Michael Slater of Sherweb

[00:00:02] Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to a February 20th edition of the MSP Initiative, MSP Talk. This is our post-Super Bowl celebration still going on here in Philadelphia. I got it all. I got the hats, the hoodies, the shirts. We're still celebrating here in Philadelphia. Sorry. But I hope, I mean, it may have not been good television, but it was for me. It was great.

[00:00:32] I didn't watch the halftime show. I'm still actually catching up on all my DVR stuff from the Super Bowl. But good time, man. It was a good time. So MSP Initiative.com, that's where all of the stuff that we do is parked. We've got some cool stuff coming up this year. It is still literally unfolding. But there you'll find all the historical podcasts in audio and video format, upcoming stuff, photo galleries from past events.

[00:01:02] It's what we know as the Global MSP Events Calendar, although that changes, I feel like, every other day. It's up there for you to check out and see what's happening on MSP land. Today we bring, from Denver, or at least that's where his mail gets delivered these days, Michael Slater from SureWeb. How are you doing today, my friend? Pretty good, George. I love the gear.

[00:01:28] And by the way, I was a Kansas City to lose kind of guy, so I was rooting for you kind of halfway. So it wasn't great to watch, but I was very happy with you and I thought of you because I knew for sure you were going. I actually mentioned that some friends of mine. I'm like, I know a guy, 100% chance. I haven't seen his Instagram. I haven't seen his posts yet, but I can guarantee you he's there right now. And lo and behold, the man was. I'll tell you, my phone was melting so fast, I was recharging during the halftime show. Wow.

[00:01:56] I went out into the hallway and was like, next to the ketchup and mustard, you know, I was like, outlet. Let's get going. I had a recharge during, it was a fast charger because I went from like 2% to like 52% during that. Halftime show. Wow. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Apple charger. Yeah. Yeah, it was a great time, man. And then the parade. Yeah. Like, I don't know what parades are like in other cities, but that's what you're a fan for guys.

[00:02:24] Like you're a fan to get to the parade. That's the whole thing. People think I'm crazy. Although, yeah, I understand it's cold outside or at least in Philadelphia usually as this time of year. And I was smart. I was smart. I got a refill. I swapped out the propane tank from the barbecue grill and I got the heater that connects onto the top. Nice. Apparently on a full tank runs for 28 hours on high. Oh, wow. Perfect.

[00:02:53] I was pretty toasty outside in the middle. Yeah. In front of the Iraqi steps in Philadelphia. Yeah. Love it, man. Good for you. It looked like a great parade. I saw we did our normal celebrations that we do in Philadelphia when someone wins a championship. Yeah. You know, some light poles get knocked out. Some traffic poles get knocked out. Yeah. Like the whole grease thing. I still want to understand like who buys the grease. What's it? It doesn't work. I don't know. Save some money. Just forget the grease.

[00:03:22] I don't know. But yeah. I mean, listen, they definitely do it. I mean, it's a thing. We all joke about it. And I know it shows up on like, you know, the news. But like it just doesn't work. So much so that like I posted that the New Orleans police were starting to use grease on like Bourbon Street. They're like, please do not climb our poles. They're old. And I'm like, so did you call up the Philly like procurement department and figure out like what grease skew you? You know, how many? The general referral code I heard. I don't know.

[00:03:52] I found that really funny. And I was like, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. Yeah. So, yeah, that Philly definitely, you know. But I think we get undue criticism, you know, for like, you know, oh, they burned the city down. I was like, go look at all the parades from New England every time Tom Brady won. Yeah. Don't tell me. Yeah. Go look at that. Go look at the Kansas. Did you hear? Did you hear? Kansas City, had they won the Super Bowl this year, had planned to have no parade.

[00:04:19] Oh, that's because apparently a bunch of people got shot in their parade last year. Yeah. And I was like. OK, I mean, listen, every major city has problems, right? Everybody's got something. Yeah. Like even in Philly, right? They're like, oh, two people got shot at the parade. I was like, nah, man. Two people were shot in Philadelphia while the parade was going on. That's a big difference. Big difference. Big difference. Anyway, I digress.

[00:04:47] Yes, we are still in celebration mode. Definitely around the world if you're an Eagles fan. And you know what? You know, for all of the. I'll leave it here and then we'll get onto the tech talk. For all of the. You know, Cowboys fans that have never been to Dallas, have no ties to Dallas, decided to adopt Dallas as their team because they were on TV through the 90s. I think it's time. I think it's time to like read. Yeah. Correct your fandom. OK.

[00:05:17] You know, like follow where you're from. OK. Like if you're a legitimate Dallas fan, you're from Dallas. All good. Not knocking you. Yeah. I you know, I don't know when you're going to get back to the nice championship game, but all good. You keep doing you. I'm talking about everybody else. Right. You're from Philly. You're all you're rolling with the Dak Prescott jersey. And like you could you haven't even you don't even know how to spell Dallas, you know, like it's time. It's time to flip. Yeah. Turn the corner there. But I digress.

[00:05:46] How is how is Denver treating you there, Mike? It's good, though. I love it. It's great weather. It is cold. It still gets down to freezing. But compared to where I'm from in Montreal, because that's where the show headquarters are. That's where I work before all this. It's great. I think we got like 70 inches of snow in the last week there. So I'm very glad to not. Oh, yeah. It's past the doors now in some places. So I'm very glad I don't live there anymore. I'm going to send Jen up there to go visit. You good, Jen?

[00:06:15] Get your snow boots on 70 inches of snow. No. So not for Jen. It's fair. Not for me either. I completely understand. As a fellow Northeasterner, I am coming to love the West weather. It's growing on me a lot more every, every day. So it's great. That's good. That's good. You know, so are you watching? Are you up on this Canada, USA? Oh, yeah. Hockey thing? Like it's big for sure. It's big. I heard there was booing. I heard there was a lot of fights.

[00:06:45] And this is good. Three fights in the first, I think, minute. I think was the first thing. But to be fair, though, that could just be hockey. Like some people say it's that. I mean, look, we definitely got a lot of talk about partners about terrorists. Like people ask me if I could ask that probably about once a week from somebody. So it's definitely something. I'm not too worried about affecting a lot of the tech tech, especially software and services stuff. It's just so hard to track and keep track of.

[00:07:08] Like if you buy something from a vendor and they're in America, and you buy it from a Canadian distributor, but it's still an American product. If you sell it back to an American, like who owns that sale, right? It's still an American product, regardless of the point of sale. And then in reverse, like maybe there's still a tariff, but no one's going to start charging for software products like that because in our economy, it will collapse like overnight because we're relying on, in Canada, US tech powers everything. Salesforce, Google Cloud, Microsoft Cloud.

[00:07:35] You know, I got to say, let's talk about that for 10 seconds. From the US side, right? From this side of the border. Yeah. I guess your laptop prices may have gone up, right? Some of your prices may go, but like, I haven't really seen a lot of must or fuss about it so far. So far. I mean, it's only February 20th, so far. Yeah.

[00:07:59] I guess you, I mean, I guess from the Canadian side, probably a little bit more commentary on it, I guess. I guess, I mean, I'll take your word for it if that's case. Yeah. I think it's kind of. Well, I think they're definitely concerned about like, about like, like there are some places just because of where they are, even on US foreign food imports, right? So a tariff war breaks out, that affects people's ability to feed their family, right? So there's some very rural parts that, you know, we rely, I think like some parts in like Arbor's in the Midwest, right?

[00:08:27] Which is like the prairies relied on shipments from like, you know, North Dakota, South Dakota, all that area, Idaho for food. We go up way out east. There's lots of like small little communities that are relying on US food, right? Because they go across the border just to get groceries sometimes, right? Depending on what they have available. So we'll see. I mean, it's very interconnected. And that's why I'm hoping the whole thing just, we all make a deal and this all just goes away. And then we don't have to worry about this next month. That's what I'm hoping that's. I think that's the right word. Deal. Let's make a deal.

[00:08:56] Well, before all of this even unfolded, Microsoft's increases that were announced at the end of last year coming up, what do you hear in March or April? Correct. On the doorstep, right? I think it's, is at least some, a lot of it's like a 5%. And then for certain products, it was more like Teams and Power BI and stuff like that, right? So. I mean, there's a series of those. And the most interesting thing right now is, is the biggest uplifting we're going to see is the annual, paid monthly SKU.

[00:09:22] So that's where they're going to go where, you know, they're, if you're getting an annual annual, you're fine. But if you're getting anything in a monthly flavor, depending on what you're going to get, the prices are going to go up and going to change. Microsoft reserves the right, even in Canada, by the way, every six months to do a currency adjustment. So as that currency goes up and down, like, and that happens everywhere, like UK market gets that, we get that. And like, it can go up a lot. I think you've probably had like four or five price increase in the last couple of years. And almost half of them were just currency related.

[00:09:49] So, so, so like, you know, is it just they're too big and like, it is what it is. Cause like for a lot of other vendors, if you did five pricing changes in a short period of time, I think people would just get fed up. Yeah. I mean, it's a great point. So I think Microsoft, because they don't really have any true competition. I mean, you can look at Google and like, I work with Google too. We have a good relationship with them. We sell their products. It's more of a fit for like the website guys. Like those folks sell a lot of it.

[00:10:18] People are like, oh, I'll make your website and I'll give you an email while I'm here. That's kind of their business. So they do a lot, we do a lot of that through them. But it's just like, it's just so necessary as the foothold into the ecosystem. And like Microsoft fully knows that now, right? That's something I've seen. So like they understand like, you know, there really isn't an alternative. And as they increase the prices of, you know, components like Outlook, right? So if you go and you want to set up your exchange server every year, that price is going up too. And even more, right? We've had an RN cost increase in our host exchange farm.

[00:10:47] We've had increased prices on partners too, just to keep up and not lose money on it now. Right. We don't focus on that really anymore, but yeah. I mean, there's really no other option. And I think that Microsoft is very aware of that. So for an MSP who, I mean, for as long as I've been in the sandbox, I think I'm on year 25. I started young, Mike. Like people don't like to do the price changes often. Their customers come back to the MSP. They complain. Why is my bill different? Right. Like this thing happens all the time.

[00:11:16] They're so afraid to change the price because they don't want to lose customers. But like, this is just straight up Microsoft. Like if they don't just update their billing as Microsoft's making their changes, you're just straight losing money. Yeah. A hundred percent. Right. And that's the thing I have tried to explain to Microsoft a lot. And I do advocate for our partners all the time where I'm like, hey, just so Microsoft, you guys know, you guys aren't necessarily something they sell to make money on by itself. Like no one's getting rich off reselling Microsoft licensing. Right. Yeah.

[00:11:46] So, and I always say, well, the approach that customers take is you are a cost of tooling to most of our partners. Right. Like they have to deliver services. They need identity. Right. They need email. They need collaboration. They know all these different tools. And especially Microsoft, you know, Microsoft owns this whole category entirely with like minimal competition. So I would say like they have to sell your stuff because like it's the table stakes of what their business does. You know? So because of that, it's like they're not necessarily going to make money off of it in the way that you think that they will. So it's a cost of their tooling.

[00:12:15] If they're really smart, they roll up until one price and they give it to it on a per user basis every month. If that's the best case scenario they can get. Obviously, we both support partners that are shades of gray of that. Some resell it directly. Unfortunately, we have some guys that are still stuck in break fix. I'm sure me and you deal with to an extent, maybe not as much to be used to, but still a little bit. And it's rough. So I always try to remind Microsoft that, you know, we got to be careful because this is a cost of tooling for these guys. Right. And there is a break point eventually. We haven't hit it yet, I think. But we could. You never know.

[00:12:46] So let me ask you this. Like before, this was just automatic, right? Check out and go. Have you just seen the lack of want to be in the middle of the Microsoft transaction now? Like and just say, hey, it's just not even worth for me to be in the middle of this conversation. I'm just going to have my customer go sign up at 365.com, put in their credit card. Oh, yeah. We definitely seen that. We've seen a lot of partners even look on bill on behalf of options.

[00:13:12] So if you work with more of a modern cloud district like us, another competitor that happens to be based in the same city I'm in, a lot of other folks like that. Usually what they do is they offer like a bill on behalf of now, which is becoming very popular. Right. So basically, we'll invoice the customer directly. And for us, it's called the advisor program, like the old Microsoft advisor when we just stole the nomenclature. People are like, oh, I get a commission on selling Microsoft. Perfect. I know what this does. So we did more or less the same thing there.

[00:13:39] And we see that getting more and more popular all the time where people are like, hey, I don't even want to take the risk on this, especially you got to look at it this way. So if you're doing an annual commit, right, on like E5s and you're sitting on 200 of them for this customer and the customer goes poof tomorrow. Like I can go to Microsoft and try. It's going to take months to get the case built internally. I have to deal with the support mechanism. Like there is stuff we can do. It takes forever. But in the meantime, we all have to pay Microsoft that bill. Right.

[00:14:06] Every DIST, every partner, every customer, we're all on contracts, especially the NCD to get that done. So it's scary for some businesses. Right. So now they're looking, hey, how do I offload that entirely? Because for me to make 5%, 10% on this, right, total value, it's not even worth the risk of me doing it, especially when I can just get delegated admin privileges and then just work on the account anyway. I can still check the users. I have all my admin permissions I need to function. I just don't have any of the risk. And again, for 5%, is it really worth it sometimes? Probably not.

[00:14:35] And as a business owner, I would get that entirely. Like it's a high level of risk that you're going to have to take. So I can't help but bring this up. And I don't want to target anyone, but it's part of the conversation. So Bill, on behalf of, you know, like who's bearing the credit card transaction fees then? Yeah. Yeah. So we are the ones that usually have to eat it, which is why we have to give less of the percentage of the money to the partner as a result. So in our case, I don't know how it works with PACs. Like I genuinely don't know.

[00:15:03] But on our end, we're billing it out because we're giving you away less of the margin compared to if you were like a standard partner, right? So if you're doing the billing, you're going through the transaction, we're giving you a higher rate than if we have to go through to the billing and then we're on the hook. Because we also want to buffer for the risk. We can't do the risk for 2% like we normally would in distribution. We're looking for much more than that if we're going to be on the hook with your, arguing with your customer, right? And a big difference between us is that we don't hold the customers liable. I think some folks do.

[00:15:29] So if some customers don't pay with some other disties, they go back to the partner. We don't. So we deal directly with the end user, which is the thing. So it makes us a little bit different in the way that we approach it. Yeah. I mean, like, listen, the Microsoft thing's going nowhere. I would say, here's my percentage. Tell me what yours is. 95% Microsoft, 5% Google, like an MSP land. I mean, it's not.

[00:15:51] I would have thought if Google was going to take stake a claim and widen their percentage, it would have been, hey, our prices haven't changed. Hey, we're not going to do annual agreements. But then I think they did. Like, they pretty much just filed. It's like the airlines, right? One airline starts charging for a fee. Oh, they're like, yeah, it's almost like a price fixing thing. So I think they did the same thing. And like, they haven't really increased their percentage and just adoption from the MSP community.

[00:16:22] Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think Google's program stuff. I just compare the two of them having had experience, like working with both, like both vendors. You know, very, very, very similar approaches, but very different skills of adoption, right? But what I will say, as much as we, you know, we like to criticize Microsoft for many various reasons. Some of them are very legitimate. Like, I understand customers, you know. People expect me, as the guy head of sales for that, to defend it all the time. And like, I don't. Like, there are some things that aren't great, and I advocate for our partners all the time.

[00:16:51] What I will say is Microsoft, especially compared to some of these other vendors, they get the channel, though. Like, Microsoft has resources for customers, for partners. They pay their reps on deals that customers work on. And what's even great now is Microsoft is actually trying to push more deals out of EA Direct and incentivizing their sellers to push it into CSP now. Like, they're actually paying them to do it, which is wild because in most places, that's a net transaction, right? If you get moved from channel A to channel B, nothing.

[00:17:19] Now they're getting 10%, I think, something revenue recognition for that. Like, it's a good shot. So, like, we have Microsoft sellers that are now approaching, like, our clients being like, hey, you know, Microsoft saves money, by the way. They're not managing that guy anymore, so they get to have us do it instead in the channel. So, like, they benefit from it, obviously. But they're incentivizing it, right? And a lot of the bigger, like, really big essential MSP vendors, they have nothing remotely like that. Like, in their ecosystem, no notion of that. So, I do have to give them credit.

[00:17:44] And so, that's why I still think, despite, you know, Google having the market opportunity to catch up and do it, they're just simply not. Because Microsoft just has it, like, down to a science on how to deal with their channel. You know, one thing that became apparent to me about a year ago is that you almost need a CPA to file all of the program, you know, stuff that Microsoft put. Like, oh, well, but you have to file this between this period and this period. You have to submit this, this, and this.

[00:18:14] And, like, I was going through, like, but – and then, like, the person giving the presentation is like, but you could make all this money back at the end of that. And I'm like, that is a ton of work. Like, it is not just set it and forget it. You got to do some heavy lifting. You have to do so much. And it's funny, we actually have three full-time people that do that for our partners, like, on, like, a basis. Like, and one of my – the most senior person doing the longest, he has, like, 30 calls in a week some week of just going through it, checking boxes. Now, he's got done with science.

[00:18:44] Like, again, he, like, he sees the board, and he can see the numbers moving live. Like, he's gotten that good at it so he can see all these things happening. So, for him, it's like this, this, this, this, this, change, change, change, change, change. We're done. So, he took what he did on mere mortal three days to do. He can do it in about 15 minutes now, right, which is great. But we just – we have to have that as, like, as a partner resource now. So, like, and again, I'm expanding to have a third person right now on the team hiring. So, hey, you're a Microsoft program manager. You're watching this. DM me. I'm hiring now.

[00:19:12] I mean, so, a month after I saw the 2024 program from Mike, like, oh, this percentage, this percentage. I was like, holy crap. Like, I have to go back and actually put this in an Excel spreadsheet. I, like, just casually as I was talking to MSPs, I'd be like, hey, have you ever filed for the Microsoft incentive rebate stuff? And they're like, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:19:34] Like, I would say a very small percent – probably the very big guys – but a very small percentage of MSPs, number one, even know it exists. And number two, have gone down the road to actually apply. And I think there's kind of two facts to that. So, and there's also the fact that now, because, like, legacy gold and silver, those are gone. Like, that thing's disappeared. So, now I think that there's already a small percentage of partners doing it.

[00:20:02] Now, based on what I've seen, there's even less now, right? Because now it's not just all of cloud revenue and Microsoft. Now there's net paid seed ads. There's competencies. And the revenue is measured by the cloud you want to specialize in. And that's the key to unlocking most of the incentives. Like you're saying, that big sheet, if you look at it, almost half of it, you have to be a partner in that lane to get that money, right? When before, it could just be any Microsoft revenue would qualify. So, we are seeing, like, less partners doing it. But definitely the big guys are taking advantage of it. Like the – and I've seen some crazy numbers from the big guys before, right?

[00:20:32] Like, I've seen us recover with, like, working with partners, like, six-digit sums of money from Microsoft that just go right back in their pocket. And, again, sometimes it's been, like, we've had to do the trigonometry and, like, recreate the missile and fly it to the moon, and it takes days. One time it was just updating the guy's tax ID, and he got a $100,000 check that month. It all varies. It's wild, right? So, we get this wild gambit of experiences for what everybody could do. I mean, not everybody gets it, which is the thing, too, that kind of sucks.

[00:20:59] I always tell people, like, listen, like, in Microsoft world, a new Microsoft world that just changed, you got to do about $5,000 a month of that specific cloud that you want to get it for, right? So, you got to be, like, a $5,000 a month model word partner, Azure partner, Dynamics partner, whichever one you are. Then you start kind of getting the amount of that. But less than that because you got to pay for the certs, right? And you got to pay for the audit. You got to pay to get the badge. It might not even be worth it for you if you're doing less than that now, right? So, at that point, you know, again, 90% of the industry probably isn't building that much.

[00:21:29] Don't get me wrong. Lots of big guys walking around, like, all the guys that evolve that we see and talk to, massive accounts. Like, for sure, they're all missing money. But, like, for the other 80% of the industry, they're going to end up being built on behalf of, I think, at the end of the day. Okay. So, let me go down this side street here. Sure. So, yeah. I think it was two and a half years ago, three years ago, they were like, hey, we're shutting off the ability for you to move in between your contract period, right?

[00:21:58] Then NCE, so that was, like, the first year of NCE. Then they changed their mind. They're like, oh, nope, we changed their mind. You can move. Although I've heard it's not very fast to move. I don't know. Maybe you can give us a – and then one thing that I've also realized over time is 365 is one thing, right? And we'll hear, you know, your opinion on what that looks like to move. But, you know, between one MSP and another, between one distributor and another. But Azure is not really movable, Mike.

[00:22:26] Like, you got to do a migration between accounts in order to move, like, Azure Virtual Desktop, for example, from one partner to another. There's no just move the subscription. So, yes and no. So, here, so we'll do the first one. So, the first thing is the general moves. Yeah, so Microsoft basically decided with some caveats, right, that you could basically go and move between indirect providers during a given period, right? So, two caveats.

[00:22:52] Number one, and this is one of the most painful things is it's optional between indirect providers. What does that mean? So, it means that technically, if somebody came to SureWeb, like another indirect provider, right, any big disti, people that are in Denver, people that are elsewhere, if they ask us, the entity of SureWeb to do it, we have the option to say no. We don't. We let the partners go anywhere they want.

[00:23:22] Same with certain big competitors that are very similar to us. We have a two-way arrangement, right, to do this with each other because we care about the partners, you know, and we're both very aligned in the way that we deal with this. Now, if you're certain other big box distributors, you just say no all the time now. Oh. Yeah, which is not great. Right, so you could have a horrible time with them, have billing issues, platform issues, all these kind of problems, and they just refuse to let you go.

[00:23:48] Now, why this also sucks, we talked a little bit about it when they made that change to the team's licensing, right, because they had to comply, so they separated it out as a separate fee. But we grandfathered people in. And so even the only way that we can keep that ground following is if we do that happy path transfer where they give it to us when you assume the contract. If you don't assume the contract, we have to break it, make a new one, and now there is a $2 lift applied to every single one of those licenses for teams.

[00:24:18] Because it's new. Because it's new. It's not that existing contract I'm reacquiring. So that causes a lot of issues with some partners because they feel like they're maybe locked in to their current distributor. So if you didn't catch that and you're listening to this, he's talking about the fact that the EU forced Microsoft's hand to charge separately for teams. So now teams being included is no longer a thing unless you're grandfathered, which that is a thing.

[00:24:41] But if you're creating a new subscription from the Ether, like never before, like brand new, they're now charging additional for you to have the right to use teams. Correct. And so when you're in the middle of doing a migration in the way that you're talking about it, hard to go back to your end customer and say, oh, by the way, you're going to lose teams. Now you're using it. Oh, well, now it costs more. Now it costs more. So, yeah, it's a big ass, right? That's one thing. On the Azure side. So that was a great question.

[00:25:11] And it's actually, it's funny. So some Azure stuff you can move, some stuff you can't. So if I'm just doing like just raw ABD subs are great or just raw subscriptions to any kind of IS or compute, any Azure services can do. Now, the problem has been though, is if we're changing between billing modes. So if we're going from an EA or a direct customer into CSP, that is the full on rebuild. And we probably get 10 requests of that every single month to go and do. And it's a paid service, right? So like it's very, very aggressive.

[00:25:41] And the funny part is like it just, it sucks because we do have to do the work. We have to go in there, build it, build the landing zone, go in, transfer at a certain time, do a cutover. Like it's very intensive for everybody involved in the technical point of view, right? Literally just to shift billing. Just to shift billing. So we got to recreate it. Like it's a pain. We probably get maybe 10 requests a month, people wanting to do that. And actually it's funny. Actually, I want to update our platform to have a note to be, because I think some people think it's free because they think it's like monowork transfers. Which of course we just do.

[00:26:11] Not to have the unfortunate conversation with my engineering team to be like, yeah, this $1,000 sub is going to cost $4,000 to bring over. Because I got to remake everything, build the landing zones, and then do the transfer on a weekend. So it's going to cost money. And so this is like the hidden tax in the whole thing. For sure. Which sucks because there's like, it's actually some pretty cool tech. And it works really well.

[00:26:39] But like people, for whatever reason, right? Businesses change. Relationships change. You need to shift to another provider. And now all of a sudden, this block shows up in cost. Which, let's be fair, Mike. The MSP is not going to suck that. They're going to send it downstream to the end customer. Oh, for sure. We've had even some partners reach out to us. And they've done it because they've won an EA, right? So they've gone in. They've done the modern work. Everything's great.

[00:27:04] And then we hit just the Azure subs and they're like, so we've got to work out like six-month payment plans with partners, right? Because it'll move over massive. I mean, massive amounts. Trading like $80,000 pro-ser, $100,000 pro-ser projects that they have to now parse out with the client, right? Rolled into the managed service fees and then recoup it over a longer period of time. So they're basically paying us, you know, a good chunk of change every single month or six months sometimes, right? To get these major products in the door. If we want the business too, we all want it.

[00:27:32] We have to work together to make it happen. It's just, it's very hard to do yet. And I don't truly understand why it's that difficult. Like, I don't have a reason, you know? It's hard for me to say. Ask Microsoft. I want to know what that question is. I will bring them up and I'll ask them why it's so different. Like, if they can make that part easier, I think we're all better off for it. But I digress. And I think they will. I think they will. Because again, they do have that big push.

[00:27:56] And we're seeing all the time where these corporate sellers, like SMC guys, like in Microsoft that manage like 500 mid-sized accounts, right? So like under 1,000 users. They're just shuffling those now into partners, like left and right. We're seeing it constantly. So again, if you're a partner and you know your local Microsoft guy, go ask them. It's like, hey, do you want me to do the work for you? And you just look at paid. And I get all these new customers I can go and sell my other stuff to. That'd be great. I love to sell those guys. It's like a lead gen source. It's a lead gen source. There's a lot of good opportunity for that.

[00:28:26] So bring it up. Microsoft gives and takes. That's the best I can say about it. All right. So let me ask you this question. New alley on the road here. Sure. So apparently Microsoft's changed their position. They're now in the backup business where before they said go find a third-party solution somewhere else? Yes. Tell us all about it. Because for the longest time, they were like, nope, you should back up somewhere else. I think it was in their master services agreement. Like people were selling off of that.

[00:28:54] And then like overnight, it was like, nope, we're a backup company now. It's a big thing. It's funny. Because I remember there were some backup partners that I deal with. I don't do continuity as much as I used to. I got more specialized in Microsoft this year. But they used to literally know the exact clause in the Microsoft agreement by name and would talk about it at conferences. Be like, clause 14CB says that they would like have it memorized. All these backup vendors by nature just to bring it up. So I think it's changing.

[00:29:21] I think it's mostly in the enterprise side because on the SMB side, like I hear nothing of it. Like we never sell it. Nobody ever talks about it. It's going to eventually show up, right? Like it always starts here and then comes downstream, no? Yeah. Yeah. But I honestly thought we'd see it a lot quicker. Like I really thought this is an easy way because, again, everybody knows backup is extremely lucrative. Like look at all the money these backup vendors, like especially really big ones.

[00:29:44] They sponsor F1 cars and they do all these – like, you know, they're at the Vegas F1, right, where it's like $100,000 for like a little shed for five people, right? So they're selling out all kinds of coins to go and do stuff. So like I thought for sure Microsoft would hit the SMB sector that a lot quicker. But like no one's talking about it. No one's selling it. I think a big factor is that Microsoft would have to acquiesce to their margins because usually they – especially with the stuff that they do sell, they're like the only person that does it. We talked about, right, that kind of like they own the market.

[00:30:13] If they kind of go in and start going to MSPs, hey, you're going to make 5% to 10% of this backup solution, they're like worst case scenario, I make 20. Best case scenario, I have my own data center and I have my own Beam setup, my own Macrona setup. I'm making 50%, 60%. Why would I drop that down to five? So do the backup solutions that Microsoft launched both a VM cloud backup and a 365 backup or is it just one? I think it's for both.

[00:30:42] So like – but Azure Backups already has a built-in native redundancy for like HCI. So you can pick another vendor already and go and do that, right? So that's kind of already built in. So you can go and be like, hey, cool. I'm already going to just dump this out and put this into another cloud, right? Because we want to have actual DR. I can't have everything in Azure. We need to get somewhere else, right? So they'll actually do that, which is good. But yeah, but I'm just surprised that just like, you know, they can technically do all that from what I've seen, right? Because I think they're partnering with Veeam, Aft Point, and a couple other folks. But a lot of these guys do enterprise, right?

[00:31:11] They're big sellers, right? And I didn't take a look, but if I guess, they're probably also Azure Marketplace partners, right? Because that's how Microsoft is really pushing the marketplace now to sell stuff, right? They cut the commission by a small bit. Actually, George, are you in the marketplace for the stuff you do? I'm surprised. I mean, because we're channeling them. Oh, okay. Because like I said, so like, and I don't think they give you the option to turn it off. Oh, no, right? They just said you have to sell to everybody if you're there. Oh, that's it.

[00:31:38] Which is why, like, you know, listen, we can talk about that for a second. Because you work with a lot of vendors in your realm, right? Like, man, there are so many companies that sell to anyone with a credit card. Even the companies that like sit at the top of the ivory tower and MSP land. I mean, they sell direct. Whether you like to believe it or not, they do. Trust me, they do. For sure. You know, like, you know, I was in that. Let's just use the early data days, right?

[00:32:06] Like Austin McCord, 20 people in an office in, you know, Norwalk, Connecticut. Like, they were like, nope, we're not selling direct. We're only going to sell through partners. Like, almost is like a dying breed, I feel like. Oh, very much so. I mean, and for us, it's funny because we had to go the opposite direction, right? So we started off as a direct company for so long, right? Because we used to do host exchange and web hosting, right? And all these things. So we started for years of being like mostly direct. And what's funny, when I first started at SureWeb, it was like 50-50.

[00:32:34] It was like half channel, half direct. And then slowly over time, we've gone to like 95% channel, then only 5% direct, just as like time has gone on. Because I watched that. We watched that channel number double and triple and quadruple and go up. And then that channel stays the same. So I think we have is, you know, we call them largely zombie clients, right? They pay their host the exchange bill. They have like two, three inboxes. And they've been there for 12 years. So like, we're not going to disrupt them. They can just stay there. Mailbox money. Mailbox money.

[00:33:03] That's exactly what it is, right? And we use that to actually even fund a lot of our partner initiatives, right? Because as you know, you guys are everywhere I go. And these conferences are very expensive. So we use that money to actually fuel these things, right? To actually go and drive the partner result. Because we never even talk to these customers for the most part. We have a couple of managed ones. Any of the ones we do have are like really weird businesses, like massive ISVs, right? That are like, they used to buy host of exchange from us. So like an MSP is not going to be able to get in the middle and like go tell this software vendor how to run their business.

[00:33:32] Because they're growing at 25, 30% a year. It's not even a good fit. But yeah, I've seen it change. But I have noticed that like there were a lot of partners that started off as being, hey, we're channel only. And then that slowly disappeared from their website as they kind of got started, right? And it's something that we got criticized on very early in my career. It's like channel only turned into channel friendly turned into we work with the channel. We work with the channel, yeah. We've definitely seen a change, especially people that are very big proponents.

[00:34:01] And they've even discovered, right, through hiring some like staff, like being like, oh, this vendor actually has this secret side deal that they do this thing as they do this secret. So I'd love to name names, but I won't. I don't want our PR people to get mad at me. But like I definitely run into people where it's like they've really been like, oh, we're a channel focused company. And then, you know, we run into a really big client with a partner and they're buying this product. And we're like, oh, I thought.

[00:34:27] That being said, end users lie, which is a problem that even we have. And I think Pac said, as I talked to them about it before, too, we're like we've had people like sign up on credit card and say they're a partner. Right. And we can't verify all 50 people that sign up in a day with our platforms right all the time. We call them. We try to reach out and be like, hey, tell us about your business. How are we going to help you grow? But they never talk to us and they just buy some licensing. Like if they will get busted by Microsoft eventually, which is good. I don't know if you know about this, but Microsoft has a $2,000 requirement for growth every year now.

[00:34:56] So if you're doing your business, they reserve the right now to kick you out of the partner program. I did not know that. Yes. So like those people are disappearing. They're kind of being hedged out because unless you're the end users growing at that rate on their fake reseller account, they're going to get kicked out eventually. They'll get found out and then they get kicked. They get busted. So we have to agitate them and then get into a partner. I got to be honest. Like, and again, we've all been in MSP land for a long, long time.

[00:35:22] Like we kind of like, you know, when I get on the phone with someone or I'm at the bar or whatever, and I start talking shop and I'm like, oh yeah. So what do you do for this? And what do you do for that? And like their answers are pretty telling. Like either they're so inflated. It's like, this is absolutely made up. Or it's like, there's no way you're running your business on Excel, shared mailbox and QuickBooks. Like it just doesn't, you can't be doing the business that you say you're doing without the infrastructure in place. Right. To do it.

[00:35:50] And so I'll be honest with you, Mike, and I'm sure you've run into it clearly. But my story is I ran into a guy who said he was an MSP, who was actually the CTO of a company who set up this side business to sell services to his company. And I'm like, straight up conflict. Like you're basically created a shell company to sell stuff to yourself as the buyer for this other company. Like that's not good.

[00:36:19] It's not good. And I remember it's been happening my first channel job ever had, like my first sales job. I used to be in technical as a sport engineer. When I moved to sales, I think like one of my first clients was literally the consultant, right? And this is telephony days, right? So I was selling 3CX to this guy like a million years ago. And when I was, and I remember he was very much like, oh no, it's just like, as I am the consultant, it's like, well, who's the customer? He's like, but my customer is the customer.

[00:36:45] And I'm like, and I just had that moment of like, I'm so green to sales that I'm like talking about it, which most sales people at that point would just shut up and stop talking. They'd be like, okay, anyway, move on. I'm like, but how you can't do that. That's not the way this, they try to have this whole conversation with this guy. And I'm just like, he's like, oh, but we, but we can, it's easy. I just bill them. It was a whole, it was the whole thing. It was, it was wild. So the best part, right?

[00:37:11] With the channel only model as a vendor, you're just like, hey, like you're going to support your customers because that's what your business does. Right? Yeah. Right. I was like, so like, we're only going to support you, the MSP, right? They're like, no, my customer needs to call you. It's like, no, no, no, no. Remember the part where you're supporting your customer? They're like, we don't really support our customer. I'm like, so are you an MSP? And then all of a sudden it unravels, right? Because there is no one to answer the phone. Correct.

[00:37:39] And that's the thing that we have, that we do stress, right? It's very strong in our TNCs because we, because like we do have like our white label relations is what we call it, right? That's their standard MSP one where your customer has no idea who's sure what biz, if everything goes well. They think you're buying directly from Microsoft. You have this established relationship. It's like, you're doing the billing. We're supporting you again. Like they're not calling me. They're calling you and then you're calling me. And then we're working this together. If we can't do it, then we're getting the vendor involved. That's supposed to be the chain of custody. But we definitely have had people, right?

[00:38:09] Who come in and been like, well, I can't really do this. And I'm like, well, I guess you can't be a partner then in that, right? So then the deal doesn't work out, which is good. So it does rule itself out, which is a good point. But definitely there's tons of small guys who just sneak right by through it, right? Because they're also the support guy. You know, they're a one-man band that does it all, right? It's a funny space. Did you run with these guys as much as you used to, though? I feel like it's starting to decline now a little bit. You know, we try and just ask the right questions up front so we don't find ourselves in a bad position after the fact.

[00:38:39] But this one example I just talked to you about was like last year, man. And it was like, yeah, they came in, you know, big. I'm big. Got all these locations. Huge deal. And I'm like, huh. And I started getting into it deeper. I started finding the story was changing from call to call. And I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. That's not what you said last time. And then all of a sudden it was there is no employees of this business.

[00:39:05] It's just an LLC that is there to front products. And I was just like, guys, like I'm not comfortable with this. Like this in a nutshell, it's like kind of fraud. No, essentially it is. I mean, it can be usually construed that way. And what's going to happen if it goes bad, right? Like, you know, like the install doesn't work. Something doesn't go wrong. Like there are a million things that could go bad. They get found out. Like, like, God, there's stories. I wish I could tell you and I'll tell you next time I see you at the bar about what I'm thinking of right now. That went real bad.

[00:39:35] But yeah, there's like there's legal consequences to like some of these cases. Right. Especially if you get stuck in the middle. You don't want to have your name show up in a, in a, in a, like nightmare situation. Right. So like, again, we try really hard to root it out. That's why we have our support. SLO, which is very specific about what we will and will not do. And they all have to accept that. Right. As part of the MSA when they onboard. So we do have like that, that outlines expectations, matrix of responsibilities, and those things to help it. But, you know, people just sneak through them. That's always going to be a thing.

[00:40:04] And like, again, and a lot of people will do a lot of crazy stuff to get a steak dinner and three drinks. Tell me about it. Speaking of which, you guys have been running. I mean, I don't think people realize you do a lot of sure web events on a regular. Like, I don't think people realize how many you do. You know, like, you know, what is the type of stuff that people would learn at that? You know, is it different? Do you have different tracks? Like, what are you generally covering? Yeah, they're great.

[00:40:34] So it's funny. We actually have multiple different levels of things based on partner maturity. Like, where they are in their journey. Right. So we have stuff that is very, like, informative. So we have, like, our specialty days. Like, Azure Day. Security Day. Like, those are very much like a, hey, comment and learn how to do your business. It's great. I'm not the only speaker. And also, no one wants to hear me go on about VoIP anymore. That's dead. Like, you know, originally. I'm out of that business now, which is great. Because George Dow could be friends with me when before I was a competitor. So, but I'm out of it.

[00:41:03] No one's here to talk about 3CX from 10 years ago. Right? No one's interested in what I do. But they are for instance of what Roddy Bergeron does. Right? As an example. Right? So we heard Roddy as our speaker. He's coming in. He's giving great talk tracks about, like, pillars of cybersecurity, cyber insurance. Right? How to pick your journey. How to build a mature security operational model. Right? How to run that security service desk. Right? So we have all those kind of different talk tracks. So it's really how to, like, build up your MSP. And then we have our big talk tracks for more mature partners. Like, we're now helping them with M&A. Right?

[00:41:33] So we're connecting them with people. We have our own internal M&A guide that we're going to have him go on the road and be like, Hey, here's how you do diligence. Here's what this looks like. Here's the process to get that done. So a lot of information to help them kind of grow their business too. And a good vector is our VIP events. We just did one. I came back from that. So it was there Monday, Tuesday. Or they want to retire or pass it on. Right? There's so many different ways you can do it.

[00:42:01] So we're trying to have a lot of content and really have it tailored down to, like, what you want. Your business track. Your solution track. Right? And everything else. Which I think, like, all the good vendors are doing. Like, no one wants to hear product speeches anymore. Like, we're all just so done. Like, and I'm sure you remember back in the day. You would say that. But damn. You know, when I go to some of these big conferences, it's still the same thing. And it's like, dude. Like, I appreciate you. Yeah, but like, come with something new then. Like, I don't know. That's just me talking out loud. But keep going.

[00:42:30] No, but I completely agree. So what we're going to be doing is in Toronto, we're going to launch something 26, 27. We're going to be doing, or sorry, 27, 28 in May. We're going to be doing a two-day security conference led by Rodney. So Rodney's going to go in. There's a sales part led by me. We'll talk about how to qualify a funnel. Right? How to do that. Because it's something I think a lot of partners struggle with. Which is, you know, how do you actually make sense of a sales funnel? Especially if you don't know what you're doing, or you don't know what your sales people do every day. Which depends. Because that's something that partners always struggle with, in my opinion, is sales and marketing.

[00:42:58] It's the perennial thing that we get talked about. I have a call today to talk with one of our bigger partners about how to hire a Microsoft sales leader. Because they want to pick my brain about how to do that, what they should look for. So like, that's what I'm going to talk about. What I'm comfortable about is running sales teams. So I'm going to go and do that. Rodney's going to do the educational portion. Right? Where he's going to talk about cyber insurance qualification. He's going to go into building a stack. He's going to go into selection. And again, what I love about Rodney, he starts every single of the conversations. And this is what he wanted to do is, hey, I'm not a salesperson. I'm not compensated on any sales figures.

[00:43:28] He's like, I'm just here to help. Like, come and ask me questions. Let's have a call. Let's do that. And we have those folks for Azure. Right? We have those folks for other clouds as well, too. And we're just trying to drive the educational funnel. Right? Because I feel like, you know, we have mutual friends in the channel. Right? These guys are getting like 500, 600 emails a day. Like, last thing they want to do is fly all the way to two time zones over, sit there and get talked at by like a networking vendor for three days. Like, that's the last thing they want to have happen. Yeah. I mean, listen.

[00:43:57] I do acknowledge that there's still a lot, you know, as much as the, you know, hey, the industry is collapsing on itself. Everybody's buying everybody else. Like, it's going down. I don't believe that at all. I think net new companies are popping up often. So, I appreciate that those guys are learning. You know, the content that they're learning, we probably learned 10 years ago. Right? I mean, it's a different updated version, but it's still generally the same.

[00:44:26] Like, the maturity level and the content delivery is definitely key. Right? Because like, if you go to the same event two, three, four, five times in a row and the content hasn't changed, what are you getting? I mean, the networking part probably, which I love, by the way. That's where me and you spend a lot of time. But, you know, like, I also can't spend that much time out of my business. Correct. I'm not going to get something back for it.

[00:44:54] And I can only imagine being like, you know, like an owner-operator of a business. Right? And then you have your techs bugging you. You have your customers bugging you with their like $5 problem that feels like a $500,000 problem to them. Right? It just, the phones are going off. You're getting emails. Contracts have to be said. You're doing this. And then you sit down. You have this big expectation. And then a 21-year-old talks to you about firewalls for an hour and a half.

[00:45:21] Which, by the way, by the way, coming back to like zooming out for a second on that. Like, man, when I first started my MSP, you know, and I'm sure everybody else was in this position at some point. It was like, I'll sell anything to anyone just to like figure out a way to make money. For sure. But, man, fast forward through the, you know, like go through the timeline, the journey a little bit. There's some stuff I should have never sold.

[00:45:46] There's some stuff I, it just didn't even pay for me to be in the middle of the conversation. My time was worth more than I was ever going to make. No, I'm curious. I don't want, I don't need vendor names, but like what product family? Can you give me an example of something that was very like burdensome for you in that way? Well, let me, let me, I'm going to go over like top three. Ready? Okay. The copier machine. I should have never been in the middle of that conversation at all. Like, forget it.

[00:46:16] That's an, you know, like make it somebody else's problem, right? Mailbox money. All right. Ready? Here's the next one. Basic web hosting and like SMTP email, pop three, that thing. I was like for five bucks a month, it costs me more to collect a credit card number over the phone than what I was going to make from it. Like why did I think that that was made sense to do that? And, and I'll tell you one still to this day, Mike, because for some reason, this technology will never die. It's like the cockroach.

[00:46:46] You'll still be around after the nuclear bomb blows up. Can I guess? Go ahead. Facts. Facts. It's like, it's like, dude, for the cable company triple play for the 25 bucks a month that they're going to charge for it. Make it not your problem because it literally won't work otherwise. Otherwise, and it just doesn't pay. It does not pay. And like people look at me all the time. They're like, no, we can put in a, yeah, yeah. Converter. I was like, no, forget it.

[00:47:16] We got these ATAs though. Don't you want the ATAs? They're great. No, no. I like, I've, I've gotten into like almost just nauseating conversations where I'm just like, so what's on the end of this line? I just asked point blank. I was like, what is it? They're like, oh, it's the alarm system. Like, nope. Why are you taking the liability when the fire alarm goes off and your thing broke and now the fire, nobody knew. And then the building burnt down. Now you're no, why, why, why put yourself in the middle of that? Or, or the elevator line. I love that. Right. Right.

[00:47:45] Or the, um, the modems still still, still all this tech running on 56 K modems, right? That isn't a dial up, right? Like I'm just like, nah, man, just keep it on a copper line. It was designed to work on that technology for the 20, for the 20 or 25 or 30 bucks a month that the internet cable companies get like, don't even waste your time. They're like, no, I'm still interested. It's like, okay, well, Hey, the modern version of what you're talking about is not unlimited. Like, what do you mean?

[00:48:13] I was like, remember when you used to have to pay for text messages, if you didn't send them between 7 PM and 7 AM, and there was like bundles and like, there's only so many pages included in this. And like, if they go over, do you know how many pages per month they do? And they're like, no, I'm like, why are we having this conversation? They're like, we can find out. I was like, it's not worth it. Don't waste your time. I used to hate dealing with the fact stuff. Like it was, it was probably some of the worst and it was, it always killed projects because like people just have the expectation.

[00:48:42] And again, it's getting that talent to go. Another weird one for us too, I used to deal with, it was like powering the strikers for like old school, like door lock security. So it's like, and again, I was like, okay, it doesn't work. People can't leave the building. Like now you're kidnapping staff. Like, I don't want to be involved in any of this discussion. I don't want any of this liability. Like I remember like, I said no to an elevator before too. Like I was like, this is horrible. I want nothing to do with this. Like back in the day, we just get these products.

[00:49:10] You could just see like six months down the line, a year down the line, you're going to get a very crazy phone call from a lawyer and you're going to have to go and be like, yeah. It's like, well, why did you set up the alarm system? Yeah. I just don't. I got one for you, Mike. Ready? Ready? And if you do listen to these podcasts and I hope that you do, cause it's like, we don't just do them for fun. Although I love talking to people like Mike all the time. Yeah. Have you ever been at the auto parking lot, checkout kiosk in your car and like, it's

[00:49:40] broken. It's not working. You press the button. It's supposed to cost somebody, right? Press the help button. But that's broken, right? Because the same adapter that I told you not to put in for the fax machine, you put in for that unit and it broke. So then what it does, it just automatically opens. Yeah. So like if you ever get stuck at the parking meter more times than not high probability, more than 50% of the time, if you press the help button, it's just going to open. Like test my theory guys.

[00:50:08] See how many, just do it for fun and say like, do it 10 times. Right. And just say out of the 10 times, how many times did an actual person answer the help button on the, on the parking lot checkout? And I bet you it's going to be less than 50% of the time. I 100% believe you. I was, cause I definitely called before that. I've just been like, no one's here. And then boom, it opens up randomly. So I don't know if they, someone on the camera's watching and he just hit a button because I'm just doing this and I'm shaking my hands at God. I have no idea, but I, I, it's been a thing.

[00:50:37] I think I live in that building right now. Not now my old place would just, just never worked. No one ever picked up. They would just open. And so I think it's funny. Like, so, you know, if you think about like, and you talked to a lot of MSPs as well, like, can you think of what you would, would you discourage someone from getting in the middle of a, Hey, I'm just going to resell this. Is there anything that comes to the top of your mind today that you'd be like, that's probably not a good idea. Yeah. I'd say my biggest one that I, that I've had, and I've had this discussion with people

[00:51:07] and some people can do it cause they're really good. So like we have one customer that's really good and they can handle it is like any emergency services deal. Like that's my biggest thing where I hear that come up and I'm immediately like, like, like, what are you going to sell them? Like, are you selling them like a thing you used to buy them one time and they own it? It's like, is this the thing where you need to service it? Is this a thing where if it breaks, somebody dies or gets hurt? Like, what are you trying to do here? So that's one of the biggest things I'd discourage because the deals, they look so good on paper

[00:51:36] because these crazy 24 seven contracts with support. And then maybe I get a guy in there that I staff full time and I can charge five times this guy's salary every month. Like there are these crazy incentives to do it. But at the end of the day, it's like, I don't know a single person that does that. All right. And enjoyed it. So any kind of E911 services, I've been like, don't ever touch that. There's just no point we have to do it. Just like, don't like I said, if you want to do a clinic, do a clinic. Clinics are great. Right.

[00:52:04] Especially if it's like, if it's plastic surgery, it's even better. Like pick something like that. Go do those guys. They always got money. They're difficult to deal with, but they'll pay eventually. In most, most of the time, 50% of the time works every time is what I always say. But like, yeah, avoid that. Another thing I think actually I do is the copy printer business, just because it's so highly specific. And it's in that category. Same with like the ETAs, right? And everything else where it's just, there's just something about technology where it just breaks and no one knows why.

[00:52:34] It just doesn't go the way it's supposed to. And there's no one really knows why. And the people that are good at it in our industry are godlike. Right. So there's so many good people that I know that can do it. Right. The copier machine price has gone down to so low. Like the big copier machine, like the gigantic one that used to be like $1,500 a month, like $200 a month now. It's like not even worth. Like if you can't do volume, you shouldn't even, you don't even want to be in it. Yeah, for sure.

[00:53:04] Like the worst thing you want to do is be able to program the SMTP account for the copier machine. That keeps on breaking, by the way, every time you want to do scan the email. You ever notice that? Like all of a sudden, like it just stops working and you're like, what happened? I don't get it. Why? And no one knows why. That's the thing. There's no, and you can't replicate it. Like it's just, it's wild. Right. So I've just told partners that are just like, yeah, they're just like, this machine is just cursed. Like it enters the building. So bad who gets into it. And then just the whole thing doesn't work forever. It's just a curse. And then it's like literally just like a back and forth in that you get, you just get to

[00:53:34] the point where you give up and you put a Gmail account on it just to see if it'll happen. Yeah. Just leave it. Just leave it. That's good. We don't have any questions. May not fit your HIPAA compliance requirement, but shit or shit, the email will go out of the copier. For sure. I'd say probably the last thing I have is highly niche, crazy vendors. Like highly niche. Like the guy that needs to have this one IBM machine, this blade from 1996 that only works with this particular setup is the niche stuff. Right.

[00:54:03] Cause again, it's big money up front, but you can't, you can't manage service it right ever. Cause it's really dependent on the hardware that you have and you can't just go and get another server. No, no, no. It has to be this specific type of thing. So like, like if you ever heard of an AIX, it's an operating system runs on gear. If you've never heard, like, it's not running Linux. It's not running Windows. It's its own operating system from like, God knows when back in the eighties.

[00:54:27] By the way, every big financial system that you've never heard of before runs on COBOL programming. Yeah. I've heard of that before. And it's on like AS 400 machines that again, another IBM creation that you've never heard of before. And like, this is what the entire system runs off of. And you're like, how? And it's like, I promise you that's what it is. Yeah. Cause I remember that, especially when, um, I can't remember this thing with some of the financial company you told me in finance where it's like, there are these,

[00:54:55] these spreadsheets with macros running on it with like Excel, like from the nineties that they ever stopped doing their thing. Like everything would collapse in a week. It's just clearly these transactions. And it's just like, so all they've done is they've layered all the new stuff. Like the app on your phone is like 10 layers up from like the machine at the bottom. That's still running. Right. Yeah. From the hamster wheel powering the machine. And then just, that's it. Right. It's true. It's so true.

[00:55:24] And like every bank runs on this. Every bank runs in this. They all need it. They're like, this, this clear, this cruise a transaction. At the end of the day, we don't, no one knows how it works. It's, it's alive. It's going. Sometimes it makes weird noises at night. We think it's haunted, but the numbers keep crunching. But I'll tell you what, and you probably will laugh at me. Cause I have a buddy of mine. I went to college with, he works for a company that, you know, sells the trading platform to the financial people that you would go to do your financial planning with. Right.

[00:55:53] And when they sign up a new group of traders or a new banking partner, they got to wait for like a year. And I'm like a year after you sign your contract before, like you can turn it on. They're like, yeah. I was like, why does it take so long? I'm curious. They're like, oh, we need to hire like Rambo to come in and code the interface in COBOL between the new stuff and the, the, the old stuff. And like, there's only so many people out there that actually know how to program in this language.

[00:56:21] So if you can learn how to do this, you'll get paid stupid money. Stupid money. So like you, you're literally, you're almost like a sage. You're like a soothsayer, like from the old times you come in, does this guy wear like a wizard robe and some, some gear? I'm telling you got people that would have been long retired are getting paid stupid money every year because there's just not enough people that know how to program in this ancient language. Hey George, listen, the Microsoft stuff ever fails for me. I know what I'm going to go do now.

[00:56:50] I'm going to learn how to code in COBOL. You're going to be, you'll make bank. I barely know any, any C++ when I was learning in college. I'll just go right back into it now. We'll just go right to COBOL. They say Latin is a dead language. No COBOL is, but they're still using it. They're still using it. Somebody's doing something with it. I love that. That's so funny. Dude, we could do this for another hour, but I know we're at the top of the hour here. Where do people find how to get ahold of you, how to get ahold of SureWeb, learn more about

[00:57:20] like what you guys can do for them and all that jazz. Sure. So for SureWeb, two things. SureWeb.com. Just go there. Our entire webpage is all dedicated to partner programming. It's everything you see right away. So go there, take a look. Look at some resources, some links. Connect me on LinkedIn. It's Michael Eastlater slash for our LinkedIn ID. You can find me on there. Great place to reach out. And if you're looking for some good content, go to our YouTube page. We're just starting to kick up on it. Again, we've worked out a lot lately.

[00:57:50] We're uploading all of our stuff. So our SMEs for all of our different subjects, like our CoPilot guy, which is Jermaine. We have our cybersecurity guy, which is Roddy. We got Jason, who's our Azure guy. All these folks, we're putting all their stuff up on there. Download and take a look. And if you ever want to reach out, reach out. I'd love to talk to you and see if we can help you with your Microsoft practice, right? That's what we do. We're the Microsoft guys. We didn't even get into CoPilot. I'd probably do a whole nother conversation on that. And like, is it worth it? But I digress. They're definitely marketing the hell out of it. But is it worth it?

[00:58:20] Yeah. Answer is, it depends. Mike, I'm going to remind you about the story you said came up to mind. You better. Like, I'm going to come back for that one. I'll tell you. Like I said, worst case, we'll talk about an IT Nation. Worst case scenario, November. Hopefully earlier, though. I'm sure it will be earlier. Perfect. For everyone else, this is actually a pretty entertaining episode. But you'll find it at mspinitiative.com under sessions.

[00:58:49] And that'll link you to the audio video. You do whatever you like. Download forward, share, subscribe. You know, all that good stuff. You know what to do. Follow Michael Slater. I do. I know he follows me because apparently my Instagram feed is interesting to follow at times. But I digress. He knew I was going to be at the Super Bowl. That was smart. No shocker. If you follow me at all, you know what I do outside of the MSP IT land. I'm a sports fan of Philadelphia teams, but mostly the Eagles. I digress. Thank you for watching this episode. Mike, catch you on the flip side.

[00:59:19] Everyone else, catch you on the next episode. See you later, guys. See you later.