Tim Conkle of The 20 MSP

[00:00:01] Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a March 13 edition of the MSP Initiative, MSP Talk podcast. Today is a Tuesday and it's not super cold here in bluster, blusterly Philadelphia, which is great, which means things are moving into the springtime, but could be fake springtime for some people. I say that and then like the blizzard will come and then, you know, we'll be we'll be back to snow. But I digress.

[00:00:31] Lots of things going on in MSP land and IT services land. So there's never like a dull moment. We'll throw some of that out there. MSP initiative dot com. That's where we park all of our stuff. Some of the stuff that we do on an annual basis starting to finally pop into the calendar. So, you know, I'm not going to get into all that now because I'm going to use all of the available time we have today with with our guests. First time bringing them onto the show, Mr. Tim Conkle. Some people call him Texas Tim.

[00:00:59] There's other names out there. But Mr. Tim Conkle, how are you doing today? Man, I'm doing good. And I really appreciate being here. This this seems to be going to be a very fun thing. And I really thought when you talk about the weather, you talk about Texas. I mean, we've got a balmy about 76 right now. You know, I always I always remind the people in the northeast part of the country, like there's like fake spring, right?

[00:01:27] Like you start to like get your warm clothes out and then like, you know, all of a sudden it's 22 degrees and snowing. I don't know. But thank God I don't live in like Maine or Wisconsin or Minnesota. We're like they only have non snow for like three months out of the year. I don't think I could do that, although I'm on planes a lot. That's that's fair. That's a fair comment to make. But part of the plane thing is also the kill the seasonal depression thing for the people who don't live in warm areas. So I digress. Tim, first time on the show.

[00:01:56] We were just joking before we went on that, like, we kind of pass each other drive by, but never really got into anything crazy. So we're going to do it on this show. This is going to be great. I always give people like and you have a pretty, I'm sure, interesting journey through technology land. I want to start there. Right. Like, let's go all the way back in the time machine and like give us a walk down memory lane. Like, tell us about the journey to get take us to presence there.

[00:02:23] Yeah. So go all the way back to high school. Never touched a computer. I didn't have one in school. Now, I'm not telling you I'm really old. I'm just saying they didn't have computers back then. It's freaking nuts. But I went in the I went in the military and I was really good at what I did. I was a master gunner on a Bradley. So they elevated me up where I worked at division. Why? Because your division commander wants a really good gunner. So when you go to gunnery, everything looks good.

[00:02:52] So when you're not doing that, though, you're in your at base or whatever you want to call it. But they had to give me something to do. And so they that they they set me in front of a computer and gave me a job. I never touched one before. It had two five and a quarter inch floppies, one booted and the other one had word perfect that you could crank up. And I felt absolutely in love with technology.

[00:03:19] So you got really good at pressing key keys on the keyboard rather than shooting things out of guns. Yeah. So and it was such it was it was such a difference. And then I got out of the military, went to work for EDS. And this is kind of how life is. I had a great job. My wife was pregnant. I was looking at a newspaper one day and in that newspaper set an IT company for sale. And I'm thinking, OK, so I don't look at this thing.

[00:03:48] And I always tell people when I first walked into place, it looked like somebody took like a thousand computers apart, took all the parts, shoved him up an elephant's butt, kicked him in, backed him up to the door, kicked him in the chin. And he just blew this shit everywhere. It literally looked like that was back in the day of white boxes and stuff. We built our own PCs. And so I looked at the company and I was like, there is no way. So I call my dad, my dad. This is what my dad does to me. He goes, well, you know, if you're scared, don't do it.

[00:04:17] He knew. And so I bought a little company called Roland Technology. Struggled for 18 years to try to hit a million bucks because you just had no idea how to get there. And back then, it was just little bitty companies everywhere. 18th year. Hold on, Tim. That's still a lot of itty bitty companies everywhere today. Don't let's be let's be fair. No, no, no. Things change, but they haven't changed that much. No, it hasn't.

[00:04:45] You know, we moved from building white boxes and Lantastic and Novell White and Windows for Work Groups into really being professional companies. Hmm. That's the the chronology of it and everything has been incredible. But you're right. There's still lots of small struggling companies. Like, let me let me just interject. I am under the impression maybe you have different stats. Feel free to correct me.

[00:05:14] Like, of all the companies categorized as IT companies or sub 150 people, small, medium business technology companies, managed service companies. I don't care what name you want to use. Put it all in the bubble. Like 85 percent of them don't even have 10 employees. Yeah. Eighty five percent from what I've heard are sub million. I think you're right. And it's tough, but I think there's a reason for all of that.

[00:05:43] I mean, and I think it's it can be easily fixed. But so then you get there. You go forward, shoot forward. And in the 18th year, I really learned how to grow the company. OK. And exponential grew after that. And then I sat there and I thought there's all these guys out there that don't know how to get from point A to point B. I do. What better way than to start a group?

[00:06:09] And then not just teach theory, but bring execution. This is that this is the the the, you know, the hidden problem in any breakout session, main stage, peer group, whatever, anything I've ever gone to. And I believe I actually went back and did this this kind of on the back of a napkin the other day. I believe I have officially been to over 1000 events in my time in the sandbox. Wow. That's a lot of events.

[00:06:39] That's unbelievable. But I think in a lot of ways, from everything I know about you and your company, you've kind of done the same thing, except you've done it from a different angle. You've you've taken a product and you said, hey, guys, there's no way you can execute on this. So. Let me execute and show you how to. So in a lot of in a lot of execution. Hold on. Let me put one word next to it. And consistency. Hundred percent.

[00:07:07] And so I think I think I think what me and you have done for the channel is probably fairly close, just a different angle. OK, I'm I'm I'm I'm picking up what you're putting down, Tim. I'm following you. Yeah. So it took you 18 years in your own IT company to fit to number one, figure out what was wrong. By the way, that's the hard way. I don't care. 18 years of banging your head against the wall.

[00:07:36] I feel your pain. No question. And but like you figured out how to break that glass ceiling. And then like then what happened? So so we we break the glass ceiling and ultimately I start teaching people how to break the glass ceiling just from one way. Google pay per click. How to make your phone ring. Well, once you do that and you your phone actually rings, now you find out the rest of your company's broke, too. You actually have to service delivery.

[00:08:06] You have to actually sell that thing. You have to be able to compete at parity with your competitors around you. And I talked to several people that had been to the class. One guy stands out big time. And I was at a conference in Florida and he walks up to me and I said, hey, how's it going? How's the Google doing? He goes, I've been on 44 appointments. I said, dude, that's incredible.

[00:08:29] This is a guy that had been in bed, been in business over five years and hadn't had 44 appointments in five years. I believe that. And so I'm like, dude, that is incredible. And he goes, yeah, but I haven't sold any. And so I stepped back and I thought, oh, my goodness. But then I was in in L.A., ran into a guy. And he had gone from like 700,000 to three and a half million in 18 months from the Google class.

[00:08:59] Wow. And I said, dude, that's incredible. He goes, yeah, but I'm not making any more money. So I'm in L.A. I said, can I visit your office? And he goes, sure. I go to his office. I open the door and there are ungodly amounts of people in there. And I'm like, who are all these people? He said, oh, I had to hire all these people. So I knew. And that was that literally gave me the beginning stage of, OK, I'm going to build a company called The 20 that's going to do all the lead gen sales and scale. It's going to do all three.

[00:09:28] I'm going to teach them you got a lead gen. And then I'm going to give them a pitch. See, a lot of people think sales is a process. And once you know the process, you just keep doing it. No, you have to have a pitch. Then you have to have a process. I'm with you. I know a lot of people in sales in different arenas, not all in our sandbox. I don't care if it's selling cars, selling pharmaceuticals, selling whatever. Definitely a lot more art than science. Oh, 100%. And it's got to be simple.

[00:09:59] And I say this to all. In fact, I've got companies that have flown into Dallas. I taught yesterday and now the rest of the team is teaching today. But I tell them, if you can't price a customer in five minutes, you might lose them. Wow. Five minutes? You don't even know what they have in five minutes, Tim. Doesn't matter. OK. In that one hour meeting, if you can't price it at the end, if you have to say, ah, the customer typically says, can I get a proposal? Mm-hmm. That proposal comes a week later. Mm-hmm.

[00:10:28] Guess what happens in that week? A yes always runs to a no. Mm-hmm. They've literally got a week to think about how to say no instead of, hey, I've got a yes today. You're in my office. And so we price on the spot. Wow. But. What's your close rate when you do that? Well, one-shot closes are really high. And I would say across the board, my best seller, I don't sell anymore. Mm-hmm.

[00:10:58] My best sales guy last year did 190,000 in newer MRR. Wow. Wow. That's awesome. The one below it did 100 plus. But it's because if you really think about it, and this is probably in the question, but the MSP space, how we package and how we sell is broken. And it's been broken for a long time. It's what I taught a huge group of people yesterday. Mm-hmm.

[00:11:28] And I teach that if you're selling IT, you sell on price. If you sell a business decision, it doesn't matter. And a lot of people say, well, that's easy to say, a business decision. I mean, that's dumb as shit. No. What do I mean by that? An educated consumer is easy to get a yes from. An uneducated consumer has to, at the end of the meeting, say, let me think about it. Why? Because he needs to ask 10 friends. Yeah. Because he doesn't understand it.

[00:11:57] What they have to realize is that guy in there is making a business decision. So if you create a business decision for him, it's easy to say yes. Fair. No, I'll echo what you just said. I was talking to an internal department to one of my companies, and I was meeting with the person there. He's not a cheap person, right? He's an expensive guy, but comes with experience. And he's like, why have you not put any more resources in this team?

[00:12:25] And I said, that's not a money question. Like, there's not a financing problem here, right? It's a, you haven't convinced me to make the investment. That's it. I was like, I have plenty of money. I can surely allocate more people here. I was like, I know what it takes to go through that process and all that jazz. But like, when I go to somebody else's team, and they come to me, and they're like, hey, if we do this, this, and this, here's what you would get in this time. Like, they laid out the business case for me, right? Yeah.

[00:12:54] I was like, okay, go do it. But I haven't gotten that from you, so I can't make that decision because I don't think I, like, why spend more money if I don't know what I'm getting from it? What's the upside for me? Which is, see, we think different. Spending money, a lot of times, it first becomes a problem-based thing. Sure. When Ms. P says, oh, I'm not growing, my phone doesn't ring, what's the first thing he does? Yes. He Googles for something that's going to teach him how to market.

[00:13:24] He probably goes to an event and asks people how to, you know, figure out how their phone rings because he doesn't know what he's doing. That's the truth. Google, yeah. That's the next thing. So they just look at the problem and not, okay, what, if I put this to it, what is the result? It's just a problem. Hey, if I pay enough money, the problem goes away. But the problem is, is you could lose your ass. Oh, 100%. But Tim, you know, football guy. I think that's clear.

[00:13:51] But I take a very, like, NFL free agency drafts approach to a lot of things that I do, right? Hey, I'm willing to take a risk if there's high upside, right? Like, you know, like, hey, if it doesn't work out, no big deal. But if it does, I could, you know, buy a stock at $10 and it goes to $400, right? Like, that could be your upside. So, like, I kind of think that way, right? But, like, I need data to make that decision.

[00:14:18] To your point, I also need to understand what I'm buying. Yeah. For sure. For sure. Let me flip the conversation into, and all this will lead into current events, and I think ties into your background a little bit. But you used to buy a lot of stuff from ConnectWords. I did. And then you made a decision to diversify and go into other places like Kaseya, right? Yes.

[00:14:43] And I know a lot of what you do is a, because you have, you know, and we'll hear a little bit more about 20 in a second. Yeah, yeah. There's a volume conversation here, right? If you're buying a lot more, you're expecting a better deal. And I think that's generally what people think, right? Yeah. I think you also spent a lot of time with Fred Verkola, who's, you know, was running the ship over at Kaseya for, I don't know, 10 years or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:15:10] Let me ask my first question now that I've kind of put that foundation out there. When you decide you want to go and either add something net new or renegotiate something that you already have, what do you look for in order to get to the end game? So first, I'm not a big fan of moving tools because you get 100,000 endpoints. It's very expensive. Time.

[00:15:37] Very labor-consent, very labor, labor, labor-intensive. And so even ConnectWise at the time, it was a problem that was being solved, not a, hey, we just want to switch tools for the hell of it. Sure. Because tools don't move the needle. Are you sure? Because when I look at the Facebook, Reddit, Discord, LinkedIn, Slack groups, I'm seeing people switch tools like they brush their teeth.

[00:16:06] Well, that's typically going to be people that have a company the size of my thumbnail. Fair. And the reason why they have time to be on Reddit is because they don't have customers. And I'm not saying this shitty. I've always said this, vote with your money, not with your mouth. Okay. Because the reality is tearing down, who you tear down today, you may need tomorrow. Fair. And let me give you a great example of this, even in my world.

[00:16:37] So when I bought Collaborance, that is a ConnectWise shop. Why don't we buy Collaborance? Why don't we buy it? Did we buy it to move all that stuff to Kaseya? No. We bought it so we have two legs of tools now. So in other words, if someone moves to join the 20 in the old days, it was you go to Kaseya or you can't come. Now it's you can go ConnectWise leg or you can go Kaseya leg or you can go enable leg. Oh.

[00:17:03] And so I think you try to fix different problems. Now, why would we do that? Well, because there's this new little thing that everybody does and they sign these three-year deals. Yeah. So when you can't flip your tool for three years and my requirement is you have to go to Kaseya or you have to go to ConnectWise, whatever that tool is, I've got this huge group of people out there that need help with no place to go. Yeah. Yeah. And they're stuck contractually, right?

[00:17:33] Like it's the burden to flip the tool at that point blows out the cost. Well, it's a deeper, longer thing of – and this gets into M&A and everything else. If you look at most bigs, big companies, 100 million plus, most have every tool you can think about in the MSP. Why?

[00:18:00] They bought all these MSPs and they're trying to transition and all that. Where the 20 difference is, is we have the size, but we're on all the same. So when we buy, everything goes to the same tool. Okay. So the standard fits all the way through the box. So I tell people this all the time. If you worry more about your tools, you're a small company. If you worry more about your customers, you're a big company. Okay. I dig what you're saying. I dig what you're saying.

[00:18:29] So let me go next question on the same theme. Yeah. The bundle wars. Because that's what I think is happening right now. Yeah. Okay. Whether it's a marketplace who's trying to stitch products together on their own to create a super bundle, whether it's Kaseya in their case where they bought 40 companies and they've been able to super skew themselves under their own umbrella, whether it's see a lot of partners, companies partnering now, right?

[00:18:57] Like Halo, Ninja, Sentinel, like, you know, they're all creating these kind of, you know, one way or another, it's all leading to a similar outcome. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Have we gotten to a place where best in class isn't a thing anymore? Where, like, it's all about, you know, hey, let me get the best price rather than let me pick each ingredient in my recipe? My personal opinion is about the best functional outcome. Okay.

[00:19:26] So if you step back and, okay, I want the best functional outcome. Support is probably our biggest thing that we look at. If I have a product that I can't get support on, it really doesn't matter. That product, I don't care if you get it for a nickel or a penny. It's not worth having. I think there's a little bit of danger to the bundle thing. My personal opinion. What do I mean by that? We do not.

[00:19:54] A lot of people think, a lot of people think, well, you know, the 20, they're a complete Kaseya stack because Kaseya bought them. Oh, Kaseya hadn't bought us. Okay, hold on. We're on the record here. Yes. So. That's not true. It is not even remotely true. In fact, there's only three classes of people that own the 20. There is no, there's no P firm at all inside the 20. Okay. I am the majority owner.

[00:20:21] The MSPs we buy roll some back in. So that's equity. And then my employees. Okay. I'm a, I'm, I'm a big believer at the closing table at some point when it happens that every single person in the company participates at the table. Every, every person. I don't care what their function is in the company. I mean, they are going to get some of the upside of us at some point down the road.

[00:20:47] So with, with, with that, with that being said, if you look at our stack, even when a lot of people said, oh, they're Kaseya stack. We use Kaseya RMM, Kaseya BMS for PSA. But we use countries. I mean, which is, I mean, so it's functional outcome is really what's important to me. How can I keep my customers safe?

[00:21:13] And to do that, I have to go with the most function, the best functional outcome. And I want long-term. I want to be on a tool and partner with somebody for 10 years. Wow. 10 years. Why do I not want to flip tools? Because it's very expensive. It's cumbersome. It creates chaos, not only for the company, but also for the customer, especially when you get to our size.

[00:21:40] And so I, again, Kaseya was there at the right time to give us some things that we needed because we need multi-tenant PSA and we need to scale. We were getting so freaking big that, you know, because we've got the MSP side and then we've got the group side. You put all those endpoints together, man, it is unbelievable. And now couple that, we all live in one.

[00:22:08] So we all live in one RMM because functioning across all of us, that means we only upgrade it once. We only, if there's a problem, we only fix it once, not 200 times, you know? So, so, so, so hold on. Let me take two things that you said and try and align them properly. So you have this massive investment and scale on top of it on the Kaseya side.

[00:22:34] And then as net new companies come into the conversation with you that already have a three-year contract with pick your company, I don't care what it is. Your position to them is no problem. We're going to use what you have until we have to make a change. Functionally until we buy them. Because when you, when you, this is the problem. If you look at, if you look at M&A out there, think of how much technology debt they have.

[00:23:03] So they buy these companies and I'm not going to, I'm not going to say a name of anybody, but, but there's a company out there buys it, lets you keep your name, lets you keep your team. And you run functionally by yourself. You're just owned by this umbrella. Mm-hmm. That means how do I get upside from both sides? How do my ticket numbers, how could I ever triage, you know? So the 20, our whole thought was we want everything the same.

[00:23:30] We want no, no technology debt in the MSP. In the group, you can stay on, if you're in the group and you want to stay on ConnectWise forever, you stay on it. Like, we're not going to actively poke a hole, hit you with an ice pick or something. Why? Because functionally, let's just be honest. When it really boils down to it, what people don't like is the business side of these guys. Oh, they're overbilling me to get the business side.

[00:24:00] Oh, them guys want three-year contracts. Well, hell, you want three-year contracts with your customers. So I get the three-year contract thing and I have no problem. Now, here's where the 20 probably differs. Inside the 20, we rise and fall. So if a guy walked in tomorrow and said, hey, I don't have a tool at all. And he picks whatever tool he picks from us.

[00:24:25] And let's say he needs 163 endpoints. He only gets 163 endpoints. He doesn't have to buy a minimum of 250, 500. Here's the second part. If you really get in a tight and you lose 30 people, you don't ask. It just happens when you're off-board them. It goes from 163 to 133. I literally was about to say that.

[00:24:52] The problem generally with the terms is that they lose revenue, but are still stuck paying on the costs, right? And so there's a misalignment. Totally understand the... I mean, listen, there's a lot of companies out there that still play the way that we all wish they did, which is the way you're talking about. When I use, I buy. When I don't, I turn off. I'm all good. Everything lines up. Unfortunately, I think that more than half the vendors out there

[00:25:20] in MSP land, in the sandbox, have gone the other way, where they've tried to Tetris this, where your term with them doesn't necessarily align properly to how you do business. And I think this is where there's the problem. So that's across all our tools, with all our vendors. Now, unfortunately, a small guy out there beating the grass for himself is just going to find himself tired

[00:25:48] because he's not big enough for them to do anything special for. I'm a big proponent of consumption-based anything. If I don't eat it, I should not have to pay for it. Yeah. That's just me. That's just me. Now, so that's why if you look inside the 20, we've built the whole group around that idea. So no member has a contract with Kaseya directly or any of those people that have them with us.

[00:26:19] And we have contracts with vendors that lets us rise and fall. Now, we've never gone backwards. So it's worked out well for the vendors because we grow fast enough that, you know, it's just the motion of everything just kind of keeps everything in check. Can I quantify this though real quick? How many endpoints do you have under management across the 20, all of it?

[00:26:47] I'll say it the easiest way I can, 100,000 plus. Okay. So when you go have a conversation with anyone short of Microsoft, you're having a way different conversation than George MSP, you know, with a thousand inputs. 100%. And that's, I think that's anybody. I guarantee you, if American Airlines uses Microsoft, they have a conversation. Yeah.

[00:27:17] We're not having the, you know, and so this goes back to a basic fundamental premise in business. Size matters. It's true. But think about this for a minute, George. I level the playing field for every single MSP. Okay. I give them that same voice. All I have to do is join the group. They get the same voice. They get the rise and fall. They get at consumption. They don't have a three-year contract with the vendor.

[00:27:45] I give them everything that they bitch about. The vendor doesn't bill them directly. We bill them. We'll leave. And trust me, if I had a billing issue at any of them, they don't jump through seven hoops versus your one to, to, to make us happy. So I say that to say this, if MSPs can ever get past this idea of me, me, me, me, me, me, me, it's really, we're better together.

[00:28:15] We're powerful together. I can even quantify this, even at, even at valuation and where you can go with your company. I can quantify this. I was telling somebody, I wasn't telling somebody, I was at a conference. There's about 50 MSPs there. And I looked across the room and I said, how many people in here do at least a million dollars? And a bunch of hands went up. I said, so let me just assume, or let's play, that everybody here has a million dollars. You have 20% EBITDA,

[00:28:44] which means you have 200,000. 200,000. And you're all worth the five X multiple, anything sub million, three to six. So let's say you're right at the high end of that. A five X makes the math easy. Individually, you're all worth $1 million. So everybody in here, if you sold tomorrow, you can get your precious million dollars. With a stroke of a pen. With the same people in the room doing nothing different, except coming together.

[00:29:14] Stroke of a pen. I can create a hundred million in enterprise value out of thin air. The question is who wants to share it? There it is. That math makes sense. Well, and so think about this. And then a lot of people were anti-PE. I'm not anti-PE. I just haven't needed them yet. I think I'm the largest founder owned, no outside equity owners in the MSP space right now.

[00:29:45] So let me hold on. Do you think the perception that you were using Kaseya money or outside money is because nobody else is founder owned? Of course. And now, to be, to be fair, to be honest, no outside money is, is not the right answer either. Okay. How did, how did, how did Tim do it? I did it with good old commercial banking. Uh-huh.

[00:30:12] The cheapest money you can get is how Tim Conklin did it. Okay. And that money required no equity outlay. It, it, it requires a really, really, really, really good business with cashflow. Uh-huh. Because see, you can, you can do, you can leverage five, six times if you're out in the world with, with debt. Uh-huh. You can only leverage with commercial banking two times. Two times.

[00:30:40] So you gotta be a really good company to stay in company. And so the difference was I could do it with regular commercial banking. And they'll give me all the money that, that I want. If you want more, come back and ask. Time out. Let me ask you a question there. This is a very interesting topic. As the regular banking industry, you know, the same people you would go to get, I don't know, a line of credit or a business loan or whatever. Have they caught up to this business model?

[00:31:09] Because up until not so long ago, they looked at you like a plumbing business, like an accounting firm, right? Like it's not exactly the same because all of those companies that would fit professional services are pay as you go, right? I go to my accountant. I pay him to do my taxes. I don't talk to him unless I have to go back to him again for something else. I go to a plumber. I have a leak. Sure. He comes, he fixes my leak. I don't have a reoccurring agreement with these people. It's different for this industry.

[00:31:38] Have they caught up to that? Well, I think they caught up to good business. I think most, I would say 90 something percent of, of, of MSPs could never walk into a commercial bank and get money. Why? They don't have strategy. They don't have vision that they, you know, and I can go, I can go deep in this. A lot of small guys, I want to go borrow $2 million to buy a million dollar company or, or a million dollars by a million dollar company.

[00:32:06] So let's say that he's a million and they're a million. He doesn't grow, has no growth rate. The guy he's buying doesn't have a growth rate. So he just wanted to get more money by putting them together. They're both worth the exact same amount. You just bought a dying asset. There's no triage there. You're not growing. You're dying. No, it's, and that's the majority. I had six banks around my conference room table,

[00:32:33] all vying for my business at the end of me, whiteboarding this thing out and laying it out there. They all wanted in. So if it's a great business, you don't have to sell your soul. Right. In order to grow it. If it's a great business. Now I know, I know personally of people that have gone out there and they'll get loans to buy a company.

[00:33:01] They'll pay 15% interest plus give equity out of, that's not Tim. Good old commercial. So I don't want people to think, oh, Tim just put all his money in this thing. No, we've had some commercial, commercial cashflow plus commercial banking has helped us. We just closed our 38th. I'll close my 39th in the last, well, September will be three years. So what is that? 28 months.

[00:33:32] And we've just done it a little bit different. Okay. So when you say 38, 39th, you're talking about acquisitions of MSPs. Yes. Okay. So let's go there for a second. Is there a standard blueprint in the offer that you would give an MSP or is it different? Every single deal is different. They're all the same. Okay. Every, every, every single one, same terms, same multiple, same everything. And there's reasons for that too. It,

[00:34:02] you know, and we, we typically only buy members. Okay. Why do we only buy members? Because you know, it's a, it's a known commodity. You don't have to guess. Not, not just are they known commodity. They're already on stack transition. So I bought the first, the first month that I started buying, I bought six MSPs in one month. Wow. 90 days later, a hundred percent integrated, everything done. No technology debt between them. That's why we did it this way. It's just a better.

[00:34:32] Now, why the other way, the other reason is, so think about a PE firm when they buy an MSP. They have a 30% earn out. Reason why they have a 30% earn out. They think somewhere between 20 and 30% of the customers are going to leave. Why are they going to leave? Because you have to go resell every one of them on a new contract. Yeah. Our, our attrition is less than 5% across everything we've bought. Why? Well, because we execute on the backside.

[00:35:01] 80% of all interaction happens at the 20 level with those customers. And how does that happen? They call for service. They get the help desk. They get a technician, live technician right there. Now, the cool thing is, is that by all of us MSPs coming together, we were able to build a consumption based help desk. That's 24, seven, three 65 live answer, all us based. Huge, huge, huge. I couldn't have done it with just my MSP.

[00:35:31] Again, this goes back to my thing better together. If, if MSPs could ever get beyond ego, I don't want to work for nobody. Well, how many customers do you have? Oh, I've got 25. Well, you've got 25 bosses. I mean, that is a fact. That is a fact. Let me get, let me go the other way, Tim. Yeah. Now I had an MSP for a really long time. I tried outsourcing help desk to third parties. Right. I use continuum for, for, I tried it.

[00:36:01] I tried it for three years. And you know what? At the end of that three years, I like my customers got exhausted. Yeah. They just said, you know what? I feel like I'm talking to a new person every time. They have no idea who I am. Like I'm constantly repeating myself. It takes like, feels like three times as long to get anything done. I shouldn't need to be on the phone for 17 minutes to reset my password. And I, I, I tried, I tried, I tried. I created as much documentation as you could ever want.

[00:36:30] That didn't make any change. And I finally got to the point where my customers were like, Hey, the expectation of what you promised me. And like what these guys give me is like way off. And like, we're out. Unless if you don't get rid of them, we're getting rid of you. Right? Like that's how the conversation ended. How do you fix that problem? Well, same way you fixed it. How did you fix it? You brought it in house where you could, you could control how the calls happen. Now,

[00:36:59] if you grow and you've got 50 people answering the phone and all 50 just abjectly can answer. How many of your customers are going to be, Hey, I got a new guy today. I got another new guy. I got another. So you build it just like you do inside. This is the difference between a help desk being truly built by an MSP. And we eat our own dog food. Where now you, you create pods where when you call in, you get the same people. What does that do? Tribal knowledge.

[00:37:30] Yeah. Our help desk works exactly. Now, to be fair, hardest thing we ever built. Now it's easy when we all do things the same way. Right. Because now every process, every think about you said, continue. So I don't know a lot about it. Continue, but I'll just throw the name out. Think about 10 MSPs that call all 10 do business 10 different ways. Right. How do you account for all those 10 different ways on the help desk?

[00:38:00] I got to assume. And the way it was sold to me, Tim was, Hey, there's certain things that are just, you know, electricity. Right. Like you're all going to be using Microsoft or Google. Yeah. Right. That's good. That's going to count for 99% of it. Right. You're all going to be using, you know, one, you know, 70% of the antivirus solutions at the time, or all these same companies. Right. Right. Or their, their, their, their, their position was,

[00:38:25] if I can take half of the front line inbound requests and off, offload them for me, then you want. And I was like, and I went back and I did my math and I'm like, sure. If that marketing actually becomes reality, they're right. It never became reality. No, because we would, we would see 50% as a absolute abject failure. Okay.

[00:38:53] Most of our MSPs inside the group, including mine, over 80% of all help desk tickets are done by the help desk. Wow. That, I mean, by the way, I could never get them past like 27%. Well, well you can't because they're, they're talking about level one task, right? 10, 10, 10 IT companies that document 10 different ways. We've created all in that one,

[00:39:20] one instance of IT glue where everybody creates documentation exact same way. So when a tech goes and looks, he don't have to hunt and peck in 45 different locations. He goes straight to where the information is and he runs. They built, building a help desk, the hardest thing we ever built. The first two years, I'm telling you, I'm surprised that, that I didn't have MSPs hanging me. Hmm. But,

[00:39:45] but the ones that hung in and helped us get there now, it's incredible. I'm telling you, but you can't, but it can't be a third party. You have to realize all our ticketing systems on one. So all ticket numbers match up. All that communication happens. The second it happens, it's not delayed. It's, you don't have to upload nothing. You don't have. So now when a customer calls back and says, well, um, or calls the company, the MSP and says, Hey, on ticket,

[00:40:15] I've got ticket 1812. And, uh, I just wanted to get an update on it. He looks at his, and it's like, I don't have a ticket 1812. Right. No, that's fine. Okay. I see what you're saying. It has to work. It's an economy is a scale conversation. Yeah. I'm following what you're saying, but let me, let me, let me ask you this kind of current day question in the same conversation. Yeah. So we tried outsourcing it overseas. That didn't work out. We tried outsourcing it domestically.

[00:40:44] That was better, but that really wasn't great. I'm going to plug in the AI bot. Now I'm going to let the computer generated voice, you know, machine, the, you know, the new age answering machine. Get to take that call. Huh? What do you think about that? Uh, I don't think we're there. We still send every single inbound support call to a live technician, not dispatcher. Dispatchers only waste, waste time getting it from here to there.

[00:41:15] And, and they can't, you know, what our customer really wants when they call is they want immediate help by somebody they think is qualified. Right. I mean, it's a novel idea, but that's really what they want. And if they get that, they're very happy. And instead of, let's say a level one gets it. And instead of that level one saying, Oh man, I don't know what I'm doing here. He pulls a level two over to him and they work it together.

[00:41:41] So you're constantly training your level ones up and not shooting your customers all over the building and starting over every time. I had to repeat myself three times. Why did they have to repeat themselves? Because they probably got transferred three times. I mean, you know, and so it's different when you're just an MSP like we are, because it looks exactly what, like what anybody would build. It's just a lot bigger. You know,

[00:42:10] a 20 man company couldn't build 150 seat help desk. They just can't do it. Okay. Okay. Hold on. So let me go another direction that I think is on the same line of thinking. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of smaller MSPs and we've already established 85% of them probably fit that word. Yeah. Kind of try and dish the end customer directly to the vendor support line. Yeah.

[00:42:37] As a way to offload because they don't have enough time or bandwidth. Right. Yeah. That tends to not go well, Tim, because like the person over here at vendor land is like talking tech and the person who's calling in like just wants their stuff to work. And usually there's a perception, you know, conversation gap that just goes badly, but they, they still try and send it there just because why not? Let's try it. How much vendor support does the 20 group leverage?

[00:43:06] Or do you think you have enough in-house knowledge that that's not really a thing? You said, you said support was like literally the number one thing you said when you go to buy anything. So I assume that happens somewhere in the conversation. How does that work? So, so, so, so that's, Jackie fits on our side too. So we're going to do, we're going to do, let's say, let's say the customer, you're saying the customer calls and it's something wrong with their application. Let's say one,

[00:43:35] just tribal knowledge over time kind of starts to make that better and better, but, but we also do vendor liaison. So our tech will literally call the, call the vendor and work through that problem. Okay. Okay. Because who, who knows the product better than the vendor? Nobody for sure. But the expectation of the vendors tech and your tech, like they're going to understand the language, right? They're going to understand what's going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And don't get me wrong.

[00:44:02] It's kind of frustrating sometimes when you call a vendor's tech support and they're in a different country and they have no context of what you're saying. You have to go through, you know, they've got books. Oh, he said this. Okay. So they run it. And can it be frustrating? Here's the cool part. You take that frustration off the customer and put it on our tech. Right. So the customer doesn't have to deal with that frustration between those two points. It's a really cool concept.

[00:44:31] But that's typically what a regular MSP does. No, if the internet's down, what do we do? We call the ISP. Sure. It's natural. The problem with third party help, and we don't see ourselves as third party help desk because the only way you can use our help desk is to be a member. So it's a help desk built by the members. Okay. So, so, so let me put some context here and then I'll let you finish. Yeah. Yeah. So 20 group is split up between,

[00:44:58] I'll call it half the house is 39 MSPs. I think you said that you've acquired. Yes. And the other side is, Hey, I'm not looking to sell my business, but I want to leverage your resources. I'm going to sign up as a member. And then I get to get, get advantage of the big company group by stuff that I can't get on my own. How many members do you have? We typically want to sit around 175 to 200. We don't want more than 20. Oh yes.

[00:45:28] Yeah. It's funny because people used to ask me, do you have room for one more? And I would think in my mind, I'm like, why are they saying that? The 20 is based off the 80, 20 rule. That's it. Right. Rose rule. But, but if you think about it, think about a third party help desk, probably not run by an MSP. No. Probably run by somebody that's run a big call center. Well, unfortunately building a help desk in the MSP space is not a big call center.

[00:45:58] No. It is a highly, you know, it's not $18 or $15 an hour people that should answer the phone and answer a question. It is highly qualified people. It's all professional people that, that make really good money. Yeah. And so it starts to fall. I'm, I've, I'm, I kind of study a lot of things like this. There's a big company that sent all of their stuff offshore. Customers started jumping. It just,

[00:46:28] can I be honest with you? Can I be honest with you? Yeah. Dell and HP and all those guys in the two thousands that did this first ruined that lane for everyone because it went so badly. Yes. Nobody will ever consider it again. No. And it's, it's one of our selling points. We're all U S based. We have nothing offshore, which means CMC and NIST and all that becomes very easy for us. Why? Because we don't have to segment data. We don't have to do anything. Yeah.

[00:46:57] You know, so it's, it's just, it's building a big MSP with an MSP mentality versus building something where you're just trying to build a function that someone will pay for. Hmm. Big zooming out though, Tim, because you got a lot of macro data. I'm curious. Yeah. Is that, is the,

[00:47:22] is the IT services MSP sandbox growing or is it consolidating or can it do two things at the same time? I think he's doing both. I think he's doing both. I think you have now, I think there's a, I think there's a tipping point coming in the, in probably the next five to 10 years. Okay. Because this industry is going to consolidate. Okay. So, so guys that are in, that are, that are $1, $2 million where there's really no mark, a P firm's not looking for a $2 million company.

[00:47:52] No. Maybe look at a hundred of them. Yeah. You, you, you have to call the 20. And if you do the right things, the 20 will buy you all day long. You know, anywhere from 5 million down biggest I've bought has been around 10 million. Wow. Okay. But it, but it's, it's kind of my box, right? We've built it where, because I knew the, I knew the industry was going to consolidate. Now, how do you consolidate part of that 85%?

[00:48:21] You have to create a really good box to do it. And that's ultimately, ultimately the plan way back 13 years ago, that was the plan. Okay. We're going to, we're going to create a real marketplace where the everyday MSP that nobody wants has a place to sell and to create wealth. I can't, can I, I'm going to give you a George-ism here. I don't think it's going to be novel, but I've been around.

[00:48:49] I started when I was still in school. So, you know, high school or not, when I said, when I started my IT services company and I'll date myself here, Tim, I started like 2000, 2001. Okay. It's 2025. You do the math, but here's what I, here's what I learned through all of that. Yeah. This business is a really hard business. It's hard. And quite frankly, I believe if you look at it properly,

[00:49:17] you should be using this as a stepping stone to whatever comes after it. Most people that start in this business, if you, I'm going to use a movie line. You know, you're the hero so long that you saw yourself become the villain. You get to a burnout and you are just miserable. Yeah. There's lots. Now, so, so, so how do we, how do we ultimately fix that for the space? You have to create a natural place for, for that, that next step.

[00:49:45] And there's just not a next step for a lot of people, you know, uh, shut it down. They just shut it down and they take all of that energy and all of that stuff that they put into it and lose it. So it's like 25 years, 30 years. And you're just gone. Now, if you look, you take the first six companies I bought, if you froze them in time, right there, moved them forward,

[00:50:15] 28 months, all of those guys are sitting on around a 20 X multiple for what they had. Wow. This is how you get better together. And this is how you build wealth is you, you do it to where you get on a bigger box and it just exponentially. So we, we've 20, 20 X sounds a hell of a lot better than five or four or three. Yeah. So little, little guys,

[00:50:44] if they could get out of their way and, and, and I don't like picking on little guys because I was a little guy and I struggled for eight. I struggled for 18 years. So I get it. I get the mentality. I get everything. They try all these different marketing things. They fail. They finally give up and they decide, Hey, I'm just going to float alone. I'm going to just float along. And whatever customers I get from referrals, I'm a, you know, and, and Hey, I can make my hundred, hundred, $20,000 a year.

[00:51:12] These guys literally created themselves a job and not. I, so I agree. 18,000%. Yeah. Yes. So the 20. Is there Nirvana? Why? Because the 20 is run by somebody, me that truly wants for us to, us to all be wealthier than we would be. Now, don't get me wrong.

[00:51:40] Tim's not a philanthropist on this. Tim's getting wealthy too. Right. By the way, I, I, I didn't think that I would expect any differently, but yeah. But if, if you, if you, if you go to a place by yourself, it's very lonely. Yeah. If you can help a lot of people move up, up that chain. I mean, you've got, you've got people that if they'd have shut their companies down, or if they,

[00:52:07] even if they had sold them might've got a million five. Mm-hmm now sitting on four and a half, $5 million. Yeah. And they didn't, and they didn't have to struggle. They didn't have to worry about growth. They didn't have to wear. They literally got to step back. Okay. I'm going to step into my magic, whatever that is. I'm a great technician. That's what you should be doing. You should not be doing the accounting or the sales or in, and all of a sudden they, they breed this. Even people that join the group,

[00:52:37] all of a sudden they take vacations. Wow. That's not, but I'm like, so, so, so let me ask you this. Do you run? So I think the space has matured a bit where people realize that there is value in their business. I think for a large amount of the, the, the total number of companies out there, I think at least half of them know that that exists, right? Yeah. I'm just going to pick a number, but I think that's a good number. So do you run into competition when you're going to buy a company? Cause they're simply just trying to get the best deal.

[00:53:08] Uh, no, Okay. And think about this. You have to, you have to think about where you are. If you're talking about a two, $3 million company, who's the market? P firm doesn't want it. Cause they want a million plus in EBITDA. Yeah. So where's the market? Who's going to buy them? Another MSP. Not going to get wealthy that way. Slow. You know, well, even if you invest back in, think about this.

[00:53:36] I was just reading an article on one of the big, the bigs that are acquiring MSPs. Mm-hmm. And this is public. I mean, it's the article that's out there. And the two main guys go to Berkshire Hathaway every year. Mm-hmm. And they prescribe to Berkshire Hathaway's way of doing business, buy good companies and hold them forever. Okay. Now, now keep that thought for a minute. Now I'm an MSP and I say, Oh, I'm going to sell to you. Okay.

[00:54:05] We're going to give you 60% cash and 40%. You're going to invest back in the company. No matter what the percentage is. I'm just making those up, by the way. Sure. Sure. I got you. When do you get your 40%? You have to sell. When, when the people that are founding it saying we want to hold forever, when do you get your money? That's a great question. Never. Never. You,

[00:54:33] so there has to be a strategy and a vision that you're trying to build wealth for the people in the MSPs in the group, not just wealth for the top of the, the top of the box. Fair. Cashflow that goes where? So I'm different. I'm trying to build wealth, completely different strategy in mind. I am not holding forever. I, I, it doesn't sound like it. It,

[00:55:00] it does no good for the people that trust. You know, I could say that. Does that mean you sell the whole thing to, do you go IPO? Do you sell to a PE? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. We're not even there yet. Yeah. I think it's deeper than that. You never sell everything. Sure. Think about this for a minute. So all of these guys get in the box. You do a 60, 40 to begin with. You bounce the first time or sell the first time. Doesn't matter. Take 80% leave 20%.

[00:55:31] Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. So some people may be in this thing for the next 20 years. See you at the table from their little bitty company back here. Honestly, honestly believe if it's, if it's done right, you can take a million, million and a half, $2 million MSP. And if they do it right, they'll net net out. And I'm not talking about after taxing all that. I think they can get to $10 million.

[00:56:02] Impossible, impossible for them to do any other way. Not unless they're making extra external investment. They've been in, they've been in business 25 years. What are all the problems? People process and money, money, money, first people, second process, third. Cause if you don't have people, you don't need process. If you don't have people, it's cause you don't have money to hire them. Fair. So it's this, it's this circular thing that happens. Where if MSPs could get to that point where they,

[00:56:32] they think. And it's not about Tim Conkle. It's about them. But at some point you have to have some level of vision or strategy to extract yourself out of the business and make enough wealth that it doesn't matter. So big takeaway from here. There's a lot. And I could probably do another hour with you. Like, by the way, this is, this is good stuff. Yeah. Guys, you got in business because you started a job for yourself. A lot of you, most of you, I did it.

[00:57:02] Tim Shirley did it 18 years. Right. We just heard that. And by the way, I didn't know that I heard, I learned that just like you did right here on this thing. Um, but when do you turn around and start looking at this as an investment and a money strategy? Cause that's ultimately why you should have started a business. This is probably not why you did. It's why you should have. But at the end of the day, you can pivot to, Hey, let's look at this as what's my upside going back to the NFL concept. Right. Hey, I buy low, you know,

[00:57:32] I either, you know, it didn't work out. I didn't lose my shirt or I bought low. And it was, I went to, I won the Superbowl. Right. Like that's the upside and there's in between. Right. But bottom line is you have to look at this. Isn't meant to be a forever thing. This is meant to be, I'm putting my time in, but I need to get something out of it at the end. And I know most of you don't think that way. And, and, and I a hundred percent agree with you. You start a business to create wealth.

[00:58:02] If you have any other reason for starting a business, it's foolish. Well, I just want to help a lot of people out. Having a good company that grows and creates wealth, lets you help more people than you would ever do with just the lip service of saying, I did this to make people, to help people. I can't argue that at all. And you have to start with you. You have to start with you. And then it goes from you to your wife, to your kids. This is why I do it.

[00:58:29] I'm creating wealth for the people I love the most. And then I'm going to, and then I'm going to stretch that out to my friends. And to me, everybody in the MSP space is my friend. I love the MSP space. We're weird. All of us MSPs are weird people, but it's not kind of weird. So it just works. Listen, I, you know, they say money doesn't solve, you know, happiness. I, I, it helps a whole lot. Hey, let me tell you something.

[00:58:58] Lack of it creates more unhappiness than having too much of it. There's a balance. Yeah. If you had a ton of money and you, you lived in a, you lived in the closet and nobody loved you because you never shared anything or did anything. That's a lonely place to be with that money. I spent three days with a billionaire in Utah at his house. Most miserable person I've ever met in my entire, entire life. Wow. Now I wasn't in there because of me.

[00:59:26] It was a friend of mine that knew him and a group of us stayed with him. They duck hunting, little goat river and all that, all that man shit. But wife wasn't there. He griped about everything. Miserable. Money can create misery, but it can also create a really, really cool utopian world where not only your family, but your friends get elevated to a haunted place. I like that.

[00:59:56] That sounds good. Yeah. Where do people find more information about either side of this program? Right. Like you said, you know, I want to be a member or, Hey, I want to sell this thing. Who do I got to talk to? Where do they go? If you go to the 20.com, just T H E dot two O or T H E two O dot C O M com.com. There's a form you can fill out. If, if, if you're in a place that you're going to sell,

[01:00:24] I can show you where you get your most bang for your buck. If you're smaller and you're like, Tim, I'm too small. Nobody wants to buy me. Let me help you get there. I will give you the recipe and all the pieces at consumption, which means you don't have to go spend all your money to do it. Do it. Do it at consumption and quit, quit getting on this. They got to get off this treadmill where they get on a new marketing program, jump off, get on a new marketing program, jump off, get on a new.

[01:00:54] And we worry about some of the craziest stuff in the world. Let me tell you what labeling everything. Yes. The way we, the way we bundle our own stuff. I tell people all the time, only a fool white labels another man's liability. Yeah. I should never make Microsoft 365, George 365. No, because you just, it goes down. I'm the bad guy. Hey, but it's easy to say, Microsoft's down. But if it's,

[01:01:22] it's gone down like two or three times, like within the last 10 days. Right. Like theoretical. Yeah. The Azure there, they're having a scale problem with Azure. I think, you know, but yeah, but, but white labeling is about ego. Yeah. Ego, most expensive thing in business. Because it's, because it's never happy. I'm going to make, I'm going to make that the title to this session.

[01:01:51] Ego is the most expensive thing in business. Wow. Hey, I think you're right. I, I can't, I got to be honest with you, Tim. Like I said, we haven't spent a lot of time talking like, you know, kind of like just been hovering in the same places, but haven't really had a real conversation. I got to be honest with you. A lot of stuff you said on this session. It all makes sense. I can't argue a lot of it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and then, you know,

[01:02:19] like the sky is blue and I need electricity to turn my computer on. That is a fact. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I kind of feel like, I kind of feel like there's a little bit of kindred spirit. We kind of think in some of the same, the same veins, right. We, we know that I'm pretty sure George Bardass, he woke up one day and said, I'm going to build a business. That's going to make me wealthy. He didn't wake up and say, I'm going to build a business. It drives me freaking nuts every day. I know it does that no matter what. I'll tell you this. And I kind of, you know,

[01:02:49] as we're a little bit over time, but yeah, like, listen, my parents came from absolutely nothing. Right. Like a lot of the people who came into this country, depending on time and dates, right. Sold everything they had and came to America for the American dream. Yeah. I was born here first generation. And I know depending on your family's history, maybe your second, third, fourth, but at some point somebody came here. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a big,

[01:03:16] you want to talk about risk versus reward, right? That's as serious as it gets. Right. Right. And so I saw my parents work with nothing. You know, just, you know, all they did was they had their two hands and they just worked and worked and worked and worked and worked. And by the way, I know it's a little bit cliche, but like, you want your kids to have a better life than you did. That's absolutely how they were wired. They still are. Right. Like, Hey, I don't want you to have to work as hard as I had to. Yeah. But I, I, that's how I was raised.

[01:03:46] Those are the wires I put together. So my point was, Hey, I understood the value of a dollar real early on in life. Yeah. Same here. Same here. Yeah. You know, Hey, dollars just wouldn't hand it out in our household. I mean, I had to work for it. You had to work for that stuff. And, but, but you know what? I think it's, it's kind of funny when you're a kid is not as important as an adult. My parents were perfect in this arena. They made me, they gave me drive to, to,

[01:04:16] to work for what I want and all the other stuff that goes with it. And it sounds like your parents were probably rewarded better than most because their son has turned out to be pretty successful. I think I'm sure they'll love to hear that. Cause I'm sure that I, they tell me they watch these, but you know, I'll tell you this. Yeah. My, you know, when I, when, when my, my father is a carpenter cabinet maker by trade. Right. And I try and you'd be surprised because, you know, my wife's like,

[01:04:45] you can't hang a frame on the wall. And I'm like, Oh yeah. Wrong guy. You don't want me to put a hole. She's like, how did you get to this place? Your father is like a handyman. And I'm like, because he told me to go do something else. Yeah. My, my dad was in construction. So when I called him and said, Hey, I found a little company for sale. And he goes, well, if you're scared, don't do it. He knew that I was going to take that challenge, you know, and, and it, and it, it ultimately paid off. No. Yeah. I mean,

[01:05:15] but there's a little bit of, I think, you know, big picture, you know, start a business for an outcome, not to create a job for yourself. If that's the case, go work for somebody else. I'm with you too. There's a certain drive that's required to be successful. There is. And if you don't have it, this is a cool part about life and humans. The people that have drive have enough for those willing to jump on the drive train. Hmm. Okay. It's no different than you.

[01:05:43] All the people that you surrounded yourself have decided, I don't have the same level of drive and I can't do what George does, but shit, I just want to be on the train. Okay. So you're the conductor. You got full steam, pretty plush seats on the train. Who wouldn't want to be part of that? That's what most people don't realize. It is okay to jump on somebody else's train that has, that has the drive that you don't.

[01:06:15] Because we need everybody. Everyone on your train has propelled you forward. And so it's not a, well, I mean, that could be as simple as I bought shares in somebody on the stock market. Right. 100%. 100%. Hey, Apple's doing good. I'm going to go buy some stock in Apple today. Right. Like crazy conversation. 1992. I buy Roland technology. I'm working. Apple stock is 23 cents. Oh, the headlines in the news. Yeah.

[01:06:44] If I would have bought a thousand dollars worth of shares in 1992, they'd be worth something like a hundred million dollars. A thousand dollars. Now, now, now think though, everything in the news was Apple's going bankrupt. Fear, fear scares most people off the greatest opportunities in life. Well, I heard some friend of mine say that Tim Conkle is an asshole. Okay.

[01:07:17] Tim, I heard that. No, people tell me, Hey, some people, you either, people say, Tim, people either love you or hate you. I can't help that. And I'm 99% sure you're the same way because we're kind of built this way. Yes. We're pretty confident. We believe what we believe, but that's what, that's what makes us take risks that no one else will. That's fair. I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:07:46] And even though we're from completely different parts of the world. Yes. So people really love me or they really hate me, but you know, I think part of my problem, Tim, for whatever it's worth is, and it sounds like you're kind of the same way, just from not just this session, but like I've, I've seen you talk before. Yeah. Yeah. I just don't like to sugarcoat things. Right. Like I'd rather just be like really straightforward, almost too transparent. And people don't like that for some reason. Yeah. I'd rather know what I'm working with and who I'm dealing with than have to guess.

[01:08:16] Yeah. If you, if you have to lie and lies be something else than what you are, if you have to be something else for people to like you, they're the wrong people. Yeah. And it's not the people that you want to bring on the wealth train with you and make wealthy. No. Why? Because they'll always do this friction. And, and me, I don't like friction. I want everybody to love me. You know, I'm just being honest, but I'm also a realist in the sense that it's not going to change me if you don't.

[01:08:48] So you're confident in who you are. That's simple. So I think a cool statement would be for everybody. They'll watch this, whether you thought George was an asshole or not, or you thought I was an asshole or not, you really should stop and figure it out. Is it the truth? I think, unfortunately, and I will probably end with this and maybe we'll schedule another one of these. This is so good. I have 10 other things that I could ask you right now, but, um,

[01:09:17] if you're not telling your story, somebody else is going to make your story for you. A hundred percent. Unfortunately, it's not the story that you wanted. No, well, it never is. Outside perspective never lets you know what the inside perspective is. But this has been cool, dude. I, I, I really appreciate you having me on and I know we've never met, but it's, it's weird in a sense that we could be friends and I've only known you for an hour. Amazing. And, you know,

[01:09:47] even though I was brought up to be an anti Dallas and the anti Texas, you know, being the Eagles fan that I am, it's okay. There's some nice. You just have to put football to the side. Hey, you know, when it comes time, I'm always willing to take a friendly wager. Yeah. Yeah. And Philly was incredible this year. I mean, Hey, I'm a football fan and I love football. Incredible football is incredible football. I don't care what name or tag you put on it. Well,

[01:10:15] incredible football teams get built right now in this time of the year. So let's see what your, your, your team is down there. Do. Same for me, right? I got to see how, how it all shakes out. Tim, we're going to get another one on the books. Thank you very much. Maybe we'll actually do this in person sometimes. Cause this is the first time we've actually talked more than just a drive-by guys. This session was recorded. I suggest you go back and rewind it. There's a lot of good nuggets here. And quite frankly, I just think if, if the,

[01:10:45] if you didn't take anything out of this, there's a lot of good things. Look at your business and understand if you're just working to pay, the bills at the end of the month, it doesn't make, it's probably doesn't make sense. Yeah. You're just, it's just a job. So if that, if you're okay with that and understand that that's one thing, but I would suggest you'd have a lot less things to worry about. If somebody else is dealing with those problems, either go work for somebody else or consider another Avenue. This could be another Avenue.

[01:11:16] I mean, by the way, if you don't know what's out there, you can't make good decisions, right? So if anything other than educate yourself on what's happening in the marketplace, marketplace. And Tim seems to think that even though things still seem to be growing in our sandbox, the next five to 10 years is going to flip, flip the other way. Understand where that, what that means for you. And Tim, catch you later for everyone else. The session will be online later on today. MSP initiative.com and the 20.com.

[01:11:46] Go check it out and we'll catch you on the next one. Thanks, George. Have a good one guys.