionality, how to use that data more effectively. So perhaps I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, you know, looking into the future. But I I think longer term, the MSP's role will not be so much um, doing perhaps what you and I have done back in the day, Todd, which is managing devices, looking after infrastructure. It's going to be more about helping people understand the power of the technology, how the data can be used, how to streamline um, workflows, um, processes within business for efficiency. Um, this phrase digital transformation, that's thrown out there, you know, it's again, it's at the big corporate arena. But for small MSPs, it's really important. I used to talk about um, I wanted my MSP to be the business that my clients wanted their business to be. Obviously, my clients didn't have MSP businesses, but they wanted businesses that provided good customer service. They wanted to be efficient, they wanted to be a sales machine, they wanted to have um, good onboarding for new clients, all of those things. We provided that with our MSP business. And the technology actually didn't matter so much, it was to do with the business processes, the culture of the business. Um, and and just how we dealt with the day-to-day interactions. And so some of our clients would approach us and say, interesting, you've always got the right answers for us when we phone up with any type of question. How do you do that? Um, and so we would talk to them in our world, it would be PSA tools, professional service automation for MSPs. But in their world, the equivalent would be CRM tools or it would be business process tools. And so we'd say, hey, this is how we do it within our business, um, we don't carry all this information around in our head, you know, when you phone us up, much as we'd like to pretend that we we are geniuses and know all of this. What we're actually doing is tapping on, you know, the shared brain that we've got in front of us, in our world, it's a PSA, in your world, it's a CRM. Let's talk to you about how you can do that within your business. And you know, we're doing that sort of 10, 10, 15 years ago. And I truly believe that's going to be the um, the future of that business then, not not crawling under tables as I started out. And uh, plugging ethernet cables in or or before that it was token ring. Yeah, it it's absolutely true. I I think um, this is more the extension of the, you know, as I continue to point to the evolution of the industry, right? Uh, uh. Originally people were very fearful of the cloud, if you remember this maybe five, seven years ago. Uh, people were saying, you know, well, we can't sell these big projects and giant exchange servers. This is where we make half our money and there was a lot of fear around this. And my view was always, well, that stuff's actually pretty difficult to manage. So the hidden costs of maintenance around that stuff is is actually a big burden to the business. So if we're going to spin up an exchange server that we just add users to in the cloud and we never have to worry about it being broken because someone else is responsible for repairing it, cool. But that implies that you're doing a value-based contract and you're still delivering value to the client. And I think what we're touching on here is that sort of the next shift in the industry, first it was away from the VAR, the reseller, the break fix mentality to the MSP. Fixed fee, um, supporting the client based on a value-based contract. And now the next step is, okay, generally the technology works, hopefully we've standardized your stack and the delivery of the technology enough that it's not problematic. Now we need to go hunting for that that technical uh, advantages that we can eek out in your business. What are the what are your peers and your competitors doing uh, that give them those those 5% mover advantages here and there, right? Yeah, absolutely. I I'll give a a really um, what I think is a strong example just as a wake-up call to any MSPs listening to this and and are not quite sure of it. Um, you know, uh, there's uh, one of the clients, one of the MSPs that I've worked with is a a Google Apps, um, I was going to say tradition, we call them a reseller, but a Google Apps MSP. Um, all of the kit that that's out there is um, Google boxes, uh, Google Chromebooks, Google Cloud, this stuff doesn't need a lot of maintenance because Google do it all. And I'm a Chromebook user, a massive fan of Chromebooks myself. It's essentially a brick though, if you don't uh, you know, if you lose the thing or if you haven't got the data in the cloud, it's just a brick. Um, despite that, um, if I look across all of the MSPs that I've worked with over the past few years, this Google Apps reseller has actually got the the highest revenue per user on a monthly basis. Um, than any others. Now, how can that be? Because theoretically, they do the least amount of work, the devices don't need managing, the Google Cloud hardly needs managing. And yet they're charging more than MSPs who do, dare I say, traditional infrastructure, looking after Windows servers and desktops. How can that be? And the answer is, they provide more value. They let the business owners that they work with uh, do the things that they really want to get on with doing. Because all of their time is freed up to do essentially business consultancy as opposed to um, you know, doing defragging and uh, patching and things like that. So. You know, if that doesn't convince you, um, you know, I'm not sure what what will. But I I truly believe that, you know, the actual device that you're using and really doesn't matter and I'm a Chromebook user, so that should tell you everything you need to know. Right. Yeah. No, it's a really important point that uh, you know, it's sort of the the damned if you do, damned if you don't situation that a lot of IT service providers face. Where uh, I have to call you all the time, what are you doing for me? And then you fix everything and they're like, well, I never call you, what am I paying you for, right? Absolutely. It's like, what are we doing here? So what you're what you're alluding to is is exactly that, that there's you still have to provide a level of value. So how are you doing that, is it through consulting services, um, is it business value? A lot of people are looking at the the virtual CIO practice as as uh an element to do this. Um, and I think it gets away less from that commoditization. Anyone can fix a computer. There's nothing special about that. If you do it in a way that people feel valued and they feel it's a high high touch customer service approach, that's different. And if you're providing some business insight that allows them to do business slightly differently or with less pain. That's the value that you provide. Uh, and I think a lot of people miss the fact that because we're technology people, um, you're you're an expert in things that you don't feel are really that complicated. And this this is sort of this hidden hidden piece to the industry that um, when you're doing tech support. These little quick, easy fixes that people go, oh, that's amazing, you're such a wizard, blah, blah, blah. Gives you that ego boost. It's because they don't know. And it seems simple to you, but then you get into the technology space, a simple example that I saw this week. Is um, pixeling uh, for SEO or for email delivery that you can get alerts when people open an email. That you know, you can follow people around on the internet for retargeting. And most people in technology know about those things, but anyone outside of technology doesn't know about those things. So that's the value that you can provide is, hey, did you know you can use technology to do things like this? Right, did you know a CRM could help you manage your clients more coherently and have all this information spread across the rest of the team? That's the advantage that you can give to people because it's not common knowledge, despite the fact that you feel that it's common knowledge simply because you're a technical person, right? Absolutely, and and to bring this round to the start of our conversation, which is, you know, why should MSP owners um, require coaching or work with coaches? Quite often you know the answer, we know what needs to be done to run our business and to grow it. But when you've got your sleeve rolled up and you're in the middle of it, it's quite difficult. And so, you know, I a lot of the business owners that I work with, the MSP owners tell me that they work with me. Not because they have revelations every five minutes, uh, you know, the stuff that I'm teaching them. But because I allow them to have another voice in the room, um, they can bounce ideas off me. They can have a sanity check. You know, it's really easy to be the the sole business owner and and to know what you need to do. But just that that voice, that imposter syndrome, that doubt inside to me saying, yeah. So when you speak to somebody who you respect and who has been there, done that and isn't emotionally involved in the situation, can then say to you, yeah, you should go ahead and do this. Or this person's behavior is not the right way forward or, do you really want to be working with that person? Listen to your gut feeling. Or whatever it might be. So, um, you know, for for lots of MSP owners who are looking to provide those type of services to become what we used to call the trusted advisor to their clients. Um, to go back to the top of our conversation, if anybody's wondering why they should have an MSP coach or to work with somebody like that, it's exactly the same answer for you. You know, you don't need to be learning um, everything that you need to know about to run a business. But it is really handy to have somebody there who can do a sanity check, who can hold a mirror up and who can just help you to to find the answers that you perhaps already know. Yeah, I think that's huge. So much of it is about perspective, uh, more than anything, right? And having that external perspective, the expression I've heard that I like is you're inside the bottle. So you can't can't read the label. Right, you need somebody else to read the label on the outside. And it's true, I mean, even in our business, as you get tunnel vision and then you have a conversation with someone who's a bit more objective. And they they just ask a couple of questions and you're like, you know, you're right. You're absolutely right, this all makes clear sense to me. Even though you like you like you said, you knew the answer, but having that validation and that perspective is incredibly uh, uh, cathartic in how you make the decisions going forward, right? Exactly. And there's a degree of that just if anybody's listening to this and thinking, you know, it's two MSP coaches shilling for their own services. Trust me, look, the way, you know, we give this information away for free, um, there's only so many people that you can you can actually work with as a consultant or coach. You can gain some of these abilities, um, that we're just talked about, gain some of these insights by talking to your peers more often. Um, you can join communities, there are groups out there like HTG peer groups. Um, Connectwise have got user groups, Autotask have got user groups. There's Taylor business groups, there's other communities out there where you can um, heck. Your local user group, everybody's got one just down the road and if you don't have, start one and watch how many other MSPs come to join you to talk about um, being in the same boat as you. You can bounce these ideas off other people, you can get the sanity check. The difference between um, dealing with um, peers and dealing with mentors, so I'm talking about somebody who would give their time away for free to help you and dealing with coaches. Somebody you would pay for that advice is, you don't have to feel embarrassed about picking the phone up to a coach anytime you want, you are not imposing upon them. They are paid to be at the other end of a phone, to be at the other end of an email or an instant message for you. Whereas whilst you can get the same sort of benefits from working with peers or working with uh, a mentor who gives freely of their time. You can't pick up the phone at any given time that you want because you might be imposing upon that other person. So for anybody who's never worked with a business consultant, a coach, I would say just go out and speak to your peers, if you want to move on to the next level, go and join a community group or a peer group. And if you by that point, you should realize actually there's a lot of value in having somebody the other end of a phone that I can call pretty much anytime, day or night. Just get the stuff out of your head, get it onto their plate and get a sanity check behind it. Yeah, 100% true. And I I think what you touched on the beginning is is the you can get the knowledge that you need. Uh, where I think the coach makes a difference in in the way that I tend to position myself is it's a lot more about the execution. Uh, than it is the knowledge. And I see this is particularly prevalent in the MSP space where people go into this knowledge collection phase. And two years later, they haven't really done anything, they just continue to absorb as much as they can. Uh, and they they struggle with that execution. And in fact, there was a blog post that I had up a while ago that someone contacted me afterwards and said, wow, man. Like there's a lot of info in here that's that's kind of proprietary. Like you like you maybe shouldn't give all of this away. And I said, I don't really care. You know, because the the knowledge is easy. The execution is the hard part. Right, so just because you know something, doesn't mean you're going to be capable of executing on it and that's where I think the accountability of a coach to keep you focused, keep the entrepreneurs away from those shiny objects and just knuckle down and do things to make incremental change week by week. That's how you make progress. Oh, could not agree more. And you know, I uh, this surprises some people, it really shouldn't, but I've got a coach now, I've got more than one coach for different aspects of my business and and personal life. Um, I always have had, I've also got mentors. I've also got peers of which I came um, you amongst, Todd, you know, there's something on my mind. Uh, I might drop you an email and say, hey, what do you think of this, how do you do this or what's your experience with it? Um, but I've also got coaches that I can say, this is really playing on my mind, you know, what what do you think about it? So it never goes away. And as I said, if the, you know, the head of the World Bank can still have a a business coach to bounce ideas off. I'm pretty sure that suggests that the rest of us mere mortals should probably have one as well. That's right, yeah. Well, this has been fascinating, Richard. I could I could spend probably a couple of hours going through more of this. We can we can chat offline a little more. Uh, but in interest of everyone's time and attention, uh, we'll look to wrap it up. If you uh, have any parting words of wisdom, any asks of the audience, feel free. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'd love talking to MSP owners, um, I'm very active on social media. If anybody wants to reach out to me, they can find me at www.tubblog.co.uk, um, plenty of uh, my thoughts on the MSP industry. And um, all the mistakes that I've made, the ones we've talked about, you can find all them up there as well. You can find me on Twitter. Connect with me on LinkedIn, but send me a message and say why you want to connect. Don't send me one of those boiler plate messages. Don't say, hey, I want to connect on LinkedIn. Well, what use is that? Anyway, I'm still in coaching mode here, aren't I, Todd? Talking, trying to teach people about networking. But yeah, just all joking aside, get in touch and continue the conversation. I I just love talking to MSP owners. Okay, great. Any uh, media appearances, uh, obviously in if people are in the UK and want to come see you speak, any any spots they could see you? Absolutely. There's there's a few coming up, rather than list them, uh, again, you can you can find a list of which conferences I'm speaking at on my um, blog. And just um, about to start doing a few more speaking appearances talking about um, my book, which is the IT Business owner's Survival Guide. So um, yeah, that one's going to be out there. And if that's the only promo or shill that I throw into this interview, then I think we've done quite well here. Awesome. Okay. Appreciate your time, Richard, as always and uh, all the best. Thanks very much, Todd. It's been a blast.