I Built My MSP for Family—Not Fortune

[00:00:00] Hey guys, Damien here. As I continue to interview the top MSPs in the world, one thing has become incredibly clear. It's time that we let go. Even more than that, every time I focus on my zone of genius and get out of the way and do the very few things I'm good at and delegate to others, I'm ready for that next level of growth.

[00:00:20] One way that I can help you is with Servocity. We co-manage more backups and disaster recovery so you can focus on what you do best, let us do the rest, and then what we do is we test the backups every single day so you never have to worry. If you'd like to engage us or just learn more, click the link below.

[00:00:38] So hiring somebody, putting them into a position and saying you got 90 days to create results, it's not going to work. What's going to happen is you're going to keep spending that money. You're going to hire this guy for 90 days, he's going to leave. Now you're going to train the next guy for 60 days, then the next guy is going to take over, and then you're going to do the next guy for 90 days.

[00:00:54] And it's just going to be this endless cycle, and you're going to get nowhere, you're going to get lucky and get one or two. We ended up landing about $380,000 a year in new business that following year because of David's just knocking on doors and talking to people. But it took over a year.

[00:01:09] Hey guys, Damian Stevens, host of MSP Mindset, CEO of Serocity. Today I continue my mission to interview 100 of the fastest growing and most interesting MSPs on the planet. Today I got the pleasure of speaking with Keith Willis of ECX Systems. He started his MSP to do something very different, to put his family first. While we all might say that, he used very specific tactics to be at every single sporting event

[00:01:43] and every single event that mattered in their life, yet still build a fast-growing business that nobody would really call a lifestyle business. If you want to know how to grow sales, but still be there for your family, don't miss out on our conversation today. So Keith, tell me, you started very unusually. I think you said you started your MSP to actually have more time with your family. Most people don't start a business, especially an MSP, with the goal of having more time, even if they want that.

[00:02:13] Yeah. Why and how did that come about? I don't know if we've started off and qualified getting to know me at all, but I am crazy. So I need to lead with that. Pretty much everything I do is probably crazy. I don't do anything that makes any sense to anyone. I'm a very determined individual who tends to do things that most people go, yeah, that's insane. Why did you do that? So my MSP is technically my fourth company. Okay.

[00:02:42] I built a consulting, Novell Consulting Company in the early 90s. I then built the largest internet provider in South Texas, the Corpus Christi area, in the mid-90s. Then I built another company where I flew around the country building internet and cellular companies. And then I worked for the government for a while, which I mentioned in my previous video, which you can watch on this same channel.

[00:03:08] And then I started ECX Systems in 2008, technically spring 2009, I guess officially. Okay. After having done all of the other things, I've already kind of been through the world of business and lots of paving the ground on lots of firsts.

[00:03:31] And so I wanted something to me that was natural to my talents and the people that I liked to work with and the people that I like to kind of hang around with. And so the driver there really was, how can I do something that lets me kind of stay at home, work with, you know, be around the family, take advantage of the knowledge base that I've built and the relationships that I've built. And ultimately that became ECX Systems.

[00:03:55] And the way I did that ultimately was our target was really hanging out with and handling kind of the IT for other IT people. That was kind of our tagline. And, you know, we would come in and I would run into people all the time that would have these problems where they're dealing with what I'd call the gray area of technology, where nobody really knows how to solve the problem. You've got, you know, company A, company B, company C, all trying to work together and you're trying to figure out how to solve these really complex issues. And I was really good at doing that.

[00:04:23] And so I started training people on how to do that. We built a company with doing, and so we became really good at integrations and migrations and building services around consulting and building those things. And so as a result, I ended up with a company that allowed me to work from home. And so I was working home well before COVID, long before it was cool for 20 something years. We've only been in this office about six years and I only come into the office now most half days.

[00:04:51] But I come into the office because it gives me a place to meet with the team, gives me a place to meet clients. We had people coming, I had people saying, hey, Keith, we'd like to fly out and see you. And I'm like, yeah, we'll go to your office. Sure. Yeah, we will. Uh-huh. I got this restaurant down the street I really like to keep a booth with Keith's name on it. We'll go there. And that tended to be kind of the answer to that question.

[00:05:15] Well, it got to where I would almost say being a serious business made me go, I need to have somewhere to be. And really the thing that put it over the edge for me personally was I had my parents were having late in the years health issues. My dad had several strokes. We had to move them into the house. And so I needed to get away because there was too many people now packed into the house. And so I gave up my office space for my parents and we built this building.

[00:05:42] So I gave away that really cool free time of working at home and now work in the office more often than not. Well, my kids are mostly grown now too. So I've only got two left at home. And so all those years that I wanted to be home for the kids, I was able to do that, which is fantastic. So but building it. Why an MSP since you've done so many other different things from government work to Internet companies? That's a really good question.

[00:06:10] I think for me, it came down to helping people. I like to help people. I like the people factor. I lost that in the government. I was a big I was a part of I was a cog in a gigantic machine, even though I made a difference there. I mean, there are things that I did that I know for sure made a difference that were super cool. But and same thing when I worked in big corporations, I worked at Dell in my early 20s for a little bit. I missed the people.

[00:06:39] You know, if you can work with a company and you solve their technology problems and you help them do something really interesting. And then at the end of the day, that business center goes, wow, you really made a difference for us. I can now employ more people or, oh, I didn't have to lay everybody off because you solved that hard problem for us. Or, oh, man, we really are trying to make our business better and more efficient. And you gave us the keys to do that. Thank you. That thank you for me goes a long way. So for me, that was a big driver.

[00:07:06] I could get I was it was a more personal connection to the to my customer base. I didn't have that in the government or in large corporations. It's just not a thing, you know, so that was my driver. Everyone else watching this is going, that's insane. Why would you do that? But for me, that was the driver. Sure. How did you try to you said you wanted to spend more time with your family. So, you know, not being locked in secret. Okay, I can see that part.

[00:07:31] But is there anything else you did to be more intentional about being there when you had young kids? Of course. Yes. Yes. So my workflow became more about the kids and about life and about family, you know, so I would, you know, so when the kids left in the morning and did their thing, whenever they had any kind of anything, you know, I had kids in drumline. I mean, I had girls in plays and I had, you know, whatever they were doing. I was always there.

[00:08:00] I was able to go to everything, like literally everything. Wow. Wow. I didn't miss anything. I mean, even if I was working and I had an emergency with a downed customer, I would make sure I was there and they were in the Bluetooth in my ear if that's what it had to be. And that was rare, but it did happen. But I was engaged at every point.

[00:08:20] Probably the biggest thing is because I officed out of the home and I owned my own business, when the kids got home from school, if I was on a meeting or if I was doing something, I could put those people on hold and say, hey, I'm going to take a break real quick. I'll be right back. And I'd go greet the kids, give them a hug. And my life was intentional around the family. Didn't mean I didn't work late, but I built it in. So the kids knew dad was available and was always in the other room. That was massive.

[00:08:46] Just the fact that they could come in there and, you know, my daughters would say, I know I can come home and give dad a hug. That's all I cared about. And I was pretty easy to please when it came to that. Um, the, the intentional nature of the business supporting our family was more important to me than the business supporting, you know, our finances. You know, that was secondary. It was really just more about, um, creating a lifestyle that I wanted to live. And NMSPs are tough, right?

[00:09:15] It's a hard business because you're constantly dealing with other people's problems. Right. And that's been a challenge for, we've been doing this now 16 years. Um, and that was a challenge and it still is a challenge. Um, but I've tried to build the business.

[00:09:32] I've been very methodical over the last say, oh, since probably about 2017, 2018 about building the company in a way that doesn't make us an emergency all the time company. Hmm. Well, and that's a whole topic I can talk about, but how do you pull that off? Right. Cause I think it's a, it's hard to set, it's hard to sit it aside and go home and punch out as any owner, let alone an MSP, because you feel like it's 24 seven.

[00:10:02] I don't know that you do turn it off. That's part of the tech gig. I don't know that you can get away from it. Right. I think doctors who do surgeries are always in their head that sometimes at any point in my head, if you do surgery, you never really truly turn it off. Yeah. Uh, I think that's true. The technical world, our tech, the tech business drives you into that mindset and that mentality of, um, I need to be available. So I don't know that you ever turn it off, but what you can do is create intentional pockets of time.

[00:10:31] You know, um, I'm going to do this thing now. If anything comes in, you guys handle it. Let me know if you need me, you know, surround yourself with people that can help you. Uh, one of the things that we did, you know, right, wrong, or indifferent, um, is that we made a model. We started down in the model of helping whoever we could.

[00:10:51] And what we realized is that most people that need technology help who aren't technology focused, and I'm going to qualify that very clearly, who aren't technology focused, who don't treat technology as an important part of their business. And that's a very, very clear line. I want to make that very clear. They are almost always fire to fire to fire to fire in their nature. And they're probably lived that way in their regular lives too. And they just don't realize it. They're fire to fire to fire to fire. Well, if you surround yourself with those people as your customers, the next thing you know is you're always on fire.

[00:11:21] And you're running around with, you know, when you've got your hair on fire and you're like, ah, my hair's on fire. Oh my God, another emergency. And it's seven emergencies in a day and a day. And you're always, always on fire. You become a fireman. You're not becoming an, you're not in it. You're not, you're not a technical professional. You're not a business owner. You're a fireman. You're just a technology fireman. Um, we had to intentionally weed those people out. Um, and that was hard. It was extremely hard. What we had to do is we had to say, okay, if you're going to call and you don't have a structure to handle

[00:11:50] your fire and you're not paying appropriately, then you're paying a lot more for the fire. So now, and then we've kept raising that price and raising that price and raising that price. I think we're something like now we're like, if you aren't under contract with us and you call and you have a fire and you call on like a Saturday before you even talk to anybody, it's like, I don't know, $900 now before you even talk to somebody. So it's a very intentional penalty. Yeah.

[00:12:17] But if you're under contract and you plan it or you think about it, or it's proactive, then you're not going to be penalized. And so we go from, we don't have, our business is no longer fire to fire to fire. We still have them, but they're rare. And they're, and when they do come up, they're minor because they're in, because they've intentionally got rid of the people who live fire to fire to fire. You know, they're still out there. They're just not the norm. You know, they'll consume us. That's an intentional, that's an intentional business decision.

[00:12:45] That's not something that you want, just wake up and make happen. Yeah. So is it mostly the focus on clients that value IT or, or are there parts that have helped you reduce the fires? Interesting. So, um, that's a really good question. I would argue that it's, it's about intentional business building. So when you, when you originally build a company, I think a lot of people build a company because

[00:13:14] it's the hobby. It's the thing that they want to do. Right. I like doing technology. I'm a technologist. I love technology. I like the new gadgets and the toys. And I like to learn. I, I mean, I think my, my, my idea of like the third ring of hell is like assembling seat belts for a living. Click, click. I mean, I, I think I'm, I mean, I would be on fire. I'm like, Oh my God, save me. Um, there's so many repetitive tasks. Things that don't change would just destroy who I am. I need the change.

[00:13:42] I got into it because of the new things all the time. The constant change that can be tiring. But, but at the same time, it's a mission critical piece of who I am and why I do what I do. I, I need to learn and grow. My wife is like, you will never stop. You will never retire. And I'm like, no, retire will kill me. I need to do things. I like to make a difference. I want to help people and I love technology. So all those things kind of come together. But I think a lot of people, when they build a company, they build a company around the

[00:14:11] thing that they chose to do to get into. Um, and we often focus on that thing. I focused on technology or I focused on the thing. I didn't focus on the business building, which I should talk about in a minute. But in order to create a business where you say, I want to have this kind of customer with this kind of workflow, you have to intentionally build your product. Which means we are constantly changing our product. When we, uh, there was a time when we only focused on, um, uh, I would call it time and

[00:14:41] material block time, time of clients doing consultative efforts, very project D very one-off. Uh, we would have some maintenance plans or maintenance, you know, maintenance things built in, but that wasn't who we were. Those were the things we offered. And then we, we said, Oh, and then we sat down and I said, Oh, that's not working. I mean, it's not, I mean, it's working. We're making money. We're okay. But it's not giving me the goal that I want, which is a solid business that I don't have to think about.

[00:15:06] Because if you build a business around the demand of the person and a lot of MSPs probably see this when they have the really smaller clients, when they're really starting to grow, they're trying to build their demand on the customers that come to them at the demand of the person. And what you end up with is you end up with a balance sheet that looks an awful lot like a sine wave, right? It's the ups and the downs of the ups and the downs. And so you have to make a decision to intentionally build your client base around a thing that works consistently.

[00:15:35] A lot of MSPs focus on the MRR in terms of the product and the service around a workstation or whatever. And that's a good baseline, but it doesn't often, it's almost too formulaic to, to be the business. So you need to build the business. And so what my idea was, okay, we're going to divide our business into three big categories, right? I've got the things that we offer as a service, whether they be software systems hosting, right?

[00:16:04] And then there's a management fee associated to that. I'm not going to sell you a service unless I'm maintaining it for you. If you just want to consume something from us, but there's no maintenance dollar to it, go find someone else who can sell that thing to you because gallons of milk are a plenty. And there's lots and lots of dairies that will sell you the gallon of milk, but the person who will handhold the gallon of milk and deliver it to you is a different person. So I just made sure that every service we had, had management dollars associated. So that was this, this leg.

[00:16:28] Then we had the leg of what we called escalation services where our target market, and this isn't going to be for every MSP, obviously, but for, for our target market, it was okay. If you're a company and you have existing IT and your existing IT has a weakness and whether that weakness is time, um, maybe it's energy or wherewithal, maybe it's knowledge gap, right? Everybody has a gap. Everybody needs help. Yeah. Um, and the way I describe it is okay.

[00:16:56] Every job, every IT professional who works at a company. And if they've got four coworkers or eight coworkers, that's team of people is typically doing 80% of their IT job. That's kind of what they're doing. They're doing 80% of their IT job. And what we want to do here is we're coming in, we're taking off that top 20%. And for one company that might be cloud things for another company, it might be networking things for another company. It might just be the things that they're just frustrated with, whatever it is. It's this 20%.

[00:17:25] So we come in and we take that off and that becomes our escalation services. And then what we do is we say, okay, we're going to sell you those escalation services at a monthly subscription. You may choose to use all of that every month, or we might just be a safety net that you pay annually just in case, but you decide how you want to use that. And we've got customers on both ends of that spectrum. I've got customers pay us. We talk to you twice a year, but they're paying us 30 grand a year because you know why? When something goes down, they're going to pick up the phone and they're going to get

[00:17:54] somebody and we're going to solve that problem. And they know that no matter what it is. And so that's a consistent, that's a consistent piece. The third leg of it are the managed, this traditional managed services. Our traditional managed services leg is a little bit different. We only do traditional managed services if we get to be the decision makers. What do you mean by that? So if you've got an IT person or a person that you put in charge of IT in your company

[00:18:22] and you want them to be the final say on everything, we don't take the job. And there's a reason for that, right? Too many cooks in the kitchen, too many IT people get into a situation. We make recommendations. Let's say the company says you get an IT budget. You get $100,000 a year to do IT things. Here's your budget, right? But Kim over here has to sign off on whether that's a good idea or not. Now she can sign off on the money all she wants and give us timeframes. All those things are fine. It's their business, right?

[00:18:52] It's all their timeframes, those sorts of things. But what I don't want them to say, no, we're not going to buy that this year. It's in the budget, but we're not going to buy that. We'll do that next year. When I know the risk, I'm coming in as the professional or my team is coming in as the professional for the IT piece of this business. And you're telling me I can't do that? And the reason we made that decision is because I would argue no less than once a month for the last several years, probably for 10 years. I'm not even slightly exaggerating.

[00:19:21] We are called in by MSPs for that exact use case. The company neglected their stuff. They were given, they had budgetary authority. They didn't empower the IT person to take care of things. The IT person gets bored or gets tired, frustrated and leaves. MSP comes in and takes over. We don't understand why everything's a mess. Oh my goodness. And everybody who's watching this MSP is going to go exactly know this story. And they're going to go, we, I don't understand. Maybe that IT guy was really bad. And some young MSPs will go, he was a loser.

[00:19:51] He doesn't know what he was doing. And I'm like, you didn't walk a mile in that guy's shoes. He spent four years trying to get them to spend money on something they should have been doing all along. But because he wasn't given the, the, the authority to do so he up and left. And now you as the MSP are brought in to clean the mess up. That's the leadership's problem at the top of the company. That's not the IT director's problem. Now there are bad IT people out there, but more often than not, I find that the company that's hiring you has finally gotten tired of the mess that they usually created on their own.

[00:20:22] That's a good takeaway. And it's a common theme and anybody who's in the MSP business has seen it more times than I can possibly count. So to that intentionality of building a business around making that go away was critical for us. I needed to, the customer to sign off and go, yeah, we understand. We're going to give you a budget. We're going, you're going to give us a part-time director, right? We call them TAMs. Everybody calls them probably TAMs in this world, but we're going to give a part-time

[00:20:52] director. And then you're going to work with that director and we're going to dictate what you do. Now you can help us with rollout. If we think something, if we're like, Hey, we want it to be 30 days. And you're like, well, can we make it 90? Sure. We're, you know, just like we were your IT department. You hired. Yeah. The difference is you don't get to tell us, no, we're not going to do it at all. Right. Because if it's good for the business, if it's good for security and it's good for keeping you stable and making you better. If I tell you, you need new switch fabric because the ones you have are dying.

[00:21:19] You don't get to tell me, no, we can, we can, we can discuss all day long about when and we can prepare for the disaster, but we're not going to take, we're not going to say, no, do that next year because we've, this is a critical piece of something we've brought to you that needs to be done. And so for us as an MSP, that's the thing that we do. That's a little bit different. We force the customer into that. We also have a minimum product stack that we require.

[00:21:47] So, you know, you have to have, you have to pay for our management tools and you have to pay for an endpoint detection and response system. Some security. Um, if you don't do that, we won't take you on because it limits my liability and it protects my client. And if they're not willing to protect themselves, I don't want them. Right. So those are kind of, so we've had to create these three intentional lines of business in order for us to achieve stability.

[00:22:14] Now with that comes evolution. And with those evolving things, we've learned things and we've grown from them. We've learned what works, what doesn't work, the kind of customers you want, the kind of customers you don't want. And all of those things have been very intentional. The, probably the biggest takeaway is the fact that customers themselves often don't know what they want. Right. And so when they come to us, they're expecting us to be able to almost tell them what to do,

[00:22:42] but we have to do it in a way that's feasible for their business. So we end up in every use case coming in and becoming, I wouldn't say an expert, but a form of a subject matter expert on their company. Like I meet with the CEOs and go, tell me about your business. You know, you know, I had a guy that got into the waste disposal business and I'm like, well, why did you become a garbage man? You know? And I'm like, just tell me about it. What was your, you know, what, what was the driver for you?

[00:23:12] Why did you want to become a garbage man? What was your thinking? How did you get there? You know, and you begin to understand those people and then you understand the drivers and you get to get insights into how they got where they are. And those things I think are what drives the, the, the most fascinating part of my business is I deal with a lot of business owners. I do a lot of other MSPs and do a lot of just general business owners, CEOs, C-suite people. For me, um, that's the cream of the crop.

[00:23:38] Not even if they're not good at it, like even if they're terrible, oh my God, you're a horrible CEO. Great. Great. Let's talk about it. It's fantastic because I get to understand how they got from a to B to C to D. And if I see bad ones, I can tell other people that was bad. Don't do that. And if I see good ones, I can say, oh, these guys did a really amazing thing doing this. We should mirror that. And I tell my friends and my other people in my community, hey, I saw this thing the other day and these guys are doing this amazing thing. We should all do that. Yeah.

[00:24:07] And, and it's, it's the, I think being an entrepreneur, uh, you know, and I'm going to device divert a little bit when you're dealing with the MSP world today. When I look at the channels that are out there and probably the people that are coming to your channel in a lot of cases and coming to looking for material, a lot of them are like, well, what's the material? What are you studying? What are, what model are you following? Whose rule book are you using? And you know, I'm going to tell you just be an entrepreneur.

[00:24:38] Yeah. You know, talk to other people, see what they're doing, take their ideas, your ideas, merge them all together and make your thing. That's what I've done. Yeah. I've done it for almost 30 years now and I do pretty okay. Yeah. Yeah. You got to keep the entrepreneurial spirit. You do. You got to be an entrepreneur. And then, and what, some of the stuff we do today, if you ask my staff, I've got staff that's been with me 11 years, maybe longer. I've got staff. Um, I've got, we don't lose. There's a lot of people. They tend to stay. And I would like to think that's because I'm a really good boss.

[00:25:08] That's probably not it at all. It's got to be another secret there. You know, I don't know. I'm sure there's some magic sauce somewhere. Maybe they like the free snacks in the break room, but, but they, but they show up every day. They love to be here. We've built a culture where people want to be here. Um, uh, I do that. There's a lot. And that's an interesting topic I talk about too, but we do, we do that. And it creates a culture of our customers know who our people are.

[00:25:36] Our people know who our customers are. That creates the personal connection. I don't think I would do really well in a business where I came in one day and, um, nobody knew what we did or I, I, you know, I, I, I couldn't do the George Jetson thing. I pushed the button, pushed the button every day. Yeah. Um, I need, you know, the relationship matters. I need to engage the people know that we're making a difference.

[00:26:01] Um, and so as a result of half my customer, half of my company's customer service, uh, which is probably pretty heavy for a normal managed services type company. Yeah. You know, I have a lot of customer service people. I've got several TAMs dedicated customer service account managers. I've got, you know, a lot of building people. Uh, multiple sales type in people. And I've got my, I've got a dedicated ordering person who does ordering and acquisitions. Kevin, he's amazing.

[00:26:31] Um, Michaela, who's one of my daughters actually has worked her way up and she's inside sales, but she bridges with purchasing. So she wears both hats. And so when people inside who is an existing customer need something, they go through Michaela, they know she's the go-to and then they, so there, but then there's outside sales, which is really not even sales. We don't really do sales. We do business development. Like I tell people all the time, call Peyton. He'll take you to lunch and you guys will visit.

[00:26:58] He'll learn about your business or he'll bring me and we'll learn about your business. So we'll learn about what you're doing. And then maybe one day you need us. Great. I have had so many phone calls in my life where somebody has handed me, has called me and said, I've got this name, Keith, with this phone number on a sticky note. And I got it in the airport and I have this horrible IT problem. Most people probably have one of those. I have a dozen or more. That's crazy. You know, I had just one guy who told me the story. He's like, I was sitting in the bar and I was raving, he had 800 employees.

[00:27:27] I was rating, raving to the bartender about my IT problems. And my IT people were incompetent. My entire company was down and down for two days. And he said, I was raving. And he said, this girl walked up to me, handed me a sticky note and it said, call Keith. And it had my cell phone number on it. And then, and at the time I didn't get my cell phone out to a lot of people. I do now, but at the time I didn't. And, uh, I get this phone call. Like, and he's like, I'm boarding an airplane. I was told to call you and you could solve all my AT problems.

[00:27:55] I'm like, maybe, probably. What are they? I'm like, happy to help. You know, he's like, call this person. They'll get you in everything. By the time he got off the plane, I had his company up and running. Wow. And, um, I cannot tell you how many of those I've gotten. The random sticky note, they've been pink. And I tried to figure it out. Who's doing this? Are they pink sticky notes? Are they yellow sticky notes? Uh, you know, what color was the ink on the sticky note? You know, I'm like, as I'm, as in my head, there's one person

[00:28:24] intentionally doing this, but I don't think that was it. I think it was just a use case situation where people who were normal customers of mine, who had great experiences off and on over the years, even if they weren't regulars, heard the plea and knew that we could take care of them. That speaks for itself. Yeah. I want to go back to intentionality because you're self-professed technologist and you're curious and you love learning. And so I know that means you love to still stay kind of deep in the

[00:28:54] weeds. Oh, a lot. How did you manage this? I want to be around for my family. I want to do these things because it's really easy to stay stuck in that and not delegate or not bringing other people. That's true. Once kids get big or once kids get a little older, you know, once they start getting into the teenage years, they don't have time for dad near as much either. That helps, you know, um, and you're there at school. So when they're at school, you're doing your thing. When they come home, you, you know, before, you know, you're there's family

[00:29:23] dinner, we cook together, we eat out together and then everybody goes and does their homework. Well, if they go do homework, I do work. Yeah. So it was just really about the intentionality of building my schedule closer to them. Now, obviously that's not a 100% thing. Does anybody watch this and go, Oh, Keith was a hundred percent at this? No, I was maybe 75% at it, but I was good at it. And my kids, even today, if I ask them, do you think I did a pretty good job? All of them say, you did a great job, dad. You were always there. Yeah. That's huge victory. That's right.

[00:29:52] That's the real victory. That was the, that's the metric, right? If they were, if their metric was there, if they were happy, I did it, you know? Um, I didn't miss anything. I was always there. I engaged. I knew the people, I knew their friends. I still do other friends, know the people in their lives. I know who's going what and probably who's dating who. And I don't want to know that, but somehow I know that, um, you know, so that's the, but that's the intentionality of it, you know? And when the kids go to bed, I can keep working. There's nothing to say. I can't keep working. I don't have to go to bed when they go to bed, they go to bed at nine or 10.

[00:30:22] I keep working until midnight, one o'clock, whatever I need to do, whatever crazy technical thing I need to do, get up the next morning. I built my life around. I'm a little bit, because I'm so deep in the weeds, technically about how, if I were to look at my schedule, I'm a leader 25% of the time. Um, I'm a salesperson slash systems engineer about another 25%, maybe 30% of the time. And then I'm a level three architect the rest of the time.

[00:30:53] Now I want it to, I want to move that. So if I'm intentionally moving that pendulum, I want to be a leader 40% of the time, a systems engineer 10% of the time. And then an architect when I'm needed, whatever percentage of time that is, you know, and then if I can do more leadership things, I want to. Um, but that's a very intentional change in business that I've been working on. And I've been working on that a long time. That's not to get to 25% was, whew, that was victory.

[00:31:20] Um, I mean, I hold regular staff meetings. I hold, um, they're, they're short, but I hold regular consistent ones. They're on my calendar. That's a very intentional thing. Sometimes we get on the staff meeting and I'm like, Hey guys, get anything you want to tell me? And they're like, no. Okay, great. We're done now. Yeah. Other times it's like, well, I want to tell you these things. I use that opportunity a lot of times, especially my engineering staff, because engineering people aren't people, people typically, they don't want to sit and talk about their feelings. Like tell me the thing that's broken or the thing I need to fix or the thing I need to learn.

[00:31:49] So with my engineering staff, a lot of times I use it as an opportunity to talk about the things they're doing well. Hey, I heard from this customer, man, you did a great job. Thank you for doing that. Uh, Hey, there's this interesting thing we're doing as a company. You guys should know about it. Oh, we got a new customer. We might be onboarding. That's doing this interesting thing. So when you see their name, this is the interesting thing they're doing. And I use that for internal marketing. And that's very intentional. Uh, with my other parts of the staff, I use it as a way to stay connected.

[00:32:19] Like if I meet, like my billing team is pretty together. I don't need to do much there. I got a great CFO. Um, and I meet with them like once a month and I'm like, Hey, I'm here. Do you need me thing? And it's really just a more of a, I'm in there in their face and they can say something and we could talk about things. And if there's something that's, that they don't like, or they want to change, or maybe they're interacting with another department in a weird way. You know, I can, I can engage at that point. Um, but that's like I said, once again, very intentional.

[00:32:48] Um, if I, if I think one of your questions that you guys sent me over was like, what would you do if you could do something different? And now you haven't asked it yet, but this is the perfect time for it. Okay. I wish I would have, if I could go back and do one thing over again, what I wish I would have done is I wish I would have been more intentional about the business building. What do you mean by that? So when I, in every business I've built, this is number four.

[00:33:14] I built the business to do the business, the thing, right? I make the widget. So I go do the widget. I didn't stop early on, even after having the experience of doing it, I didn't stop early on and say, you know what I want to do is I want to structure the company in this way. And I want to create these kinds of workflows and these kinds of gates to make the company more accessible, more manageable and pre think the company out a little bit.

[00:33:43] If I would have just spent a day and penciled that down and said, this is how the company is going to be going to work and not just winged it, things would have been a lot smoother over the first several years. But instead I built it at, I kind of built it where the airplane was flying, but I'm good at that. I'm very much a seat in my pants guy. So I did very good at the building, the airplane while it's flying thing without completely crashing to the ground.

[00:34:08] Um, but you, you would build a department and I can give you a hundred examples, my sales department, right? So I bet every MSP struggles building a sales department. Absolutely. And it's because every MSP thinks sales should be the one thing you show up, you market to people, you go out, you push your product and then the people buy your product. And then you go to the next product. I have yet to meet an MSP who could pull that off. Right. No one does because that's not the product you sell.

[00:34:37] The product you're actually selling as an MSP is the relationship to the person and the trust that they, that you can take care of their technology. They want a technology babysitter. That's what they want. They want you to come in and they want to hire you just like you interview your, if you have children, you're going to interview the babysitter. Hmm. Are they going to let them like eat candy after nine? Yeah. Right. Those are the questions you're asking the babysitter. Is this somebody I can trust? Are they going to be on their phone all night?

[00:35:04] Or are they going to call 911 if my kid's finger gets cut or bleeding off or whatever? Right. Whatever that, are they get burned is something, are they going to do the responsible thing? Or are they going to be talking to Becky Sue on the other line going, Oh my gosh, he just got his hand burned. Can you believe it? If that's going to be the case, let's not hire that babysitter. Right. I want the babysitter is going to make the responsible decision. Well, when you're selling, that's what people want. They want to trust you and trust that you're going to make the responsible decision because they can't make the responsible decision.

[00:35:33] They're not equivalent. They're not good enough to watch their own technology kids. They want you to watch your kids. So what most MSPs try to sell is the technology and they get in trouble or they sell the widget or the nobody wants that. I'm not going to sell you. I can, I can hold up the coolest widget on the planet and I can tell you everything about it and nobody's going to buy it. But if I can sell you that I can help you and I can, you can trust me and the trust will not happen in the first meeting. It will happen at the second meeting.

[00:36:03] It will happen at the third meeting more often. It will probably not happen until they're upset with something. Yep. I will make introductions to companies and I will, I will, I will close the intro this way. I just want you to know we exist. This is what we're doing. We're really good at it. And we're really smart, good quality people. If you ever get into a situation where you feel like you really just need really good, smart, quality people can help you with technology. Just give me a call. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to have Peyton or one of my team.

[00:36:30] We're going to check with you once a month or once a quarter, just to remind you we're here. We're not going to ask anything of you. If you want a free lunch call, we'll do that. If you want to just vent about anything, give us a call. We'll take you to lunch. We'll pay and we'll visit because you need to know who we are, who we say we are, because until you can trust, we are, who we say we are. You're never going to trust me with technology. And if I, if you can't trust me with technology, we're never going to have a successful relationship in any form.

[00:36:56] So the only way we're going to pull this off is if together we agree that we can trust each other. And I will get calls a year later, two years later, three years later. Hey, you know, we just had this horrible situation happen with our existing service provider or management's finally fed up with XYZ problem. We're now willing to bring on an IT solution. Can you please come talk to us? As a technologist, how long did it take you to figure that out? Half my life? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:37:26] Half my life. Yeah. I, um, when I was, when I built my internet company, it wasn't a thing because everybody wanted the internet. Yeah. I didn't have to sell it. They all just showed up and asked me for internet. I was like, here's internet. Yeah. Uh, so that was kind of cool. That was different. When I became a, when I was doing Novell consulting early on, um, almost all that business was referral business because I was in Austin, Texas. It was a booming early pre-internet years.

[00:37:54] And almost all of my customers were in the same industry and they're referring me one to the other or playing golf together, referring me to the next one, to the next one, to the next one. So I didn't need to sell myself. They were doing it for me. And they liked the young geek Keith who showed up with his backpack full of network cards, you know, 19, 20 years old and goes, Hey, I'm here to help you build your network. And then I was a nice guy and I did it and I was personable and my personality worked for me. And that was what cinched it. But when I was intentional, you know, when I built, when I started flying around the country,

[00:38:24] building internet companies, and I was trying to figure out how to engage with these other internet providers, I realized they really wanted me to solve their problems, but really where it was the clicking together that made the difference. They would, they needed to be comfortable that calling me would get, would, would, I would listen, you know, uh, and, and, and as I make the joke all the time that, you know, not only am I a consultant and a technologist, I'm also a counselor.

[00:38:52] You know, I can tell you how many other people I've counseled through divorces and, you know, horrible, bad, bad businesses failing, um, because of the trust, they trust you. And I love those people. And every single one of those people today. And if, if somebody who I've had an interaction with were to watch this now, and I haven't talked to me in 10 years, they should know they can call me and our relationship will pick up exactly where it was 10 years ago. Cause I care about the person.

[00:39:20] The thing that we do is the thing that we do, but I don't have enough hours in the day to keep up with every single person individually. That's just never going to happen. It's not realistic. Sure. But I care about all of those people the same way. And if I run into them, I go out of my way to try to spend time with them. Um, and I think that's true and it's true with former staff. Um, you know, but it's a, it's, it's an intentional caring about the people. I think that's, I think that's super powerful.

[00:39:47] How do you, how did, for, for the MSP owners listening, how do you set this up with your Peyton, with your salesperson? Cause I feel like most people are like, I'll hand them the phone book or I'll tell them to go to, you know, business after hours and I'll give them, you know, 90 days to hit a number. And if not, it's a horrible sales rep. Yep. And that's the problem. I mean, right there, you just, you gave me the entire problem. Right. So here's what you have to do.

[00:40:15] You have to realize that, that business development or building your business is an ongoing process. You never stopped doing it. So hiring somebody, putting them into a position and saying, you got 90 days to create results in this business. Now that works for other things. If you're selling a vacuum cleaner, great. But if you're doing this, it's not going to work because what's going to happen is you're going to keep spending that money. You're going to hire this guy for 90 days. He's going to leave.

[00:40:43] Now you're going to train the next guy for 60 days. Then the next guy is going to take over. And then you're going to do the next guy for 90 days. You know, and it's just going to be this endless cycle and you're going to get nowhere. You're going to get lucky and get one or two. You might get lucky and hire salespeople. Who's got the book of business that can bring you some people. But if they're so willing to leave those other companies, maybe you don't want them. Have you ever asked yourself that question, Mr. MSP? Yeah. So the salespeople you want aren't salespeople. Mm-hmm. So when I hired Peyton, and Peyton is a wonderful story.

[00:41:12] Peyton is going to be my fourth biz dev person at ECX. Um, the first one I hired, I hired a seasoned, seasoned sales guy. Super seasoned. Loved him. Great friend. Uh, helped me build this company from nothing. Met him when I was working on my master's degree. Um, he had been a sales company, a salesperson for, uh, his name is David. He'd been a salesperson for, um, big insurance company, renting thousands of reps. Um, but he didn't know the IT business. Mm-hmm.

[00:41:42] But I'll tell you what David knew is people. And David came in and we were talking and we both had the same philosophy. It was about the people. And so David said, okay, I'm going to build a program for the people. And he would, and he was like, how much do you want to spend? And I'm like, well, let's spend as little as possible, but do as much as we can between you and me. And so David would be like, okay, how about we schedule no less than say two lunches a week and we'll buy lunch for people, whoever will show up.

[00:42:12] Okay. So that was where we started. And then we would, then he, David literally just would, he built a little cool flyer. It was terrible. I look back now. It was like really bad, but it was a flyer and David was proud of it. And he took the flyer and didn't have Photoshop skills, but it was okay. And he took this flyer and he would literally go places. He'd give them the flyer and he'd say, Hey, my name's David. And here's the flyer and we're ECX systems. And we do cool, cool technology things. If you have a problem, let us know, but you know, I might come back and check on you. And he would just, just banter with them.

[00:42:41] Then they go to the next person, next person, next person. Well, eventually what happens is our name starts getting around the area. And next thing you know, people are, but it's, it's months. You're doing this months and months and months, no return, no return. But David's salary ain't changing, baby. That's right. Right. It's months and months. Well, I knew that we couldn't operate the company with David doing that a hundred percent of the time as a startup. So David, I gave David another half job. Half job was operations.

[00:43:08] You oversee the quotes, make sure they get out the door and the people get the right thing that they order. So he had both jobs. That way we could at least justify his cost a little bit early on. Sure. Well, then as it, as the position evolved, he could do more and more people stuff. We ended up landing, um, about $380,000 a year in new business that following year, because of David's just knocking on doors and talking to people. But it took over a year. It didn't happen overnight. It was a long time.

[00:43:37] And so, well, then we did, and then we just kept that up. Well, then David retired several years ago. He retired. And, um, we dropped off doing that kind of business building stuff. Uh, we were still growing through word of mouth. I would land one or two. On average, we left about 12 new customers a year, uh, which in the MSP business, I understand it's quite a lot, but for us, that's actually kind of slow. Um, and it was word of mouth. People would go, Hey, call Keith's team. We were growing.

[00:44:07] Um, and then in, um, before COVID, I brought another guy on also a seasoned sales professional. Um, and we went down the same rabbit hole with what we did with David and it worked. We built new customers. It was the same deal. We upped our volume of customers coming in, but it was long build, long build. Um, well, I realized that, um, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to say this out loud. I'm getting older.

[00:44:36] The hair's graying and it is in the, you know, my hairline used to be here. I don't know if you can tell, but you know, I had this really elegant hairline down here. And as I was getting older, things were exceeding. And I know that my, my staff is aging too. Right. And I, and I think that may be some, a lot of MSPs, the young people aren't in the service business the same way as the people in their forties and fifties, and even some in their sixties who came up in the pre-internet generation who are very heavy hobbyists.

[00:45:05] Um, and you probably interview a lot of those people. Um, and so as a result, I realized I need more younger people. And so I set my sights on trying to find someone with zero skills who I liked. That was the benchmark. Zero skills, zero skill. I didn't care what skills I had. Can you, can you write emails? And do I like you? Are you likable? And can you, I will, I looked for somebody with just really good soft skills.

[00:45:31] Um, now if you're a technical MSP and you're trying to do this, please call someone who has good soft skills to do this for you. Yes. But if you have good soft skills, then you can recognize it. You can recognize when someone can read the room, right? They don't need coaching. They're not miss saying things in the interview. They're not going down a path. You didn't lead them down and embarrassing you or saying weird things when you're interviewing them and talking to them. You know, you, if they can read the room on, you know, get the pulse of the person they're

[00:46:00] talking to and have a pretty good idea and they're pleasant and friendly. They don't need to be super pretty necessarily if that does help. But if you can get that kind of person and then you invest in them, you will get dividends back, dividends back a thousand fold because then they can then train the next person and the next person, the next person. And so I had Jeff bring on Peyton. I hired Peyton. I found, I found him with that criteria.

[00:46:26] And then Jeff hired Peyton and now Peyton's been doing biz dev on his own for about a year, maybe longer now, year and a half. And he just, and, and, and it's very, my, my, the Peyton controls his schedule, controls his appointments. I don't breathe down his neck. He meets every, we meet every Monday for a sales meeting. He briefs me on who's on the list. Everybody's in the system as a prospect or potential. So I can look at any time, right? There's nothing hidden. He briefs, Hey, this is good. This is not good.

[00:46:55] We're doing good with that. But his goal is not who he's converting. His goal is who did you meet? Were they a good meet? Do you see a future with these people? Six months, a year down the road, three months down the road. If you don't see a future, quit talking to them. Yeah. If you, you know, just let them know we're here. Be nice. They can, they may call. You never know. But if there's not a future, don't call them every month. Yeah. Ask them if they want you to call them every month to check in. If they don't want you to call them every month, can you ask them?

[00:47:25] Can I call your recorder? I just want to check in, possibly buy you lunch. But can we engage as a human? You know, you may not have a technical problem. That's okay. But can I, Keith, engage with you, Damien, at least once a month and just see how you're doing. If you're going to give me five minutes of your time, even if that five minutes is, yeah, nothing's really changed, man. Thanks for checking on me. Great. It may be, you know, what about this thing? Can we just talk about it? Maybe you don't want to engage me, but maybe you want to talk about the thing.

[00:47:55] And then we can say, yeah, we've done that before. No, we haven't done that before. Do you want a technical resource? I can give somebody to use a technical resource to talk about it at no charge just so we can see if there's synergy. But if there is synergy, great. If there's not synergy, then let's not keep doing this, you know? But find the people who got synergy. And so that list needs to be synergy people and people with potential futures, not I'm selling this thing tomorrow. With that said, you better dang track your pipeline. Right.

[00:48:24] You better know how much each one of those is costing you, how much each one of those you're putting time in. If you've got somebody who's a dead end and you're pretty darn sure they're a dead end, then that biz dev guy needs to read the room and not spend, give this guy seven free lunches. Right. Now you're just throwing money away and wasting time, you know? And there's a fine line there because some of them might be really, really good people to know for other reasons.

[00:48:51] Maybe they're well-connected in a particular community that you want to be a part of. Then go ahead and give them the seven free lunches. They're well-connected in a community you want to be a part of. That's your entry fee. Mm-hmm. Whatever it is that works for you to build those relationships, but it can't be about the goal of selling. It has to be a goal about the goal of the people and the way we do it. And not everybody can do it this way or wants to do it this way, but we do it through education. And right now what we're doing today, and it'll change in a couple of months probably.

[00:49:19] But right now what we're doing today is we hold a seminar. We go to companies, we send out, we're doing different things between mass mailings and different things. And we're like, Hey, do you want to talk about your business? We can tell you kind of what the big trends are right now, what people are working on and what advantages and disadvantages, what's commonalities? What are the things that people are concerned about? And then you can ask us specific questions about your business and whether you fall into those categories or not. And it brings attention to things like cybersecurity.

[00:49:46] It brings attention to things like IT modernization. I talk about a lot. There's a huge propensity for businesses to invest in a technology, but not take advantage of it. Right. Right. They pay all these one super, super simple example that every MSP should know is all these companies are spending big money on Microsoft 365 and they're spending all these licensing dollars. But there's this huge stack of features that are built in autopilot and Intune and defender

[00:50:16] that are built in. They're probably paying for that. Nobody bothers to set up and engage. Right. Well, you have this entire opportunity to streamline, to take a company who's already spending the money, no extra dollars out of pocket, maybe 10 hours, 20 hours, 30 hours of engineering and get them really into a situation where they're taking advantage of the thing they're paying for and really modernizing the way that business operates. Why are we doing that more? I run into tons of companies.

[00:50:46] I talk to companies all the time. Do not audit their 365 ever. Why aren't you auditing your 365? That's like a, you know, we can take two hours, do it, give you a report and we can now make some decisions. Yeah. This thing, you know, these are things that are low hanging fruits. We bring those things to the table so that the end company hears it and goes, wow, I wonder why we're not doing those things. You know? And then sometimes they're like, Hey, we're really happy. We have a great MSP. This is funny. My MSPs love this.

[00:51:15] And I'm like, okay, well you'd ask your MSP if there's doing those things. And if they're not, they should. So you should ask them to do those things for you. And if they have questions, call me. I will help the MSP do those things. Yeah. And I probably won't even charge the MSP to help them do those things. I'll just get, I'll give them some information on what they need to go do. But we all need to be making the industry better. I don't want to go into somebody who's happy. And I tell everybody, if you're happy with your MSP, so if anybody gets an ECX marketing call and I show up and they're happy with their MSP, I'm not stealing it.

[00:51:45] That's right. The first thing out of my mouth is if you like your MSP and you have a relationship with them and they're competent, do not switch to us. I say that out loud. We are here in case. Now, if you find that your MSP is weak, if they're in 80% of what you need as a business, but there's 20% you're not doing, then you need to call your MSP and tell them to call us. Tell them the 20% of the things that they're not doing that you, that you think they need help with and tell them to call us. We'll step in and help the MSP with the 20%. There's no reason we can't do this as a team.

[00:52:15] Speaking of that, what led you to be the MSP for MSPs? Helping people. I like to help people. I don't need the money. I mean, I need the money, but I don't need the money. Does that make sense? Not at all. You know, everybody needs money. Money's a tool, right? It's a pencil, it's a pen, it's a piece of paper, but it's not the end all be all. I don't need money like that. My business is successful. We do pretty good. I make pretty good money. I built my own little fiefdom over here.

[00:52:45] So when I go into a company, I'm not going into that company going, wow, I need this business. I go into the company going, how can I help this business? And if I can help everyone else along the way, why don't I? I'm equipped to do so. I'll help you. Now, I'm not going to help you to my own detriment. There's a difference. I will help you, you know, if I can spend an hour with an MSP and give them some tips and tricks and then they can go on and make their business better, I'll do it all day long. Yeah.

[00:53:14] But if you're going to come to me and go, I need 10 hours of your help and I want some coaching and I want you guys to show me how to do this and I want some training and I want you to help me with this thing and this thing, I'm like, do you need to subscribe to my services? That's what we pay for. Yeah. But if you just want some tips and tricks, if you're another CEO or an MSP owner or a president of an, you know, or an operations guy and you're like, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this. I'll give you some advice. Happy to, but that's given back to the community. And that's, I've helped a lot of companies that way. I keep doing that, but I do that also for my, my own customers.

[00:53:43] You know, um, I help a lot of MSPs with pre-sales because I have a hard time selling. And so we step in and we help with them with pre-sales because they just don't know sometimes that how to move the ball over the line. And more often than not, in almost every pre-sales call I'm on, it's comfort. They've met with the MSP a bunch of times. The customer at the other end knows they know what they're doing. They feel confident in their technical skills, but they're not comfortable.

[00:54:12] I show up and I be me like this and they go, Oh, I'm Keith makes me comfortable. And then they close. And in my, in my delivery is they're a partner. I will always be there for them. If you need something, you can call me and here's my personal number too. So if they're not doing what you want them to do back channel me, I'll go talk to the ownership. We'll make sure they do what you need to do. So you have it all. You're protected as the business owner or the business decision maker. You're protected from all rounds. Cause I'm here. I've got your back on all of your direction.

[00:54:42] And in turn, I've got the MSPs back because now the MSP has got somebody that, that also trusts their customer. So now when the, when they call me and go, Hey, there's this thing happening. I call the MSP owner and go, Hey, your staff isn't behaving, man. We got a problem. We need to work on this together. What do we got to do so that your staff is behaving? And I would want them to do that to me if my staff isn't behaving. Right. You know? I mean, and so that, but that takes trust. A lot of trust. And there's a lot of MSPs that there's a lot of them. They're too busy to think you're going to steal their business or they think you're going

[00:55:11] to backstab them. Or they think, man, if I wanted your business, I'd have taken it a long time ago. Right. That's not what it's about. It's an out me targeting your customers and going after them. That's not the thing. The thing is about, um, it's about building the relationship longterm. Sure. I have no desire personally and as a company culture to bring on a customer. That's not longterm. If I bring on a customer and I onboard them and we streamline them and they stay with us a year and go somewhere else.

[00:55:40] I brought on the wrong customer. I failed. I failed as a leader. I brought on the wrong customer. I hired the wrong customer. I did the wrong thing because customers should be, customers should be in it. If we're all into their business, they should be all into ours and we should be a team. Now that doesn't mean everybody's perfect. Something's going to happen. You know, the leadership's going to change or something's going to happen and they're going to feel like I want to do something different, you know, but that should happen

[00:56:06] three, four, five, six, seven years down the road, not year one. Yeah. You know? Um, and, and I want them to tell me, you know, I worked with this engineer and he made me mad and I decided to change because of this one engineer. Okay. At least I know now why you changed, but I'd like to know why you threw away seven years over one guy because you could have called me and I could have taken that guy out and given you a different guy, you know? And they often don't have an answer for that because they've let it build up and let it build up. Sure.

[00:56:34] But cause that's never really what it is more often than not. It's like, well, you're too expensive. We really don't want to spend the money. We want to cut back. But by using the engineer as the excuse that works for us right now, because we did this one, you guys did this one thing wrong to try to defract from, you know, defray from the fact that they want to save money. But I tell all my customers all the time, if you want to save money, tell me. Doesn't mean I can help you, but I will do my darndest. And if we end up at an impasse with going, well, I've cut as far as I can and still give you the same level of service you want.

[00:57:03] You either have to sacrifice the service level or I can't be your provider anymore. I want to make that decision on purpose. If you want a cheaper MSP, you know, I've got partners. Let me recommend one. That's probably maybe cheaper than us who I know will take care of you. I would rather make that handoff and we go on in a good amicable way than you feeling like you need to find something wrong to fire us. Yeah. But I lead with those conversations. You know, I never say we're the cheapest coming in.

[00:57:32] I never bargain on price. I bargain on quality of the product. And I tell you if you, and I tell every customer, if you're looking for the cheapest one, don't hire me because that means every conversation is going to be about the cheapest thing. And if every conversation is about the cheapest thing, we're not actually talking about your business, which means I'm not doing the right things for your company. I'm doing the things that are the right things for what you think are the cheapest thing that needs to be done. Wrong focus. Yeah. So, but I'm in a situation now having grown my company where I can do that.

[00:57:59] When we were early on, we made a lot of mistakes taking on as many as we could to try to build. Sure. Sure. Sure. I wouldn't even call them mistakes. They were growing pains. The lessons learned, right? Right. What is, what is it about you and I guess the trust you build that has enabled you to do what most people would say is impossible? Most people, you know, they want you to be a vendor or an MSP, right? Yes. You're both. You're working with MSPs. They feel comfortable.

[00:58:29] Like most people couldn't imagine that their customer know you exist. Yeah. The customer will actually reach out to you. I think it's because we've proven it over and over again. I had a customer literally call me up one time. Actually, I've had this happen several times. We don't want to work with our MSP. We'd rather just go to you directly. And I will say, I'm sorry, that's not going to happen. We don't do that. I don't take business from, I don't steal.

[00:58:57] I said, what we need to do is we need to work together and solve the problem. The reason you're calling me is something isn't working. Mm-hmm. I'm glad that you trust me and will call me about the thing that's not working. Now, I want to, I'm going to bring leadership in at the other company and we're going to figure this out and we're going to build a formula. And if I've got to do it personally, I'm going to build a formula that will make it work for you because you're, you've got a thing that's bothering you. And if I can get them to open up about the actual thing that's bothering them, you know, and it's not money.

[00:59:26] A lot of people think it's money. It's never money. It's almost always relationship. Mm-hmm. I send an email, they don't respond to me. Or when they do respond to me, they're condescending, but they don't say that out loud. Yeah. So I ask those questions. When you get emails from the engineers, do you feel like they're condescending to you? Well, yeah. Like I'm reading their mind or something. I'm like, no, I know engineers. Right. You know, I said, I said, so here's what we're going to do. You need to understand engineers are engineers. That's going to happen.

[00:59:53] But you need to look at the overall thing that the company is doing for you. We need to introduce a layer between you and the engineering team so that you can, so they can be a translator. So when things go wrong, you've got a translator. Mm-hmm. That almost always fixes it. Oh, really? Yes. You know, now a lot of times when they're a small MSP, that's the business owner. They become the translator. I encourage business owners, always hire a young person who communicates well, knows nothing about

[01:00:22] the IT business, who can be your translator. Because all they need is a warm and fuzzy person. I heard, and I think if I talked about this last time on the pod, I had Nancy, my customer service rep. Her mandate is to this day, one line. You have all power necessary to keep, to make the customers happy. You are the customer happiness officer. I don't care what that takes. Now, you're not giving away my money. You know, she has limits on how much you can give away. Everything else needs to be approved.

[01:00:51] But outside of that, you do whatever you need to do to keep them happy. And more often than not, that's being there, listening, talking, providing information, and really making the customer know at the end of the day, if anything goes down within ECX, anything at all, I can call Nancy and she's going to help me. Whatever it is. I don't care if it's a billing issue, if it's a personnel issue, if it's Keith said something dumb to me and I'm pissed off and he's the owner. I don't care.

[01:01:20] Call Nancy. I'm not perfect. I'm going to say something dumb, you know, but call Nancy. And then that way they know for sure they got one person. And then if they're a dedicated, if they're a direct account, you know, they're a dedicated account and they have a technical account manager assigned to them, the technical account manager also becomes that person. Well, now the customer knows if I've got a problem with the technical account manager, I call Nancy.

[01:01:45] If I call Nancy, if I've got a problem with Nancy, I can call the technical account manager. And that way there's the people wall that gets created. We spend so much time as technologists building technology things that we don't remember that we're building them for people. I can't tell you how many times I get brought into a problem and they're like trying, they're telling this problem, they're trying to tell me how to solve it, right? I want to do this and I want to build this. And can you deploy this thing? Stop. What are we doing?

[01:02:15] And then they tell me and I'm like, well, that's not a technology problem. That's a people problem. I can build you the best system in the world and you will not solve it. You have a people problem. You have a workflow problem to solve that. And I'm not a workflow expert. I'm pretty good at it, but I'm not a workflow expert. I'm going to, we need to hire you somebody who's a workflow expert because you need to solve the people problem because I get through all the technology out of that I want and they're not going to use it. We had it here. We did, we bought connect wise because connect wise was the big thing and focused our business around connect wise.

[01:02:43] And our billable time went down by 25% a month. My God, that's opposite of what you want. What the heck? So I'm calling business owners. I know who are running connect wise. And I'm like, you guys are running connect wise. Now this is a long time ago. Maybe the product's better. So I'm not beating on connect wise, but for us at the time. And he's like, yeah, I got two dedicated people that manage connect wise. I'm like, I got seven employees. I don't have enough debt. I can't put dedicated people on a product. Yeah. That's not a thing. Yeah.

[01:03:13] So I said, so what we realized, so I had to figure it out. I had to figure the work. I said, I got a people problem. This is not a technology problem. Connect wise was a great product. Did exactly what it was supposed to do, but my people did not use it. Why? So I had to sit down. It took us meeting after meeting after meeting of like, what are you doing? What's going on? What, you know, why aren't you? Oh, I'm busy, boss. I'm busy. I'm running from this thing to this thing to this thing. Well, what we learned is because of the nature of our business, where we're working on one

[01:03:40] thing and the next thing, and we're all, you were very on demand, right? We're a very on demand company, technology to technology, technology, technology. An engineer doesn't work with an end user, sit down and do their write up. Then they go, okay, now I'm back. Oh, another end user, pick up a ticket, work with the end user, right? That's not how we work. That's not our model. Our business model is other smart people. So it's asking questions all day long. It's engaging all day long, right? Here's this five things happening at the same time.

[01:04:08] I'm working on this server over here, this server over here, this server over here. And at the same time, I'm answering complex questions for this group over here. So there's all these back office-y things that are happening. Well, we made it really hard for them to document that. ConnectWise was like 19 steps to say, I spent 10 minutes logged into this server and solved this directory replication problem. I made that hard. So they just went, ah, what's 10 minutes? Yeah. Right?

[01:04:37] And our billables were just like, oh. And then the worst part of it was the billables were bad, but that wasn't the worst part of it. The worst part of it was I now had no employee accountability and no insight into what my customers or what my employees really cost me. That was the most disturbing part. Because we're already not getting everything anyway, just through the nature of time tracking. People don't do it. I mean, nobody does everything perfect, perfectly anyway. So I already knew you probably got a good 10 to 15% you're losing anyway.

[01:05:07] Now you throw on an extra 25%. Brutal. Brutal. So we created workflows to where literally I let them log everything in Notepad and we would send it to secretary type people to put it in. Wow. Wow. That was the only way I could solve the problem because I needed the engineering data as fast as possible and then send it off. And eventually we ended up switching over to Kaseya, which was better because it was like

[01:05:33] time entry, hours, status, a couple of dropdowns and save. So that was a little bit, that made a big difference. Now what we do is we have our own, we wrote our own ticket system slash time tracker. And we call it the ECX Vault. And it's a product in development, I will say. It's beta 1.1 or something. It works pretty well. For us, it's working well. Not very commercial, but it works very well.

[01:05:59] But it allows us to more readily, quickly put that data in based on our workflows. And so I don't miss things anymore. Let me switch gears for a moment. If there's one thing you could do over, do differently in your history of business, what would that be? Of business? If I were, I would say with this particular company more than anything, I would have been more intentional about the financial side of the company.

[01:06:31] Because I'm a technologist, I'm technology minded. So I very much built this company to be engineering driven. Some companies are often built leadership driven, sales driven, engineering driven. They're driven by different factors, right? I very much built this to be engineering driven. I mean, almost to almost an occult kind of way where the engineers kind of get their own way and they're almost like spoiled children because we're very engineer driven. And they're all going to watch this and laugh at me. They know they're spoiled. And, and, but they're also very hard workers.

[01:07:01] You know, if my engineers come in on a Friday and they get called late for an emergency and they work through Saturday and maybe Sunday, they're not required to come in Monday. They just need to make sure if they have anything scheduled, they can hand it off to somebody so that the customer is not let down. Yeah. But they need to control their own schedule. They, I mean, I want adults working for me, not children. So they need to go and they need to say, Hey, you know, I've got stuff Monday. I need somebody to take it from me. Make sure they get confirmation back that somebody is going to take it. And then they can take money. They need Tuesday. Take Tuesday. You know, you drive your life.

[01:07:30] You live your life. I want them to be as independent as possible. And if, if, if you've got a medical issue, go deal with it. Don't come to work. If you've got a, you better not miss your kids plays, man. Go do it. Go to the kids plays. You get the same advantage I get. You go now. Don't stand the customer up to do it, but go to your kids plays. And so we're very engineering driven. So if I could go back in time, I would have been more cognizant about the financial side of the company.

[01:08:01] When we started, and I'm sure this is going to resonate with some people. When we started, we did a lot of custom pricing. We would come in and we would build the solution for the customer because in my mind, no, and this is true today, no customers created equal. Every single customer is different. Every single one has different needs. Some of them are needier than others. Even if the technology is exactly the same, some customers are more needier than other customers. Some need to have different requirements. Some need more handholding. Some need less handholding.

[01:08:28] Some need, um, have one little legacy app sitting in a corner somewhere that they need extra babysitting. All of those things are different factors within what they're doing. And they all dictate how to price that effort. And if I were to charge a simple customer, the same way I charge the complex customer in the end, I'm underwater on the complex customer and I'm bleeding money out of the simple customer to keep the complex customer alive. And that's not fair to either party. And it's not fair to me or the business that I'm trying to build.

[01:08:59] So rather than rob Peter to pay Paul or borrow from one company to pay for another company's time and blah, blah, blah. I need all of them to be equal. So in my head early on, it was build custom pricing around every customer, but we weren't intentional. And what I mean by that is we didn't sit down and say, this thing is a value and this is the cost. This thing has a value and this is the cost. This thing has a value and this is a cost. These are the, these are the Legos. Legos do not vary from the Legos because we know what the cost of the Lego is.

[01:09:28] Instead, we built things and then kind of tried to figure the cost out at the end. Yeah. We would rough the cost numbers up and go, yeah, I think we can do it for this based on time level of effort and then rough it up. And that works really well when you're teeny tiny. Does not scale at all. I mean, not at all. Does anybody trying to do that? If you want to scale your company, bail on that now. Now, the coolest thing we have ever done as a company from a financial perspective is we move to NetSuite.

[01:09:56] We standardize every package, every price. And I don't mean per workstation, but literally absolutely everything we do is a Lego. There's a Lego associated to it. If you need five email boxes hosted on a Linux server, there's a skew for it. If you need 10 hours of support to migrate an exchange server, there's a 10 hours of support package. Whatever those things are, they exist as a Lego.

[01:10:25] Our TAMs, you cannot buy a TAM for less than $800 a month. Why? Because we know what it costs to run a TAM. So they have a TAM Lego. Now, there are different tiers for TAMs based on usage of the TAM in terms of percentage of the time per the month that TAM will give you. But they all have a Lego price. There's a minimum spend because we know the cost. Same thing with our engineering support. We have a monthly support. We have a quarterly support. We have a minimum. It's a Lego. One minimum standard.

[01:10:54] And if somebody says, but I don't need that much, we say I'm sorry. Because we now know very specifically that the amount of time I'm going to put in to manage a customer at, say, a five-hour contract versus a 10-hour contract is pretty much the same amount of time. The energy that goes into that customer because of the full service kind of company we are and the responsive nature of who we are, our definition of us as a company,

[01:11:20] we put the same level of effort in a five-hour company as we do in a 10-hour company, which means my minimum spend has to be 10 hours. But that was for us. Everybody needs to figure that out on their own. But we realized that was our piece of the equation that was most critical was figuring out what those minimum spends were. But then building that into an intentional financial structure that is fully audited.

[01:11:43] Again, I do not know how many MSPs out there are doing CSP-type services, monthly subscription service, and do not audit the bill. I have no idea, but I want to shoot you people. You better audit that bill every single month without fail. You lose so much. You don't think very – oh, well, it can't be off by much.

[01:12:05] I mean, we had one time – we had a situation where some VDI environment went really squirrely and ended up – Sentinel One ended up spinning up – we ended up spinning up, I don't know, 50 VMs three or four times over the course of this troubleshooting effort. Well, their RMM automatically installed Sentinel One. Well, Sentinel One charged us, I don't know what it was, four bucks a month at the time. Well, now it's times 150 above and beyond what the customer is normally paying. Well, you know, you call Sentinel One, you know what they say?

[01:12:35] Ha ha, you installed it, baby, it's yours. Well, okay, now I have two choices. I eat the dollars, which was going to be $500, $600, $700, whatever it was, right? It's a significant amount of money that I never am going to get back. Or I go to the customer in an intentional way and say, this is a thing that happened and we're going to have to – I never offer to split it. I'm like, look, this is a cost of doing business. We had to solve this problem as part of the nature of solving the problem. The EDR software got installed 18 times.

[01:13:03] It won't be next month or 450 times. It won't be next month, but it was this month. I couldn't do anything about it, so we got to pay the bill to the vendor. You just so happen to write the check to me, but I'm paying the vendor. This is your service, not mine. Now, we can have – if you don't like that, we can have a discussion about Sentinel One and maybe find somebody else. But that's a different conversation because if I wasn't in the middle, you'd have had the same dispute with Sentinel One and they'd have told you the same thing they told me.

[01:13:32] Just because I'm in the middle, you want to take it out of my hide and that's not okay. Because I'm not making enough money on Sentinel One to cover that cost. And the more of these MSPs are being shoved down the product route, they're getting a little bit, 5%, 10%, 8%, and there's not enough margin there for mistakes at all. That's right. Yeah. And then the client would have audited the bill, so they wouldn't have caught it. They'd have had to pay it either way. That's right.

[01:13:57] What's a myth about running an MSP that you'd like to bust? Oh, that you can have it all. Oh, my God. These MSP people, I watch these little videos. You can go play golf while your MSP runs itself. Whatever. I've been doing this a very, very, very long time. And yeah, that doesn't exist.

[01:14:26] Now, can you build a team that manages everything for you and you play golf? Sure. But you can do that with any business if you're good enough. Yeah. But this idea that somehow you're going to come in, you're going to build these MRR contracts, and you're going to kind of just coast, and everything's going to take care of itself. Yeah. You're going to spend so much time and energy on automation and fixing the automation. Now, can you automate a lot of it? Yes. But in the end, you're going to still be babysitting that thing. And you're going to be lots of late nights. You're still going to have the late nights. You're never going to get away from them.

[01:14:55] You're always going to be on call. Because if you don't, companies like mine are going to sweep in and take them. Because we're going to build the relationship. Because guess what? You're on the golf course, and you're not listening to your customers. So this MSPs on the nature are a service business. The number one word is service. Yes. So if you're not going to be in the service business, don't become an MSP. Service means engaging with the client, understanding the technology needs, and being there for them.

[01:15:26] That's my interpretation. There may be some people who can debunk me on that, but my guess is they're probably few and far between. Oh, yeah. I'd like to see those people. It would be great. Right. But given all the tinkering you do, all the changes that's going on, what's something that you're looking forward to? Wow. That's a good question. There's so much happening.

[01:15:50] You know, I talk about all the time how our industry evolves at such a rapid rate that four or five years ago, there are technologies that exist today we're managing, maintaining, and growing, and spending time on that didn't even exist. An easy low-hanging fruit would be to point at AI, but that's even kind of cheating the system, really. That's really not valuable. There's cultural, political, business change things that are happening on a regular basis that are changing things.

[01:16:20] You know, nobody would have ever guessed that Broadcom was going to torpedo VMware. Right. Nobody would have ever guessed that was going to happen. And VMware was, as far as most IT people were concerned, an industry standard. And now we have an entire industry in upheaval being divided up into little spoils like the Roman Empire. Right. And for the thousand-year reign of the Roman Empire, now we're going to have little minor, minor kingdoms. And you've got Proxmox getting their little piece, and Nutanix getting their piece, and Scale Computing getting their piece. Right.

[01:16:48] And then you've got the big vendors trying to figure out who they're going to back. You know, so it's a drama. Right. Yeah. And the evolution of the business, to me, is the most interesting. How this industry is going to evolve and change, and how we're going to better serve industries. So I think what's going to happen is there's going to be a big consolidation. I'm looking forward to consolidation. And I mean that in terms of the menial things.

[01:17:11] There's a lot of service that MSPs provide and technology professionals provide that are mundane and simple, that are a waste of time and energy. They're expensive for no reason. You know, for me to have a good, talented person on staff that can solve problems, even if they're a level two person, by the time you factor in training and payroll and taxes and all the things, the overhead, it's $100,000 spent minimum. Mm-hmm.

[01:17:42] And, you know, when you factor in all of the other factors. I had to buy my laptop. And I've got to pay monthly fees for this. And I've got to have, you know, all the tools. And when you factor it all in, it's at least $100,000. Well, if the person's sole job is primarily to do end user questions, that's a horrible spend of $100,000. So if we can automate some of that and consolidate the market in such a way to where that's better through AI or other technologies, that's going to be huge.

[01:18:05] And now what's going to happen, I'm hoping, is that we can actually all, we can get through the initial problem set and then get to the more meaningful issues behind, under the covers, right? If somebody needs Excel training, the AI can help them with that. Or if somebody needs to get their Outlook reinstalled, maybe AI can help with that. But when it comes down to, man, you know, I've done the AI Outlook repair and they were really, and the AI was really friendly and his name was John. And that was great. And we were bantered while we fixed Outlook.

[01:18:34] But now I'm at the end of John's capabilities and I need to engage with a human who can actually look behind the scenes and see what's going on. To me, that's powerful. Because now I can take all of these things that are the mundane problem children of the day-to-day and eliminate them out of the business sphere. It's less about the problems that my tech people have to deal with and more about the fact that an end-user company just wants to get through their business day. I want to get from A to B through the day, from 8 to 5, whatever. I want to get through my day.

[01:19:02] And this technical roadblock came up that AI could solve for me. To me, that's huge. That type of consolidation is huge. If we can see that happen. What's the one book you'd recommend? That's interesting. So I'm not a book guy in that way. I read a lot for entertainment. I've read a lot of Brandon Sanderson stuff. I think just about everything in his library. Because it allows me to unplug my crazy, busy brain.

[01:19:29] But what I do do is an incredible amount of micro-learning. What do you mean by that? And if you're a technologist, you probably do this but don't realize you do this. And maybe if you feel like FOMO for not reading books, I mean, maybe take a page out of my book. I find really smart people that are writing about something that have either written blogs or they've done videos. And I'll consume that content. I'm real big on throwing a YouTube video on while I'm working on something. Putting it at one and a half speed or two speeds so I can hear it.

[01:19:58] Because they talk too slow for me. Speed them up a little bit. And I'm consuming the content while I'm listening. Because I can always go back and rewind it and listen again if I miss something because I got busy. So, Keith, for everybody that's been listening, how can they find you online? We are easy. ECXsystems.com. EchoCharlieXraySystems.com. We actually pick up the phone like real humans. So if you do call us, our phone number is on our website. You can give us a call. And press 2 for support.

[01:20:27] You will definitely get somebody at some point. If you don't get somebody, it is probably because we are very busy. But if you do, leave a message. We'll get to you for sure. You can also send an email at any time. Sales at ECXsystems.com for just general inquiries. If you find yourself watching this and you're in tears and you need technical help, support at ECXsystems.com. We'll get you back. Could stranger things have happened, right? Hopefully that's not you. I've been there.

[01:20:56] I've received those phone calls many a time. Well, Keith, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for being on MSP Mindset. Thank you for having me. I love this sort of thing. If you ever think of another really fun topic that you would like to cover, I'm all in. Pick a topic. We'll talk about it. I'm all in on this stuff. Absolutely. Thanks, David.