What are some big wins?

[00:00:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the SMB Community Podcast with hosts Amy Babincek, James Kernan and Karl Palachek

[00:00:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Produced by Kernan Consulting and for the International MSB Community we are dedicated

[00:00:16] [SPEAKER_01]: to making every IT professional a successful IT professional.

[00:00:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody welcome back to the SMB Community Podcast as James Kernan with Kernan Consulting

[00:00:31] [SPEAKER_01]: and I'm back with my good friend Amy Babincek. Hey Amy, good morning.

[00:00:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Good morning James. Good morning.

[00:00:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah so how are things up in Michigan?

[00:00:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Things up in Michigan are hot but yeah other than that it's doing great you know it's

[00:00:50] [SPEAKER_00]: still summertime we're still doing our summertime pattern of going out to the boat on weekend

[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_00]: so it's nice.

[00:00:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Yep yep we're in about the same pattern it's hot hot hot I think it's supposed to be 101

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_01]: today with a heat index close to 110 so that makes it tough to coach football.

[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god.

[00:01:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Practice tonight I'm a little worried about that lots of water I guess.

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah wow yeah it's gonna be I feel bad for your little guys.

[00:01:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah well hey we got a lot to talk about today so let's just kind of dive into it.

[00:01:27] [SPEAKER_01]: We've got an interesting question of the week and the question that actually came in was can you

[00:01:35] [SPEAKER_01]: share some big some examples of some big wins when you had your MSP so it's interesting I mean

[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_01]: you came out of this fresher than I did so I'll let you go first but share some examples

[00:01:47] [SPEAKER_01]: of big wins or strategic wins for your company.

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah so you know we never had a great big huge jump in revenue from landing you know that

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_00]: one amazing client we never had that type of big win.

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah you know what this reminded me of is when I first started my business I just hired my

[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_00]: first employee and at that point in time you're scrambling for money you know and

[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_00]: because you just made a hundred percent jump that first step's a doozy and so I get a call

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_00]: and this I guess is why it's good to answer your phone and don't say no to things try them out

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_00]: and see what happens. I got a call from a company that said hey we're in California we have this

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_00]: rack of systems in Michigan we need some hard drives swapped out all you have to do is

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_00]: show up swap out the the hot swap the hard drives all this up we'll make sure it's good and then you

[00:02:48] [SPEAKER_00]: know if they're working good you're done if they're not we'll swap back in the old ones we ship back

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_00]: the old the old drives that's it that's the whole job. We're going to pay you $50 a hard drive

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_00]: and there's going to be you know at least four so let's a $200 stop so I'm like okay I'll

[00:03:04] [SPEAKER_00]: you know I'll go do that and so you know plus its brain did simple right and no I'm not going to

[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_00]: be there very long for $200 so I'll go and do that. Yep. That led to doing more and more of those

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_00]: jobs and turned out that it was a it was a gig for Comcast and I didn't know it.

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_00]: So Comcast was actually shipping me advertising their commercials right for the local market

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_00]: and so they needed to have them streaming locally is how they how they were doing it and they had

[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_00]: these racks of servers stashed in the backs of other businesses people were running out space

[00:03:50] [SPEAKER_00]: it was kind of a weird thing it'd be like in the back of a printer shop in the back of a

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_00]: small managed drink shop and the whatever there'd be this rack that then I started then they were

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_00]: like oh you know we need you to swap out this server and the server itself was huge and it was

[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_00]: basically just it held like 24 hard drives it was quite huge at the time and this is why it was

[00:04:16] [SPEAKER_00]: like we need you to swap out the whole thing and you know they told me what they were going to

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_00]: pay for that and I'm like okay I'll go do that well when it got there I saw that on the label it was

[00:04:26] [SPEAKER_00]: by a company called Equus in California well and unbeknownst to me Equus is who made all of Netflix's

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_00]: equipment they custom built these things and shipped them out so now he was doing some work for

[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_00]: for Equus I got to know Equus and I'm like wow if Netflix trusts them to build their

[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_00]: networking environment maybe I should too and that turned into a 15-year business relationship where

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_00]: that wasn't I didn't continue in the drive swapping business as we grew we stopped doing that and

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_00]: but I developed that relationship with Equus and it became a really close one we did some events

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_00]: to promote my business with you know since I started using their servers you know we

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_00]: invited them to things they came they helped promote us it really turned into a good business

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_00]: relationship so although it started off as a $200 deal I consider that to be a big win because we

[00:05:24] [SPEAKER_00]: developed a great business relationship out of it. Yep now that's exciting I love it and in the

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_01]: cool thing Amy that you said is it started with you picking up the phone yeah it was

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_00]: there's a call and not saying no right like it's a little out of the out of the ordinary but

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_00]: it's a quick to do $200 at the moment when I need it put $200 and it it grew yeah I

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I have a similar story that was a project that uh ended up coming in became a recurring project

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_01]: but uh you know I'm a small MSP in San Diego Networks Plus and it was my first sales rep that I

[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_01]: hired his name was Will he answered the phone a call came in said hey we want to interview you

[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_01]: we're looking for a certified small business there to do some government work we need to

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_01]: put some engineers on site and you need to be a Dell part and he's like okay well let me get

[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_01]: the owner on the phone and you know you could interview him so he took a message and he

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_01]: must have come over to my desk you know three times that morning hey have you called him back yet

[00:06:32] [SPEAKER_01]: have you called him back yet have you called him back yet and I'm like oh I'll call him this afternoon

[00:06:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll get to it when I get to it well ended up calling interviewed we had a couple quick

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_01]: interviews and I didn't really think a whole lot of it but they said they needed they

[00:06:46] [SPEAKER_01]: needed a couple full-time texts on site well a month maybe five weeks go by I haven't heard

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_01]: anything from them and then a Thursday night I get a phone call and it said hey um and it was like

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_01]: 5 36 o'clock at night they said hey Monday morning we need four full-time engineers that have this

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_01]: skill set down at a military base you know at six o'clock in the morning on a Monday I'm like oh

[00:07:11] [SPEAKER_01]: great you know I've weren't working to find four full-time people geez you know who get up

[00:07:15] [SPEAKER_01]: early yeah it's like well we did we found four really good people and got them plugged in

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_01]: and that that four people you know grew to 10 people to 20 people and we started plugging people

[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_01]: in and that contract grew to us having hundreds of engineers on site for this contract um in 22 states

[00:07:37] [SPEAKER_01]: so uh it really was a lucrative deal for us and it was another form of monthly recurring

[00:07:43] [SPEAKER_01]: revivatives really just you know engineers as a service or really staffing so we did

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_01]: project work and that was uh we did uh we did that for about three years and that really helped

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_01]: catapult my growth and then there was another a fun one that came in it's kind of an interesting one

[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_01]: but you know how many of you get something in the mail good old-fashioned mails a big

[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_01]: rfp that got mailed to my office I looked at it it was a big project and it was the San Diego

[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Potray's new ballpark that was going into downtown San Diego so when it was an rfp you know it was a

[00:08:18] [SPEAKER_01]: big project they wanted a bunch of cabling and network infrastructure and I was like well

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_01]: you know we're too small to do all of this but why don't I subcontract someone and so I went to

[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_01]: the biggest cabling shop in San Diego and we subcontracted with them and we did all the

[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_01]: network infrastructure our proposal had them doing all the cabling and we went through several

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_01]: interviews and ended up we won that contract so when when we won that contract I had eight

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_01]: employees it was really funny eight employees and uh we kind of went from a nobody to a somebody

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_01]: because all the network infrastructure was all Cisco it was about a one and a half million

[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_01]: dollar deal and then all the cabling was done by this contractor and we made a little

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_01]: override on that but uh that was a big deal for us and um you know great great marketing but

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_01]: again that was you know how many of you bid on an rfp that comes in the mail you know most people

[00:09:17] [SPEAKER_01]: would just throw that in garbage and you know you never know until you kind of think outside

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_01]: the box so those were a couple fun examples that we wanted to