Meet the MSP Thriving in the NYC Market, with Morris Tabush (MSP Titan #14)

[00:00:00] Hey, before we get into this interview, my team and I, we're going to be in person at the GrowCon 2024 event in St. Petersburg, Florida. It's December 3rd through the 5th. And if growth is your rock or your strategic objective, if sales and marketing is something you care about, then make sure you join us. And it's free. So it's a crazy good deal. You're not going to want to miss out on those conversations and discussions. Make sure you come by and say hello.

[00:00:29] If we tried to go too far out of our comfort zone and do something and we did a subpar job at that, that's how the client would remember us. So for example, we rolled out a VoIP system for a client. How hard could that be? You know, I used to troubleshoot the phones in my parents' house. They had an old Panasonic system. I know about VoIP. I can read some articles about it. We did it. We did a poor job. And even though we were doing really great on the IT, the voice is what, you know, they thought of first. Oh, that phone system stinks. Tabush stinks. And we ended up losing the client.

[00:00:57] And there were one or two other clients, the same thing. We just tried to go too far out of our comfort zone and we ended up losing them completely. You know, a client's never going to say, well, you're great at this, but you're not so good at these things. So I'm going to replace you over here. No, they're going to replace you entirely. How you do something is how you do everything in their eyes.

[00:01:17] Hey guys, Damien Stevens, host of MSP Mindset. Today, I continue my mission to interview 100 of the fastest growing and most interesting MSPs on the planet. And I'm blessed to be joined by Morris Tabush. Morris has built a super fast growing MSP by referrals.

[00:01:37] Now, I know you get referrals, but the question is, have you built a top 500 MSP with referrals? There's some secrets that he reveals in our conversation that you won't believe. Don't miss out on our conversation.

[00:01:51] Let's go all the way back to the beginning of being that IT guy and the early beginnings here and what led you to start your company.

[00:02:02] Okay. So if you really want to go all the way back, growing up in the 1980s and early 90s, I was one of those kids that loved technology.

[00:02:12] Anything with buttons or lights or wires, I was fascinated by it, but that was never enough for me. I had to know how does it work and what happens if I push this button? What happens if I do this?

[00:02:25] So I was always taking things apart. The minute the VCR broke or the cordless phone or the answering machine, I love to open this stuff up.

[00:02:34] Sometimes I'd fix it. Sometimes I wouldn't, but I was fascinated by this stuff.

[00:02:39] Probably around 1987 or so, my parents bought the first computer for the house. It was an Apple IIc. I was eight years old.

[00:02:47] I was either 86 or 87, so I was seven or eight years old at the time. Again, fell in love with this thing.

[00:02:54] At the time, I think it had an eight megahertz processor and 128K of RAM. I believe it was a Motorola 6086 chip, but don't quote me on that one.

[00:03:06] So parents brought home an Apple IIc computer they had purchased from Macy's. I was fascinated by it.

[00:03:12] And again, of course, you could put the floppy disk in and run the program, but I was always curious, well, what happens if I push these buttons?

[00:03:18] What happens if I do that? And I got into, I guess you would call it the BIOS or the DOS prompt of the Apple II world.

[00:03:26] In school, I always loved computers class and science class.

[00:03:30] And fast forward a little bit, when I was about 14 or 15 years old, I got a call one day from a woman who lived nearby in the community.

[00:03:39] She had bought a computer, didn't know what to do with it, how to take it out of the box or set it up.

[00:03:44] So she called the school I went to, spoke to the computer teacher who recommended me, said, oh, I have this kid more established in my computer class.

[00:03:51] He's really, really good. Why don't you call him?

[00:03:53] So went to her house after school one day.

[00:03:56] I think it was a Mac classic.

[00:03:57] Set it up.

[00:03:59] Taught her and her daughter how to use it.

[00:04:00] Showed them how to open the word processor and how to play some games and how to drag and drop files.

[00:04:07] She drove me home.

[00:04:08] Said, how much do I owe you?

[00:04:09] I said, I don't know.

[00:04:10] I was there for an hour.

[00:04:11] I guess $10 is good.

[00:04:13] So and from then on, that was 1994.

[00:04:16] And from then on, I just became known, or maybe it was 93.

[00:04:19] I became known as the guy around town to help you set up your computer.

[00:04:24] So for the early 90s, I was riding my bike all over town.

[00:04:28] This was in Monmouth County, New Jersey, where I lived at the time.

[00:04:31] Setting up everybody's first computer, whether it was a Mac or a Compact Presario.

[00:04:37] Getting them on to America Online or at the time before there was even real internet.

[00:04:42] So AOL used to send out the floppy disks in the magazines.

[00:04:45] And if you refer to somebody, you get five bonus hours.

[00:04:47] Well, by the time I graduated high school, I probably had a bank of a few hundred bonus hours

[00:04:52] from setting up everybody in town with AOL.

[00:04:54] Well, and I, again, I'm setting up computers, fixing computers, teaching people how to use them.

[00:05:01] That was me throughout high school.

[00:05:03] In college, I went to college in New York City.

[00:05:06] I started getting phone calls from people to go to their offices and set them up with this new thing called DSL

[00:05:12] so they didn't have to share one dial-up line for the whole office.

[00:05:15] Or they were asking me, hey, can you get us our own email domain

[00:05:18] so we're not all using AOL.com addresses for the company?

[00:05:22] Cleaning viruses, doing, again, random IT support.

[00:05:25] This was in the mid-'90s when most businesses were very behind as far as technology.

[00:05:30] Getting on the internet was not as easy as calling Verizon or Comcast and just ordering a cable modem.

[00:05:36] So that's how I kept busy throughout college.

[00:05:39] And then as I was in my senior year, my dad turned to me and said, hey, you're going to graduate soon.

[00:05:44] What are you going to do next year?

[00:05:47] I didn't really know, but I said, hey, I really like doing IT work.

[00:05:51] Let me see if I can make a business out of it.

[00:05:53] At the time, I had probably two or three small businesses keeping me busy a couple days a week.

[00:05:59] Again, random IT work, cleaning viruses, setting up computers, fixing random issues.

[00:06:06] I had also had a couple of interesting summer internships over the years, one of which was working for a company that did Microsoft.

[00:06:13] At the time, it was called Great Plains Dynamics.

[00:06:16] Now I think it's called Microsoft Dynamics accounting software.

[00:06:19] I worked there for two summers.

[00:06:21] They had a systems department that at the time was setting up servers and networks also, but they were looking to get out of that business and only focus on the software.

[00:06:29] So they called me also while I was a senior in college and said, hey, remember these two clients you used to go to on our behalf?

[00:06:35] Well, would you want to keep going to them and build them directly because we don't want to do that work anymore?

[00:06:39] So that's how I got started.

[00:06:43] I graduated college in May 2001.

[00:06:46] A few days later, I took a small office in New York with two employees, one of whom was my brand new roommate as well.

[00:06:53] It was an old friend and roommate and decided to come work for me and do sales.

[00:06:57] Another one was in some of my computer classes and heard I was starting a business and asked to come work as an engineer.

[00:07:04] That's how we got started in June, probably second or third of 2001.

[00:07:09] That was an early time to be in technology for sure.

[00:07:15] Hey guys, today's episode is sponsored by Servocity.

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[00:08:02] A couple of things I want to unpack from that beginning.

[00:08:07] One, what gave you the idea and confidence to start with two employees?

[00:08:16] So I'll say this.

[00:08:17] I went into this business without a business plan or anything else.

[00:08:22] I just had saved up a little bit of money.

[00:08:25] I think my business plan was an Excel spreadsheet that was about this big in total.

[00:08:28] It kind of said we're going to bill $125 an hour times this many hours, which will give us this much revenue and this much profit.

[00:08:36] That was my business plan.

[00:08:37] But what gave me the confidence?

[00:08:42] I think what kind of gave me the confidence, you know the saying, when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose?

[00:08:48] So here I was.

[00:08:50] I was 21 years old.

[00:08:52] I'd probably saved up about $50,000 over the years from random consulting work and some summer jobs.

[00:09:02] I had moved into an apartment that I was sharing with two people, very low living expenses.

[00:09:09] And I just said, let me give this thing a shot.

[00:09:11] Now, when I said I was going to start it, somebody approached and said, hey, I want to work for you as a technician.

[00:09:15] I was like, oh, great.

[00:09:16] I'm going to need a technician.

[00:09:17] You're hired.

[00:09:19] And then, like I said, my brand new roommate, we discussed in late May.

[00:09:24] He found an apartment in Brooklyn.

[00:09:25] We were going to move in together.

[00:09:27] He heard what I was doing for work.

[00:09:29] He said, hey, I'd love to come sell for you.

[00:09:30] I'm a great salesperson.

[00:09:31] I love to talk to people.

[00:09:33] We're like, okay, great.

[00:09:35] I didn't think about, well, wait a minute.

[00:09:37] Can I afford to hire two employees?

[00:09:39] I just didn't think about it.

[00:09:41] All I knew was that I had some money at about $50,000 in the bank.

[00:09:44] My dad loaned me a little bit of money also.

[00:09:46] He said, listen, you're starting a business.

[00:09:47] You're going to have expenses.

[00:09:48] You might need this money.

[00:09:50] Here it is just in case.

[00:09:53] And that was really it.

[00:09:54] And for the first, I want to say about year or so, every week, I would watch the bank account

[00:10:02] in QuickBooks just go a little lower and a little lower and a little lower and a little lower

[00:10:05] and a little lower and a little lower.

[00:10:09] So what gave me the confidence?

[00:10:10] I really don't know.

[00:10:11] I was young and stupid and fearless.

[00:10:13] Sometimes that works in our advantage, right?

[00:10:17] That's really cool.

[00:10:18] Well, tell me about 2003, I think it was.

[00:10:23] Was that when it was that you were able to repay?

[00:10:27] So, yeah.

[00:10:28] So 2001 was a rough year because, A, I was starting out and I had no idea what I was doing.

[00:10:35] So I'll get to 2003 in a minute.

[00:10:37] 2001, all of a sudden, I had an office.

[00:10:40] I had rent to pay our first, I believe our first office, the rent was $3,000 a month.

[00:10:44] I had a few employees to pay.

[00:10:46] I put myself on the payroll also for a very low salary just because the accountant said,

[00:10:50] I should, you know, to avoid getting flagged or anything.

[00:10:56] And every morning we would go in and like, all right, what do we have to do?

[00:11:00] A couple of emails came in from people requesting work.

[00:11:02] The phone would ring sometimes.

[00:11:04] All right, you go here, you go there.

[00:11:05] Really, the two technicians were me and Ari, the guy I had hired.

[00:11:10] We were just running around New York City.

[00:11:12] We had beepers.

[00:11:12] So we would call back to the office and the sales guy was there.

[00:11:15] And all right, this person called that person.

[00:11:17] There was no, you know, there was no smartphones or, you know, BlackBerry's.

[00:11:21] I don't think BlackBerry's right.

[00:11:23] So it was like, call the office, see what they have.

[00:11:25] And there's an emergency.

[00:11:25] They'll page you with the 911 at the end of it.

[00:11:28] Yeah.

[00:11:29] I can remember those days.

[00:11:31] Yeah.

[00:11:31] And for the first year, it was, again, like I said, watching the bank account drop a little

[00:11:35] bit and a little bit.

[00:11:36] But I was young.

[00:11:37] I was stupid.

[00:11:38] I also was single and had a lot of energy back then.

[00:11:41] So I was in the office till midnight most nights.

[00:11:43] And when I'd get back from doing all the IT work, I would try to, you know, do the invoices.

[00:11:48] I'd try to deposit any checks that came in.

[00:11:49] I would think of what promotions I could offer or send out, you know, what emails could I

[00:11:55] send?

[00:11:55] What marketing could I do to try to drum up some business?

[00:11:59] And then September 11th happened a few months later.

[00:12:04] So everything went on pause for a while.

[00:12:06] But shortly after that, I want to say around September 15th or 16th, it probably was, I got

[00:12:12] a call from a company that I had been pitching a few months earlier in the summer saying, hey,

[00:12:17] if you're still available, we need help.

[00:12:19] The company that hosts our email, their servers were in the World Trade Center.

[00:12:23] So we have no email.

[00:12:24] But this might have been, it was sometime between September 13th and 15th this happened.

[00:12:28] So can you host our email for us?

[00:12:30] I said, sure.

[00:12:31] Spun up a quick POP3 server at some company I'd been working with.

[00:12:34] I said, okay, your email's set up.

[00:12:37] Go here to create the accounts and I'll send you directions on how to configure all your

[00:12:41] computers.

[00:12:41] And by the way, hosting email was something we charged, I think it was $299 a year from.

[00:12:45] So I was not going to get rich off that.

[00:12:48] And Jimmy, who was the guy on the other end of the phone said, well, can you just come

[00:12:51] to our office and set up all the computers and we'll pay you to do it?

[00:12:54] I said, of course I can.

[00:12:56] So that was a, and that led to being one of our, you know, one of our best accounts for

[00:13:01] probably about 10 or 12 years.

[00:13:03] And that company is still a client of ours, by the way.

[00:13:06] They're not on POP3 email anymore, but they are still 23 years later, a client of ours.

[00:13:12] So again, little by little over the next few years, jobs kept coming in.

[00:13:16] Some of them were residential work.

[00:13:18] Some of them were custom programming.

[00:13:21] It was sort of any type of tech work that would come in.

[00:13:24] We would take projects, service work, but things started to build up and, you know, around

[00:13:30] the middle or towards end of 2002, all of a sudden I said, wait a minute, we have more

[00:13:34] money in the bank than we did last week.

[00:13:35] Like we had gotten down to probably about six or $7,000 and I knew if I needed to, I

[00:13:40] can go to my dad and ask for a little more and he probably would have given it to me.

[00:13:44] But all of a sudden, like started to go up and up and up.

[00:13:48] And sometime in 2003, I don't remember exactly when this was, I called my dad and said, I want

[00:13:54] to come have lunch with you.

[00:13:55] His office was a few blocks, actually still is a few blocks away from mine.

[00:13:59] Went over to have lunch with him and I handed him an envelope with a check in it for the loan

[00:14:04] he had given me.

[00:14:05] And that was, that was, it felt really, really great to be able to repay him back every penny

[00:14:10] that I borrowed and know that now I was standing on my own two feet.

[00:14:14] Yeah.

[00:14:15] Standing on your own two feet is a big deal and doing that in two years and being able

[00:14:18] to repay in full is quite the feat, right?

[00:14:21] Yeah.

[00:14:22] That is really cool.

[00:14:25] I wanted to, I wanted to talk about kind of what changed by, because you, you continue to

[00:14:33] grow rapidly if I understand.

[00:14:34] And then we did.

[00:14:36] It seemed like there was an inflection point somewhere around 2010.

[00:14:39] Yeah.

[00:14:40] So for the first nine or so years of the business, we grew rapidly.

[00:14:45] At the time, IT was still somewhat new to the business world.

[00:14:51] And I want to say IT was still new to the business world.

[00:14:55] It was maturing very rapidly.

[00:14:57] And companies, you know, they had, they needed a lot more IT support than they do today.

[00:15:02] Most end users back then were not comfortable doing things on their own.

[00:15:07] Most technology couldn't be done on its own.

[00:15:09] You know, you needed a professional to do it for you.

[00:15:11] Anyway, we, yes, we grew rapidly for about eight or nine years.

[00:15:15] And here we were in the middle of New York City.

[00:15:18] We'd done a couple of really nice, prestigious projects, which put our name out there.

[00:15:23] We were getting a lot of phone calls and we were happy to take that work.

[00:15:28] Problem was we grew a little too fast in too many different directions.

[00:15:33] We were, like I said, we were sort of doing any tech work that people would pay us to do.

[00:15:38] And me being a do-it-yourselfer, I like to figure things out.

[00:15:41] I have a talent for that.

[00:15:43] Give me something technical.

[00:15:45] Give me something to build.

[00:15:46] And I'll figure it out pretty quickly.

[00:15:48] Everybody's always said I'm a fast learner.

[00:15:50] But I didn't realize that not all of my people were the same way I was.

[00:15:55] They had different skills in different areas.

[00:15:57] And at the same time, you know, being good at IT and being a managed service provider are two very different things.

[00:16:07] So what happened was for eight or nine years, we grew a little too quickly in too many different directions.

[00:16:14] And I want to say 2007 or so, our quality started to go down.

[00:16:19] We were just doing too many things.

[00:16:21] We lost focus.

[00:16:22] And we had a few too many issues and too many glitches.

[00:16:26] You know, got to a point that around 2009, 2010, I had taken on a partner at the time.

[00:16:34] And we both, we didn't love this anymore.

[00:16:38] You know, I started this business and he joined this business because we love doing what we do.

[00:16:43] We love servicing clients.

[00:16:44] We love building solutions and solving problems.

[00:16:47] And we didn't love it anymore.

[00:16:49] And there was a point in 2010, we had just moved into a new office, actually still the same office that we're in 14 years later.

[00:16:58] We had lost a couple of clients in rapid succession.

[00:17:02] One of the big ones went out of business.

[00:17:04] Another one got acquired.

[00:17:05] And then one or two others fired us because we had too many issues.

[00:17:10] And we looked at each other and we just said, maybe this is a mistake.

[00:17:13] About how many employees did you have around that time?

[00:17:15] We probably had about 30 at the time.

[00:17:17] I don't remember what our revenues or our margins were, but we had about 30 employees.

[00:17:22] We were all in the office.

[00:17:23] There was no hybrid or work from home at the time.

[00:17:26] We were super busy.

[00:17:27] But like I said, we were just going in too many different directions and it was too much of a mess.

[00:17:32] And it almost got to a point that in the mornings, as I was getting the elevator to go upstairs, I just think to myself, okay, what's going to go wrong today?

[00:17:39] What kind of problems are we going to have?

[00:17:41] Can I just get through today without getting screamed at by somebody?

[00:17:44] What did you decide to do from there?

[00:17:47] So we had a big decision to make.

[00:17:49] Do we call it quits, throw in the towel?

[00:17:52] Do we just let ourselves get acquired by one of the big guys?

[00:17:55] I think all covered was on an acquisition spree back then.

[00:18:00] Or do we give this thing another shot?

[00:18:02] And we thought long and hard about it and we said, well, if we can do it all over again, what would we do differently?

[00:18:08] And that's what we did.

[00:18:09] We decided to hit that reset button to change a couple of fundamental issues that we just knew were holding us back.

[00:18:19] And over the next year or so, from probably 2010 to 2011, we probably parted ways with 50% of our clients and 75% of our staff.

[00:18:31] Wow.

[00:18:33] That's huge.

[00:18:34] It was not easy.

[00:18:37] It was not easy.

[00:18:38] Then again, some of it, I didn't have the choice.

[00:18:40] Some of it, out of those 50% of the clients that parted ways with us, some of them made that decision for us and some of them we made the decision.

[00:18:49] And when we're losing clients, hey, we got to get rid of some staff because we can't afford to keep everybody.

[00:18:53] Yeah.

[00:18:54] We also decided that we're not just going to get rid of some of our clients, some of our staff, but we're just going to focus on what we're really great at.

[00:19:02] And we realized the things that we were really, really great at was managing and supporting IT, cloud.

[00:19:08] We had already built up our own private cloud and professional services, but in a very focused way.

[00:19:16] The things that we were doing, but we were not great at, phones and voiceover IP, cabling, project management and projects for companies whose IT we didn't manage, custom programming, web development.

[00:19:31] Let me think.

[00:19:32] I could probably add five or so.

[00:19:33] Oh, audiovisual work, camera systems, and probably 10 other things that I can't think of right now.

[00:19:40] Yeah.

[00:19:41] Those are hobbies of mine.

[00:19:42] I enjoy doing them, but we don't do them professionally.

[00:19:45] Yeah.

[00:19:46] That's a big difference to make that shift and to make that decision.

[00:19:49] Yeah.

[00:19:50] So you decided to make this change about 2010?

[00:19:56] I believe it was late 2010.

[00:19:59] Okay.

[00:20:01] And then did you transition at that time from, was it break-fix to manage services during kind of that transition?

[00:20:09] Yes.

[00:20:11] That was, yeah.

[00:20:12] So up until then, most of our work was a break-fix model.

[00:20:17] We got paid hourly.

[00:20:18] We had some clients that were paying us an annual fee plus hourly.

[00:20:24] Some clients paid us monthly for a block of hours, and you could roll over the unused hours.

[00:20:28] And some clients were just on a flat fee, but it was still break-fix.

[00:20:32] You know, we'll charge you a flat $4,000 a month, and whenever you have a problem, it's included.

[00:20:38] But we were all over the place.

[00:20:40] So we not only decided to begin the transition to a managed services monthly fee model, but also said, hey, if we're going to charge a fixed fee, what can we do to get the volume of work as low as possible?

[00:20:54] Mm-hmm.

[00:20:54] You know, the more proactive work we do, the less reactive work we'll have to do.

[00:20:58] So it was at that time that we also, I think we had already purchased Kaseya, Kaseya VSA software.

[00:21:05] Yeah, actually, it was still called Kaseya back then.

[00:21:07] It's one of the only ones that didn't change names.

[00:21:09] Yeah.

[00:21:09] We had purchased it.

[00:21:11] We had installed it.

[00:21:12] We had never done anything besides maybe installing it and using it as a glorified remote access tool.

[00:21:18] We decided to make a big investment that we said, we bought this tool.

[00:21:21] It's a heck of a lot of money.

[00:21:22] It's supposed to be amazing.

[00:21:23] We hired one resource, got them trained and certified in Kaseya, and said, okay, make this thing, you know, make it worth its money.

[00:21:31] Make it invaluable.

[00:21:32] We started doing that, building a lot of automation and scripting and reporting.

[00:21:38] We had also recently invested in Autotask as our PSA software.

[00:21:43] So we decided to lean more heavily on that and take advantage of it.

[00:21:47] And then little by little, the clients that we were keeping moved them over to a managed services model, which is a challenge because people like only paying when there's a problem and when they need you.

[00:21:59] So that took a while.

[00:22:01] And at the same time, as new clients or new opportunities came along, we just said, hey, we're focusing on managed services.

[00:22:07] If you want us to manage and maintain and support your IT for a monthly fee, let's talk.

[00:22:12] If you just want to pay somebody hourly or you just want a project done, I'm sorry.

[00:22:16] It's not for us.

[00:22:17] Was it all the pain you had before that that drove that conviction?

[00:22:23] Or was there a straw that broke the camel's back or something else?

[00:22:27] Because I know there's still people today that are struggling with that transition.

[00:22:30] And not everybody made that transition at all.

[00:22:33] Not everybody made it quickly or smoothly.

[00:22:36] Right.

[00:22:37] I mean, listen, it's very difficult to say no to business.

[00:22:41] Even today, you know, I thank God every day that business is, you know, is at a great place.

[00:22:47] It's hard to turn down an opportunity.

[00:22:49] You know, we're in business to do business.

[00:22:51] Yeah.

[00:22:52] But I just kept saying there's only, we only have so much energy, so much time in the day.

[00:22:57] And every client I take on is preventing me from doing something else.

[00:23:01] And also, look, I'm sure we've all had bad clients over the years.

[00:23:07] Speak to any professional, any IT person, lawyer, accountant, consultant.

[00:23:11] Everybody's had bad clients over the years.

[00:23:14] I think I hope that at this point in 2024, I've learned my lesson that I can spot the red flags before they sign and say no.

[00:23:25] I just, I don't think it was one experience.

[00:23:27] It was just a lot.

[00:23:28] And I had also seen some other service companies and IT companies that had grown a lot.

[00:23:34] They were focused.

[00:23:35] Now, not necessarily MSPs, but for example, the software company that I was speaking of earlier, they realized that if they're really going to grow, they have to go all in on something.

[00:23:44] And they went all in on Microsoft Great Plains.

[00:23:48] They grew tremendously.

[00:23:49] They even focused on doing it for the financial services and media industries.

[00:23:54] And they grew, again, three years ago, they were acquired in a very nice deal.

[00:23:58] But again, they grew because they did one thing and they did it really, really well.

[00:24:02] You know, us IT people, we're scientists.

[00:24:05] We're jack of all trades.

[00:24:06] We love to do a lot of things, but you can't do everything and do it great.

[00:24:10] And we love to learn new things.

[00:24:12] Exactly.

[00:24:13] Tell us about where you are today.

[00:24:15] What do you focus on?

[00:24:16] What does that avatar look like?

[00:24:18] So, Tabish Group today, we are approximately 44 full-time employees.

[00:24:25] We're still based in the same office since 2010 in Midtown Manhattan, but only about half of our employees live in the New York metro area at this point.

[00:24:34] Our focus is a few things.

[00:24:37] Who we're focused on servicing are law firms, 25 to 100 employees.

[00:24:43] That is our sweet spot.

[00:24:46] Now, we, and to expand a little bit more, we go into other areas of professional services.

[00:24:51] We do go smaller than 25 and larger than 100.

[00:24:54] And we also go into some other industries.

[00:24:56] We have clients in financial services, real estate and construction, and then a few other manufacturing and wholesale and a few other industries.

[00:25:06] But our main focus are professional services businesses, lots and lots of law firms, accountants, consultants, like I said, financial services.

[00:25:16] Businesses where IT really matters.

[00:25:19] What we do for them, there's really, there's sort of two, I don't know if it's just two or three things.

[00:25:26] So, I'll kind of say it.

[00:25:27] Number one is we manage, maintain, and support their IT.

[00:25:30] And we do that in two ways.

[00:25:31] Number one is the traditional model, which used to be very much on-prem.

[00:25:37] Now, it's moving much more to cloud and SaaS model.

[00:25:39] But in those cases, the clients have their on-prem resources, their SaaS resources, their endpoints.

[00:25:45] We manage, monitor, secure, and support all of that.

[00:25:48] And the second model is a VDI DAS model called BoxTop, which we developed on our own.

[00:25:55] BoxTop is a completely private cloud-hosted managed desktop environment.

[00:26:01] It's the alternative.

[00:26:02] It's for companies who don't want to own or worry about any of their IT.

[00:26:06] Instead of owning the computers, the servers, the backend services, the cloud services, everything lives in BoxTop, which we manage, maintain, support, secure.

[00:26:16] As well, we deliver end-to-end managed services.

[00:26:19] So, all the way through to their desktop computers, their connectivity, and everything.

[00:26:23] So, the main thing that we do, like I said, is manage, maintain, support IT for those businesses.

[00:26:28] And we do it in both models, the cloud first, but on-prem or endpoint model, and BoxTop.

[00:26:38] The other thing that we do is professional services.

[00:26:41] We have a decent-sized professional services team that implements, I'll say, moves, adds, and changes, as well as onboardings.

[00:26:48] We only do professional services for our managed clients.

[00:26:52] Nice.

[00:26:53] We don't bid on, you know, random IT projects.

[00:26:57] Obviously, you've been in business for some time, Morris.

[00:26:59] How did you arrive at, you know, 25 to 100-seat attorneys?

[00:27:05] Like, everybody, it seems like a lot of people struggle with getting to those kinds of things.

[00:27:09] It's, and especially because it, and basically three core services, which, you know, sounds like the right things.

[00:27:16] But how do you say no to different ones, to different services, when everything's a shiny, blinky light?

[00:27:22] And, you know, you could, and if you say yes too many times, you're going to go back where you were in 2010 or 2007, right?

[00:27:30] So, I'm going to answer the second question first is about how did we arrive at what we do?

[00:27:35] And then I'll go back to who we do it for.

[00:27:39] So, like I said earlier, you can't be great at everything.

[00:27:42] Yes.

[00:27:45] I think the way we, the way we arrived at, I'll start with cloud services.

[00:27:49] How did we arrive at cloud?

[00:27:50] Well, back in 2003, New York City and much of the Northeast had a blackout for two days.

[00:27:56] I don't know if you remember this one.

[00:27:58] I don't know.

[00:27:58] Were you down in South Carolina back then?

[00:28:00] I was, but I had a number of clients in New York.

[00:28:05] And, yeah, so that was the only thing everybody, of course, was talking about because it was a huge deal.

[00:28:10] Exactly.

[00:28:11] And once again, now talking about it, I remember exactly where I was and who I was meeting with when the lights went out in our office.

[00:28:18] But the reason I bring that up is a day or two later when the lights came back on, my clients, the first thing they asked me is, why didn't our BlackBerrys work during the blackout?

[00:28:28] I said, well, because your Exchange server and your BES server were in your office where the power was out.

[00:28:35] I said, well, what can we do about it?

[00:28:36] Now, at the time, there was no Office 365.

[00:28:40] I don't know if there were any hosted Exchange providers back then, but I said, well, what we can do about it is we can stick your servers in a data center.

[00:28:48] What's that?

[00:28:48] I explained to them what a data center is.

[00:28:50] Two or three of our clients all liked that idea.

[00:28:53] So I rented a half a cabinet at a data center in Newark, New Jersey at 165 Halsey, which is one of the big telco buildings here in the Northeast.

[00:29:01] And I was sticking pizza boxes, as we call them, or Dell Powered 1750s at the time, Exchange servers and BES servers in this data center, all behind one firewall, VPNs back to the offices,

[00:29:15] so that no matter what happened, when their internet went down, which was very common, you know, T1s and DSL lines, they'd go down on a regular basis or the power went out.

[00:29:22] At least your email and your BlackBerrys always functioned.

[00:29:27] Then, you know, oh, hey, the email's in the data center.

[00:29:31] What else can go there?

[00:29:31] So we started putting a few other random applications and servers in the data center.

[00:29:37] Then virtualization came out and said, hey, instead of owning the hardware, just pay us a monthly fee.

[00:29:40] So we built our own little VMware stack, and our clients were renting space on that stack, put more and more things into the data center.

[00:29:48] That was pretty early for private cloud.

[00:29:50] It was, yeah.

[00:29:51] I like to tell people we've been doing cloud since before the word cloud was invented.

[00:29:55] Yeah, exactly.

[00:29:56] Yeah.

[00:29:56] So we were in Newark for a few years.

[00:29:59] We outgrew that.

[00:30:00] We moved to a data center out in Comac, New York, which is out in Suffolk County, Long Island.

[00:30:05] We were there for a bunch of years.

[00:30:06] And then, you know, every so often we'd grow and grow.

[00:30:10] We'd add a little bit more capacity to the, you know, to the VMware cluster, add a little bit more storage, put a little faster storage in, add another firewall, get some more bandwidth.

[00:30:18] And then we moved into, in 2011, we moved into the data center that we're currently at in Staten Island, where, you know, we've been ever since.

[00:30:28] We've, you know, moved around within the building a few times.

[00:30:30] But the reason I say all this is we've been doing cloud since 2003 before it was called cloud.

[00:30:35] It worked well.

[00:30:36] And we learned that when cloud is done right, it works really, really well.

[00:30:40] So we were always looking to see what else can we do in the cloud?

[00:30:43] What else can we take away from our clients' offices?

[00:30:46] Because even a well-built server room for a small business is not the proper place for your IT to be.

[00:30:53] Yeah.

[00:30:54] And at the same time, as connectivity got faster, cheaper, more reliable, cloud, you know, has made more sense than ever.

[00:30:59] So that's how we got into cloud over the years.

[00:31:01] Now, our traditional private cloud of hosted virtual servers is way smaller than it was probably 10 years ago.

[00:31:10] Because, you know, most applications have moved away from a Windows server model.

[00:31:15] As well, it's very hard to compete for a traditional, you know, virtual Windows server.

[00:31:20] It's hard to compete with AWS and Azure.

[00:31:22] But there are still some very specific use cases where it does make sense to keep things in our private cloud.

[00:31:28] As well, clients like the accountability that everything is with us.

[00:31:31] And if anything happens, we can answer for it.

[00:31:34] We don't have to say, well, we're waiting for a callback or a ticket to be answered from Microsoft.

[00:31:39] And then, of course, there's BoxStop, our DAS environment, which is most of our private cloud now is dedicated to that.

[00:31:46] But the same thing with managed services, you're asking how did we get into what we do?

[00:31:51] We knew what we were really good at.

[00:31:52] And we knew that if we tried to go too far out of our comfort zone and do something and we did a subpar job at that, that's how the client would remember us.

[00:32:01] So, for example, we rolled out a VoIP system for a client.

[00:32:06] This is, again, probably 15 years, 16 years ago.

[00:32:09] You know, they wanted a phone system.

[00:32:10] They wanted us to do it.

[00:32:11] We said, oh, phone system, how hard could that be?

[00:32:13] You know, I used to troubleshoot the phones in my parents' house.

[00:32:15] They had an old Panasonic system.

[00:32:17] I know about VoIP.

[00:32:18] I can read some articles about it.

[00:32:20] We did it.

[00:32:20] We did a poor job.

[00:32:22] And even though we were doing really great on the IT, the voice is what, you know, they thought of first.

[00:32:27] Oh, that phone system stinks.

[00:32:28] Tabush stinks.

[00:32:29] And we ended up losing the client.

[00:32:32] There were one or two other clients, the same thing.

[00:32:34] We just tried to go too far out of our comfort zone and we ended up losing them completely.

[00:32:38] You know, a client's never going to say, well, you're great at this, but you're not so good at these things.

[00:32:42] So I'm going to replace you over here.

[00:32:44] No, they're going to replace you entirely.

[00:32:46] How you do something is how you do everything in their eyes.

[00:32:48] That kind of makes me think of when we were talking earlier, you talked about, I was asking why, you know, why you're succeeding, why you keep growing, why you keep being on the fastest growing lists.

[00:33:00] And you said something to the effect of we're not succeeding because of anything you'll find on our website, which I love.

[00:33:08] And that you're also kind of not the cookie cutter MSP.

[00:33:11] So what does that mean?

[00:33:16] So we took on a client last summer, actually based in South Carolina, funny enough.

[00:33:22] And, you know, whenever we're speaking to a prospective client, we always ask them what's wrong.

[00:33:26] You know, why are you talking to us?

[00:33:27] Because no business makes money by switching IT companies.

[00:33:30] They make money by selling their product or services.

[00:33:33] IT is a means to an end.

[00:33:35] And what they said to me was, you know, they were very unhappy with their current company.

[00:33:40] They showed me their contract and they said, you know, we pay them, I forgot what it was.

[00:33:44] Let's say it's $4,000 a month.

[00:33:45] We pay them $4,000 a month.

[00:33:47] We hardly ever call.

[00:33:49] We're such an easy client.

[00:33:50] And last month, we had to call to have a person's password reset over the weekend.

[00:33:55] And they charge us $300.

[00:33:57] And when we complained about it, I said, well, it's in the contract.

[00:34:00] And I looked at the contract and yes, it said, you know, support is Monday through Friday, nine to six.

[00:34:05] The after hours is this.

[00:34:06] Weekend is this.

[00:34:08] And they just said, I can't believe they did that to us.

[00:34:11] And I agree.

[00:34:14] So why do, you know, the things that you don't find on our website.

[00:34:20] A few years ago, it's probably about eight years ago now.

[00:34:23] Again, I remember where I was when this happened, where I was living at the time.

[00:34:27] Got a call one evening on a Thursday evening from a client.

[00:34:30] He said, I'm 10 o'clock.

[00:34:31] I'm so sorry to bother you on your cell phone.

[00:34:33] I'm going away on vacation tomorrow.

[00:34:35] I just opened up my laptop, which I haven't used in a few months, and it won't go on the internet.

[00:34:40] And if I can't get this thing to work, I can't go on vacation.

[00:34:43] He said, my flight's at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning.

[00:34:47] Thought about it for a second.

[00:34:48] I said, all right, you know, you live about two miles away from me.

[00:34:51] I'll be there in 15 minutes.

[00:34:53] Threw on sweatpants and a t-shirt.

[00:34:56] Went over to his house.

[00:34:57] I sat there from about 10.30 to 11.30 at night.

[00:35:00] Found the problem with his laptop.

[00:35:02] It was a Windows update that conflicted with the BIOS on the laptop.

[00:35:05] Fortunately, I had brought my laptop and a USB stick with me.

[00:35:08] Do the BIOS update and everything.

[00:35:10] Handed it back to him at about 11 o'clock.

[00:35:12] And he said, wow, thank you so much.

[00:35:14] You know, bill me for this.

[00:35:15] I'm sure this is not included in my company's contract.

[00:35:17] I said, are you kidding me?

[00:35:19] This is what we do.

[00:35:22] Yesterday, yesterday, one of our client servers died.

[00:35:25] And we have a few clients that still have physical servers.

[00:35:27] Server died, busiest day of the year, back to school.

[00:35:31] Without even flinching, our techs got right on the issue.

[00:35:35] And they worked till about three in the morning to bring it back up for them.

[00:35:38] It's not about what our contract says or anything.

[00:35:40] They're a client.

[00:35:41] They rely on us.

[00:35:41] We take good care of them.

[00:35:43] And that's it.

[00:35:45] Have clients called us on weekends?

[00:35:46] Of course they do.

[00:35:47] Do we charge for it?

[00:35:48] No.

[00:35:49] It's just they're a client.

[00:35:50] They're there for us.

[00:35:51] We're there for them.

[00:35:52] We partner with our clients.

[00:35:55] One of the things that I tell people also is the difference between a client, you know,

[00:35:59] you sell to a customer, you take care of a client.

[00:36:03] We don't sell to our clients.

[00:36:04] Once we have a client, they're paying us a monthly fee to be their IT partner.

[00:36:09] The sale is done.

[00:36:10] At that point, our job is to support them and advise them, not to sell them more things.

[00:36:16] A lot of MSPs, again, they'll bring you in for a few hundred dollars a month only to sell

[00:36:21] you more and more and more.

[00:36:22] They have account managers whose job is to upsell clients.

[00:36:25] And I'm sure they're doing well.

[00:36:26] They're making a lot of money.

[00:36:28] We don't operate that way.

[00:36:29] Our client manager's job is to take care of our clients and keep them happy.

[00:36:33] Whether that means that they need to buy some more services or products from us, or they

[00:36:37] need to buy things elsewhere, or they don't need to buy anything at all.

[00:36:41] Our job is to keep them happy and take good care of them.

[00:36:44] That's amazing.

[00:36:45] And most, I think MSPs have forgotten that.

[00:36:47] I think that was how MSPs used to be in the early days.

[00:36:52] But we've gotten, I think, as an industry, too used to pointing at a contract and saying

[00:36:57] it's not the contract.

[00:36:58] Exactly.

[00:36:59] So I love that.

[00:37:01] How do you create the culture with your team to where there's any work-life balance or anything

[00:37:10] left if people can and or will just call any time of the day or night?

[00:37:15] So the culture is not something that we just create internally.

[00:37:20] It's internal and it goes to our clients as well.

[00:37:24] Something that we did about five years ago was actually define our core values and our

[00:37:30] mission statement.

[00:37:31] I wish I did that way before because we use that not only in hiring and firing of employees,

[00:37:39] but we use that in identifying clients, if they're going to be a good client or not.

[00:37:43] It's not perfectly accurate, but it's pretty good.

[00:37:48] Look, people talk about culture a lot.

[00:37:51] And you can go on YouTube and find billions of videos about people talking about culture.

[00:37:55] Yeah.

[00:37:56] So, yes, we talk about it.

[00:37:58] Yes, we have our core values, but more than having them, we live them.

[00:38:04] And they're not things that we created.

[00:38:06] We didn't create or decide on what our core values were going to be.

[00:38:11] We uncovered them.

[00:38:12] This is something that I've heard a few times and I strongly believe it.

[00:38:16] Core values are things that either you are or you're not.

[00:38:20] So, you know, our values, which are teamwork, integrity, innovation, and care, that's just

[00:38:26] the way that I've always been.

[00:38:29] And our, you know, our team, these are values that they're born with or they've developed

[00:38:34] over their lives.

[00:38:35] They're not things that they have to become.

[00:38:38] Having said all of that, I once heard a quote that said, how you treat your employees is how

[00:38:44] they will treat your clients.

[00:38:45] Listen, it's very easy to burn out and to work, you know, 24-7 shifts in any business,

[00:38:51] especially in IT, because IT doesn't stop.

[00:38:53] Absolutely.

[00:38:56] We've, you know, we believe very strongly in a work-life balance.

[00:39:00] We've created shifts of, you know, so not everybody is on call every single night.

[00:39:06] We respect our employees.

[00:39:08] You know, I tell my employees, I may send you emails at night sometimes.

[00:39:12] It's only because that's when the thought pops in my head.

[00:39:15] If something is urgent, I will call you.

[00:39:18] I will text you.

[00:39:19] I will message you.

[00:39:20] I will find a way to make sure you know it's urgent.

[00:39:22] Nothing is ever urgent.

[00:39:23] And the same thing with me.

[00:39:24] I do not check email constantly 24-7.

[00:39:27] I try to check it.

[00:39:28] I try to limit myself to three times a day of looking at email.

[00:39:31] And I tell everybody, if you need to reach me urgently, you have six different ways you

[00:39:34] can reach me.

[00:39:35] Use one of them, but not email.

[00:39:37] At the same time, you know, look, our employees go above and beyond for us on a regular basis.

[00:39:45] I try to do the same for them.

[00:39:46] So we have one employee who likes to go to Europe every year and visit his extended family.

[00:39:51] He goes for two months every year.

[00:39:54] Most of that time he's working.

[00:39:56] He takes a few weeks off, but I've been letting him do that again since way before COVID.

[00:40:00] For over 20 years, he's been doing that because it's important to him.

[00:40:05] Um, another employee shortly after he started here, there was a family tragedy.

[00:40:11] And I just said to him, this is maybe his second or third weekend.

[00:40:14] I said, go deal with it.

[00:40:16] We'll be here when you're, when you get back.

[00:40:18] Um, and we try to celebrate employees milestones in their life.

[00:40:22] Um, we don't want, they're not just here to work.

[00:40:24] You know, we spend more waking hours with each other than we do with our spouses and families.

[00:40:29] Um, and I just, again, I try to take good care of them.

[00:40:31] I try to, I keep reminding myself, these guys are coming in every single day, giving their

[00:40:36] heart and soul for my clients, for my business.

[00:40:39] The least I could do is take great care of them and show my appreciation.

[00:40:43] And in turn, they usually end up treating our clients the same way.

[00:40:47] You mentioned core values and how you wish you'd had identified them earlier.

[00:40:53] Why is that?

[00:40:54] And what, what kind of difference has that made?

[00:40:59] So the reason why is that is because defining or uncovering our core values, while it's a

[00:41:08] very daunting exercise and we did try to do it ourselves a few times and it fell flat on our

[00:41:14] face and we had to bring in some outside help for it, but doing it, it helps us understand who

[00:41:19] we really are, what makes us special, why clients work with us.

[00:41:25] And then number one, replicate that.

[00:41:28] So by understanding our core values, now when we're hiring people, we look for people with

[00:41:32] those same values and they're much more likely to succeed.

[00:41:36] Number two, it helps us in decision making.

[00:41:39] When we have a tough decision to make as happens regularly in business, I kind of look to those

[00:41:44] core values and say, well, what do they tell me to do?

[00:41:47] So, hey, it's, you know, integrity, for example, you know, we define integrity as doing the

[00:41:53] right thing, even when nobody's looking.

[00:41:55] So there have been times and there's times in everybody's life when I can get away with

[00:41:58] this, but no, there's a reason that we do things a certain way.

[00:42:03] Let's stick to it.

[00:42:04] Care.

[00:42:05] Again, we, if somebody is not exhibiting care on a regular basis, that means that that's

[00:42:11] who we are.

[00:42:12] This is why our clients love us.

[00:42:14] They don't fit the model.

[00:42:16] So I wish I did it much earlier because I could think, I could think back to many mistakes

[00:42:21] that I probably could have avoided had I done that exercise a lot earlier.

[00:42:25] How have you navigated this hybrid remote that it seemed like everybody's still figuring

[00:42:31] out?

[00:42:32] Yeah, this is a difficult one.

[00:42:34] I mean, it was difficult for us as it's been difficult for everybody.

[00:42:37] Yeah.

[00:42:38] So prior to March of 2020, we had one remote employee and that was only because he had been

[00:42:46] in the office for five or six years.

[00:42:48] Then a family situation had to move out of town.

[00:42:51] We said, listen, you're great at what you do.

[00:42:53] Work remotely.

[00:42:55] As of March 14th, 2020, we had everybody remote.

[00:43:01] So the first, okay, fortunately, a month prior, we had switched our phone system over to a VoIP

[00:43:09] system that actually worked out of the office.

[00:43:11] Prior to that, we were on a VoIP system that for some reason never worked out of the office.

[00:43:14] So fortunately, we had phones that worked everywhere.

[00:43:16] As well, Boxtop, which is a virtual desktop environment, we eat our own dog food.

[00:43:23] We were on Boxtop.

[00:43:24] So everybody was, all of our team was able to work remotely.

[00:43:28] The first month of COVID was complete chaos in the sense that number one, we as a business,

[00:43:37] we're not set up to operate remotely, meaning everything was based on being in the office,

[00:43:43] walking around, overhearing things, and all of a sudden you couldn't do that.

[00:43:48] Number two, so we were just as a culture, our culture was designed to be in the office.

[00:43:52] The second problem was we were in the IT business, and all of a sudden we had every

[00:43:59] single client sending us orders.

[00:44:00] We need 50 laptops, 50 printers, 50 monitors, ship them to these 50 addresses, all while every

[00:44:08] single one of our distributors had no stock.

[00:44:10] And some of them were saying, oh, and can you also go to the houses and set them up for

[00:44:14] the people?

[00:44:15] And we're like, not right now.

[00:44:17] It's COVID time.

[00:44:18] So it was all of that.

[00:44:20] Plus we had clients dealing with, let's say, Citrix environments that couldn't handle the

[00:44:24] capacity or deploy, log me in across all their computers.

[00:44:28] It was really challenging.

[00:44:31] But literally we had our admin staff just doing procurement for a month.

[00:44:36] Where can they get webcams?

[00:44:38] Where can they get laptops?

[00:44:39] Where can they get monitors?

[00:44:41] Where can they get printers?

[00:44:42] It was complete and utter chaos.

[00:44:44] So the good thing is it was so chaotic, we didn't have time to realize how confused we were.

[00:44:49] As things settled down, we started getting to a rhythm.

[00:44:53] Like a lot of companies, we were over-Zooming in the beginning.

[00:44:56] We were having team meetings all day long because Zoom was the coolest thing ever.

[00:45:00] But over time, we fell into a rhythm of routine meetings and we started systemizing a lot more

[00:45:07] of what we do because we couldn't rely on overhearing or walking around or printing and distributing

[00:45:12] reports.

[00:45:12] So like somebody said, it forced us into the future.

[00:45:17] It forced us to figure things out and how to operate better as a remote business.

[00:45:23] Over the last three or so years, we've gradually returned to a hybrid model, but not completely.

[00:45:31] At this point, on average, we're 10 to 15 people in the office on a given day.

[00:45:35] The rest of the people are remote, either because we've hired them out of the area or they've

[00:45:40] moved out of the area or their jobs begin again.

[00:45:42] We're in the IT business.

[00:45:43] A lot of work has to be done at nights, has to be done on weekends.

[00:45:46] It doesn't make sense for them to come in.

[00:45:49] But we have built a really good system for or routine for meetings or we've built a really

[00:45:56] great org chart and structure, which we never had before.

[00:45:59] When do teams meet?

[00:46:00] How often do they meet?

[00:46:01] Are they on video?

[00:46:02] Are they on, you know, we utilize teams, we utilize all sorts of collaboration tools.

[00:46:08] And we make sure also to get people together in person various times.

[00:46:13] For our holiday party every year, most of the team is flown in to spend a couple of days.

[00:46:18] They don't just come in for the party.

[00:46:19] They come in for two, three days, hang out of the office, work with everybody in person.

[00:46:24] We sometimes bring remote hires.

[00:46:26] We'll bring them to New York for a few days for onboarding and training and again, to meet

[00:46:31] the staff.

[00:46:31] So I would say we're navigating it pretty well.

[00:46:36] There are times that I wish I could just get everybody back in the office because I

[00:46:40] like walking around and seeing the action and hearing everything going on.

[00:46:44] But then there are other times when I say, wait a minute, look at the value we're getting

[00:46:47] from remote.

[00:46:49] We can never get all this here in New York City.

[00:46:51] Yeah.

[00:46:52] And I love that you touched on quite a few things because it's productivity.

[00:46:56] You know, a lot of times they love it.

[00:47:00] You might be able to get people outside of the area as well, like you talked about.

[00:47:04] But there's some big differences in management and culture.

[00:47:09] And I love that you bring everybody in.

[00:47:10] That's huge, I think, because it'd be too easy to just keep expanding and see people once

[00:47:16] a month or whenever the cadence is on a Zoom meeting versus actually getting to break bread

[00:47:23] with them.

[00:47:24] Yeah.

[00:47:25] The problem that we found in late 21 and early 22 was a lot of the newer employees

[00:47:31] that had been hired either right before or during COVID, they were the ones that didn't

[00:47:37] have the relationships.

[00:47:38] You know, the employees that have been here for 10, 12 years already, they were okay on

[00:47:42] Zoom, on Teams.

[00:47:44] Teams on, they were okay because they knew everybody already.

[00:47:46] It was those new employees that weren't forming those relationships.

[00:47:50] So again, it was challenging, but we've gotten much better at it.

[00:47:54] We also had to completely overhaul our employee onboarding program to work in a remote environment.

[00:47:59] So we do have employees now that have never been to New York City in their lives.

[00:48:02] We've never met them, but they feel like they're members of the team because we've changed

[00:48:06] our onboarding to accommodate for that.

[00:48:09] How do you make them feel welcome for folks that haven't made that transition that are still

[00:48:14] in an office?

[00:48:16] I honestly don't know because I have not, I have not part of the onboarding process.

[00:48:20] I'm sorry.

[00:48:21] One of the, one of the, you know, good things about being where I am is there's a lot that

[00:48:25] goes on here that I don't know how we do it or how it happens anymore, but I have really

[00:48:30] good people that I trust that, you know, that take care of it.

[00:48:33] Yeah.

[00:48:34] Yeah.

[00:48:35] I honestly don't.

[00:48:36] I do know a few of the things we do in our employee onboarding.

[00:48:39] So first of all, it's a very detailed structured process, just like the way you run a project

[00:48:44] or the way you onboard a client.

[00:48:46] We have that same level of detail for the way we onboard an employee.

[00:48:51] They are always assigned a navigator, almost like a buddy system.

[00:48:55] So this is somebody who is not their direct supervisor or direct report.

[00:49:00] It's a random person in the company whose job is to just check with them a few times a week,

[00:49:04] get to know them, be their friend and answer questions about anything they may have.

[00:49:08] Because anytime you go to work at a new company, you have questions.

[00:49:10] Hey, you know, how do you use the coffee machine?

[00:49:12] Where's the men's room?

[00:49:13] What, what, who do I tell if I have to leave early for something?

[00:49:17] What happens?

[00:49:18] Who do I talk to for anything?

[00:49:19] So we assign them that navigator.

[00:49:21] We also host a, what we call a quarterly update meeting, which is an in-person plus video meeting

[00:49:29] where my partner and I get up, sort of talk about the state of the company,

[00:49:33] what's happened in the last quarter, new clients, new employees, new initiatives,

[00:49:37] what's coming up in the next quarter.

[00:49:40] And then we have a happy hour in the office.

[00:49:42] We usually get about 25 people in the office for that.

[00:49:46] And almost everyone else is on Zoom for those happy hours.

[00:49:51] So again, we do things to bring people together and create that culture.

[00:49:56] We have other things that we do throughout the year also to try to make this a fun place to work.

[00:50:00] I think that's something that some of us missed.

[00:50:04] I know in the early days, the rush to COVID, rush to remote.

[00:50:08] It's like, we still need to get together.

[00:50:09] We still need to build those bonds and have fun and get to know each other.

[00:50:13] The worst punishment in the world, you know, in our, in our, the worst punishment out there is solitary confinement.

[00:50:22] I mean, I don't know, but I've heard.

[00:50:23] Hopefully I'll never know.

[00:50:25] We humans, we, we like being around other humans.

[00:50:29] And work is not just about work.

[00:50:31] It's about, to me, this is, look, the way I feel, work is not just about accomplishing and producing and selling and making money.

[00:50:38] It's about getting out of the house, getting out there.

[00:50:40] You know, I'm speaking to you while I see you're in a home office, but I don't know.

[00:50:44] I feed off that energy of being in a workplace, being around other people, being in New York City.

[00:50:49] I could walk to some of my clients.

[00:50:51] I could walk to meetings.

[00:50:52] I hear the noise and the hustle bustle things going on.

[00:50:56] You don't get that when you work from home all day.

[00:50:59] You don't.

[00:51:00] No, no, no.

[00:51:01] I've got, we had an office downtown.

[00:51:03] And so having some of both is, is far better from my perspective because they're very different.

[00:51:10] Yeah.

[00:51:11] I wanted to ask this because we've covered so many things and I want to see what your thoughts are on this, Morris.

[00:51:19] You, a lot of folks listening, a few of maybe your peers.

[00:51:22] Okay.

[00:51:22] But a lot of them are saying, I want to get where Morris is.

[00:51:26] Yes.

[00:51:27] I am earlier in the business.

[00:51:29] I haven't seen some of the growth.

[00:51:30] My customers, my clients, they don't love me quite as much.

[00:51:34] I haven't made this transition, whatever it is.

[00:51:37] So you're one of the fastest growing MSPs.

[00:51:41] What do you attribute to that success?

[00:51:45] I mean, look, a lot of it is luck.

[00:51:49] Luck, and I believe a lot of it comes from above.

[00:51:53] But do the right thing.

[00:51:55] Take good care of people.

[00:51:56] You know, you want your clients to love you and refer you?

[00:51:58] Give them a reason to.

[00:52:00] Yeah.

[00:52:00] If you just stick to what your contract says, they will pay you.

[00:52:05] And that's it.

[00:52:06] You want them to love you?

[00:52:07] Give them a reason.

[00:52:09] Yes.

[00:52:09] And you're in a business that you can give them those reasons.

[00:52:12] You're not, you know, you're not the copier company that the best thing you can do is make sure the copier is working.

[00:52:17] As an MSP, you've got so much opportunity to be the hero.

[00:52:21] And to go above and beyond.

[00:52:22] They will love you for it.

[00:52:24] They will stay with you.

[00:52:25] And they will refer you.

[00:52:27] Well, I want to switch gears and ask you, and all this time, what's the biggest lesson?

[00:52:33] I think the biggest lesson that I've learned, and this is true not just for the MSP business.

[00:52:41] I think it's true for every business.

[00:52:43] But in MSP, technology, you know, being great at tech, what tech you use, what stack of products you offer your clients.

[00:52:53] That's at most a third of the business or a third of what matters.

[00:52:58] The other things that really matter are servicing clients, taking great care of your clients.

[00:53:05] Because your clients don't really care if you use SonicWall or Fortinet or WatchGuard.

[00:53:09] They honestly don't care.

[00:53:12] And knowing how to run a business.

[00:53:14] At the end of the day, a business is about, you know, management, marketing, HR, finance.

[00:53:21] If you can't master those things, it doesn't matter how good you are at what you do, the business won't be profitable, won't run successfully, and you won't be able to do it.

[00:53:31] If you had one thing you could do over or do differently, what would that be?

[00:53:35] So I'll say in general in life, I don't have regrets.

[00:53:38] I believe very strongly that everything happens for a reason.

[00:53:42] And I could connect the dots of some mistakes I made way earlier in my life and how they've led to successes over the years.

[00:53:51] But I mentioned earlier about core values.

[00:53:55] So when I went into business, I was this 21-year-old kid who thought he was smarter than everybody else and said, I know what I'm doing.

[00:54:02] I'm going to do this.

[00:54:03] Right.

[00:54:04] I didn't have a partner.

[00:54:05] I didn't have a mentor.

[00:54:06] I didn't have a coach.

[00:54:07] I didn't have an advisor or anybody.

[00:54:09] I was just doing it all myself.

[00:54:10] And I made a lot of mistakes early on.

[00:54:14] It wasn't until 2019 that I decided to hire a business coach and start implementing some structure into the business.

[00:54:23] I wish I did that way sooner.

[00:54:25] I didn't have to do it on day one.

[00:54:27] On day one, I couldn't afford a business coach.

[00:54:29] Yeah.

[00:54:30] But I wish I did that a long, long time ago.

[00:54:34] Would have saved me from a lot of mistakes, which, you know.

[00:54:39] It's great advice.

[00:54:41] What's a myth about running an MSP that you'd love to bust?

[00:54:45] I'm curious if all your experience, you're like, you don't actually have to do whatever it is that you may hear around to be an MSP.

[00:54:55] You have to do this or you must do it this way.

[00:54:58] Like I won't put words in your mouth, for example.

[00:55:00] There are some that say you can't niche, but you've clearly kind of settled down on a niche or two.

[00:55:06] So, yeah, just to kind of get your wheels turning on.

[00:55:09] Common myths about running an MSP.

[00:55:16] I would say that the biggest myth about either running an MSP or hiring an MSP to service your business is certifications.

[00:55:26] Microsoft certified, Cisco certified, SonicWall certified, this one certified.

[00:55:31] Certifications, they're good, but they're worth the paper they're written on.

[00:55:36] I don't know if that's a good answer.

[00:55:38] I think it's a great answer.

[00:55:41] What's something that you're looking forward to with all the things you've learned, all the changes coming up?

[00:55:47] What's something you're looking forward to personally?

[00:55:50] So, I'm really looking forward to 2025, I'll say.

[00:55:53] Not that 2024 is bad.

[00:55:55] 2024 has been a good year.

[00:55:57] But right now, we have a few clients.

[00:56:01] And August was a really busy month for us.

[00:56:04] So, we have, I think, four clients that we're onboarding right now, which is busy for us.

[00:56:08] We usually onboard only about 12 to 15 clients a year in total.

[00:56:12] And we have four coming on right now.

[00:56:14] We have some new hires that we're in the process of filling those positions and making,

[00:56:20] maturing some of our products and service lines,

[00:56:23] and possibly a new offering that we're considering as well.

[00:56:26] So, we have a lot of stuff in the fire, which I'm really excited about.

[00:56:30] And we've also made a lot of investments in the business over the last year or two that are just starting to pay off.

[00:56:36] So, I'm just really looking to see, you know, the next chapter in our life, what it's going to be,

[00:56:42] and where things are going to go from there.

[00:56:44] What's your take on what you think is going to shape the industry in the near term or the next few years?

[00:56:51] Is it M&A or cybersecurity or AI or something else?

[00:56:55] No, it's not.

[00:56:55] I was actually going to say, it's actually not AI is my take.

[00:56:58] I am very bearish on AI.

[00:57:01] I think right now it's the hot – sorry, there's a fire engine going past.

[00:57:06] I don't know if the mic is picking that up.

[00:57:07] I think AI is way overhyped right now.

[00:57:10] Don't get me wrong.

[00:57:11] It's a really great technology.

[00:57:13] ChatGPT is super cool.

[00:57:15] But it's all anyone is talking about because NVIDIA's stock price is through the roof.

[00:57:20] And at the end of the day, it's going to take time for it to mature, just like any of those.

[00:57:26] I think it's not going to pop like blockchain popped, but it's not putting everybody out of a job.

[00:57:34] And it's not going to be as – it's the new cool thing right now.

[00:57:41] That's why it's all over the news.

[00:57:43] I think cybersecurity, I believe it's going to change.

[00:57:46] I think things will actually get better soon.

[00:57:49] I think the whole world knows how dangerous it is.

[00:57:52] People have started to become more conscious and aware of all the cyber threats out there.

[00:57:57] More and more business people are spending money on proper cybersecurity practices.

[00:58:03] That being said, most threat actors don't try to hack systems.

[00:58:08] They try to hack people, and people still do stupid things, which is why they keep hacking them

[00:58:13] and why it's a profitable – I don't want to call it a business, but it's a profitable career for many people to be in cybercrime.

[00:58:22] I think it's going to get better.

[00:58:24] I hope it's going to get better.

[00:58:25] I honestly hope that the government could find some way to crack down on cryptocurrency

[00:58:28] because if you can stop the flow of crypto, you can stop cybercrime.

[00:58:33] If there's one book you could recommend to everybody that's listening, what would that be?

[00:58:38] Only one?

[00:58:40] Yeah, maybe two, but what are your top?

[00:58:42] The number one book, I believe, is The E-Myth by – is it Barry Gerber?

[00:58:49] No, Michael Gerber, sorry.

[00:58:50] Michael Gerber.

[00:58:51] The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber.

[00:58:53] It is the first business book I ever read, and it is just – it's invaluable.

[00:58:59] Love that.

[00:59:00] That's the number one.

[00:59:01] If I can get a second or an honorable mention,

[00:59:05] what got you here won't get you there, and who the A method for hiring.

[00:59:11] Those are my two runners up.

[00:59:14] For everybody that's listening, Morris, how should they find you if you'd be open to somebody reaching out or connecting with you online?

[00:59:23] So I was blessed with a very unique name.

[00:59:26] I believe I am the – I am one of two Morris Tabishes in North America, maybe in this world.

[00:59:32] So if you just Google Morris Tabish, you will find me.

[00:59:36] You can reach me on LinkedIn.

[00:59:38] I think if you go to my company website, you can probably get my email address on there.

[00:59:42] Don't bother with Facebook or Instagram.

[00:59:44] I don't check those very often at all.

[00:59:47] I might have a Twitter handle, but I don't – if I have a Twitter handle, I don't ever check it.

[00:59:53] So LinkedIn or email is the best way to reach out to me.

[00:59:56] Got it.

[00:59:57] Make sure to take advantage of that.

[00:59:58] Morris, this has been amazing.

[01:00:00] Thank you for your time, and thank you for being on MSP Mindset.

[01:00:03] Thank you, Damien.