MSP Initiative Live with Juan Fernandez from MSP-aas

[00:00:00] Wow, September already. September 3rd edition of the MSP Initiative, MSP Talk Podcast. Everybody's back to school. This is it. This is the September, October, November gauntlet. This is what everybody complains about every year, although I feel like this year is slightly different than past years for whatever reason. But it is one of the busiest times of the year in the MSP sandbox, and we have plenty of stuff to throw on the map too. So I'm going to get some

[00:00:27] housekeeping out of the way. And then I'm going to use every last second that I think we can use on today's podcast because I've got to return guests to the pod. It's been a while. We can catch up and see what's going on. So MSPinitiative.com, that's where this session, every previous session since, I don't know, March of 2020, are posted. YouTube, podcatchers, like, subscribe, download, share, do all that good stuff. The Channel Sports Tour is live for 2026. We're going to Australia

[00:00:57] for a game. We're going to London for a game. The rest of our games are domestically here in the US. Check it all out. Right now, you can put yourself on a wait list. Again, if we approve you, absolutely no cost for the game ticket, tailgate, hang out with MSP people at an NFL game, hopefully in your backyard. We're all over the place. I think there's like 12 games on the list. So go check it out. Our last community block party for the year is in Sydney at Kaseya Connect APAC. So looking forward

[00:01:25] to that. Actually doing a little bit of last minute housekeeping while we're down there for the NFL game next week in Melbourne. So Kaseya Connect APAC is in Sydney. It's in November. This was a really good event last year. It was well over a thousand people. I suspect it's going to be the case this year as well. So if you're headed there or you're just in the area and you're an MSP, it's our final community block party for the year for you. And we hope you join us.

[00:01:54] All that information, again, mspinitiative.com. Housekeeping is out of the way. I bring back hopefully a familiar name if you've been following the pod, Juan Fernandez, who I feel has changed seats since we last had him on. It's been a minute by a minute over a year. So there's been a lot of change. So Juan, just in case somebody who is listening to this doesn't know who you are,

[00:02:24] maybe like a quick background on yourself. And then let's talk about what's changed since, I don't know, almost a year ago. Yeah. And again, thanks, George, for having me. It's always a pleasure, man, to be on the show. And lots changed. I think not just for me, I think the industry as a whole. And I love to talk about that all the time. But for me, I've been in the MSP industry for a long time at this point.

[00:02:48] We always wax lyrical about building our MSPs from our younger years there, George. And I've had the great honor of building an MSP and taking it to zero to 20 million in about six years. And it popped out and built a number of amazing things. And wrote the MSP owner's handbook and invested in a number of things in a number of companies and brought a company called Hackware out. Had a beautiful stint there and also brought another

[00:03:15] fun company to bring out to revolutionize the industry with Super Ops. And I think that was the last time I was on the show was with Super Ops. And so then decided it's time I got to go help the MSP community a little bit more and help us move to the future and create that bridge toward the future. And we acquired a company called KnockDock and have tooled it out now to create a whole ecosystem

[00:03:39] of opportunities for our MSPs to be successful. And so we're a KnockSock service desk, all US-based, white label, proud to now be inside of the PAX 8 marketplace, which again, in the time that I acquired it to the time that we are now is very wild to have formed all the partnerships that we have to be able to deliver that success. But lots of great partners, lots of great people and really enjoying,

[00:04:05] you know, and currently watching a lot of the MSPs that are part of our program be successful. So it's a lot, a lot of change, man. That was like a warp speed summary. That's, you're going to rewind and catch all that, but that was a lot. Okay. So I'm going to start here because I think this, you know, I want to get like a foundation point to where we can go next. So as a guy who's done it, right? Like the hard way, right? You had a

[00:04:32] couple of, you know, bullets that didn't, you know, shoot the right direction. You, you relaunched a couple of times, right? You, you got to a success point, you had a successful exit, which $20 million MSP even today on today's standard is super successful compared to the average MSP size. I digress. So it feels like, um, I asked every person who comes on the pod, similar questioning. So if you listen to

[00:04:59] this over and over again, I'm trying to give you different perspectives because that's what this is about. It feels like AI is the new, um, billboard. I mean, it's more than seems. It surely is. If you just follow the marketing knowledge, um, snake oil or real, like what, where, where, what is your perspective on what that means to the person who is running IT services at work today?

[00:05:28] Look, I don't know that AI is getting us anywhere that we couldn't have already got. And in terms of where we've been in the past, right? Automation's always been a thing that we've had access to it's whether or not we had it as accessible, right? I think AI now bringing it to the forefront is just bringing this rapid, you know, opportunity to people that didn't have access to the technology. So it seems like this is a new thing, but would I say that it's snake oil or the savior? I would,

[00:05:57] I, you know, I'm betting on, on something very different, right? Everyone asks me, why did you buy a human-based company in an AI era? And I'm like, because the industry isn't ready for AI in the way that everyone believes they are. Right. And I, I, I harken back to listening. You know, I love visiting my parents often or listening to the conversations they have and listening to people and the way they interact and loving to hear the fact that everyone I hear when they're talking

[00:06:22] to just a basic IVR screaming agent on the phone. So I don't really believe that AI is the answer right now. I think it's an answer for certain things, but I don't know that it's going to really fundamentally change everything that, I mean, cause we could have been doing this already. This is nothing new, right? Like there's really nothing here that we're doing. That's exponentially

[00:06:48] different than we could have done through scripting and automation previously. So, I mean, it's just making it easier for people that don't know what they're doing to do something. And so it sounds amazing. Right. And it's like, for those that know how to do it, this isn't new for those that don't know how to do it. It's amazingly new. And so that's why you're seeing a lot of the consumers that didn't know how to automate things in their business run to these moments by

[00:07:15] asking questions that they don't know answers to and getting an output. Right. And then they're like, Oh, I really want to do this thing because it made this thing easier. And it's like, so for me, I don't know. I I'm still on the backside of, I'm going to wait for the industry to be truly ready. And we have provable, scalable models that actually work at that point. Then I'll start to invest in that. But right now still pause. It's interesting that example. So my father's a

[00:07:45] retired carpenter, union carpenter, cabinet maker, and the amount of time this guy spends even retired and Home Depot and Lowe's is amazing. But that being said, so I'm at the house. And he called Home Depot to try and get to the tool department to see how much it would cost to rent a piece of equipment because somebody had called him about something. And I watched him like call the Home

[00:08:11] Depot number for the one down the street, go through the AI answering version of everything, take 20 minutes to finally get to a human being only to be transferred to the person who's been sitting at that tool rental counter the whole time. And then finally get the answer. Like a year ago, he could just call directly to that number, get the answer in five minutes and be off the phone.

[00:08:34] This guy took almost half hour. It's not good. No, it's not. And that's where, you know, even when I think about, you know, us as a people, right? Like, you know, let's look at all this AI outreach on social media right now, right? How many of us have now trained our minds to see this, you know, Hey, you know what you're doing with XYZ is such amazing. And, you know, this, that, and the other. And I would love to contact you. This is not a short pitch. And I can't tell you how many times I replied with

[00:09:04] I'm surprised you let AI burn your reputation before you said a word. Hmm. And I say this all the time, you know, the challenge that I have with AI right now is that we should be getting closer to the customer instead of automating our customer away. This moment is not about separating you from that interaction. It's about getting closer for us. And that's where, that's where I'm placing my dollar and my bet, George.

[00:09:31] Interesting. So let me, and everybody's going to roll their eyes if they follow the podcast, right? We've seen the second and third generation of the drive-thru order taker, by the way, McDonald's is the most recent example of that. They're trying again after a couple of false starts. Still think Chick-fil-A is the king of the order taker drive-thru. I mean, they have human beings tablets and they move cars through there so fast. I can't even, I would love everybody to get to that level of

[00:09:55] efficiency, but I digress. It feels like we lost track of the customer service slash relationship part of why this industry got to the point that it did to your, you know, feeding off of your thought here. If you are using this new technology so that you can spend more face time with your customer,

[00:10:19] awesome. But to your point, if I am losing interaction points with my customer and it's harder and it's expanding the touch points in between the set period of time, you know, I feel like it's just making it more commoditized than everybody said that it was. Oh, you said a word that I really, I get on a whole nother level about, right? Like commoditization is a choice,

[00:10:45] right? Like you choose to be a value, you choose not to, right? And I would say that at the end of the day, during the pandemic, I think that we saw a lot of folks believe that this was the time where we were going to separate from being in person, separate from being in communication with each other. And we started to build models around that. And that is what's flooding in here and making it

[00:11:09] seem like we made a lot of investments in this remote opportunity to get in touch with customers. And you're starting to still see that backflow of it. To be honest with you, I believe the future is where we are good. It's the human connection. To your point, the reason why you're going to find somebody, I mean, sitting out there and I'm in Texas, man. So it's hot. I feel for these people,

[00:11:34] bro, that are out there standing in those in the heat at 115 with 80% humidity, man, I feel bad for those people. But, you know, I even tried to tip a little there, you know what I mean? Because I feel bad, but I do appreciate the fact that they've taken a human approach to solve a software problem, which is customer success. You can't solve for customer success with software, right? There's no

[00:11:58] way to automate happiness. It's an emotion that's felt, right? Like, it's just how it is. And I feel like a lot of people are like, you know what? I don't have an ability to make that happen. So they step away from it and start implementing what everybody else is doing. What is everyone else doing? Okay, well, that just makes it okay that we are doing this because everyone else is doing it. And that's why we're just going the opposite direction. We're going toward putting people out the line,

[00:12:27] to answer the phones, human answering, conversations, human emotion, connection. That's where we're headed. Interesting. So I can't, you know, like we are a sub industry, managed services, IT services, small, medium business, IT things, right? We're underneath of the big guys, right? The Microsofts and the Googles and the Apples and all those guys. And I feel like everything

[00:12:56] comes downstream in a lot of cases, right? Like the big guys do something, we adopt it. Big guys do something, we adopt it. Big guys try and come downstream, doesn't work. Then they go back up, we try and fix it. I feel like as I'm watching the newswire on all of the big guys from, we're laying off a ton of people, we're rehiring a bunch of people, we burned through our budget in one quarter for the entire year. We're trying to figure out how to do it cheaper. It's, you know, all over the place.

[00:13:25] We're building stuff and then having to rebuild it because it changed. And three months later, we had to redo it again. Like, I feel like it, the plane is being rebuilt as it's in the air. And if it's happening at the level where these guys have so much money, we're never going to see it, like money, right? Millions and millions. Why do you suspect? Why do you think people are going to be successful? Or what are people telling you, Juan, that they think they're going to be successful at

[00:13:54] our level that the big guys are still trying to figure out? You know, and I don't know that we are. I mean, I think that they're making pretty white swings. And we see this, we've seen this over the history of time, right? Like, just because they get information from, you know, folks to make decisions, we also get to react to those decisions in an opposite way. And again, that's, I look at

[00:14:20] that. A lot of my learning, a lot of development that I create is learning from other people's failures and also how I felt about things in my leadership journey, right? Like I realized there are certain things you shouldn't do. Separating yourself from your customers, probably the one kiss of death that I've always noticed. As soon as you get further and further away, then you're not a value to them anymore. It's just like any human relationship. The longer we wane between time, the less of a friend we are, right? And that's just an assumption, right? So

[00:14:49] why would it be any different in business, right? You should stay close, but I don't know. I look at a lot of those businesses that are making those decisions and I, you know, hey, you must have a lot of good information and hey, more power to you can make those decisions. We have to be very delicate down here at our level to make sure that we have sustainability. Otherwise, this industry is just going to fold up and go a different direction. And you're starting to see a lot of that design

[00:15:14] coming down into our industry to suffice for those moments to say, well, if you're not going to do it, then we are right. And we're going to do it with automation and we're going to do it differently than you guys did it because obviously whatever you did didn't work. And that's not true. It's not that it didn't work. It's just that we didn't scale it in the same way, right? And that's where I think there's a lot of interesting interlaces between the big and the small, but we're just moving differently. And it's always that way.

[00:15:45] Hmm. What do you say to the people that have convinced themselves that they can vibe code their way out of half their vendors that they're working with? Oh, George, you know what I say about this, man. And I say it all the time. I say this to anybody that comes past my desk. I'm two people, right? First and foremost, the chief encouragement officer. I want to see everybody be successful. Find the best version of yourself and become it,

[00:16:15] whether it's your business, your personal, all the things. And then I'm the bad news broker. And in those two cases, a lot of software companies that come to me for investment or come by my desk for, you know, what are my thoughts? I always ask who the hell asked you to build that? And if you can't tell me who asked you to build that, then I have a pretty material response to it is why are you spending time building somebody nothing nobody asked you to build? Because if you're

[00:16:43] building it for yourself, that's one thing. But assuming that somebody else is going to want it just because you do is very, very dangerous. Because that's a good idea. That's not a business plan. That's not a scalable business repeatable process for, you know, the industry and a productized roadmap of success like you're not. That's not what that is. And so I see a lot of people wasting time.

[00:17:10] And to be honest, that's OK. You can. That's your choice. That's your priority. That's your business. Do what you want. But don't get frustrated when it doesn't work. Right. And that's where I've seen this play out. As long as we've been in the IT industry, everyone's been trying to figure out how to build an RMM or a PSA and do it cheaper and do it better and do it faster. And, oh, I'm going to build this tool and I'm going to do that. Really? Did any of

[00:17:36] those make it? No. Why? Because they don't understand like how software sales work. Like you have to build stuff that people actually want. I know you think you want it. But that doesn't necessarily mean anyone else wants it. And so, again, we face the same challenge, right? Like MSP as a service, like who in the hell would think that MSPs would subscribe to the same services they deliver?

[00:18:03] Why do they do it? What is the mechanics behind why make the choice? You have to understand why they would do it in order to be able to take it to market and to be understanding why they would do is because it has to be far better than what they could do. Right. And I think that when you think about that, you know, just I watched a lot of people spend a lot of time on vibe coded software recently. And I can tell you how many of them over the last year has spent a lot of money and time

[00:18:28] and it's got them absolutely nowhere. And that's, it's okay. That's a learning lesson. But I would say, understand where you're going and really think about the long-term strategy around what it is you're trying to build and design, like, you know, tokenization and toll gating and all these other things. No one saw that coming because nobody was paying attention to that. They were

[00:18:54] just enamored with, they could do a thing and I could tell it to do a thing and it does a thing. So I'm going to do more things, but I don't have the long-term ratification of like building a scalable, repeatable model that somebody is going to buy. And now all of a sudden they've been dealt the kiss of death and they're like, oh, well shit, that was a lot of time, money and effort spent on nothing. That's a hard conversation to have with your wife at the end of the day or your significant

[00:19:20] other. Right. Like, so I don't know. I just say, be cautious. Um, I think everybody's gotten to a point where they probably built something that hasn't worked really quickly, which I appreciate the industry succeeded really quickly and failing so that we can move on to what we actually should be doing. Yeah. The, I, I don't, you know, you had mentioned something there that I want to spend two seconds on like the toll gating part. I don't think people understand maybe what

[00:19:46] that means. Like up until now, a lot of the incumbents and, you know, staple vendors in the space didn't charge to use their API. Right. Like they just, here's how to go do it. Here's how to connect. Here's documentation. Godspeed. Right. Um, that was generally the thought and like, didn't cost you anything to use an API, but you connect your AI tool to it and you start to burn

[00:20:16] tokens with your AI vendor of choice. But now the guy on the other side might start charging you for their use of the, of the, of the feature. And now all of a sudden it's like, it's like Visa, MasterCard, American express times two, right? Everybody's got their hand in there. Everybody's got a model now that's starting to come out with where they're saying, Hey, our APIs and the rate limiting and all this is going to come out soon. Like

[00:20:43] there's no free access to any data anymore. Right. Like that's where everybody got it wrong. It was like, Oh man, this is just, no one's paying attention. I can just get my fingers in all these data sets and do things. And it's like, wait for it. Here it comes. And they let you too. They let you for a little while. It's a, until it was like, we call that in cybersecurity,

[00:21:07] kind of a honeypot, right? Like he reset you up. Oops. And now we know that you all want it. And guess what? You just helped them quantify where their next revenue stream is going to come from, because now you spend a bunch of time building a product that requires them and they know it. So yeah, it's a interesting world we live in today, George. Yeah. I don't think people realize that's around the corner. If it is, it'll be,

[00:21:35] won't be free. It'll be a shock to the system. I'm sure. No. And I think if we're paying attention, right, you've already seen some of the major players in our space mentioned that they're going to do this. Right. And so, you know, building that vibe coded platform unified situation might cost more than you think in the future.

[00:22:00] Yeah, I think so. More like, I think it's very likely so. Okay. Flipping around the other side. So a lot's been said about, hey, you know, what does the MSP industry look like in 2030? Right. Are we all still here? Is this thing going away? You know, there's a lot of forces going on, right? You got all the AI stuff. You got still the consolidation from the outside money guys.

[00:22:29] Right. The PEBC guys. You have people thinking that, you know, hey, I don't need any outside help. I can fumble my way to an answer. Right. And, you know, only call somebody when, you know, my plumbing doesn't work. So like all of that, there's various themes there, but they all seem to be, I don't know, colliding into each other. I'll throw one more in there. Just the industry

[00:22:55] overlap, right? Like the verticalization overlap between the copier guys and the phone guys and the surveillance guys and the cabling guys and the IT guys all now kind of in a lane together on the highway. So I don't know. There's been a lot of speculation on, you know, where this all goes and whether this is still something that looks similar to what it is now or not. And, you know, I think 2030 is not too far away. We'll be in 2027 here in no time. It's only like three and a half years from

[00:23:24] now. What's your best guess? You know, I started talking about this back in 2025, man. I was talking about what do you do and what you do isn't what you do anymore. You won't be doing what we're doing today. I can tell you that right now. And I feel like a lot of folks here, um, and not to say that it won't still be here. I mean, you still see papers arrive, get thrown to your door every once in a

[00:23:50] while. There's still things called records floating around, you know, there's still laser discs still here. There's eight tracks even still around, right? Like, let's just go back. Like I have a lot of gas engine cars, right? Like that sounds weird to even say, like, you know, I don't have a horse and buggy, but technology continues to evolve quickly. And I think that if you're assuming and anybody out

[00:24:15] there that's assuming they're going to be doing the same thing they're doing today, well, you can assume that's going to happen, but that's materialistically not going to be the need of the customer in a very near term future, right? Like I've been talking about business operations as a service for a long time, you know? And when you think about what do businesses of the future need, again, is it whether or not our industry is still around is a very different question than

[00:24:40] what is the need of the consumer in the future? That question is when we should be thinking about how we answer, like, what is it that we do from a technology enablement standpoint to serve the customer of the future is really where the pin should be placed. It's not whether or not I'm going to be here or not. Who knows? I could drop tomorrow. That's, you know, it could happen, right? But it's just, did I set my company up to serve the future consumer is really where they, I would say

[00:25:09] that everyone needs to start placing their bets. And, you know, if AI consulting is a big part of your customer base, then I think that you should start thinking about automation engineers and tooling toward, you know, these opportunities and thinking about things that way. We're just going back to another era of break fix, right? It's like, Hey, I'm going to help you implement these, you know, automations. And if they break, I'll fix them for you. But like, we don't have a model

[00:25:34] that's easy to wave. Like we have in the past of saying, I have a dedicated tool set to do a thing for you. Now I have to go and craft this again. We're entering that, that engineer architect era again for a next generation of technology. And that's where MSP should start placing their bets on. And again, you can't even understand what it is your customer needs if you don't freaking talk to them. Right? Like I wrote a book called MSP owner's handbook called QBR edition.

[00:26:03] It was about getting to know the customer. And the reason why I wrote that book was because that was what made it grow because we were listening to the people tell us where to go next. Yeah. And that's the thing is that we're asking questions of, are we going to survive? A lot of people are asking that because they don't have any communication with their customer on the needs of the industry or the businesses that they serve. So they're assuming we're just going to keep feeding them this thing and they're going to keep eating it. No, that's not true.

[00:26:33] That's not true at all. Yeah. You don't know again, back to, what did I say a minute ago? Who asked you to build this? Well, shit, if you're not talking to your customer, then you don't know what you need to be doing to tool your business to their success and your success. So if, and what anybody that gets out of this is go talk to your freaking customers, understand where their businesses are at, dive deep, get close, and then help that tailor the

[00:27:02] direct trajectory of where you go next. Like you're not going to sit here and do the same thing, assuring you of that. You're not going to get them to keep buying the same things. They're going to move on if they already aren't right. We all know that. A couple of podcasts ago, the idea, the new role that didn't exist before 2026, which is forward development engineer. Have you heard this term FDE? Yeah.

[00:27:31] This is where the AI companies like directly, the AI companies hire somebody to go into your business, figure out what you do and basically download your IP into their platform and then roll out. Like they took it. Yeah. That, I mean, it sounds very similar to kind of what you're saying, right? Like as an MSP,

[00:27:57] we're there to help. I don't think we're there to take, but they're there to take. Like the people, I don't know if people understand what that actually means. Yeah. I would say that there's a lot of new roles for the future. And I would say that a lot of what we're going to land up doing again is going back into, you know, architecting this new world. And again, for a lot of folks that don't want to do that, they're going to push back

[00:28:25] on that approach. They're going to say, okay, well, I'm going to wait for a tool to show up so that I can just click a button. I, you know, I like the easy buttons. I don't like the other buttons that you have to do things. I have, I like the ones that I can just click. Right. Yeah. I mean, back as a kid, when we first started playing games, like none of us took time to learn how to play the game. We just button smashed. Right. That's all we did until we learned there was an up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, AB start. Right. Like, and you knew now I know a code to do a

[00:28:55] thing. Right. And that's where it's the same thing now. Right. We're just button smashing and asking questions and like getting wrong answers and like, okay, ask another question. It's just, there's no architecture to it. And I think that to your point, this is where we need to try and fail and fail fast and iterate around those moments. And we have some relationships internally at MSP as a service. We have a few folks that are AI architects and engineer firms that that that's all they do. And they go in

[00:29:24] and do these assessments and I'm watching them as they go do this to see. And man, it's so much, very much the same as where we started as an industry. It's exactly the same. Nobody knows what they want. They just want technology to do a thing. And it's almost like you're bringing a PC in for the first time and setting it up and you got to teach them how to type in their run commands to start applications. Like it's so far back, but so far forward. Right. It's like, wow, what a trip to watch.

[00:29:53] And I think that for those of us that came in right in the middle, that weren't part of the developer or creator era of the other architecture engineering eras of managed services, the 1.0, the 2.0, it's going to be hard for the four to get to the five, which I believe is where you're going to see this new emergence of new entrepreneurs. And again, that's why when we created MSP as a service, I talked about recently in the entrepreneurial ecosystem is that they don't want to do any of

[00:30:23] this noise. They just want to do development and architecture and in developing the new world, which is to your point, these new titles that are coming in here. They don't want to do nothing that we did before. But they got to live inside the business, whether it's for their own benefit or the end customer who they're taking from's benefit. In order to know what to build, you need to know

[00:30:49] how the business runs to figure out where to plug in now. Yeah. And that's where I think that we actually have a leg up in terms of for those that took time to build out an ideal client profile and understand that industry type. That's where the legs up are going to be right now. For those that just said, eh, I don't really care. I don't care about an industry type and I don't really need to know Dentrix for dentists. And I don't need to know, you know, all these softwares for these different

[00:31:18] industry types. I don't need to know that. I don't need a special, I don't need to know a QuickBooks for accountants. Like I don't need to know any of that. I'm just going to serve them and just do this little piece. That's who's struggling right now, right? Like they're struggling to get closer to that customer because they didn't spend the time to dive in deep with that ICP. So they don't know the business. So you've got this huge gap of folks that are trying to now after years of serving them say, Hey, so what is it that you do?

[00:31:47] Like, tell me about your business. And they're like, really? Like you've been here for how long and you don't know. So there's a little egg on the face. It's kind of like when we had to start saying that, you know, definition based backups weren't good enough anymore. It was like, Oh, well, I thought you were doing that for us. And it's like, well, no, we weren't. Yep. I hear you. The perception versus the reality, right? We're

[00:32:13] constantly fighting that, that line. To your point, I think you've made a couple of times now. I think everybody assumed that what's available today is what we've seen in the movies. And, you know, like the Star Trek computer. I don't, I don't think that that's quite exactly what's in front of us. And, and at what costs, right? And I think, I think, you know, listen,

[00:32:37] at the end of the day, I hope everybody who we're talking about here are in business for profit, right? And at the, you know, at some point, at least I hope to do your taxes. You got to figure out where you ended up at the end of the year, right? I mean, you, I guess you could look at the bank account, but I mean, you know, what did we spend and what do we make? And like, I, I hate to write blank checks. Well, I hate to actually not know, like, I don't, I don't mind spending money

[00:33:06] to experiment, but there's gotta be an end to the, uh, end to the means, right? It means to an end. Like, I can't have that checkbook be burning forever with no end in sight. Yeah. And that's where I think, you know, it takes some time. You know, I have this conversation up. It's like, you know, you know, a lot of what we built is a profit first methodology, right? And for many MSPs, the first time they see our operational model and our pricing and the way that we deliver

[00:33:35] it. And they look at it and they say, hold on a second. Like the second that I do that, I make 50% margin. And I'm like, exactly. And I already know they haven't seen that before because generally speaking, it's pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, tool, tool, tool, tool, tool, tool, contract, contract, contract, first dollar. One year later, 50 cents of profitability, right? Like no one has ever

[00:34:01] seen profitability day one. Like you can't just turn it on and it just makes money. And this is the first time that that's happened. And I would say that to your point, that's really what customers are looking for in every business out there these days. Everyone's looking for a way. And no one says that. I teach that class, you know, what your customers aren't telling you. Nobody ever tells you at the end of the day that I don't give a shit about any of this.

[00:34:27] All I want to do is make money. They don't say that. There's very rare people that say that. Very rare people will say that. And I will say when they, I do meet folks that say that to me, I'm like, then you just saw it. And I'm, here's your pen right here. Congratulations. And they're like, give it to me. And I'm going to sign right now. And I'm like, congratulations. You'll make money

[00:34:50] tomorrow. Right. And that's where it takes so long right now. And we don't have time and no business really out there. And that's why they're looking for these magic wands to wave, to say, poof, make me some money. Right. Like, and that's not what's happening. You have to have a articulate design that does that for the customer. If that's what their success is, is money, which we

[00:35:14] need to survive, grow and scale our businesses. Then why aren't we taking time to design those things for our customer bases right now? Prove it that it works and then they'll buy it. It's super simple, right? Like, and that's where I even tell people, I say, you know, everything I talk about, I'm actually doing in front of everybody as it's happening. I'm literally doing what I just said for the industry.

[00:35:42] I've created a model, ran some MSPs through it, proved that it prints money and it delivers success. And that's exactly why people are buying it. I'm not trying to cast stones. I'm just showing you're not, you're not calling that tokens. No, I could tokenize it. I guess I should start thinking about that, but that's not the part. The whole point is, is that we built this specifically for our partner's

[00:36:08] success and their profitability as day one. And that's where I think that when we start thinking different in terms of architecture of approaches to our customers, if we just spent a little bit of time perfecting one thing, you'd be exponentially successful. It just, you just have to be good at something. This jack of all trades, masters of none. I've always said, just change it, become a master

[00:36:33] of some, please just be good at something. And you will be so much more happy at it, right? Like. I like that master of some. I like that. That's a great line. I've never heard that before. I don't know why I took this one. Totally Lance, by the way, I follow exactly what you're going for there. I'm going to throw some themes out here that I got to imagine is the stuff that you're hearing on the

[00:37:01] other end of your calls that your company, MSP as a service. So you're not the first company in the sandbox to play this outside service desk knock, um, as a service and all the other stuff. Like I'm, I'm not giving it justice. I'm just talking general generally here. Like many have come before you. Absolutely. And I've seen a hybrided model where some people are in the U S some people are out. I've

[00:37:28] seen all out. I've seen all out in different parts of the world. Um, I don't know, uh, varying success, probably more, not successful than successful in my opinion, but what's different here, or is this just the same thing, uh, in, you know, all over again? I, you know, I think that some, there's several different pieces and parts that make it work, right? Number one is all U S

[00:37:58] based tenure, you know, background check, you know, all W two hall, no near shore, no far shore, no funny stuff, right? Like U S based, you know, tier zero to done model where we actually work a ticket to close. Like we're very different when we think about how we approach things. Like we're all IT operated. We're probably the only one that I know of that CIS aligned across our entire

[00:38:24] organization. And we work with our partners that we are to align them to the CIS controls and make sure that we are adhering as a service model to the CIS controls, which that becomes a white label transaction that MSPs can take as a point of presence to their customer. And that you couldn't do that before where you can inherit our DNA and actually take it to your customer. And then not only can you

[00:38:48] take us to your customer from a contextual standpoint, but you can grab our sales team and we'll even come in with you as you, as a white label support team and service team, you know? And so we just decided to deeply partner and actually be part of the success of our customer than actually trying to just say that, right? Hey, I'm going to help you do something cheaper. Everybody in the world knows that

[00:39:15] everybody struggles with anything other than native English, right? Like it's just the temperament of the world. We're tired of it. I'm not saying that that's everyone else saying that, right? Like my customers from a security perspective, the United States government is trying to come back home. We're trying to move everything onto the U S shores for our perspective. So cybersecurity, like that you need U S based labor, you know, we work with the FBI often. And, you know, a lot of the

[00:39:43] reasons why they even entertain a conversation with us is because of the way we're tooled. Right. And, and that's where I think that at the end of the day, when we think about what matters and what's different is that we're just doing what everybody wished somebody would have done in the past. And I hear this all the time because they're like, dude, this sounds a lot like what we were promised somewhere else. And I'm like, I know I heard the same story.

[00:40:07] We just did it. Right. Like that's all there is to it. We just did what everybody's been asking for just synergetically to what I've been saying, who asked you to build it? The whole freaking industry asked you to build it. Y'all just chose not to do it. And so he did. I saw, I saw that billboard. I saw that ad. I bought that ad. I did. I swiped that card. Hey, I'm not going to name any names. I'm not going to cast any stones. I'm just going to say

[00:40:36] that during the time that it was taking place, decisions were made that were in benefit of the organization, not the partner. And that's just where we decided as a company, this was going to be our model. And this is how we were going to take it. And we were going to support us labor and build the ecosystem that MSPs needed and that they wanted. That's it. So me chastising and everything

[00:41:04] I'm talking shit that I don't know what I'm saying. I'm literally doing what everyone asked to, who asked me to build this? Everybody asked, just not me directly. I just am responding with a solution to the problem based on everybody's inputs. And that's why it's growing as fast as it is. And everybody said. Interesting. I feel like a lot of people tried everybody that was available.

[00:41:29] Sure. It didn't work out in a lot of cases. They moved on. Fast forward, the 2026 version of this is eliminate the human being from the front lines with the customer. And you have actually turned around and gone the complete opposite way on the highway. And I'll continue to do that, right? Like I, my, I will continue to prove it. It's every movie that's ever been, I mean,

[00:41:54] we've watched how many of the amazing movies with, you know, humans versus robots, right? There's always the resistance. The humans are always the minority and somehow they, they emerge victoriously. And in some cases they may even, you know, become, you know, artificially, you know, interlaced between the two, but the human always seems to win. Right. And that's where

[00:42:18] I'm just playing out the modern day movie, if you will, for our industry showing that there is a human versus AI war. And the humans want human interaction. They don't want artificial interactions. They like human interaction. Some of the great companies that are out there have kept this line

[00:42:45] and we're going to be one of them. I don't know that we're going to be one of the greats, but I am going to be staking our flag here saying it's a human first approach. AI last. I'm following you. And I subscribe back to the, Hey, I I'm using it like a normal person consuming services for myself. Right. And you know, if the idea, if the countering argument, I've heard this one, let me, let me know if you've heard it's like, well, the human being that I had doing that job

[00:43:14] before wasn't great. And so if the bar was really low, I can only go up from here. It didn't turn out to be true. In my opinion, there is a lower bar. All right. So let's go back here. That's that's that statement at chaps my ass just a little bit. Right. Because here's the thing about the human that isn't great is also led by a leader that likely

[00:43:39] isn't great. Right. And that leader allows that human to be less than great. Right. That's a leadership thing for me. And that's where, again, I'll not casting any stones, but we always assume that you should hire people smarter than you so that they could do a thing. And hopefully you're going to find success off their back. You know, the beauty of leadership is when you create a process that

[00:44:05] empowers the people that creates a great company and that in turn creates a great culture, which creates a scalable opportunity. That's what I found. Now, not a lot of people know that it takes a lot of building to understand that you need to be a good leader and challenge your team to be better. And that's what we're doing. Right. Like every one of our or every one of the people on our company right now, including me, is going for a certification at this moment. Why? Because

[00:44:33] and Scott Chasen said this to me once when we were having a conversation and I always will appreciate this moment because we were having a conversation on the future of the industry. He said when the when the when the speed of business outside, when the speed of technology outside of your business is moving faster than the speed inside of your business, you're in trouble. And that's where we're at right now is we're in trouble because the world's technology is moving

[00:44:58] way faster than us. And that is a leadership thing because we're not staying on top of it, because to your point. We weren't focused on it. We weren't focused on staying ahead of the game. We were focused on serving, you know, buying a new boat or go taking a vacation or, you know, dealing with tickets all damn day. Right. Like we weren't keeping our eye on the future of the

[00:45:23] company. We're keeping our eye on whatever it was we were thinking about. So I would say just as a leadership lesson, it's our job right now to help the people get to the next level. It's our job to start paying attention to the technologies that they need to be focused on. It's our job to help them really empower them to get to this next point, because we are the ecosystem of the industry right

[00:45:49] now. And if we aren't challenging these people, then we're allowing them to be eradicated by the technology. And that's a choice. And so because of that, technology will keep pushing in as long as we don't push back. As long as we don't become proficient, technology will just take fill in the gap. And that's what we're seeing. I'm following you. I'm following you. So

[00:46:14] you said you're like two roles on a regular basis, right? You're the chief encouragement officer. And you're also the, what was it? Bad news broker. I was going to say bad news bears guy, bad news broker. I'm not sure how both of those things happen simultaneously. I know you've probably

[00:46:36] have the answer to that, but how do you deliver the tough love of it's not good enough. We need to do better while still getting people to like have motivation, right? Cause a lot of people don't take feedback. I feel like we're, you know, I don't know if it's a generational thing. I feel like it is, but it's like, Hey, just cause I'm telling you something doesn't mean I don't like you. It just means that something's wrong and we need to do something differently. And like people don't

[00:47:06] usually take well to this. Yeah. And I think it's the approach, right? When we're having conversations with people, you know, I, I spend a lot of time helping understand individuals in terms of where they're at. Right. Like in it's, it's kind of fun to, you know, a lot of folks don't know my background and don't know that I'm technical. They, they, I don't speak in a way that would elude you to believe that, uh, I don't show off what I know, right? Like that's not my job.

[00:47:35] My job is to try to help you become the best version of you. Right. And as long as that best version of you is moving in that forward direction, then I continue. And again, the way I do this is by creating goalposts, right? Like, Hey, here's a game. We got to score these points. And I need each one of us to get in on, on this deck and we need to get there and perform. And I hold everyone accountable to those moments. I'll give you a good, for instance, something we're talking about now

[00:48:01] is, you know, is KPIs internally, right? A lot of folks are not, you know, really excited about KPIs, but we're doing is like, Hey, look, it doesn't matter where you start. I said, but we're going to do like these rookie playing cards, right? You're going to get your team and your name and your face. And on the back is going to be your stats. This is your rookie year, right? This is where you start. That doesn't mean your pro career, but every professional athletes, people that have a strive

[00:48:25] to be the best that they possibly can be all have a rookie card. It doesn't mean that's who you were. That means that's where you started. And this is where you need to get. And here's how you kind of get there, but you got to be the best version of you. That doesn't mean you're going to be Michael Jordan. It doesn't mean you're going to be Bo Jackson. It doesn't mean you're going to be any of these people. You're not going to be Pete Rose, whoever, whoever it is. That doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be those people. It's just, you need to be the best version of you.

[00:48:53] And as long as you're striving, as long as you're hungry for it, as long as you want to push yourself, you're part of this team until if you're not, that's okay. You don't have to be part of a high performing sales culture and team. That's all right. You can be part of something else. It's just not going to be here, right? Like, so you got to learn, you got to teach them how to win and you got to set those areas for them to win. And I love celebrating with them. We talk a lot about locker room learning

[00:49:22] in the back where we like, Hey, by the way, we don't do that on the field. Just so you know, like that, that doesn't happen out there in the real world or just, you know, but so I'm, and as a group, it's, it's, it's a group. I don't do things behind closed doors. Everybody learns from everybody where I work, right? Like everybody gets to hear it. We all look at it. I ask everybody, and here's a fun way I do things too, George. I was recently talking to someone about culture

[00:49:50] and I said, you know, one of the things I love when people say is, I don't know, I don't, we don't know about, I don't know anything about that. And I'm like, oh man, everyone just was like, oh shit. So when somebody says, I don't know how to do something immediately, that person is now on the hook to go and learn that thing and then present it to the entire company. So I use a lot of tactics on helping people make their, their weakness, their strength.

[00:50:20] And that again, is me as a leader trying to challenge them to create and empower others. Again, back to the beginning, right? Our thesis for success is when a leader creates and empowers another leader, but success doesn't come until that leader creates and empowers another leader. I'm trying to build that because I'm not just chastising the industry. I'm trying to be the change in the industry that also generates entrepreneurs and companies and people and employees that will generate the future of the industry. I could be stupid. I could be completely

[00:50:49] wrong. Could be completely off base and AI is going to come here and wipe, wipe the floor with us, but I'll be damned if we're going to go down, not trying. That's fair. I'm with you. I'm going to use the last few minutes here. It feels like there was a theme here of what is and what isn't the community. I mean, a lot of people use this word. I see it in

[00:51:18] titles now. I don't know if we all understand or agree on what that word is supposed to be. I know what the definition of it is. I just don't know if everyone is playing that word in the same way. So if I could use the last few minutes to understand from your view, what is the point of the community efforts that should be happening? I don't know if they are, but what should be happening?

[00:51:46] You know, I feel like this is one of those places where, you know, this is something that I was always been a passion of mine since I came in here. It was always concerning to me that I would share what I was doing similarly to what I'm doing now. People would look at me weird and say, why the hell are you telling everybody what you're doing? Like, what is the point of that? And I'm like,

[00:52:13] I could have swore that that's what the tech community did was share. I mean, we used to have user groups and we would all talk about like how we're using things and sharing, but like, do we not do that in business? Like, what's the story? And it was kind of interesting. So I was kind of this weird anomaly back in the early days that would continuously go on and talk about how we were building and scaling and what was happening and what were the ways. And I mean, even the MSP owner group

[00:52:40] book, or the MSP owner's handbook is, is me giving away the model on that, right? Like, I feel like community to me, and again, I'm just a guy is giving what we know back, right? It's under helping everyone else behind us become better. And I think that if we're using community to help ourselves,

[00:53:06] from a financial perspective, you've got it all wrong, right? If you're using communities to draw people in so that you can extract coins, you got it all wrong. If you're using communities to do things that are in a benefit other than the people that are attending those, you got it all wrong. And I think that at the end of the day, the folks that are willing to give, I really do appreciate everybody that's there that's doing that, that goes out and talks about some of their failures. You know,

[00:53:35] I've been one of those guys, I just did it on another podcast with George Leith. And he's like, man, you were, you were raw on that, dude. And I said, because I'm trying to help the community, bro. There's no ego here. This is not about me. This is about helping somebody else avoid the pitfalls of doing things that could potentially instrumentally help them lose their business, right? I did that. It sucked. I don't want anyone else to have to go through that. And they can learn because I'm being honest about how I screwed up. That's all that matters. And I think that for

[00:54:05] me, community is about openness and sharing and being able to talk through these moments like we are about what do we see the future and what are we doing to tool toward it? And being open and honest about that, not just being under the guise of, you know, I need to say the right thing to get you to buy something, right? Like I need you to all believe that you all need to do something so that you,

[00:54:31] I can get you to, you know, potentially, you know, sign a contract. Like, don't do that. That's not what community is. And, and so for me, even when I was doing the super summits, I say all the time, like, you can't buy anything for me because I'm not selling anything. I'm just trying to help people be successful. If you want to find success with me and there's something that I'm doing fabulous. So if you

[00:54:55] guys aren't delivering success to the communities that you serve, stop, right? Like I appreciate community minds. We did a lot of good there. And I was part of that. And we taught a lot of MSPs and a lot of people learn and they walked away with new ways to see their business. And I got a lot of feedback from a lot of people there that were like, man, this is awesome. And there was a great nuance of vendors and MSPs that were together focused on the growth of the community. And that's where I find

[00:55:25] that my passion lies there, George. And you know, that to be true, you know, I really hope that we can continue. And I've had a lot of people hit me up and say, Hey man, can we just do like, just, just us in a room, like just talking and just think, figuring this out. Like, and so I know there's a desire. It's just a lot of people have gotten smart now and realized that

[00:55:50] some of these areas that are being curated for the word community are not to support the community. It's in support of them. And that's, that's where I'm just saying, Hey, I said a statement recently. If the community is the last thing you do, then that's the last place I'll be. And I've, I've stand firm on that, right? Like I'm all about recently in the entrepreneurial

[00:56:18] ecosystem. I'm all about sharing. I'm all about helping people grow and scale their businesses. I'm all about helping MSPs become successful and truly find success as a partnership. I just hope everyone else can jump on that train. And I, that's my only ask, right? I think that at the end of the day, and again, kudos to you and thanks for all that you do for the community, George. I really do appreciate that, man. No, thanks for saying that. I mean, one thing's for sure. A lot of this stuff I

[00:56:48] did was definitely not about making money. If you thought that I'll show you the receipts. That's for sure. Okay. Juan, I know we're on our way out of here. Final. Hey, if you need help doing X, or if you're looking for a thing, way to fix Y, how can you help them? And where do they go to find more information? A hundred percent. I'm always open and available. Come find me on LinkedIn, Juan Fernandez MSP,

[00:57:16] and just find me there. You can book some time with me anytime. I literally am open to anybody that ever wants to have a conversation. And I mean, ongoing, I talk to tons and tons of people all the time trying to help people find the right places and understand the way that they can find success in their business. I don't, and never will be a person that you need to worry about. You need to buy something or buy my time or owe me anything. I've never owed anybody and I never plan on it. So

[00:57:43] I would never ask that of somebody else. So come find me on LinkedIn. And if anything else, come ping me, shoot me an email, Juan at summit-holdings.com, or shoot me a text or give me a call, 505-270-6558. Wow. You have, I found this phenomenon on these podcasts of people literally giving out their phone numbers. That's crazy. Well, Juan is reachable. There it is.

[00:58:10] It's all about the future is human connection. My intent is to connect with people and help them see their way to this next moment. So that's why I'm available. All right, guys, this guy has been through it and like different levels and versions. The guy's giving you a free door to have a conversation. I think you should seriously consider taking it. And that's as direct as it gets.

[00:58:37] Awesome. I want, I feel like we took too long in between these sessions because that much happened. So maybe we do a little bit more frequently. Yeah, a hundred percent. Uh, guys, this session was absolutely recorded. It's actually one of my favorite ones of the year. Uh, we probably could do another hour without blinking, but I know everybody's got stuff to do. Um, go back and rewind this one and forward it to people and listen closely. Cause, um, talk about authenticity.

[00:59:06] I don't think you got anything less than that on this one for sure. It's all it can be George is real human, authentic person, but, uh, I hope that, uh, the community, uh, gets inspired by this and, uh, takes that step as well. Yeah. A hundred percent. Juan catch on the flip side, everyone else, you know where to find this and we'll catch you out on the road. Hopefully in the next couple of months, take it easy guys.