The Balance Between IT Customization and Standardization - EP62

Justin Esgar (00:07):

I screwed up because the other day I fell asleep with TikTok open on my phone and so I fell asleep at some point, mid scroll, and so whatever the next TikTok was that was on my thing. I go to bed with headphones on. I have these really awesome headphones I go to sleep with. They're called bed phones. They're flat and they's just a wire that runs around the back and the Bluetooth lasts for 12 hours so you can get a good full night's sleep and they don't bother you at all. Okay? And so I fell asleep with this. I don't know what it was, but yeah, I fell asleep with a TikTok playing in my head all night long, and now one, my entire TikTok for you is messed up because TikTok believes that I wanted to spend eight hours watching whatever BS it was feeding me. Yeah, so now my entire TikTok feed is messed up as well as I know there's something rattling around in my head, some dumb TikTok trend that I will be on. I guarantee I'll be on stage at ACEs next week and be like, let's all do the hustle or something stupid, stupid, because it's going to wait to see that because it's going to be in my head and it's going to come out like manger candidate.

Eric Anthony (01:46):

And see, this is why we're banning TikTok.

Justin Esgar (01:49):

This is not why we're banning TikTok. We're banning TikTok because politicians don't understand what freedom of speeches bending ear and ear and ear.

Eric Anthony (02:02):

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Justin Esgar (02:57):

Somebody posted Sales is not chess. One of my favorite insights comes from a book called Chess for Dummies, which teaches the grandmas that they usually don't need to think more than two or three steps ahead. The temptation is for immediate players to plan out too much of the game in advance. They imagine steps 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and even further, the game then takes a turn different from what they envisioned and they start making wrong moves instead of adapting, they stick to their initial plan playing an imaginary game in their minds. You will run hundred maybe thousands of sales meetings throughout your career. Your prospect will probably only have a few choices when they choose their new provider. Make sure you aren't talking past meetings into your new one. Oh, sorry. Make sure you aren't taking past meetings into your new one. Don't imagine where the sales meeting might go be present at the one you are having now, TLDR. If you find yourself blindsided by your prospect, it's because they're having a different sales meeting than the one you are in. Michelle Espinoza, that is an amazing post. I have no comments because I think you're dead right, Michelle?

(04:13):

The joke side of that is that my wife's name is Michelle. The amount of times I've said I think you're dead right. Michelle is absolutely once four seconds ago when I just said it to Michelle Espinoza and every sales meeting is different. You cannot go into a sales meeting. You can have, and we talked about this a little bit an episode or two ago, you can go in with your plan of attack in terms of, or not a plan of the way you want to host my way of doing three sales meetings or whatever. You can go with that, but every meeting is going to be different, and so you can try to formulate and get them to fit into the rules of your game, but you have to be listening to everything that the person's saying because every client can be different. This is a big problem that I have in general with everyone trying to standardize on everything. You know what? I'm going into an episode. Here we go. Alright, buckle up butter, fix my sweatshirt.

Eric Anthony (05:03):

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Justin Esgar (05:33):

Here's my problem. Everyone wants to standardize everything and the fact of the matter is, unless you're only selling one product to a bunch of clients who are all the exact same, you can't standardize it. Everyone wants to standardize onboarding or offboarding or how are we going to do this or sales, just like what Michelle said from the group, you can standardize certain procedures. You cannot standardize all of them because no two clients are the same point. In fact, yes, we can standardize by saying we're putting them into email, but which email distribution groups are they going to go into automatically? They're different or maybe they don't have distribution groups at all. There's always these slight differences and I think too many of us believe that standardization is a very rigid thing and it has to be like it's a hundred percent standardization or nothing, and I'm like,

Eric Anthony (06:35):

It's

Justin Esgar (06:35):

Neither those, it's like a 5% standardization. I don't know, but it's my Peter Griffin that really grounds my gears.

Eric Anthony (06:46):

But there's a place where this came from, right?

Justin Esgar (06:50):

Yeah. I had an argument with my team yesterday.

Eric Anthony (06:53):

No, no, that's not what I mean. I don't mean your psychotic rant. What I mean is as this industry has evolved, we've moved from consultants to selling IT services, outsourced IT, help desk project work, whatever you want to call it. And now we've gotten into the place where that stuff is commoditized and that stuff you can standardize the processes on a lot. What you can't standardize on is the solution for the client. That's where people get themselves in trouble. And now I think this is creating a bifurcation in the industry. You're having the people who are going to chase after commoditization driven by standardization because that's the only way they can improve their profits. But then you're going to have people going the other direction in terms of customization so that they get the higher profit margins, but off of fewer clients. See, with commoditization, you have to sell more at lower profit margins with consulting, and that's creating custom solutions, less clients, higher profit margin.

Justin Esgar (08:15):

Talking about commoditization, I'm trying to find where somebody, this article was in Columbia Magazine, how Quincy offers tech support for Boomers Co-founded by Ryan Green, I'm assuming this is the class of 2021 business. The company guides older adults through ever changing digital world. Now, I've said this on the pod before. One of the greatest ads I ever heard was a product called Bushel, which is now jammed now way back in the day because when it was called Bushel, and the ad was read by Jeff Gammut on an episode of Mac World podcast that I was on, and he said, take care of your parents the right way remotely with bushel. And that has stuck in my mind for 10 years. Anyway, this dude, Ryan Green, 21 BUS basically has launched tech support for the older generation. Two paid tiers of service, $4 and 99 cents per month. Pay as you go, which caps the cost of support sessions at $11 or a $19 99 cents per month all inclusive. He's offering tech support for $20 a month to your grandmother. You want to talk about a race at the bottom? I have older clients. I have a couple of individual older clients that are still in our books. There's not been a single time any one of them has ever called us and it's taking less than four hours to get them to click the orange, the blue o in their doc to get Outlook launch. Okay, I'm being a little sarcastic, but you know me just, I don't know what I think about this particular situation because he commoditized it to the N degree here.

Eric Anthony (10:33):

Yes and no because remember at the beginning of this you talked about standardization only works if you have a very specific client and they all look the same. He's done that,

Justin Esgar (10:49):

But at the same time, no, because my comment was if you're selling one product to one type of client, you can repeat in my head. I meant are you selling email backup services for Microsoft 365 customers? And that's it, right? When as soon as you add the human aspect of it, if you're dealing with multiple grandparents, yes, they all were. There's originals, but they're at very different levels of the spectrum of knowledge. They're at different levels of what they're doing. Some are Facebookers, some still think MySpace is a thing. Some people, I mean, my mother's on TikTok, don't ask me what she's doing on TikTok, I have no idea. I see how you're trying to play me against myself, but I'm calling your BLO dude.

Eric Anthony (11:44):

But in my opinion, he is only selling one product. He's selling help desk

Justin Esgar (11:49):

To old people.

Eric Anthony (11:51):

Yes. So one product,

Justin Esgar (11:57):

I'm going to his website, oh, I can't even copy and paste from columbia.edu. And

Eric Anthony (12:02):

Here's the thing, it's because of what he's offering and because of who he's offering it to, probably he doesn't get a lot of calls per client. Now there's going to be that one client who uses up all of his dime. Okay? Yeah, a hundred percent. But I think if he's done it right, he's probably proved out the math and made sure that it works. I mean, I don't know if the price is right. Okay.

Justin Esgar (12:36):

I think that's the gripe I have is that I think the price is way too low because even in New York you got the two guys that are fighting over pizza. The person who gets to 65 cents per slice loses.

Eric Anthony (12:52):

Yeah. But I would also,

Justin Esgar (12:53):

If you eat at either of those places, you lose.

Eric Anthony (12:57):

I would also bet though he sells a lot more of the 4 99 than the 1999 and at the 4 99, he's actually charging them for time. He's just limiting it at $11 per incident.

Justin Esgar (13:10):

Correct. So four 90, I'm on his website now, 4 99 speak with a live person immediately. $11 copay per session. OnDemand technicians seven days a week, some defense suite cancel anytime his unlimited plan now it's now it's even less 1899 a month plus you have unlimited on-demand tech request, your favorite technician valid for first time subscribers. And then he has this new plan for 35 99 a session, which I guess gets you, which is a one-off, I guess it's not a month guaranteed resolution on your money back, no contract. I mean, he's making it stupid simple to do. I'm also wondering where his staff is. I don't want to rip into this guy. This isn't the point. The point is not

Eric Anthony (14:00):

This guy.

Justin Esgar (14:01):

The point is, the point here is the commoditization, and we've talked about this so much on this show, it kind of pisses me off a little bit because see, this is what happens when we record late. My phones go off. If you commoditize our product, and I mean as in the audience who's listening, if you commoditize our product, none of us will win. You think you're going to be smarter than everyone else by being like, I'm going to sell unlimited IT services for $99 a month to your entire staff. You're going to go out of business and you're going to hurt the rest of the industry. And a lot of people probably don't care about hurting the rest of the, but let's talk about how you're going to hurt yourself. Because unless you are the sole IT person in all of Bumble, Montana, and I'm only saying that because I don't know anything about Montana, so I apologize if you're from Montana, there's only so much you can do. I think it's funny because literally I was on a call yesterday with somebody, I don't want to talk about who, but this particular person, and they're in a relatively major metropolitan area and they're new to the game.

(15:36):

They just started and they don't have any clients yet and they're kind of running out of money a little bit. And they were like, I don't know how to get clients. I don't know what to price my stuff at. I'm getting some people in the door, but I think I'm priced too high. Or maybe I'm priced too low. And I'm like, just ask the other people in the area. We have a friendship amongst them. And keep in mind, apple people are different than we have the A CN community. We have MAC admins, we have a bunch of things. I was like, just ask them. The person was afraid to, and I was like, okay, well here's the going rate as far I know it or work your way up. But he understood the idea behind not commoditizing the product he wants to be able to work with, but the community itself was like, we'll help you. We'll do whatever. I gave him a free one-on-one session yesterday to go through all of his gripes was starting his business.

(16:31):

I forgot where I was going with that story. That's fine, dude. It's another filler episode. Dear. All things MSP, Eric and I would like to take this moment to apologize for the fact that we didn't plan in advance for today's episode. The fact of the matter is I had a client who needed me at the normal time we record, so we bumped it back. And in doing so, apparently I have messed up the space time continuum and therefore neither Eric nor myself have any idea what's going on that plus the day we're recording this, I'm leaving in two days to go host a conference for a week. So my brain is elsewhere, but I love you all and thanks for listening and all the fish.

Eric Anthony (17:06):

Well, and the other thing that I don't know if you caught Justin, but about, I don't know, 45 seconds a minute ago, my power went out.

Justin Esgar (17:17):

I'm just talking. I didn't even notice.

Eric Anthony (17:21):

Well, because on a laptop that obviously has a battery and for some reason the lights didn't flicker. That's the part that I don't get.

Justin Esgar (17:31):

We are really going for that good sponsorship money right now.

Eric Anthony (17:37):

It's entertaining if nothing else. But anyway, to get back to the topic, because

Justin Esgar (17:42):

I think have a topic

Eric Anthony (17:43):

Which you brought up, yes, we made a topic out of that article, out of this article because there's a different story than just the commoditization piece there, right? Yeah. And we talk about this a lot. We talk about the diversity of business models in this industry because a lot of people really don't like residential. And basically that's what that is. That's residential. Although he's even further narrowing down the niche, which is a good thing. And it just goes to show that if the numbers are right, if the numbers work for him, there is nothing wrong with that business model. And it doesn't hurt the average MSP who's serving businesses because it's different. It's a service that is needed. We all know those people that service is good for. And so is there a lot of room for that? No. So it's not going to be a mass business like the MSP serving small business because there's so many small businesses out there that there's hardly enough MSPs to handle it all. But with residential, if that's what you want to do and you can do it well and you can make it work for you, more power to you

Justin Esgar (19:09):

And I talked about this before. I have a couple of friends in LA who do only residential. I have one friend in particular, this guy Jeremy, who going back to the standardization, part of it is he doesn't standardize the way he works with clients. Well, sorry, he doesn't standardize the things that the clients are asking. He standardizes his procedures around how he works with the clients. So what I mean by that is this particular gentleman, no phone calls. You can only text or email and you have to be okay with playing in his sandbox. He makes the rules around his business. And if you can play in that sandbox, great, he'll work with you. And if you can't, he'll move you to somebody else. And he's totally fine. And he's got a pretty good business and he is living large out in la. He lives down the street from the, this is funny, why don't have to go see him?

(20:04):

I Google mapped his house so I can get the right place. And up the street from him is, it's marked as the Totto house, which is the house that Dominic Totto has the furious lives in. It's like a real house in la. It's like down the street, but that's how it works. And for residential, for what he does, I think it plays well, right? He knows his particular types of clients. Keep in mind it's la so there's high net worth individuals who will work on his time versus I'm in New York City and if you don't get it fixed in four hours for somebody, they're just going to cancel your contract, sue you, and hire someone else. I don't get to make the rules. That's New York City rules. Maybe it's a little different since Covid, but it works for some people. A hundred percent. And I think possibly the way, excuse me, it works for my friend Jeremy, is the way it probably works for this Quincy guy or Quincy company. His name is Ryan, but the company is called Quincy.

Eric Anthony (21:11):

Yeah, it is just that he's figured out how to scale it up. That's the difference.

Justin Esgar (21:15):

Exactly. There's another company that's out there, and I don't want to mention these guys by name at all because I think they're a little bit of, a lot of people in my industry or on the Apple side don't particularly like this particular company, so I don't want to mention anything shocking. Well, no, this one company everyone has kind of gone against as far as I know, but they kind of did the same thing. They commoditized outsourced IT support for small businesses, and they threw up a number and they threw up a product and went there. Now, I did lose a customer to particular this other MSP, and I heard through the grapevine with three months they left because they're a little bit more showy than they are. Dewey.

Eric Anthony (22:10):

Yeah, they've sparked some outrage.

Justin Esgar (22:12):

Wait, you know who I'm talking about?

Eric Anthony (22:15):

No, but I'm guessing.

Justin Esgar (22:20):

It's funny how it's for those who don't know behind the scenes, you guys know that Eric's in a completely different state than I am. We're recording this on stream yard because we're in different places. And so telepathically, I am telling Eric exactly who I'm talking about,

Eric Anthony (22:35):

Or you could just put it in the chat

Justin Esgar (22:37):

Or I can text you while we're on air. That's true. So there are good and there are bad. I think that's what it comes down to. I think there are rules you can follow. There are rules you can't follow. And I think it also depends on who your niche is for us. See, I have my do not disturb on, so I can't see who you were typing, but that's exactly what I'm talking about. See, you guys think we're bullshit, but I'm telling you we're on the same page. There's levels here. All of this comes back to let's just bring this all the way back to the very beginning because Michelle's sales is not chess. You know what? Neither is anything else we do.

(23:27):

That's what it comes down to, even in our own industry. So I'll tell you anecdote. You remember five episodes ago I was complaining that it was day 147 that I was moving this data from the sonology, and it turns out that Sonology Drivey software does not move that are longer than 2048 characters because theology has not yet moved to the 64 bit world. Thanks. It took us three weeks. We finally found a piece of software that will merge this stuff and I told the client, Hey, I'm merging this stuff. We're good to go. Here's my plan. We're ready to do this. Let's get this going. And he's like, yeah, let's do it. Let's move it. Let's merge this stuff. And I hit go and within six hours he goes, stop. People are having a hard time trying to figure out what's old data and what's new data.

(24:14):

And I was like, what? So the entire plan just went right out the window and guess what? We had to start all over again. So you can't plan for that. That's why we're in business. I do make this comment a lot. I do say this, I go, I don't understand how any of us have a job because computers are math. Computers are code. Code is math. Math is math from incredible two. Math is math one plus one equals two, but one day one plus one doesn't equal two. And that's why the server just stopped working. Thanks, Microsoft.

Eric Anthony (24:52):

Okay. I don't know how I follow that up. I mean, yes, I think the analogy to chess is very accurate and it not working for business models because yes, you can set up processes, but things change all the time. And so you can't be thinking that many moves ahead because the plan's going to go off the rails, things that you have no control over, and so therefore it doesn't do you that much. Good to think that many moves ahead because people just,

Justin Esgar (25:30):

Yeah. The other thing about that also is, and I had some members of my team who used to do this, is that they would try to plan for all of the anomalies and they would, before anything got done, they would write their SOP and they would try to go through it and try to be like, what could possibly go wrong or what are all these things? And I was like, you're not getting anything done yet. You haven't done any gets move it because they

Eric Anthony (25:55):

Have a word for that

Justin Esgar (25:56):

Procrastination. It's actually

Eric Anthony (25:57):

Two words.

Justin Esgar (25:59):

It's

Eric Anthony (25:59):

Analysis by paralysis or paralysis by analysis. Sorry,

Justin Esgar (26:04):

First off, that's three words. I

Eric Anthony (26:06):

Know because it's really supposed to be analysis paralysis and I totally messed it up.

Justin Esgar (26:11):

That's the name of this episode. Analysis Paralysis. Yeah. It took me a while. We finally started to break people a bit. I was like, you don't know that it's going to break. You may actually have a plan that works and well, what if it does break? Okay, well then you deal with it in the moment. That's what we do. We are fixers in the moment. This is another reason why I don't like anyone who writes, we do proactive services. Everything we do is reactive, but I think we've talked about that to death. I don't want to get into this one again,

Eric Anthony (26:44):

We have and we disagree, and that's another episode.

Justin Esgar (26:48):

If you want to find out what happens next, follow us at facebook.com/group/all things msp. If you want to throw some shade at us on this particular episode, go to youtube.com/at all things MSP subscribe, hit the bell and then leave some nasty comments below. Eric and I will respond to all of them. Yes, we will in the best manner. We know how, I'm sorry guys. I'm sorry everyone, especially the people of Montana. I guess the only thing left to say is, bye. What the fuck was that?

Eric Anthony (27:25):

Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow us on Facebook, but better yet, go ahead and join the Facebook group. You can also follow us on Instagram if that's your thing, and make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel at all Things MSP to catch us in all of our video glory. And last, but certainly not least, if LinkedIn is your thing, you can follow us there as well. And a special thank you to our premier sponsors Super Ops Move Bot goes into Easy DMAC and comtech, and we also want to thank our vendor sponsors. The All Things MSP podcast is a biz POW LLC production.