The AI Layer Every MSP Is Missing

[00:00:00] I saved over a thousand hours in the past year personally with AI. What's better is I went to my team and I shared just the opportunity and some of them came back and made what I did look small by comparison.

[00:00:15] If you want that for your team and your company to enable your team to see things and do things that were just never thought possible before and go from the hype and fatigue and buzzwords to actually building things, join us Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern for our free build sessions. None of the hype, all of the building, all of the answers. See you there.

[00:00:38] I see inevitable that there will be always a layer in between the data and the management. There has to be a layer that can decipher what's going on. You know, you are a modern business now, right? I'm getting emails, I'm getting chats, I'm getting Zoom chats and I'm getting some of them in Teams. I'm getting something that is in my CRM. So all this data coming at me all the time and if I really want to get something out of it, I have to ask, I have to gather information.

[00:01:06] And really you're going to do this maybe once or twice a month. Well, if I had a system that could understand everything that's going on and everything that's all the data and, you know, all my phone calls, everything is ingested into one place and can relate all these things together. You put the AI layer that can determine what's going on and give you an alert. I think every company is going to do this.

[00:01:32] Hey guys, Damien Stevens, host of MSP Mindset, founder and CEO of Servosity. If you're like many MSPs, you're wondering, are you too late? Are you too early with AI? Leith Palawan, who joins me today, got in and built his own AI company in addition to his MSP over three and a half years ago, sinking all of his hard-end time and money into it. And he learned that most of us are too close to see the opportunity.

[00:02:00] So the question is, what if there's this gigantic opportunity that we are just unable to see? How do we see that? And what do we do about that? If you want to know what the next steps are clearly and what you should be doing in AI with your MSP, don't miss out on my conversation today with Leith. Leith, thank you so much for joining me on MSP Mindset. Thank you. I want to dig right in.

[00:02:27] So you're, in my opinion, really doing some interesting things. And we're going to get into what that looks like, especially in the AI sphere. But before we do, you've been in MSP for quite a while. So as the CEO of Orange Crew, when did you start that? Actually, I started in 2002. I was in a corporation. I was in the dot-com world. The company I was with had moved me from Canada to California.

[00:02:57] And I really enjoyed being in California because of the weather, basically. And, you know, you're in California. So the company that moved me here, of course, during that time, the dot-com bubble burst. And I just didn't want to get back. So at that time, there was a big movement, like the Geeks on Call or Geek Squad. This was a thing happening right now, right?

[00:03:26] So I thought, okay, that's one thing I can do. I went from a director level at a big company, like a Fortune 1000 company, into being a one-man shop with a tool set. Of course, at the beginning, you think, oh, man, if I can do this, no problem. Right. You learn very, very fast that, you know, a little ad in the yellow pages is not going to get you the glory that you hoped for.

[00:03:54] So, yeah, so you learn to become a lot smarter, you know. You get out of your shell. All of a sudden, I'm doing networking. I'm going to call people, cold calling people, and very, very hard times in the beginning. So I did that for a few years. And then right before the economy tanked in 2008, 2009, I learned about the MSP model.

[00:04:21] And it's like this was great for me because now I can have some kind of reoccurring income, right? Yeah. So I invested. Back then, it was Enable. It was the big player. And I invested a good chunk of money and borrowed money on that. And, of course, great timing because as soon as I did that, the economy tanked. I lost, what, 70% or 80% of my clients. Oh.

[00:04:49] And it was really rough times. I mean, I had to get out of my apartment, go live with a friend of mine. He gave me a room in his house. And just the thing that happens at that time was as well, like a few years ago, I would take a bunch of flyers, make 100 of them and just throw them out of a speeding car. I would get like $4,000 or $5,000 worth of business.

[00:05:19] Now, I had targeted campaigns. I was spending more money to go after businesses and nothing was coming back. And so the way I think of it is like imagine if you put sugar in your coffee every day and it becomes sweet. One day, you put sugar. It's not sweet. You put more sugar. You put more sugar. It takes a while to realize, okay, sugar, I'm going to find something else. Sugar is not making coffee sweet anymore. So by the time I realized that, I was really in a lot of debt, right?

[00:05:49] So I went through a lot of debt consolidation. I ended up having to get creative, right? So how did I get creative at that time? Upwork or it was OnForce back then. I don't remember the name back then. I got a couple of people in the Philippines at $1 an hour. I used Skype for phones. I used Spiceworks, which was free as well.

[00:06:17] So I created this entire system that is free. I had two technicians costing me $80 a week. So that was pretty sweet. So with that, I was able to pay rent and survive that period and still be in business, right? Yeah. But what that did was the big thing you got from that is not the money. The money just kept me alive. What that helped me do is all of a sudden, I had to depend on the system.

[00:06:47] I no longer could have all the things in my head and know the clients one by one. I had to rely on the system. And that actually made me, as a company, look more like a company than a guy with a toolbox, right? Right. So with that, I was able to partner with a couple of other companies that they saw a value in what I do.

[00:07:12] And actually being in a partnership, they say in business, one plus one equals 11, right? So just having these guys with me really, really helped. It gave me a lot more confidence in closing. It created a lot more opportunity because there was a lot more conversations. I could relate and delegate more. And that made a big difference, right?

[00:07:42] And throughout the years, the partners all wanted to do other things, had to buy them out, and they went away. And, you know, that kind of – but at that point, I've already created a good number of clients. And I was able to manage them. I grew my technicians. The people in the Philippines, they went from $1 an hour to $1.25 an hour, which is – they went to a lot more.

[00:08:10] With time, I was able to give them more money. And they stayed with me 11 years, 12 years, actually. And then eventually, everybody went away. So at one point, it became just a completely different company. Of course, at one point, the people that got you started, their skills were great at the time. But as you grow up, you need different skills. You need different people. So that got us to a point where we had some clients, and we helped our clients grow a lot.

[00:08:39] And that created a lot of surplus for us. And I'm not the kind of guy that likes to spend money on cars and watches and stuff like that. And, okay, I do smoke a cigar every once in a while. But I do like to – but there is money. And instead of all of it going to taxes, you know what? Might as well spend some money on R&D.

[00:09:04] So that's how I had the money to have some R&D money. Because I've been looking for a way to differentiate myself from other MSPs. Because, I mean, I think I talked to you about this earlier. I think most of us are really having a hard time to grow like we envisioned we could grow. Yeah, we got stability because we do a good job. We can smile and be nice and fix problems.

[00:09:34] But to actually go and expand, that is a very tough thing. Because once you're in with a client, man, it's very, very – the bond is very strong. It's high contact. You know, what we're doing here is very high contact with our clients, right? Yes. So we have very strong relationships. And to break that, you know, I really have to wait for somebody to really screw up. And not just screw up, like really screw up, you know? Yeah.

[00:10:01] And that's when they come out and start looking for us. Now, we just want to make sure that when they do look at people, that there's something that differentiates us from others. I think everybody could relate to that, right? Yeah. How are we different? How do we differentiate? You relate to most of us have like a technical background, not a sales marketing business development background. Yeah. I mean, like whenever I hired a marketing agency, they're always like, oh, what makes you different?

[00:10:29] Like, honestly, there's nothing that makes me different. You know, like what's – to me, from a client's point of view, okay, if my plumber is using an electrical wrench versus a regular wrench or like a stone versus metal, I really don't know the difference. And it's very hard to differentiate myself when you're doing service, you know? Other than my relationships and maybe my style and maybe my honesty.

[00:10:57] But, you know, who doesn't say they're the most honest or that they're the most talented? We're all – everybody's saying that people are so desensitized from this. Yeah. So you have to bring in like some kind of a new value, you know? And that's what I've been searching for. And, you know, so you can try to specialize in the field. And, yeah, they tell you, okay, specialize in like dentists or property management or something.

[00:11:22] Like, you know, these – most of the time I found when I do try to specialize and I try to market to a specific segment, it doesn't really – I have not been able to be successful at it. Because, you know, no matter what comes at me, I'm taking it, you know? At the end of the day, honestly, we're all doing very similar things, right?

[00:11:47] The only thing is you can do is, you know, make sure that you're there on time, you're friendly, you're not – you're doing your homework, you're doing your maintenance. Not just saying that you are. And hopefully that pays off, you know? So I totally get the sales and the differentiation, right? How do we differentiate? How do we sell? And you were looking for something, right?

[00:12:14] You were trying to figure out, like, how do I crack that nut, which almost everybody is. And so where did that lead you? Okay. So obviously at one point a few years ago, right around pandemic time, there was a lot of, you know, cybersecurity, emphasizing cybersecurity. And there was a lot of emphasis on actually even selling insurance. If you remember, cybersecurity insurance, they were trying to get us to sell insurance.

[00:12:44] Which was a tough sell, to be honest with you, for an IT company. So – oh, or the last thing was compliance. Like security compliance, discompliance, and things like that. And these things, unfortunately, turned out to be a nightmare because the standard keeps on changing, right? And nobody's really able to adapt to it.

[00:13:08] And when you try to do it, it's an ocean of things that can be important or not important. So while I'm trying to do all of this, I had an assistant that's been with me for 12 years. She was – she's not an assistant. She was, like, pretty much the office manager. I shouldn't say that. And she quit.

[00:13:33] You know, the same day she quit, I heard about ChatGPT. And this was like – okay, so right away, it's like, oh, man, wouldn't it be nice if I had somebody that kept the history of the entire company and knows what's going on? Because when I went to Emily, she knew everything always, even what happened, like, 10 years ago.

[00:13:59] And I thought, if there was a system that could do this for me, you know, that will never quit on me, that would be great. And there was Chad GPT as well. It's like, you know what? If I can get this logic to work with my data, I think I might have something. Also, it happened at that time, I was a part of a network of executives, you know, that we used to meet once a month and talk about, you know, business.

[00:14:25] Most of the time, they were talking big business, like really heavy stuff, you know? Right. I'm not talking about, you know, like, hey, I got a printer I got fixed. So I, so when I was, so they really, and they were very focused on AI back then because it was a new thing. And this one guy gave us a presentation about how the future looks like for AI and what jobs are going to suffer, what jobs are not going to suffer.

[00:14:56] And one of the jobs that are going to expand, believe it or not, is the MSP world. Because now you're going to need more technology and you'll probably have to be a little bit more involved than just the network and the plugs, right?

[00:15:10] So I thought it would be nice to have like from a plug to prompt kind of company where you can take from the, you know, from the networking to actually on the screen, have a way for you to access your data and still deliver it in the same way without having to do any customization, write reports or anything like that.

[00:15:31] So, so I talked to these guys and then I found a group in the Netherlands actually that will, and of course at the time I was looking, I was thinking more of an investment. So I, I found this company that was led by a guy who does a lot of security podcasts and interviews on CNN. So I thought, okay, I need this kind of name behind me in case I need to prove that I have some legitimacy, right?

[00:16:00] So yeah, it was very expensive at the time, but they gave me the first, the first glimpse of how it would work, right? And we got our data connected and actually it was useful, you know, still a lot of, this is like JetGPT3. So there's a lot of improvement to be made, but it was better than nothing. And that to me was good enough. You know what I mean?

[00:16:28] Or just to be clear, this was years ago from what you're saying. This is three years, three and a half years ago. Yes. Well, that's really early, right? That's very early in that, like you're saying the, the, the changes in your software, the changes in models, all the things since then. Correct. Yeah. So you set out to invest, not necessarily, you know, in terms of how you wanted to build this. And did you know day one that would be a separate company from your MSP? Not in the beginning.

[00:16:56] But then because I was with these guys who know how to run SaaS and everything, it's like, yeah, if you want investment, you have to make it a separate company. You have to, you know, make it a C-Corp and an S-Corp. And they gave me a lot of framework of how to work with. And I thought, you know, okay, now, and I got a lot of people very interested, especially when AI was a big thing.

[00:17:16] But, you know, it's, it's one thing to talk and signing that check is a completely different thing. Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, even with like the crypto and just the way the economy was, we ended up not finding, not getting investors.

[00:17:40] And also, I wanted to create something that, you know, you know, give them an offer they cannot refuse. Right. And I don't think I was there yet. But what I had was, you know, I had a lot of hallucination and didn't have the right framing. And I think that has become a lot better in the last few months, actually, where, and I think I've expressed that to you before,

[00:18:03] I did a shark tank in Atlanta to, because to, for investors and, you know, when it's time to do the presentation, I had to really examine my position and how I'm going to market this. And I think I have a much, much better framing of how I can sell this solution and position this solution for others.

[00:18:32] So, let me back up a step. So, you decided to build this company and then you realized at some point it should be a separate one. And what is the name of the company? The company is Bloom Logic. Okay. And the site is bloomchat.ai. So, because it's a chat. So, it's a bloomchat.ai and there you'll see the details of our company. Tell me about the mindset, because there's got to be some confidence.

[00:18:58] There's got to be some belief from, you know, long time MSP to all of a sudden, you know, you're like, I'm going to build something with AI. That's a big change of mindset. It's another change of mindset to be across the country, you know, doing pitches and raising capital. There's all these things that most people have not gone through, have not done. You know, what made you say, like, I'm going to create a new company. I'm going to use AI.

[00:19:28] I'm going to do all these things. Well, I mean, a couple of things. I had a couple of dollars that I could do this with, right? The second thing is I'm very interested. I really believed in this. I honestly believe that in the future, every company is going to have a component of what I'm trying to build. You know, it's something that gives you a lot of input, looks at your data without bias.

[00:19:57] You know, even yourself, when you look at your data, you know, you give it some bias. Oh, that's because we're just, but AI does not give you any, doesn't really care about how you feel. It just tells you, okay, hey, this is a danger here. There's a problem here. Also, when I'm, even when I'm communicating with my staff as well, like, when I ask them what's going on, you know, they're going to tell you things in a way that makes them look good and makes the client look bad.

[00:20:24] But there is some kind of, if you have an unbiased opinion, they'll tell you, hey, we should really focus on this. We should do this better. You know, we should provide this to the client. I mean, of course, the model, the one I'm building is built for customer service because we're a customer service company. So, it always takes the side of the client, you know, to a certain degree. I mean, the client is completely unreasonable. And there are times when the client is like, they're done with you.

[00:20:54] And you don't know why. Jeez, you really don't know. And at that point, it's like, okay, you've tried everything you can. This is the most professional way to do this. If you want to separate, if you want to do something, this is how to do it properly. You know, you keep your dignity. You keep your values. So, taking on the risk and believing in the product, that will be a big thing. That's a big thing.

[00:21:19] The other thing is, you know, having a bit of resources to do this and the desire to do it. Honestly, it's a lot of times it's if you really believe in something, if you really believe in something, you want to see it come through. You know, you want to see it happen. You want to see it materialized. Absolutely. And I always pride myself in being able to get what's in my head to come in real life. I even paint or like even a joke or whatever it is.

[00:21:49] It's something in my head that you materialize into real things. So, I believe that I can do this, you know. And this, of course, I did a lot of asking chat, hey, can I do this? Can I do this? Can I talk to people? My brother is a developer and I have a lot of friends that are developers. I've been in the industry for a long time. So, I know a lot of IT guys like me. And, you know, yes, you can. There are problems. Yes, there are problems. Not everything can work the way you want.

[00:22:17] But my goal was to do better than nothing. And doing better than nothing, it was easy to achieve. Now, we want to do better than the average. The average is, and I've done a lot of shows, AI shows. I've been to a lot of places. Because, you know, best people can get is about 80% accuracy, which we achieved very early on.

[00:22:40] Now, we're working on a lot better, more accuracy because we're building our own maps and we're building our own logic into the solution that is giving us a lot more accurate information than we did before. So, I want to back up a little bit, Laith. You were early days, the foremost people, you know, in chat GPT and other things. And I think it was harder to see then, right? Because the models weren't as good. Hallucination was much higher. Logic wasn't as good.

[00:23:10] There wasn't tool calling. So, what was the vision you had? Like, what did you see that others didn't that made you say, I've got to do something? I wanted to – well, I don't know if there's anything that I saw. Actually, I'm surprised that others did not see what I see. You know, to be honest with you, it seems inevitable. Yeah, what do you see as inevitable?

[00:23:35] I see inevitable that there will be always a layer in between the data and the management. There has to be a layer that can decipher what's going on. So, you know, you are a modern business now, right? I'm getting emails. I'm getting chats. I'm getting Zoom chats. And I'm getting some of them in Teams. I'm getting something that is in my CRM. There is something in my documents. There's also something in QuickBooks. QuickBooks is another form of communication. There is also communication in there.

[00:24:04] You know, when people pay, when people don't. What does it mean when somebody doesn't pay for three months? It means something, okay? So, all this data coming at me all the time. And if I really want to get something out of it, I have to ask. I have to gather information. And really, you're going to do this maybe once or twice a month, maybe, to really understand what's going on.

[00:24:25] Well, if I had a system that could understand everything that's going on and everything that's all the data and, you know, all my phone calls, everything is ingested into one place and can relate all these things together. You put the AI level on, the AI layer that can determine what's going on and give you an alert. I thought this would be like, I think every company is going to do this. I mean, eventually, they have to do this, right? Especially if AI gets even better.

[00:24:55] And I see that what we're doing is only going to get better and better. I mean, the other thing I wanted to mention was for the SMB market, for an MSP client, nobody's doing that. WatsonX is doing it for Fox. They're doing it for IBM, whatever. But nobody's really thinking about you and I.

[00:25:21] The other thing that I wanted to do, I mean, that was baked into the design, I wanted to make sure that, like, if there's any kind of customization, it's going to be nothing. Like, almost nothing, you know? The AI has to determine, hey, you're a law office. Okay, you care about billing hours. You care about number of cases. You care about this, this, this. And AI does this, like, natively. They know what's important for you. So I wanted it to be an easy setup, and I wanted it to be cheap.

[00:25:49] And I wanted it to work, like, right away, to have value from it right away. So when I designed everything, that was the first thing is, you know, I want to make sure that the setup is very fast, that you get benefit right away, and the customization is simple, almost nothing. So all these things helps create a product that's as easy to deploy as cybersecurity, let's say. Yeah, maybe even easier, because you're not doing every workstation.

[00:26:16] So that's actually the design, the idea that went – so that's what I really believed in, and that's what made me stick to it. Of course, the promises of money from people that never came through was also helped me stay in there. Yeah. But also, I would have probably found another way to do it, even if there was no promise of this, because I really believe in this product and the idea. I want to unpack this for everybody.

[00:26:47] You know, I got to see this, but I feel like most people are still chatting with AI. And even though it's called Bloom Chat, it does so much more. And you were just talking about the difference between the models and the data, and there's this layer that is kind of missing for a small to mid-sized business. So can you help people understand, like, what is it they're missing? How is this different than, you know, attaching a CSV and chatting with it? Okay.

[00:27:17] A couple of things. One, this is – I'm calling it a business control layer, like a business control center, right? So what's happening – I'll tell you what's happening under the hood a little bit. So whenever you get an email or a phone call or any transaction or ticket from Halo or Autotask, whatever, this data is imported into our system. Now, while it's imported, you know, we run it through AI to get, you know, what category it is, what's the sentiment.

[00:27:46] Is it a sales opportunity? Is it a problem? Is it a technical problem? Is it a printer problem? Is it a marketing thing? So you get all this metadata that's added to it. So now every transaction has a sentiment related to it, right, and has a category to it. So now what I can do, because I have this information in there, I can now go determine, okay, for a certain client, are they happy today or not? You know?

[00:28:14] So let's say we found out that they're happy. They're 80% happy. Great. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, you have to put it in context, right? So if I'm putting in this data every day and I found out that yesterday they were 100% happy and today is 80% happy, it's like, oh, wait a minute. We're starting to do something wrong. It's declining. So that gives me a warning. So I have also, I can create a warning to give it to me. So this is not just putting in data out of context.

[00:28:43] This is putting in data with timestamp on it. So I know how we're performing over time. This also goes for, as well, like, let's say, employee evaluations, right? So I have had the system now for three years. Whenever we do employee evaluation, I get the manager's input, and then I compare it to what the system says. Okay. So I want to evaluate one of my employees. Let's say his name is John.

[00:29:13] And it tells me, well, John over the last three months has done this, done this, done this. He's good at this. He's good. Here's a couple of weakness of what he's done. We should work on this. And I compare that to what my manager says, who is not using this information. He's using just her experience with the employee. And there's usually a very good match. I'll tell you where this became very, very, very, very important.

[00:29:43] I certainly acquired a new business because I wanted to bring in something new to the, you know, from an operations point of view, right? Not an MSP. No, it wasn't an MSP. It's a dispatch company. We, they place field engineers globally, right? So when I got this company, it's, first of all, it's mostly focused on Latin America. A lot of our clients are here, but the dispatch is done in Latin America.

[00:30:13] So a lot of the conversations are in Spanish and Portuguese, right? So I connected to that company's QuickBooks. I connected to their email tenant, 365 tenant. And I connected to their ticketing system. Just these three things. Okay. Of course, the documents comes with the 365 tenant and everything.

[00:30:37] Just from these three things, I was able to use the system to figure out, okay, who's really performing? What clients are important? Which ones are important? Where do you have weaknesses? So when I actually did meet the staff, I had a very good understanding and very good idea of what they're doing. So having that information and having the dates shows me, okay, when did things start going south? When did things improve?

[00:31:05] Of course, QuickBooks, the financial is one thing, but also you can do other things that correlate with these numbers. And that system actually can figure this stuff out for you. So that's one of the things I'm thinking is if you are a business consultant and if you are a business coach or something, when they put this in their system, they put this into a client, you just need to connect really just a few things.

[00:31:34] And once you have these are connected, then you can have a very good idea on who's doing what. And, you know, and okay, well, this is your CFO. Your CFO seems to be spending a lot of time on PCs, on computers. And, you know, now instead of just having three or four clients, you can have 10 or 15 and have something that you can give your clients regular reports so they can see what's going on throughout time.

[00:32:03] And, you know, the other thing that this system does, it keeps a snapshot of your business the whole time so you can look at the history of your company and see how it's working and if it's improving or, you know, what clients are doing better. That's huge because every other chat tool starts over every time you start a new discussion. Exactly. And you have to input things manually. What do you do and what does your business do?

[00:32:27] And you can give it a document or a CSV or maybe both, but that's a single point in time. Like you said, you're missing the historical analysis and all the different pieces. And so, yeah, for everybody listening, if you haven't tried what Leith's doing in some shape or portion, like you just don't see it, right?

[00:32:48] You don't see what's possible now because if you can give it that context really amounts to context engineering, then it can inform you about the individual or the financial performance or whatever it is. So you should have far better prepared. What was the reaction as you go to like acquire this company and you kind of are starting through your discussions with them better prepared than probably anyone they'd ever seen?

[00:33:15] Yeah. I mean, they, like right away you come in, they got the impression, oh, this guy really cares because like the management that was there did not really pay attention to them. They went to real estate and other things and they just left it running by itself. So I went in there knowing everything. Of course, nobody could tell me, you know, the sky is purple when it's really blue, you know, and I could tell, hey, no, what do you mean?

[00:33:40] Like I had, and they weren't, I was saying that they tried, but no, going in there and showing how much I knew about the company, let them, gave them notice that, oh, okay, these guys, these guys know what he's talking about. So, um, uh, you know, you gain a little bit of respect so they know that, okay, I really care about them. I really care about this company. Let's go move forward. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:05] I love how that basically ties back to people and caring about people, um, which is kind of orthogonal with a lot of people's views around AI. You know, there's a lot of fear and uncertainty of like, is it coming from my job? Do I need less people? You are somebody that has both an MSP, has built an AI company, acquired another. There's, is the, is the goal to remove all the people or most of the people?

[00:34:32] It's, it does not remove people because it's not, it's doing, it's the work it's doing. The, what, what I'm created, the work it's doing is not taking anybody else's job. It's doing work that nobody's doing. Honestly, uh, you, usually a small company does not have a business analyst in the, in the middle of doing all this stuff. And these business analysts require a lot of money, like 10, 15 thousand dollars a month. Usually they're very expensive and they're there for three months and then they're gone. And then, you know, you're on your own figuring out buddy.

[00:35:01] Um, but this is something that's giving a small business owner another layer into what's happening in their company. You know, especially now if you're using people in the Philippines or if using people in Latin America, you know, this is one of the things that I kind of, uh, uh, the other thing that, that helped me, uh, determine that this is important.

[00:35:20] When the pandemic happened, a lot of people started asking us to put spyware or like, uh, these things where I can go, uh, productivity, uh, uh, uh, indicators. So where you see what people are doing day to day because they're working from home. They're not in front of you all the time. Well, you know, I don't know, put yourself in the place of the technician that has to go and now look for what this person has been doing. It is very, very creepy.

[00:35:48] You know, you're looking at people's private data. You're putting out their private communications and, you know, as much high value that we all have, you know, you get curious, hey, is there a picture of this or picture of that kind of thing? So this was another way to kind of look at, and I can go and ask, hey, what is, uh, let's say we use Johnny again. What is Johnny working on today? Well, Johnny had these conversations. He got these emails. He worked on these tickets. He updated these, uh, documents.

[00:36:17] And now you have an idea without having been micromanaged, uh, manager to get an idea of what this person is doing that day. And, um, you know, um, now you have, you feel, you know, hopefully help you manage better. Like even for example, I have a prompt, you know, every day I say, you know, as a manager of these three companies, uh, what should I focus on today? You know, I look into emails, the calendar, whatever, whatever. And it gives me like a bit of a, hey, I mean, I mean, it gives me the information.

[00:36:46] It's not like I do anything about it, but it's just, at least I have that, you know, if I was more disciplined, I would do something about it. But, uh, I do get the information, which is kind of nice. And every once in a while, something would catch my eyes like, oh, you know what? Let me check on this. You know what I mean? This really happened, this destination. So that's one thing. The other thing that, uh, I use it for, you know, it has an alert system.

[00:37:07] So when there is a bad conversation, when somebody goes, hey, this is my third time calling about this, or, you know, this has not been resolved yet, or a ticket has been opened several times, or, uh, um, an invoice that's like 90 days late. That gives me an alert. Hey, you know what? These guys might be unhappy. You know, instead of waiting for the complaint to happen for me and to go fix it, I can now in advance know something happened and right away address it and make sure everything's okay and contact me.

[00:37:37] the client, if I have to, which is, has been actually very helpful in several, uh, several times. Hmm. I love, I love how it ties into helping people. Yep. Whether it's being less creepy and still knowing what they're doing remotely now, especially have had people on multiple continents employed and rescue clients and just so many different ways you can use it to help people, which is, I think sometimes where the message gets lost. Correct.

[00:38:03] You commented earlier, uh, about how things had gotten so much better a few months ago. Um, I share that same view, but I'd love to hear your perspective on that. Like what, what did you see change and what did that, what happened? Um, for, okay. So for me, it got better in different ways.

[00:38:24] Um, first of all, uh, when I, uh, had to do the, uh, the bloom, um, presentation, um, that forced me because now I'm presenting something in front of a lot of people. So at first, okay, I need to get my story solid. Um, so with my, uh, with my, the new development team, uh, we were, uh, we started thinking of ways to increase efficiency.

[00:38:48] So instead of, you know, being satisfied with the 80 to 85% kind of plus or minus, um, accuracy. Now we're building specific maps to get specific data. So it's no longer guessing as consistent data. As you know, with, um, with, um, AI, a lot of it is based on probabilities. Yeah. Well, you know, for a small business, we can, we can tighten that a little bit more.

[00:39:14] We can have a combination of probability and actual data and combine those together. So that's another layer we're, we're adding. The other thing is because I did get the, the field engineer, the dispatch company. Okay. Now my reach is no longer local. You know, when you're local and this is the truth, unfortunately you're going to get one or two good leads. A year, really like good leads.

[00:39:43] We're not talking about, you know, so if you close two, three clients a year as a local company, you're actually doing pretty well in my opinion. And, and I'm somebody who's really advertised like heavily. I spent a lot of money on advertising and cold calling and all that stuff. You get two leads a year, you're good. You know, but with expanding my, um, you know, being national and soon, hopefully, Latin America that helped a lot.

[00:40:12] Uh, this is a field engineer company. So we do a lot of rack and stack, ITAD, uh, some minor cabling. All this actually helps as well. Get your foot in the door. And a lot of MSPs, you know, once they have the big clients, they stopped doing the small things, which really got us the big client, honestly. And because it's really messy, it's very not profitable. But this is a company that's already doing the small stuff.

[00:40:40] And that actually creates a lot of conversation, which is really, you know, sales is going to happen through conversation. And if you're not, you're not talking to people, you're probably not, uh, going to close anything. So that's how it got there. So just advertising nationally, all of a sudden AdWords are starting to give me something that I can actually sell, which they didn't when I was just local.

[00:41:06] Having the, the, the reach also, I mean, that's something I have to say for the company, for the dispatch company coming in there and showing that there's management and adding the processes that I have and, uh, and, uh, um, attention and putting a new system, increasing their efficiency gave a lot of their current clients, uh, confidence. So now they're giving us bigger jobs, right?

[00:41:33] So that, that, that, so, and so I'm saying better. It's better because there's a lot of positive movement and there's a lot more conversations and interest in this business, which has really been my biggest challenge since I started this company. Right. Which is, I always, I thought that I was going to be able to not be able to handle the work. Uh, but it's actually, I cannot get the work. That's the problem with MSP. One of the hardest things to sell, honestly. Knowing what you know now.

[00:42:03] What would you start this AI company again? I would, but I have to change a little bit of the way I was thinking. In the beginning, I thought, okay, well, this is a great tool to give to other MSPs. I'll give it to my clients and they'll use it. And that is, oh, I am way ahead.

[00:42:24] Whenever I try to talk to my current clients about it, they cannot, they cannot, not, it is so hard to give people a new concept to think about. It's really, really hard. I think there was a, what's his name? Uh, uh, uh, uh, Green. His name is Green. He wrote the, uh, book called Mastery, right? Uh, I think it's Tom Green. I thought, I don't remember the name. Um, Robert Greene. Robert Green. 50 to last. Robert Green. Yeah, yeah. This guy.

[00:42:55] Um, there's one example he says, you know, uh, there's these natives. I'm sorry. I'm butchering the story completely. Uh, they were looking at the ocean and the, I think it's the Vikings coming in and the ships kept on going, coming closer. But because they have no concept of ships, they could not see the ships. They were only able to notice them when the ships were very, very close. And by that, by that time, it was too late. And this is the thing I'm, I'm facing right now.

[00:43:22] When I talk to my clients, hey guys, I have something that'll log into all your, uh, data, all your phone calls, your, basically. All the digital data that you have and make sense out of it. So, oh yeah, let me like chat GPT. It's like, no, it's, I mean, it does one of the functions it does, but also it gives you like a control layer. It gives you warning signs. They are not able to relate. So you really have to find people that are enthusiastic, that are open-minded to this.

[00:43:52] Uh, actually, basically your clients are going to choose you. You're not going to choose your clients. That's what the word of the day, I guess. Uh, so, um, yeah. So if I would do this, I would focus mostly on, you know, educate and realistically is this kind of stuff to make a blip. You need like over a million dollars, maybe $2 million. And that's, uh, nothing you should spend from your own pocket.

[00:44:18] This is people that have lots of millions of dollars that can say, okay, well, let's try this. You know, so I really should focus more on, um, on, um, raising capital more than perfecting the, the, the product first. Actually, a lot of, um, the people that do build these things, they just have a concept that's very simple and they find the money.

[00:44:45] So I, my networking with people that know how to raise money is kind of weak and I should really start with that. It's hard bought lessons there. Yeah, very, very hard. Leith, you're somebody that sees where others don't yet. And I can relate to that in a lot of things that I'm doing. That's why I'm doing these Thursday build sessions for MSPs. They just want to experience this, uh, agentic AI and not just chat with it.

[00:45:11] So I'm curious, like, what should people be doing or looking for, you know, what do you see coming? And, you know, especially MSPs, what, what, what do they need to be looking for, looking out for? Well, MSPs need to go beyond the plug and, uh, you know, fix my printer. Most of the time, the, if you want to strengthen your, your conversation with your client, right.

[00:45:37] And the client is not thinking bits and bytes, client thinking reports and thinking, uh, efficiency, automation and stuff like that. Um, one of the things that AI can do is get you involved in that conversation a little bit without you having to be a business, um, uh, a business analyst.

[00:45:59] And, uh, giving your clients a little bit more access to the data that you as an MSP, you're the only one who knows where all the data is. Actually, your client doesn't know. So you can, if you give them a way to say, Hey, you know what, here's a way you can, and yeah, you can use whatever you can use, um, um, co-pilot. Uh, you can use whatever Microsoft is doing, which is very expensive.

[00:46:24] They, you can tell they're not sensitive to small business, but as you as a small business, show your clients how to integrate with chat GPT, give them, reduce the fear of using AI. People still have a lot of, uh, fear about using AI, just like they had a fear of fear of, about going to the, to the cloud with their servers. I think this conversation has been won already, you know what I mean?

[00:46:49] I have not installed actual hard, uh, on-premise server and maybe three or four years. Everything is in the cloud. Everything is, uh, expandable, uh, email server, maybe 10 years. I have not installed an email server in 10 years. Are you kidding me? Putting in like a, um, an exchange server and managing that. That's a nightmare. It used to be a nightmare and a half. Yeah. So, um, so yeah, so of course the cybersecurity, I think it's kind of played out to be honest with you.

[00:47:17] Everybody is, it's a standard now. I think the next frontier, which is based on a lot of research is going to be the AI world. And, uh, and AI can now be installed and integrated in a way that is not like, you know, the old days when you try to do automation and you have to build a report and spend three months on it. And then as soon as you do it, you know, there's a new product or a new person comes in or a new department or whatever it is.

[00:47:47] Now you have to go redo the whole, uh, uh, report and which is static usually, and just use it once or twice. This AI thing is a layer that the MSPs actually can integrate into, uh, their clients. Their clients, the clients are going to trust you. They're not going to trust anybody else with their data. Yeah. And, you know, the MSP has a lot of clout actually with their clients actually.

[00:48:11] So helping your clients get to beyond the, beyond just the bits and bytes into some of the logic, I think that was going to be very, very valuable for MSPs. And like I said, the research has been done. A lot of jobs are going to, uh, suffer the MSP, the IT guy is not going to suffer actually a lot. Maybe the developers, but not the IT guy, not, not us, you know, the MSPs.

[00:48:40] So, uh, we have big opportunities for us. You know, I suggest really, um, the way to expand in a way that, um, that can really make an impact is the AI world more than the compliance and anything else. Cause compliance, honestly, it's just, it's just a mess. So the AI world, like, is that getting deeper integration for outcomes or is that just reselling the vendors chatting tool?

[00:49:09] Or what, what are you, what are your thoughts? In some way you can, if you can create, if you, if you're smart enough where you can create some kind of a package that has an AI consultation or AI automation package, you know, for example, like if I'm not saying, I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but let's say something that simple as, uh, uh, as, as bloom, where you go in there and you just help them, you know, create the API.

[00:49:39] To connect to, uh, to connect to, uh, everything. Now you're associated with the deployment of it. Of course, the, with bloom, the more you use it, the more it learns who you are, the more it remembers who you are. So it kind of, uh, creates a, like a barrier to exit. So, uh, you know, and that's a way for people to make some extra money, but also now you are related to, um, the, their intelligence. Right.

[00:50:03] So if they want to get rid of you, now they're going to lose that, uh, that product with you and that makes you closer to them. Also, you can help them with things like, uh, supporting them in that, uh, uh, you know, they want modification. They understand something. They want more integrations. All these things make you a little bit more valuable than just, you know, where I can replace you with another IT guy that's come in and just do their own, uh, security stack.

[00:50:33] So you're getting a little bit more deeper with, uh, the client again, making the relationship a lot stronger. Again, they're talking to you about five or 10 times a week, right? So it gives you a lot of opportunity to understand where they are and even just don't demoing for them any kind of AI solution that helps them, uh, you know, do their business a little bit better or give them more insight into what's going on. I think that would be the next step for a lot of MSPs.

[00:51:02] I think it just has to be. Yeah. I think that's, that's, that's solid advice and give this an unprecedented opportunity. Like you were saying, Leith, to get out of the infrastructure and have the strategic, uh, conversations. We've all said we want to be the VCIO or the CEO or what have you, but really it's mostly been when you need to order more, you know, desktops or refresh some kind of hardware.

[00:51:30] Um, this is an opportunity to actually provide value that really we haven't had before. Um, so I think if you miss out on that, you're missing out on a lot and talk about differentiation that, that, that comes back to what you started with. Right. That really differentiates you. Absolutely. I agree. Well, Leith, for everybody that has enjoyed this as much as I have, um, how can they find you, uh, connect with you or what was the best way to do that?

[00:51:56] Well, I am on LinkedIn, uh, Leith, follow on, um, and, uh, bloomchat.ai is, uh, the product we talked about where the orange crew.com and JTINetwork.com. So, uh, I'm everywhere. Yeah. If you cannot find me, man, you need, you need another Google. That's funny. Ask your AI to find you. Um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:52:22] So, yeah, I'm, uh, you know, I'm always happy to talk about any of these things. I'm always happy to give advice or not. I shouldn't say advice. I'm happy to share my experience with anybody. Anybody wants to know anything about what I've done and the impact it's had on me. You know, it doesn't mean it's going to have the same impact for you, but just the more, you know, kind of thing. You know what I mean? That's right. Make sure to take Leith up on that offer. It's really, really valuable. Um, Leith, thank you so much for being on MSP Mindset today.

[00:52:51] Oh, thank you for having me, Jamie. I appreciate it.