In this episode of What's Important Now, host Carrie Richardson sits down with Andrew Moore, founder of Ridgeview Advisors, to dive deep into the concept of "Operationalizing Trust" in the managed services provider (MSP) industry.
Andrew shares insights on how scaling trust is critical for MSPs and how it directly impacts profitability, client satisfaction, and business scalability. Andrew recounts his journey from his early days in IT to becoming a COO and now running his own consultancy.
From practical sales strategies, cost of client acquisition, to the art of expectation management, this episode is packed with actionable advice for business owners looking to optimize their operations and build long-lasting client relationships. Whether you're an MSP owner, entrepreneur, or simply interested in operational efficiency, this episode is a must-listen.
Key Takeaways:
- Operationalizing Trust: Scaling trust beyond the owner and embedding it into sales, operations, and client management.
- Cost of Acquisition: The importance of knowing your numbers to improve profitability.
- Expectation Management: How clear contracts and upfront communication can save relationships and margins.
- Scaling MSPs: From hiring the right salespeople to implementing scalable processes, Andrew shares what worked (and didn’t) during his time scaling an MSP from 8 to 65 employees.
- The Power of Letting Go: Why business owners need to trust their teams to grow effectively.
Quotes from Andrew Moore:
- "If you operationalize trust, you’re not just selling a service — you're creating a system that scales trust across your entire business."
- "Understanding your cost of client acquisition is crucial. Most MSPs don't have a handle on these numbers, and it’s a game-changer."
- "Expectation management isn't just a service strategy; it's a business survival skill."
Connect with Andrew Moore:
- Website: Ridgeview Advisors
- LinkedIn: Andrew Moore
Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?
Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.
Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.
Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.
Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com
Book time with either of them here: https://randr.consulting/connect
Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.
Carrie and Ian Richardson are partners in Richardson & Richardson Consulting.
Carrie is the founder of the content collaboration agency, Croocial.
Ian is the founder of the strategic consulting firm, Fox and Crow Group.
Carrie Richardson: Good afternoon, My name is Carrie
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Richardson.
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host of what's important now.
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today I'm asking Andrew Moore.
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Andrew, how are you doing today?
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Andrew Moore: I am awesome.
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I'm super excited to be here.
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Thank you so much for the opportunity to hang out.
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Carrie Richardson: Is this your first podcast
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Andrew Moore: It's the first time I've had opportunity to do
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this, so I'm excited to see how it works.
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It should be fun.
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Carrie Richardson: why don't we start?
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Tell me about the new venture.
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Andrew Moore: I've started Ridgeview advisors and the plan
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is to be working with MSPs, to help them with, with what I call
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operationalizing trust, which is the, the part that everybody
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thinks that they should be doing, but nobody knows how to
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scale, when you're an MSP, you're out there trying to get
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your clients to trust you.
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and a lot of the times people do that, just being the owner.
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They hit a certain level where they just can't get enough
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people to trust them all the time.
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and what winds up happening is they can't scale their business
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because everybody wants a piece of them specifically.
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They can't get out there enough tell their story enough help
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their clients enough What I want to do is figure out how to take
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the idea of building trust into your community through being a
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subject matter expert and lunch and learns partnering with other
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B2B organizations.
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Draw that through your sales process into your operations and
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then scale it so that you can build real value
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Carrie Richardson: it's not like you're a newcomer to the space.
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you were until recently, part of a large MSP.
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tell us about your journey
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Andrew Moore: I came directly out of 1999, 2000, getting
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Microsoft certifications and I got a job in MSP.
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I'll be honest, I was a terrible employee I was new to getting a
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job I worked for a company called E Net and whoever those
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guys are, if they hear this, like y'all were right to get rid
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of me, I was not good at what I did.
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I went into the federal government, skipped around after
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DHS was founded.
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I got a chance to work under Homeland security grants That
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was a cool experience.
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then I started at a company called ergos, and there was
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about eight or 10 of us at the time We started to scale and we
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built it up in the six years that I was there, 50 or 60 folks
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were working there when I left, and they were bought by a
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private owner who's still there.
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His name is Salim.
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And, he's really grown that up to one of the biggest MSPs in
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the country.
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I started doing The engineering stuff and, working with the
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clients and the figuring out how to build run books and how
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documentation time entry and working with the early part of
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connect wise in this environment and figuring out how that works.
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And then I got a chance to meet up with a guy named Ryan Lakin.
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and, everything went
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Carrie Richardson: to hell
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Andrew Moore: you told me that the one rule of the podcast was
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we couldn't actually talk shit about people.
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We'll talk about Ryan.
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Carrie Richardson: How everybody loves Ryan.
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Andrew Moore: It's true.
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He's been really good to me.
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I elevated myself into the, Position the COO with Ryan and,
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when we started, like I said, there were about 8 or 10 of us
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we built it up over about 12 years when there was finally an
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exit there after I'd come on board, we were about 65 people
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were about an 11 million MSP, and we were platformed.
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Which was amazing.
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So we had a private equity investor we focused on creating
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scalable processes and systems.
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we developed an awesome process for our operations.
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We were very profitable but didn't have good sales coming
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in.
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I don't think sales Is a dark art.
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there's a magic to it.
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marketing requires a certain eye there's a process if you do the
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right things when you're dealing in business, if you sit down and
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say, are we doing the right activity?
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Are we targeting the ideal client profile for us?
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If we're not just trying to take everything in if we're going
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through the process and our routines of qualifying these
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deals as they come through.
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So we're not wasting our time we can drive real sales And then
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started that process And then we had 15 percent year over year
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growth for almost four years, it wasn't because I did anything
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special, we created a process around sales.
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We talked to you at that, during that time, which was like, how
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do you make sure that you got good lead gen and where are you
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going to be bringing these folks in from?
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And, how do you do the qualifying process?
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And what does that look like?
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you kept telling us it's a process.
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it's a numbers game.
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follow a process and a script put stuff in place tweak it.
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Carrie Richardson: You are the only company I ever spoke to
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that knew their cost of acquisition.
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You didn't have to look at numbers.
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I was like, Ryan, how much to close a new client?
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He was like 16, 000.
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He knew and most MSPs don't, they don't know how much their
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leads costs and they don't know how much their deals cost.
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Andrew Moore: I think cost of acquisition is, Way more than
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anyone thinks it should be if you talk to any MSP They'd be
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like, I don't know, like three or 400 I don't, I don't think
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they actually know
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Carrie Richardson: we would ask that all the time.
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that was back when we were undercharging, When we were a
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small business and didn't understand our numbers.
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We might've charged 500 a lead at that time, and we should have
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been charging 5, 000, but it has to be a qualified lead and it
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has to hit all the high notes, it has to be in the right
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industry within a certain window of evaluation, when an MSP says
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that they want leads, what they're saying is, I want you to
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do all of the work and hand me, A sales opportunity with a bow
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on top that is BANT qualified.
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all I have to do is go in there with a contract I've already
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filled out and put it in front of them.
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then I want to sign it
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Andrew Moore: I remember when I first started doing sales, I
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still had a problem talking about budget.
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It made me feel uncomfortable because I was like, what if I
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scare them away?
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I started to realize I really needed to know what that budget
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was with that client.
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Because if I didn't, I would waste our time.
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Like the cost of acquisition is so expensive.
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Because you're having to go out and deploy a sales engineer and
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review their network and and that's not even including, like,
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how much it's going to cost you to pay your commissions and
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your, the marketing spend that you're doing and all of it, your
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pay per click and all that We as engineers and folks like that,
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when we get into MSP, we really worry about whether or not we're
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going to be able to close this deal because we get so few of
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these opportunities because we don't have a refined sales
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system or sales process.
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And that's why I keep telling everybody get these things lined
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up, get these opportunities qualified.
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if you're not qualifying upfront, then you're pulling
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stuff through How often do you get to the point where a
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salesperson brings in a lead and they get all the way to putting
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contracts together and somebody in ops looks at it and goes,
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this is terrible.
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why are we doing this?
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This isn't great for anybody you wind up pulling them through and
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you want to give the sales guy some mo and he convinced you to
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do it.
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now you've got an underperforming client and that
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turns into two or three underperforming clients.
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And then your margins are crap, That salesperson doesn't stick
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around anyway, right?
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People have really got to focus on that part of their business
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instead of just taking whatever comes through the door and not
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having a process around sales, that's one of the most important
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things I learned
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Carrie Richardson: I have a solution to that problem.
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we spent two years building it
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Andrew Moore: love that.
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Carrie Richardson: We just took everything our clients were
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asking for And productized it you hit capacity consulting
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quickly,
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Andrew Moore: right?
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Carrie Richardson: we can support eight Clients.
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With a full time Strat Op, or fractional cro gig The total
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addressable market is about 55 000 MSPs in north america alone.
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We could capture one percent of the addressable market That
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replaces our consulting revenue 10 times over.
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Andrew Moore: you were going to show me a bit of your product at
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it nation.
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tell me without getting too sales pitchy,
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Carrie Richardson: first it eliminates most of the grunt
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work at the beginning of the sales process.
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So let's say you're going to hire in house, you're going to
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stop paying the astronomical third party lead generation
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agency fees.
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You're going to stop doing pay per click and SEO.
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Nobody knows really how it works, but it's very expensive.
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What we have found over and over again is that MSPs will hire
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somebody in sales But they've never done sales themselves
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they've been referral based or they've grown through word of
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mouth and they've never done organic sales And they've worked
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with third party agencies for some lead gen here and there,
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but now they're going to bring a sales rep into the org and they
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have no structured process.
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Like you mentioned at the beginning, they do not have a
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process to hire.
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They think they're getting a bargain when they underpay
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someone, right?
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They're laughing like, Hey, we got them for 45, 000 a year.
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And I'm thinking like, that's not a sales rep.
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That is an HR nightmare waiting to happen and they don't have
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the tools set up for them.
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They don't have any way to explain to them how they're
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going to make money, what their commission is going to be,
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right?
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Like you look at a hundred Reddit posts.
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what should I pay a sales rep?
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How much commission should I pay them?
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how about we start at the very beginning with what am I going
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to teach them to do?
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Because just because they sold insurance successfully for four
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years in Oklahoma doesn't mean that they're going to be able to
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sell managed services in New York, and they can't put
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together their own playbook and their own process.
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Sales reps aren't process people were talkers were dreamers.
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We're very convincing, but we still need somebody to say, here
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is how you get from a to B, here are the steps that you have to
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take here, the guidelines or the parameters we need you to stay
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within.
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Here's how profitable we need our accounts to be.
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Oh, and here's what managed services is.
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It's not a broken printer.
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So we've created a platform that first of all, starts at what is
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managed services.
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So instead of you, business owner, having to take a week of
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your time to sit down and explain your own business model
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to a sales rep, we've handled that for you.
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We've handled the playbooks.
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We've handled every single process that a sales rep would
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need to know to be successful within a managed service
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organization, starting from cold calling and lead generation to
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sales discovery and closing.
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Andrew Moore: what I think is super cool is as we scaled our
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business, we had 40 or 50 people in the service delivery team.
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I had a couple of leads and was busy Being COO, I took on one
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marketing person, one sales admin, and an actual sales
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hunter.
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And that became 80 percent of my time.
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And that was just at the very beginning, right?
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Then we start layering on new salespeople.
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what I warn folks about is there's that chicken or the egg
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do you hire a sales manager?
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Do you hire a rep?
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But if you don't have somebody who's willing to manage a sales
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rep, then you have no business hiring a sales rep, if you're
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not going to do it yourself, or you're not going to hire a
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manager to build that program for you to then hire sales reps
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then I don't think you should do it.
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You got to have somebody that's like.
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In your business that knows how your business works and working
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with that sales rep on a almost daily basis.
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Carrie Richardson: This platform will do fractional CRO for you.
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Andrew Moore: After we platform, we work with a private equity
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group.
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We brought in a few companies, from around the country I had
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been going hard since the pandemic, I needed to.
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Take a step back from client delivery and some other things.
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And I really needed to catch my breath.
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And what I thought was really important was I'm in peer groups
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and I don't see enough high quality talent on the consulting
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side.
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That's not to say there's not out there, but to your point,
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there's 55.
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Thousand MSPs or some ridiculous number.
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I felt like there was a place to get involved and say, hey, let's
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have some one on one do I want to empire build with this?
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Probably not.
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I don't know if I want to.
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Try to replicate myself 15 times and try to build some big
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consulting firm out of this.
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But for the right, for right now, I want to get back to
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helping people again.
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I want to get back to just being in the day to day helping them
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grow their business.
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That's exciting to me.
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Carrie Richardson: I love small businesses.
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when we worked for large vendors, we were a line item we
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did well for them.
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But when we worked for a small business and helped them land
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the biggest client they'd ever had.
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And it changed the course of their business forever.
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To a 1 million or 2 million MSP that, 6, 000 monthly recurring
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client or that 15, 000 monthly recurring client is significant
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revenue
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Andrew Moore: So my dad ran his own small business we knew if
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the business didn't do well, like he was going to be a shitty
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Christmas and, or if we were, if we happened to go on a family
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vacation, we may stop at a client.
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On the way, because my dad was like we're hitting by here
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anyway.
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Like it was just so ingrained in everything we did as a family
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and how important it was to him that if anything went sideways
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with that business, it affected all of us and all of his
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employees.
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And it was super important to him and all of us.
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to be in a position with Ryan, where he would give me so much
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opportunity to manage his business on behalf of him his
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family and our employees.
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it was never lost on me that there was a level of trust that
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most people don't understand unless you're in small business.
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I loved being an MSP and I think it's so important and so
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privileged for the MSP community to be out there servicing these
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folks.
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I want to get back involved with MSPs at that level knowing what
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they need and how important it is to have an advisor helps them
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through that process.
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so they can do the same for their clients.
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To me, it's cool.
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Carrie Richardson: My first client was, an MSP out of
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Canada.
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he'll be at Evolve this year.
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He just became a client of ours for the platform.
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So 12 years ago, my first client is now a client again.
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that to me is extraordinarily flattering,
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Andrew Moore: The reason I gravitated towards sales and
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marketing is I'm creative, so I like to create things.
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And so for me, like when I would build environments for our
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clients, it was always just about, it was almost like Legos.
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If you've got a mind for detail, you can be an MSP if you've got
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a mind for creativity and how to interface things together.
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You can be an MSP if you're a people person.
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You can be an MSP if you're, a server troll and don't like
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people and you wanna hide in a server room somewhere and be on
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the NOC there's all these things you can do in MSP.
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I don't know if you've noticed this.
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I don't know how many frustrated musicians I've met in MSP.
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in our last MSP, we had a band.
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There were so many of them, I swear to God, like we had a band
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and everybody was like, yeah, I play guitar, play drums.
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I had a saxophone player.
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a flutist.
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We did Jethro Tull covers it's cool to find all these different
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types of people, whether they're super professional, like to
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consult or super introverted they can all come together
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around a common cause, which is one of my favorite things is
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that it was when the MSP.
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It's terrible, but awesome.
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It's like when shit hits the fan and everybody gets together and
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they help a client.
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And at the end of the day, you did something awesome.
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The client's super excited it's super rewarding.
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different types of people together achieve stuff they
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didn't think they could It's super fun.
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I love it.
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Carrie Richardson: Who else is starting another MSP now?
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Who swore they never would.
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Andrew Moore: Yeah.
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It's crazy.
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They get right back in.
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it's interesting to see how excited they get about it again,
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because they take all this stuff they learned and start applying
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it, which is really cool to watch.
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Carrie Richardson: The second time around is, easier.
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Andrew Moore: I've done this for 20 years.
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My dad worked for 20 years.
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sold his company for a little over a million dollars, it put
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food on our table.
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he wasn't an MSP, I knew we weren't rich, but it doesn't
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matter how hard you work, That doesn't necessarily equate to
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how much your business is worth.
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It's what the market will pay for your business.
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Go to where the work is.
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know what your numbers need to be and don't be afraid to make
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tough decisions.
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whether that's walking away from a sales opportunity, that might
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seem like a good idea.
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Firing a loud client.
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Because they're obnoxious.
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Can I ask you a question I want to know, have you seen with your
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clients, a shift since the pandemic where everybody in
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service Is I don't care about your feelings.
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workload.
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SLAs.
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contract.
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I need this fixed now.
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And I'm going to jump the line.
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And I'm like, there is little to no patience I feel like anymore,
00:15:36
or maybe now I've just gotten old and I'm like, get off my
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lawn, but I feel like in the last like few years, like
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patients for anything service related has just been
00:15:44
eliminated.
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people are just.
00:15:45
Irritated all the time.
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Is that just me?
00:15:47
Carrie Richardson: Ian, after he sold his MSP, refuses to do any
00:15:51
tech work I sold in 2020.
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I haven't had to call for support for, four years.
00:16:00
I haven't found people being that way with us.
00:16:02
Like I haven't found our clients being like, but again, there are
00:16:05
no sales emergencies.
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Just set firm boundaries.
00:16:08
when we started we ignored our families while we built our
00:16:12
businesses, And we've got divorces to show for it.
00:16:15
my kids are still speaking to me.
00:16:16
But I was like your dad on summer vacation.
00:16:18
And so I five more minutes, five more minutes, my kids to death
00:16:21
for 10 years We took stock of what we wanted and it helps to
00:16:25
have a little bit of money in the bank now I can say, this is
00:16:28
what I want my life to look like.
00:16:31
And I'm not going to work with clients that don't respect what
00:16:34
I want my life to look like.
00:16:37
I don't have my email on my phone anymore.
00:16:38
If I get an email after five it doesn't get looked at until
00:16:41
tomorrow.
00:16:43
Andrew Moore: awesome.
00:16:43
Carrie Richardson: Ian's a Paterson StratOp guide, and he
00:16:47
also does life planning.
00:16:48
a strategic plan for your life.
00:16:50
We both went through that process to see what we want the
00:16:53
rest of our lives to look like?
00:16:55
Andrew Moore: that's cool.
00:16:56
Carrie Richardson: didn't look like taking calls from clients
00:16:58
at 10 o'clock at night.
00:17:01
Andrew Moore: That's it.
00:17:02
And that's the thing about MSP it's almost like being a doctor
00:17:05
in that regard.
00:17:05
I'm not saying you're saving lives.
00:17:07
Please don't take that out of context.
00:17:09
I just mean, it's when you got to really helping people and you
00:17:12
got to really take what you do.
00:17:15
seriously to a point.
00:17:16
Like we used to say it all the time.
00:17:17
It's we're not curing cancer, I wanted to make sure people,
00:17:19
didn't get so stressed out with their job that they took that
00:17:23
too seriously about listen the, sometimes our problems will be
00:17:26
there tomorrow.
00:17:27
And that balance in MSP has been really hard.
00:17:29
And I feel in the last few years, it's just that people
00:17:31
have been really focused on maybe they feel like at least in
00:17:35
business we had a lot of catching up to do.
00:17:37
We really need to take advantage of what's going on with the
00:17:39
economy right now.
00:17:40
Hey, Let's go.
00:17:41
Maybe it's just the climate where people are frustrated and
00:17:44
don't know where to, Put that frustration.
00:17:46
they take it out on the guy on the phone there's this level of
00:17:48
anxiety that everybody's got when it comes to wanting to get
00:17:50
things knocked out when it comes to it.
00:17:52
But I also think it might just be because everybody has to be
00:17:55
on all the time.
00:17:57
you're at home, you're working, you're on the road, you're
00:18:00
working right.
00:18:00
Like it.
00:18:02
Everybody is on everywhere that they go and they just expect
00:18:05
everything to work flawlessly.
00:18:06
so if you get somebody that calls they're like, I can't get
00:18:08
my job done today.
00:18:09
let me see if I can log in and figure out what's going on.
00:18:11
I'm in a hotel room in Boston staying here for a couple of
00:18:14
days working remote.
00:18:15
We don't have documentation on that.
00:18:17
then everybody gets frustrated.
00:18:18
I was told I could work anywhere.
00:18:20
You can't
00:18:20
Carrie Richardson: expectation management is a big, important
00:18:23
part of onboarding that I think a lot of MSPs just gloss over.
00:18:27
Andrew Moore: Yeah.
00:18:27
We used to have a saying A client will let you burn down
00:18:29
their house as long as you tell them when you're going to do it,
00:18:31
how long it's going to take.
00:18:32
Carrie Richardson: Yes.
00:18:33
I couldn't have said it better myself.
00:18:35
Andrew Moore: Have that conversation up front make sure
00:18:36
it's in the contract and you make sure that you're supporting
00:18:39
it so that when an emergency comes up, you handle it the
00:18:42
right way.
00:18:42
when they try to circumvent that, you can have a
00:18:44
conversation with we really, we'll do it for you this time,
00:18:47
or we can do it, but it's going to cost more, or we can't get to
00:18:50
it because, we've got these other things that are going on.
00:18:53
And this is not what we agreed to, right?
00:18:56
And I think there are so many entrepreneurs and business
00:18:58
owners feel building trust comes with saying yes.
00:19:01
not defining what their service looks like.
00:19:05
this is what we're going to do for you.
00:19:07
And this is what you're going to do for us, be patient, follow
00:19:09
the rules, pay us on time.
00:19:11
Carrie Richardson: Not be shitty
00:19:12
Andrew Moore: Oh God.
00:19:13
Yeah.
00:19:13
I think that level of give and take, if you're doing it the
00:19:17
right way, setting that example in the way that you're putting
00:19:20
together your outside marketing, whether that's.
00:19:22
Lunch and warns with existing clients that are good where
00:19:25
you're bringing prospects in right or events or whatever that
00:19:27
looks like we're going out to shows and you're doing speaking
00:19:31
engagements if you're instilling that into what you're doing and
00:19:33
pulling it through, and building your sales process you can
00:19:36
understand what the client is like.
00:19:38
Throughout this process, that turns into happier clients that
00:19:42
trust you, allow you to sell new and interesting things as our
00:19:45
industry and business changes, right?
00:19:47
So you're going to have upsell cross all opportunities.
00:19:50
You're going to have low churn.
00:19:51
They're going to bring in referrals for you.
00:19:53
Your margins are going to stay in line because you built
00:19:55
something that they understand that they're going to stick to
00:19:58
so that you don't have to like, like how many times have MSPs
00:20:01
got excited because they pulled six people off of something, to
00:20:05
go fix this thing that the client dropped in their lap at
00:20:07
the last minute.
00:20:08
They're like, Oh, we bought a new server.
00:20:09
We need to install this afternoon.
00:20:11
And then you're like, yay, we did all that.
00:20:13
what you wound up doing was pissing off seven other clients
00:20:15
because you didn't get to their shit.
00:20:18
So I think that if you do all these things right back to your
00:20:21
point of just creating a level of hate expectation management
00:20:26
from the beginning and holding to it with some flexibility, but
00:20:29
mostly sticking to it.
00:20:31
To me, that's the missing thing most MSPs don't have.
00:20:34
if you do it that way, You can't help but scale it because it's
00:20:37
not dependent on the owner's promises or the sales guy's
00:20:41
promises or Steve on the desk taking every single call
00:20:45
Carrie Richardson: you know how you get the best support?
00:20:47
You marry someone who owns an MSP.
00:20:50
Andrew Moore: My wife and I met at computer school, getting our
00:20:53
Microsoft certifications.
00:20:54
And so she has like a full blown MCSE for Microsoft, 2000 active
00:20:58
directory.
00:20:59
15 years ago, she started focusing more on like product
00:21:01
management and SAS solutions and, development and all that.
00:21:04
So she's over there in that space now.
00:21:05
I never fully finished my MCSE like she did and she's like the
00:21:09
printer has a problem I'm like, get a new printer.
00:21:11
Carrie Richardson: All right.
00:21:11
So this is going to be your first it nation as a vendor.
00:21:16
What are you going to do?
00:21:17
what's it going to be like for you?
00:21:19
Andrew Moore: I was telling friends on my morning walk
00:21:20
normally I go and I get wined and dined and, this year
00:21:23
everybody's all get bent.
00:21:25
Like you don't have any money.
00:21:26
Normally I'll just go and I'll like, hang out and I'll network
00:21:29
and make memories, but this year, my focus is going to be, I
00:21:32
really want, so there's a couple of different things I really
00:21:34
want to do.
00:21:35
I really want to walk the floor because I know it usually once
00:21:38
or twice I have to walk on the floor.
00:21:39
Like you get a feel for it, but I want to see what's out there,
00:21:42
who's coming up with something new I know AI is the big
00:21:45
hotness, but I want to see what people are doing to actually
00:21:48
implement it in a way that makes sense.
00:21:51
And I think that there are some use cases that are really
00:21:53
interesting to see who's messing with it.
00:21:55
Carrie Richardson: Somehow figure out how to, get Ryan
00:21:57
Lakin.
00:21:58
Blackballed at the bar.
00:21:59
I haven't figured out how to do that.
00:22:00
My advice for a new vendor in the channel at IT Nation is go
00:22:06
to breakfast.
00:22:07
Andrew Moore: They're doing universal one night.
00:22:09
I don't know what part of the park
00:22:10
Carrie Richardson: never go to that.
00:22:11
Andrew Moore: It's actually pretty cool.
00:22:12
they quarantine this section and call it the superhero section
00:22:15
the one time we went and you get to get on all the rides as much
00:22:17
as you want.
00:22:18
it was super fun.
00:22:19
I love going to see live shows.
00:22:20
I've never seen stone temple pilots.
00:22:22
The connect wise thing of Friday night.
00:22:23
That's what I heard.
00:22:25
Carrie Richardson: I might go to that this year.
00:22:26
My best advice is work breakfast.
00:22:29
Always get up and go to breakfast.
00:22:31
The food is never good, but what I like to do is get I get a cup
00:22:34
of coffee.
00:22:36
And then I like, Oh, is anyone sitting here?
00:22:39
And then I sit down for a minute and I like, start talking to
00:22:42
people see who they are and what they're doing.
00:22:44
if there's nothing interesting I get up with my coffee and I go
00:22:47
to the next one.
00:22:48
And I wait until I find the table where I feel like.
00:22:51
I might actually be able to do some business get a bit of fruit
00:22:53
exchange business cards and eat half my breakfast at six
00:22:56
different tables.
00:22:58
Andrew Moore: cool.
00:22:58
Carrie Richardson: Those are the people that came to work not
00:23:00
sleeping through the keynote and they're they didn't go out late
00:23:03
partying last night they're trying to figure out how their
00:23:05
businesses work.
00:23:06
they got up on time.
00:23:08
those are the people that I want to talk to you, the people that
00:23:11
are like actually there to attend sessions, not the Andrew
00:23:15
Moores who drink until two in the morning.
00:23:18
Andrew Moore: that's not me anymore.
00:23:19
Carrie Richardson: you have to join me at breakfast.
00:23:21
go hustle
00:23:21
Andrew Moore: Yeah, that's true.
00:23:23
Carrie Richardson: Yeah, there's an art form from going from like
00:23:25
the question to the pitch.
00:23:27
Yeah, when you're at a meal or round tables in the exhibition
00:23:32
hall, they usually have those little round tables
00:23:34
Andrew Moore: I bet I could sit down with 10 of them and they
00:23:36
could give me a quick two minute spiel on how they're running
00:23:38
their business.
00:23:39
I should go walk around.
00:23:40
Carrie Richardson: See you at it nation.
00:23:42
Andrew Moore: Yes, ma'am.
00:23:44
Carrie Richard: Operationalizing trust.
00:23:46
What does it mean?
00:23:48
Andrew Moore: When you operationalize trust for a
00:23:50
managed services provider, it's taking what the owner, what the,
00:23:56
the lead engineer, the people that have been working directly
00:23:58
with the clients, what you're doing is you're taking the
00:24:01
essence of that trust that gets built and instilling it into
00:24:04
every aspect of what you do in a scalable way by taking it all
00:24:09
the way out to your pre sales engagements through your
00:24:13
marketing in the community, How you're interacting with other
00:24:16
businesses, how you're presenting yourself on LinkedIn,
00:24:19
right?
00:24:19
Being able to say, this is how you run a business.
00:24:21
giving free advice, pulling that through into the sales process
00:24:25
to be that subject matter expert, then in your contracts
00:24:28
and how you explain to clients, what your expectations should be
00:24:32
setting boundaries, You build that into the sales process and
00:24:34
pull that into operations.
00:24:36
So the client knows what they're getting the entire road all the
00:24:39
way through execution.
00:24:41
And then what that's going to do is it's going to keep your
00:24:43
margins in line, Because expectations have been set, they
00:24:46
know what they're getting into.
00:24:46
It's going to bring in better clients because you've been
00:24:48
educating them from the beginning and they're
00:24:50
interacting with your client base they have an idea of what
00:24:53
it means to work with you.
00:24:54
You've built your sales process to demonstrate to them how trust
00:24:57
is earned and how you're going to operate together.
00:25:00
And so all those things come together to lowering churn, not
00:25:03
dropping the client, creating a much better experience for the
00:25:06
client and having better margins.
00:25:08
and then all of that results in better EBITDA, right?
00:25:12
So you're going to grow your business.
00:25:13
You're going to have more profitable business and trust is
00:25:15
going to be something that happens throughout the system.
00:25:17
if you do it that way, you can't help, but spread it through your
00:25:21
organization.
00:25:21
it's not just one person doing it, the owner can't let go of
00:25:25
the vine and move on if you operationalize trust, you put it
00:25:28
into everything so that at every touch point, you're putting a
00:25:32
system in place that allows the owner to then take what they're
00:25:35
really good at, which is Technology and trust and all the
00:25:38
things of being a business owner and instill it into the
00:25:40
business.
00:25:41
As the owner you gotta start letting go and moving on people
00:25:43
can't do it because they can't trust that something's getting
00:25:46
done.
00:25:46
But if you look at putting trust into the way that you're doing
00:25:48
things.
00:25:49
And this isn't like a scam.
00:25:52
You're not trying to trick people into trusting you.
00:25:54
What you're trying to do is operationalize it in such a way
00:25:56
that it becomes scalable.
00:25:58
that's when you make an impact in your community.
00:26:01
And that's what the business owners want.
00:26:02
Like you can grow a business, but a lot of business owners
00:26:04
like being out there, just meeting with other business
00:26:06
owners and helping their community out.
00:26:08
And a lot of people got into this business to help.
00:26:11
You can only help a finite number, People, unless you
00:26:13
operationalize the way that you build that trust and the way
00:26:16
that you execute on things and grow that trust moving forward.
00:26:19
And that's what my goal is to help MSp owners do that.
00:26:22
Operationalizing trust.
00:26:24
The first show that I ever went to with Microsoft shows they had
00:26:26
emotional, support animals where they would just bring in dogs
00:26:30
and then they would walk around.
00:26:30
They were like, conferencing's hard play with a dog and they
00:26:33
would just have puppies and then you would just get to play with
00:26:35
the puppies.
00:26:36
And then they're like, Oh, are you tired?
00:26:38
Here's a wall of doughnuts.
00:26:40
And you would walk over there and they would just like a wall
00:26:41
of donuts and we would play with puppies.
00:26:44
And I was like, this is way better.
00:26:47
Carrie Richardson: The best conference I ever went to was a
00:26:50
Las Vegas conference put on by the people that make trade show
00:26:55
booths.
00:26:57
It was like everybody just like showing off for each other.
00:27:02
And it was incredible.
00:27:03
It was at one of the largest conference centers all the
00:27:05
companies that make the booths or create experiences.
00:27:09
one of them was a full 1920s Gatsby style speakeasy.
00:27:13
the next one was a fifties diner.
00:27:15
And candy shop, they had actual candy you'd sit they'd bring you
00:27:19
a malted and you'd sit down with one of the sales reps.
00:27:22
And on the way out, they gave you a bag and you filled it up
00:27:26
with candy.
00:27:26
Andrew Moore: That's super meta.
00:27:27
reminds me of that scene in Austin Powers where he's we have
00:27:29
a factory that makes miniature models of factories.
00:27:32
Carrie Richardson: Thanks for joining us today
00:27:34
Andrew Moore: Super fun.
00:27:35
I will see you next week
00:27:37
Carrie Richardson: take care.
00:27:37
Andrew Moore: Bye.
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