Aligning Business with Purpose: The Heart Behind Gerry's MSP Success (MSP Titan #20)

[00:00:00] Now you have to get the technology right. You have to be perfect in the technology, but that's the starting line. And many MSPs think that if they can deliver that, they've achieved their goal. On top of that fidelity of service, you have to deliver an incredible customer experience and you have to make your customers better at what they do than they could ever get on their own. And building that baseline of technical fidelity and then delivering that value on top, most MSPs miss that.

[00:00:33] Hey guys, Damien Stevens, host of MSP Mindset. And today I continue my mission to interview 100 of the fastest growing and most interesting MSPs on the planet. Today, I am so excited to be joined by Jerry Miller. Now, from day one, he focused on a single niche and never deviated, healthcare in the cloud. What did that mean? Margins that are the envy of every MSP on the planet and a guy with the conviction to be able to help you.

[00:01:03] Turned down a billion dollar opportunity. If you want to learn how he built his MSP in an amazing way and an amazing speed, don't miss out on our conversation. Quick side note, he cares so much about healthcare that we do a deep dive in the beginning about who he's serving and why. Bear with us. You're not going to want to miss out on the rest of that conversation.

[00:01:26] Healthcare is definitely my passion. I did not start out trying to be a healthcare professional. I mean, my background is music, so that's what I studied in college.

[00:01:41] But like many things, this is my fifth go around as an entrepreneur. And I just got lucky. So 13 years ago, a friend of mine called and asked if I would help him architect a healthcare solution. I had no background in healthcare. So I had to learn very quickly.

[00:02:02] Um, but what I learned is that it's one fifth of our GDP. I mean, we, we spend so much money on healthcare and we're really inefficient with it. Um, and interest, interestingly enough. So a month ago in Montenegro, I got really sick. I got COVID. Um, and I got that latest strain and I, I'm an asthmatic.

[00:02:27] So I ended up having to go to a clinic. I spent maybe five hours getting x-rays and blood tests and this and that. Um, when I checked out, I spent 108 euros. That would have been 12 or $15,000 at a hospital in the U S.

[00:02:49] Yeah. So our system is broken because we don't take care of healthy people. We take care of sick people. And the sicker you are, the more money you spend.

[00:03:01] So I don't call it a healthcare system. I call it a sick care system. And what we should be doing is helping people stay healthy. We should be teaching people how to eat right, how to exercise their bodies and stay healthy.

[00:03:15] But we have a pharmaceutical industry and healthcare industry that makes more money, the sicker that we are. And that is as broken as can be. And so as I learned more about this industry, it just became a passion for me because we can make people's lives better.

[00:03:36] And, you know, every day, my, our, our company's motto is we want to make everybody in the world healthier through the work that we do.

[00:03:45] Mm-hmm. And we live that mission from the moment that we open our eyes in the morning until the moment that we crawl back into bed at night.

[00:03:54] Also, it's, I think there's a lot just unpacked there, um, to dig in on. One, I thought there was some unwritten rule. You can't criticize the same system you're, you're serving, right?

[00:04:05] I think there's a lot of people that I need to say to, you know, to sort of talk about that. I love that because, you know, I've had many conversations with practitioners and other things and, you know, they can only help you if you're sick and they can only prescribe things if you're sick enough in certain ways.

[00:04:19] Yeah, yeah. No, it's a good point. Um, the, the, the frontline practitioners are always on the same page. It's the back office bureaucrats. It's the private equity companies that are buying up hospitals that are looking at the money piece.

[00:04:38] The doctors still want to make people better. And the implementation of, um, electronic health record systems has made their lives more difficult. Um, the implementation of more and more federal regulations have made their lives more difficult, but the practitioners want to help people get better. And so that's who we like to engage with on a day-to-day basis.

[00:05:02] So is it more than the, what is the typical customer for you?

[00:05:08] Oh, it's, it's, it's across the board. So we, we serve, um, providers. So generally larger hospital systems. Uh, we serve as payers like Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. Uh, we do a lot of work in health tech. So organizations that generally have SAS based solutions that they sell into the healthcare industry. Uh, we do a lot of work with, um, federal and state and local governments. Um, we did the pandemic response for the state of New York.

[00:05:38] So that, um, so that, that was a great opportunity for us. Um, so it, it, it, it's really across the board.

[00:05:45] This episode is brought to you by Serbosity. I started Serbosity because I was an MSP that lost data because I thought backup success meant I could recover. And boy, was I wrong.

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[00:06:47] What was it that drove you to start Cloudicity?

[00:06:52] Like I said, like everything that has happened in my life that has been good, it was an accident.

[00:07:00] I was bored.

[00:07:02] A friend of mine asked me to help him develop a healthcare solution.

[00:07:10] There was a healthcare mandate from the federal government called Meaningful Use 2.

[00:07:15] that required that healthcare delivery organizations build patient portals so that their patients could get online and access their health records.

[00:07:26] And there were some specific requirements around how patients had to interact with those patient portals.

[00:07:35] So there was a organization in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Spectrum Health.

[00:07:40] At the time they were the 10th largest health system in the U.S.

[00:07:45] They had grown through acquisition.

[00:07:47] They owned 18 hospitals.

[00:07:49] And they had a disparate number of back-end healthcare systems that we had to integrate and deliver a healthcare patient portal.

[00:07:57] So he asked me to come lead that architectural effort.

[00:08:03] In 18 months we delivered that portal.

[00:08:07] They spent maybe $6 million with us.

[00:08:11] But at the time, if you met certain criteria, the government was giving financial incentives.

[00:08:19] And so they made, in the first year, $36 million in financial incentives.

[00:08:27] And they did that for three years in a row.

[00:08:29] Wow.

[00:08:30] So for a $6 million investment, they made over $100 million in financial incentives.

[00:08:36] And so that both led me to understand the financial benefits of the healthcare industry because that's where most of our money goes.

[00:08:48] But also the human benefit of what can happen when you focus on healthcare as a benefit to people.

[00:08:58] And so that drove me to really dive in and learn a lot and then just become part of what we think at Cloudicity is the solution to healthcare problems.

[00:09:13] And what is that?

[00:09:14] You've got to focus on the delivery of healthcare.

[00:09:17] And you've got to focus on doing it in a cost-efficient manner.

[00:09:20] And you've got to focus the healthcare providers on the people that need solutions.

[00:09:30] And you've got to focus on preventative health.

[00:09:33] And that's the biggest thing that we can do.

[00:09:37] And how does that contrast with the same old way or the way it was being done?

[00:09:42] Well, again, healthcare is generally reactive.

[00:09:45] And so we take care of people.

[00:09:48] They show up at the emergency room.

[00:09:50] They're having a heart attack.

[00:09:51] They're sick.

[00:09:52] We don't spend enough time in this country focusing on preventative medicine.

[00:09:57] We don't spend enough time focusing on the right nutrition, the right ways to keep moving our bodies.

[00:10:05] And as a result, we're in a constant reactive mode.

[00:10:11] And that's why a fifth of our GDP is spent on reactive healthcare.

[00:10:17] And so at Cloudticity, we are on a tear to turn that around.

[00:10:24] And so many of our clients are preventative health organizations.

[00:10:30] We've got a client, Caridove, out of Canada, that is helping babies that are blind or deaf regain their sight, regain their hearing.

[00:10:40] So at the earliest stage of life, we're trying to help turn around some of the conditions which result in negative outcomes later in life.

[00:10:53] So we really love working with these preventative healthcare organizations.

[00:10:58] Got it.

[00:10:58] So you're not just working with the traditional hospital where you go into the ER.

[00:11:02] You're working with a ton of preventative care.

[00:11:04] Yeah.

[00:11:06] So I'm just going to ask the questions on my mind because it seems like everybody's buying the same system, maybe Epic or whatever it is.

[00:11:13] And you just put it in and then do the same things.

[00:11:15] Right.

[00:11:16] And maybe you manage it.

[00:11:17] You manage their technology.

[00:11:17] And that's needed to keep the lights on, right?

[00:11:20] Yeah.

[00:11:20] Or whatever.

[00:11:21] Yeah.

[00:11:22] But how do you tie that to your mission?

[00:11:24] And how do you deliver versus just, you know, and deliver in a way that's tied to your mission, not just here's a, you know, SaaS app or a.

[00:11:33] Yeah.

[00:11:34] Yeah.

[00:11:35] No, great question.

[00:11:36] So, yeah, Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, the meaningful use to laws that we talked about earlier required the adoption.

[00:11:48] Epic obviously is, you know, the 100-pound gorilla out there.

[00:11:52] We see hospitals, we have one customer, one of the top hospital organizations in the world, $18 billion organization.

[00:12:03] They had a billion-dollar Epic rollout.

[00:12:06] So, but what we're seeing is that the doctors hate working with the software.

[00:12:14] And we saw, once the EHR requirement rolled out, we saw a massive retirement wave of doctors.

[00:12:26] Because, you know, if you think about, you go to your doctor now, there's a laptop in between you and your doctor.

[00:12:34] And so, the software, from our perspective, has become an impediment to care.

[00:12:40] And it really should be an adjunct to care.

[00:12:44] And so, what we work on is removing all of the cruft that makes it so difficult for a doctor to work directly with a patient.

[00:12:55] And making that software a benefit to that relationship versus what it is today in general.

[00:13:05] It's just a barrier between patient care.

[00:13:09] And doctors, you know, they have to chart things.

[00:13:12] And they have to stay up until 11, 12, 1 o'clock in the morning charting back into the EHR.

[00:13:19] We think that there are ways that you can use AI to capture voice and to translate that automatically.

[00:13:29] My son was, it's called a scribe, where it's generally a kid that sits in the room and does the typing into the EHR.

[00:13:39] All of that should really be beneficial.

[00:13:42] And so, we've got this incredible investment in software that should enhance the doctor-patient relationship that, to date, it's just not lived up to its promise.

[00:13:55] And so, we at CloudTicity work exceptionally hard at identifying those companies that are using AI, that are using innovative technologies to turn the EHR experience for a doctor and for a patient into something that actually benefits both parties involved in that medical relationship.

[00:14:21] Interesting.

[00:14:21] Can you give me an example of how you make it better?

[00:14:26] I mean, it doesn't have to be vendors, but just a mechanic, because I picture, no matter which the vendor, I just, you know, when they get that large, I just picture these incumbents that don't move agilely.

[00:14:38] And then I picture you saying things like, let's help the patients and let's do AI and let's do all these things.

[00:14:43] And I don't, I picture things that don't go well together, like agile and fast and AI and behemoth bureaucratic type systems.

[00:14:52] Yeah, so, good question.

[00:14:55] So, one of the best things that we've seen is helping move all of that software to the cloud.

[00:15:05] So, Epic is a little bit difficult to move to the cloud, but we've worked really closely with AWS and with Azure to build common ways of moving Epic to the cloud.

[00:15:17] The interesting thing, when you move Epic to the cloud, there are about 10,000 software packages.

[00:15:24] We call them co-travelers that go along with Epic.

[00:15:27] So, it's everything from charting software to imaging software to documentation software.

[00:15:35] Still, strangely enough, in the medical world, the most common way of exchanging health records is through fax.

[00:15:42] So, fax software, go figure.

[00:15:46] But when you move these things to the cloud, things move much more quickly and we can apply AI technology.

[00:15:54] So, when you're doing, for example, an imaging study, you can use AI, which has gotten better than doctors at diagnosing illnesses based on imaging studies.

[00:16:06] So, we're seeing significantly faster and better diagnoses.

[00:16:12] We're seeing faster patient integration and interaction.

[00:16:21] And so, we're seeing significantly better patient interactions.

[00:16:27] So, I'll give you an example.

[00:16:29] When we built the first health information exchange on the cloud, you know, this was 13 years ago.

[00:16:38] We came in at the last minute and they were not going to put their health data on the cloud.

[00:16:45] Like, you know, 13 years ago, the idea that a healthcare organization was going to move data outside of the four walls of their data center was unthinkable.

[00:16:54] Yeah.

[00:16:54] So, we ended up, we simulated the ADD traffic, like the admit discharge traffic of every healthcare bed in the U.S.

[00:17:07] And we ended up winning that deal.

[00:17:10] The timeline for implementing that health information exchange was 18 months.

[00:17:16] We had it up and running in six weeks.

[00:17:18] Wow.

[00:17:20] Yeah.

[00:17:20] Yeah.

[00:17:21] So, seven weeks later, the technology director, the guy that chose us, he had a two-year-old daughter and she started limping.

[00:17:33] So, they brought her to an orthopedist.

[00:17:36] They did some x-rays.

[00:17:38] They determined she had like a hairline fracture in her tibia.

[00:17:42] And the orthopedist said, you know, it's a toddler.

[00:17:45] Like, this happens.

[00:17:46] We'll put a cast on it.

[00:17:47] Three weeks later, she'll be fine.

[00:17:48] By the time they got home, there was a urgent call.

[00:17:53] What they didn't know at the orthopedist was that when this little girl was born, she had a heart condition.

[00:18:01] And as an infant, she had open heart surgery.

[00:18:03] And what presented as a tibial fracture in a normal toddler was a sign of cardiomyopathy in her condition.

[00:18:13] And they rushed her to the emergency room and they saved her life.

[00:18:17] Wow.

[00:18:20] And the message that got from the orthopedist to the cardiologist traversed the health information exchange that we brought live in six weeks instead of 18 weeks.

[00:18:34] So, I get a little teary-eyed when I talk about this.

[00:18:37] But when I talk about real people and real impact, there's a little girl alive today.

[00:18:45] And I know her name because of the work that my team does.

[00:18:50] Wow.

[00:18:51] That's a much deeper connection.

[00:18:54] It's a much deeper connection.

[00:18:56] To blinking lights in the closet than most people are able to make.

[00:19:01] Yeah.

[00:19:01] That's life, literally, you know, life or death.

[00:19:05] Yeah.

[00:19:05] And you know what?

[00:19:07] I love technology.

[00:19:09] I love coding.

[00:19:10] I love all of the behind-the-scenes things.

[00:19:13] But we can never forget why we do what we do.

[00:19:19] And when we get out of bed in the morning, my team thinks about the people that our customers serve.

[00:19:26] And that's the key difference.

[00:19:28] Hmm.

[00:19:30] So, I want to go back to that.

[00:19:33] How did you manage to shrink 18 months into six weeks?

[00:19:37] What's that?

[00:19:38] Oh.

[00:19:39] How did you manage to shrink the 18 months to six weeks in terms of the – because that system wouldn't have been turned up yet, right?

[00:19:46] Yeah.

[00:19:47] Yeah.

[00:19:48] So, cloud was the difference.

[00:19:50] You know, the initial plan was to procure hardware and then wait for boxes to show up and unpack servers and put them into a data center and rack things.

[00:20:03] And in the cloud, you know, you can provision servers in seconds, not in months.

[00:20:10] And so, at Cloudticity, we learned early on the value of automation and the value of the agility that cloud brings and to quickly provision things that would take 10 times longer in physical data centers.

[00:20:30] And so, that's sort of been our mantra from day one.

[00:20:33] And that was our second client.

[00:20:37] And, you know, when we were successful there, we really learned how we should invest in being able to automate everything around provisioning and to accelerate, accelerate, accelerate.

[00:20:57] And our clients experience tremendous gains from the agility that the automation of cloud brings about.

[00:21:09] I want to go back to that.

[00:21:10] So, you won this before anybody was willing to really put a major healthcare system in the cloud.

[00:21:16] Yeah.

[00:21:17] And then I think, you know, I know people still run into this.

[00:21:20] Like, AWS is like, we won't sign a BAA.

[00:21:22] BAA.

[00:21:25] This was before AWS would sign a BAA.

[00:21:29] Yeah.

[00:21:29] Yeah.

[00:21:29] So, like, how did these seem like insurmountable challenges?

[00:21:32] Like, government or not government, but things that are almost like government and then regulations.

[00:21:38] How did you overcome what could seem like an insurmountable challenge?

[00:21:41] I mean, that's just one of, I'm sure, a ton you probably have.

[00:21:50] Honestly, it was probably, like, innocence and stupidity.

[00:22:00] Nobody was doing any of this.

[00:22:02] And so, we didn't know anything at the time.

[00:22:06] And so, we took a flyer with a couple of companies that, for whatever reason, said yes.

[00:22:16] What do you think it was that made them feel like you were the ones to go do this new thing or you could achieve, you could deal with high tech or HIPAA or give the compliance?

[00:22:27] Because even if the IT is a little more, has a little more risk tolerance, I found that there's somebody in compliance somewhere that's not going to be on that ride.

[00:22:37] Compliance officers were always our first conversation.

[00:22:39] Yeah.

[00:22:40] So, it was twofold.

[00:22:42] One was, you know, Meaningful Use 2 was, that was a big thing.

[00:22:50] And there was a lot of money and incentives.

[00:22:53] And so, there was some degree of risk tolerance just to gain access to those dollars.

[00:23:03] And the second was, you know, we were the first company that put anything HIPAA related on Amazon Web Services at the time.

[00:23:11] That was, like, you know, the only viable cloud.

[00:23:15] So, we got their attention.

[00:23:18] And they, you know, some executives kind of partnered with us because the opportunity was so great.

[00:23:27] We delivered the first HIPAA session at Amazon reInvent in 2013.

[00:23:34] And, you know, it's, so it was, I guess, just the perfect storm, right?

[00:23:42] The confluence of government regulation changes of this brand new technology that was out there.

[00:23:51] As it turns out, healthcare collects a lot of data.

[00:23:55] At the time, you know, people were starting to wear Fitbits, which were producing data.

[00:24:01] EHRs were becoming a requirement.

[00:24:04] Data at the time was really expensive unless you looked at something like Amazon S3.

[00:24:09] And then it was, like, pretty cheap.

[00:24:13] So, it was just kind of a perfect storm.

[00:24:21] What about your team?

[00:24:25] I want to talk about the, I guess, the attitudes and appetite for risk is maybe the better way to say it.

[00:24:35] Like, how did your team, you know, feel about let's be the first, let's go do the thing that nobody's done.

[00:24:43] Let's figure out things that, you know, you can't ask them if you want to do if you're the first one to do them.

[00:24:48] Yeah.

[00:24:49] It's a really good question.

[00:24:51] One of my favorite ones in the field.

[00:24:54] So, early on, we were, I think at the time, four people.

[00:24:59] And we were building some of the largest healthcare solutions on the cloud.

[00:25:03] How do you do that with four people?

[00:25:06] We worked really hard.

[00:25:08] Didn't sleep a lot.

[00:25:10] My hair used to be perfectly black.

[00:25:16] But early on, we kind of wondered, like, we were doing really well.

[00:25:22] And we had hit on a solution that we couldn't quite identify what made us click in the right way.

[00:25:32] So, we hired an outside consultant.

[00:25:35] And she interviewed us.

[00:25:37] She interviewed our partners, our customers.

[00:25:41] And she came back with eight principles that made us really click.

[00:25:46] But the two that I want to talk about in answer to your question.

[00:25:51] One is tenacity.

[00:25:54] We just don't quit.

[00:25:58] And we will take on the hardest challenges.

[00:26:02] But we know that it's going to require a tremendous level of effort.

[00:26:06] Because like you said, there's no guidebook, right?

[00:26:09] There's no roadmap to do things that have never been done.

[00:26:13] The other one that I didn't quite understand initially was courage.

[00:26:19] And over time, what I found is that courage is kind of the flip side to the coin of tenacity.

[00:26:27] Because to go down a path that nobody has taken before, to commit to something that has such gravity in terms of human lives requires a tremendous amount of courage.

[00:26:41] Because what we do day in and day out impacts people.

[00:26:45] And if we fail, the human toll can be significant.

[00:26:55] So between tenacity and courage and just building a team of people that live and breathe that day in and day out, that's our secret sauce.

[00:27:07] And you know what?

[00:27:08] We've had some pretty big competitors that we've gone against.

[00:27:13] We win day in and day out.

[00:27:15] We're a small team.

[00:27:16] We go against big, big companies.

[00:27:19] But it's that tenacity and that courage that sets our team apart.

[00:27:26] I love that.

[00:27:28] Speaking of courage, did – like let's say the original one.

[00:27:33] Everybody else is saying it's 18 months to roll it out.

[00:27:35] You guys did it in six weeks.

[00:27:37] Yeah.

[00:27:37] I'm curious.

[00:27:38] Did you tell them it'd be 18 months?

[00:27:40] Did you tell them it'd be 12 weeks and do it in six?

[00:27:44] Or did you tell them like, oh, I think we can pull this off in six or seven weeks?

[00:27:48] Honestly, I don't remember.

[00:27:50] I knew it would be like very, very quick.

[00:27:53] Like I said, we had built that prototype overnight that simulated the ADT traffic from every hospital bed in the U.S.

[00:28:03] I knew it was going to be much faster than 18 months.

[00:28:09] We weren't project planners at the time.

[00:28:11] So I didn't have like a Gantt chart that showed what that was going to look like.

[00:28:17] I just knew it was going to be fast.

[00:28:19] I was just curious if you recall like in the proposal, what was key to winning that deal?

[00:28:26] Like we're going to shorten the implementation cycle greatly.

[00:28:29] Oh, for sure.

[00:28:30] Yeah, yeah.

[00:28:31] Yeah, for sure.

[00:28:31] Yeah, they were still like procuring hardware and we were processing HL7 overnight.

[00:28:39] So they knew that it was going to be much faster with us.

[00:28:43] And break that down.

[00:28:44] What's HL7?

[00:28:45] Oh, sorry.

[00:28:47] HL7 is the standard healthcare messaging format.

[00:28:52] So every time you show up at a hospital, every time that you show up at your doctor, there's a computer message that is captured.

[00:29:03] And that's called HL7.

[00:29:06] So I want to dig in a little bit more.

[00:29:08] How much of either what you did then or what you're doing now, is it actual software development?

[00:29:15] I know a picture like you're more of a managed service and you're implementing some EHR on cloud.

[00:29:23] So then that, I don't want to put words, but like that's more infrastructure management.

[00:29:28] Or do you actually have to write a lot of software to say that this stuff doesn't actually work?

[00:29:34] Great question.

[00:29:35] So our bread and butter, I mean, where we make our money is managed services, managed security,

[00:29:41] and managed compliance for healthcare workloads on the cloud.

[00:29:44] And the reason that we make money doing that is because it's cloud-based with our Cloudticity Oxygen platform,

[00:29:53] we've automated the vast majority of what most of our competitors have to use people to do.

[00:30:00] What do you mean by that?

[00:30:01] Because I can picture maybe some deployment of some VMs that have automated.

[00:30:07] Or perhaps your network, your VPC in Amazon speak.

[00:30:13] But what do you mean?

[00:30:17] Like full stack or like what level of automation?

[00:30:20] Yeah.

[00:30:21] So most of what we focus on today is compliance.

[00:30:26] We have 2,500-ish controls that we monitor automatically.

[00:30:33] Wow.

[00:30:34] The vast majority, when we see something that we don't like, we will auto-remediate it.

[00:30:41] We tie all of that back to the HITRUST CSF framework.

[00:30:49] So much of what most healthcare organizations struggle with from a compliance standpoint,

[00:30:57] we just execute through automation.

[00:30:59] And that's, like I said, 13 years of software development.

[00:31:04] So we use external tools.

[00:31:07] We use a tremendous or hundreds of thousands of lines of code that we've developed.

[00:31:13] We pull a tremendous amount of information from AWS, from Azure, from Google Cloud,

[00:31:23] from the tools like CloudWatch and, you know, the monitoring tools that they provide.

[00:31:32] We use external tools like Prisma Cloud, like CrowdStrike.

[00:31:36] So we're pulling a tremendous amount of information into a gigantic data lake in real time.

[00:31:42] And then we've got a rules engine that operates against that in real time and identifies problems that are about to happen.

[00:31:52] And then we prevent them from happening.

[00:31:55] See, I think, help me if I get this right.

[00:31:58] Sure.

[00:31:58] The three things are mostly managed services, managed security, and managed compliance.

[00:32:03] Yeah.

[00:32:04] And if I'm understanding you, you're delivering those things, which is amazing.

[00:32:09] Yeah.

[00:32:09] But it sounds like you are managing it.

[00:32:13] Don't get me wrong.

[00:32:13] I don't want to take that away.

[00:32:15] Yeah.

[00:32:15] One of your superpowers, it sounds like, because everybody knows that you could automate cloud.

[00:32:22] Yeah.

[00:32:22] And it seems like everybody starts with some PowerShell scripts or something, you know, automate a few actions.

[00:32:26] Yeah.

[00:32:27] But that's a long way from where, you know, you guys are.

[00:32:31] No, we have, we've really kind of honed then in our software stack is really good at that.

[00:32:39] But then to get back to your original question.

[00:32:41] So that, that's where we make our bread and butter money.

[00:32:45] But we do have a professional services team.

[00:32:50] And that's kind of the fun stuff.

[00:32:52] When clients come to us and they say, okay, we, we need to help building a solution that you're eventually going to manage.

[00:33:01] Can you help us kind of figure out how to best leverage the cloud?

[00:33:05] That's where the fun comes in.

[00:33:07] Um, and so the pro serve team, it's a much smaller part of our business, but it's the one that I think is more impactful on the healthcare industry.

[00:33:19] Right.

[00:33:20] So then whatever they do need, they need these things connected or to do something it didn't do or something like that.

[00:33:25] That's when you're bringing professional services.

[00:33:28] Yeah, exactly.

[00:33:29] I love that.

[00:33:30] So I don't want to put words in your mouth.

[00:33:32] I'm curious, Jerry, but as I hear this, I mean, it, it sounds like you're an MSP, but the opportunity to automate a lot of those things would be the possible or unlikely.

[00:33:44] If you're still sticking, racking things in a data center.

[00:33:47] So it sounds like you are an MSP delivering managed compliance, managed security and managed services.

[00:33:52] Yeah.

[00:33:52] But you've got this superpower of, you know, software development where you built the remediation and the monitoring and all the other things.

[00:34:01] Yeah.

[00:34:01] To allow what would probably take a lot more heads.

[00:34:08] Yeah.

[00:34:08] Oh yeah.

[00:34:09] Yeah.

[00:34:10] Yeah.

[00:34:10] One of our bigger investments is in our software development team.

[00:34:16] And we put our money there instead of putting our money in people that are doing sort of that day-to-day management.

[00:34:25] And, you know, the average MSP runs maybe 35% gross margin.

[00:34:33] We're 70 plus percent gross margin.

[00:34:36] Yeah.

[00:34:36] That's, that's a software company, not a, not an MSP margin.

[00:34:41] Exactly.

[00:34:41] Right.

[00:34:41] That's a SaaS type margin.

[00:34:43] Exactly.

[00:34:44] Yeah.

[00:34:44] Okay.

[00:34:46] Yeah.

[00:34:46] So, yeah.

[00:34:47] And I don't want to put words, but it's, it's almost a SaaS business model in terms of the margins and the way you're able to execute with software, but you're delivering managed services instead of just saying, here's some off the shelf.

[00:35:26] Yeah.

[00:35:27] And I'm a company that allows location independence.

[00:35:32] So I'm as likely to be on a beach in Thailand as I am in my condo in Seattle.

[00:35:43] And I, you know, I, I want my people to do the same thing.

[00:35:47] I want people to have location independence and freedom to travel, to work their own schedule.

[00:35:55] We've never had a vacation policy.

[00:35:58] Um, we have a policy of do the right thing for the company, do the right thing for your teammates, for your customers and for your life.

[00:36:10] And that that's been our goal from day one.

[00:36:14] That's both for myself, for my family and for the 30 plus people that I employ.

[00:36:22] That is nothing very different from the typical MSP there.

[00:36:26] There's definitely some, but is this, uh, you hire nationally or whatever you do to look to hire a team?

[00:36:34] Yeah, no, we, we, we have no location preference.

[00:36:38] Um, I've had people like, I had, we can only hire, uh, U S citizens because, you know, we do like federal data and that sort of thing.

[00:36:47] So, um, but I had a U S citizen guy that lived in Israel.

[00:36:53] Like we, we have people around the world.

[00:36:55] Um, I spend several months in Europe.

[00:36:59] I've had guys that like took their family to Greece for a couple of months.

[00:37:03] Like it, wherever you want to be, um, as long as you're, uh, displaying fidelity toward your team's needs, toward your customers needs.

[00:37:16] I don't care where you are.

[00:37:17] I don't care what time you're up.

[00:37:19] It, it, I, I, I don't lead that way.

[00:37:22] So you built it by design that way.

[00:37:24] A lot of us were forced into that world in a post COVID world.

[00:37:30] Yeah.

[00:37:30] And, you know, I've learned that, uh, we were set up better because we were starting to hire remotely, but we were still primarily in office and then hired remotely.

[00:37:40] And I've learned that, you know, hybrid is different.

[00:37:42] All remote is different.

[00:37:43] In office is different.

[00:37:45] Yeah.

[00:37:45] I think there's some pros and cons when it comes to things like culture.

[00:37:48] So how do you maintain the kind of bonds and culture that you want when you have not only, uh, different locations, but sounds like different work hours and time zones.

[00:38:01] Yeah.

[00:38:01] No, good, good question.

[00:38:03] Um, a lot of zoom.

[00:38:07] So we, we, we, it was interesting.

[00:38:10] One of my earlier employees said, um, he said, he, you know, when, when I worked in an office, I never communicated with my coworkers as much as I do here.

[00:38:22] So we have a culture of communication.

[00:38:25] I mean, we are always online with each other.

[00:38:28] We're always talking, uh, always sharing information.

[00:38:31] So that's key.

[00:38:33] And, you know, we, we do regular offsites.

[00:38:36] Like we, we get people together on a fairly regular basis.

[00:38:39] It's, um, it's a big investment, you know, an offsite might cost us 80,000, a hundred thousand dollars.

[00:38:45] Um, but it, it is good to get people together in person.

[00:38:52] Um, but it's not necessary to do that on a daily basis for us.

[00:38:58] What do you have a, a, a preference on how often you like to do offsites?

[00:39:03] It, we used to do it, uh, semi annually.

[00:39:08] Uh, at this point, it's the logistics of getting 30 people together.

[00:39:13] We do it at least annually.

[00:39:16] So we got together most recently in San Antonio, Texas, which was great.

[00:39:21] Nice.

[00:39:22] And then we have, um, like our leadership team gets together quarterly, um, various teams get together more regularly, but we, we get the whole company together on an annual basis.

[00:39:34] And we, we, we, we spend a lot of attention toward making it a very productive agenda, but also, you know, we do fun stuff like scavenger hunts and, you know, escape rooms.

[00:39:49] And, you know, just, just to make sure that, um, we like each other and the team likes each other.

[00:39:57] We, we, we're, we're, we're a, we're a fun team.

[00:40:01] Um, we're a friendly team and we're a highly efficient, effective and efficient team.

[00:40:09] Yeah.

[00:40:10] Yeah.

[00:40:10] I think it's easy to forget being remote doesn't mean you can't ever see each other.

[00:40:14] No.

[00:40:14] Right.

[00:40:14] Of course.

[00:40:15] Yeah.

[00:40:16] Yeah.

[00:40:16] Uh, and, uh, build those bonds.

[00:40:20] Um, yeah.

[00:40:21] See each other in real life.

[00:40:23] Yeah.

[00:40:24] Um, what, what else do you think is important?

[00:40:27] I know you, you talk about culture and it starts at the top.

[00:40:30] What else do you think it's important on, uh, from a leadership and a culture perspective?

[00:40:38] Um, passion for our cause.

[00:40:41] Right.

[00:40:42] So, you know, like, like I said, our vision at CloudTicity is we want to help make every

[00:40:48] person on earth healthier through the work that we do.

[00:40:51] And so really rallying around that cause, um, it is critical.

[00:40:59] Um, a lot of diversity.

[00:41:01] We like, we have so many different ages and colors and preferences at our table.

[00:41:09] Um, and so having all of those voices, uh, is critical.

[00:41:17] But to weave together so many different types of people, you need a common cause and you

[00:41:23] need a common set of principles.

[00:41:25] And so we really, we rally around the eight principles of our culture.

[00:41:30] That's never changed from our third year or fourth year in business.

[00:41:36] Um, and kind of sticking to our swim lane, you know, we, we do one thing.

[00:41:47] We do healthcare on the cloud and we were really good at cloud.

[00:41:51] So we've had so many opportunities.

[00:41:54] We, we had a, we were offered a billion dollar deal to move into the energy field.

[00:42:01] Wow.

[00:42:02] And we said, no billion with a B that's a, that was a big deal.

[00:42:06] That was a big deal.

[00:42:07] Um, but that's not what we do.

[00:42:10] And so just sticking to what we do and rallying around that cause is, I think one of the keys

[00:42:22] to why we've been successful at, at what we do.

[00:42:27] I love that.

[00:42:28] There's so many MSPs that not all, but a lot of figured out you need to niche and we haven't

[00:42:33] really brought that up, but from day one, you were already highly, not only healthcare,

[00:42:39] but healthcare in the cloud.

[00:42:40] So different, different take on it.

[00:42:42] Um, and I think it's easy to say, it's easy to read about.

[00:42:47] It's harder to do.

[00:42:48] Yeah.

[00:42:48] And I can't imagine like what, what went through the, what kind of process did you guys go

[00:42:53] through, like how entertaining a billion dollar deal.

[00:42:56] Right.

[00:42:57] Because I think a lot of people would say, well, we do need to focus, but on the other

[00:43:00] hand, with that size deal, we can have a whole nother team that focuses, you know, we'd get

[00:43:04] another team the size of ours or bigger, you know, just to focus quote unquote on, uh,

[00:43:10] on another industry.

[00:43:12] Cause I know I've talked to people and say, you know, we only serve three industries.

[00:43:15] Yeah.

[00:43:16] Um, it, it, it would have killed us.

[00:43:20] Yeah.

[00:43:20] Is the answer.

[00:43:21] Um, we, we weren't big enough to take that deal on and we had to get really intentional

[00:43:32] about what it is that we're here to do.

[00:43:34] And what we're here to do is it, we make money, like obviously like with our margins, we do

[00:43:40] well.

[00:43:41] Um, and you know, as a serial entrepreneur, like I, I build companies that make money, but

[00:43:47] what we're here to do is to help every human on earth get healthier through the work that

[00:43:51] we do.

[00:43:51] And that was not in our vision.

[00:43:59] And we have to be very intentional about why we're here and what we're here to do.

[00:44:05] And we try not to forget that every day that we get out of bed.

[00:44:10] This isn't your first rodeo.

[00:44:12] It's not your first exit.

[00:44:12] Even lots of people, there's, there's a few people who started multiple businesses and had

[00:44:17] failures, but you've had some exits and you've, this has come up again and again.

[00:44:22] And it's really interesting to me, but because you could be doing lots of things or nothing,

[00:44:27] it sounds like.

[00:44:29] Yeah.

[00:44:29] So why is your mission to help people and their healthcare so important to you?

[00:44:39] Wow.

[00:44:39] It's a really, really good question.

[00:44:41] Um, yeah, I, I keep trying to retire, but I just can't.

[00:44:55] Um, I, you know, I, I, I was born with certain gifts that I, I can't take credit for.

[00:45:11] Right.

[00:45:12] Um, was born with motivation and intelligence.

[00:45:19] And that's not something that I did.

[00:45:23] That's something that was gifted to me.

[00:45:26] And I feel an obligation to do something with that.

[00:45:34] Right.

[00:45:35] I, it, there's, there's this incredible world of people that need what I can build a team

[00:45:48] to give them.

[00:45:51] And I have to do it.

[00:45:53] Like I did, there's, it's not even a choice.

[00:45:56] It's, it's an obligation.

[00:45:58] And so it, every business I've started, you know, it's been, I've tried to, um, deliver

[00:46:07] some impact and I, I don't see a day when I won't feel that drive.

[00:46:16] Like I, I.

[00:46:19] Mm-hmm.

[00:46:20] Is there some part of your journey that led you to say, I want to help people in healthcare

[00:46:24] or, or maybe help people be more proactive?

[00:46:27] Did you have a part of your journey where you said, I need to be, you know, non, not just

[00:46:32] reactive and in, uh, in sick care?

[00:46:36] Well, uh, yeah.

[00:46:39] Um, I mentioned I've, I've had two heart attacks myself.

[00:46:44] I, you know, have been on all sorts of statin medication and blood pressure medication.

[00:46:54] And I one day just realized maybe I can manage this through more proactive, healthy living.

[00:47:02] And so I did a ton of research and I found some supplements and I changed my diet and, um,

[00:47:08] I don't take any medication.

[00:47:09] My, and my, my health has completely normalized.

[00:47:14] So all that through proactive intervention, people can become healthier.

[00:47:20] And we live in a society where our food industry lies to us.

[00:47:27] Our pharmaceutical industry lies to us.

[00:47:30] Our healthcare industry doesn't care about us until we're sick.

[00:47:34] And then they charge us a lot of money.

[00:47:36] Um, and we, as a society, society, we, we can do better.

[00:47:42] Um, and you know, through personal experience, I've learned this and what would be the worth

[00:47:51] of my life if I didn't share that with the world at large?

[00:47:55] What would be my value on walking this planet?

[00:47:59] If after so much research and self-intervention, I don't help other people.

[00:48:07] Hmm.

[00:48:09] Hmm.

[00:48:10] Hmm.

[00:48:10] So I've been very blessed to speak with a, anordinate number of fast growing top MSPs.

[00:48:18] And there's some that pick a good niche, but what struck me is you, you didn't pick a niche.

[00:48:25] You are the niche.

[00:48:27] The niche picked me.

[00:48:29] Yeah.

[00:48:29] I, I, I didn't set out to do this.

[00:48:32] I, I, I fell into it and it enveloped me and it's become my life.

[00:48:41] Yeah.

[00:48:42] It's, it's, it's like, it's your, it seems to be your calling.

[00:48:44] It seems to be what you're, what you're here to do, at least in this season.

[00:48:47] And I love that because there's a big difference in commitment versus, you know, there was three

[00:48:54] niches that were attractive and economically viable.

[00:48:57] And I picked this one.

[00:48:58] Yeah.

[00:48:59] Uh, I love that.

[00:49:00] Um, is there any starting points for folks listening that on your journey of diet, on your journey

[00:49:11] of supplements and your journey of, um, exercise on your, anywhere in your journey?

[00:49:17] Cause you went from, you know, pretty unhealthy to, to being off all those medications.

[00:49:22] Sounds like you're significantly healthier.

[00:49:24] I know I've been on my own journey and I don't claim to be an expert, but I'm curious if there's

[00:49:28] anything that as folks are listening, you think would, you know, this might be interesting

[00:49:32] to start you look at this or try this.

[00:49:35] Uh, be intentional.

[00:49:37] Um, like personally, I, I know the joke is how do you find the vegan in the room?

[00:49:44] Don't worry.

[00:49:44] They'll find you, but I, I don't eat meat.

[00:49:47] Um, I think that, uh, plant-based diet is healthier.

[00:49:54] Um, my wife is in the, uh, office, but normally I work, I have a treadmill at my desk.

[00:50:00] So I walk maybe 10 to 15 miles a day.

[00:50:04] Um, I don't drive.

[00:50:06] I walk everywhere.

[00:50:07] We live downtown Seattle.

[00:50:08] Um, just be intentional about health in your life.

[00:50:15] Um, balance work, value your family.

[00:50:19] I have four kids and just love your time with them.

[00:50:25] And, you know, none of us will be here forever.

[00:50:28] Um, but while we're here, what we can contribute to the greater good, I think is the most important

[00:50:38] thing that we can, um, focus on.

[00:50:41] I want to switch gears, um, and ask you some questions.

[00:50:46] Yeah.

[00:50:47] And, uh, I would love to hear what's been your biggest lesson in building this and running

[00:50:53] this.

[00:50:55] Oh, um, I think the biggest lesson is how lonely it can be at the time.

[00:51:08] Hmm.

[00:51:09] Tell me more about that.

[00:51:10] I can relate, but yes, tell me more.

[00:51:12] So, you know, everybody wants to be the CEO and for me, um, it's, it's a very isolated

[00:51:27] role.

[00:51:28] Um, everybody looks to you to have all the answers.

[00:51:34] Like honestly, on any given day, I'm just winging it.

[00:51:38] Yeah.

[00:51:39] You know, I get it right more often than not, you know, lucky me.

[00:51:45] Um, but I don't know the answers and, but I have to present myself as if I know the answers.

[00:51:52] Like you don't, you don't want to get on an airplane and have the pilot look all worried,

[00:51:57] right?

[00:51:57] You want to be confident and people expect that of me.

[00:52:01] Um, and there's really nobody to go to when you feel, uh, scared.

[00:52:10] Hmm.

[00:52:12] Hmm.

[00:52:13] And so just learning to deal with that sort of uncertainty and loneliness has been the

[00:52:21] most unexpected part of this journey for me.

[00:52:25] Hmm.

[00:52:25] Hmm.

[00:52:27] I appreciate that.

[00:52:28] It can be very lonely in my, in my experience.

[00:52:32] Yeah.

[00:52:33] Um, yeah.

[00:52:35] And I won't speak for you, but at least when I've done things that were unconventional,

[00:52:43] unorthodox first time, it feels like there's even less people to talk to.

[00:52:48] Yeah.

[00:52:49] Right.

[00:52:49] If you're building the same, uh, you know, dry cleaning business or something, there's lots

[00:52:55] of people that have, that have, uh, that have done that before.

[00:52:59] Yeah.

[00:53:00] And at the same time, I, I wouldn't give this up for anything in the world.

[00:53:05] Um, the privilege and the thrill of leading this journey is that that's, that's, that's

[00:53:18] the thrill of a lifetime.

[00:53:19] And I wouldn't do it in any other way.

[00:53:22] Well, on that note, uh, I'm sure there's been some downs along with those ups.

[00:53:29] What's, what's one thing you'd share with us that if you, if you could, you'd do a over

[00:53:33] or differently?

[00:53:40] Hmm.

[00:53:40] That's a good question.

[00:53:41] Um, the, the hardest part of my job from my very first time that I hired a person,

[00:53:54] is recognizing when a person is not the right part of your team and parting ways, uh, efficiently.

[00:54:07] Um, I remember I, my second company, I think I was 21 years old and we had hired a guy that

[00:54:17] it turned out he wasn't the right person.

[00:54:19] Um, I'm 21.

[00:54:21] The guy was my dad's age, teenage kids and we knew we had to let him go.

[00:54:28] And I delayed and I delayed.

[00:54:32] And I, I remember, um, the day that we, we had to let him go.

[00:54:37] I sat down with him and I had to run out of the room and vomit.

[00:54:42] I was so sad because all I could think about was the guy going home to his family and saying

[00:54:51] that he had just lost his job.

[00:54:53] And to this day, um, when I have to part ways with somebody, it's no easier than that

[00:55:02] first time.

[00:55:02] Mm-hmm.

[00:55:04] Mm-hmm.

[00:55:04] But balancing that against the other 30 plus people in the company that might be impacted

[00:55:12] by the wrong person on the team, um, that's the hardest part about my job is when you just

[00:55:22] make the wrong choice or the company changes.

[00:55:27] And, you know, somebody who was right at one time is no longer right based on the new trajectory

[00:55:33] that, that is just the worst part about my job.

[00:55:37] And that that's the part that I am still to this day, not very good at.

[00:55:41] Mm.

[00:55:42] I appreciate the candor.

[00:55:44] Uh, I want to ask about talent.

[00:55:48] It seems like you built probably an amazing, what I would call somewhat unconventional team.

[00:55:56] Yeah.

[00:55:56] Yeah.

[00:55:57] Uh, you've assembled, you know, quite a bunch of interesting folks.

[00:56:00] Yeah.

[00:56:01] What is, the other thing is if people ever do to go remote, then they go, well, I had this

[00:56:06] little pool in my city to now I have the entire nation, which can be a blessing or a curse

[00:56:11] depending on how you view that.

[00:56:13] So how, I mean, you hire anywhere, right?

[00:56:15] So how, what's your process or how do you approach hiring?

[00:56:22] We have a full-time recruiter, uh, Krista McRae is her name.

[00:56:27] Wow.

[00:56:28] She is a magician.

[00:56:30] Full-time recruiter at that, at your side.

[00:56:33] Yeah.

[00:56:33] And she's been with us for quite some time.

[00:56:35] Yeah.

[00:56:35] She, she was an earlier hire for us because we knew that we would have to staff up.

[00:56:40] Um, she is, I don't know how she does it.

[00:56:44] Um, she waves her magic wand and people just flock to our open positions.

[00:56:51] You know, we, we have a brand, people want to work for us.

[00:56:54] Um, but how Krista finds the people that she brings on and we have really, really, really

[00:57:02] good people.

[00:57:03] Like there, there is, there's no weak spot on our team.

[00:57:07] Um, so, uh, that, that, that's been one of the greatest investments that we've made.

[00:57:13] And she is one of the most valuable members of our team.

[00:57:18] How, how, what's house for you guys when you had, when you hired somebody?

[00:57:21] Oh, I think she might've been our 15th employee, maybe.

[00:57:25] Wow.

[00:57:25] That's super early compared to most.

[00:57:28] I'm not saying it's wrong.

[00:57:28] That's amazing.

[00:57:29] We knew we needed it.

[00:57:31] You know, we, we, we knew that we're going to grow.

[00:57:33] Um, like I said, our head count doesn't scale linearly with our revenue because of the software

[00:57:41] investment, but we do need to grow.

[00:57:45] And when we grow, we need top notch talent.

[00:57:49] Like we're, we're not going to settle for B players and she does nothing but find A plus

[00:57:55] players.

[00:57:55] I don't know how she does it, but she's been one of the greatest investments that we've

[00:57:59] ever made.

[00:57:59] Why is this so important to you to bring in a full-time recruiter?

[00:58:05] A lot of people still don't have a full-time recruiter at a hundred plus employees.

[00:58:10] Why is it so important to have a full-time recruiter so early to you?

[00:58:17] Because we make such judicious investments in our team.

[00:58:22] Everyone counts.

[00:58:24] And we needed to make sure that we, like I said, nothing but A plus.

[00:58:29] And so we knew early on that that was a key player if we were going to continue to grow

[00:58:35] effectively.

[00:58:36] Um, especially as a remote team, you know, even pre COVID, um, the culture that we've developed

[00:58:43] is so critical.

[00:58:44] And the way that we work together and communicate together is so critical.

[00:58:49] Um, we couldn't afford to make any wrong moves.

[00:58:54] And Krista has been one of the key players in helping us build this team.

[00:59:00] I love that.

[00:59:02] I love how intentional you were from very early on.

[00:59:07] What, what's a common myth about running an MSP that you'd love to dispel?

[00:59:12] It's not all about the technology.

[00:59:16] Um, now you have to get the technology right.

[00:59:19] You have to be perfect in the technology, right?

[00:59:21] You can't, you can't be 99%.

[00:59:25] You gotta be 100% all of the time.

[00:59:31] And, but that's the starting line.

[00:59:33] And many MSPs think that if they can deliver that, they've achieved their goal.

[00:59:41] What you need to deliver is on top of that fidelity of service, you have to deliver an

[00:59:48] incredible customer experience and you have to make your customers better at what they do

[00:59:52] than they could ever get on their own.

[00:59:55] And so building that baseline of technical fidelity and then delivering that value on top, most MSPs

[01:00:07] miss that.

[01:00:09] And, you know, we, we at Cloudticity, we're super proud that that's always been how we've

[01:00:16] approached the business.

[01:00:17] We have always partnered with our customers to make them better than they could be on their

[01:00:23] own.

[01:00:23] And we have customers for that have been with us for more than a decade.

[01:00:30] And we, we had one customer that when we acquired them, they were $5,000 a month.

[01:00:36] They grew to $500,000 a month.

[01:00:38] Wow.

[01:00:39] Customer that went from 30,000 to 500, $600,000 a month.

[01:00:43] Um, so we grow together and we do that and they stay with us because we're not just providing

[01:00:52] technology services.

[01:00:53] We are their partner day in and day out.

[01:00:56] And I think a lot of MSPs, they just, they go to a racy matrix.

[01:01:01] They say, these are the services we deliver.

[01:01:04] And here are our, our SLAs.

[01:01:06] It, all of what you have to do.

[01:01:08] Um, but you gotta know your customer and you've got to truly care about your customers and

[01:01:14] become their confidants and their friends.

[01:01:19] Um, and that, that's something I, I think is missing in general in the industry.

[01:01:25] And I think it's something that our team here at CloudTacity gets ready.

[01:01:30] I love that.

[01:01:31] You gotta really know them.

[01:01:32] Yeah.

[01:01:33] Yeah, absolutely.

[01:01:34] Yeah, we have, uh, team meetings.

[01:01:37] Um, one of our favorite things is, uh, we have a, a position called the cloud value architect

[01:01:44] that is designed to deliver cloud value.

[01:01:47] Um, they have to deliver a presentation about what their customer does.

[01:01:54] And so it's not just, they have this many servers or this many, you know, EC2 instances

[01:01:59] or EKS, whatever, um, they talk about the value that their customer delivers to the industry.

[01:02:06] You know, they save children's sight, they save, you know, cancer patients.

[01:02:11] And so that, that's where we focus.

[01:02:14] And I, I think a lot of MSPs, they, they just, they're not that day-to-day invested in

[01:02:22] what their customers do.

[01:02:25] All right.

[01:02:26] Some of you listening, you can challenge right there.

[01:02:28] Yeah.

[01:02:29] What, what's something with all the changes, all the things going on, what's, what's something

[01:02:33] that you're looking forward to?

[01:02:40] I guess at my age, just waking up tomorrow.

[01:02:45] Like that, that's a fair answer.

[01:02:50] No, honestly, I, I, I love, I love what I do.

[01:02:54] I, I, I, you know, we'll exit at some point, but, um, I, I really can't imagine a day of

[01:03:04] not doing this.

[01:03:07] I, I love everything about what we do here at Cloudticity.

[01:03:11] Every single thing about it.

[01:03:13] Wow.

[01:03:15] Is there anything, I don't know, AI is a buzzword or M&A is hot.

[01:03:19] Is there any particular trend or thing that you think you're looking forward to like incorporating

[01:03:24] this for your team or your clients or?

[01:03:26] Um, AI for sure.

[01:03:29] Um, it, it's a buzzword.

[01:03:32] Um, we look at it a little bit differently, you know, in, when you monitor 2,500 data points,

[01:03:40] um, there can be a lot of noise.

[01:03:42] So we think about AI in terms of just kind of like separating the wheat from the chaff.

[01:03:48] Um, yeah, uh, it'll sort itself out.

[01:03:55] Um, we use AI, a lot of, you know, marketing, writing, that sort of thing.

[01:04:01] Um, we're super excited.

[01:04:08] I mean, there, there's such, uh, tremendous advances in using AI, particularly around imaging

[01:04:17] and identifying diseases, um, from imaging, uh, studies through automation, um, integrating

[01:04:26] disparate data sets.

[01:04:28] You know, you've got genomics, you've got clinical data, behavioral health data, and these are

[01:04:34] gigantic data sets.

[01:04:36] So identifying commonalities across those and, and building customized clinical, um,

[01:04:43] pathways is super exciting.

[01:04:47] Um, you know, so those are some of the areas that, that we're investing in and our customers

[01:04:52] are investing.

[01:04:53] Um, it, it's really about integrating and managing gigantic data sets, gigantic numbers

[01:05:01] of, of, uh, clinical alerts, of behavioral alerts, of, um, compliance alerts for environments.

[01:05:10] That, the, the, those are, those are areas where, um, we think there's just a tremendous

[01:05:15] amount of upside and opportunity for improvement.

[01:05:18] So that, that's where we focus our time day by day.

[01:05:20] What's a number one book you would recommend somebody to read?

[01:05:27] The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

[01:05:29] Hmm.

[01:05:31] All time favorite book.

[01:05:33] Yeah.

[01:05:33] It's a great book.

[01:05:34] Yeah.

[01:05:34] It's a fantastic book.

[01:05:36] Yeah.

[01:05:36] I learned more from that book than I think that from anything else.

[01:05:40] Yeah.

[01:05:40] That is a great book.

[01:05:41] Definitely.

[01:05:42] Definitely.

[01:05:43] Great read.

[01:05:44] I recommend it as well.

[01:05:45] Yeah.

[01:05:46] Yep.

[01:05:47] Um, well, for everybody that's listening, Jerry, uh, and if it's all right with you,

[01:05:54] could they reach out to you?

[01:05:55] If so, how do they, how do they find you online or connect with you?

[01:05:58] Oh, absolutely.

[01:05:59] That would be my pleasure.

[01:06:00] Uh, it's Jerry, G E R R Y at cloudicity.com.

[01:06:06] And email me anytime.

[01:06:08] Awesome.

[01:06:09] I always like to develop new relationships.

[01:06:11] Yeah.

[01:06:11] Make sure to take Jerry up on that offer.

[01:06:13] Uh, Jerry with a G and, uh, and, uh, and cloudicity.

[01:06:18] Um, I loved our conversation today.

[01:06:21] I learned a ton.

[01:06:22] Um, this was a true blessing.

[01:06:24] And thank you for being on MSP.

[01:06:27] It's my pleasure.

[01:06:28] Thank you so much.

[01:06:29] Thank you.