Paul Daigle Scaling Success The Blueprint to Elevating Your MSP

[00:00:09] Hey everyone, welcome to the latest installment of MSP Business School. As always, I'm your host, Brian Doyle. And today I'd like to introduce a new guest to you, Paul Daigle. It's his first time coming on with us here at MSP Business School, but many of you probably know him from LinkedIn.

[00:00:26] And Paul operates and leads BizAdvisoryBoard.com. And he is really a knowledgeable individual who understands the MSP game and exactly what we need to do in scale and grow. So welcome, Paul.

[00:00:40] Well, thank you very much, Brian, for having me, even if it's only the first time.

[00:00:45] Well, we want to make sure the first time isn't the last time. So, you know, we try to build long term here, but we're glad to have you on this first time.

[00:00:54] Let's kick off maybe, though, with sharing a little bit about your background with the audience and help folks understand, you know, what you've done in the past and how you entered into the crazy world of MSP.

[00:01:05] I entered into the crazy world of MSP from being a VAR and a break-fix guy.

[00:01:13] At the time, we were trying to see what we could do about keeping our clients' computers up, and we built our own PSA and RMM tools.

[00:01:24] And that's before the big Kaseya stuff and Autotask and everything else. Once I saw their stuff, I couldn't keep up with development with them.

[00:01:32] I just jumped off my sinking ship and jumped on to their ship.

[00:01:37] And so, you know, I was an MSP for 20, 25 years. During that time, I did a lot of M&A for my own.

[00:01:45] I grew. I bought web companies. I bought UCAS companies. I bought other MSPs.

[00:01:52] And I really grew a lot that way. Not only did we grow from M&A, but through organic type of stuff, marketing and all that stuff,

[00:02:03] that a lot of MSPs tend to have a hard time, and I wasn't much different.

[00:02:08] Yeah, I think organic growth is probably the number one topic we have on this show where people are really looking at strategies

[00:02:15] to grow beyond friends and family and referrals, right?

[00:02:17] And it is the toughest piece of the puzzle to master, especially with a majority of our leadership out in the marketplace being technical-led leaders, right?

[00:02:28] So sales isn't necessarily a native bone in their body. So they've got to hone that skill.

[00:02:34] But, you know, as you know, and I'm sure we'll get into this a little bit later, there's certainly some turns on valuation.

[00:02:39] If you can show you have a strong sales engine working and you're going beyond, you know, just bolt-on growth these days.

[00:02:47] Yeah. Basically, whenever you can get and you build some sort of C-suite and you have somebody in the C-suite,

[00:02:54] that's not only the CEO, CTO, but the CMO, the chief marketing officer, because marketing has got so many tentacles to it

[00:03:06] that you need someone within your organization a lot of times just to manage it.

[00:03:11] And then it doesn't really matter whether you're a $500,000 MSP or a $50 million MSP.

[00:03:18] You know, you need someone internally kind of looking over what's going on with the different resources

[00:03:25] and the different multiple ways we have marketing today.

[00:03:29] Yeah, I think the biggest challenge is you need to be in so many places at the same time consistently, right?

[00:03:36] And I think the number one, you know, thing that we're hearing people talk about from a marketing perspective is

[00:03:41] pick one channel, master it, and scale, right?

[00:03:45] Yeah.

[00:03:46] So don't try to be everywhere.

[00:03:48] No, you get those guys that go after the CPAs, the attorneys, and then they go after manufacturing,

[00:03:56] and you'll never get anywhere that way.

[00:03:58] You know, within the tool we're going to talk about a little bit later,

[00:04:02] it tells you where within the MSP business maturity model when you should start divesting and looking at another model.

[00:04:11] But the thing is, it's like your business.

[00:04:13] You want to get it going, and you want to make it strong.

[00:04:16] You want to make it profitable.

[00:04:17] You take some of the profits and go into another business and have that blue.

[00:04:21] And then, you know, after so much longer, you go off and have the other one blue.

[00:04:26] But by that time, you got the processes done.

[00:04:28] But identifying the market and identifying how they need to hear your story, that makes it different from everybody else.

[00:04:37] It makes it compelling for them to come to you rather than you asking for the business.

[00:04:42] Yeah, no doubt.

[00:04:43] And, you know, I think that's something that a lot of MSPs haven't looked at, even in their own book of business.

[00:04:49] It's like, you know, everybody's got that key client, that client they do really well with, or those couple of clients that they do well with.

[00:04:55] What are the commonalities in those clients?

[00:04:57] What verticals are they in?

[00:04:58] Can you take that client, replicate what you do, and do more of it, right?

[00:05:02] You know, one of the problems with that referral-based process is you're getting whatever's being brought to you.

[00:05:08] And they can be very, very different, which increases support costs, which increases delivery costs.

[00:05:13] You know, pick your poison there.

[00:05:15] But if you look at your core customers and go, how do I find another transportation and logistics company,

[00:05:20] like the one that I'm really doing well with, that pays us a lot and we do very profitably, right?

[00:05:24] And master that and go after that channel and gear your marketing to get more of them.

[00:05:30] And that's easy, just working on one market rather than trying to work on multiples.

[00:05:36] Because it takes time to learn it.

[00:05:38] And you've got to focus on it.

[00:05:41] And, you know, say it takes you two, three months to actually get you into there.

[00:05:44] You go to their trade shows.

[00:05:46] You go to their meet-up events that they have locally or whatever you want to do.

[00:05:50] Whatever industry you really, really want to focus in.

[00:05:52] And you know their software better than the software providers within their industry.

[00:05:58] So you're the one neck to choke.

[00:06:01] And, you know, you're responsible for it.

[00:06:05] And they like it just making one call and go, no, it's not a hardware problem.

[00:06:09] It's not a communications problem.

[00:06:10] It's a software problem.

[00:06:12] Here, let me help you solve that issue.

[00:06:14] So, Paul, you talked a little bit about when you were an MSP, part of your growth was building through acquisitions that you made.

[00:06:21] Tell us a little bit about what you targeted in an acquisition and what you felt would make a good acquisition opportunity for your business.

[00:06:29] Well, we were really focused on attorneys throughout.

[00:06:35] And I found an acquisition that kind of fell on my lap.

[00:06:39] And they were doing government work for municipalities in the state.

[00:06:44] And I go, and I was at the time, I was at a certain revenue stage that I can afford to go ahead and bring that on.

[00:06:53] I brought on their CEO and their CTO to manage that because they needed to do all kinds of stuff.

[00:07:02] Like we got in really big with Barracuda because, you know, to do searches for public records that government agencies need to do.

[00:07:11] And just a whole bunch of other tools that we learned we thought we knew, but we didn't really know until we got entrenched in there.

[00:07:20] And so, you know, acquisition of another company to go into another business segment and kind of piggybacking on what we talked about earlier.

[00:07:32] By doing that, they were very profitable.

[00:07:36] And by doing it by acquisition, I did not have to take my technicians' focus off the attorney side, learning that stuff.

[00:07:48] They were focused to focus, like the tech support.

[00:07:52] There were so many techs that were supporting the attorney side.

[00:07:56] And we had so many techs that were supporting the government side.

[00:07:59] And, you know, they would be able to cross-pollinate if they needed to.

[00:08:03] But having that expertise went a long ways.

[00:08:07] And it's amazing how good news and when people are really happy with you on how they spread the word within their fish pond.

[00:08:16] All the government people go together.

[00:08:17] They talk about it.

[00:08:19] All the attorneys get together and they talk about it.

[00:08:21] And, you know, you just show up at one of their events and your clients are going to be pointing people in your direction.

[00:08:27] Yeah.

[00:08:28] No, there's no doubt about that.

[00:08:30] And, you know, that's a great story there because it is a great way to look at acquisitions.

[00:08:34] Can I enter a new market and can I enter it cleanly with the right resources to get there versus building it out on my own?

[00:08:41] You know, it's the old one plus one equals three equation, right?

[00:08:45] Because you will have that cross-pollination of engineers who are supporting each other on technology, right?

[00:08:51] Technology is technology.

[00:08:53] And, you know, obviously each engineer probably has their level of expertise.

[00:08:56] I know I experienced that when I was an MSP and we made those acquisitions.

[00:09:00] But you can't shortcut bringing in industry expertise for the vertical you're going to.

[00:09:06] And it's not something you can develop overnight.

[00:09:09] Sometimes it's even tough to get the other people to believe that you have that if you're known as the lawyer guy.

[00:09:14] And then all of a sudden you want to be the government guy.

[00:09:17] It doesn't always translate, right?

[00:09:19] You know, you can't wear both hats and go deep enough because those are two worlds that have.

[00:09:23] Well, that's why you staffed in industry.

[00:09:26] I hired, you know, people just to go after those because I only have so much time in my life.

[00:09:32] And the thing is, is have someone else go to all those trade shows and everything else.

[00:09:37] And they were the voice and the heart.

[00:09:38] I had one particular lady that ended up with Parkinson's.

[00:09:42] And it was so bad.

[00:09:44] You know, during the MSP, we ended up being the largest CRM reseller in the world.

[00:09:51] And her name is Doris.

[00:09:53] And she came to me and goes, Paul, I know you're doing CRM.

[00:09:56] I love CRM.

[00:09:58] These are the types of contacts I can bring.

[00:09:59] I want to run that division for you.

[00:10:02] She ran that division.

[00:10:04] We had what, 2025 techs.

[00:10:06] We had SQL people.

[00:10:07] We had all kinds of great people.

[00:10:08] And that part of the business just grew so fast.

[00:10:12] It was beautiful.

[00:10:13] Having the right people at the right time in the right place.

[00:10:16] I've been fortunate enough to have that in my career, Brian.

[00:10:19] Yeah, and that is the most important part, right?

[00:10:22] And I think, you know, you'll hear almost any owner that's had some success say,

[00:10:26] if without the people, you can't do it because you can't scale one.

[00:10:29] And, you know, it just doesn't happen.

[00:10:32] And usually when you're one, the more hats you wear, the worse everything gets done, right?

[00:10:36] So you need others.

[00:10:38] So, you know, it's great when you can bring in those people that have that domain knowledge

[00:10:42] and make it work.

[00:10:43] And acquisition is certainly one way to go.

[00:10:45] So, you know, maybe from there we can pivot into a little bit of what you're doing today.

[00:10:50] Talk a little bit about Biz Advisory Board and how you're helping MSPs in your new role.

[00:10:56] Well, it's a role that I think I've had for about eight or nine years.

[00:11:00] I don't know.

[00:11:01] I have to check my LinkedIn to find out.

[00:11:03] But, you know, the Biz Advisory Board, you know, we're a strategic advisory firm

[00:11:08] offering coaching, mergers and acquisition assistance, capital services, growth, and scale.

[00:11:15] And these are all types of things that almost any business needs.

[00:11:21] And, you know, I'm the senior managing partner, but we have some other managing partners that

[00:11:27] have 15, 20 years running and being part of MSPs in so many different domains, whether it's

[00:11:35] IT services or whether it be AI that they're offering or machine learning.

[00:11:41] Fudge, we picked up an opportunity where we're doing gunshot detection.

[00:11:46] And that was machine learning.

[00:11:48] That was edge devices.

[00:11:50] That's everything else that, you know, comes within our portfolio of stuff that we've done.

[00:11:56] And it's so beautiful how we can take somebody and escalate or accelerate their growth

[00:12:05] through anywhere, even the development, all the way up to commercialization and stuff like that.

[00:12:12] You take a look at my LinkedIn.

[00:12:14] You take a look.

[00:12:15] If I can't double something in nine to 12 months, we get bored and we're out of there.

[00:12:21] We're going to double revenue.

[00:12:23] We're going to double customers.

[00:12:24] We're going to double something.

[00:12:25] And when you're doubling something, you're doing good for everything else within the organization.

[00:12:31] So, but, you know, that's what we're doing now.

[00:12:34] You know, I'm also the author of the MSP Business Evaluator and Accelerator, where the MSP Business

[00:12:41] Evaluator, an MSP can put in four parameters about their business.

[00:12:44] And I'll tell them where they are, what peer group they are within the business, MSP Business

[00:12:50] Maturity Model.

[00:12:51] And I'll tell them how much they're worth to a strategic and to a financial buyer.

[00:12:55] And not only that, it will also tell them how close they are to achieving the benefits of

[00:13:01] the next peer group.

[00:13:02] And, you know, we measure stuff like the revenue per employee goes up tremendously.

[00:13:09] Your multiple for your business increases dramatically when you go from peer group to peer

[00:13:14] group.

[00:13:15] And then our Accelerator version of that will actually give them a blueprint and roadmap that

[00:13:20] provides the best practices to accelerate from one peer group to another.

[00:13:24] It'll tell you how long you need to be in a peer group.

[00:13:26] And in every peer group.

[00:13:29] So you'll be able to see where you are in the MSP Business Maturity Model and scale and

[00:13:35] do it quickly.

[00:13:36] So for our listeners that are not part of peer groups today, and when you talk about moving

[00:13:40] from peer group to peer group, maybe you can give a little backstory on, you know, what

[00:13:44] that really means.

[00:13:45] Because not all peer groups are created equal.

[00:13:47] And I think that's really what you're referring to here, correct?

[00:13:49] That's a good point.

[00:13:50] That's a good point.

[00:13:51] We refer to peer groups and it's only financial.

[00:13:54] Okay.

[00:13:54] Only on the financial side.

[00:13:55] You know, if you're doing less than $100,000, your challenges, your blueprint, your roadmap

[00:14:04] is different from where you are at $3 million.

[00:14:07] And so within our peer groups, we go, hey, if you're a $2 million peer group, this is what

[00:14:13] these are the challenges and these are the things that you're doing well.

[00:14:16] And this is your budget of what you should be spending on legal marketing, everything

[00:14:21] else.

[00:14:21] And that's a customized budget based upon that peer group.

[00:14:24] And then you take a look at the peer group to the left from where you came from.

[00:14:27] And it goes, oh, this is what we were.

[00:14:30] And you go, oh, this is where we are.

[00:14:32] And now what we're able to do is this is where you want to be.

[00:14:35] And that's where you can set strategic direction to expedite your growth from peer group to

[00:14:40] peer group.

[00:14:41] And that's what we're really there.

[00:14:43] You know, now you're kind of giving a blueprint on how to scale and how to get to those next

[00:14:47] areas that we want to get to.

[00:14:49] Because we all know that the hardest jump is getting from $1 million to $5 million, from

[00:14:52] $5 million to $10 million, you know, and so forth, right?

[00:14:54] It seems like in the middle of those parameters, it's pretty much the same problem, same story.

[00:14:59] It's just getting past those inflection points that are the challenge.

[00:15:04] Yeah.

[00:15:04] Yeah.

[00:15:04] We give you the blueprint and roadmap.

[00:15:06] And the thing is, is with our tool, you're able to do it self-guided.

[00:15:10] Now, of course, if you need help, you can always call us and we'll walk you through it in time.

[00:15:16] Yep.

[00:15:17] And I think that's a great point, too, especially for those that are at the early part of their

[00:15:21] journey.

[00:15:21] You know, getting into the right peer group early on that really can benefit you and

[00:15:25] having the ability to have a self-guided blueprint, too, to work from when you're still kind of

[00:15:31] early on and trying to figure things out and doing a lot of trial and error can, you know,

[00:15:35] can be invaluable to that young upstart and growing MSP.

[00:15:38] Yeah.

[00:15:39] And, you know, we use peer group on the financial sense, but there's other organizations that

[00:15:44] have peer groups.

[00:15:45] And, you know, we have accountability groups, not peer groups.

[00:15:51] Okay.

[00:15:52] You know, our accountability groups, they meet for 45 minutes, two times a month.

[00:15:58] And we have four to five people in there and we got to go, what did you do last the past

[00:16:03] two weeks?

[00:16:03] What are you going to do the next two weeks based upon a yearly plan that we put in place

[00:16:08] when they first come on?

[00:16:09] You know, we're, you know, we're, we're so busy.

[00:16:13] We don't need to join another group that a social group necessarily.

[00:16:19] We need, we need someone to keep us on track and on task, task and time.

[00:16:25] And that's what, that's what an accountability group does rather than a peer group.

[00:16:29] So just a little bit definition in terms there.

[00:16:32] No, that's, it's huge.

[00:16:33] And I think most MSPs would tell you accountability is one of the biggest challenges, especially

[00:16:38] early on, because it's really easy for an owner to say, I'm not going to do this today

[00:16:42] if I got to do this or I got to answer this bell.

[00:16:44] Right.

[00:16:45] And, but yet if you don't do those things that are really your, your stakes in the ground

[00:16:49] and those rocks you need to climb over, you're not going to get to the next level.

[00:16:52] Right.

[00:16:53] And you're accountable not only to the facilitator, but now you're accountable to four other people

[00:16:57] or three other people within your group and everybody holds their feet to the fire.

[00:17:01] Yep.

[00:17:02] And it's possible it might not be important that week where they misjudged or something

[00:17:07] really came up.

[00:17:08] Well, that's understandable, but what are you going to do to keep on track for your yearly

[00:17:11] goals and objectives?

[00:17:13] Perfect.

[00:17:14] So, you know, we're getting near the end of our time today and time flies.

[00:17:18] It's amazing.

[00:17:19] You know, maybe tell people a little bit more, you know, what are your closing thoughts?

[00:17:24] Is there something that you want to share with others that we may find valuable today?

[00:17:28] Yeah.

[00:17:29] Our closing thoughts is, you know, every MSP needs to know how much your business is worth.

[00:17:35] Part of their personal plan.

[00:17:39] You know, I get three or four calls on a weekly basis that there's that someone owns an MSP

[00:17:48] with two other partners and one of the partners needs to retire and they need to evaluate how

[00:17:52] much your MSP is worth.

[00:17:54] That adds a little bit of extra confusion to really calculate how much a third person's

[00:18:00] worth based upon their involvement and stuff.

[00:18:02] But, you know, we have the tools and everything else and the time, the expertise to help them

[00:18:07] and guide them through it.

[00:18:10] Now, you can go in.

[00:18:12] We're going to be offering a promo code for a business evaluator and accelerator.

[00:18:17] And you just go to Biz Advisory Board.

[00:18:21] You go to that URL right there and they've got the promo code right there.

[00:18:25] You're more than happy to, you know, go ahead and download it.

[00:18:28] And the accelerator versions have coaching already built into the price.

[00:18:34] So you can always call us up and ask us, you know, what do you think about this?

[00:18:39] This is my situation.

[00:18:40] I'm a little bit different.

[00:18:43] And what can you do to help guide us and coach us?

[00:18:46] And again, we're so entrenched in the MSP community.

[00:18:49] Our ability to give out strategic relationships and introduction can go a very, very long way.

[00:18:56] And for those of you that are listening to this audibly today, we will be putting in the URL into the show notes.

[00:19:02] So you'll be able to get to that.

[00:19:04] It is bizadvisoryboard.com, MSP-business-evaluator-and-accelerator with a hyphen between and an accelerator.

[00:19:13] A bit of a mouthful for that.

[00:19:15] But, you know, if you get up to Biz Advisory Board, I'm sure if you go into the evaluator accelerator, you'll get there.

[00:19:20] And the promo code, again, is VCIO1024.

[00:19:26] So definitely go and check that out.

[00:19:29] Paul, anything exciting you got upcoming?

[00:19:32] Anything else you want to share with the audience before we say goodbye today?

[00:19:36] No, I'm doing a lot of these.

[00:19:38] I give demos.

[00:19:40] The third Thursday of every month, we do a live demonstration of the tool.

[00:19:47] So, you know, if you're in private equity or you have an MSP or you're looking to sell your MSP or buy another MSP, connect with me on LinkedIn and ask me for a link to our next webinar that we have on the last Thursday of the month at 11 o'clock.

[00:20:04] No, the third Thursday of the month at 11 o'clock.

[00:20:07] And we'll be putting Paul's LinkedIn address into the show notes as well.

[00:20:11] So certainly reach out to him and get hooked up on that evaluator demo.

[00:20:16] Paul, thank you so much for joining today.

[00:20:18] It's always great to hear from somebody that has been through the MSP journey, understands it, and wants to share with others on how to grow and scale.

[00:20:26] So I really want to thank you for joining me today.

[00:20:28] Thank you very much, Brian, for the opportunity.

[00:20:30] All right, listener.

[00:20:32] And as you know, you can get this podcast anywhere you download your podcast or check us out on YouTube and subscribe there.

[00:20:38] We'll be again with you next Tuesday.

[00:20:41] Until everybody else, we'll see you next week.