Customer Zero: Why this MSP Dogfoods AI Before Selling It

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[00:00:57] Okay, we've got a problem over here with shadow AI. Let's shut that down or how do you want to approach that? The real valuable ones are look at these functions, look at what these individuals are doing and how much easier can we make their life? They're the really rewarding conversations that we're having.

[00:01:13] Hey guys, Damien Stevens, host of MSP Mindset, founder and CEO of Servosity. Today, I was blessed to spend time interviewing Ben Smoker. He is the CEO of SOTA, which is a top 10 MSP in the United Kingdom.

[00:01:34] And the fascinating thing to me was they were ready to go to market with their AI offerings nine months ago, well before most of us, yet they decided to be customer zero. For them, that meant let's not just look through an IT lens. Let's go to every department and counterintuitively, let's go to the busiest person in every department, finance, HR, marketing, sales, etc.

[00:02:00] And let's figure out what their true problems are. By actually implementing the things that hurt the worst in every single department, they learned what governance is really needed, which solutions actually work, what AI is truly capable of, and perhaps most importantly, they unlocked.

[00:02:18] When they go to sit down with a customer, they can tell you directly how it saved them time and money. And if you want to talk to their finance guy about how it works for him, they can put you in touch with him. So if you'd like to unlock this kind of potential for your MSP and how that informs your go-to-market, don't miss out on my conversation with Ben today. Ben, welcome to MSP Mindset. Thank you. It's good to be here.

[00:02:46] Yeah. I want to dive right in. You, Sota, specifically took kind of an approach that not everyone takes, took a little more time. I think you were saying something like six to nine months to, I don't know what I would call be more clear about your go-to-market with AI. So let's start with why, right? Yep.

[00:03:12] Sometimes we get in the rush, like first one. Tell me your thoughts around that. Yeah. I mean, it's, we've, I think to start, kind of go back to try and talk about our history.

[00:03:24] So we've, we've been around almost four decades. So, and some of our customers we've had for 20, 30 years. So they know us, they trust us. And, you know, if those customers saw us just rushing to market with a new offering and just following, you know, like sheep, if you like, they're going to question, are we, are we taking the right approach?

[00:03:49] Have we, you know, we've got their best interests at heart or are we just being driven, you know, by profit decisions and what everyone else is doing in the market? So we made a real clear decision that we wasn't going to, you know, take that approach. It was a governance first. We also recognize the fact that as a business, which I think a lot of MSPs can probably relate to. We spend all of our day, all of our lives trying to make our customers' environments better and safer.

[00:04:19] And it's quite easy to take the eye, your eye off the ball in terms of your own environment. So, you know, we, we went through an intense period and, you know, this, this will be ongoing around our own digital transformation. You know, and it's not all about AI, you know, it's about, you know, challenging the way you do things. Is it automation? Is it AI? Is it just, you know, putting the right people in the right places, challenging processes?

[00:04:45] So we went through an intense period, as you said, you know, six to nine months where we really challenged ourselves on governance, using test cases in our own business to say, this isn't just about the techs. You know, this isn't just about the customer. Let's get some, let's get some test cases. Let's go to the guys in finance. Let's go to the people in HR. Let's get under the hood of, you know, what, what are their pain points? What are the repetitive tasks that they do?

[00:05:10] So clearly then we started to build up a picture of, you know, time that we can save, how we can make lives easier for those individuals. And it was a really rewarding process because then when we're sitting in front of a customer, we actually believe it. We know we've done it because we've treated TOTA as customer zero ultimately. I think that comes naturally to some of us.

[00:05:36] You know, sometimes we're like, I'll deploy the new, you know, cybersecurity, you know, we used to call it AV, right? Fulfill in the name of the three letter, four letter acronym, right? Right. But I think that was really more of a vendor bake off. Right. So. I want to unpack what you said, because I think that's one of the problems we're having in the industry.

[00:06:05] Like, what am I going to offer my customers? And one of my questions is, what have you done internally? And usually the answer is not much, you know, resold this product, chatted with it. The other thing that I want to unpack around the dog fooding part was you didn't say. Technical support or operations first, you know, you said things like, I can't say it as cool as you did, but like HR or.

[00:06:33] Or you said finance. I think that's the part most people are missing, right? I think sometimes they don't realize this really can apply to the whole business. So I'd like to just start with like, how did you guys even approach? Where do we even start? Not only tooling, but even more importantly, like which people or departments? Like how do we even figure out which processes or workflows or whatever it is to even consider? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:03] So I think that I was at a slight advantage in this case because I'm non-technical. I'm an accountant by trade. So I've, you know, I'm a non-tech CEO. So I haven't got, you know, an affinity to certain technologies or, you know, yes, I've got a love for technology. And I've been in the space, you know, a long time, you know, and a relatively good understanding. And hopefully you don't test me on that today.

[00:07:28] But I think the beauty of that is that when you don't have an affinity to that, you don't, you know, I've never, you know, I can't fall in love with certain technologies. You know, all I can do is kind of fall in love with outcomes, you know, and everything based around customer outcomes, you know. And, you know, if I take the view then, you know, the people in my business are customers as well. You know, what do they want?

[00:07:57] How do I, how does a business make their lives easier? So what we did was quite simple, really. We looked across and, you know, we didn't, there was, there was not no huge art to it. We basically said, let's get a person from each area of the business, you know, different functions in the business. And let's, you know, really analyze and open their eyes to the power of AI.

[00:08:21] First of all, get a baseline to what they're doing, how long things take, what are their pain points, hear it directly from them. And don't just sit up in an ivory tower and go, oh, you know, we believe, you know, this, this person takes this amount of time to do this. So really involve those people, get them invested. And I wasn't interested at that point, whether they had an interest in AI at all. It was just get to the bottom of what they do day to day.

[00:08:47] And you start seeing the pattern and they start seeing the pattern without even realizing of those repetitive tasks they do day in, day out. And we all go to work and there's an element of our jobs we just do. And we just do the repetitive and then we do all the firefighting around it. And that's what, that was the picture I wanted to paint. So it was really just get that baseline first of all, you know, and then see where we can go with that. So there was no, there was no huge art to it.

[00:09:15] Just staying organized and staying open to it. And knowing that, right, we wasn't right at the forefront of this, you know, you know, AI has been around a long time now. So we did have the beauty of being, I want to say slightly late to the party from a tech perspective. But I look, you know, we've got, you know, almost 400 recurring customers today and a huge element of those are still not leveraging kind of the power of AI.

[00:09:45] So there's, we're going through the big education piece at the moment, you know, to try and convince them. But going back to what I said, you know, a short while ago, now we've got something where we say that we've got someone in our finance team. You know, do you want your, do you want your head of finance to speak to ours? You know, and then the conversation becomes far more believable, far more powerful.

[00:10:09] You know, you get two accountants talking to each other and they go, have you ever, have you ever tried, you know, have you ever tried, have you tried an agent in, you know, an Excel? What's that? I'm just really good at formulas. You know, you don't have to be anymore, you know, so you can do all the critical thinking around it. So that was kind of our, that was kind of our approach if that, if that answers, you know, what you was looking for. Yeah. But as you were saying, almost 400 customers, you, you aren't late.

[00:10:39] And in talking to the majority of MSPs today, I think most of us don't have really a, what I would call an offering. Maybe we're reselling some random tool, but I don't think we figured out how do we meet the customer where they are? How do we have a real impact? I'm curious. So you pick one person per department, but they weren't raising their hand as the, maybe the AI first person. So like, did, was it whoever drew the short straw or how did you, how did you select the one?

[00:11:08] It was, you know, there was, there was a little bit of common sense to the fact, you know, right. We have to look at, you know, workloads and stuff like that. And, you know, someone who's, you know, you know, you know, really stressed and, you know, has got loads on, you know, do you want, and then we kind of like questioned ourselves and go, actually, those are the exact people we want. You know, do we want to just avoid those people and go cut that guy in, you know, that guy in compliance, you know, he's, you know, we don't want to go near him because, you know, he's just got too much on. Well, absolutely. Let's, let's take him as the idea.

[00:11:37] So, you know, as any business you get, you get a bit of resistance. And we're still going through that journey now, you know, we're educating ourselves as we're trying to educate our customers. And, you know, as you said, you know, every day, you know, we're kind of learning something new and, you know, refining that, you know, and our own offering. But, you know, I think you hit the nail on the head there really that, you know, are our customer base ready right now? I think we're really in that education phase at the moment.

[00:12:04] Of course, there's some that are chomping at the bit, you know, and going to us and, you know, they're saying, we don't want to talk about, you know, governance. You know, we've got an AI policy. We just want to dive straight in with a gentick AI. Fine. You know, let's, you know, if you're there and, you know, we can do it safely, absolutely. And you're ready, then absolutely. But there's a whole raft of customers that we need to make sure that are going to be doing it in a controlled way. They're doing it safely.

[00:12:28] We don't need to talk about all the horror stories of, you know, of data loss and, you know, and, you know, AI being open, you know, to, you know, sensitive business data. So that's kind of our approach. We went straight in at the, you know, at the governance of the lower end. And, you know, we didn't even start with our bigger customers, you know, like the enterprise ones that are ready for it.

[00:12:54] You know, if we were, if it was all about just making money, we would have dived straight in on the ones that were ready. So we kind of, you know, challenging ourselves and still are today to say, you know, this customer says, you know, they're, you know, they're, they're not going to, they're not even going to buy a copilot license, you know? So, you know, okay, that's a challenge, you know, a challenge we're willing to accept, you know, let's, you know, let's try and educate them along the way. And, you know, if they don't want to listen to us, they don't. And we're not ramming it down people's throats.

[00:13:24] We're doing it in a way that is a really kind of laid back, look, hey, look what we did. We're a business as well. We might be an MSP and a bunch of smart technical people. But look how we, look how we are still today transforming our business. Look at the benefits. And, you know, we haven't made a single redundancy. You know, it's about how do we empower those people to do more valuable tasks and take away the kind of routine mundane.

[00:13:54] And, you know, we're not the finished article. We're not, you know, you know, that's I think sometimes is the beauty of it when you're speaking to your customers. You know, we're still learning too. So kind of as we're learning, let's kind of learn together and let's not ram it down people's throats. And that's where I think sometimes hopefully it's refreshing that I'm not a tech CEO because I'm looking at it from, you know, slightly more business outcome perspective rather than let's just go for the shiniest, you know, tool that's out there at the moment.

[00:14:24] I want to go back to your dog feeding approach because so many people say we're going to use tool A or B or A, B, and C. And let's go see what the tool can do. But you sound like your approach to from what are the challenges the busiest guy in finance or HR fill in the blank is having, which is just how we approach that as well. What were some of the lessons, the biggest lessons you learned out of that?

[00:14:48] It's not to say that we haven't looked at tools or, you know, leverage AI within tools. So it would probably be wrong of me just to say that was our only approach because naturally, you know, we've got, you know, the same, you know, software that many MSPs have got out there in terms of what's your PSA and how are you using it? And that was a place and still today that we're focusing heavily on, you know, driving AI within that tool.

[00:15:16] So, you know, can you auto triage? Can you leverage sentiment analysis? And can you leverage call recording with, you know, speech to text and writing up, you know, engineers notes and stuff like that? So, of course, there is still the tool element. But I think that, you know, it's a hybrid of the two, really.

[00:15:40] It's looking at it from the tool perspective and there certainly will be tools that, you know, are still going to help businesses. But it's easy just, as you said earlier, just to focus on the tools. And actually, I would advise business leaders to come out of that approach and just say, let's just have a real holistic, you know, view of each department.

[00:16:02] And let's go really deep dive in there and let's challenge everything, you know, because we've got kind of, you know, I don't want to say once in a lifetime, but AI has kind of changed the landscape. I think that, you know, you used to have, I used to see our business 10 years ago. It was like ranks in terms of who's got the most technical knowledge. And they were the people we kind of respect, you had to respect the most.

[00:16:27] And I think what AI has done to an extent is come along and it's leveled the playing field slightly. So I see that now, you know, kind of the winners will be the one who apply AI commercially and not just technically. That's the kind of ethos I'm, you know, I'm keeping behind all of this. And that's, that's, if I can impart that on some business leaders to take that slightly different approach, I think that might stand them in good stead.

[00:16:58] I'm talking to business leaders every day. And one thing I'm shocked about is they say, yeah, we're, we're doing some things. Like most of them are doing something piloting at least, you know, trying this. But most often I get, yeah, you know, my CTO is handling that or tech talk to the CTO and I'm all CTO at C level and probably fantastic.

[00:17:21] I feel like you're missing out on, like you said, this once in a lifetime piece that really should be informed by everybody in the leadership side to say, what is our strategy and how do we want to engage? What's your take on that? Yeah, I think it's, you know, that's always been the approach that we've had in the industry. You know, let's get our smartest guy on it from a tech perspective. And I'm not saying that's even still the wrong approach.

[00:17:48] I'm just saying that I think that there's other voices that need to be now included in that conversation. And, you know, if you, you know, even your CTO can have their eyes open, you know, to, you know, by speaking to someone, you know, in a back office business function, you know, and, you know, some of the biggest gains we're seeing. And for our customers is not, not in the technical space.

[00:18:14] Of course, as I said, around, you know, around your CRM or around, you know, for sales or around your PSA or, you know, but actually the biggest gains we're seeing are those back office functions. So is it right to just go, we've got our CTO on it? Yes, from a technical perspective, someone's got to understand it unless you're completely outsourcing it. But I think all I'm really saying is let's just get more people involved in the conversation.

[00:18:43] And let's see if that just changes the dynamic rather than just taking the easy way out and going, I'm getting my CTO on it, if that makes sense. Yeah. I think it made sense in a different era, perhaps, because it was less building, more vendor selection. And also just it was the opportunity I see and see what you think, Ben, is we have an opportunity to.

[00:19:10] Yes, we've helped the whole business, but no matter how much we've tried, we're not often at the board level. We don't really have a true seat at the board with our customers because we really have been the infrastructure, maybe the enablers to help you get work done faster. But we were basically most of the time I felt like the amazing head of IT, you know, like maybe we were almost like their CTO. And that was great from a relationship perspective.

[00:19:37] But we had no real reason to do anything or interact with the back office, like you're saying, or the other functions. So I think that this is an enabler of that. On that note, like you did that specifically. Do you have any lessons or examples of, you know, we did this with HR or finance or we did these things? Because I think when I talk to people, because we're in IT, we go to the IT things.

[00:20:06] We go, you know, service desk or we go infrastructure. Yeah. So we've got, you know, we've got a lot of the time it's getting people talking in the business. It's like it's learning something new, something new has come along. Hey, have you seen this? Let me show you. You know, I've used that example before of, you know, an agent in Excel. You know, I would say I've got, you know, intermediate to advanced Excel skills. I'd say you'd have to have that as an accountant.

[00:20:35] You know, there's plenty of people who are, you know, far, far better than me, you know, around modeling and stuff like that. But the power that you can get now from, you know, agentic AI around functions like Excel, you know, unless someone says to you and shows you, hey, look at this, I've used it. And then you sit around the screen and go, wow.

[00:21:00] You know, and then the conversation, you know, changes to that is so cool. That is so good. That saved me so much time. And then actually seeing people actually who are non-technical going, coming at it from the governance perspective, you know, asking the questions. But what if it's wrong? You know, if I type that formula, you know, I've, you know, you know, yes, everyone makes mistakes in spreadsheets. And we know they do or, you know, whatever application using.

[00:21:30] But that's been quite an eye opener for me is to see those people, the non-technical people, you know, applying that critical thinking at either end to say, is it right? Do we need to challenge? You know, and, you know, and that's the same with using AI to, you know, write emails or help you write proposals or something like that. Don't treat it like it's just the silver bullet and it's going to do it all for you.

[00:22:00] And it's just, you know, and you're going to sit there with your feet up. You've got to do the hard work. You've got to keep doing, you know, prompting the iterations and challenging it. And I see AI personally, I use it a hell of a lot, you know, in my role as almost like, you know, an analyst, you know, challenging what's going on in the market and stuff like that. So there's so many different use cases for it. You know, and I could be, I could probably be here all night giving you some examples.

[00:22:28] But I like the one, and I naturally bring things back to finance because of my background, but I like the one around, you know, the amount of time that it saves around kind of the Excel and analysis and stuff. But then rounding that whole conversation with the governance piece. I don't know if that actually has answered, Damien, what you've actually asked there. No, it gives me some food for thought.

[00:22:53] But because most of us are technical and you tend to think through the finance angle, I'd just love to know. Like we did this thing that produces this. Like maybe it's a model. Maybe it's a proposal. If you have any idea of like we saved time or X person loved it, I just think we're missing those perspectives.

[00:23:12] Yeah, so we're, you know, we've built, you know, full kind of three to five year, you know, forecasts and management accounts around with AI analysis. Kind of, you know, it used to take me days to produce a board pack.

[00:23:33] I'd spend, you know, so much time and I'd be so, you know, back in the early days of my career, I would be so, you know, scared of the FD coming out. And, you know, he was so old school. He'd bring out and he'd print out what I produced and he'd wrote all over it and read lines and spelling mistakes and, you know, and grammatical corrections.

[00:23:53] And, you know, we're in a world now where, you know, due to AI, everyone has the ability to be able to write, you know, in a proficient way, in a sensible way and articulate things well.

[00:24:09] And I think that for us, that's a really good use case that we're seeing as around kind of saving time on reporting, producing models, things like simple things like around credit control. You know, it's, you know, every business out there has it, arguably, you know, they have to, you know, have to chase their customers for payments.

[00:24:33] But do you always need someone sitting there looking through your age debtors every month and going, right, oh, we've got to call them. I know we've got this problem player, you know, and quite often in those scenarios, it's like you only know you've got a problem when, you know, you're getting a call from a liquidator, you know, or, you know, something like that.

[00:24:54] But if we can use AI to spot trends, you know, almost like they're taking a day extra, you know, each month, something is happening in that business, let's just try and have that conversation with them now. You know, so the human element is still there. So that's what I love. You know, that's kind of good example of, you know, you know, using AI to spot trends to allow you to make decisions and take and take actions to prevent things happening before they do.

[00:25:22] So hopefully that's a couple of kind of a little bit more meat on the bones of kind of test cases or, you know, use cases that we've seen, certainly internally. I love it. If you're using it and it's, you know, it's probably saving you time, right? There's probably some evidence there that would be interesting if you have any information there.

[00:25:45] But you also brought up something really interesting because I think the gap between we tried it and we're using it is larger than most of us will admit. Not only governance, but, you know, depending on the model and depending on the approach, there's risk, there's hallucination, there's a lot of things. And like you said, you've got to figure out how you verify, how you have the human element.

[00:26:11] In our team, we always say you own what you ship, whether it's an email or a spreadsheet or code or whatever. And so because depending on who you listen to, it can do everything and you're not needed, which is not accurate. Or it really can't do anything. It's a calculator and, you know, or autocorrect and that's all. But I think the interesting part's in the middle, which is it can do quite a lot. How do we allow that with the right governance?

[00:26:40] And I don't know if you call it governance, but also the risk of like it didn't leak information, but I sent out something that I wouldn't have normally sent. So that quality, you know, maybe that's more quality control. What are your thoughts there? Yeah, so I think that's a valid point. I mean, I kind of go back to the governance part, really back to the basics for business around just know what people are using it for and how much it's being used.

[00:27:08] And there are tools we speak about, you know, not talking about tools. There are tools out there at the moment. And we're certainly leveraging it for our customers to be able to say, you know, we can look at a customer's tenant and we can see how much, not only how much individuals are using AI. So as just an example, how much, you know, they're using, say, if Copilot is their choice.

[00:27:34] How much is it being used and in what departments? And then more important than that, where is the shadow AI? You know, where is, you know, you think you're only, you know, your policy. Oh, yeah. We, you know, we're Copilot first. Okay. How do you know? Have you enforced that? Have you got a policy? You know, people don't come forward. You know, we're still in this kind of era of this. I see it every day, you know, you know, AI shaming, you know, where people go, oh, you know,

[00:28:04] a Copilot email or, you know, an AI email, you know, almost discrediting a piece of work that someone's done. And I'm doing my best to kind of eradicate that so people don't have fear of using it. But it's a valid point because the shadow AI piece that, you know, we're saying to our customers are, we need to go back to the basics of that governance. Have you got an AI policy? How do you enforce it? And how do you monitor it, importantly?

[00:28:31] Because people aren't going to come forward to you and go, I prefer ChatGPT or, you know, or Claude or, you know, whatever. And, you know, how can you actually see it? So there are ways to be able to see it. And we're certainly leveraging that with, you know, our AI kind of services to basically say, and that isn't just a tool for people to go and, you know, go to their staff and say, we're paying for, you know, a license for you and you're not using it enough.

[00:28:57] Or it's not just a tool for people to go and just, you know, beat people up to say, oh, you're using the wrong tool. It's just having that kind of awareness of what it's being used for. That's the real key of the governance piece. And then the other part of it that we're finding fascinating for our customers at the moment is where it's highlighting the people in the business who should be using it.

[00:29:23] So, you know, and that's the real great conversations you have with a customer to say, you know, these are the people that are using it in your business and look how much, you know, efficiency is driving for them. Okay, we've got a problem over here with, you know, with use of shadow AI. Let's shut that down or how do you want to approach that? But the real valuable ones are look at these functions, you know, and look at, you know, look at what these individuals are doing and how much time could we save them?

[00:29:52] How much, you know, how much easier can we make their life? They're the really rewarding conversations that we're having. But, you know, there's a governance piece all wrapped into that. Yeah. I want to dig deeper. You talked about AI shaming. And I think that's interesting because if I heard what you said, there's at least a couple ways, right? One is your thoughts on people saying, oh, you wrote that using AI and there's, you know, they're shaming people.

[00:30:22] There's, I think, shaming for you're not using it enough or using it too much or you're, you know, so I'd love to hear how you're dealing with that because I suspect we're all humans and it comes back to fear, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Yeah. I'm not out there preaching to people either way. I know what works for me and what's, you know, how I treat it, you know, as a personal assistant. I use it as an analyst.

[00:30:52] You know, I use so many different factors and then I use it in different ways. Someone, then I speak to someone, they go, do you use the voice thing? And I'm like, oh no, do you know what? I didn't. And then now I've realized there's places where I can use it. And I'm not advocating, you know, using AI whilst driving, but, you know, there is a case that you can now do it safely. You know, you know, or, you know, you're out and you're walking, you know, your dog or something like that.

[00:31:20] And you don't want to be walking along, you know, writing something into, you know, into AI and, you know, and speaking it and then realizing it can speak back to you. You know, so I know what works for me and I'm not out there, you know, shaming people in our business or saying you're not using it enough or, you know, or you're using it too much. And I've got so many examples of, you know, of seeing both sides of that, you know, some real ones where it's like,

[00:31:49] I can't believe some of the things I hear, you know, still today, you know, being on a course recently and, you know, and sitting there and that was, it was actually an MBA course. So you'd think there'd be, you know, a reasonable understanding around AI. And someone actually said, I caught a member of a junior member of the team using AI to write their email. I thought, wow, I caught them.

[00:32:15] You know, so it's like, well, are they going to get, are they going to get reprimanded? Are they, you know, if you, is your actual policy in there, no one's allowed to use it? And what, you know, then dig a little bit deeper. Is there a reason? Has something gone wrong? As, you know, as in, you know, rather than me just thinking that person's got the wrong, wrong approach by saying call. And I just could sit there and go, oh, how am I to get wrong? Yeah. Has something happened in that business for, you know, as they've had data leaked.

[00:32:41] So I guess what I'm saying is I'm kind of sitting on the fence with a question, but it's what works for the individual. And, you know, so I tell people how it works for me and they can take the good or the bad. You know, I'm sure some people look at me and think I use it too much and that's fine. That's an opinion. But I know what it's done for, you know, my own output, you know, in terms of, you know,

[00:33:07] and so I just try and impart that knowledge to people and I listen to people's opinions and people say, oh, you know, what about if we lose too much of that human element of that critical thinking? What then? And I love those conversations because that's healthy debate, you know. It is. And so that doesn't give you, that's not a definitive answer. I can only say what works well for me and then I try and, you know, any opportunity. What is your take on that? Let me challenge you.

[00:33:33] Like, what is your take on how do you personally not lose the relationship and the human element? I spend, you know, so much time challenging AI and to the point where I love to see it when it just gets, you know, it gets in a mess and it's like, you know, and it's lost. If you keep one thing, you know, I've seen it on Copilot, I've seen it on ChatGVT.

[00:33:59] If you carry on a thread long enough with AI, it doesn't like it. You may as well just stop and you may as well just start a new thread, you know, and that's something I think they've got to solve. But it kind of, it loses, I don't really understand the technology, you know, the technical aspects behind it. But you get to a point where it's, you know, it's not re-scanning every single thing that's happened, you know,

[00:34:26] and actually the quality erodes as you go along. So yeah, I'm finding, I'm having to keep the balance of, you know, of we've got to a point now where I've got my output. I'll challenge that. I'll say you haven't quite got that right. I might upload a document and say, now consider this. I might then ask you to do some credible web research and, you know, and, you know, tell me where it's got its sources from.

[00:34:53] That's how I do it, you know, and I'm not saying that's perfect. But it's certainly better than just going, give me this and do this for me and then taking the output and not challenging it at the end. Because as you said, in your business, I think you said, you know, own what you ship or something, you know, along those lines you said earlier. So, you know, that's, I look at that the same, you know, anything I put out there, especially in the role I'm in. And I think that applies to, you know, to anyone in any level really.

[00:35:23] But you've, it's got to be credible. You've got to be able to stand behind it. You know, you can't think is perfect. Yeah. No, I, I think, you know, I put out something that started out as an AI policy and later evolved into something I call compounding teams that talks about how we work with humans and agents. But I've also made a ton of mistakes around it. And what I mean by that is I still own what I ship.

[00:35:51] But, and I think as a CEO, that means if I expect you to use it, I need to use it. I need to figure out where it works and where it doesn't just to have general understanding. I don't need to be the smartest engineer, but I need to understand the general state of it. And as an example of a lesson learned, kind of a failure, is not just writing an email, but writing a bunch of things I was sharing with my team and doing research and going back and forth.

[00:36:20] And so I had my writing and its writing and, you know, I agreed to everything I sent. But I sent it over and, you know, finally somebody on the team kind of called me out there like, a lot of this is AI generated. And I was like, you know, and so now it's like, okay, well, let's learn from that. Let me learn from that specifically, but let's learn from that because it's not that enjoyable when you, when it reads like soulless AI and maybe it saved me some time to output it.

[00:36:49] But now it's costing me even internally a little bit of reputation. So it's like, okay, let's figure out how do we codify. That's not, it's okay to help form my thoughts that way. But should I really expect you to read equivalent of AI slop if I didn't put more care into it? And there's been ones that have been closer to slop, but there's ones that are the harder ones to me are the ones that are somewhat in the middle, right? It was a research partner and added this and I thought that and I did these things.

[00:37:18] And, and then, you know, this document output that's 15 or 20 pages has a bunch of, you know, kind of co-thinking in it. And so, but I've realized like, we just need to talk about that, figure out what we're, what's acceptable. And is it, is it the same internally or externally? And so I, sharing that, because if you haven't already done something like that, you probably will.

[00:37:46] That's my thoughts if you're listening, but also. But did you, Damon, did you ask, did you ask colleagues in your business to almost like, this is, this is what I like doing. Almost owning it and saying, I've, I've used AI to help me form the below. So, um, but I appreciate it's probably not going to be a hundred percent right. Um, you know, and ask them to challenge it. So own it from the outset and, and get kind of, and that's a bit more difficult externally.

[00:38:14] Cause you, it needs to be good going out to a customer, but I don't know if you, you know, if you've seen that internally. Cause I've done it as well. You know, we've all made, you know, kind of mistakes where, you know, people have spotted, that's not really how you write or something. And so it's the credibility factor, but I've kind of tried to own it now and just basically say, I've used it for this. And I've, and I'd be honest and say, look, I've, um, you know, I've done the thinking before, you know, this is what it's come out with. This is what I'm trying to, what do you think? You know, you challenge it.

[00:38:43] And so it's almost, I don't know if you've tried that in your business to try and own that, you know, and get people to try to challenge it themselves. I took it as a, I took it as an opportunity to learn instead of just saying, you know, mea culpa. I said, okay, great. What do you think we should do? Not just about this document, but like in general, because now we have team members all the time that are doing a similar thing. So it's almost like a disclosure, like, Hey, uh, it helped me.

[00:39:09] Um, and I did in my case where we kind of sit and this will probably evolve tomorrow or something, but, um, I read every word. Right. Right. So yes, it helped me come some of that, but I'm not going to just skip that. It was actually the, I agreed with everything that was output. It was certainly had paragraphs that were, you could tell if you've read much of my writing, it was just different than how I would write. You know, it came off as that.

[00:39:35] Um, and I, I realized I'm also learning, like there's levels of that. Um, if it's too, um, if it's too different, it's almost hard to imagine, you know, it can come off very masculine. It can come off very feminine, which is odd if I'm putting it out. Like it's not just, is the grammar correct? It's just, there's a lot of different voice in it. And so I at least own, I stand by everything output wise.

[00:40:00] Like these are the ideas I'm trying to communicate, which I think was the core for an internal, uh, piece. Uh, but then, um, I think it's an ongoing issue. And as we see this proliferating into SOPs and knowledge base and other things, um, I don't know if it's the right, but we're working on a tool right now that actually tracks the provenance of which, which lines are written by human versus AI.

[00:40:29] And it doesn't mean we won't read them. It's just, you know, as we, I know that I want to put more of my ideas into it for research and less of its ideas into it. Um, and so, um, so anyway, yeah. I've got something quite interesting to add just on that writing style piece, because again, look, you know, we're not, I'm not saying, you know, learning every day and we're not certainly AI experts. You know, we're, you know, we're an MSP first and, you know, we are, we are an infrastructure at the end of the day.

[00:40:55] So we're still learning, but something that someone showed me just on that writing style piece, because I have the same dilemma as you, you know, it's almost like I've used this now changed the good stuff that I've wrote. And it doesn't sound like me anymore. Um, you know, and people are going to see that. And then someone opened my eyes to the fact of, you know, there's, I think certainly in copilots, and I'm sure all, you know, all different platforms have it, but I think it's called copilot memory.

[00:41:21] Um, and it's like, you know, you can talk to it to basically then say, or just say, this is how I do right. You know, this is what I sound like. Um, so in that way, you're not always having to put that prompt back in and saying, make this sound less AI generated, or, you know, that double space long hyphen, or, you know, dramatic single sentences over and over. So you can say things like avoid that, avoid this, this is how I write.

[00:41:50] And I've even taken it a step further to basically put things in there, like things I'm passionate about, like our, you know, our vision and our purpose as a business. So what are our values? And I've kept that, you know, in, in, in the memory in there. So then when I ask it to analyze something, it then prompts me.

[00:42:09] And then it says, you know, and that ties in well, you know, with one of SOTA's values, you know, or one of your objectives for this year is to, you know, is, is to grow in cloud and, you know, and to be hybrid cloud enabled. So if, you know, for anyone listening, that's something, you know, a little tip that I was showing the other day that I absolutely love. And it's, it saved me a load of prompts around writing style, but absolutely at the end of it still, you know, make sure it's, you know, it's you at the core.

[00:42:38] Yeah, no, I think that that's a great example because what that makes me think of is there's a, there's a few issues. One is any tool nowadays, if you work with a little bit can, you can help develop and it can write like you, but then I don't want to outsource the relationship. So how do I do that? But not just, you know, every time you ask me for an email, my agent writes it for me. Um, and so right now, you know, the idea is I use that for assistance, but I don't hit send. I sign off on it.

[00:43:08] I edit as the, as needed. And, um, but then the other part that I think is very similar, but most people miss is anchoring it in your vision, your core values, the things that make you Ben and the things that make Soda, Soda. And that's the part I feel like a lot of people are, um, missing. And, uh, and I think that's actually where the, some of the state of the art is right.

[00:43:37] Is working on how do you do that across a team? We're, we're working on a product of how do you, how do you have that across the team and, uh, kind of an organizational memory, if you will. Yeah. Because I think that even if it can sound voice like me, if it's not going to have my core values or other things, that's, sometimes I think that's worse because it's, it could almost trick you, even if I didn't mean to into sounding like me.

[00:44:03] But if it's going to go on and talk about things that don't quite align, like maybe it's not orthogonal, but it's still, uh, maybe adjacent. It's, um, I just know I would end up rewriting more of it. Yeah. You know, I think sometimes it's refreshing to also just, you know, also take a break from it. You know, I found, you know, and seeing if it's changed, AI has changed the way I work. You know, it's, it's changed. Has it changed the way I write?

[00:44:32] Has it changed the way I think? That's, that's when the conversation or, you know, thought process starts getting interesting. You know, if I then stop using it, have I changed from when I was using it before? And I think the answer is yes. You know, I work in a slightly different way than I used to, you know, years ago. So I think, you know, that's a whole different subject, but it's quite an, quite an interesting thought to pose.

[00:44:56] I want to go back to something we got into earlier that I think is interesting that I think we had a common experience around the culture and sometimes the fear. And I know fear, nobody wants to talk about it. It sounds horrible, but I think that my view on this is it's mindset and culture and then later tools.

[00:45:19] But I had an experience, I think you had one where as you're going to do this and offer this and adoption, sometimes the more technical people struggled more. And it's still something that's a little odd because it's like, oh, as we jumped into cloud native or this or that or cybersecurity, this, you know, the technical people were always the one that were the most in. And now there are those.

[00:45:44] But it's interesting to me that sometimes the sales guy or the marketing guys all in and some of the technical people are not. Are you seeing that at all? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I wouldn't say it's completely, you know, biased in one way or the other because it would be unfair to say there's not technical people in our business that are leveraging AI and, you know, leading the way with that because they are.

[00:46:11] You know, they have to because, you know, we're advising our customers and we're, you know, we're showing them that, you know, this is what you can do. So, you know, absolutely those people, you know, from kind of from a pre-sales and a sales perspective, they, you know, they need to be those people that, you know, have embraced it. But it's kind of the back off, you know, behind the scenes technical people.

[00:46:37] It's definitely have seen, you know, an era of, you know, senior technical people, you know, who are really fundamentally against it. And that was kind of interesting, a little bit foreign to me because like you, as you just, you know, as you just described, you know, I think I always thought that, you know, just technical people would just go for the latest and greatest and embrace it. And that's not what I've observed.

[00:47:06] So then that, you know, the next question in my mind, well, why is that? And, you know, are they scared of it? Do they not understand it? Do they think their skills are going to become irrelevant? Or replace? So is it that fear element that you mentioned before? So I ask people quite simply, I say, you know, why? And it's not coming from a place of so I can say to you, I'm right and you're wrong. It's just understanding.

[00:47:32] Is that, without them saying it, is that coming from a position of fear? Or is it just personal preference? And I think we're seeing a mix. And like you say, and then you've got people in different functions of the business, completely non-technical. And they're, you know, they're, you know, the people that you think would just be set in their ways. And they've always done their job the same way. And, you know, maybe the least technical people. And then all of a sudden they're massively embracing it. And they're your advocates. And, you know, they're teaching some of the technical people.

[00:48:02] You know, it's kind of changed the dynamics, you know, of businesses and certainly within an MSP. So I think everyone is slowly getting on board. You keep hearing, you know, people talking about, you know, fearing for jobs, you know, in the future. And we have, you know, a lot of people in our business that have kids of a certain age. And people are thinking, well, what are the skills they're going to need when they're older? You know, I've got a 19-year-old and an 18-year-old, one of them, the youngest one, about to go off to university.

[00:48:32] And, you know, we're having conversations about where her career is going to go. And then in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, what will I do to that? You know, and, you know, now, you know, she was quite innocently just excited about the way, the direction she was going. And then is it fair to then put a doubt in their mind? So, you know, so I think it comes back to fear, if I'm honest. If I had to pin it on anything, I think it's people being fearful that their jobs are going to be replaced.

[00:49:01] And we hear a lot of people just saying, you know, ultimately, and I believe this, you know, I don't think AI is going to replace people's jobs. But people might be replaced by people that do use AI. That's kind of the simple thing. And that's just a challenge I'd leave in people's minds because, you know, if someone comes in and they can do the job at the exactly same level as you, and they're completely, you know, got the same skill sets, but they can produce more and they can do it quicker,

[00:49:28] you know, then what is a business going to choose? You know, I might be wrong. No, I think to a large degree there's not really a choice because a business is generally hired for an outcome. MSPs certainly are, right? I need security. I need governance. I need things to work. I need these things to happen. And if those outcomes don't happen, they will find somebody else.

[00:49:54] But also if, you know, this is overly dramatic, but if you had an MSP that sat on the sidelines for the next five years and did nothing, and somebody that was forward thinking like you, most likely you would resolve things significantly faster, higher quality levels. You know, there will be things that doesn't standardize. It doesn't have to be cheaper, but it could be different levels of surface speed, quality. It could be more capabilities.

[00:50:25] Obviously, since some of them want to benefit from AI, your ability to help them in that journey versus somebody that is not. And if they're looking for an outcome, they're going to need it, right? So I could be wrong, but my point is businesses are generally hired for outcomes. So we need people that can produce outcomes. Yeah, I think I can, you know, certainly from my own, you know, while we're on the subject of fear, you know, my own fear from an MSP perspective is, you know, if we don't keep up to date with this,

[00:50:54] and if the bigger players, and let's be honest, bigger, you know, far bigger MSPs than what I run, you know, are far ahead of us. And they've already, you know, leveraging the power of AI all across their business and making efficiency savings left, right and center. And I think we're doing a good job right at the moment. And we're, you know, we're progressing well. But my fear is for those MSPs that aren't looking at it right now, because there will become a time where at the moment,

[00:51:23] the big players in the market are already, have already able to, you know, realize those efficiency savings. So they're not having to add headcount at the same rate as their revenue. So they're winning on that front straight away. But will there be a matter of time before they go and disrupt the market and go, hey, now we can actually lower our prices.

[00:51:49] And I fear for the small MSPs, you know, to maybe not the mid market, but around that between the small to the kind of midsize ones that are not even thinking about it right now. Because what happens when your competitors lower their prices? You know, yes, you can show value and it is all about, you know, the value in those outcomes, but we can't avoid, you know, that kind of, it's not a race to the bottom, but it's definitely,

[00:52:18] it's a challenging economic backdrop that we're, you know, all businesses are facing. And if you've got a business that can lower their, you can, you know, do it as a, you know, two thirds of the price you're offering today, they're going to at least listen to them. And so I fear that, you know, for those smaller MSPs that then they go, oh, right now, what do we do? Do we just lower our prices as well? And it is then truly a race to the bottom and it's commoditized. You know, and I don't worry, I'll drop my prices, but you know,

[00:52:47] I'll still retain my customers and I'll still, you know, I'll still be able to grow in volume. Um, but ultimately all you're doing is just eroding your margins and then you'll get to a point where you realize you need to invest in your automation or AI or however we want to frame it so you can achieve those efficiencies so you can still make the kind of profits you need to run your business and grow. So I took us off on a bit of a tangent there,

[00:53:12] but they're the kind of thoughts that are the bigger picture thoughts around AI and kind of wider automation that kind of not certainly not keeping me awake, but thinking if we're not on that journey and far along it, you know, could we, could we hit a crunch point at some point? Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, I think I'm not the guy that's the fear mongering, right? So it's not that it's too late, but it will be at some point, you know? And, uh,

[00:53:41] and so I think getting on the journey, dog fooding, like you said, cause then, you know, like maybe you don't know what the, if the customer really liked it, but you're, you can, you can see it in your team or saving ministry, saving four hours, right? You can see what kind of impact. And then you can see if that really makes a difference to the quality of life, maybe to revenue per employee, uh, all sorts of metrics that you could, could analyze.

[00:54:08] And then you can speak from a firsthand perspective about the impact, become your own case study. And, um, and I think because we all have the same, you know, lines of business, the same HR, you know, maybe not the same people, right? But we all have similar roles. It's like, of course they expect us to be good at it. We have a whole bunch of it people, but if your HR person is very much like my HR person or what have you, then this could really translate the thing we did.

[00:54:37] You know, maybe you have a different payroll system or whatever, but like things we're doing to save time are still probably at least good ideas. Maybe a different one works in yours. I think that there could be, you know, many services has been circling as there's been more and more, is there a race to the bottom? And I think that's one of the possible, but I think it's the less likely. I think that, I think is, I think in the next six to 18 months,

[00:55:05] we're going to see dramatic abilities to drive more efficiencies. And you're going to see somebody that has, make up a number, a hundred employees. Now they can do the job with 50. It's not one implementation overnight, but like with enough automation, automation driving efficiencies. And I think the people with the one X vision will cut headcount. We're going to see those headlines. We're going to see that. And I think also it's a good to blame on, you know, instead of saying we had a downturn in business or whatever,

[00:55:34] we can blame a AI or do something. And then, but what I think is exciting is the people with the 10 X vision will say, Oh, well, I have a hundred personal org and a freed up half, but what could I do with all that capacity? And now that we understand this and what I really think is great. You can deliver managers, it and, you know, maybe you could compete lower priced, but instead of lowering your prices and your margin,

[00:56:02] if the other person that's sitting on the sidelines, you could go to them and say, what if we could deliver some kind of similar benefit? IT almost becomes secondary. Like it needs to be there from governance and cybersecurity. It's foundational. But I think that what we're going to see for the first time, what I'm excited for the first time is we truly could be a strategic player with our clients and actually improve things like revenue or the bottom line. Yeah.

[00:56:31] And not just from an IT perspective. And the thing is, I may only have a certain budget for IT, but if you tell me you're going to increase leads or velocity of leads or close rate or patient scene or whatever that is, the budget is, is far different now. Yeah. I mean, I can, you know, so much of what you just said resonated because I'm sure anyone that would, you know, would, you know, come on your podcast wouldn't sit here and go, you know,

[00:56:59] I'm trying to make these efficiency savings just to make redundancies. You know, no one's going to say that, but, you know, I'm quite passionate about the fact of actually exactly as you just said, that, you know, we've got 80 staff today. You know, we're leveraging automation. We're doing things, you know, you know, more in a more standardized way. We've got a long way to go still. You know, we haven't made redundancies in that space. Exactly. As you described, you know, we've saved time. We've allowed people to, you know,

[00:57:29] work on more valuable stuff. It's made us ask questions about, you know, what MSPs do for their customer, you know, and we all follow trends as MSPs and we go, you know, and everything now is remote only, you know, and it's remote first, you know, and that's the efficient way of doing it. But then it'll ask you a question. Well, if you've got more time and if you want to stand out from, your competition, what more can you do to add value?

[00:57:58] What can you do from a customer experience perspective? Can you just send someone to site, you know, and, you know, and you didn't need to do that, but you send someone to site, you know, and there's that human element now, which has been leveraged by the fact of us, you know, embracing automation and the use of AI. So, you know, and then the user, the end user now judges you on how they feel at the end of that. And they've had someone turn up who didn't have to do that. So that's,

[00:58:26] that's the great side of it from, you know, from, from internal perspective, from an MSP. The thing that I worry about is, you know, is that we're trying to educate customers to basically say, you know, can you be using it? Can you make efficiency savings? But we're, it doesn't matter what you and I say now, business owners will be thinking about, okay, that's great. I've heard that. I want some of that. And I'm just going to save money and I'm going to cut some heads.

[00:58:54] So it's almost like you get that moral dilemma of the fact that, are we trying to make their lives easier? And at the, you know, the risk of, of other people's jobs in their business. That's the kind of internal dilemma I have. And, you know, the only way I get around that is by educating our customers to say, don't do it for that reason. You know, you know, think about, don't think about tomorrow. Think about, you know,

[00:59:25] you know, think about two years time, you know, just thinking decades, where do you want to be, you know, and you're going to need those good people. So that's, that's the way I, you know, I frame it. I love that Ben, because it, that's, along with what I say, right? Augments, not replace. And I think there's going to be an opportunity for us to help in a more strategic way. And you nailed one example, right? Because unless you're Walmart or Amazon, you're, you're probably not,

[00:59:54] your value prop is not the cheapest like that. That's what they do. Their value proposition is kind of the cheapest, but unless you're one of those very few, but unless you're that this, your value prop as a business is probably not literally the cheapest, which means cutting. It doesn't matter if it's cogs or people or whatever, you know, is not necessarily make you more valuable to your client. And you're pointing that out for,

[01:00:21] they go do something that they might regret and helping them grow into deeper relationships with their clients, new areas, new lines of business, things they didn't think they could do before. I think it's going to, I think they're going to be those people. I wish I could say, nobody's going to do that, but people will. But I think the people that invest in people and augment them are going to have nonlinear returns. Because it's not like I, you know,

[01:00:50] I had a hundred and I went down to 50 because, you know, AI and automation enabled it. And yeah, I'm stocking away a bunch of cash, but then the person that kept the hundred and has at least the ability, but 200 org is going to multiply that into a, more like a capability of a 300 person org. Now they're going to out compete in all these other areas and new lines of business. And, you know, you fast forward, like you said, thinking a decade and they're going to have, you know, 10 times the business that you did. And for the first, you know, year you,

[01:01:19] you socked away a lot of cash. But other than that, you might be looking at a, a business with no, no future because you really haven't, it's to me, it's like a manufacturer or something else that just, never made the investment in equipment. And if it had a 10 year life to manufacture something, you wrote it for 30 years till it fell apart. And then you drained all the, you know, all the assets out of the business, then what are you going to do then?

[01:01:48] Like you've ridden it all the way to the end. There's nothing left. And I think the people are the, are the difference maker. Yeah. I would say those 50 that you've kept and they've seen 50 go. What, what's, what's their mindset? What are they thinking? Well, what about when they, they get even more efficient and they drive more automation, do we go down to 25 and do I want to stay there and see what they're capable of doing? And I, it, it makes me think about the, the kind of COVID era. You know, I think I mentioned this when we,

[01:02:18] when we spoke before, but you know, we, you know, as an MSP, we knew that we got incredibly busy at the start and everyone was gearing up to work from home. And we had to, you know, we had to, we had to, you know, make sure that make that happen for our customers and sometimes at no extra revenue. And, you know, we, we knew that we was going to be incredibly busy. So we was like, we're going to be really busy, but then we're going to have a lull. Um, and you know,

[01:02:46] we could just follow that status quo and that trend and furlough a load of staff and just keep, you know, the core people there, or we could just take a different view. And that's what we did. And we just basically said, we won't furlough a single person. And we will just, now when we go into that quiet period, that's our time now to double down on training or making ourselves better, making our business better. And I'd like to think by doing, I'm not, I'm not making the picture that we're, you know, we're,

[01:03:15] we're the best business or we, you know, what we've done is right. But I'd like to think that we retain staff. We bought goodwill, you know, when you hit those hard spells and everyone has their ups and downs and, you know, and you've got that goodwill, you've got it in the bank with those, with those staff. And I'd like to think they stay around longer. And I think it just, you know, I think they, they think that that's the type of business I want to work for, for the next decade or the next year.

[01:03:42] And I wouldn't want to be that business that people are looking over their shoulder going, they're about, they cut 50%. When are they going to cut the next 50? Yeah. No, I would go a step further than you and say that is right. And what I mean by that is if you think you can run, like there's a few headlines out there of like a one person, billion dollar business. Like if that's your deal and you think you can do that, then go for it. But for me and you and everyone that knows that the people are, are the differentiator,

[01:04:11] then that is the right thing to do. Because we know we need those people. We've fought so hard to get them. They have so much, you know, the main expertise and not to least the mention, the message, you know, we invest so much in culture and the message that would send to toss people out and say, you know, and you always imagine like, why would you do that first? And second of all, if you did, like, can you imagine, you know,

[01:04:39] doesn't everybody want to be on board with this new initiative to automate and streamline? I think there's enough fear that people have around, you know, just change. It's never changed faster. The, the, I have an engineer on my team that started out with AI and saved 10 minutes every time he did something, but he built full agentic operations. And then he comes back and he's like,

[01:05:09] I've saved six hours a day. And that's crazy, right? I mean, you think about it, but even though he'd been here a long time and there was trust, he still, I think was looking there going, I wonder if you're going to keep me like, you know, most of my job. And, and, and I think the short side of the people would, would maybe make a short, you know, a short term decision, but that's exactly the kind of people that will help create more value. And in his case, he shared it with others on the team that benefited. And, uh, to me,

[01:05:38] that's why the, I got into this and why he got into it. And a lot of our team, it's like, we got into this to help people. Sometimes that's our people. Sometimes that's the client. Sometimes it's both. But, you know, any of the other things is, is not, it's not helping people. It's not growth. I completely agree. Um, Ben, I feel like I could talk to you for hours, but I don't want to take up your entire day. Um, thank you so much for being on MSP Mindset.

[01:06:09] Thank you for inviting me. I've had a great time. You know, as I said, you know, listen to your podcast, you know, big fan and, uh, yeah, really appreciate you being on here. If folks would love to find you or connect with you, um, what's the best way to do that? Yeah, you can, you can find me on, um, on LinkedIn. We've got quite a prominent surname. So I'm Ben Smoker. Uh, I don't smoke. Um, and you know, and our MSP is called SOTA. So that's SOTA.co.uk.

[01:06:39] Awesome. Make sure to take up Ben on that offer. Um, Ben has been amazing. Thank you so much for being on MSP Mindset. Thank you very much.