Marc Menzies of Overview Technology Solutions

[00:00:00] Welcome to another edition of MSPIs weekly webinars. We have Mark Menzies today who I will get to. We'll talk about him and his mustache and his beautiful hair in a few minutes. But first we got to do a little first we got to do a little housekeeping. And yes, once again, I am not George Bardissi nor do I try to play him on TV, but he will be here. He's running a little bit late. But let's start with a little housekeeping talk about some very cool things that MSP is doing.

[00:00:26] If I can find them. There we go. All right. And Mark has these things close to near and dear to his heart too. So first up is MSP Community Minds. These are events that are completely educational. You can see folks like Mark Menzies on the panel who come in and actually talk a lot about what's going on in their world and actually educating each other. No sales pitches, just a complete educational event. The next one, September 25th and 26th in Denver, Colorado.

[00:00:56] Make sure you register. These are can't miss events. You've been talking so much about how much you want real educational events and here they are. So make sure you get out there and be a part of these. They're really cool events. You're going to see a lot of cool people. You're going to get to a lot of real good nuggets for your business. Make sure you make it. And then of course, there's the block parties, which is the fun part of all these things. The next one coming up is the Pax8 Beyond Party in Denver. That's just next week, Mark. Are you going to be out there?

[00:01:25] I am. I'm really excited about it.

[00:01:27] Nice. Awesome. We'll talk about that a little bit. If you want to find out about other parties that are going on, just click on the MSP Initiative website and go to Community Block Party and you'll see that they are everywhere. They're at DattoCon Europe in Dublin, Ireland where Jen will be at. ConnectWise IT Nation Australia.

[00:01:44] You can see it at DattoCon in Miami, Florida and so on and so forth. All these great parties closing out with ConnectWise IT Nation, which is always the biggest party of the year. You want to make sure you make these parties if you can.

[00:01:57] So everything here is recorded and you can find them all on the MSP Initiative website. You can find them in any form that you like to listen to them. Lots of cool stuff. Make sure you check in on these things.

[00:02:08] And again, I'm trying to find my way back, Mark, because multiple screens. It just takes everything away and spreads them out. Here we are.

[00:02:16] You tend to wander and do stuff. I get it.

[00:02:18] I do. I do. I'm sorry. I was looking at someone. No, I couldn't say that. I can't find someone much more handsome than you. There you go.

[00:02:25] So our guest today is Mark Menzies, a gentleman who I've known for quite some time. So I really do feel honored to kind of pop on here and start the show off with Mark.

[00:02:36] Mark, why don't you start by introducing yourself and actually not just your basic introduction. Talk about like how you started and where you ended up now because it's really interesting to me the jump that you've made into real cybersecurity knowledge and learning and education.

[00:02:54] So, you know, start from the beginning. But I really want you to roll into the stuff you're doing now.

[00:02:59] Gotcha. So my parents met in high school. No, I'm just kidding.

[00:03:02] So, so the no. So Mark Menzies Overview Technology Solutions. I'm a CISSP, ISMP, and CMMC certified assessor.

[00:03:12] So how did I get into this? So I own a company called Overview Technology Solutions. We're based out of Ron Concom in New York, which is on Long Island and also out of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

[00:03:25] That's a story for another day. But so how did I get into this? So, you know, I was one of those kids that was good with computers in high school type of thing and just decided to, you know, when I was in college, helping some small business customers, things like that.

[00:03:41] Anybody who would give me a dollar. And, you know, one day I was, I was sitting down and I said, I wonder how hard it is to incorporate. And as it turns out, not that difficult.

[00:03:51] They'll let anybody do it. So, you know, incorporated in the state of New York, formed a little LLC and then started doing computer repair and such.

[00:04:00] This is at the end of 2009. And, you know, just eventually got to the point where, you know, we opened up a small little office. Then, you know, bought a small computer repair shop that was in a prominent area.

[00:04:14] You know, got some business customers out of that closed the shop down and the end of 2014 then really started focusing more on SMB and business and such.

[00:04:22] In 2016 or so I started studying for my CISSP because I felt like I was a young person and I felt like no one was really taking me seriously when I was having, you know, trying to have security conversations.

[00:04:34] And I also didn't really have, I didn't have, back then I thought I didn't have credentials to back up my knowledge. But as it turns out, I didn't have knowledge to back up the credentials I thought I deserved.

[00:04:45] So, while going through the CISSP, you know, learning challenge. You know, I learned a lot, helped to fine tune where, you know, I was moving the business and, you know, 2017 got my CISSP got my HCI SPP in 2018.

[00:05:03] And at this point had rebranded the company to overview technology solutions was originally overview computer services so we moved from computer service to technology solutions.

[00:05:13] Anyway, so over time we started to try to.

[00:05:17] We people use the word MSP a lot and they talk about their journey into becoming an MSP we never really went through that whether it was when we did it.

[00:05:27] What our business plan was, we always consider ourselves something different and I think a lot of MSPs aren't MSPs. I'm not sure. But we consider ourselves more of a hybrid solutions provider we do a lot of professional services we do manage services, but the MSP model isn't the only one that we follow we do co manage we do.

[00:05:44] You know, consulting for security frameworks, etc etc. So I've been I was kind of looking for like in the late, you know, 2010s or whatever want to call them.

[00:05:56] I was trying to look for something that would be a differentiator for us right like, you know, we did a lot with, you know, dentistry medical.

[00:06:04] It just wasn't enough of a differentiator. We weren't consistent with it or ideal client profile had been established yet that's only within the last couple of years.

[00:06:12] My good friend of mine JP Casey, you know, he's always at the forefront of stuff he came up to me and one day at an event he was like hey have you heard of the CMMC thing this is in like maybe March or 2020, you know right right before you know that coven thing started.

[00:06:27] He said no I haven't he's like you should look into it. So anyway, I did I did a deep dive and I was like hey this whole like government subcontractor needing the adherent to certain policies that nobody's really doing yet sounds like our chance to like kind of get in there and have this become a differentiator.

[00:06:45] Four years later, you know myself and one of my staff members are CMC certified assessors.

[00:06:53] We've really started to get some of the market, especially on the MSP side for manufacturers and other DOD subcontractors when I'd like to think that we become a little bit of a thought leader or at least an evangelist for MSP is interacting with the defense industrial

[00:07:12] base, how that looks.

[00:07:15] And, you know, how that should be handled and you know who, who you should be taking direction from what strategies you should be using and such, etc. That's kind of how we got ended up here is just a, you know, I wouldn't consider myself or, you know, a success story but it's what's

[00:07:30] that saying we're like, you know, this is a, this is the result of a 15 year overnight success story or something like that it's it's. I didn't wake up like this it took a little while to get here. So, and we are far from the end of our journey.

[00:07:44] Right. Well, first of all, the fact that you recognize that separates you right that's a that's important to recognize where you are right and what you're doing.

[00:07:55] And yeah, overnight success.

[00:07:58] Listen I think it's um it's overrated.

[00:08:02] Because I think I don't honestly I don't think that you get where you're at, and have the experiences that you've had that that are stuck in your, you know, that are in your psyche when you're dealing with things on a daily basis if you were an overnight success

[00:08:17] and all those experiences that have happened to you over the past, that by the way make you unique and also help you deal with, you know, the crap that we deal with on a daily basis.

[00:08:29] Me, you know, speaking purely from the heart you know and not trying to be condescending but I feel like a proud pop up because like I know when you were back and you were saying no one was taking you seriously right and I see, I saw the

[00:08:44] I saw the whole discussion and I watched it. And by the way, when you talk about hard work like you put the work in to get to this point. So much so that like you know people like hey where's Mark Benzies right because before it was, hey I'm going to be at every event

[00:08:59] I'm hanging out but and you still we learned a lot together but not as much as the time that you need to take to do those pieces of the puzzle and I think, given you credit, you took that time did it and work your butt off to get to where you're at now and you also know that

[00:09:13] it's not over there's a whole bunch of moving forward. So I love this I do love all of this and where you're going with this and it does make me proud knowing that you know we have a group of friends that kind of have flourished and grown into and created other groups

[00:09:28] and grown things and it's all blown up. So for me, that's really cool. From a standpoint of MSPs that might watch this, you know down the line, you know what would your advice be to them other than do it get started.

[00:09:43] You know, what would your advice be to those that are needing to better understand the CMMC piece and what it takes to get there.

[00:09:52] Yeah, so the grass is always greener like you're gonna, people are only going to talk about their successes.

[00:10:00] They're only going to talk about the good things. They're not going to talk about the struggle that I'm going to talk about, you know all the bad stuff I mean I am a six and I and everybody that I know that's in a similar position to me or pass me or whatever you want

[00:10:11] to consider this in the journey. There was success of their failures if they did everything right the first time, the moment they were faced the challenge they would just collapse, they wouldn't know how to handle things they wouldn't know how to navigate things and I'm far from perfect

[00:10:23] in terms of you know handling situations like that but I'd like to think that I've gotten.

[00:10:28] I've gotten better at it over time, and you know it doesn't just kind of happen, you know alone even if you do fail, you know, a million times. It's, you know, you we all stand on the shoulders of giants before us whether it was you know a mentor that you had

[00:10:43] even, you know, people who, who, you know, had to do with the advent of modern cybersecurity, or even of, you know, modern computing itself type of thing like we're all, you know, we're all successors to someone who came before us in some way shape or form so, you know, I know I owe a lot of credit to a lot of the friends

[00:11:04] I've made along the way yourself included that have helped to enable me encourage me, and I try my best to pay that forward to other people too.

[00:11:12] You know as well so being in the middle of that having mentors and mentees is really interesting for me because I didn't used to have the, the mentees thing and you know people asking questions and things like that and sometimes I'm like I don't know the answer that I'm

[00:11:24] going to go ask the person I asked questions.

[00:11:28] But, yeah, yeah, it makes sense right and so, and by the way, you know, I know some of those hard times that you had to get through right you know it's it's it's so funny that you, you know you bring it up and we always say to people hey we should talk about

[00:11:43] those moments we should be bringing that up, because everybody should know it's not that easy to do this, and we all go through struggles, and man you've had some big ones.

[00:11:54] I remember sometimes where you were like dude I don't know man this is nuts right and we all have that, and it's how you deal with them that separates you from the pack.

[00:12:04] Yeah, absolutely and it's, it's, you know, you'll have a lot of people come up to you sometimes if you know I'm talking to like the MSP owners out here.

[00:12:12] You love a lot of people come up to you and they make it seem super simple sometimes like oh why don't you just do this, why don't you do that and then you start to question yourself a little bit like why didn't I just do that and then, you know, especially

[00:12:22] people who were purportedly business owners themselves and then you kind of like if you peel back those layers a little bit, you start to find that they're, you know, sometimes projecting or hiding.

[00:12:35] Again going back to that grass is always greener type of thing you don't know something about somebody else's situation so if you're getting discouraged by somebody just just remove that person from your life.

[00:12:45] That's what I've learned. Just like you know, please don't rain on my parade you're done I'm done with you. I just, you know, there's a lot of that that has needed to happen over the past few years.

[00:12:54] You know, if you're not a champion of me then then you know that's fine if you have some, you know, feedback to give some way to help me grow.

[00:13:03] I want to hear, I want to talk to those people that are that don't like me more than those that do but if I'm going to constantly get discouraged without solution oriented conversation that I'm just not going to have a conversation is it's not helpful.

[00:13:14] Right. And it's true there is there is there is plenty of help out there there's a lot of good people out there that are willing to help yourself included myself George, you know, that's the funny part of that's the part about it that cracks me up is, unfortunately, there's a lot of

[00:13:31] bad people out there I guess, people that are, and we don't know what they're going through maybe they're not bad maybe they're just misguided.

[00:13:39] And we see that we right here we, we see it right we see where these people are either telling you hey if you don't do it this way you're it's wrong if you you know you're doing it wrong and you're a mess and you're never going to be right and we all know,

[00:13:52] at least from, from our group of people. There's 1000 different ways to do this MSP thing and you know I hate that term MSP I've always have because it, it doesn't describe anything. It could be anything from a large given of things until we know what our operational

[00:14:07] maturity levels at and then separate it right. Figure out where you're at, you said it so eloquently at the beginning about the different pieces that you're doing, and how are you doing it.

[00:14:17] There are good people out there and find your people, find your people find the people that mesh with you rise you up raise you up and get make you better and stay around those types of people.

[00:14:28] There's just no room for negativity and bringing people down and, you know, you can do this job differently. It doesn't have to be done any one way so I love that you said that mark initially is that, hey, this is what we did and by the way we tried dental

[00:14:44] we tried this right right you gotta, you gotta work through it until you find where you need what your niche is.

[00:14:50] Exactly and sometimes it comes down to timing sometimes you're early of the market sometimes late to the market we were early the market CMMC I'd argue and because of that and how you know the government moves at the speed of hurry up and wait.

[00:15:01] You know it's been a lot of like, are we sure that do you want to do this now do you want to do this later and you know, we kind of put some of our plans on pause and have recently reanimated some of them because of new news but I want to go back to something

[00:15:14] that you said, you know, be around people that raise you up so like you know we've all had challenges and such and I formed a group of, you know friends of mine called the tech degenerates and where we do a whole bunch of stuff and it's not just

[00:15:26] you know a dozen or so it's a whole community of people and ends like but some of the people that started that with me.

[00:15:33] You know we had a an offsite together a few months ago back in November and, you know, I was going through some tough times business wise, and had a lot of things going on and it was just, I just moved to Fort Wayne and there was just, it was just,

[00:15:48] at the same time all at once, and with two small kids it becomes challenging to like even like, you know, put your pants on them. Sometimes without like everything just crashing in at the same time and so I had a I wouldn't call it an intervention as much as an

[00:16:05] intervention. I'm there with a dozen of my closest, you know colleagues and they basically said hey how are we gonna, how are we going to get you back on the rails, how are we going to get your company back on track.

[00:16:14] So between you know my interactions with like Paul Vedder getting involved like the 75 hard thing for my own wealth mental well being and health and physical health and things like that.

[00:16:26] You know in between December, January, February where I like lost 30 pounds and they feel amazing physically and mentally and then you know everyone encouraged me to do like things like the US process so like, you know, Martin Perkins is like constant involvement with

[00:16:42] helping us run us meetings, Don Don Sizer and I meet weekly and everybody else in that group just just always being a huge proponent Seth everybody else like you know I never felt like I was truly alone and even when I wanted to pick up the phone when I was

[00:16:56] like feeling like weak or whatever. I wouldn't call and complain I would call and say hey you just need to talk to a friend right now, because I knew that they were dealing with the same stuff that I was.

[00:17:04] And I was just able to just like not complete because I know the answer to most of the problems that I had at that point right. I know I need to do this, this takes time I need to find a new team member to do this that takes time I've trained somebody

[00:17:16] right policies, you know five somebody do that that takes time. So being overwhelmed about it doesn't really help if you're just complaining about it sometimes it'll be an organic conversation of hey what are you doing this weekend.

[00:17:26] And all your you know, you know, you're going to this you know whiskey tasting or this or that oh it's interesting Oh how you doing I'm doing fine struggling with this a little bit but I know what needs to do next I just needed a quick break and just need

[00:17:37] to talk to somebody that I know understands the struggle. And sometimes that's all you really need. And sometimes it does need to be in the long form intervention on how to fix an organization.

[00:17:47] But, but yeah that's that's something that you know again, talking about rising up. I, you know, I wouldn't be who I am today or without a lot of people that have brought me along the way yourself included so yeah.

[00:18:01] Well, I appreciate that little tear in the eye here.

[00:18:04] Yeah, no I mean look and we talk about we've been talking a lot about it. I mean I, I know we were just, we're ending mental awareness so we just ended mental awareness month right but it should be mental awareness year like we should be talking about

[00:18:17] it a lot more and bringing it up a lot more we're trying to do that you know we brought it up at Community Minds and the hardest part is that the most of the most of the guys unfortunately are like, I don't need that I, you know, that's not tough file by, you know,

[00:18:34] I'm going to pull my pants up and do this all by myself and I'm a guy. And it's like yeah dude I know that but you know what being vulnerable allows you to get to the next level and allows you to get past a whole lot of those problems, and, you know,

[00:18:47] that's the struggle is saying hey we're not talking about mental health, but we are right guys.

[00:18:54] I find that very interesting that you're mentioning that and you know the, the, whether you're, you know, male or female or what have you.

[00:19:02] You know it's like a lot of the same thing is that you don't want to show weakness to others, and a lot of times those people are your family members and spouses and things like that because you need to sometimes be that, you know, person of integrity

[00:19:14] that person always knows the answers and stuff like that especially when you have kids.

[00:19:17] Um, I'd say to put that mindset aside, you know, however you want to handle your personal life, your business life should be completely different you need to be vulnerable around the people that could actually like, you know, help you from a business perspective now

[00:19:29] not saying you shouldn't be vulnerable around your friends and family but like your, your, the people that you do business with other people that are in the same business with you.

[00:19:36] They'll understand your challenges on a completely different level, and you gain nothing by not sharing and being vulnerable with each other you literally gain nothing.

[00:19:45] If anything, you will seem cold and distant at conferences and no one will want to talk to you. No one will want to interact with you know one or for work to you if you're not personable and able to share some of the struggles that you have.

[00:19:58] Yeah, I 100% agree and yes, that mental health effects, you know, everybody. I just bring up the the men because of the fact that we watched it happen right where I don't know you heard about the event does did a conversation about this very subject, and 90%

[00:20:13] of the people in the room were female which is, which is weird because 90% of the people at the event were men who could use that conversation and does crushed it she did a great job.

[00:20:24] So, you know, there's not needed to be in that room. Not all of them were in there. So that's why I point to that because it's like, okay, you see that and it mentions mental health, I don't need that everybody needs.

[00:20:35] Everybody should have at least a conversation, especially entrepreneurs MSP is people who own businesses.

[00:20:42] There's so much of a struggle and think about it, and you know this because you've been through it a bunch of times, you have your employees to take care of.

[00:20:49] You have your managers to deal with, you have your family to take care of us. So it all rests on your shoulders. And there's got to be a place where you can break off a little bit like you said reach out to a friend and have a conversation that makes you feel a little

[00:21:04] bit better and kind of come out of that funk. I don't know how I never thought about it when I was younger, because I was in a different generation and as I come up through this, man I don't know how I get through some of the shit I do that we do without

[00:21:17] it doesn't like you said, you just say something funny to me and you've you've brought you know you broke the ice and it's taken. It's made me feel a little bit better and boom, you don't even know how much that helps when you have that conversation and you're already

[00:21:29] feeling like hey I don't have all this other crap to deal with. Mark just made me laugh at something pretty funny, probably about me or him or, or whatever right, but it took me away from that for just that moment, and then build on that have conversations

[00:21:42] talk about the things that are happening because when you don't, that's when that stress builds up and just causes so many crazy again it affects your physical health that affects everything.

[00:21:51] So I think that like is you made a statement like oh I'm in the generation that doesn't X or Y or Z. And I don't know how I would have without X or Y or Z.

[00:22:00] I don't fully agree with your perspective on that because I think that you've, you've probably as many people, you know before you or they will come after me.

[00:22:12] You'll deal you'll find figure out your way of dealing your own way of dealing with stress and and and I think that nowadays especially in the last you know 20 or so years we like to label stuff.

[00:22:22] So, you know, maybe the label of mental health awareness is something that you know attracts you know the demographic that it's actually intended for in many cases. But at the end of the day like you always in your life probably had way of dealing with stress I think

[00:22:35] journey of just, you know, moving in that spectrum towards a more moving in that spectrum towards like maybe more self awareness and understanding and self peace and things like that is really where we need to go whether we're labeling it as mental health whether we're labeling

[00:22:54] it as de stressing or this or that it all kind of forms under the same umbrella of things that people have been doing for hundreds of thousands of years, so I don't get old Joe.

[00:23:02] I get that yeah yeah I was talking more about the sharing and being more. Yes, the vulnerable part of it is something that you know, like I said people, you know, hold it in and don't don't want to be vulnerable right because that's, that's a sign of not being strong it's the opposite.

[00:23:17] The more vulnerable you are the stronger you are.

[00:23:20] Well we're in the great communications age I mean you know information for decades has been just available at our fingertips and now in, you know, many great ways where we could, you know, have the zoom call and webinar rather and just like you know, we're just so used to this

[00:23:34] at this point 20 years ago this is mind blowing stuff. Right, so I mean like we're just, we have to adjust to it and then just, you know, understand that this level of accessibility means that we can share more, and we share more we you know get more

[00:23:47] intimate and and I think that that's where it's leading that's a good thing.

[00:23:51] Yeah, I agree too and of course there's nothing better than being in person but this just gives us a way to do this in a much better way I mean we did it during coven right we had the, we had these calls we were doing them on, we had these

[00:24:03] calls we were doing every Tuesday and Thursday we had a bunch of people on the call and one person even said to us this is my therapy, like being in this call is very therapeutic right because we we discussed just about everything.

[00:24:17] And you're right it's changed the way that we do things in the way we think it's it's it's crazy to think about and then of course everybody's like I'm sick of screen fatigue my eyeballs hurt.

[00:24:28] I have a giant 49 inch monitor.

[00:24:31] Yeah, get a better monitor lower your brightness. This is 100 ways you can combat that I have two giant 49 inch monitors and a giant 27 one over there for my email and like, um, I don't have any screen fatigue I keep them really low I keep the ambient light and I have

[00:24:46] a lot of light coming in from the outside behind it.

[00:24:49] I have a screen to the, to keep the, just the screen light down what do they call that.

[00:24:54] Oh, the like the filtering the blue like I use locks so that at night yeah you know that's yeah exactly.

[00:25:00] I mean, yeah for talking about that stuff though it's really funny though you know we have, you know, everybody has laptop everybody most people have like a desktop or their home workstation.

[00:25:09] I don't work if I'm not in this room, like I don't have my laptop out in my house I'm just sitting in this room, getting my work done and I don't have screen fatigue because when I'm not in front of these screens.

[00:25:20] I'm really not looking at a screen I'm not looking at my laptop I'm not messing around, you know, two in the morning anymore.

[00:25:26] If I'm still in the office at 2am yes I'm in here but I don't really get that anymore, but I just realized that I used to but then I made adjustments and any who.

[00:25:35] Nice.

[00:25:37] So, so now we know what are the next steps we talked about the fact that you got here.

[00:25:43] You know, first of all for you. What's next.

[00:25:47] You know one of the things that you have to do going forward and then also for the industry. You know what's what's going on with the CMMC.

[00:25:55] We know it gets really crazy and look at his face yeah he's he's ready to go.

[00:26:00] You know so talk about what's next for you and then how would that how it interacts with what's next for the industry. Yeah, so so going through the whole like us processes really helped to like, you know, center, you know, our ideal client profile our, our, you know, what our internal

[00:26:17] Our core values things like that which has helped to inform on what our next steps as an organization is so you know we're we've figured out our ICP we've we've figured that we're going to double down in many ways on our like, you know, our ICP being involving the defense industrial base

[00:26:34] We don't have a specific vertical we deal with but we do have a few. And so our next steps are currently going through our, we're prepping to have our dipkak assessment or prepping to have our CMMC level two assessment so we have targeted those out.

[00:26:48] One of the and I gave a couple talks about this last year about the disastrous not disastrous journey, the learning journey that we had on on doing something that most MSP's haven't even thought about starting to do which is like getting CMMC compliant.

[00:27:03] And then trying to you know become assessors and things like that and then scoping all of your, your MSP environment into that.

[00:27:10] And we didn't quite get to where we wanted to, but at the same time, not many have tried.

[00:27:16] So in the country does like what 40 41 or 49 or something like that see through PAOs which actually can assess which is what we're trying to go for. You know there's 10s of thousands of technology companies in the country.

[00:27:27] I mean, you know, it's it's, and we're well on our way. So I'm very proud of my team for the work that they did. I'd argue that one of the biggest failures we had, you know, coming to this about a year ago was that.

[00:27:39] I thought we had leadership buy in from from me. I, we didn't have leadership buy in. I wasn't actually giving the team the resources we needed. I wasn't giving myself the resources they needed.

[00:27:48] There was a lot of like, there was a lot of like trying to convince myself all we could just wing this and it's actually not the case. So, you know, it this is a like things like, like framework implementation internally especially look with clients it yes it will take time but internally be surprised at how much more difficult it is because you know how the how the how the soup is made.

[00:28:08] And sometimes it's harder for you know the shoemaker children to not go shoeless. So yeah, those are some of our next steps though but us is helping tremendously I mean I we finally started our service L 10s like today actually we, we've been we've been we've been kind of like you know we started with our leadership.

[00:28:27] L 10s, we start with full actually full company L 10s to kind of get everybody on the same page to introduce into the process. January started our leadership, and then we added in finance, and then we started one for our just technical for our high security enclave it's called,

[00:28:43] which is our CMC initiative and then we just started on service and then we're going to do operations, probably in a couple months we're just handling it all leadership now but you know we're trying to gradually get into this, you know, canceling other meetings getting out

[00:28:57] of our normal habits.

[00:29:00] It's so our next steps are just like getting our rocks done moving forward I mean, you know, we do have things that we want to achieve.

[00:29:08] We do have them clearly laid out, but at the same time like it's sometimes you don't know you're at the destination until you're there.

[00:29:15] We're kind of there we're not we don't have a lot of our metrics aren't around specific, you know, we need to be at x revenue with x EBITDA by this time in this date 2024 for us it's all about organizational stability redefining who we are getting used to

[00:29:31] and how our company is going to run for the next 10 years, you know after reflecting on the prior 1015 what have you years. So we're kind of at a little bit of a teetering point where it could have teetered down but instead of work teetering up.

[00:29:47] So, nice. It is, is Martin facilitating or Martin's Martin's yeah Martin so Martin facilitating our leadership l 10 meetings.

[00:29:57] You know, I'm facilitating the rest of them, which I've been told I'm not terrible so that's good.

[00:30:05] I highly recommend that if anybody ever needs someone to step like so you know for those that don't don't do us or anything that there's a special specific format and I'm sure someone will, you know, there's there's a lot of nuance to this but at the high level

[00:30:19] there's a fairly standardized way of going through an l 10 meeting and we have, you know, we use shreddy to help support that great piece of software. Oh yeah. And so, so, you know, I know at any time I can ask one of a half dozen people.

[00:30:36] Like, hey can you run this meeting for me because I feel like I need to be a participant, you know, rather than a leader and Martin helps to do that for leadership meetings and I'd be happy to do that for anybody else that needs that same, you know, type of someone

[00:30:51] to step in and do that. So if anybody ever needs that let me know, I'm happy to help.

[00:30:55] Yeah, I love that and I really do believe that you know some kind of, you know, EOS is important. I just it gets everybody rowing in the same direction and just yeah and strategy I do we just started using strategy.

[00:31:10] I don't know a couple months ago and it's a big yeah that's been a big change within the l 10 meetings and it's been a lot better at organization and those types of things. And so for you when you started doing when you started to decide okay we're going with the

[00:31:23] And for those of you don't know EOS is a entrepreneurial operating system there's traction there's Patterson no relation.

[00:31:31] Definitely no relation, definitely no relation, but brain power or money got neither.

[00:31:37] So, and you should definitely look into it takes your business and and puts it in just the right direction now with the question I was going to ask Mark and what I'm saying is, it's not easy.

[00:31:50] And it's painful sometimes at the beginning of it if you're not already moving in a certain direction for me mark. The my facilitator literally said to me you're going to lose some people during this process.

[00:32:02] I did they were not in the right seats. I wasn't doing things that I thought I would, you know, I thought I was a great boss until we ran into us and I realized, oh man, I got some some things I wasn't paying attention to so it is painful for you know what was the most painful part of getting started with you know jumping into us.

[00:32:20] So, after I left my intervention kind of thing I felt very like motivated there was crying there was a whole, you know, and it was just, it was a lot so I wrote a very long form email to my entire staff, all of which were completely like what the hell are you doing the, the level of organizational

[00:32:42] whiplash that I must have put on everybody because I just got I got calls I got this I got that and I was like, well, I'm just saying that we're going to start doing it.

[00:32:51] It's sort of trying to ease people into it is if I were to do that over I would ease people more into it rather than being like, hey, this is what we're doing now, because that's something that you know they were not informed about I'd say hey maybe read some of these books before

[00:33:06] introducing anything. Then again at the end of the day you kind of sometimes have to make a large grandiose gesture to let people know that you're being serious about something which is kind of what I had to also ultimately do.

[00:33:19] Aside from that so so buy in was a little bit tough at the beginning. If you're trying to claw yourself out of a place where people aren't thinking that you're going to be following through with what you're going to be doing.

[00:33:32] You're going to you're starting from this, like a negative space, you have to then get back to neutral and then get to positive. It's really hard to claw yourself out of there sometimes. And that the only thing that that takes is time, you have to time dedication and consistent

[00:33:45] performance or how you earn people's trust back, it takes a long time.

[00:33:49] It does, it does. And yeah, I had seen a couple of over the past couple of months talking to people who are using us now since it's been a long time since I did it for my own MSP and now I'm doing it in our business.

[00:34:04] But one of the couple of things I heard get a grip, and what the heck is the OS are like books that you can hand out and get people at least started so they're understanding what it is what's it all about before you dive in like you said,

[00:34:18] we have a distributed workforce. So like I said, we have two headquarters, and we also have people like in Cali and like Tennessee and all across the Eastern seaboard.

[00:34:28] Maryland forgot the name of that state for a second Jersey. So, you know, we had a bunch we ordered a bunch of books to the office in New York and then we just kind of anybody that wanted it, you know, ebook we, you know,

[00:34:41] Expense it or I don't remember how they did it.

[00:34:44] You know, we sent them the book or this or that but what the heck is us is the one that we chose for the that sort of like read this and then the other things will make more sense rocket fuel is one of my favorites because it kind of got me to that point

[00:34:56] of like, okay, well, it helped to fizzle out a lot of my internal internal stress because I had a lot of internal stress about why can't I do all the things why am I not good at doing these repetitive tasks that that you know don't require creativity.

[00:35:11] Why am I all over the place why am I scrolling all the time and it's sort of like well no, I'm the visionary and I don't have a an integrator that is involved in my business right now that is doing the integrator job fully and wholly.

[00:35:24] So that is why I'm feeling that lack of dichotomy I do not have a partner so I don't have anybody to bounce that off of so you know help me to understand myself better and even though didn't fix anything per se, it helped me to understand things better.

[00:35:36] And when you understand things better you're able to compensate better. And even though I don't think that things are operating the way that they should in terms of like my long term plans for how I'm operating within my own organization, and at least let lets me know I'm doing this task that I'm

[00:35:49] doing right now because this task should be done by somebody else who is a person who will hopefully will find one day but I do not have right now until then I am that person and then one day I'm looking forward to not having to do this, it helps put these binders on

[00:36:03] things where I don't have to feel like I'm lost at least you know like I said putting label on things sometimes is actually a good thing. So it allowed me to do that.

[00:36:11] Nice, yeah, like I said, it changed my business completely. We just completely flipped my business upside down, the two people that were the water cooler problems and we're in the wrong seats and those people are gone and we started to get direction I started to learn a little bit more

[00:36:28] about myself like you said, you know, you just assume that you're doing things right you think everybody's happy and then you start to drive forward and you're like, oh, okay and I wanted to be better. Right. It wasn't that I wanted to be the clueless clueless owner who didn't know where everybody

[00:36:42] what everybody was doing or what I was even doing to the business, and, you know, I started to learn so much rolling through that process and getting a better understanding and of course, falling back on my peers the people that I, you know that I knew in the

[00:36:56] industry that I could reach out to and not being, you know, as competitive right we talked about competition and I think was Bob Carpage that coined the phrase, it's not competition it's cooperation now right we work together.

[00:37:09] Yeah, and that's, you know, not that castle mentality anymore and blowing that out of the water and saying hey I need to talk to my peers. I need to see what they're all doing and learn and understand that we need each other.

[00:37:23] Oh yeah, absolutely. So I want to talk about the competition but I want to just touch one last thing on the US so my team has been surprised not surprisingly supportive but they've been extremely.

[00:37:35] I've been I was told in not so in quite a few different ways that your biggest issue is going to get buy into this. Once they got the taste of all he's serious about this and oh this is actually working like within like I had extreme by and Martin was talking to me

[00:37:50] about this and I was like I've just never seen a team, like just kind of like, go like my team is amazing. And there's nobody that we lost that we didn't want to lose in this process. So, and you know I'm really proud of them and if they're if they're watching this I love you guys.

[00:38:05] But but you guys are doing a great job and I very much appreciate everything and it's, it's, it's helping us to all get where we all want to be both as a group and individually, but cooperation wise.

[00:38:17] So, so I think I alluded to that I had moved to Fort Wayne recently and you know it's different different from New York, a little bit, and a little bit little bit that much.

[00:38:28] So, one of the interesting things that what I try to. I think I've drank the drink I don't want to drink the punch because that's not a great term turn a phrase to use anymore but I think I've gotten so used to the coopetition being so prevalent in a lot of the communities

[00:38:46] that I kind of forget that there are still some out there that have not been properly evangelized the benefits of working together. So one of the first things I did when I you know we moved here you know I was like oh well I need to, like you know my desktops

[00:39:01] you know let me let me go to the local PC repair shop you know they have one that's been here for like 107 years. And you know let me let me let me get a new, you know, and to SSD, you know, let me see if they have them or at least strike up a conversation ever

[00:39:14] And, and like they're very cold and very this and I'm just like oh you know I tried to introduce myself hey I'm not the competition I'm going to you know definitely need some support out here if I get a client out here definitely need you know equipment and I really have an office

[00:39:28] established out here yet like you know I'd love to make referrals to because I'm trying to go for a really specific type of client out here and you know the mom and pop isn't really what I want to do and it seems like that's what you want from our conversations,

[00:39:41] And I try to get like lunch with them and blah blah blah do not want to be friends with me they do not want to be Mark's friends. And, you know, it's just, it's just very jarring because back especially when I was you know earlier in my career, I would love for people not even in my career

[00:39:57] And now even when someone comes up to me and they're like they don't have an ulterior motive like I don't have an ulterior motive like I my ulterior motive is, you know, making friends with people who are in similar situations and if sometimes they need to bar a cup of sugar or I do at least I have support here just didn't seem like a priority it just was so far and concept to me so I, you know, I don't know.

[00:40:19] Doesn't make sense.

[00:40:20] No, you're 100% accurate they get standoffish because they're worried and it's like but we just talk they're not listening. They're not listening to that part of the conversation it's all about whoa this guy is going to come in he's starting you know you're starting to his New York voice these slickers coming in here.

[00:40:39] I don't know what's going on. I'm just yeah yeah right it's it but it's interesting to see that there's still businesses doing that castle mentality and some of the best relationships, I ever grew with the folks that I knew.

[00:40:52] I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to do break fix at the time I didn't want to crawl into desks, I made friends with all those people and refer to a ton of business to them. And also, when the ones that realized they didn't they couldn't take everything and they didn't want to take the bigger ones

[00:41:07] they would come back to me and say hey I got this big one I really don't know what to do with it and send that work over and it's just, it's such an easy thing to do.

[00:41:16] Yeah, the inability to like at least like try to, like even if you guys are in the exit.

[00:41:24] All of us got into this business for different reasons but one thing that I found amongst most professionals like us that came into this are we are we got into this because we're we're nerds and at some point, in some way shape or form and we really enjoy what

[00:41:39] we do. And we've kind of like, we've, we're not doing what we used to do most of us but like at the end of the day like we've grown a bit and we want to share that growth with others and we want to experience it with other people and and be we're social

[00:41:52] creatures and I think that there's those that aren't doing that I think are just, they're, they're trying to, I don't know, they still figure it out.

[00:42:02] It is hard, it's hard to put a finger on it and actually you know just determine what it is they are thinking.

[00:42:10] But it's sometimes hard to, I mean I guess it's almost like an MSP world, you know as an MSP we've been burned so many times by, you know, stuff that happens in the vendor space that some MSPs just don't want to talk anymore about it right they just

[00:42:25] Nope, there's nothing left out there for me I'm going to just stick with my little stack and I'm done. So we can kind of relate and these guys have been, these guys and girls have been burned so many times by maybe someone coming in and saying hey where your friend

[00:42:37] and then they, you know they steal something from them or they do something like that and so I guess there's that you know like we always talk about putting ourselves in someone else's shoes and and understand what they're going through.

[00:42:47] That's the only way I can think about it because I really, I'm like you, I'm confused why? Why wouldn't you want this to work? There are so many ways that this is productive for both of us.

[00:42:59] I think one of the, that's interesting you kind of really made me think now because not everybody comes into these things with best intentions and smart business owners and people actually do put up their defenses before they see that things are proved to them

[00:43:10] otherwise and that's, it's interesting. I haven't thought about that perspective yet so I will reexamine that with a different perspective now. I will think more along, I don't know how to, I'll send them a pizza. That's what I'll do.

[00:43:22] I'll open up the, I'll open up the friendship floodgates there.

[00:43:27] Drop a referral on them that you know what I mean? The thing that I, you know and also you have to get a good feel for if they're really going to take care of a referral that you drop on them.

[00:43:36] That's what I was going to say, I don't want to give referrals until I got to know the people.

[00:43:39] Right. That's my thing. I didn't want to do that. That's the other side of it. It's like you know you just don't know and sometimes just asking the question, you know Mark being upfront, you know kind of a weird thing I picked up over the years and it works almost every time.

[00:43:55] I'm sending you emails every week Mark. I'm trying to, trying to get your attention, trying to connect with you right? I'm sending you emails, sending you emails and I get no response, I get completely ghosted.

[00:44:05] My next email to you is going to be what I call the not okay email. Hey Mark, I'm not sure if I did something wrong.

[00:44:13] But I'd like to know either way, if you're just busy sure that's fine but sometimes people don't want to say the wrong thing or say something negative to the person so they just don't get back to them at all.

[00:44:25] And if that's the case I'd rather you just tell me what's wrong and usually what happens is that changes the mindset and you reach out and say Ken no no there's nothing wrong because you feel bad that I made, you made me feel a certain kind of way right?

[00:44:38] So that's something I've done over the years to get people to at least come back and tell me to jump off a bridge right? I'd rather have, you know, and you know the way I would say that if we weren't live.

[00:44:48] But if for me, for me, but for me, I would rather have someone come back to me and tell me to beat it than not respond at all.

[00:44:57] And so sometimes there is something that's causing that that isn't just they're ghosting you. They're going through something while they're dealing with something and they and so they don't prioritize that stuff.

[00:45:09] So sometimes if you take it from a different direction with these folks, maybe you just go in and say hey I don't know if I did something to offend you guys or if you think that I'm here for a different reason.

[00:45:19] But I'd love to find out more about you because I do have business that I could pass to you and I'd love for you guys to send bigger stuff or stuff that doesn't fit in.

[00:45:27] Sometimes when people say bigger and smaller, if they get a little offended right? Yeah. If there's stuff that you don't do that you'd like to pass to me, that's fine.

[00:45:36] But the only way we can do that is if we have this conversation. So I mean, for me it's like trying to reverse it put myself in their shoes, and I'm like you I get confused by it because you know we don't think that way.

[00:45:46] We're like wait why? Why wouldn't you take a chance? Why wouldn't you have this, have an open mind to getting more business right?

[00:45:56] Because we all know that that struggle is real. Right? How do we get more business? What's the best way to do it?

[00:46:01] You do make a good point because we just don't know the history. You don't know their trauma and that just is for people that in general is that they're not in the same mindset as you necessarily and you have to kind of meet them there.

[00:46:11] I think that I've again gotten really used to the communities we surround ourselves with because everybody's there for the same reason and then like it just makes it so easy.

[00:46:20] And then we're faced with a challenge now and I'm just like oh it must be everybody else.

[00:46:25] And in this in case it might not be so maybe I just need to kind of just bring myself back down and just say look, like I get it you know if you guys are whenever you guys are ready I just don't want to you know offend anybody and I'm going to still you know if I need a favor I'm going to ask for one or something like that.

[00:46:40] I just you know I and maybe more descriptive in that way. So yeah cool.

[00:46:46] Yeah, those are so much today Ken. Oh stop it.

[00:46:51] It is it's just an interesting you know it's all interesting it's an interesting time that we're in and look we still have people in our communities that we need to straighten out right there's like we say there's people out there, you know, oh if you don't do this and you don't charge this much, you know you're useless and that's hard for people

[00:47:08] breaking into our space because they go to an event their first event the first thing they see is some guy on stage going you do this.

[00:47:14] If you're not doing this and then the first thing they think is oh my god I'm doing I don't belong here. I'm doing this wrong right and we have to a we have to try to stop those people that are talking at the community and not to the community from doing that and be

[00:47:30] we need to make those new people that come into our communities feel welcome and let them know this isn't how it's done. We don't feel that way. There's 1000 ways to do this there's no silver bullet if there was we'd all be on an island right now.

[00:47:42] Right. Yeah, yeah, we don't. Yeah, we would are in the middle of a forest or something. Yeah.

[00:47:48] I have my fantasy about that but you know it's you know it's interesting. I used to kind of feel that way and I've kind of like gotten more of a balance over time where I walk into those and I kind of have like a like in my head I have this like, like a disclaimer

[00:48:04] this is this person's opinion. Like, there, there is a person there are people in that audience that that will speak directly to sometimes if you've been in the industry for such a long time. You do need to hear somebody like but, you know, wake up now's your time.

[00:48:18] Oh yeah thing. And and sometimes that'll hit home with the right people and you know, at the end of the day.

[00:48:24] You know what I'm talking about though I'm talking about the, you know, hey, if you're not getting $800 per endpoint you're doing it wrong. It's like, well, well, this isn't my idea. This isn't my opinion. This is facts and you should feel bad if you do not follow this. Yeah.

[00:48:37] Right. And by the way, if it's if it's really that way without even knowing anything about the customer. That's what you're going to say right like let's let's roll this back a little bit let's teach.

[00:48:47] Let's teach this the right way. Right. It's about finding out who you're selling to who is your customer. Right. Who are you selling to and why and by the way, stop the selling part of it. We're in a different industry now we're we've finally gotten recognized as first responders of the business world.

[00:49:04] Yeah, that's that's actually a really good, you know inflection point here so like, you know, one of the things that I try to tell our, my, you know, my co workers in my company and also, you know, some clients depending on who they are.

[00:49:21] Without having to actually say this is, you know, we've kind of gotten to the point where like, you know, you have your, you know, business owners or such or organizations have their of council they have their, you know, in house out house.

[00:49:33] Or, and their attorneys, I'm sorry, those counselors attorneys, accounting firms, or something like that those are the trusted advisors.

[00:49:45] We're kind of in that bucket at this point. Right, and we're in this weird space where you know you have an attorney and they went, you know, they're a part of bar association hopefully.

[00:49:57] They were a very long journey in order to get there. And while there are unethical people in every field, you know, at least you know they're qualified unethical, but also the same time you know what do you call a doctor that got all season college doctor, you know,

[00:50:15] And so and you know accountants and CPA firms and such like that are the same. We don't have that yet we don't have that standardization. And so like you could be getting advice from somebody who is willfully ignorant or just confident and not knowing what they're talking about

[00:50:31] And I don't mean that you know oh I use you know x y z product and use ABC product and because of that we're different you're wrong you're wrong it's like no no it's like, Oh, do this you'll pass the assessment just like, No, you won't.

[00:50:45] You absolutely won't and you're not going to know until it's way too late. And, you know, while we are the trusted advisors though we haven't really gotten to that point where we can kind of like thin the herd, as it were.

[00:50:58] And so, I don't know I want to talk about that a bit maybe and like you know what you're seeing out in the community.

[00:51:05] To make that possible I know I'm seeing some stuff from CompTIA, what are you seeing out there. Yeah, not enough. I mean, there's two sides of that right.

[00:51:16] And CompTIA always, always, always, always tries to step in and be that you know they were advocating for doing something with the government and lobbying for us to actually do our own.

[00:51:31] You know, set up our own systems right to measure MSPs and obviously that struggle got really really hard and I think they saw that it wasn't something they could do

[00:51:42] as quickly so now they're in the security trust mark which I don't know a lot about but I know the right people are involved. I'm not sure that you're involved. I know Matt Lee's involved right I know.

[00:51:51] Me and Matt and about 30 other people sit on their work.

[00:51:54] So that to me, I don't need to know anything else. If the right people are involved then I know it's going in the right direction.

[00:52:01] My, my problem is.

[00:52:04] Well, I say problem, but this the situation is that a, I think we have way better in a lot more people here in our space than we've had in a long time and I don't mean to disparage the people that were in this when I started, but I'm telling I've been doing this

[00:52:23] a really long time as you know, and the fights and the battles that I was having back then are somewhat the same, but I have way more way more soldiers on this side of the fence than we did back then.

[00:52:36] And I mean that by. There's more advocates there's more people like yourself the tech degenerates as a whole.

[00:52:43] You know the matleys of the world there's so many more people stepping up and stepping outside of the technology and making it more about community.

[00:52:54] And that's going to drive it in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go from getting you know from away from this MSP calling it an MSP when you could be anything from break fixed to, you know, see him MC superstar security, you know

[00:53:12] And then now, oh my god, how stupid are we now we added a friggin another letter and now we have MSSP and and then motion. There's a lot of emotions around that one right there's all that that conversation goes even with the people that we know right that there's

[00:53:27] people on both sides of that fence but you know first of all MSSP isn't just by adding a letter right that doesn't make you an MSSP.

[00:53:34] Well you can't do that 24 hours by finding one products.

[00:53:37] Well we know about those. Yeah, we know about that one.

[00:53:39] Boy, I don't understand that anyway.

[00:53:42] Yeah, so anyway.

[00:53:44] But yeah that that motion that allows us just to create an acronym and then tie it to a whole entire industry doesn't happen anywhere else.

[00:53:54] And, you know, I can wake up tomorrow and be a guy who worked at IBM for a few years and then just say, you know what, I'm going to be an MSP like you said it's not that hard to click up and be it have an LLC started out very quickly.

[00:54:07] Right. And here I am, you know KP MSP with very little experience in the industry, but there's no, there's nothing stopping me from joining this.

[00:54:18] I mean, even a hairdresser, you know, has some kind of license to cut here, and we don't.

[00:54:25] Well that's that's actually the exact analogy that I give all the time is that like you know I go to my barber and they have a little license on the wall, regardless of the state basically and the state runs all that and then you have like the bar association

[00:54:36] and then you have a ICPA and everything like that for like you know the those other communities and what I'm trying to do is foster, you know, us creating this rather than the government government mandating it because you look at, you know, the, I can't remember the executive

[00:54:48] order number or whatever but a lot of recent, you know, statements by, you know, President Biden by by the Department of Defense by other legislation coming through mostly around CMMC and in support of, you know, initiatives around control and classified information

[00:55:04] you start seeing definitions around, you know, CSP has been around for a little bit in the government space. I think in the last year I think that, you know, Biden mentioned, you know, MSP or managed service writers like that, the blanket term that's being used is ESP external service provider

[00:55:22] that's a big one right now and you know I wouldn't call myself an external service provider by for branding purposes because yes anything I'm not doing for myself is technically external so yeah of course I'm an external service provider so as a plumber technically but you know

[00:55:37] that's not doing anything in their own house but but um you know ultimately these some of these definitions are starting to come down the pipeline will have and do have real legal ramifications so there's gonna be more power around that language so I think that the alphabet soup of MSP MSSP this that the other thing whatever

[00:55:53] I think that that will over time start to really diminish and start to be more aligned with actual responsibilities that that are either driven by the community or driven by the government that are fairly strict and unchanging so you know yeah we have a little bit of a concern if the government's doing because they have no clue so the government doing it I mean I get it I guess having something is better than having nothing but then you have a something that the people driving it have no power to do it

[00:56:20] something that the people driving it have no clue about the industry and how to how to do it right so that's what gets a little ugly I went actually I haven't looked at Louisiana started this though right they actually have something in place they do have some things in place and I haven't looked into like what's the public stuff recently like what's publicly out there because I know things and stuff and I'm not going to talk too much about it but like ultimately I know that there are big

[00:56:50] big leader in this has been a lot of really great meetings, a lot of you know people that I know that have made a lot of great strides there and I know that Louisiana is a leader in, you know, managed services.

[00:57:02] They're allowed to be number one in something they're allowed to be number one in something.

[00:57:06] But, uh, I'm just kidding, but um, I would I also don't want to see is that every state does something different because it's going to get very confusing.

[00:57:18] And how do you do that when most MSP's handle, you know, you do to across multiple states.

[00:57:27] Exactly. So, you know, it's, it's like a, and you look at like the legal industry with this right now, and it's very hard to overlay what we do on to over what they do the numbers don't jive very well, you know, the level of effort doesn't jive very well because the law

[00:57:45] is not the rapid pace is what we do changes. So like there's there's there's, you know, it'll become increasingly difficult.

[00:57:56] I think to deal with, you know, states based.

[00:58:00] I did, I'm hoping that if there is something it becomes more of a federally recognized thing, or at least some sort of framework is together where you know you have sort of like a here's what everybody's doing and then depending on the state here sort of more of like

[00:58:16] the state defined parameters. Right, rather than like completely different frameworks everywhere.

[00:58:23] You almost, you almost hope that there is a, you almost hope that there is a company, a business out there that's in our field that has the money to do to get something started that would help pull together some kind of group, much like the bar.

[00:58:38] Right, that was done by the lawyers that wasn't done by the government, initially, some way for us to pull together and create, even if it was at its most basic level.

[00:58:49] Here you are MSP level one here you are MSP level two right, 101 the 201 the 301 like we like everything else we talked about.

[00:58:58] So that's basically what com to is doing right now, like, yeah, as being part of the trust mark working group that's literally what they're trying to do, and we have very meetings very often a lot of great people are involved there and you know,

[00:59:11] and Wayne and Chris Johnson are doing a great job, and with what they're doing and you know it's. I think that that's going to be the thing that will, they would want to shift this to be more community led in my opinion.

[00:59:25] So it's it's I think that that's that's where the as of this point that's where the money were. That's the horse my money is on.

[00:59:33] Right, well that's good. So for everybody that knows make sure you go out and check out com to go to their events check out folks like Mark Menzies, the people that he mentioned Wayne CJ there's some great people over at com to you doing some really cool things and it's all for the community so make sure you check that out also make sure you connect with Mark Menzies if you don't know him find them on LinkedIn you should definitely connect with him.

[00:59:56] Yeah, and he's going to be at beyond if you're at beyond find him, ask him some questions he's like he said he loves to be a mentor and he loves to help. That's what we love to learn to. I love to learn to want to be told to talk we always learn something from each other which is the beauty of this, this whole community

[01:00:13] So again, we're up at the end of the show here Mark I can talk to you for a whole other hour since I don't see you anymore. Hopefully I'll see you at beyond it was still working on that but I'll, I'll end the show off with, you know, thanks everybody hope you guys should check this out again

[01:00:29] this is recorded so you'd be able to play it back and pause it and check out Mark's mustache on pause but there you go. Look at that.

[01:00:37] Um, and is here. It's very high. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[01:00:42] Um, and again, everything that MSP initiative does the show the parties the events. Again, make sure you come out and check out MSP community minds I believe we have Mark men's he's again on a panel out there.

[01:00:54] So make sure you check that out. And again, George should be back on Thursday for another episode of the show and thanks very much mark appreciate your time I know it's it's you're doing a lot so to take an hour out to do this as much appreciated.

[01:01:09] Happy to do it and thank when you see him thank George for having me and thank you for for dealing with me for an hour can anytime we've had many hours together my friend. Oh yeah, some of them sober anyway.

[01:01:22] See you later guys.

[01:01:24] Bye everybody. Thank you.