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[00:02:29] I'm a big fan of your channel, and I'm sure you're going to be a big fan of mine.
[00:02:43] I'm a big fan of yours.
[00:03:13] I'm a big fan of yours.
[00:03:16] For Christmas, Amy got me a guess where trip.
[00:03:23] Basically it's a day trip that you don't know where you're going.
[00:03:27] It's local to your area.
[00:03:30] So we are opening up the envelope tomorrow and figuring out what we're doing.
[00:03:38] I've seen something similar that where they get just an envelope and they open it up and there were tickets to London or something like that.
[00:03:47] It was ridiculous.
[00:03:49] So there is a company that does that, but this is a different company that does them specifically locally.
[00:03:55] And while I have not seen any spoilers for the ones in North Carolina because there are multiple
[00:04:00] The ones in Canada actually look pretty cool and they look really well done.
[00:04:06] That's cool.
[00:04:08] I'm not even worried about the holiday season as it is September and I need to get through the rest of this week.
[00:04:14] And it's Friday afternoon when recording this and I'm like buried under work and things like that.
[00:04:22] Quick shout out. I just want to do a quick shout out to two of my friends, Mike Thompson and Harold Mann.
[00:04:28] The reason I want to shout these two out is actually last week's episode that made to air where we talked about security stuff.
[00:04:35] My friend Mike Thompson sends me a DM on Slack and he's like UK MSPs.
[00:04:40] They're the worst because we were talking about the guys who had the active directory on prem to control the Wi-Fi.
[00:04:46] And I was like, that's hilarious.
[00:04:47] And then Harold Mann who has spoken at ACES, I was emailing with him and I owed him something and it's been like a couple weeks.
[00:04:55] Harold, I'm sorry.
[00:04:56] But I finally send it to him and he goes, I literally am listening to your podcast right now as you send this email.
[00:05:02] That was creepy.
[00:05:03] And I was like, I hate to please.
[00:05:07] We have a from the group.
[00:05:09] We should do a from the group.
[00:05:10] You want to do a from the group?
[00:05:11] Let's do from the group.
[00:05:20] What's up group?
[00:05:21] If you don't know right now, facebook.com.
[00:05:23] All things MSP.
[00:05:24] You should know that though because that's where this information about this podcast is posted.
[00:05:27] So you're probably already there and you're probably going just and I'm already there.
[00:05:29] Stop telling me about it.
[00:05:30] But just in case you're not facebook.com.
[00:05:32] So Kyle Goodwin writes, I need some advice.
[00:05:36] I'm looking to offer.
[00:05:38] I'm looking to offer to replace network equipment for my client to allow easier management of those systems.
[00:05:43] I've been looking at unify.
[00:05:44] I've also looked at Dell and data.
[00:05:46] However, unify looks simple enough and flexible.
[00:05:49] I'm focused on clients 200 to 200 people.
[00:05:53] So small business any suggestions.
[00:05:54] Okay.
[00:05:55] First off, 200 people is not a small business, but whatever.
[00:05:59] We don't have definitions of what a small many.
[00:06:02] I think a lot of people do they're just different.
[00:06:05] They're all different.
[00:06:08] I think unify is great.
[00:06:10] I should be told we used to only do Maraki and I would sell a Maraki firewall and Maraki access points but not sell the Maraki switch because they are so darn expensive.
[00:06:22] And for the for in Kyle's case, a small, small business like the ones that we take care of it was never just it was an we can't ever justify the cost for having since acquired a couple of companies in the Midwest where they tend to be a little bit more price protective.
[00:06:42] Price conscious.
[00:06:43] Price conscious.
[00:06:44] We've been the two companies we've acquired are there have all been unified.
[00:06:48] And so we've been doing a lot more unified systems.
[00:06:51] The difference between these two is not about the price.
[00:06:56] It's about the support.
[00:06:58] I needed help with a client who had a Maraki.
[00:07:00] I called them and within three minutes I had a human being in California on the phone helping me.
[00:07:08] But if I had a problem with something at unify, you're not getting that phone support now.
[00:07:12] Unify now does offer support at like, I think it's like $100 a month or something that per client per site per something.
[00:07:24] That sounds a little steep.
[00:07:27] I mean it's not terrible, you know, because you're rolling it into their monthly price but right still professional phone support.
[00:07:36] Hold on.
[00:07:36] I'm going to pull the price right here.
[00:07:39] Did they have the price on this page?
[00:07:42] It's a subscription but it doesn't have, oh you just have to activate it.
[00:07:50] It doesn't have the pricing here which I don't want to activate.
[00:07:53] But yeah so there's the difference.
[00:07:56] If you're well versed enough in unify or the data equipment or the Dell equipment, you'll do fine.
[00:08:07] It comes down to what your comfortability is.
[00:08:09] I think unify makes great products.
[00:08:11] I think the problem with unify is that they're always out of stock on things and they really need to fix some of their,
[00:08:16] they need to fix their shipping modules but they have a couple of things that they've released recently which I think are super super awesome.
[00:08:24] And their switches are not outrageously expensive and have some really nice features.
[00:08:28] So as long as you know network, just be told if you know networking you can get anything for the client.
[00:08:32] But if you want something good and up to 200 people, I would start you with like a Dream Machine Pro or a Dream Machine Special Edition and build from there.
[00:08:42] So I think unify is a great solution for that.
[00:08:45] Now I think in general when we're talking about picking a stack, right?
[00:08:50] A lot of times we're talking about picking a software stack in terms of tools and things like that.
[00:08:54] But I think networking equipment qualifies as well because if you try and standardize on one type of networking equipment,
[00:09:04] it's going to reduce your costs to support because it's going to take less time for your technicians to understand multiples.
[00:09:12] It's going to take less time for them to search through manuals, interfaces.
[00:09:17] If they are familiar with one or two interfaces, they are going to be much faster at doing their jobs.
[00:09:24] There is some value there.
[00:09:26] Now I think going back to the $100, let's just assume it is $100 per site per month.
[00:09:33] Per site. Okay. That's what I was going to go with.
[00:09:35] I was going to say $100 per site per month.
[00:09:38] If it's a mission critical site that's got 40, 50, 100 employees, that's probably worth it.
[00:09:47] Yeah.
[00:09:49] However, you get down to 5, 10 users.
[00:09:54] They can all just leave and go to Starbucks.
[00:09:56] Right. Yeah, I agree.
[00:09:59] It's your ROI on it, right?
[00:10:01] According to this Reddit post that I found because I can find the direct information,
[00:10:05] it was $100.
[00:10:07] It's on-demand video and phone support.
[00:10:10] $100 per site per month with an early access price I could change.
[00:10:15] Single site with a unified cloud gateway and anything related to this site.
[00:10:20] So any switches or access points, but self-hosted controllers are not supported.
[00:10:27] Phone support will work on a callback system at 9 to 5,
[00:10:31] including holidays and currently only in US English.
[00:10:35] Now I don't know if that is still accurate according to this continual post on it.
[00:10:43] The team is based in Chicago and they are, as of nine months ago, still looking to add to Canada.
[00:10:52] So I also don't know what their skill set is, but like where is a firewall from Maraki?
[00:10:58] Like a firewall from like a dream machine SE from Ubiquiti is $500.
[00:11:04] Done.
[00:11:06] Done.
[00:11:06] But the same like unit ish from Maraki with a one gig, which I think it's the MX-75
[00:11:15] with the three year license is almost four times that price.
[00:11:20] However, you can pick up a phone and call somebody and have somebody in three minutes.
[00:11:23] So $500 a month plus let's say $1200 in monthly service is now $1,700 versus $2,000.
[00:11:33] But also that you have to renew those licenses with Maraki.
[00:11:37] So the question comes down to is what's the, what are the, now we're getting down to like the technical differences between the two and which one you feel more comfortable with.
[00:11:46] Truth be told, I still like Maraki over Unify.
[00:11:49] I had Maraki in my house for a very long time, but when my licenses were up, I was like it's too much money.
[00:11:53] And for the same amount of money for all my licenses because my old house was really weird.
[00:11:57] People used to think I lived in a mansion because I had seven access points in my old house.
[00:12:02] Because of the way my like floor, because I had a multi-split so every floor was different.
[00:12:08] But when the time came to renew my licenses, I was like, I can buy all Unify stuff for that same price and never have to pay another license fee.
[00:12:17] So that's what it comes down to.
[00:12:19] But the problem is if I have a problem with my Unify system, I can't just call Maraki.
[00:12:23] Luckily on my team, I have two or three people on my team who understand Unify pretty well.
[00:12:28] So there's that.
[00:12:29] The other thing that I will say, if you want to do Unify, I think it's training.
[00:12:36] No.
[00:12:37] Unify has a training calendar.
[00:12:41] There it is.
[00:12:41] ui.com slash training slash calendar.
[00:12:45] And if you click on, there's courses by country on the right, you can see all of the trainings they have and they have very good training.
[00:12:56] They're expensive.
[00:12:56] There's two-day training, I think is like 16 or 1900 bucks.
[00:13:01] And they're all over the place.
[00:13:02] St. Louis, Missouri, Pasadena, California, Phoenix, Arizona, White Plains, New York, Dallas, Texas, Redwood, Washington just looking at you.
[00:13:10] So they have training.
[00:13:11] So if you're going to do Unify, go get trained on it.
[00:13:15] Actually, I'm looking to get trained myself on it.
[00:13:17] Unfortunately though, the only time it's in New York happens to be during the Jewish holidays.
[00:13:20] And if I don't go to my mother-in-law's during, like because I'm in training, I will not hear the end of it until I die.
[00:13:27] Well, that's poor planning on their part.
[00:13:29] Yeah, how dare they f*** you, Unify?
[00:13:31] I'm a Maraki boy just for that.
[00:13:35] Well, Kyle, thanks for the question.
[00:13:38] Hope you figure it out.
[00:13:39] If you have further questions about it, please feel free to DM Eric or I.
[00:13:44] We're here for you always and that has been from the group.
[00:13:50] All right, so today, you know, I thought we would talk about your first hire because this is a conversation that's going to be a little bit more interesting.
[00:13:51] You know, we're actually going to be talking about the current program of our IT managed service provider business with SuperOps, the all-in-one platform that integrates RMM and PSA.
[00:13:57] Powered by AI driven insights and automation, SuperOps helps you stay ahead, streamline operations, and boost efficiency.
[00:14:06] Are you ready for operational excellence?
[00:14:08] Find out more at atmsp.link forward slash SuperOps.
[00:14:13] All right, so today, you know, I thought we would talk about your first hire because this is a conversation that comes up just so often.
[00:14:24] And I think it's just one of those dynamics of MSPs.
[00:14:28] You know, there's a new one starting.
[00:14:30] It seems like every hour and then they eventually grow and they get to a point where they need to hire.
[00:14:38] More people or basically just stay the same size they are.
[00:14:41] But there's even this dynamic of I don't know about you, but there are things that I don't like to do.
[00:14:49] There are plenty of things I don't like to do like talk to clients and do tickets and work.
[00:14:55] Okay.
[00:14:55] Well, that's a conversation from my psychiatrist, not the podcast.
[00:15:04] Oh, that's yeah.
[00:15:06] So normally what I find is that it comes down to sales, marketing, admin or tech.
[00:15:17] Okay.
[00:15:18] Right?
[00:15:19] Those are the four that you typically hear about as being the first hire in an MSP.
[00:15:25] And I know I have my opinions, but I'd love to hear yours first so that I can contradict them later.
[00:15:35] I mean, truth be told, those four buckets, right?
[00:15:38] Sales, marketing, admin tech are the four that are needed.
[00:15:41] The thing here is, and we've talked about this before about a lot of MSPs became MSPs because they were good at tech and therefore they started a tech business, but they're not necessarily good at business.
[00:15:54] Right?
[00:15:55] They're still really in the mindset of tech.
[00:15:57] And that's why I find a lot of people, and this is why I tell people about coming to ACES as an example is like just because you learned cool new things in terminal doesn't make you a better consultant.
[00:16:10] Doesn't grow your business, doesn't move the needle forward for you.
[00:16:14] So a lot of the times I find that MSPs will, they all think they need a sales person right out of the gate.
[00:16:22] I think any MSP I've talked to, I go, what's your biggest problem?
[00:16:25] They're like, we need more customers.
[00:16:26] That's why we're looking for a sales person.
[00:16:28] We're looking for a sales person.
[00:16:28] We're looking for an SDR.
[00:16:29] We're looking for sales person.
[00:16:30] I'm like, do you have your ducks in a row?
[00:16:34] They're like, what ducks?
[00:16:35] Like, do you have everything set up that you can hire a sales person and then follow that process to help new customers or can you not?
[00:16:46] Now for us, we don't have a sales person and we still bring our new customers and we screw them up every time because our ducks are not in a row.
[00:16:55] Right?
[00:16:55] But when it was time for my first hire, I'm trying to remember if my first hire was, I think my first hire was some kid and then I finally hired Noah and then I finally hired Ryan.
[00:17:10] And so I always, because I'm not a technologist, I am a business person.
[00:17:17] I always try to hire someone who can do more tech so I could do more business.
[00:17:25] So your first hire really needs to compliment you with also taking over some of your responsibility.
[00:17:32] So it's a little weird.
[00:17:33] It's not like, you don't need, you can't have a one-to-one.
[00:17:36] You need someone who can do some things so that way you can better yourself but they need to be able to do some of those things to get them off your plate.
[00:17:44] You know what I'm saying?
[00:17:44] Yeah, I do.
[00:17:45] And I agree with you by the way in terms of the sales, it's very easy to get overrun by hiring a sales person and then not having the other people in place to be able to handle that increase in business.
[00:18:01] In fact, when you started saying it what came to mind was Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men and he goes,
[00:18:08] You can't handle the truth.
[00:18:10] And I was thinking, you can't handle the sales.
[00:18:13] That's a good t-shirt.
[00:18:14] Because it's true.
[00:18:16] Like if you hire a full-time sales person, if they're doing enough to pay for their position, they're going to generate a lot more business and if you can't handle that then you're going to be losing money because you're just,
[00:18:33] You're either not going to do it well or you're not going to do it at all or you're going to let the, you know, ball drop and it's just not going to work out well.
[00:18:40] Yeah.
[00:18:40] Now, so one of the points that I would absolutely make is the one that you made is that you need to make sure that the business is ready for that person.
[00:18:51] Okay.
[00:18:52] Now in picking what kind of person to hire first, one of the things that I think about is can I arbitrage?
[00:19:01] Right.
[00:19:02] If doing technical work, I'm bringing in $150 an hour.
[00:19:08] Okay.
[00:19:11] And I can go out and hire an admin to do light bookkeeping, maybe a little bit of marketing, you know, answering the phone, that kind of thing for $20 an hour, $30 an hour somewhere in there to get a good one.
[00:19:26] Right?
[00:19:26] Yeah.
[00:19:27] That means I'm not doing those things so I'm actually making money there because I'm actually trading a $20 to $30 activity for $150 activity and I can see you have something to say about that.
[00:19:41] I do because here's my issue with that and you're not wrong, right?
[00:19:45] That's not the problem.
[00:19:46] My problem isn't that you're wrong.
[00:19:47] My problem is, and this is actually a rip out of the four hour work week from Tim Ferriss about getting a virtual assistant.
[00:19:56] His thing was get a virtual assistant, you pay them $10 an hour to manage stuff and while they're doing this stuff, instead of you doing this stuff during that same time, you should be doing this stuff if you're getting paid at a higher price point.
[00:20:08] My problem is that everybody agrees with that sentence but nobody acts on it properly.
[00:20:12] So, whilst you could get this admin person to do the phone calls and the bookkeeping and the marketing, you take that two, let's say it took you two hours in your day and you've given them now to this person.
[00:20:23] You need to fill those two hours with billable time at $150 an hour and there's where people screw up because they just don't or they can't.
[00:20:33] It might not be their fault.
[00:20:34] And so, if they're not doing that, they're just paying someone to do work and now you're losing.
[00:20:42] So, there's my problem with it. You're not wrong.
[00:20:44] It's just that there's an asterisk at the end of that saying, if you're not filling that time, you're messing it up.
[00:20:51] There is.
[00:20:52] And you're absolutely right.
[00:20:54] You are probably never going to fill that time with billable time.
[00:20:59] Right.
[00:20:59] Okay.
[00:21:00] But what you can do is you can fill that time with a higher value activity like selling or marketing.
[00:21:09] And to get you more billable time, which then you will replace those two to three hours with billable time and give you the flexibility now go hire a salesperson or a marketing person.
[00:21:24] And, you know, that's another interesting part of this, right?
[00:21:28] Is chicken egg problem.
[00:21:30] Yeah.
[00:21:31] Right.
[00:21:32] Because you have to have marketing to feed a salesperson because if you don't have marketing to field us to beat a salesperson, they're not going to have enough leads to be able to do what they need to do and generate the revenue that you need to justify paying them a full time salary.
[00:21:51] Plus, salespeople who are working in commission.
[00:21:52] I mean, like you said earlier, like if they're going to hit the mark that they need to be like making money, there's going to be a lot of sales.
[00:21:59] And in order to do that, you need to have a lot of marketing.
[00:22:02] So that's why I don't think a sales and marketing person is the is the right first.
[00:22:08] Oh, for most MSP.
[00:22:20] 100% agree.
[00:22:21] And then you have to make sure that you have enough work, ticket management, even becoming your defensive mechanism for when you're getting too many tickets to hold people back.
[00:22:29] Like we've done that before where we had an executive assistant when like we were getting from part of the tickets their job was just to be, hi, we received your ticket.
[00:22:37] We're a little slow today because we're backed up.
[00:22:39] We'll get to you soon.
[00:22:40] Like even that.
[00:22:42] Or get a tech, right?
[00:22:44] If you have enough work for a tech.
[00:22:45] And here's what I always tell people about hiring a tech.
[00:22:49] Let's say your workload is at 100% because a single person business, your workload should always be 100%.
[00:22:56] And when I mean by 100%, I mean you're taking care of clients, you're doing the only administrative stuff, you're doing the sales, you're doing the marketing, you're doing the tech, you're doing everything, the four, the four things we talked about.
[00:23:04] 100% 100% of your day is 100% of your work, which makes sense.
[00:23:08] One person.
[00:23:08] If you hire another tech, many people will say to me, while I'm at 125% of my day, I'm going to hire another tech.
[00:23:19] I'm going to give them the 25%.
[00:23:21] I'm giving them all the overage, right?
[00:23:23] I'm giving them everything that's spilling over the cup.
[00:23:25] And my answer to that is don't do that.
[00:23:28] Give them 60 to 70%.
[00:23:31] Like fill their day with work.
[00:23:34] Yes.
[00:23:35] Lower your 100%, 125% down to 10 and then fill yourself back up.
[00:23:42] Because one, whoever you hire doesn't know your business the way you do.
[00:23:46] And two, if you're hiring a tech, don't expect them to do sales marketing and admin.
[00:23:51] You should be doing it.
[00:23:51] So like you have to think through that entire play.
[00:23:54] That's why I still, I do believe if I had to choose between an admin and a tech as my first hire,
[00:24:02] because I'm a business person, not a technologist, I would hire the tech.
[00:24:07] But if you're a technologist, I would hire the admin.
[00:24:12] Right.
[00:24:12] Because you want to play to your strengths, right?
[00:24:15] Yeah.
[00:24:15] Because you are going to be, if you like doing the technology and you're good at doing the technology,
[00:24:20] you are going to be more efficient at the technology.
[00:24:24] So it's probably better for you to hold on to that piece a little bit longer.
[00:24:29] Yeah.
[00:24:30] Now, if you are a business person, it is probably better for you to take the business tasks on yourself
[00:24:38] and keep those and hire a technician.
[00:24:41] I mean, there are franchise models out there that actually teach people how to do that
[00:24:45] because they're straight up entrepreneurs.
[00:24:49] It's like somebody buying a McDonald's.
[00:24:51] They have no technology experience, but this is such a profitable business model that you have non-technical
[00:24:59] but good at business people coming into this industry and doing that exact same thing.
[00:25:06] Now, you made me think of something in regards of how do you kind of prepare the business
[00:25:13] and how do you figure out who the next person should be?
[00:25:16] And it reminded me of something that I used to do when I had my MSP
[00:25:22] and that is I actually drew out my organizational chart.
[00:25:26] But instead of names, it had roles.
[00:25:29] It had all the things that had to be done in the business at that moment
[00:25:34] and probably for the next 12 months.
[00:25:37] That's very similar to what EOS and Bossop and all those companies, the 90,
[00:25:43] they're all very similar in that regards, right?
[00:25:46] EOS model isn't CEO, president, tech director, whatever, whatever.
[00:25:51] It's kind of what you're saying a little bit, right?
[00:25:54] There's like the visionary, the integrator and then underneath you have finance,
[00:25:58] you have marketing, you have sales.
[00:25:59] So it's very similar to what you're talking about.
[00:26:02] Right.
[00:26:03] But what it does is it gives you a visual representation to be able to look at this
[00:26:07] and go, okay, I can do all of these.
[00:26:10] I'm not so good at these.
[00:26:12] So I need to find somebody who can do those two or three boxes.
[00:26:16] Right.
[00:26:17] And what's really nice about that is that even, maybe with the exception of the tech
[00:26:22] and actually probably could still do with the tech,
[00:26:24] you don't have to hire a full-time person for this stuff.
[00:26:27] It's not like we're talking about your first hire being a full-time W2 employee
[00:26:32] 40 hours a week.
[00:26:33] You could outsource or get part timers or use professionals like on Upwork.
[00:26:40] Like a lot of the stuff that we, when I first started,
[00:26:45] we leveraged the hell out of Upwork for marketing and sales calls and things like that
[00:26:51] just so that way we can run test beds against everything that we were doing.
[00:26:55] Right.
[00:26:56] It wasn't like I went out day one and was like, okay, I'm going to hire you as an SDR
[00:27:02] and now you're my sales guy forever and I'm going to pay, you know,
[00:27:05] you can't do that.
[00:27:06] So, and I understand the one thing I've never part-timed is techs
[00:27:11] and I have an issue with part-timing techs because any tech or consultant,
[00:27:16] whatever you want to call them, like it doesn't matter how much you tell them
[00:27:19] to document things they never do.
[00:27:22] So I don't want to be caught with my pants down when a client says,
[00:27:26] hey, so-and-so was here and working on something and it's not working
[00:27:31] and I can't get in touch with so-and-so because they're part-time
[00:27:34] and they're not working today and they're on another job
[00:27:37] and I can't get to them for at least two days, right?
[00:27:40] Because I'm going to screw my client.
[00:27:41] So that was the one reason why I never part-timed any techs or consultants
[00:27:44] but like your mileage may vary.
[00:27:46] Maybe it's different the way your business is structured
[00:27:48] or where you are or the types of clients you have.
[00:27:51] New York City is very like if you don't get a fix in four hours
[00:27:54] you're fired, you know.
[00:27:55] Yeah.
[00:27:57] Well, and by the way, my mileage did vary on that because I actually had,
[00:28:02] we had a pretty decent community college near us
[00:28:06] and so I would hire level one techs from the community college.
[00:28:13] Now, a lot of times I would put them on tasks that were A,
[00:28:19] not client facing and B, didn't really matter if they documented
[00:28:25] or not because they weren't doing something that I would have
[00:28:27] to reference back to later.
[00:28:29] Literally as long as they put their time in a ticket
[00:28:32] and took care of the problem, that's all I cared about.
[00:28:34] Can you give some examples?
[00:28:38] So somebody can't print, right?
[00:28:41] Sure.
[00:28:42] You know, the documentation already exists from when we set up the printer,
[00:28:46] the documentation that matters.
[00:28:48] Right.
[00:28:49] They can't print, they can't do something in Word or Excel,
[00:28:53] you know, which is a whole different story because honestly
[00:28:57] in my opinion you should send them to training for that.
[00:29:00] That's not the job of the MSP to fix that problem.
[00:29:03] But there are plenty of issues like that that are temporary,
[00:29:08] typically user issues rather than actual technical issues
[00:29:14] that can be solved in a much more transactional way
[00:29:19] without having to worry about it.
[00:29:21] And so therefore you're part of the person who can fix a printer,
[00:29:24] doesn't need to write down how they fix the printer or do whatever
[00:29:27] because it's a printer and the answer is we should throw them out anyway.
[00:29:33] Sure.
[00:29:34] Printers are horrible.
[00:29:35] Stop printing people, save trees.
[00:29:37] There's no reason to print.
[00:29:38] Meanwhile I have all bunch of notes from this class that I took like three weeks ago
[00:29:42] and I actually printed them.
[00:29:46] Yeah.
[00:29:47] All right, now that makes sense.
[00:29:48] So okay, you're right.
[00:29:49] Like I said, your mileage may vary and depending on what you're doing,
[00:29:52] it's important.
[00:29:53] The other thing that you may also want to think about for your first person
[00:29:58] is either an intern or an apprentice.
[00:30:01] Yes.
[00:30:01] We were doing semi-pad and we had Autrieve,
[00:30:06] which was our software development company back in 2011.
[00:30:10] We had interns, we had college interns who we gave college credit to
[00:30:12] and I don't know what the rules are different now,
[00:30:14] but back then we could do this.
[00:30:15] We gave them college credit.
[00:30:17] We worked with their schools and they came and they did intern stuff.
[00:30:20] We brought out, we had marketing interns coming in,
[00:30:22] marketing our apps and like doing stuff because it was low cost,
[00:30:25] low reward, so I don't really care.
[00:30:27] And we were just letting, we were just throwing ish against the wall with it
[00:30:29] because it was fun.
[00:30:32] But then as the, we ended that division, whatever.
[00:30:36] And it was actually, side note,
[00:30:37] it was actually one of our interns who caused the fight with Wired magazine
[00:30:41] and us, which was a hilarious bunch of things.
[00:30:46] But then we had him, you know, we brought an employee on
[00:30:50] and I brought him on as an apprentice
[00:30:51] and I said, you're just going to shadow me for six months.
[00:30:54] And he became one of our greatest employees.
[00:30:56] He did so well.
[00:30:58] He's not with us anymore.
[00:30:59] He moved on.
[00:31:00] He's now in cybersecurity at Ferrari.
[00:31:03] So like he's done really well for himself,
[00:31:05] but like we brought him on as an apprentice
[00:31:07] and that was the only way he was going to learn to like get,
[00:31:09] because he was coming from nothing, right?
[00:31:11] In terms of tech skills personally,
[00:31:17] we paid him appropriately.
[00:31:19] It wasn't like we, it wasn't an unpaid apprenticeship,
[00:31:21] but this way when he was doing that for the first six months,
[00:31:25] if I was on site and this is all pre COVID,
[00:31:27] but I was on site and I needed to touch or deal with two problems at once.
[00:31:31] I can send him to go deal with another problem.
[00:31:34] I wasn't charging my clients extra for him or whatever it was.
[00:31:36] And like it was a good hand on learning without it causing problems.
[00:31:39] This way if there was something that,
[00:31:41] and he could just tell me what he fixed, right?
[00:31:43] And I could have written it down or whatever it was,
[00:31:45] but if he wasn't there one day for whatever reason,
[00:31:47] it wasn't going to be an issue, right?
[00:31:50] So it was another,
[00:31:52] that's another great way to like lead someone into the industry.
[00:31:56] But yeah.
[00:31:56] And you mentioned something a little bit earlier
[00:31:58] that I want to go back to.
[00:32:00] And that is, and it's a dynamic that I didn't have
[00:32:03] when I had my MSP.
[00:32:05] And that was the gig economy.
[00:32:07] You know, you talked about Upwork
[00:32:09] and there's a really important dynamic
[00:32:12] with that that I think is critical to this conversation.
[00:32:16] And that is, and you mentioned it,
[00:32:18] you can hire these people and test things
[00:32:21] without fully committing.
[00:32:23] And I think that especially when it comes to sales and marketing,
[00:32:28] I think because those are so experimental in nature
[00:32:33] that those are great ways to dip your toe in the water
[00:32:38] of sales and marketing is by hiring gig economy people
[00:32:43] to do that work.
[00:32:44] Because then if something happens
[00:32:46] and you need to shut it off, you can just shut it off.
[00:32:48] You just turn it off. Exactly.
[00:32:49] And you can even with the gig economy,
[00:32:51] you can find a virtual admin.
[00:32:54] We've had plenty of virtual admins through time
[00:32:57] who manage tickets.
[00:32:59] Like I had a, we had a great virtual admin,
[00:33:02] this woman Jen,
[00:33:04] who part of her job was
[00:33:07] go through the tickets every day
[00:33:09] and if there was a ticket that was sitting
[00:33:11] for more than 24 or 48 hours without being touched,
[00:33:14] bugged the person whose ticket it was.
[00:33:16] That was it.
[00:33:17] That was her job.
[00:33:18] I mean, it was one of many, but like,
[00:33:21] that's a good thing you can hire
[00:33:23] a freelancer gig academy, whatever you want to call it
[00:33:26] to do without fully getting in
[00:33:29] because she was part-time at a need or full time.
[00:33:32] She worked two to three hours a day,
[00:33:34] did what needed to be done and zipped in, zipped out.
[00:33:36] Perfect.
[00:33:37] So there are ways around it.
[00:33:39] Your first hire, like we said,
[00:33:41] doesn't have to be a full-time hire
[00:33:44] and your first hire should
[00:33:47] compliment you
[00:33:48] as well as offset the things that you
[00:33:52] cannot, will not, shall not do
[00:33:55] and only you can make that decision.
[00:33:58] Remember, only you can prevent forest fires.
[00:34:01] Only you can prevent a bad hire.
[00:34:04] Only you can prevent a bad hire.
[00:34:05] And if you do have a bad hire,
[00:34:06] get rid of them fast.
[00:34:08] Oh yeah.
[00:34:10] Hire fast, fire faster.
[00:34:11] I forget who said that it might be Gary Vaynerchuk.
[00:34:15] It was a hire.
[00:34:15] Well, originally it was hire slow, fire fast
[00:34:18] and then he changed it.
[00:34:20] But I don't know if it's in this.
[00:34:22] But then Steve Jobs said only hire A players
[00:34:24] because A players hire other A players.
[00:34:26] But if you hire a B player, B player, hire C players.
[00:34:29] And I was like, that doesn't math.
[00:34:31] I know that this is a huge tangent,
[00:34:33] but I think too many HR departments
[00:34:37] have taken the hire slow to a new level.
[00:34:41] Hire slow.
[00:34:43] Yeah, exactly.
[00:34:45] Okay.
[00:34:46] So what people should get out of this episode is...
[00:34:50] We don't know what we're talking about.
[00:34:53] I'm kidding.
[00:34:54] You hate when I do that.
[00:34:56] I do hate when you do that
[00:34:58] because it really feeds my imposter syndrome.
[00:35:01] It's another topic.
[00:35:02] No. Number one,
[00:35:04] make sure that you're hiring the right person
[00:35:08] by going through the exercises we talked about.
[00:35:10] Right?
[00:35:11] What do you like to do?
[00:35:12] What are you good at?
[00:35:13] What's the most expensive thing for you to do?
[00:35:16] What's the cheapest thing for you to do?
[00:35:17] Assign numbers to those different things.
[00:35:20] And then to me,
[00:35:22] the next thing is making sure the business is prepared.
[00:35:25] Like, you know how much that person is going to cost.
[00:35:28] You know it's going to take them a certain amount of ramp time.
[00:35:31] Make sure that you have the money in the bank
[00:35:35] already to pay for that ramp time
[00:35:37] because otherwise you're just going to...
[00:35:40] Even if it works out,
[00:35:41] you're still going to be causing yourself enough stress
[00:35:43] that it's not worth it.
[00:35:45] Okay?
[00:35:46] And then, you know,
[00:35:48] make sure you have a good hiring process
[00:35:50] and make sure you have a good process
[00:35:52] for setting expectations
[00:35:54] so that they don't meet those expectations
[00:35:56] you can fire them fast.
[00:35:59] I'm big on the hiring...
[00:36:00] on the expectations thing
[00:36:01] because I know for a fact that's not something I do
[00:36:03] and I need to do when we hire people
[00:36:05] and set those rules like out the gate.
[00:36:10] And then, you know,
[00:36:10] I'm going to go into one...
[00:36:11] See? I told you we do know what we're talking about.
[00:36:14] Bring on the right people, figure it out,
[00:36:16] calculate your thing.
[00:36:16] I mean, it's all...
[00:36:17] What's funny about this is as you were talking about
[00:36:20] putting dollars to those value,
[00:36:22] to those items,
[00:36:24] people who are in our industry
[00:36:27] like problem solving.
[00:36:29] This is just another problem for you to solve.
[00:36:32] And that's how you hire people.
[00:36:35] Another problem to solve
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[00:37:00] They just got to make it harder for us.
[00:37:03] It's easy for you to say.
[00:37:04] Yeah, I'll get there one day.
[00:37:06] Other than that, any last words
[00:37:08] for the listeners slash viewers?
[00:37:12] Just that we'll try and do better next time.
[00:37:14] Oh, he stole my line.
[00:37:16] Well, that's Justin.
[00:37:17] I'm Eric. Bye.
[00:37:20] Thanks for listening and don't forget
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