Zero-to-100 Staff: And How His MSP Is Still Growing

[00:00:00] Hey guys, Damien here. As I continue to interview the top MSPs in the world, one thing has become incredibly clear. It's time that we let go. Even more than that, every time I focus on my zone of genius and get out of the way and do the very few things I'm good at and delegate to others, I'm ready for that next level of growth. One way that I could help you is with Servocity. We co-manage more backups and disaster recovery so you can focus on what you do best, let us do the rest, and then we can help you.

[00:00:30] And what we do is we test the backups every single day so you never have to worry. If you'd like to engage us or just learn more, click the link below. The bottom line is people want to do business with people they know, like and trust. And so it's our responsibility to make sure that we can connect with people on that basis. That's the core thing. Like any business, we certainly get leads from our website. We might get referrals online in some way. But the vast majority of our business is going to come from people who we've had the opportunity to demonstrate excellence for.

[00:00:58] And they're willing to say, hey, we've got somebody else you should probably go talk to. Hey, guys. Damian Stevens, host of Emispy Mindset. And I am incredibly excited to be live at PAX 8 Beyond 2025. Brian, thank you for joining me. I have Brian Miller, who is the CEO of Fusion Tech. Thank you for joining me. Thanks, Damian. Great to be here. Excited to have a little conversation.

[00:01:24] Yeah, we were just chatting kind of before this. And one of the let me let me call out two things. Right. I've known you for a few minutes now and already two things are crazy. One, zero to 100 employees as an MSP. Nobody gets there. It's been a journey. That's for sure. And two, which I want to get into more is the way in which you're growing the acquisition is incredibly interesting.

[00:01:51] Let's start with that first one. Obviously, that wasn't overnight. How long have you been at it? You know, tell me we won't go through the whole thing, but tell me how you started. You probably didn't have this grand plan. Absolutely not. So the Cliff Notes, no joke, was I was in high school and I was just sort of helping repair and fix computers for a couple of local businesses, building them in my parents' garage. I'd have them or the client pick me up and drive me there. Exactly. Before I had a driver's license. So like that point type of thing.

[00:02:19] And so over time, went to college, sort of tried that for a little while. I was not a successful college person. So went to three of them, barely made it out with an associate's degree and then dropped out the third one. Okay. You made it out of one of them. Yeah, made it out of something. So that's a deal. And then, you know, over the next, I think like five, seven years, something like that, I have to do the exact math. Sort of did a bunch of like freelance IT consulting. Maybe had one or two people start helping me out.

[00:02:45] And really like the biggest challenge was, hey, I want to go on vacation, but I don't, what am I going to do with my customers? How are I going to handle that? But, and so I ended up forming Fusion Tech in 2007. I had a business partner at that time and that was awesome because he had the exact same problem. And so it worked out well. After a couple of years working together, we decided we had a slightly different past. And so he chose to move on to something else and we parted ways amicably and that was great. And then since then, I've been the sole owner of Fusion Tech and have focused on sort of the growth and the scalability of that.

[00:03:15] And so like most MSPs, we sort of move up and then we have a plateau for a couple of years. Move up and you have a plateau for a couple of years. And that was the same challenge we did. And we really, it really took a ton of time for us to sort of get our cadence down and have success. And so we started having a bunch of success from an organic sales perspective. And that was awesome. But one of the things we had really seen is the market's changing.

[00:03:36] There's a lot more things with automation, AI. And even if we look at this five, 10 years ago, it's a fairly similar concept that there is an economy of scale at some point, right? Part of our value promise to our clients is we're building an IT infrastructure they can count on. It's consistent and it's dependable. And so the more things we can automate and therefore scale, the better and the more efficient it can be as far as business runs. And so one of the ways we did that is we obviously got the organic growth, but then we looked at M&A activity as well.

[00:04:04] So what size did you grow to before your first acquisition? We had, I would say, around 20 people, something like that, 15 to 20, somewhere in there. I need to check the exact amount because, yeah, so it's... That gives me a good barometer. And the reason I want to ask that is I think there's too many of us that sit there and go, I couldn't do that until I was 50 people or 75 or 100.

[00:04:28] And, you know, but no, I mean, like some things are usually working at 15 or 20 a lot better than they were at half that size. But maybe you're different. I know at that size, I didn't have everything figured out either. We don't have everything figured out today. I can assure you that there will be problems that will pop in the next 24 hours that weren't even on my radar. And there's other stuff that I would tell you I'm very proud that we've been very successful at and been able to get stuff done. But absolutely, that's part of it. So tell me about the first acquisition.

[00:04:57] So we actually started a couple years prior to getting the first deal closed. And so we closed our first deal in August of 2023, right? But we really started probably around, you know, a little bit around the beginning of COVID, plus or minus. May have been a little bit before that. And identified, you know, obviously working with trying to find people we could talk to. We did a partnering with a broker. So we used the folks at IT Valuations, Reed Warren, his team, which do a great job. And they've worked with us on several transactions.

[00:05:27] And so we ended up talking to people. And we probably spent a good 18 to 24 months talking to people, trying to find the fit, trying to figure it was ever before we finally got the first deal absolutely rolling. So there was a lot of time and, quite frankly, a lot of financial burn just trying to get to that point and get that rolling. So. Take me. I think people, they miss both of those. 18 or 24 months is a lot of time. Mm-hmm. Shows that you got to have some patience to not buy the first thing you see.

[00:05:57] Absolutely. Which I think is a kind of misnomer. But you also said burn. Because I think people miss that aspect. I think they understand the investment of the acquisition, perhaps. But what do you mean by that burn? Because I think that's easy to miss. So burn or burden? The burn. Burn, yeah. So burn in that case, I'm referring to financial burn, right? We're continuing to invest. So the same way you might spend money on a particular tool or platform, maybe you're investing in certain team members because you want to flesh out a certain department or whatever else.

[00:06:25] And so we were investing both in our time and financial resources internally and also engaging various brokers, outside partners, things working with, et cetera, legal folks, et cetera, trying to go through that entire process. And it's one of those things where it's like, hey, are we going to get some return? Is this worth it? This is a little questionable in what we're doing here. So the takeaway there, right, is it's not zero cost. It's not like you get there and then call your attorney and say, we've agreed, make it legal, right?

[00:06:54] There's a lot that goes into it. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. And now, so you're at 15 or 20 employees. Now you're at 100. Yeah, we're right around 100-ish, yeah. Okay. Okay. So how many acquisitions does that represent? Yeah, so that represents four acquisitions that we've successfully completed. We publicly announced our most recent one last week. Congratulations. And thank you. Appreciate that. And what that does is that that certainly expands our foothold, if you will, in the area we serve.

[00:07:23] So we have a really interesting, I don't know if model is the right firm, but the clients that we serve, we serve clients all over the place. So a lot of MSPs are like very specific, like, hey, I am the expert MSP provider in any town USA, right? Or I'm in one specific vertical. I serve just attorneys in this particular, you know, region or something like that. And so we've got a wider range of client types. So we typically have six or eight different, you know, verticals, which are the most popular ones.

[00:07:52] But we also have clients all over the place. So we do a bunch of work within the fishing industry. And so we've got fishing plants up in Alaska, right? We have contract manufacturing facilities for public companies that you would know and recognize the names of who are in the news. We have various heavy civil construction clients and projects. So if they're building roads, bridges, tunnels, things of that nature. So we've got a really cool staple of different types of clients.

[00:08:17] And that was really beneficial for us pre-COVID because people had a very distributed workforce. So when a lot of the disruption came, if it was our team having to do remote work or it was our clients having to do that, we already had a fairly solid and built out playbook in that particular category. Hmm. So what is your thesis for what is the right investment and the right fit? Yeah, absolutely. So we're self-funding this, as we mentioned before, we're talking about, right? That's a big difference. It is a big difference.

[00:08:46] It's also when it's your own money and money you were accountable for. It's a little bit different in sort of how you might look at that and how you can start playing with somebody else's money, so to speak. But really what we're looking for in that case is we're trying to find businesses that have built and have solid employees. So like great people who understand the MSP business. They have awesome clients to work with. And typically they have one or more owners that for whatever reason, they've decided that they want to move on to a chapter which doesn't involve running an IT business.

[00:09:17] One of the things I'm proud about is in all four deals that we've done, every single deal has had a different structure, both in the terms of how we structured the actual purchase of the business and then also in what the former owners of the business did post-transaction, post-close. Let me give you an example of what that means because obviously every deal has a different valuation, but I think you mean more than that. Help me understand that. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:09:42] So I think I certainly have part of my personal identity tied up in my IT business as I think most people do. And so if somebody's looking to sell that business and move on to the next chapter, that's a tough thing to do because you've got to both financially understand what it looks like, emotionally and mentally look at what's about. And there's a lot of different parts. I mean, I was chatting with some people at this event yesterday and there's a decent portion of like, you know, my social network, so to speak, that I see at these events, I see in this industry.

[00:10:10] Most people are either in the MSP industry or they're other business owners in other industries. That's just how that sort of functions. And so because of that, you look at people and they're like, hey, I'm moving on to the next chapter. It's tough to do that. Both really sharp, really solid guys. One of them was basically like, hey, I want to do something else full time. I'm here to professional support.

[00:10:38] I'm going to like follow up, make sure I get the right connections. But as soon as possible, I'd love to roll off and sort of do my own thing. I got a classic car I want to go drive. I'm going to go like take some trips, et cetera. And so we structured that deal with that particular partner. And then with the other person, he's like, I just want to like transition de-risk a little bit, but I still want to be actively involved. And so he ended up, yeah. And so we had sort of a graduate plan where he stayed on full time for a length of time. And then he's slowly ramping that down at this point as far as it goes.

[00:11:08] And so it's great because there's consistency from a client relationship perspective. It's great from a knowledge share perspective on both their behalves across the board. And they feel they get a benefit. We get a benefit. So everybody wins. Yeah. And for everybody listening, right, this dispels a lot of myths because not everything's private equity like in your case. And then in this case, it sounds like you're keeping the team. You're in some cases keeping ownership. At least our goal is always to offer employment to all of the members of the team. They were all there for a reason.

[00:11:38] So we'd ideally like to make it work. Now with any sort of business we recognize, especially at this size now, there's people who are like, I love working at that 10 to 15 person company. I don't want to be, you know, somebody in the 100 person company, even though I think we've got a good culture. We have great events. We have great communication, et cetera. There's people where they're just like, hey, that's not the right chapter or fit. And that's totally fine. And we want to help them move to whatever is a better fit in that case. By the same token, there are people who are like, hey, I had sort of maxed out my skill set or knowledge or growth opportunities.

[00:12:08] And so I was going to look to leave the MSP I was at. But in a larger company, we're able to have more people who either focused on a very specific subset of the business and there's a larger growth trajectory or path. There's typically also, you know, I'm an IT person, technologist at heart, right? It's like cool, shiny things. There's bigger companies, more cool, shiny things to go play with and like make work. And especially with AI and everything else, just the materiality of the changes you can make and the impact is a lot bigger in that case. Yeah.

[00:12:35] Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit more about this because there's certainly a number of MSPs that have decided to make an acquisition organically without private equity. But in my experience, they find themselves in a spot where there's at least five or 10 years on that note and before they can do another. Right. They can't they can't do that. But you've done many in just a couple of years.

[00:13:01] So, like, you know, how are you able to continue to do this and continue to do this part of your plan? Absolutely. So obviously, you know, pulling different financial levers to help facilitate that. So that's part of it. Another part of it is we tightly focus on how we run the business from a metrics perspective. And I will tell you, we're a lot pickier than a lot of companies we've acquired just from a time tracking perspective or effective hourly rate or like managed services burn.

[00:13:27] But because I think we've got more command and control on those numbers, we recognize, hey, it's going to be tough for a couple months or this or that. But we have all the needles and levers we can move, so to speak, which is a really impactful part of it. So from 15 or 20 to 100 employees in two or three years, two and a half years, something like that, it sounds like? Something like that, yes. Since our first actual acquisition, we're a little under two years at this point.

[00:13:54] But we're four to five years in the sort of acquisition journey, so to speak, because we had a lot of people, you know, we'd tried to write LOIs and tried to work deals. And just we were trying to fight a solid uphill battle to try and even get one done. And then we sort of figured out, hey, we need to make a couple tweaks to what we did and a slightly different approach. And we got rocking and rolling. So what do you see as the future? What's the vision for this? Was that it? No, no, no.

[00:14:20] So what I would tell you, the biggest thing, right, is there's vision in a couple different areas. So one thing I am super proud about is the team members that we've had and we've had the opportunity to work with. I truly feel that we've helped set them up for success, and we'd love them to stay long-term as employees at Fusion Deck. We recognize, once again, chapters in life. Some people might move on somewhere else. So I am very proud of the opportunities that we have provided, but also how our team members step up and take advantage of those opportunities. It's two-way street.

[00:14:50] So we make sure that. So that's one part of the vision is making sure that we're driving excellence for our team and supporting them and helping them grow. The second one is certainly in the same vein as nobody likes to eat at an empty restaurant. We like having cool clients with unique and different projects and things that we do across the board. In addition to what I call core managed services, obviously security is a big area. So not only do we do proactive security, tabletop exercises, things of that nature, we also do a lot of incident response and remediation.

[00:15:20] So any day you open up the newspaper, you go online, you do whatever you're going to do, you're going to see plenty of stories about large-scale businesses that have been impacted. And they're dead in the water. And our team's had the opportunity to help many of those remediate that. And one of the things I really like about it is I liken it to if I'm going to go get heart surgery, really do I want the person who's watched a couple YouTube videos about heart surgery and they've done like the operation game or something? Or don't want the people who's like gone in there, this is their core thing. They like understand this.

[00:15:49] They've seen this. They've worked through all sorts of unique edge cases. And I feel that because our team has exposure to those sorts of incident response events, it makes us better from a security recommendation and preparedness point of view. Because it's one way it's academic to say, oh, hey, we saw this or a BEC business email compromise or somebody got in there and detonated some ransomware. It's a totally different thing if we say, hey, we know what they did is they did this social engineering thing or they leveraged this particular vulnerability or they did this other item.

[00:16:19] And that makes it so we can better educate our customers and explain, hey, this is an appropriate tool. And this isn't us just trying to like sell random products and services. But we understand what your business is. We understand where the business risks are. And that's part of what we're putting in place to set you up for success. Is part of your growth, I'll say the P word, to be the platform, right, that kind of thing. Is that not part of what you see as part of it? We've wound up there to some extent at this point.

[00:16:49] That was not the original intentionality. But that is a happy byproduct, so to speak, of that part of it. And quite frankly, I mean, the platform thing, while nice, that's not really the necessary goal. Like I said, like making sure we're making a solid impact for our team members and making a solid impact as well for the customers and clients that we serve. Those are really what I view as the important parts of that. And so the success that we have in this business is a byproduct of that.

[00:17:16] And I'm happy with for that to be a byproduct, but it doesn't need to be the star of the show in that case. Yeah. So what do you foresee as your growth in the future? Is it going to be mostly organic or mostly M&A or? We want to track in both categories, right? Right. So and like any business, there's peaks and valleys where it might be heavier on the M&A side or heavier on the organic side as far as that goes. But I think a healthy business is in both categories. You know, we, like every other business, are going to have churn. There's going to be people that say, hey, we're not a fit anymore.

[00:17:45] We might think they're not a fit. A lot of, you know, merger acquisition sales things from a client basis. Like the PE market is very hot, not just in the MSP space, but a lot of other ones. And so I'd tell you, maybe like at this point, once a quarter, plus or less, maybe a little less on a yearly basis. We've got decent sized customers who are like, hey, we sold. And so by the same token, that's awesome for that business owner. But we know that most of the time, that tells us that we've got somewhere between a one week and an 18 month roll off period. And that's just nature of the beast. That's how it goes.

[00:18:15] So part of what we need to do is we need to continue to backfill that and support it. And that's part of where the organic growth driver is. How do you drive organic growth at the scale that you guys are? Absolutely. So we do it in several different ways, right? And I would tell you, in some ways, it's no different than when there were five or ten of us. So for example, we have Breonna's our marketing manager.

[00:18:41] And so that's awesome because she has dedicated that and she does excellence in doing that, executing that, making sure things like our website, social media feeds, building out the content, our sales team needs, all those sorts of things. So we have somebody who's able to own that versus, hey, I'm going to do that between midnight and 2 a.m. on Tuesday after I finish sending out the bills and before I go reset somebody's password, right? So the fact that we have somebody who can devote that full-time energy and excellence to that is great.

[00:19:07] But it's no different when the bottom line is people want to do business with people they know, like, and trust. And so it's our responsibility to make sure that we can connect with people on that basis. And so that's the core thing. Like any business, you know, we certainly get leads from our website. We might get referrals online in some way. But the vast majority of our business is going to come from people who we've had the opportunity to demonstrate excellence for. And they're willing to say, hey, we've got somebody else that you should probably go talk to. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:19:36] You mentioned AI earlier. Obviously, this has been kind of a big theme here at PAX 8 beyond 2025. What is your – where do you stand on that? Where does your company stand on that kind of AI journey? Absolutely. So a couple things. The running joke I have, which I made a special after the keynote yesterday, was I just need to put, like, a little sunburst, which says now with AI, on, like, every single thing we sell. And then, hey, we're done. Problem solved. We're all good to go.

[00:20:04] We know in reality that's absolutely not right. And so what I view AI with is sort of like I've got a toolbox already. And I'm going to go and fix a problem for a particular client or deliver a service. I open up my toolbox. I look and I find the tool that I need to do that, right? And maybe that's networking expertise. Maybe that's we're going to go ahead and do a cloud migration. Maybe that's whatever in my metaphorical toolbox. AI is just some other tools that are in the toolbox. And using those tools is things that we use, like any other tool, to help move things forward.

[00:20:34] But it doesn't excuse or abdicate our responsibility to be aware of how they work and how we can leverage them. So we've got, I think, like four or five different AI tools that we're using internally in our service delivery process. And the goal of those tools is to make sure that we can respond to our clients in their time of need faster and deliver excellence in what we do more. And so we look at all the different points like, hey, what can we do to service data sooner? Because we've got a lot of people.

[00:21:01] One of the biggest challenges we have is saying, hey, we have people and we have capacity. We have problems to fix. How do we connect the right person on the team with the right problem that needs to be fixed? Just because when there were 10 people, I could be like, oh, hey, Jimmy. Jimmy's the expert at deploying Cisco routers or whatever. Go do that type of thing, right? Well, now we've got this unique thorny issue coming in. And we're like, okay, so somebody could solve that problem somehow. But how are we going to do it? Or, hey, there's so much noise and hustle there.

[00:21:30] Maybe something gets lost in translation where, like, once again, we're 10 people. I just have, like, the clients just pick up the phone and call me directly or maybe send me, like, the hate email, which everybody occasionally gets. It's like, you've dropped the ball on all this stuff across the board. And we're like, yeah. But we're going to take accountability. We're going to fix it and resolve what we need to. I love that. I love that. So in your mind, is AI something that you can actually drive tangible business value from today? Absolutely. 100% it's both tangible currently.

[00:21:57] And then the next thing that we're starting to do is partner with some of our clients and help them on their very specific AI journey. Because, once again, similar to the security analogy I used earlier in the YouTube video, if we don't use it internally, why on earth would we ever be qualified to sell or deploy it? But if we use it internally for business processes, and we have been, or several months in this case on most of those things, it's certainly been within the last year, that allows us to have real-world experiences and shares in that particular case. Yeah.

[00:22:27] I bet I know the answer to this, but are you AI first or people first? And what I mean by that is you're 100 employees. So I don't know how many L1s that is, but it's probably more than a couple. There are people that are out there and saying, hey, I'm going to take out all of my L1s and put in this AI tool, and that's going to make me more effective and efficient. And then only then it'll route to L2 or L3. And maybe there's some benefits to the customer faster.

[00:22:55] Maybe there's some real cons. Like now my customer is dealing with, instead of a human, they're dealing with an AI. You know, where do you land on that? Because I think the answer probably is not never adopt AI, but I see people that are so AI first. It seems like they've forgotten that people element. So I was at South by Southwest earlier this year. And like any other conference, a lot of AI presentations. And so I went to one with a thought leader in that particular category.

[00:23:23] And he had a great quote to the start of it, which has stuck with me, which is there are two types of companies at the end of the decade, right? Which, if we think about it, is just five years away. I mean, it's coming right quick. Like there are going to be those that fully embrace AI. And there are going to be those that are no longer in business. So you have to embrace it. But the second thing I would say, and then the picture he put up after that, was a picture of a steam shovel.

[00:23:48] And the steam shovel is a really interesting thing because if you think of the Industrial Revolution, you think when people started using mechanical advantage of that things, it wasn't that suddenly people building buildings were out of business. It's suddenly that, hey, you can take those people with that expertise and we're going to build a several hundred foot tall building because we've got the technology to do that. And so the people part, I think, is incredibly important. One of the things I'm really proud that our team has done is they've built an internship program.

[00:24:17] And so our goal is every quarter we have a couple new people join our team for an internship program. We interview them just like we'd interview everybody else. And it's a three-month internship program. And when we originally did it to start with, there was like a one-page outline of here's what we think we're going to do and we'll sort of help them out. The team now, especially Chris and Megan, have just got that process dialed in. And so it is like a very clear curriculum and syllabus, get them set up for success across the board.

[00:24:42] And at the end of that three-month period, we say in some cases, hey, that was awesome. We think there might be a fit here for you to work for us while for your full-time employment. And there might be other people saying, hey, it's great experience across the board. It's probably not a fit for us to, you know, employ you in the future or whatever. But we are absolutely here to give you a reference and give you good feedback on the time that you were here. But the cool thing about that from a people perspective is because we're training people on day one from what we're looking for and what we view excellence as.

[00:25:11] We deliver that across the board. And we don't have to sort of go retrain people with different habits. Not necessarily bad habits, but just we have certain things we expect and we need to be accountable to delivering that to our clients. Love that. But it's amazing how few people do something like an internship program. And for a while, it was like very sort of loose. And like I said, there's a gentleman who's our director of service delivery, Chris Brock, who's really took that to heart and really built that out and built up the foundation.

[00:25:40] And then a colleague of his, Megan, has actually been the person who's taken and owned it and sort of built it up to the next level. I love that. I love that. Well, tell me one last time, like who's the right fit? And especially for those who are listening. Like, right? Absolutely. If you're listening, like who's the kind of person that should reach out and maybe say, let's have that kind of conversation as an MSP owner. Yeah, absolutely. So what we're really looking for is businesses that are typically a little bit on the smaller side. So employee count is sometimes an easy way to look at that.

[00:26:10] And we're typically looking at businesses that are somewhere between 5 and 15 employees. We find that's the right sort of fit. We're fairly geographic agnostic as long as it's a decent sized market we can work with or something in that case. We currently have people in, I think, close to a dozen states. And we serve as clients and more than that. So we already got people spread out all over the place. That's not a new part of the game plan. And what we're really looking for is businesses that the owner owners have built a great business. They've taken care of their employees.

[00:26:38] They've taken care of their clients. And they're looking at moving to the next step in the transition plan for them. And like I said before, that transition can be a lot of different things. That can be just like, hey, here are the keys. Have a great day. That can be, hey, I'd like to be actively involved in the business for some additional time. But understanding we really got those three components. I always love to have a conversation. Tell people I always love to go have lunch. Go grab a drink at the bar. Learn about people's businesses and what they've built. Yeah.

[00:27:05] Tell people how they can find you, connect with you online, social media, whatever you prefer. So website's obviously easiest thing for things that we're doing from a business perspective. So it's fusiontech.com. And like any good IT company, we misspell the word. So tech is Tango Echo Kilo or with a T instead of T-E-C-H. It's T-E-K. And then LinkedIn's the other one. Our marketing team does an awesome job at sort of building that outpost and a lot of information there. Certainly reach out to connect via LinkedIn as well. That's awesome.

[00:27:32] And for anybody in the MSP community, I'm always happy to help chat with people directly. You're always welcome to email me directly as well. And so my email address is super easy. It's bmiller at fusiontech.com. Yeah. Make sure to take Brian up on that offer. And I've already learned a ton. And I just can't tell you how much I appreciate you being here and spend the time with me. And thank you so much for being on MSP Mindset. Thanks so much, Damien. Really enjoyed it. Absolutely.