Scaling an MSP: What Really Separates the Best from the Rest

[00:00:00] As you may know, it's my mission to interview 100 of the fastest growing and most interesting MSPs on the planet. What you may not know is I am distilling all of that knowledge into one battle-tested book. If you'd like early access to that book, make sure to click the link below. The only way to get this NPS score of 80 is to have people who love their job because you can't give great customer service if you don't like your job.

[00:00:26] You can maybe fake it occasionally. You can't fake it all the time. If you see somebody, a company that has great NPS scores and great customer service, very high chance that they're in a company that takes care of them and that gives them what they need. Hey guys, Damien Stevens, host of MSP Mindset, founder of Servosity. Today I continue my mission to interview 100 of the fastest growing and most interesting MSPs on the planet.

[00:00:55] Today I am blessed to be joined by Brian Bailman. Now Brian, like a lot of us, told his clients, our people are the secret sauce. They will make our support so much better. And they told him, you're the third time I've heard that today. So what did he do?

[00:01:15] He set up on a mission to prove that his team was better and ended up with a world class NPS score of 80, which is over double the average MSP and has led to the lifetime achievement award as an MSP. So if you'd like to go from just talking the talk to walking the walk and becoming the best in your industry, don't miss out on our conversation today.

[00:01:42] So Brian, tell me about how you and your partner started. We started in 2007, but the origin is earlier than that. So in the 2000s, I was working at a national consulting company. So we were like a 700 person consulting company and traveled all around. And I was running the Boston office and I hired my business partner who at the time he was just out of school and so forth.

[00:02:10] So as we left that firm and I went to various startups, I worked at like true venture capital startups. And it was freaking amazing because you're just like you're working crazy hours. You're learning lots. You're wearing lots of hats. Everybody there is really pretty smart from places like MIT and so forth. And so throughout my venture in there, he had branched off to academia.

[00:02:40] He worked at BU. So we kept in touch because he was a very, I liked his go-getter-ness. He's just a hustler. And so at my third startup, when they're like, well, we need to try to find funding or we're going to die, round B, round C and so forth. I thought, well, I want to start a company that's based on my skills because I think the IT departments, you know, I did IT, but I also did a lot of other aspects of it.

[00:03:10] I got involved in sales and marketing and so forth. But I wanted to start a company that was based on not some novel semiconductor that may or may not make the market, but on IT. And so, but at the time I really, I felt like I could do it, but I felt like I was missing something. And, and, and I felt that Jeff, my business partner had that.

[00:03:32] So we, we got together and I had written a business plan and I presented it to him and we, you know, I think it was in 2006. Um, and then we launched in January of 2007. So we, our, our, our intention was all along was to actually build a consulting company and not just be a couple of consultants. We had both consulted on the side for most of the time.

[00:03:58] I mean, and, uh, I was lucky enough actually that when, uh, when I was starting the company and working for the startup, I asked my, I told my boss, I said, Hey, is it okay if I consult on the side? I'll still put my 50 hours in, you know, here. And then, so I would, when starting this thing, I would take some, some, uh, vacation days and I would actually work instead, or I would be get up at crack of dawn and so forth.

[00:04:25] So, um, so when it worked out, I decided to actually launch it. I said, I'm going to resign, but if you want to hire my company, you can. And he said, sure. And that was a, and I was, we were prepared if he said, no, like we had enough, we had enough side business to that. So that, so yeah, we started, I had, uh, my background is in Linux, Unix security with a lot of, uh, kind of experience under my belt. My business partner was a little younger. Jeff has had an MBA. He was more of a windows guy.

[00:04:54] So we had kind of, kind of all most, and he had, he was pretty good at firewall. So we think we had enough breadth to, uh, to at least fake it till we made it. Um, and so that's, yeah, we started, uh, we started the company Iuvo. It was Iuvo technologies originally. Uh, and just in the last year or so we've shortened it to Iuvo. We reincorporated. So, um, so that is, I think generally our, our origin story.

[00:05:22] And then what point did it really start to take off? Was that day one, uh, or was there a point where that trajectory changed? 2010 is when we first had our first million dollar year. So. So always a year you'll remember. Yeah. Right. Right. It's like, it seemed like, wow, we made a million dollars. And, uh, so by that time, I guess we had enough momentum and still, yeah. So that was, we had enough people.

[00:05:49] We had some people, uh, we, I don't know, had a handful of people there, three to four, five people maybe, I, if I can recall. So I would say maybe 2010 is when we, we were, um, kind of like let's say product market fit. You kind of have enough business to show that you have a valuable product or service and that people are going to continue to recommend you and, and, uh, and continue to, to, uh, you know, refer you to other ones. What would happen to your MSP if you couldn't restore your client's data?

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[00:07:17] At what point did that hit you guys? Yeah. So I don't know the approximate year. I mean, maybe it was, I could guess like, um, 20, Let me ask a better question. Yeah. When I, about what was it that caused you to realize that or about like what, cause I'm trying to figure out, was it at the number of head count or was it the, you know, scaling of this or that?

[00:07:42] I, at least in my story, it's usually some scaling is where it hurts bad enough that I finally slammed my head into the wall enough to realize that, you know, I'm that on that bottlenecks. I'm curious what the underlying pain point was. Yeah. I think it was.

[00:07:58] So we also like probably like other MSPs, we, um, we sell product to what I remember in particular was we, you know, when you, when you're helping a client grow and they need a lot of, a lot of physical stuff, hardware, laptops, servers, so forth. And we, we were, we had to prove everything ahead of time. We like, you know what? This makes sense. Like we're, we are the bottleneck. Things aren't happening. Things are slowing down. People are waiting for us.

[00:08:27] Why don't we, you know, let's just, we, we entrust people, uh, to do that. And we, I can recall, um, yeah, we said, let's, let's put a higher, high threshold or higher threshold on people who can just, you know, order things for customers. And, and we found we'll, we'll, we'll handle mistakes. And looking back, of course, you're like, realize that the mistakes are so small compared to the productivity that happens because people are empowered to, to just serve the customers on their own.

[00:08:56] So we, you know, we had a number of things where we were just a bottleneck on, on most things, uh, on like sort of delivering service or purchases. So, and, and I, I had a meeting. So every, you know, every year we have a kickoff meeting and, uh, I'll, I'll bring out this phrase cause it, it costs some people to, um, question the phrase, but there's a phrase called, uh, open, opening the kimono.

[00:09:25] And, you know, and be like, well, that sounds kind of risque, but what it really is is, well, it comes from a, an Asian term where you're basically, I have no weapons on me. I am exposing everything. You can see like, we're, you know, we're going to do business together. And so there's about that time. We also said, let's, there's, we shouldn't let's have everybody have access to every, all the information we can, you know, and typically some information is only meant for, for certain people.

[00:09:51] But we said, let's try to share as much as we can with everybody and only, you know, keep salaries and maybe keep HR sensitive things private. But the more information people have, the more they can make informed decisions. And it was, and so we, as we started designing things, we always asked the question, well, is there a reason we can't share this? And so, and typically if we, we, and hopefully the answer is mostly there's no reason.

[00:10:18] So, and that helped a lot because I think if you hire great people and they don't have access to that information, they can't do their best work. Mm-hmm . And so I think it goes away from a little bit from the hierarchical, almost like military general colonel, you know, you only have what you need to do your job to a little, it flattens the organization a little bit.

[00:10:38] And, and again, I think the mistakes or the, I think there's very little risk to what they, instead of opening the kimono, it's like really about, I think the term is open book management is what the, is what it is. It's open everything you can, even the finances to people. And if they see that you're losing money, they might say, oh, that makes sense. Let's, I know why, because I've been over serving this customer or something. Right. So they can make, they can, they can come to the, the answer is the why.

[00:11:05] Was there a particular, like, I'm curious what's number head count you were at or something that you ran into that's where you were that bottleneck and decided like I need to kind of employ this open kimono or open book management style? I would, I'm going to guess it's around 10, maybe 10 people.

[00:11:28] Mm hmm. That was when at least we felt, I guess that that I it's hard, you know, it's 18 years ago, but it's, I think it makes sense maybe or 10 people. Tell me about some of the other lessons you've unlocked. I think one was managing the process, not the employee.

[00:11:50] Yeah. Um, so I think if you, well, I know me, uh, if you think back about the way you've been managed through your life and there are certain people that are micromanagers and how you feel, how you like, feel, how you like working under them. And typically the answer is I don't. Mm hmm.

[00:12:14] So I think that part of this process is what do we, what are our, you know, KPIs, what are, what are, what are, what are our performance indicators and how do we understand whether our business is on track? And so in order to get away from managing the people, you establish a clear roadmap.

[00:12:37] And along with that roadmap, you've like, here's the measurements. So it could be, it could be, uh, sales funnel. It could be, uh, response time to tickets. It could be whatever, whatever's important to you as a business. And then you, and you, and you measure that. And then if, if that is, that falls the blower above the various thresholds, you can, you can dig in to say why, but the important thing is to let everybody know this is what we're going to measure. And this is why, and does that make sense? And everybody says, okay, that makes sense.

[00:13:08] So they, you know, the huge aha moment really was that, um, if you, you know, again, I must caveat this with hiring the right people, but if you hire the right people and they, they're often going to come up with solutions that are maybe different, but way better than you would ever have thought of on your own.

[00:13:27] And of course, if you have that collaboration element where everyone collaborates very heavily, then of course you got real synergy, uh, not to use too many, like, you know, buzzwords, but really to have everybody work and collaborate together without having to go, uh, hello, Mr. Manager or Mrs. Manager, is that okay if I do this? Like just do it. And, uh, as long as, as long as you adhere to certain principles and the principles for us are our core values.

[00:13:54] So if you, if you're doing something and you, and it's within the core values, you don't even have to question it. If you have a barrier, that's when you would escalate up and say, I have a barrier. Can you kind of help me get over this roadblock? But if you're cruising along and you, you know how to serve the customer and you were beating, you know, you're meeting the, the measurements or, um, the process, you're following the process.

[00:14:19] And, and again, the process we found, uh, kind of another aha moment was we started off very detailed processes to kind of like, well, this is like a franchise model. Make the hamburger, put the, you know, so much, you know, so many scoops of onions or whatever. Ours become more of a checklist of things along the way because the, A, things changed very quickly.

[00:14:41] But B, if you have a checklist, people can still accomplish the end goal without having to, uh, you know, just having very, you know, overly detailed processes because, uh, because they may find a new way to do it. And B, keeping documentation up to date. That's very, very involved with screenshots and all that stuff. If it doesn't need to be, then it's hard to maintain and keep that up to date.

[00:15:06] So I covered a little, I went all over the place a little bit here, but that was kind of the, the, the overall concept of letting people, the word, the really word is empowerment, empowering people to do their best work. So speaking of the people, I want to, I'm talking about the, your MSP being different. Um, I think there's a couple of different areas that we could probably unpack, but like, how did you see your MSP being different than most of the others you bumped into?

[00:15:35] I'll tell you how we're different. Um, we have very clear differentiators in my mind, but was, what was interesting and came out when we were, uh, because we, I think we've all deal with deal with this when you're in a competitive situation. They ask, well, what's, what's unique. And you say, well, it's our people. We have the best people, the best process. There was technology. And then they say, by the way, I've heard the exact same thing from the last three people. And so we're like, oh, well, I guess that's not, you know, but we say, no, but ours is, we, we really are. And then, you know, who's going to believe that.

[00:16:06] So, so, so we set out to try to really on two avenues. The first avenue was what, what is unique about us that we can prove that you could say, here's what, here's, here's the proof for it. And if you want to compare apples to apples, then ask people the same exact question. And, and so those, those three things for us were around customer service. So how do you measure customer service?

[00:16:33] And so we said, well, we are very good at customer service. Matter of fact, kind of our internal motto is we're a customer service company that happens to be great at technology. So we're customer service. And so to make a common way for businesses, not just MSPs, but to measure, there's a couple of ways to measure customer service. Some of them is CSAT, customer satisfaction.

[00:16:56] We chose to use a net promoter score, NPS, which is a little bit more globally used, you know, places like Starbucks or, you know, Apple and so forth. They measure NPS. It's, it's basically a simple, simple question of how likely would you refer this business to somebody else? And the score is between negative 100 and positive 100. And so our current score right now is 80. It started off in the 70, now it's 80.

[00:17:25] And to give you an idea where that is, like that's some of the best, most below it. It's called a world-class score and, and the NPS average for the, for MSPs is 38. So we're double, we're double them. So I always ask, Hey, you know, ask, ask your, ask your competitor what, what their NPS score is. A challenge with that is not everybody you talk to knows what NPS is.

[00:17:50] So you're like, they like have to look it up and they're not, if you, if you're deep into NPS and you know what it is, you go, you realize 80 is pretty, you know, pretty good score. Very, very good score. Some of the best brands. Yeah. Yeah. We're up there with, yeah, some of the most beloved brands that people swear by. The other aspect of it was, it's our experience. We have a very deep experience and expertise.

[00:18:14] And so I went through all of our resumes of our, of our employees and I do this, I do this annually and we add up how many years of experience they have in IT. And so our, our, the average experience in our company is 24 years. So that's, that's crazy. Right. So crazy high average. Yeah.

[00:18:37] So when I say, well, you know, you might get somebody who's maybe cheaper, but they're, you know, likely they have a bunch of very junior people out of school and they're, and they're really learning on the job and they're, they're really good with Google and maybe now chat GPT and try to figure these things out. Our people have done it. They've seen it. They wrote a book on it. And so, and we found, this is what we find when we, we engage the customer, they go, wow, you guys are really good and really experienced.

[00:19:03] But until they actually experience it, you have, that's the, that's, this is a metric I can say, well, you can ask people, what we say is we have one of the highest experience densities in the industry. And so, you know, with that comes a cost. We, we, we, we, I will say I have one more differentiator, but along this, this experience route is when we were interviewing or looking for somebody to join us, we come across somebody and go, wow, this person is awesome.

[00:19:34] They go, can we afford them? And we go, I don't know. That's, that's pretty high. That's a big salary. And we say, you know what? Let's let, if they're that good, they're going to add a lot of value. And I'll be honest. We've never regretted saying, you know, we paid for this person. And, and, and if they're, if they live up to what they, their potential was, they've, they've added more value than their salary.

[00:19:57] So you pay more, but then you get more and, and you can do, you know, instead of doing something in 10 steps, you do something in one step because you know, or, you know, you know, the shortcut. But you've managed to carve out differentiators, which I want to come back to, but I think it's one of the challenges is so many managed services providers are saying, well, I buy the same stack. I resell it. I resell it. So, you know, at the end of the day, it's a race to the bottom. We're all the same.

[00:20:25] And even worse when we let the market believe that you provide managed services. And so does a company a 10th year size, but the breadth and scale and operational maturity are probably pretty significantly different, let alone tenure or experience density, NPS scores. So it seems like you're pretty good at selling. You've got these differentiators.

[00:20:52] How is it that you figured out how to win the market since so many MSPs have kind of fallen down to the, you know, lowest common denominator? Well, I'm not going to say that we've, I don't know if we're any better than anyone else in that area. I would say that we, um, perhaps we have, we could say we can claim victory that we're able to, um, well, so to be clear, we're, we're also more expensive. So we are one of the more expensive.

[00:21:22] We're not the most expensive, but we are one of the more expensive. And it's in order to win those deals. You have to show value. And, and honestly, some people, some people are just about getting the cheapest prices and we're not going to win those deals. Like we talked to them and they say, you know, you're just expensive and they're not seeing that you give them, you know, I've, I've created a, you know, lots of different material on our value, um, value propositions to customers.

[00:21:49] And if it resonates, it resonates, but we have to work hard at that. And it doesn't, we don't, I'll say like for RFPs, sometimes RFPs are really apples to apples on everything. And we hardly ever win an RFP because they're just following a very specific process. Uh, but we succeed around, I think it's building relationships and showing value early on.

[00:22:11] And matter of fact, we try, you know, even on our website, all of our blogs are written by our, our technicians and people like, so they'll write like, Oh, how to, you know, how to do something tricky on a Cisco ASA or how to configure AWS instances in a, in a cost effective way. And so people find those things and we try to give out and show our expertise to everyone we can, uh, in hopes that they're going to say, well, these people are good.

[00:22:39] I do have a great story about this. Um, I was, I was last two, two Fridays ago, we went to, I went to one of our customers, uh, to, I was presenting to the whole company on some initiatives we're going to, we're going to do together. And, and, and the CEO of the company, she said, she stopped me and she said, she wanted to tell her staff. She says, just so you know that, you know, when we did, they did an RFP and we actually won, but they said we did an RFP for IT services.

[00:23:08] And Iuvo was, um, one of the most expensive ones, but we really liked their culture. We liked, we liked, you know, what, what they were about. So we decided to go with them and within, so the, and the reason they, they engaged us was because they said that their IT was their, their pastors being locked out there. Um, they were, um, nobody could work. They were very, very frustrated.

[00:23:32] Their current IT, um, company and consultant was telling them, oh, it's, it's because of interference from the city or the lots of different barriers. But what we uncovered was that they had been for the last two months had been penetrated by Russian hackers on a persistent attack. And so they were inside and they were constantly trying to, um, brute force on other people's passwords, which was causing them to be locked out.

[00:24:01] So they're getting locked out all the time. And so we solved that problem like within the first, you know, 30 days. And then we said, okay, now let's focus on modernizing you going forward. And, uh, so, you know, I think that the previous IT person had, they had, or a company, they had no idea. They were just like, I'm not sure why this is happening. And, and they were like, maybe you ran over the cord, uh, you know, the ethernet cable with your, with your, uh, with your, with your, um, chair.

[00:24:30] Maybe they actually said that, um, that's why you're getting, you know, so, um, so I think the, we have to do a lot of work, um, to show value ahead of time. It doesn't always work. Uh, and I will say too, is we, we have a very strong culture.

[00:24:50] So we try to, we try to showcase that, uh, in our website and what we do in our social posts, because I think people want to work with other people that they kind of relate to that, like that, that, that show that they have honest, uh, culture. The, uh, the brand, the brand is really a reflection of the culture.

[00:25:08] So you like, you know, you talk about NPS and the beloved brands, people, people who love Starbucks, love Starbucks or people who love Warby Pinker glasses or, or Tesla or whatever that, you know, Apple, you know? So they, uh, there's a brand associated with that. So we work hard on that, on not just promoting our products, but our brand and we're small. So our brand in, in, in comparison to some of the really big name there, we're tiny.

[00:25:36] Like, so, um, you're only going to see us if you're really kind of interested in our services. You seem to have created very intentional culture and what are some things you did to have 24 years average tenure? Um, that's, that means you've, you're holding on to your team probably a lot longer than others.

[00:25:58] So let me, let me clarify, make sure I said this correctly earlier, but we, so we're only a 17 year old company, but so we have 24 years of experience like before, before us and after, but we, we do hire. We do hire very, uh, experienced people.

[00:26:14] And so one of the questions, which is, I think is around what you're asking is, um, somebody was asking, well, how do you keep such experienced people there that the one that don't mind doing sometimes very mundane things? Because we face it, it could be like helping people with Excel all the way to architecting an AWS environment. It's big, big, big, wide variety.

[00:26:39] And so it, uh, I guess the secret really is, um, there's, it, there is, it is the culture. It is, it is the hiring. So you hire people with two sets of skills, uh, and one of them is tactical and one of them is, is people skills. Hmm. And, um, when you start hiring those A players, they only really tolerate working with other A players.

[00:27:36] Mm-hmm. And like to share information. Uh, that's partly showing that you're a core, like one of our core, core values is collaboration. So you live the collaboration, you collaborate all day long and it makes everybody smarter. So when you're, so when you're doing like, uh, you're serving a customer and, uh, and maybe you're a high level resource and, and, uh, we, we do have some tiers and so forth.

[00:28:05] And then you come across a problem that might be basic. What we tend to do is those, those experienced people are going to see the problem and they're not just going to fix the problem. They're going to say, well, how can I roll this? How can I make sure this happens? It doesn't happen to anybody else. So you, you kind of architect, uh, uh, automated solution. You put it into our RMM or room management and say, let's go out and check for this setting for everybody, all of our customers.

[00:28:30] And then by, by doing that continuously, you have a really robust system where you're really not bothered with the basic, uh, issues. We don't, I mean, we have people say when we're in the sales process, well, how do you handle password, password resets? Like all we're doing all day long is password resets. And, and like, we don't have that problem. Like, uh, they're like, no, you have to have that problem. Like, no, we don't. Like we, we might have put a self-serve portal.

[00:28:59] We might do this and this and this, and we, all the best practices. We actually focus on trying to get your product out to market faster because you're, because you're efficient. So the, the people that we work have, they see the big picture and they realize, okay, this is a temporary small little thing I've got to do. Um, and, but in the scope of big thing, it makes everybody, you can add that value, not just for one customer, but across all customers. So they enjoy that, uh, I think.

[00:29:28] And, and frankly, sometimes it doesn't work. And those people don't, don't last with us, but the ones that stick around, they, they kind of, they get it. What do you do to give them more creative freedom than maybe the average? A, they're allowed to make mistakes, right? There's no, you're not going to be penalized for making mistakes. Yes.

[00:29:51] And B, if something takes you longer because you're, you're, you're, you have the long view, long view in mind. So you say, well, you know, it's, let's say it's only going to take, it's going to take you an hour to do this, this job, but you spent four hours writing a script. That's going to automate it forever. And you say, well, you can't bill for those three hours. And some companies will say, that's wrong. Don't do that. You spent too many hours. We're not going to be profitable. We're going to, we say, that's great.

[00:30:18] You know, we'll eat this right now because we're going to gain it a long term. So it's that long view. So you can make mistakes. Try not to make the same mistake twice. And if you do make a mistake, broadcast it to the world. So nobody else makes your mistake. I, and when we start the company first day, I tell everybody in the orientation, I tell everybody about my big mistake I made. And, and, and, and, and what I did and how it was with the customer environment.

[00:30:48] And so they, they know it's okay to make a mistake. Speaking of making mistakes, who owns culture? Well, I do. Okay. Yeah. So as the CEO, you own it. And speaking of ownership, tell me about what leadership at the edge means to you. So leadership at the edge is different than leadership on the edge.

[00:31:15] So I'll say leadership at the edge is basically similar to what we've been talking about. But if you imagine that, if you imagine a wheel or a hub and spoke model for an organization where the center is, is management and you have layers of management all the way out to the outside. The people that are actually interfacing with your customer or developing your product or doing invoicing or whatever it might be. Those are the people that are at the edge.

[00:31:44] And they are, they're the ones who are, can make a big impact on your business. So if you allow the people at the edge to be leaders and to do things autonomously and not be afraid to make mistakes. And then they just, the only time they have to check in with the center is like, I need a resource or I need to have a barrier. Or how can you connect me with somebody else in the company that has this, this thing?

[00:32:08] Basically, it can possibly 10x the effectiveness of your company. Why is that? Well, we talked about earlier about when I was a barrier because I didn't have, people had to be, had to wait for me to approve a purchase for a laptop or a desktop. Now these people are saying, you know, I just bought 20 laptops for this customer and we're going to, and, you know, and, and we configured into, and so automatically configure them.

[00:32:37] And they just did all of that. And they didn't, they never had to check with anybody and they just did it. And so imagine that they had to check in every time and they had to, to get permission to do that. And they had to see if it's okay. Imagine how much slower that would go. And the visual I've been thinking of lately around this is that like the sense of a wheel.

[00:32:59] And if you're, if you're, if your company is a, is a, is a motor and it's turning a wheel and you have a very small little wheel because the wheel only goes as fast as the management company. But then you make the wheel much larger because everybody at the edge of this wheel are, are like the, where the rubber meets the road. And with the same revolution of an engine, the, you know, you're now going the circumference of a bigger wheel. You know, you're, you're making what you're going faster because everybody at the edge is going fast around this.

[00:33:28] So you're, um, I think that, yeah, I mean, for me, it's the only way to live is, is to empower people. So I think if you want to, you know, I think, well, my experience is that we, we do have mistakes, but they're so, they're so small and so far between that we can handle it. Handling the exceptions is, is very efficient compared to trying to, trying to control, uh, or not empower people that are not empowered.

[00:33:59] And, and frankly, it goes to their job satisfaction. So if you, if you have a company that supports you and your culture is great and they, and, and, and they take care of your basic needs and you have good benefits and you have good culture and sharing and you have advancement, uh, you are going to do your best work. Think about like, sometimes I, you know, you might go to, uh, maybe you go to get coffee sometime and someone's having a bad day and you're like, you go, you arrive there and they go, can I help you?

[00:34:28] You know, like, oh, you're having a bad day. You know, they look, they're just not into their job. So the only way to get this NPS score of 80 is to have people who love their job because you can't give great customer service if you don't like a job. And if you can fake it for one day, if you're whatever, you can maybe fake it occasionally. You can't fake it all the time. Yeah.

[00:34:48] So if you, if you see somebody, a company that has great NPS scores and great customer service chances, the very high chance that they, they're in a company that takes care of them and that, that gives them what they need. So leadership at the edge is about more than delegating, about getting out of my own way, getting out of my own way, not being the block for them to purchase laptops or whatever that is.

[00:35:13] And if I distill that down, it's, it's essentially, would you say it's something like scaling trust? On what? Scaling the trust as you have more and more people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is scaling the trust. That is. Yeah. And yes.

[00:35:34] And it's infusing, it's infusing the culture default, defining your culture, infusing it in everybody and make sure everybody lives and operates that way. When you mentioned leadership at the edge, it's fair to say that, well, I'll, I'll, I'll say, you know, this, cause we talked about this earlier, but I have a book coming out in January called leadership at the edge. It's about this. So it's something that I started up. So the name came out.

[00:35:58] I write a weekly memo out to the company called leadership at the edge. And I, you know, I was talking about a certain topic, update everything that was going on. And I just called it that. And over time I gathered all these together and I made a talk about it, you know, a present presented at a conference and, and it was really well received. So I, then I expanded on it and I, and over the course of three years, I, I've developed into a book. So it's going to, it's in the publisher right now.

[00:36:28] It's going to be coming out in January. So I codified these for these, these, these, these concepts around leadership at the edge, everything from culture to brand to resilience, open door communication. We talked, talked about grit. And then, and then how to do these things, how to do it. Like there's description of how, what does mean, but that how do, what, how do, how do you nurture your people? How do you collaborate? How do you ensure you're collaborating?

[00:36:57] And then, which the old goal is empowering. It's the, the spirit of empowerment. So, uh, yeah, that's, that's, that's leadership at the edge. Uh, so I'm, I, I obviously have a passion for that, that, that concept. Why is it so important to you to write that book?

[00:37:13] I think we have something special here and I think that, uh, especially in, in our field and a managed service provider and, uh, you know, like in the spirit of sharing, sharing with the world, um, that's one aspect of it. I'd like to, and I think when you share your ideas, whether they're accepted or they're critiqued, which they, if they're critiqued, that's fine because it helps your, somebody say, well, I didn't get this part of it.

[00:37:43] And that doesn't make sense to me. And then you may come up with, oh, well, you're right. I need to elaborate on this aspect of it because that, and so whenever you put your anything out, you write, you have a painting, you're going to put it out there. The world's going to have an opinion on it. And yeah, I don't expect everybody to, to love it, but also you can make it better. We, I can use that as input. Uh, the other aspect of it is that we, it's part of the be honest, it's part of my personal brand.

[00:38:14] So as, as, uh, so I am the chief CEO, but I'm chief culture and I'm, you know, that, but I, but I want to, by having a book out that shows our culture and who we are, if there's other leaders out there that, that where the book resonates with, and they want to partner with a company that has similar values.

[00:38:38] And they can agree with, they may choose to work with us just because they see how we operate and they want to work with us. They may say, wow, I, I, I, this really resonates. If I were to have an IT provider, I probably would have, when I have somebody who believes the same way, I'm hoping that's the case. Uh, if, or it may be the opposite, like, wow, you know, these guys are a little out there, you know, I, I, I don't know.

[00:39:02] It could be either way, but, but it would hopefully would help attract the type of people that we would work well with. We will make sure to have a link in the show notes. If you guys are interested in Brian's book, I do want to shift gears for a second though, and ask you, um, what's the biggest lesson you've learned in all these years building your MSP?

[00:39:24] I will say, we talked a little bit about, I, I tease this out earlier, but the biggest lesson that I will go to my grave with is, is to hire the right people and hire people that are smarter and better than you. Um, everybody that I've hired has some skill that I don't have. Um, and you know, and I hire a marketing person. They're like, they're really awesome at marketing or whatever.

[00:39:50] And technologies these days is easy because I've kind of gotten out of, out of practice. But in all fairness, um, I, you know, I've, I've, I've tried to hire everybody. You, you, there are some people that don't want to hire people that are smarter than them because it makes them look bad. They want to be the smartest person in the room. I don't want to be this smart because this, you are the sum of the five people you hang out with. Right. And so you want those people to be, I don't know, there's a phrase, uh, rising tide raises all boats or so forth.

[00:40:19] You want to be in that group. That's going to elevate you. So while I had that idea early on, you know, not everybody has the courage to do that. I would encourage anybody to, to, you know, they're a, I told, I talked about them. They're expensive sometimes, sometimes they're not. And, but they're going to, they're going to increase not only the value of your company, but they're going to make you happier. They're going to make you happier. Uh, 95% of the time.

[00:40:48] If there's one thing you could go back and do differently or do over, what would that be? This may, this may resonate with other MSPs is that most of the IT services companies were, are formed by technical people that are good at their job. And they say, gosh, I could do this for a business. And it wasn't, it took me a while, um, to really understand how to make a formalized sales and marketing strategy.

[00:41:19] Um, so I think, you know, we've, uh, I think we've embraced marketing earlier than others, but I look at some of the, you know, if I, we talk about Pareto, I look at some of the 20% who really scaled and grown well.

[00:41:33] And I think they had a very sales oriented focus rather than a tactically aimed focus where they looked at it as business and, you know, growing it and looking at, uh, you know, keeping an eye on EBITDA and keep it and learning what's important for a healthy business. Whereas, you know, we, we, we, that's how we feel now. And that's what we feel for the while.

[00:41:59] But, but maybe if I, if we would have been able to embrace that and understand that, or maybe even have one of our other founders, somebody who was really a sales person at heart, uh, we probably would have accelerated even faster or, um, than where we are. I think we've done okay, but I do think that, um, yeah, I, I think, you know, beginning was a website was all about us. Look at us. We have a website and we realize, no, no, no, the website is for the customer.

[00:42:28] The website is for the prospect to understand you. It's not about you. It's about what's good for them. You know, it's, uh, you know, and, and it's so a lot of the, you know, uh, SEO and, and all the things I've learned about that over time. It, it didn't, it wasn't from day one.

[00:42:47] So, um, you know, and I, and the, the business plan I told you that I wrote and, and gave to, uh, and shared with Jeff, um, you know, instantly the core values and things we talked about were in there. They haven't changed, but all the technology and how we did business, it's all different. I bet. I bet. What's a common myth speaking about change and different things. What's a common myth about running an MSP that you'd like to dispel?

[00:43:15] MSPs generally consists of technical people. And historically, um, whether the MSP or just at, in a company, most people who, uh, become very technically focused have not developed personality skills or social skills. Or there's, you know, I think Saturday night live had, I think Jimmy Fallon was like this, uh, that, you know, this very rude MSP or not MSP, but tech IT guy. Right.

[00:43:42] So they're, they have a reputation of, of maybe, um, just, you know, wearing black and listening to death metal and being in the back server room and doing, you know, doing IT stuff. So maybe MSPs because they're a little more, you know, they have a little better reputation than typical IT, but maybe the myth is that you can have both. You can have, you can have people who are really good at skill, technical skills and really good at personal skills.

[00:44:09] There are somebody who can solve a really complex technical problem, but you still want to have a beer with them at the end of the day because they're really a good person. So that's maybe that's a, um, um, maybe it's an MSP or an IT myth. Um, when you said that, uh, I have a, I don't know, this is not what you asked, but I made me think of kind of the myth of being a CEO. I don't know if you're interested in that. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:39] I would love to hear that. Yeah. So I think about this because maybe you can explain what I'm actually supposed to be doing. So, yeah, I'm curious. No, no. Yeah. Yeah. So I was, cause I was wondering, cause well, I say this because, um, so I've had, you know, this title and, uh, when I talk to people that are even family members, they think, oh, you know, like I remember a family member saying, uh, it was like a, you know, uh, brother-in-law or something like, Hey, you're a CEO. You can do whatever you want.

[00:45:08] You can go on vacation and you can take as long as you want. Cause you're the CEO or you, you must golf or you must do whatever, you know, like, and you realize people have a myth about that. That's not, that's not, if you're doing things right, you're actually working for your employees. You're doing things for them. You're even, yeah, you have the title and you have the power to, to make change and so forth.

[00:45:28] But I think the myth of, uh, of a really, uh, of a CEO is trying to do things right is that you are, you know, you're, you're working very hard. And, and I think that anybody who's in the seat running MSP, they will probably all agree. They, they work a lot of hours and they do a lot, uh, extra work to make this all happen because there's a lot, you wear lots of hats.

[00:45:52] And when, when nobody can solve a problem, it all goes up to you and you have to solve that problem. And it could be an HR problem. It could be a technical problem. It could be a legal problem. It doesn't matter what it is. You have to solve it or find somebody to help solve it. So, uh, you know, it running an MSP and trying to grow it is really not for the faint of heart. So I would say MSPs listening to this, they say, yeah, we know that.

[00:46:21] Cause we're, we're, we're in the trenches. But if you're not in MSP and you think, you know, and you run with somebody and they say, uh, I'm a, you know, my neighbors don't even know I'm a CEO. I just say I work in it cause I don't want them to know. But, um, I just don't, you know, it's not a big thing to me, but, but, but, but somebody who says, oh, there's a myth, you know, you're, oh, you're, you're like, well, Jeff Bezos, you got your yacht, whatever. I mean, that's, that's a, that's a big extreme, but they, there's a, there's a misconception, I think. And that's a myth, if you will, about that as well.

[00:46:51] Yeah. Oh, that's, I definitely can relate to that. Yeah. Um, Brian, what's, what's something you're looking forward to right now? Um, I am. Um, particularly very excited for the future and, uh, what aspect of it? Well, so I just finished, um, our vivid vision.

[00:47:15] Uh, there was actually a book on vivid vision, but it was actually suggested, uh, my, uh, Jeff, my co-founder said, you know, we should write a vivid vision of the company. And it's basically for, in 2027, what do we envision the company being? And like, and it's all about the how and the whys, uh, not the hows, but the what and the whys and who we're going to be, but not the how we're going to do it. And so the, the, the, the rest of the company is going to come up with, uh, with the what.

[00:47:40] So I, I've worked on this for the better part of, uh, this early this year, I present to the company and I'm having one-on-one meeting with everybody in the company to talk about where they see themselves in this vision. And, uh, and I've been so inspired by, by people saying, Oh, I wanted this and this. And they're, they're, they're kind of, they're really psyched about it and you're trying to get everybody on board. And so trying to look, looking forward. And then, you know, when you have this vision, you know, a lot of people right have three year plans.

[00:48:08] This is kind of a detail. If you can, you know, you can look at, if you look at vivid vision, there's a couple, um, you know, there's a whole book on it, but there's, um, it's, uh, it's a really descriptive. It turns out it's very visual. I put it in the graphics and so forth, but I'm very excited about getting to the point where we can incorporate this into our 2025 rocks and goals and, uh, really just disimplement it. Some, some of the stuff is what we're, where we are now.

[00:48:37] And some of it is, uh, where we want to be. So I'm pretty excited about that. And I think I'm excited because others in the company are excited about it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Vivid Vision by, um, Cameron Harreld. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe best, best known for that or the 1-800-GOT-JUNK. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the guy. Yeah. Really, really good.

[00:49:04] Well, uh, I don't know if this spoils the next question, but if there was one book you would recommend, maybe other than yours, uh, we'll get back to you. But if there was one book you recommend, uh, an owner of an MSP read, what would that be? There's probably two books, but I'll start with the one that, um, recently had an impact on me. It's called Capturing Loyalty, uh, by, uh, Larson and McClellan.

[00:49:28] And essentially, uh, it's about how it basically, when, when, when I read this book, we ended up spearheading, um, our revenue operations team. So we had, we had sales and marketing and we had a customer loyalty to that aspect of things.

[00:49:47] And this book, um, lays out the, it has some really great stories about it, from Staples to different companies that did things, but, uh, really does a good job of, of, of articulating how great customer service, great law, creating customer loyalty. It will make you more profitable. It reduces customer churn. You can, you know, you can, you can grow your customers without having to, as you know, have many new sales and so forth.

[00:50:17] Really does a great job. I was really, um, really well-written. So I would say Capturing Loyalty, uh, and strangely, uh, not strangely, but, uh, another MSP, which I forget, um, which it was. So one of the guys in a peer group had posted on LinkedIn and said, I love this book. It's great. And I was like, I want to, I want, you know, I'm pretty like you, Damon. You see a book, like, I want to know about that book. So that's what I did. I got the book and then, and it was, uh, it was a, uh, yeah, it was kind of a game changer.

[00:50:46] I think I read it like three years ago, but, um, I read a lot of books. I could, I could talk about a number of books, but this one, uh, I think MSPs would really benefit from it. Wonderful. Wonderful. Um, was there a second one? Yeah. Yeah. This is one that I, I, uh, I actually give out to people. Um, it's the startup of you by Reed Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn. And, you know, I gave it, you know, I've had my, my kids read it.

[00:51:15] I've had, uh, given it to people who graduated. Um, I'm a, I love, I really do believe in the power of LinkedIn, but it's also treating yourself like a startup essentially. And building your own personal brand. And how are you going to do that? And how are you going to link in?

[00:51:30] And, and basically some of the concepts I've talked about earlier is, is basically offer people, be there for people when they, when, um, when you're not expecting, when you don't want anything, just give out and be part of people's networks and, and, and people and help them with things before. And then when there comes a time when you need them or you would ask for them, then you've already built up some social capital. Mm-hmm.

[00:51:54] And so it, it describes this a little bit in, uh, in kind of in the architecture kind of LinkedIn, but it's, I think it's really well done. It's, uh, you know, I think it's kind of the modern, uh, win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie kind of like, it's kind of the startup of you. It's about you. It's about believing in yourself. How do you can reinvent yourself? What do you want to do with your life and how you can make it happen? So I, uh, I'm a big fan of that book. If you, I don't know if you've read it, but I would recommend that for sure. That's a wonderful recommendation.

[00:52:24] Well, Brian, uh, this has been wonderful. Um, tell everybody how to get connected with you online. Yeah. Uh, so, um, our domain name, um, um, well, Todd, you can, you can email me. Uh, my name is Brian, Brian, Brian, B-R-Y-O-N dot Bileman, B-E-I-L-M-N at IUvo tech, I-U-V-O-T-E-C-H.com. Um, I'm also, uh, on LinkedIn, LinkedIn.

[00:52:53] Uh, you can look, look at me under Brian Bileman at LinkedIn. I've, um, I'm very active on LinkedIn, LinkedIn, and maybe you'll see something posted by me. Those are the, probably the two best ways to reach out to me. If you have any questions you want to run, you know, I'm happy to help you with a referral or just talk about, um, business or technology. That is, that is amazing. We will have a link to the book, uh, that will be coming out right about the time we air. And, uh, what about your podcast, Brian?

[00:53:23] Yeah, the podcast. That's, so the podcast is going to be launched in January. Um, and, uh, it's going to be associated inside of our, uh, website. Um, my, my marketing person and I are going to do that. Uh, very, I might follow a, we have a certain theme that's going to be different from yours, but I hope, I'm hoping I can run it as well as you run yours.

[00:53:44] And, uh, so it's, you know, right now you can go to leadership.ievoTech.com is where the, the launch page for the, the podcast will be, but that'll be coming in January as well. Podcast about leadership or leadership at the edge. Yeah. It's going to be about leadership in general. And, and, and the topic is really going to be, we're going to have two, um, two phases to this podcast.

[00:54:09] The podcast is going to be, uh, but my, my intention is really to reach out to businesses and, and have them talk about themselves. Um, and I want to, there's so much goodness out there we can all learn. And, and, and I will be using leadership at the edge as a framework to, to, to have discussions about how they handle culture or brand or leadership or, you know, sharing information. But I want to know, I want to hopefully give everybody else exposure to these other companies that are doing this.

[00:54:37] And then we'll have another, uh, we'll have one. The other aspect of this is going to be, uh, two people talking tech kind of thing. So it's going to be some of our technical people discussing, um, you know, talking about certain technology and what people should know about it. So, um, and that's, that, that won't be me, but that'll be on the same platform. I love that. Brian, thank you so much for being on MSP mindset. This has been a tremendous gift to me. Well, Damian, this is, this has been awesome.

[00:55:06] I really appreciate the time and, uh, and, uh, and I have a great questions. So I hope, uh, um, uh, you know, I like that, that, uh, you're helping MSPs everywhere.