ERP095 - The REAL MSP Market

I've gotten into this debate with a lot of people. And I think that full bundled system and the cake as Gary Pika used to do it. And we were part, my MSP was part of True method and we followed that. And I believe back then, that was right. I will go stand on any soapbox, any podium, any stage and say that in the next three years, very few businesses will consume an all-in package like that. Welcome to Evolved Radio, where we explore the evolution of business and technology. I'm your host, Todd Kane. This episode is brought to you by Evolved Management training courses, a whole series of courses built specifically for your MSP training needs. There's a project management for MSPs course, an MSP service manager boot camp, MSP security fundamentals, and an IT documentation done right course. Check them out for the full suite of courses at training.evolvedmgmt.com. Or look for a link in the show notes. Today on the podcast, I'm speaking with Colin Knox, CEO and co-founder of Gradient. Colin is an MSP channel veteran. He built and sold his MSP, created Passportal, which he then sold to Solar Winds. Now, Colin is back at it with Gradient. Colin and I get real on the composition of the MSP market. Not being what a lot of people seem to understand. How that influences the vendors and some of the marketers in the industry and how that affects a huge majority of the MSP market. We get on our soap boxes a little bit on this one and talk about some really important things in the industry. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Colin. Colin, welcome to the Evolved Radio podcast. Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely, great for you to join us. I really wanted to ask you about some data that you guys presented in a webinar a little while back. I found it really fascinating because in a lot of ways it validated what I sort of naturally understood about the MSP environment. But for whatever reason, it really blew my mind. Seeing it in the data on sort of what I had assumed or kind of understood about the industry. And it's a bit counterintuitive, I think. So the some of the stats I'll sort of breeze over here, not necessarily specifics, but just the broad sense of what I took away from this webinar. Was that 90% of MSPs in the industry are under a million dollars. And the majority of those are kind of, you know, one or up to five man shops. And that's a pretty like wild statistic to think about. Now granted, it's a gigantic industry, so there are certainly the bigger players that exist in the market. But I one of the there's a couple of angles that I wanted to take here and get your your sort of input on is what does that stat say about a lot of people that maybe suffer with this imposter syndrome of like am I doing enough with my business? I see all of these other sort of fast track high growth organizations that are cracking 5 million over 10 million. And they really struggle with their identity as a sub $1 million organization, not necessarily recognizing they are by far the majority of the industry. Any thoughts there? Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it's it's really where we were coming from when we wanted to be able to do some of this stuff, right? So obviously a lot of with what Gradient does as a product, didn't really tie to this. But people knew that we were working on stuff with data to be able to help the industry. And what really spurred it when I was off taking some time off after my last gig. Was one of those reports came out. Now I can't remember if it was from service leadership or, you know, Kaseya or Connectwise or whoever. And and this report came out talking about how the best in class are performing. And it was this just annual report that came out talking about, you know, best in class profitability. Best in class growth rates, best, you know, this is what the best in class are charging per user per month or or for anything. And I was reading it. And and I I always find those reports interesting, but it reminded me for some reason that time. Of when I was running my MSP and I was between 1 and 2 million in revenue. And I'm reading this report. And I just was so deflated. Yeah. And I was just sitting there. And I was like, wow, I run a shitty little company and I have so far to go. And wow, now I'm embarrassed to even tell anybody where I'm at as a business. I thought I was doing well. And stuff and and I think a lot of times those reports are put out there to inspire people. Or make people feel good about themselves. But I think it's actually been having the opposite effect for a lot. So we really wanted to dig in and after reading that. I I dug up some old research from from CompTIA. Um that they'd done in 2016 that said that 88% of the industry was was 10 employees and under. And I was like, wow, that's such a big thing. And then you dig further, further. They never went any further beyond that, right? Like 10 employees, you're sitting at million, maybe up to 1.3ish million in revenue. But I'm like, what if that 88% is up at that tier? Like, like what what is actually the segmentation of that? And so that's something that we wanted to be able to provide, we wanted to be able to to inform the industry. Make other MSPs feel recognized and normal. And understand how, you know, how this industry is broken down and even even as much if not more so. Help channel vendors actually understand what this industry is comprised of. You know, you and I had a conversation a while ago and we were talking about doing this podcast. That I was sitting in in an executive meeting at a very large channel vendor and an individual in product marketing was doing a presentation on a day in the life of an MSP and this persona project that they had gone through. And they started talking through all of these things. And I was sitting there and I was like, man, that was not a day in my life. Until I had, you know, $4 million operation, 25 staff. I was just steering the ship and doing stuff like that. And this organization has 20,000 plus. MSP partners that were using and reselling their products. And it just scared the shit out of me. And I asked them, where did you get this information? What informed this narrative that you wrote? And their response was, oh, I talked with some of our elite partners. You know. And and when you looked at that, those elite partners were in that 10 million plus category for for revenue. And and it terrified me for two things, one, that the vast majority of this market. Was going to be overlooked by this organization. And two, that that organization was going to miss out on a massive opportunity for themselves, right? That MSPs that would see the marketing coming out from this organization would say, not for me, okay, I don't fit there, right? Which is the only thing that was right about that narrative was the fact that the MSP owner sat down in the morning and had a cup of coffee, right? Like, probably way more cups of coffee. So, so yeah, so we wanted to be able to provide this. And and we knew that nobody was ever going to give us their data just for the sake of giving us data to look at. Um so we had to build a brand, we had to establish trust and we had to deliver a product that would give value to them before we could do this. And now we're getting to this point where, you know, we're getting really near to a thousand MSPs in our platform that's feeding this de-identified and aggregated data set. And, you know, what we're we're really starting to see and clue in that. You know, across all of those MSPs, the average revenue is just under a million dollars a year. But averages don't matter, it's what's the median, where's the bulk of this? And what we landed in is that that was at like 150,000 in revenue. And that's a lot of one person, maybe two person shops if they're, you know, pulling out somewhere 60, 75k. They've got a lifestyle business. But they want to do stuff, want to grow and so we're starting to see what these average and median revenues are, these profitabilities and what's contributing to that. And, you know, there's been a lot of experts in our space and some of them have done very well and and have really helped a lot of MSPs, but they give advice based off of their opinion or based off of their loan and sole perspective and and perception of the market. And so, you know, we're we're able now to start uncovering information around. How many services the average MSP is offering? How many services at different stages of their, you know, revenue growth and maturity growth are they offering? And what are they charging for those and what are they profiting off of those? And and what is that culmination of of different services and categories start to look like? But, you know, I think I think it's shocking to realize. That channel vendors often come into this space marketing to those 5, 10 million plus shops. And they do decent because the average contract value with them is is fairly substantial. But then they they hit this plateau several years in where they're not growing anymore and they don't understand why. And there's been MSPs trying to pull them down to the, you know, bulk of where where the the iceberg really carries its weight. And um they just don't understand it. So, yeah. There's there's so much coming into it, it's it's really interesting to see. And I'm excited to continue to watch how it evolves and and, you know, as we continue to get more and more MSPs involved with us to see how that dynamic changes and shifts. And and how some of these reports and intelligence that we're going to be able to create out of it helps influence and and usher that along. Yeah, and I think like the data and the the insight that you gain. Sort of in a way, anonymized, right? Like, uh obviously. But but it it's more raw and gives you a a deeper perspective on the industry than other sort of market research to date has done, right? So, you know. The peer groups do a lot of the benchmarking and and standards and things like that. Do that comparative profiles. And I think that that is a bit of a skewed perspective because you have to be at a set sort of a size and a maturity. Before those groups really make any sense at all. Like the the one two man shops are busy enough with the work that they have going on. That they don't really have the time to be spending in peer groups unfortunately. Yeah. And then the other is the uh industry surveys. And, you know, that's based on someone who self-selects for feedback. And may give a bit of a sort of an angle on the industry and the people that are willing to provide that information. So I guess the one piece I would maybe ask you in a maybe a point of pushback is. So the data that you're using is raw, it's more direct, it's it's a sort of a wider breadth of people that are using the tool. But does it maybe suffer from some of those similar biases of who is using the tool itself? Yeah, I think I think it would, right? I so at a certain point in in any product or category adoption over time. You know, you're going to have your early adopters and the people that can get the most value from something. And and we're either going to fall on one side or the other on that. You're going to have a lot of the smaller sized MSPs that are like, holy crap, I don't have enough time in the day to do half the stuff I need to do. This is something I can jump on right away, it's going to save me X number of hours a month. You know, maybe it's going to find me a few more grand in in revenue type of thing. I'm going to jump on that. Whereas the slower decision process of larger MSPs, they may have more to gain. But, you know, they're confident in how they do their billing for instance, right? They've got a team of people that do it. They don't believe they're missing it. Yeah, it could save money on costs and time and labor. But, you know, so we're we're going to see that skew over time until you hit and and that bias over time until we hit that kind of early majority. And and get some of the other larger MSPs coming in on and on board. You know, what I'd say for us though that that we have the benefit of is the raw nature to your point. A lot of the research out there is simply survey-based research, right? It's it's Q&A, there's nothing validated about it. It's whoever was willing to tell something or share something. And what they wanted to tell in some cases, right? Well, that's the thing, right? Yeah, I'm going to hide certain things, I'm going to do certain things. And and even with the peer groups, they're not pulling straight from source either. They have a standard that you and I both participated in them when we ran MSPs. Right, you have your standard format template of how you have to deposit all the information in here. And and it's you know, manual manual effort to fill it in and submit it and stuff. And even if everybody is honest and and, you know, does that with the right intent. You're still only being benchmarked against the other 10 MSPs in your group, maybe up to 100 or so MSPs in the broader peer group organization and stuff. And and you don't get that same spread and and understanding of how it goes. And so, you know, part of what we're looking to be able to provide is, you know, not just how our MSPs in this peer group performing, but any MSP. And then not even just how our MSPs that, you know, and how am I performing compared to other MSPs that use Connectwise or Dato or Kaseya or whatever, right? It doesn't matter what product you use or what platform you're on or what ecosystem you're in. You know, you should be able to get the full breadth of of understanding beyond that. Which is where we're trying. So right now there'll be some some natural bias. But, you know, I think what's what's unique about how we're doing it. Is we have the opportunity to see anomalies and dig in on that. And try to understand what is what's happening and and really spot early trends of things that that we can key into and clue into that. That can really make a difference for the MSPs. So. So I'd love to maybe uh speak to the 90% of the channel, sort of those sub 1 millions and, you know, just cracking 1 millions. Two things I think is like just a a bit of a frame here is yes, that is the majority of the market. But I would still say like there's a there's a stat from service leadership. That I continue to to quote a lot and hinge on. Is that 25% like a full quartile of the channel, like all MSPs are either break even or losing money. Yeah. And I think that that is still a valid point of feedback that I think is important to realize. Is yes, it's okay to run a lifestyle business. It's okay to have a sub $1 million business. Especially if you're able to live a life that doesn't cause you to have just like a train wreck of a personal life, your nerves are frayed, like it's it's a lot of work to scale a business, right? So if you're comfortable with the business that you have, don't feel bad about that. But make sure that it's profitable, right? Like there's a lot of things that can go wrong here. It's not about the technology, it's about the business. So you don't need to scale it, but you absolutely need to build a business that is is producing profit and able to give you a future in a life. So that's the first thing that I would say just on that. Any sort of advice or feedback that you would give to that that 90% around this data or just your travels in the industry? Yeah. I mean, your point is valid. I mean, there's there is a lot of lifestyle type businesses in the industry. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think, you know, does it have to to be in report as profitable? Not necessarily, but you need to know that it can be. Yep. Right. So that's, you know. If you're if you're dropping $20,000 on air quotes vacations for you and the family. That, you know, you're saying was a business trip or a team meeting or strategic offsite or whatever. That's fine. But make sure you're tagging that stuff so that you do understand what are you what are you giving to yourself as perks and benefits and everything else. And, you know, if you needed to to pull that away and and do whatever, what what would that profit be really normalizing what the what the performance of the business is? But yeah, if you're if you're paying yourself. Your money and you're you're going from, you know, paycheck to paycheck by business speak, right? Like invoice to to accounts payable every single time. Then yeah, that's a stressing life that you don't want to have. And and I think at times like that, there's an opportunity for you to dig in and look at at some of the reports and understand. Why is that, you know, are you burning time and effort and and stuff on services that aren't delivering for your business? Are you, you know, not charging enough? And and I think that's really where it's going to come down to. Is one of the biggest revelations or a moments when when a lot of MSPs come into our system. Is we're able to break down their their straight revenue and then gross profit on every service that they resell or offer their customers. And very few MSPs have ever looked at that. Right. They always look at what's my top line revenue, what's my, you know, bottom line profit across the whole org. You know, what's what's my revenue and profit per contract like per customer type of thing. But they're not digging into what's contributing to that on on a regular basis, right? I mean, I just. Actually, I saw posts today on Reddit on the subreddit. Talking about how they just realized they're underwater on Microsoft licensing now because they just read their NCE invoice from their CSP. And they're like, I'm being charged more per seat than I am for for what I'm charging my customers now. You know, how long does that go on for? Yeah. How many other services does that happen for? You know, where you maybe in your mind thought that I I don't even know. But you're not staying on top of of reconciling all of that stuff. Or maybe you're only making a few bucks profit on a regular basis on certain services. You should know that because then you still have the whole time admin and support burden behind that. That is where you're supposed to be making your money, right? So I think I think that's the big thing. Are you offering too many services that you can't focus and and see success and adoption across all of them? And then the big thing comes down to what you're charging. I mean. Gary Pika last week at rate of boom says, hey, you should be charging 400 or 450 bucks a month. With a full complete cyber security pack bundled with all of your, you know, managed services and everything else in there. You have Chris Weiser in the industry that are saying 350 to 400 or 500 bucks a month and and on and on. And, you know, I think there's merit to what they're saying there. I'm not sure that that survives across any geography necessarily. I think there's certain local economies that can support, you know, prices that high. But not every single one. I can't buy a house or a property in California or New York for what I can in Nevada for instance, right? Like it's just. There's there's such a disparity in value and economy supports that and and everything else. So, you know, understanding and being able to see and maybe report on. What are other MSPs charging for certain services in a specific region? And how far under that are you, right? And sometimes all it takes is. Hey, guess what, I can bump by 50 bucks a user a month perhaps, doesn't have to be 200 and you can go in with the confidence that when you go to bump that at contract renewal. Or even before that, if you've got a longer contract with your clients. That even if they price shop that, it's going to hit on average about the same price. So are they going to go through the big displacement change, you know, get to know you period, everything else when your service is being delivered just fine. So really, really clueing into that, but being informed about it. Yeah. I think that's a huge piece. So I would echo the idea that you're kind of digging into that regardless of your size. Knowing your finances is not optional. Right. And and beyond just sort of top line, bottom line, really understanding in detail. I think is one of the absolute first things that people should do if they're trying to think more like a business owner rather than just sort of a person with a tech business. Yeah. Like get sophistication around finances and really understand them. Because it'll pay you huge dividends as you grow or at least save you from some disaster along the way, right? I was just going to say. Like they they do it on the service delivery side, right? They they dig into. Where they're burning time. Right. Hopefully. What are the what are the most common service tickets? Let's create articles, let's do client training. Oh, we're patching this piece of software, line of business application all the time. Do we have to upgrade it? Do we need to do whatever? We're running out of disk space. You're proactive in everything about mitigating the amount of time you spend delivering the service. So you could be more profitable there. But you're not digging in at the same granularity with what's contributing to your financial position. Yeah. And so the other part that you hit on that this one I really struggle with. Because one part of me it really bothers me with the numbers that people throw out at conferences of what you should be charging. Because I think this is where this imposter syndrome really shows up for people. Is they go to this conference, they're they're say they're cracking a million, they're 1.2, 1.5, starting to really scale their business. And they they start spending some time in the industry, going to conferences and things like that. And they go to go they hear some of the speakers saying like, you should charge 450 or 350. And they they kind of reflect on they're like, what the hell, like I'm charging 100 bucks. Like a couple of contracts I managed to get 125. How does that work? I can't quad a contract with a client. Like they're going to they're leaving for sure. Yeah. So and part of that I think is geography. Like I tend to believe and I've seen this is that like I've I've dealt with some clients in consulting capacity where they're in very small markets and they can charge quite a bit. And and part of that comes to two things is the sophistication of the clients that you're dealing with, right? If you really want to restrict the type of clients that you deal with, you can absolutely charge more. Because they see the value in what you're providing, they're not just shopping on price. Yeah. But like that's one a restriction of your sales funnel and two requires some level of sales sophistication. And it and I think like what maybe sort of differentiates the people in those sub million dollar businesses is that they're great technical people and they run a decent business. I would say in a lot of cases, they struggle as sales people. And and that sales and marketing piece just doesn't come naturally to them. And I see that that come up time and time again. So, like I believe in this idea of this is the thing that you should strive for, you should never be afraid to go up market. Is one of my favorite expressions, right? So sure, if you can charge 450 for a full stack, full security package with VoIP, everything rolled in. That's amazing. That's a great business to be able to have. But that is by no means the majority of the industry, right? No. No. And and so I'm so happy we're talking about this now. I mean, I could this could be the longest podcast in history if we kept going. But so a few things. One. I I am in complete belief that that geography plays a massive role in what you can charge. It just is. You you dig into local economies. What what feeds those economies, right? So. I mean, there's there's we're we're both in Canada. You look in Sasquatch one. You know, farming provides an agriculture provides most of the economy there, right? But it's not at a massive profit rate, right? It's it's quantity of just sheer how much volume they're pushing and stuff. Well, I can't charge egg companies the same for IT as I can in say Alberta for oil and gas. Or in BC for, you know, import export and stuff like that. Like it's it's all so so variable. But once you do understand what the local what drives the local economy and that should be pretty easy to understand when you're there. Just focusing on the businesses that support that and understanding what would be of highest value to them and and being able to attach your outcomes. And and what they actually get out of it. The other thing though is that these these big ticket number. Thing that everybody's preaching about out there of 350, 500, 400 bucks a month. That's all on a fully bundled offering. Now, I've gotten into this debate with a lot of people. And I think that full bundled system and the cake as Gary Pika used to do it and we were part, my MSP was part of True method. And we followed that. And I believe back then, that was right. I will go stand on any soapbox, any podium, any stage and say that in the next three years, very few businesses will consume an all-in package like that. Because. As the demographic shift, as the world goes more and more consumption model. You are going to be seeing more and more of these business buyers and decision makers saying, no, I don't buy mass packs of anything in my life. Everything is tailor fit to me. I can see what all of my options are, I can select, I want this, I want that. Not these things, this, this, this. And they personalize and and deliver something that and and choose something. That is best fit for them. And that is all that they need. Now, they could be up sold over time to consume and and take on other things. But they want that flexibility. They do not and will not anymore pay for something that they don't believe that they're using or need or see value in. And so yeah, you got to really sell on value, but man. And especially if if a recession does come in here and people are looking to save bucks. They're not looking to negotiate you down from your 350 to 325 or 300 a month. They want to know what the F I'm getting for that, line by line, itemized. And you give me a description of it all and I will tell you what I don't need anymore. Right. And so the companies that are willing to go down to that granularity, I believe will be the ones that succeed, survive and and grow the fastest. And this isn't just me talking about it. Cisco has invested billions of dollars shifting their entire business to a consumption model. Right. You have Microsoft has done the same thing. IBM is doing the same thing. HPE is doing the same thing. Take a clue, grab the hint and run with that. Right. It it is not going to continue down that path. And and I think as we continue to go down that path, you're going to see that that that will become the dinosaur MSP. The MSP 3.0 is back to full consumption, variability, no lock in, flexibility and what you consume, what you don't. And being able to upsell them in the future on things that they believe they have value on. This is like the most age old debate in the industry. Is the good better best model, like the the the bronze silver gold or the full package. I I tend to go sort of down the middle of this, the way I describe it is. Build a package that 80% of your clients get 80% of the value from. And the rest of it is fries with that, right? So. The 20% are things that are variable solutions that get applied in circumstances. This this company has compliance needs, so they get the full suite of security products. But a 10-person accounting firm probably doesn't need that. It'd be nice if they did. But they they don't necessarily ascribe to the same value. Not everyone has VoIP. Right. As a service that they consume from you directly. Would be nice. But it's not something that would be default into every offering. So I kind of like this this mix and match model of as much value as you can pack into a single offering, but having some of that variability built into it, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think even look at Netflix, right, they they started a certain level and then you can upgrade to higher things if you want the 4K. If you want to be able to share with more people. And stuff like that, but you start at a base tier, you have that base level. And that's that's just kind of the way we consume everything in life. Now and it's it's just going to continue to get more and more like that. So, yeah. I think I think those one line item invoice MSPs are are going to to get hurt and hit by that over the next few years. Bold prediction. We'll check in you with you in three years, Colin. Let's do it. Let's check in in three years. So the other side of this, uh, you know, we we hit on sort of the vendors, maybe missing the mark on who their clients are. I wonder if part of this is intentional. Right. That they're not particularly interested in the sub $1 million orgs because they're not sort of an ideal customer. Or they won't necessarily have the budget to spend on the solutions that they're trying to offer. Or are, you know, do you have an opinion is that there may be marketing and missing a sort of a major audience? Or are they just sort of targeting the group that they think is going to be more profitable? I think any business wants to go and sell deals that move the needle faster. Right. Right. Doesn't matter what you're doing. You want to you want a bigger deal size. Because that that helps you hit your target quicker that that retires more quota. Everything like that. But but the big driver, especially for the large vendors in the space, they're very driven by their unit economics. Right. So you have things like your average annual contract value. Your average, you know, lifetime value of those customers and stuff. But a big one in there is your CAC. Your cost to acquire a customer. Now, when they're going after the bigger fish, I've got a higher, you know, I've got a longer sales process. So I'm paying more more time of sales and marketing, I've got more marketing touches, I've got other little spiffs and bonuses I provide. I've got a higher and larger commission check. That I'm writing when those bigger deals are closed. And what they don't recognize and what what a lot of that haven't had the luxury to segment down in. Is that how does that CAC vary with a different sized customer? Because not, you know, my my cost to acquire an MSP that's sub 1 million is not going to be the same cost to acquire, you know, a 5 or $10 million MSP. And I mean, we're we're proving that out like crazy right now at Gradient as we're bringing a ton of these guys on. At a very low cost to acquire customers. Because of how they're willing to consume and decide and make a decision and and buy and everything else. Compared to what it is that a lot of large organizations. So I think if the data can be presented to these organizations in a way that helps them see the magnitude of the opportunity for them to go downstream. Then they can use that information to tailor different marketing campaigns to that. Being willing to invest, you know, a smaller cost to acquire customers and and, you know. Sample those markets to to support what that could be. Groups like Dato did that amazingly well and that's what what shot them up really high early. Was, hey, we can we can just offer all of these quick easy things. Because we understand how a smaller business makes a decision and what's important to them. And what they need to try. Hey, here's NFR. Here, have your first appliance free. Use it, try it, whatever else. Because it costs nothing and if they cancel and they ship it back, right? Like big big deal. But I think that's that's where it really starts to come into play. Is is them understanding that they can acquire a different segment of customer at a much lower price and and just to segment out their unit economics and see it. I mean, you look at some of the fastest growth. Vendors in our space that have done just that, you know, Ninja. They came in, they went to the bottom end of the market to start, right? Let's grab those smaller MSPs. Let's do that. Synchro's done the same thing. Like it just it it seems to be that trend that the people that go in at the small size first. They get the weight and critical mass of their business to then go after the bigger ones. Logic now is a crazy case study around that. Right. Until Solar Winds acquired them and kind of brought them together with enable and stuff. But man. You looked at the bulk of their partners were all small, but they were a SAS solution. That cost them next to nothing to acquire all those partners to use their product. Right. You're already paying for your hosting, you're already doing whatever. Just let them come in and try and buy and grow and and do that stuff. And and then by that point, they had a mass business. And then guess what? What does marketing ever say? Marketing says X number of MSPs. On the platform. We do it too, right? 850 MSPs use our we don't say, you know. 700 uh $200,000 MSPs and 100 $2 million. No, it it it doesn't matter. A $10 million MSP looks this and they see 850 or 10,000 MSPs use it. I just assume. Hey, those are people like me. Because I call myself an MSP. Right. It it doesn't matter at that point. So, you know. The more more critical mass you can get with the easier, cheaper sale. That provides dividends off and and continues to grow market share. The other thing is. These smaller MSPs are growing as well. Yeah. Right. They are growing. And and we're seeing that growth happen and we're seeing how they're they're bringing on new customers. And we're seeing how they're they're selling more to their existing customers. And stuff. Why would you not want to get on the ground floor with those people? Right. There's there's support burden is low. Right. They're not calling you. Because 50 of their clients are down and out right now or they can't do this or can't. It's it's here and there. And most of them are self-service because they're techy, techy, techy. They're looking through your knowledge base, they're talking in the forums, they're asking their peers for help and support. Super cheap to support these guys. Right. I mean, we have two support people at Gradient supporting over 800 partners. Right. And yeah, based on our data, a bunch of those are most of those are sub million. Right. Yeah. I'm totally fine with that. That is an easy easy cog for me to to push out. So. I think this to me, I think strikes to a bit of the cultural mismatch that I see in the industry. And I've I've personally warned several vendors around this idea where some of the smaller groups. Especially in forums like the MSP Reddit in particular. They're a noisy bunch. And, you know. They they I think a lot of not a lot, some of the vendors sort of recoil from this. And they find it very irritating. And they're like, these are not the people that we're interested in dealing with. Like they almost sort of look down on the group being so vocal. When a lot of their feedback is quite legitimate. And if they actually just listened. Right. Like term contracts. You know, they sales process, like the one that you noted. Whether or not they post pricing. Like there's so many of those things if like, just put out a solution, have some pricing on your web page. And let the person self-service to whether or not they're going to sign up for a demo and see this, right? Like nine times out of 10, these people will self-select on whether or not they'll buy the product. And you don't have to put anything into it. So why sort of like lock everything behind this this this sales and Bizdev framework of, you know, we won't tell you anything about our product unless I booked a book a demo call with you, right? Like sure, if someone wants it, great, but like don't hide behind that. Because you like it really turns off this large majority of the industry and I think being closer to that feedback. And and being close to the community, I think one, gives you a better sense of who you're actually appealing to. And and positions the marketing, like another company, Gradient has done this very well. And I think like one of the leaders in the market in far as I'm concerned is Huntress. They've been. Oh yeah. They're they're beloved by the community largely because of this. They just focus on training and they focus on on uh being close to the community. And and getting and collecting that feedback and being visible. I think that's a huge marketing effort that's underserved by a lot of the lot of the larger vendors. You know, let's do easy math, right? Let's just say there's 100 MSPs. Right. 88 of them you're ignoring. And you have 12 of them that are maybe singing your praises. Chances are not. Right, you probably have maybe eight of those that are singing your praises. And four of them that are actually the tractors. But I would rather have 88 voices. All speaking my praises any day the week, they're all going to be talking about you. Regardless, yeah. Is what it is. So I can either have them saying really good things and be a positive conversation. Or I can have them saying bad things. And yeah, I think a lot of a lot of vendors shy away from. This subreddit and forums and Facebook groups and stuff like that because they think if I ignore it, it'll go away or they're just terrified of how overwhelming it could be, right? Everybody's scared that oh, if I respond then 30 more are going to jump on me and start flaming me and doing whatever. When if you look at a lot of the responses, as long as you're honest and and you give a reasonable response. You don't need to have the answer. A lot of people will be like, hey, thanks for that. Thanks for being honest about it. Thanks for taking a look. Thanks for whatever, right? Instead of just more and more people piling on and I the amount of times I've seen even other other MSPs in those peer peer forums. And stuff start to jump on the people that are are talking crap, right? Like, hey, hold on. At least they showed up. At least they're handling this. They're talking about it and everything else. Just back off, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's it's that. It's such a way to go. And it's it's such a large massive market. I mean, you talk, there was $420 billion. In revenue that flew through managed service providers, MSPs last year. Huge market. That's a huge, huge group, right? You have all this stuff that yeah, maybe 20% are delivering 50 to 60% of that in reality. But look at the rest of what you're missing out on of of opportunity there. It's it's crazy, it's a sneaky big market that way. Yeah, I think at least like experiment with this is maybe what I would say. If any vendors are listening and you don't feel like this is a a segment of the market that you're you're appealing to. Create a bit of a skunk works group and just sort of see what you can dig up on this. I think it would I think it would produce probably better results than most people would would imagine in short order. Because I think you're right. Like the sales process to reach the $10 million MSPs. Like it's a good target. There's a good reason as to why they're targeting towards them. But I I think there's a huge amount of effort in spend and time where just like nominal efforts and trying to be more visible with community, being more transparent with pricing. A lot of those things. I think would would really help. Uh the expand them into those those sort of sub $1 million market, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Well, this has been really fascinating. I appreciate your time. Anything else that we wanted to hit on before we wrap up here? Anything we haven't touched on? No, I think this this was a this was a good good conversation. Right. I think, you know, as as MSPs. Anybody listening. There's there's lots of you out there, don't don't be deflated if you're sub million. Sub half a million and feel like you're you're nobody in this industry. You got a voice all the same as any other sized MSP and there's a whole lot that are the exact same position and place that you are. So, yeah. Just keep pushing. And tune in your business. Awesome. Appreciate your time, Colin. Rock on. Thanks. Part of the MSP Radio Network.