The Reality of Remediation Projects

Andrew Moore 0:00

This is the How to MSP podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Moore. The one thing that Abbott talks about is setting expectations up front. We are very clear about telling them that during the onboarding, we're going to go through these things that we know about and these things that you've told me you don't know about, but we need to find out about. And we tell them before we go signing contracts, hey guys, we're going to come back to you. And since no one knows anything about this email environment, there's going to be a remediation project. I don't know if it's a $5,000 project or a $50,000 project, but you're going to have a remediation project. Make your peace with whatever God you may or may not believe in. It's happening. That was Travis Grunke of Ashton Solutions out of Ohio. They're a managed services provider that has found a way to align sales and operations in such a way that they've created a dynamic MSP engine for their community. Today we talked with Jim Abbott and we also talked with Tom Foley with Travis and his team about how they align sales, operations, account management, and what that means for onboarding, setting expectations with your clients, and what a powerful pipeline does for the ability of operations to be able to create gross margin and set boundaries with their clients. All right. Hello and welcome to the How to MSP podcast. My name is Andrew Moore, and I am the host of the show today. Every day, I guess. So I am really excited today about our show because we are talking to the folks at Ashton Technology Solutions out of Ohio. They are a fabulous MSP. I have known them for over a decade. A long time. Travis and I have have been in operations peer groups together and had a lot of good times, some stories, something that'll maybe never see the light of day, something that we might be able to recount, but uh a lot of good times. Uh so I'm I'm really excited that you guys are here today. Welcome to the show.

Jim Abbott 2:09

Thanks for having us.

Andrew Moore 2:10

Yep, absolutely. So today we've got Travis, Jim, and Tom, and uh they are with Ashton. And I'll just quickly kind of go through uh the team here and and have them introduce ourselves. Uh Travis, let's start with you. Uh what's your role? What do you do?

Travis Grundke 2:25

Sure. Uh so I've been with Ashton now for I want to say 23 years. And um I am uh currently executive vice president. So I kind of run the operations. If we're doing EOS speak, I'm the uh technically I'm the company integrator.

Andrew Moore 2:41

Excellent. And you've got a background in technology and ish, adjacent ish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You you know enough to know that if somebody tells you something in an acronym, you can actually the sniff test, yes. Yeah, love that. Love that. Um and Tom, what's your what's your role with Ashton?

Tom Foley 2:59

Uh I am the project coordinator here at Ashton. I've been here for seven years. Um, so I I help clients with the projects that we're doing, server migrations, hardware replacements, uh, but our big focus right now is onboardings.

Andrew Moore 3:15

Onboardings. And company onboardings. Yeah, client onboardings. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. And uh Jim, hi, buddy. What what what what what would you say you do at at Ashton? What are you up to these days?

Jim Abbott 3:29

Well, the business card says VP of client solutions, and uh that's only because a prospect many years ago was offended that they didn't have a VP sitting in their office. So sales and marketing is what I really do, uh, regardless of what the title says. A lot of biz dev and uh a lot of marketing.

Andrew Moore 3:46

Yeah, and and I I will be 100% with the channel. There have been plenty of really great sales and marketing things that I've stolen from Jim.

Jim Abbott 3:54

And I've stolen a few from you as well. Exactly.

The "Credibility Pack": Polishing Your Sales Process

Andrew Moore 3:58

We borrow, there's a little, there's a little borrowing. Yeah, a little bit of borrowing, collaboration, if you will. So he's his stuff works great. As a matter of fact, um my wife's company was talking to me, I don't know, a few months ago. I've been kind of helping them out with some sales stuff, and they're putting together a credibility pack, and they were like, Show me what you did with Iron Edge, and I was like, ah, and so I got out the credibility pack like you guys have built with all the different flyers in it and everything. And they're they're very excited to start trying to figure out how to put something like that together. So uh it lives on. It lives on.

Jim Abbott 4:28

What what version of that are we on now, Abby? Version four, version five, twelve years in, thirteen years in. That actually preceded me. So I can't take credit for it. The original, anyhow.

Andrew Moore 4:39

Well, it it was solid whenever I saw you guys, whatever version I got from you was fantastic. So I've been for the for those who who aren't familiar with what we're talking about, we had had the Ashland's team had put together like a folder uh with a branded uh branded folder. And when you opened it up, uh inside there were flyers, which you know seems like it's pretty standard stuff, but they were kind of staggered in such a way that you could see different things, the the the different solutions that they would offer, and you could mix and match things out of the folder, and it was really beautiful and well presented, and it made made them look like a very well-put-together MSP in the sales process. And I I attribute having borrowed that idea and used it in our sales process of of having to help us win many accounts because of it, you know, really representing us as being a more polished MSP when we were in the in the process of trying to build that trust at the beginning of the relationship.

Jim Abbott 5:29

I actually see the bright green folder sitting over Travis's left shoulder. Uh we know that when we hand those out, it's gonna sit on somebody's desk. And uh I think your theory, Andrew, was uh IT emergency. Put a tab on it, put it in a uh pendiflex folder. We know that it's gonna stick out like a sore thumb. And when somebody has a problem, we're gonna be there for them.

Andrew Moore 5:52

Yep. I love that. I love that. But I feel like you guys really were one of the first MSPs I talked to uh at your size that crack the nut on how to really create alignment between sales and operations. And see, Tom.

Tom Foley 6:06

I'm just saying, like I know we have to agree on everything all the time. But yeah, we do work pretty well.

When a Sales Guy Says "No" to a Prospect

Andrew Moore 6:12

Yeah. You guys, like honestly, it to me, when you talk about sales and and operations alignment, the goal is to try, like in our space, people come from owner-led selling. In EOS, you've got the um you've got the integrator and then you've got the visionary. And a lot of the times the visionary is the one that's out selling because they're really excited about the business. And when you're the visionary, you're not thinking about what it's gonna mean when the integrator or somebody else has to actually do the work. You're just trying to close the deal. And I think that's the real maturity step for an MSP is to start aligning what it is that you're selling with what you actually do and what goes on in the contracts. So I guess I'll start with I'll start with you, Jim. Like, where do you see sales and marketing in that sort of process as you're trying to develop these relationships and open up opportunities and sell into new accounts? Why do you even care what Travis and the team are supposed to get knocked out? Like, why, why, why does it, why does it matter to you if you're out trying to get a sale? Like just get it, let's like root into the the very basics of it. Like, why do you care?

Jim Abbott 7:23

So I'll tell you the first time that that I ever uh Travis and I sat in a prospect meeting and uh small manufacturing firm. Prospect kept answering questions the wrong way, and I I finally closed my notebook about 15 minutes into the meeting and and put my pen down and thought this guy's just not a good fit. And Travis practically fell off of his chair for me to say, no, you're not a good fit. And at this point, the prospect kind of begged us, please don't go. I I really want to work with you. And I'm like, you're just not a good fit. Uh so I I learned my lesson. You know, that was about probably eight years back. Uh I still can see the look on Travis's face when I actually said no to somebody. Um, you know, sales guys always want to say yes. And that doesn't make and that's not just MSP. That's in, you know, I I worked for a web design digital marketing firm before this, and uh operations had the same issue with me that they thought I always wanted to say yes. So you you kind of as much as I hate process, uh being a typical sales guy, you do have to say no, and you have to find what the right fit is and understand that I can sell all day long, but if our team can't back up what I'm selling, it just makes everybody look bad. It's not a good customer uh interaction, and the words are gonna get out.

Building a Scalable Sales Process with CRM

Andrew Moore 8:43

Yeah, for sure. And I want to I want to poke on something that you just you just said there. You said it's a process, and I preach to people who come to me and say, I need help with sales. I'm like, great. So I'll say, so where are you tracking your opportunities? Like, how are you doing your calldowns? What does your day look like when you're scheduling stuff? You know, what what you know, how are you qualifying? What process are you using? Right. Like, and a lot of them are just like, well, no, I I just I need more leads. And I'm like, I I come back and say, I I think we need to build a process first because I I feel like sales is 80% process, 20% magic, because I think there's still some magic in it. Um, I don't know. What do you think?

Jim Abbott 9:32

I would agree. I mean, there's definitely process to it, and and we have a great sales team in place now who is much more process driven than I am. Uh they're great at using the CRMs. Uh Glass Hive previous. Now we've just moved to HubSpot, uh, which is going to give us even more eyes on, better analytics, better credibility. Uh, I hate process, and that's my my rock for the year is to follow process. And and everybody on the leadership team has told me I need to do that. So, you know, I know it's there. Uh, it's like pulling teeth. You know, everything I do is in my head, and I realize that's not scalable. So I'm fortunate that the sales team we have in place now is very much about using the CRM, about a process, phone call, email, follow-up, follow-through, knocking on doors, talking to people. You know, I just go out and shake hands and kiss babies. And uh fortunately, I have a very good network in place. But again, a network is not scalable. So you have to have that process.

Andrew Moore 10:35

Yeah. And and then when your process is working, how do you work with Travis and Tom and the rest of the team to integrate them into that? You said you went to a to a client or you went to a c a prospect with Travis. How do you integrate operations into what you do, if at all? Like what do you do there?

Jim Abbott 10:58

So I'll often bring Travis along. Any of us on the sales team will bring Travis along if we realize that somebody wants to get down into the technical weeds. You know, as sales guys, I think we were all born without whichever side of the brain it is, handles technology and science and you know, detail. Uh, so we can kind of tell early on uh if somebody has an in-house IT resource, okay, they're gonna want to get down into the technical weeds. We're much better off bringing Travis, bringing one of the senior engineers in to talk that talk. I also think it's, you know, I mentioned to a prospect the other day that I understand they don't always want to hear from the sales guy because they look at us as we're trying to sell them. It's important to have somebody who isn't selling inherently. Uh, same goes for existing clients. They would rather hear from client account management or engineers as opposed to me and my team saying, hey, you need 10 new PCs. They just look at we're trying to sell and up the bottom line.

Andrew Moore 11:56

One of the next things that I really want to poke into is as you bring Travis or someone along for the sales engagement. Travis, how does how does that play for you? Do you feel like you're adding value to that process? Do you feel like I know that in the past, when that would happen with me, sometimes I felt like maybe I was too involved in the sales process, and maybe my sales team wasn't really being as utilized as I probably could have had them because I just I knew how to close a deal. I knew how to get in there and talk to the client. I knew what they wanted. Is that the same for you? Are you more involved, less involved? How does that work? What's the balance between you and Jim and the team when it comes to selling and operations?

The EOS Approach: Finding the Ideal Client Profile

Travis Grundke 12:42

So a couple things. Um, first of all, and this will be believe it or not, kudos to Jim Abbott for putting the process in where it needs to be. The number of opportunities that the sales team has that they feel the need to bring me into has decreased dramatically because they have built out the talking points, they've built out the battle cards, this, you know, all that kind of stuff that needs to be discussed. But most importantly, um they understand that the majority of the clients that we're talking to right now, they're not interested in technical discussions, they're looking to solve a business problem. And they're all very good at talking about solving business problems. So because Jim's been able to build this stuff out, and you know, as a sidebar, we worked with an EOS company called Convergo a few years ago to help us build out the sales process. So what's the ideal client profile? Who do we go after? Why do we go after them? What are the talking points? What demographics are they? What are the questions around that we should be asking? So Jim and the sales team have built that out. So that's a long way of saying the good news is they've got a system in place that only requires the technical team when there's really a need to kind of close the deal for some technical reason of a sort. So my involvement has decreased dramatically, which is great because it's a testament to the sales team for building that out. Um the other thing though that has changed that's allowed them to do that is again, because of EOS, we've gotten very good at saying no. So by by defining what we are not going to support, that's helped narrow the focus quite a bit. So we cut out a lot of junk. Um and and over the last two, three years, we've really become hyper focused on the ideal client. You know, just because it's business doesn't mean it's good business. And so we've been cutting that out. So my involvement really has has dwindled because I used to be Dr. No. You know, the sales team, ABBA would come to you and say, hey, I talked to this guy, here's what they got, da-da-da-da-da. And I'd look at him and say, No. And that was my job. And you're like, oh no, but they're gonna be a center of influence. Or or they're gonna introduce us to all these other people. Or if we get in and we just do this survey, then they're gonna have us do managed services and you know, Jim's laughing and and all, but I still do that on occasion. Right. And there's still some of those opportunities that come up, they're legitimately good ones, but we're not chasing phantoms anymore. We get to know faster. We get to know faster. Thank you. That's exactly right.

Andrew Moore 15:23

Can I can I can I poke in on that for just a second? I want to I want to talk about getting to know. One of the things that I think is really important for a sales team is that beginning qualification process before the discovery call. So there's a thing that I want to ask about how you guys operate together with operations, and it comes back to getting to know. First, let me, I mean, it's more of a two-part question. Are you all involving the operations team as part of the initial discovery process? Does somebody come out and look at the environment on your behalf and scan things, or is that done by the salesperson? And if you do bring in somebody from operations, how do you make sure that you're not wasting their time because you didn't qualify them properly? Can we can we dig into that process between sales and ops and talk about how you guys do it and what you recommend?

Selling Business Solutions vs. Technical Weeds

Jim Abbott 16:13

So oftentimes the people we're speaking with don't, they're not here to talk about firewall switches, servers. You know, they they have a business issue. They've had a breach, uh a data X fill. Uh their current provider is not reacting quickly enough, resolving quickly enough. They're not bringing any strategy to the table, any insight. They're just a wrench turner, very reactive. Um so as Travis says, it's it's less and less frequent where we actually need to get eyes on the network, the hardware, the systems to make a decision. Uh in those instances when we do, I typically rely on Travis. Uh it's much easier to pull him out than it is pulling Tom or one of the engineers who's working on a project off. Um, that's been kind of you know hammered into us. Hey, don't don't bother the the smart guys uh in the building. Let's get Travis in involved. And you know, Travis is is great because he can speak to technology, having been there, done that, but he can also speak to the business perspective of things. And as I say, more and more people we're we're talking business with people. We're not so much talking technology.

Andrew Moore 17:30

Right. But if you do wind up, like if you have to bring in Travis, how uh Travis, how often have you over the years been brought into a deal that was just not qualified well? Like, are y'all getting better at that?

Jim Abbott 17:45

Are you you know we've gotten much we've gotten significantly better over the years? I mean, it used to be I was every time I spoke to a prospect, initial phone call, I'd wander down to track, you know, I'd shoot him an email and I'd wander down to his office thinking I'd beat the email to his office. Uh Hiddle I said exactly. Hear all the details, what do you think? Uh, you know, it's me being the sales guy, sure, we can sell this, we can do this. Part of that is because I have so much faith in the team we have put together. I know these guys can get the job done and do it the right way, which makes it easy for me to sell, makes it easy for our team to sell. Um but I think we've we've really reduced those bad opportunities significantly in recent years.

Travis Grundke 18:31

So it's it's a you know, Andrew, you you remember this because you've been through the MSP space from small to large and the you know the growth phases. It's a maturity curve. Um and when you're smaller and younger and an immature business, you you just kind of take all comers. To be honest, I don't remember Tom, maybe you could jump in on this one. I can't remember a recent opportunity where we went in and did a technical analysis before signing paperwork. It was basically and that's a way of saying along the lines of what uh Jim Abbott just mentioned about you know, we're talking business, most of the conversations, the environments now, they're moving from an existing provider. It's not like they're starting from scratch and have never had an outsourced IT vendor. So that's changed. Um a lot of the environment now is cloud-based. So they got a Microsoft 365 environment, they got they probably have a firewall, they've got endpoint security, they got a couple of line of business applications. And really all I care about at this point is how many laptops, desktops, servers, firewall switches, locations do they have? Because we know we're gonna go through and review all that shit and we're gonna clean it all up anyhow, and we're gonna have to recommend replacements. Depending on the size, if we're you know, if we're walking into a 500-seat environment, yeah, we're gonna do the technical dive. If we're walking into a 50-seat environment anymore, generally it's a hey, do you have an asset report that shows me age of hardware? And that's good enough. Because we're probably gonna recommend ripping and replacing a bunch of stuff anyhow. And increasingly, we're just putting our own stack in, you know, in terms of firewalls or any other hardware, because it's it's it's relatively inexpensive enough and it's cheaper in the long run for us.

Andrew Moore 20:19

So let's let's let's dive into that with Tom then. Like, so Tom, how does that work for your team? Because you're actually doing all of the onboardings for the clients. What does that look like for y'all? Because I I'm hearing this, and what I'll say is that that really puts a lot of what the MSP space is doing on notice because most people will want to do, most MSPs are going to want to do some sort of technical due diligence prior to taking on an account. How have you seen that mature within Ashton Tom? Like, how does that work for you guys when you bring in an account that you don't have a technical review of prior to onboarding?

Tom Foley 20:57

Um, you know, years ago, it would be scary. Like Abbott or someone on the sales team would come to us and say, Hey, we're onboarding this new client and here's everything we've got. And we're like, that that just seems like a bad fit from the rip. You know, all of this equipment that they have. But the environment itself isn't really as much of a concern for us as fit. And I think uh being able to lean on those processes that we have is what's really important because I pr I harp on process a lot. I'm I know Amin is probably sick of it at this point. Um, but one of the first things I did as uh project coordinator is I I met with him and I was like, I want to understand your process because it doesn't matter what firewalls they have, it doesn't matter what switches they have or how many servers. Um what really matters is when my team gets in there and they start digging into that environment and pointing out and you know, shining a flashlight on the things that are fundamentally wrong with how they are currently. Set up and how we want to improve that for them to make things better and make things more secure. It's is that client going to be open to those changes? Are they going to actually take us seriously and make those changes at the end? If they are, then the environment doesn't really matter. Because we can get in there. I know my team can get in there and fix it. I know my team can get in there and handle it. But when we get a client and Abbott goes, yeah, they have a they have a Linux server and they said they have to have Putty installed on every single machine to get to it. And you can't run anything newer than uh the version of Putty that's 12 years old. That are they willing to change, make changes and improve that environment? No. Okay, then why are we even signing them?

Jim Abbott 22:46

Don't there's no Travis is like no that kind of comes with my experience. You know, I I as I I came here having no technology experience or background whatsoever. And when Jim Milliken, president of the company, offered me the opportunity, or we were having conversations, I said, listen, I don't know anything about this, and I definitely can't talk to IT people. We just don't have anything in common. I don't speak their language, they don't speak my language. And he said, I don't need you talking to those guys. Just get your foot in the door, figure out what experts to bring in, and we'll go from there. But over 12 years, I've gotten better. I can actually have a conversation with somebody about a firewall or how a switch works. And I know when somebody says, Yeah, we're all on Linux, uh, yeah, that's not a good fit. Or, you know, we're running a uh an email solution because it's free. I think that was the guy I closed my notebook on. He said, Oh yeah, we we use this free email solution. Okay, you're not the right fit. See ya.

Andrew Moore 23:47

Well, I so I'm I wanna I want to keep going down this path a little bit because I wonder how you approach Travis brought something to my attention many, many years ago, and I still use this term. Um, I love it. He said that you guys used to keep office space near like an insurance company or something that did like pet insurance, right? Or something.

Speaker 24:13

Yep.

Managing Risk: The MSP as an Actuary

Andrew Moore 24:14

And um they talk to you, this light bulb went off for me when he talked to me about it, that what you do is what we do as an MSP is risk management. And that by looking at contracts and and discussing what the client needs, it's it's actuarial work, right? Like what is our risk versus our payment every month in order to maintain profitability, the portfolio of the assets that were under management by our company? So my question to you is as the custodians of this these environments, and you go in and you sell them something for a certain price, and then Tom gets in there and he's like, this is actually a jacked up mess. How do you work that out with the client so that they're willing to spend the money to fix those problems or are accepting the fact that you just jack their rate by 200% in order to maintain your insurance on their environment? How do you guys manage that process with prospects?

Jim Abbott 25:13

I'm gonna start off on this, and I know Tom will have an answer, and Travis will have an answer, but it starts with sales. It's all about building trust. Uh, I think most people who are coming to us looking to make a change for one reason or another, they oftentimes realize that they've got a shit show uh throughout their building, throughout their company in terms of technology. So they know that they're gonna have to make some changes. Umce we get them onboarded, and part of the onboarding process is Tom and his team going through and scoping out hey, you have issues here. Abbott tells me that you're concerned about your phone system, Abbott tells me you're concerned about um, you know, five different servers from five different organizations that you've acquired in the past three years, and you're trying to consolidate these five businesses under one roof. So Tom has a little bit of insight, but we have to build that trust. Tom and his team continue to build that trust, and by the time they have been onboarded and they're a month or two into the uh the engagement, they're basically doing what we're recommending. I mean, uh it's it's not a hundred percent of the time, but in in most cases, our clients trust us enough where when we say, you need to do this, and here's why you need to do it, and it's not coming from me, it's not coming from the sales team, it's coming from the engineers with a business perspective to it.

Travis Grundke 26:38

Clients go, oh, okay, we trust you, let's do it. So, Andrew, to your point about how do you how do you surface that stuff during the sales process? Generally, what's happened is because the sales team has built out a good set of questions and processes, Jim Abbott will have that initial conversation. He'll come back to me and he'll tell me, hey, here's what we found, here's what we talked about. My first question is, do they have an asset list? He'll show me the asset list if they have it, and I'll skim it and go, okay, red flag, red flag, red flag. I think you guys need to go back and find out what their willingness is to replace these things or move from on-prem to cloud or whatever it might be. Jim will go back and he'll have those conversations the second time through. And they generally tend to be more around, like you talked about, a little bit more of a psychodemographic conversation. Hey, how do you guys like to invest in things? Andrew, this will go back to something too that you know we've talked about over the years. You remember this. You'd walk into a prospect and you could almost immediately tell from the foyer or the waiting room whether or not it was gonna be worth your time or not.

Andrew Moore 27:48

Spider Sands, dude.

Travis Grundke 27:49

Yeah. So we call it spider sands. If you step in and it's 1970 with wood paneling and green shag carpeting, probably not going to invest in their IT, right? Abbott's gotten good about developing that skill and teaching the other salespeople that skill. So to his point, when that does make its way over to the sales team, the one thing that that I talk about when I get pulled in, the one thing that Abbott talks about is setting expectations up front. We are very clear about telling them that during the onboarding, we're gonna go through these things that we know about and these things that you've told me you don't know about, but we need to find out about. And we tell them before we go signing contracts, hey guys, we're gonna come back to you. And since no one knows anything about this email environment, there's going to be a remediation project. I don't know if it's a $5,000 project or a $50,000 project. But you're gonna have a remediation project. Make your peace with whatever God you may or may not believe in. It's happening. And we'll go through those things that we know about, and as long as during that sales process, they go, Yeah, we know we have to do that, we're ready to make this move, we just need to get it fixed. As Abbott and Tom have said, once we get to the onboarding and Tom goes, Yep, your 365 environment's wide open to the world and it's a $10,000 remediation, they're generally good with it.

Andrew Moore 29:16

Well, time.

Travis Grundke 29:17

No doubt, it's a risk.

Andrew Moore 29:19

It is, and so I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna ask Tom, is is that actually what happens? How does it go down in real life? Like when you're actually poking around in those environments.

The 6-Week Onboarding Rule

Tom Foley 29:31

So um there is uh a lot less swearing involved than there used to be. Um, but it's because uh we we've learned how to collaborate better. You know, um when I first started doing onboardings before I uh leading onboardings before I took over all of project management, um sales very much had the thing that they did. They had their system for how they were going to sell somebody. They had their own set of documentation that was built out for them. And they would share that with us when they hand the client over for uh the onboarding once the agreement is signed. But I'd get that documentation, I look at it and like, this is this is useless for our team. There's nothing in here other than they have, you know, a firewall, a couple switches, two servers, and 20 endpoints. Like, great. That doesn't really tell me anything about their environment. It tells me the size of the environment. But um, one thing we've known for a long time is size does not dictate complexity. You know, you could have a 500 endpoint client that is the easiest client to work with, and a 20 endpoint client that is the most difficult onboarding you've ever had. Um, and it was opening that door and talking to Abbott and saying, you know, this documentation's great. However, here's kind of what my team's looking for when you're having these discussions. And I know you may not understand the questions, you may not have, you know, understand if the answer that they're giving you is the correct one, but this is what we'd like you to ask. This is what we're looking for. If you can find out X, Y, and Z, that will help my team understand what we're getting into during the onboarding before we actually step into that environment and go, oh my God, this is a disaster. Like we kind of have a little bit of expectation there uh before the onboarding begins, and it just makes things go smoother.

Jim Abbott 31:24

So, you know, Tom put together, I I used to put together a uh an initial call con initial conversation sheet, which was one page, just kind of anecdotal evidence that I picked up during the course of the conversation. And Tom put together a spreadsheet. I mean, there must be 90 different line items on it that he has asked us to, us, the sales team, to gather that information. Now, I would say three-quarters of it we can gather during the sales process. One quarter of it is is left to the onboarding team to pick up as they start their process. But I think it's made it much more enlightening for our team to get that information. We ensure that there are no surprises for the onboarding team. Like, hey, they have three different locations, and we only told you about two because we forgot one. And that's a big oops. So now that we've got prompts, so to speak, it makes it easier on us, it makes it easier on the the onboarding team, and it makes it easier on the the rest of the engineering team throughout the course of the engagement.

Andrew Moore 32:33

Well, I the thing that I do want to touch base on as we're walking through this process is so now we've got to the point where they've signed contracts, Tom's looked at their stuff, we know that there's some things that need to be taken care of. However, the client is in operation. We are taking tickets. We have now identified projects. So the two things that I want to dig into is how does your service desk deal with what could be a misconfigured or messy client on the service desk? Are you absorbing that noise? Do you have any stop capture to put in place there? That's my first question. And my second question is who gets commission on the projects that you sell after they become a client, right? Is that your account management team? Is it? Yeah, okay. So is the sales team involved? Like how does that so let's let's I'm gonna dive into both of those things. Let's start with how do you deal with the ticket volume? What does it look like when you bring on a new client? Do you keep them isolated? Did they go right into regular production? Like, what does that look like based on the fact that you've got a client that isn't optimized for the service task? How does that how does that look, Trav?

Travis Grundke 33:40

Well, so Tom, I I think it might be better for you to handle this one in terms of how you're handling that right now when you you come across these projects. Because you and I have talked about this very recently in terms of a change in your philosophy on how we remediate or send a project. And then we can talk about you know how we do the project side of things. So, Tom, you want to field that one?

Tom Foley 34:04

Yeah. I mean, so to answer your first question, we don't silo them when they start. Um everything that we've done on the project side, especially for onboardings, um, goes to the issues that we recognize. So there's there's two official handoffs. Sales does their prospecting thing, and there is a handoff to the onboarding team. We do the onboarding, and then there's a handoff to service. And both of those handoffs, uh, we realized early on that we were kind of all doing things differently. You know, I'm process driven. So my side of the house, we have processes for everything, and we we follow them as best as we can. Um sales didn't really have a bunch of that, and we didn't really understand what processes there were. Um so the client would meet with sales, and they're like, oh, this is one experience that they're getting. And then they meet with onboarding, and it's like, okay, this is a little bit different. You guys are a little more, you know, they're a lot of fun, and you guys are really serious. And then we hand them over, we hand them over to service.

Jim Abbott 35:07

So you can't give them the scary guys to start. You have to give them the fun guys to start.

Tom Foley 35:14

I'm an acquired taste, I get it. Um, but then then you hit too late now. You've already signed the contract, buddy. We high hand them off to service, and and you know, it was a completely different experience because it goes back to being like, those guys are serious, but they're a little bit more relaxed, uh, you know. Um so what we really tried to do is identify the the issues between those hands off handoffs and how we can smooth it out so that when we're handing off from one to the other, uh, the transition is smooth, they're getting the same experience. And the onboarding team's goal is identify what's wrong with the environment, how we're gonna fix it moving forward, and let the service team know ahead of time. So it's it's really that communication and that collaboration between departments that is making it easy for us because one of the things I tell the clients, um, we we actually just had one uh, you know, talking about getting to know faster. I think the part that we we kind of forget in that is it's not just yes or no, there's also maybes. So we had a client who came out. Um, they wanted to start onboarding, they wanted to leave their provider, uh they had a recent compromise, and they came to us and they were asking specific things that, according to my process for onboardings, is not how we do things. Um and the sales guy came over and was like, hey, listen, I'm prospecting this client right now. Uh, this is what they're asking for. If we're not able to provide it, then we're not gonna be able to do it. And I told him, hey, yeah, go ahead and tell them yes. Like we can handle that because we're just taking a part of the process that happens towards the end of the onboarding and moving it to the beginning. And I can plan for that, I can coordinate that, I can let the team know what's happening and and we can manage that. Uh, but I tell the the client in the the kickoff, uh, because one of the things they asked was, could you guys get this onboarding done in three weeks instead of six? And I'm very strict on it's a six-week onboarding work because our goal at the end of the onboarding is that from day one, we are able to provide you with the same level of service as a client that we've been providing to clients who have been with Ashton for 20 years.

Andrew Moore 37:39

I love that. I I love the expectation. The ability to set that expectation for the sales team, I think is fantastic too, because if they come to you and say, you know, like, hey Jim, I I really need to get out of my contract. You know, it's coming up in like, you know, two weeks. Can you get me onboarded? Answer is six weeks, six weeks from contracts, right?

Changing Tires While the Car is Rolling

Jim Abbott 37:58

Like, I mean, you know, otherwise it's what Travis refers to as changing the tires while the car goes rolling down the road. And uh, you know, there are instances where it has to happen. And I tell people on day one, the first conversation, here's how the onboarding process works. It's six weeks. If you sign on March 1st, you're gonna be onboarded uh six weeks after, you know, it's we'll start March 7th and it's April 20th. There are instances, and I tell them this, where we have to change the tires while the car's rolling down the road, you know, your existing provider says, screw you, I'm out. You're on your own, or they choose to get out because it's it's become untenable. So if we have to do it, our team is good enough that they can do it, but it's much easier on everybody involved if that six weeks, six-week process takes place as it is supposed to.

Travis Grundke 38:48

Let me give you let me give you two two quick stories that that feed into this. And and the theme is expectations. So we've got a relatively new client that we brought on, and when we were in the sales process, we really liked the managing partner and one of the owners of the firm. Um, easy to work with. He told us that this is a great fit because he told us here's my vision for the business. I'm going out and I'm acquiring, and I want to roll these companies in, and I need Ashton to be a partner in helping us to template this process. And he was very upfront with him on his timeline, and we were very clear with him on reasonable expectations. So, one of the acquisitions that he made, um the target company is staffed with some older staff and they're legacy staff, and the owner of the new company has a new way of doing things. So there is internal friction that we have no control over. And on top of it, they're a seasonal business. So even though the owner of the company wants to integrate all these companies, get rid of the servers, move to the cloud, do all this kind of stuff, he knows that between now and June, we can't do that. And he knows that between now and June, it's going to be kind of messy from an IT support perspective. So the owner and us were on the same page in terms of, hey, this is what we can do, these are the constraints we're under, and this is what your people need to be aware of. The missing piece there is we've run into some problems with their staff who have not been fully bought into the fact that, hey, we need to make our peace that these things are going to be crappy for another six months, and it's not Ashton's fault. So we had a level setting, and this goes back to how do we communicate between sales, service, and client account. This week we had a level setting with them to say, hey, you all need to educate your team to be a little bit more polite with us, more professional with us, understand that here's the list of constraints that we have, and we're doing the best that we can. We ask that you give us some grace until we can fix this all. Because guess what? When we fix this in six months, you're gonna love it. But it's gonna be bumpy until we get there. Once we set that, things seem to have you know smoothed out quite a bit. But it's setting those expectations very clearly and getting buy-in from the client. Then I think you avoid a lot of the headaches and frustrations that a lot of MSPs have.

Andrew Moore 41:20

Well, I I wanna I want to dig into let's let's let's go back to the the second part of that question, and then I want to dig into pipeline real quick because I think pipeline is super important to all the conversations that we've been having today. So when we talk about migration to service after onboarding, so we're you know, now we're getting everything completely aligned. Tom, your team has found some projects. We kind of knew about them at at sales. Now we're positive things are gonna happen. And then you hand them to who within your organization and how do they manage that? Like what does that process look like? And how do you continue to continue to build that trust with the client and drive that forward with with whatever's happening in either operations or sales when it comes to the ongoing relationship?

The Art of Firing Belligerent Clients

Tom Foley 42:08

Uh so yeah, I mean, the onboarding for us ends with a in a an onboarding report uh with all of the engineers' finding and recommendations. And this is something that we're we're continuing to evolve for right now. Um, but at the end of the onboarding, we have a meeting with the point of contacts. I have a report that I've generated that has everything that our engineers have found that isn't what we would consider up to our standard um in the environment and recommendations for how to improve that. Some of it is agreement services, things we're just going to change. We're gonna work with you. Um my team's focus after the onboarding because the guys that are on my team, they're engineers too. Like they're part of the service desk. I just pull from from that uh pool of engineers whenever we have an onboarding. Um, so some of the guys know what's going on with the clients uh because they're in the onboarding. Some of them are learning about it towards the end. Um, but we have that meeting, we go over the issues that we found, the ways that we want to improve and the the projects that we would like to scope out for them. And I just ask them on the call. I say, listen, here's all of the tickets I'm going to create for things that we're just gonna go in and fix. And if it's something we can fix without interrupting your users, we're gonna do it. If it's something that's going to cause a disturbance, our team will reach out and consult with you first before making those changes so that we don't cause any unnecessary uh turbulence, you know, with your your end users. Um, and here's the list of projects we want to scope. This is why we're scoping the project. This is why it's a problem. Um I don't give them any kind of estimates or anything because I'm I'm not the sales guy. I'm not scoping out the project uh as far as labor and things like that go. Um Um but these are the things we want to scope and it kind of in order of urgency. And do we have your authorization to send you a quote? Like, do you want to get a quote? Do you actually want to fix these things? Um and 99% of clients that were onboarding, one, they're they're extremely generous uh when it comes to the report itself. We we get a lot of comments on, you know, this is great, we didn't know that these were issues or um you know vulnerabilities that that we were facing. Um and most of them do want to do the work. There will be questions from time to time uh about cost, and you know, I can give them rough estimates based on similar projects we've done. Um, but usually it's cost isn't the the thing that we have to overcome. It's normally, well, this is gonna be a big change for our users. That it is. It is, it's gonna be a big change, but we'll we'll help you through that. We have documentation, we have guides, we have people on the staff who do training. Um so we'll we'll help you through that. And I think the the big thing with that is uh we do set expectations up front, sales and my team. Um but everything we do is also focused around building trust. And by the end of the onboarding, they trust us well enough to to Travis's point, the client he was talking about that had an acquisition. Um the reason they left their previous provider is because their first acquisition, the previous provider said they could handle it and they just didn't. And he was upset. And he came to us and and said that, and the onboarding ended. Within 45 days, he had purchased another company. And about 45 days after that, this new company, we completely replaced every computer they had, migrated them to a new phone system, migrated email to the the parent tenant in 365, uh, replaced all of their network hardware um and had them incorporated into this new company as well as we could without making huge fundamental changes.

Travis Grundke 46:08

So, Andrew, let me let me jump on that because if this were five, seven years ago, what Tom just described, could we have done it? Yeah. Should we have done it? Heck no. And I i I think it's it's one of those situations where if you look at, you know, I don't know your listener base and the other MSPs that will be watching this, but it's a it's a knowing where you are business maturity-wise should drive the decision-making process during sales as to whether or not you should be taking on this business. And we all know what it's like. Sometimes we all, you know, we eat the elephant and then you know we choke on it. And you know, we've had we've taken some calculated risks over the years, but I think that's exactly what we've done is we have thought it through very carefully before saying, yes, we're willing to take on this risk. No, we're not ready to take on this risk. And I think there's a lot of business owners in the MSP space who just say, ah, fuck it. Let's do it. Let's go.

Andrew Moore 47:12

Right. Well, who's who's managing the account and the risk after Tom gets done with it? You have an account management team, or is it like, is it somebody on the service desk? Like who who goes in and says, No, like you do need to do these projects and let's get these done and let me do my business review with you and make sure that you're on point. Like, who's managing that process for you guys?

Travis Grundke 47:33

So Laura Fisher is our client account manager, but she often she does kind of a tandem operation where she will bring in Tom because Laura can say to them, you need to do all this stuff. But Laura hasn't necessarily built up the trust that Tom has or any of the other engineers who've been intimately involved in the cleanup and the ombuding and all that kind of stuff. So we really do a we operate on a team level to say, hey, we're gonna go in as a team, Tom, Laura, sometimes me, to say to the client, okay, we've gotten through this, here's why you need to take these next steps. That seems to be really effective for us because client account management for us, totally outside of the sales world on purpose. Uh I go back to what you remember, Tom Mitchell used to say this all the time is the reason why people bought from Tom Mitchell is because I'm not a sales person. And um I'm sorry, Jim. I'm not no offense. No offense. But when but when Tom when Tom says to them, hey, you know, here's what you need to do. There's a level of trust that's been built up over time, and um he's not sales. You know, it's it's he's doing it for the right reason, which is you know, you need to do this.

Jim Abbott 48:52

And I'm doing it for the right reason, but the people don't necessarily think that because I'm the sales guy. Yeah, I I think along with that, we have a lot of people in the organization that come from a customer service type background. Whether it's you know, I I used to be on the phones with a with a one of the top insurance carriers in the country, taking 150 phone calls a day from customers and from agents. You know, Tom was in retail. Um Francisco, who handles procurement for us, came from retail. Laura Fisher, client account manager, came from a customer service background. You know, in the end, we are a customer service organization. We just happen to be in technology. And it's all about providing an outstanding customer experience. As I say, it starts with building trust, it's a ton of communication. And you know, we want people to be happy and and uh that's important. Yeah, I think it allows us to stand out.

Andrew Moore 49:55

I agree with you 100%. And I think that the I think there's some scalability areas that you know, I'd be happy to grab beers with you guys at some point and go through, you know, the different levels of how account management should work based on the size of your organization. But I do believe that at some point that account management has to stay in operations, like it needs to be there because I believe that account management really is that the differentiator when you talk about service, Jim, it's like we're a service as company. And so if you make the relationship where the only touch point the client ever has is with somebody who is focused on cross-sell, upsell, and project revenue, and that's how they make their money and their base is low and all those things like you can still get that out of a good operational account manager, right? And you can still incentivize those things, but the motivations are very different, right? And they're a very different type of person, in my opinion.

Travis Grundke 50:49

That's right. And, you know, Andrew, you asked earlier, you know, how the comp model setup and everything else. The sales team is net new logo. That's their comp model. And our client account manager is a salary position. It's not an uh incentive-based uh seat at this point in time. Now that might change down the road, but right now it is, you know, that's just part of the job is to make sure that those requests get fulfilled.

How a Strong Pipeline Empowers Operations

Andrew Moore 51:16

Yeah. And I want to touch on something before we start winding down because I think this is super important. You had talked about the maturity of the organization or the size or the way that the processes within the MSP work. And everything that you all are talking about, I don't think MSPs in general give themselves enough credit for how powerful a strong sales pipeline enables the operations team. Having the ability to push back, to say no on bad opportunities, to sit down and have a conversation with a client to say, you're being an asshole and I need you to chill out, like because you're willing to say, we, we, we have some pipeline. Like we're not, we're not desperate anymore. Right. Can we talk about that a little bit? Does that do you think about it in terms of that, or is that just a byproduct of having built this pipeline and now you're used to it? Like, how does that feel to you? Am I off base? And Jim, can I jump in on that one first?

Travis Grundke 52:17

Yeah, please. I'm I'm feeling like I'm on the spot. So go ahead. Talk all you want. I, you know, this is one of those, I'm the old guy, you know, I've been in I've been doing this for long enough. I remember back in the day. And and I do remember when we were young, and you know, every bit of revenue mattered. And there was that constant nagging fear of somebody turning off our lights. And so we would bend over backward, we would accept crap because we just felt like we had to. And to be candid, I think that in business, unless you get really, really lucky, there's a little bit of that that I think most small businesses have to deal with when you're starting. You just you kind of do. But it's it's like the old adage, if if you're the kind of person who doesn't understand that, you know, well, and never mind, I'm not gonna say that, but it it it it's it's the the the thought that if if you are if you want to improve your state in life, you gotta do something about it, and you gotta you gotta bust your butt to get away from having to live like that. And we have done that through sheer will and some luck, but will and planning and process to get away from that. Quick example for you last year we had a client for we were in year, I think I want to say we were going on year two of a three-year contract, and the owner of the business was very belligerent, and finally we'd had enough, and we fired them as a client. Verbally abusive. And we fired them. I get a phone call a week before, and we gave them six weeks' notice, almost eight weeks' notice. Yep. Uh a week before the contract was us supposed to end, I get a call from a competitor who says, Hi, I'm Bob Smith calling from so-and-so MSP. Um, we're we're taking over for this company. Um, you know, just wanted to, you know, get the process started. And I said, Great. Um, you know, what information have they given you? And he said to me, Well, I don't really know. I'm just the sales guy and I'm supposed to kick this off. I just sold the deal. And I said, So do you know the reason why we walked away from this business? And he was like, Man, I'll be honest with you, I really don't care. I mean, that was exactly what he said to me. He's like, I really don't care. They signed when I walked walked in to go talk to them. They they just signed. And I said, if you want to have an off-the-record conversation, I'm willing to give you some insight. And he was like, No, that's not my that's that's the operations guys. Literally, that's what he said to me. That's the operations team. They can deal with it. I'm just here to sell it. Okay. You do you. The operations team is gonna love you.

Speaker 55:07

That's the worst.

Travis Grundke 55:10

So my my point is that I think that the you know we've learned over the years and we've we have worked very, very hard as a team to put ourselves in a situation where we don't have to eat shit.

Andrew Moore 55:23

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that comes back to I I strongly believe that comes back to if you've got good account management and retention processes, your onboarding processes are solid. A lot of that comes back to are we doing the right thing on the sales side? And if you know, Jim's team is pulling in revenue at a clip that you're comfortable being able to say, listen, we don't have to sing for our supper the way that we used to. We've got a pipeline of qualified opportunities here. We can push back, we can feel comfortable about raising rates, we can feel comfortable about having conversations with clients who aren't doing the right things, right? We can we can say no to this the Linux account with all the putty instances on it, right? You can there are things that you can do, but I think the empowerment comes from having a functional sales system and allows you, in my opinion, not just from a revenue perspective, but from an actual like dollars in the bank. Like, I think it allows the operations team to grow their margins if you're doing it right. Right. Like that's that's my opinion.

Jim Abbott 56:30

You know, that's a lot of what we're seeing. You know, the pipeline will always be an issue. Um, how do we get new leads into the pipeline? And that's a lot of the reason we went to HubSpot, to create a more automated marketing process. Uh, that's what we've added to the sales team in terms of bodies to get more people out, as I say, shaking hands, kissing babies, going to events. Um you know, that said, the vast majority of our new logos are referrals and just our personal network. So there's again, that's not always scalable. Uh and I don't think that's ever going to change from an existing client perspective. You know, the the manufacturer that Travis mentioned that we dumped last year, I don't get anything from none of us get commission from contractor news. You know, once they're in the door, we're out. So I don't care personally letting somebody go, but at the same time, from a business perspective, I look at it as revenues are going out the door. Now we dump an asshole, um we lose the revenues, but there's a lot less grief and agony for the engineering team. Uh they can put their focus on people who appreciate what we do and who will continue to grow that revenue. There are other clients who you know we just grow out of. And they're not causing problems. They're paying their bills, they're not paying much. But when when the rest of the team goes, eh, let's just dump these guys. It's not benefiting us. My perspective, it's revenue. They're not causing us any problems. You're killing me, even though I don't get anything out of it. My goal is to increase revenue. That's the bottom line. I mean and my team, we're here to increase revenue, and when we're dumping clients who might not be the optimal fit, it makes me sweat. It makes me angry.

Andrew Moore 58:37

Yeah. Well, it it's interesting. I had a conversation with uh Reed Warren with IT valuations, and one of the things that he and I talked about was this was surprising to me. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised because I've kind of gone through the private equity world a little bit, but valuations are heavily skewed towards revenue growth. It's not just whether or not you have a certain amount of revenue, and your gross margin is definitely important because that drives to your EBITDA. But if you can show year-over-year revenue growth, top line revenue growth, then apparently that you know his position on it is that actually will increase your multiple because people will buy you knowing that they can probably fix suboptimal operations. But if you're out there in your market.

Jim Abbott 59:32

Private equity looks at it from a different perspective.

Andrew Moore 59:34

Right. For sure. If you're running your business, for sure. I just mean that it's important for that top line, to your point, Jim, it's important for that top line revenue growth to continue to happen. Right. So if you're if you're if you want to run a lifestyle business and you want to run at five million dollars at 25% forever and you never want to grow your top line revenue, great. Like that's awesome. Like that's a way to run a business, and that's fantastic for everybody. If you want to grow your top line revenue, you should be focused on that rule of 40 and trying to align those those two numbers on your growth statistics. But also at the same time, it's really important for MSPs to realize if you're dumping clients off the back end faster than you're bringing revenue up on the top end, it's a problem. Even if you're even if you're running it, you know, 20, 25% net, right? Like you, you, you're gonna be in a position where you're just gonna stay, stay stagnant.

Travis Grundke 1:00:24

Well, and Andrew, part of the, part of the, and I'm I'm hearing this from a couple of colleagues that you and I both know, as well as others, that um, you know, in general in our space, the net new business growth has slowed pretty dramatically. Yeah. And it's it's it's churn in terms of moving from MSP to MSP that we're seeing. Um because most everybody's been through the MSP or they've got an MSP. And so the net new growth has really become the biggest challenge I'm seeing a lot of people facing.

AI: Cutting Through the Hype to Find Outcomes

Andrew Moore 1:00:59

I'm hearing the same thing in the channel, is that people are it's I think people are still interested in bringing on an MSP um as they grow. I think, though, that you're seeing a change in the buyer of our services and that you're coming into a generation of people who grew up on technology and are familiar with how that works. So you've got a different buyer persona versus you know, Gen Xers and boomers who are not quite as up to speed on how some of that stuff would work. Um, so you've got that as a potential thing. You've also got the like low level of in of opportunity cost to get into a solution. If you want to start a business, you can go out and get an Office 365 tenancy for 25 bucks a month versus before you'd have to buy a server and install software on it. So you've got a change there where they can run at kind of a lower level. So I think the MSP space is really going to have to have a conversation with itself about who we're selling to and what they actually want. And I don't think we're ready for that conversation. You're seeing it at the shows. I was at Ride of Boom. Um, you know, I've seen what happened at IT Nation last year. You go onto the floor of those shows, and it's 80% security vendors selling security services to people still, which is a big deal. But at the same time, I think we're lagging on that. When it comes to new opportunity, you know, everybody's like, now with I AI. Well, there's only a couple of like pure AI companies that are agent, a gent, a gentle, agent-based AI that are actually selling into the MSP space. You're only, I'm, I'm only ever seeing a few like real innovative companies. Uh, empath is when they're out there like selling learning management solutions to MSPs. Like, there's not a whole lot of companies that are out there that are really trying to address this because I don't, I think we're going through this existential crisis within our industry, where you've got companies that have been around forever, like ConnectWise and Dotto, and they're being kind of looked at as slow and clunky and big. And you have new up-and-comers like Halo and Ninja and these companies that are coming in and they're kind of shaking things up a little bit. And I think the next like five years within our industry is going to be a huge shift. And it has to do with exactly what you're talking about is what do our buyers want and how are we going to run our business? And oh, by the way, AI. AI is coming for everybody. You know? It's freaking me out a little bit. Like, I don't know what you guys are seeing when it comes to AI with your clients. I just know that when I've talked to folks out in the market, is that people don't know how to sell AI or even how to consult around it well enough in the MSP space to monetize it in any way. They're just like, I it's weird and expensive, and I like expensive to consult because nobody knows it.

Jim Abbott 1:03:45

I would agree with I would agree with you on that for sure. But at the same time, the buyers, the prospects that we have, they're all talking about AI, but they don't know enough about it to know what questions to ask. You know, I related a story this morning in our meeting that 12 years ago I had lunch with a lawyer buddy and he pounded his fist on the table and said, Jimmy, I got to get my law firm in the cloud. I said, Rob, do you know what the cloud is? He goes, Nope, no idea, but all my peers are in the cloud and I've got to have my firm there.

Speaker 5 1:04:14

Right.

Jim Abbott 1:04:14

It's the same now. We've got to use AI. Well, what's your what business process are you trying to improve through AI? What are you trying to get to with AI? And they go, I don't know. I just everybody talks about AI. We got to be using it. Okay. So they need to figure out what questions to ask. We need to do a better job understanding how we can use it both internally and externally, and we're doing some really cool things internally, making people's technology better for them through our use of it. You know, we're allowing our engineers to spend more time focused on customers because we're getting the busy work off their plate. And that's huge, again, in a customer service organization. We can provide even better service because that's what our clients remember. They don't remember we turned a wrench and fixed something, they remember the time we spent with them.

Andrew Moore 1:05:09

Well, it comes back to what your core philosophy is around how you're running your business. You see yourself as a service company that's using technology as a way to provide service, but you're also understanding that you're focused on business outcomes. You're not as focused on, you know, Tom's team is obviously focused on the checkboxes and the things that you do within the environments to make sure that they're configured properly. But then the out, like Tom, I believe your team is successful because you know that you're driving towards an outcome, not that your job is just to make sure that that environment has this checkbox on it. You're like, well, if I check that box, this is what the outcome is for the client. I feel strongly that if you keep that philosophy, adoption of AI will probably be less difficult for you than it will for other MSPs because. There's an upskilling that has to happen to people on Tom's team as we go into AI and you remove that busy work. They're going to have to get smarter and smarter about outcomes. And if that's already in the DNA of your company, I feel like you're in a better position to be successful.

Travis Grundke 1:06:15

And that's exactly what we talked about this morning during our all hands meeting is how do we set ourselves up to be successful and not reactive to the trends that are occurring. So you know, where should like like we said earlier in this, where should we say yes and where should we say no? What do we need to shore up in terms of our skills and insight? And what do we need to partner with other people to say, hey, we're not the right people to have this conversation with you, but I'd like to introduce you to Andrew, who he's going to be able to walk you through this and point you in the right direction. I'm perfectly happy to do that because it's the right and responsible thing to do. Um so we're trying to figure out very quickly how to do that. And in the meantime, we're trying to build out internally, you know, basic competence, responsible talking points, and layering in the use of some of these solutions where it makes sense. Um I I think that too many people look at the big pie in the sky and think, you know, it's gonna we're gonna automate everything and no one's gonna have to work kind of thing. Um I'm more interested in what are the small little changes that can occur to improve people's lives and more importantly, give us more free time to spend time with people. Let's automate the tasks, spend more time with people. That's where we're driving.

5 Questions: Books, Music, and Interview Horror Stories

Andrew Moore 1:07:42

No, I I would agree with that 100%. Um, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna call that a day when it comes to our conversation. Uh I want to thank y'all for being a part of what we were doing here. I think that it was incredibly insightful to hear about how you guys manage your clients and your processes when it comes to sales and operations. Um, I respect the hell out of everybody there at Ashton, um, and especially the three of you. So I appreciate you guys being here with me today. That being said, I'm gonna get into the five questions. Uh, we don't all have to answer each of them, so I'll just kind of throw them out. And, you know, whoever wants to go for it will go for it. So let's start with what's the best book you ever read that ever helped you in business? Anybody?

Jim Abbott 1:08:27

I'm gonna say I I hate business books. I read a lot, I hate business books. Travis, it seems once a month is throwing something on my desk. I'm a huge fan of unreasonable hospitality.

unknown 1:08:37

Okay.

Jim Abbott 1:08:37

It's about the food service industry. Uh it's customer service and and it's restaurants, uh, but it pertains to people outside of the food service industry. The other one, because I've been around it all my life, as I have been food, uh LL Bean, the making of an American icon. Uh amazing story about how uh LL Bean grew that business from making hunting shoes to what it is now.

Andrew Moore 1:09:02

Nice. Nice. And Trav, you probably got one because I know that you like actually sneak off to remote places with a trunk full of books.

Travis Grundke 1:09:11

I know. Um actually, probably the the one that has stuck with me the most was the goal. Dude, what am I that's probably came from you? So it's like a hockey book. I read I'd be the I'd be the last person to read that if that were the case. No, it's it's um it it was fantastic for getting me to realize that every system has constraints and to make my peace with God uh that they exist instead of trying to optimize for every little thing. So yeah.

Andrew Moore 1:09:41

That's good. And I love uh the idea of of I think the restaurant industry is a complete parallel to what we do. I I use the I I grew up working in restaurants. Um it's just fascinating the amount of effort that goes in from you know, your to your point, Travis, the throughput of how do you take reservations, how do you make sure that everybody's seated properly, what are your daily disciplines for managing your stations, like how do you coordinate the front of the house and the back of the house? Like it's just amazing to me that these that these um people figure out how this stuff works. And if you are a smart MSP owner, my my opinion of it is do not try to reinvent the wheel. Go look at another industry that's been around for a hundred years and just do what they do, right? Just just copy whatever restaur a good restaurant are doing and then figure out how that uh applies to your business. Just real simple.

Tom Foley 1:10:33

Um to that point, uh my favorite book is the Medici effect, which people probably wouldn't consider a business book, but um, it's all about the intersectionality of ideas between different cultures and different um concepts. Uh so what in food industry could be applied to tech, what in sales could be applied to tech. Um it's actually about a uh banking family in Florence, Italy that basically funded the Renaissance movement uh by funding different projects for artists who are working with science, uh, you know, scientists and philosophers and and things like that, and how true innovation comes from people with different backgrounds and different experiences coming together and finding where those overlap and you know new things that can grow from it.

Andrew Moore 1:11:27

That's fascinating. That's awesome. And for anyone who's interested, I will put links to all these in the show notes so we'll be able to find them quickly. Uh all right.

Speaker 1:11:37

It's like Tourette's favorite, favorite curse word. Go ahead. Blurt it out.

Tom Foley 1:11:46

Don't know that it's my favorite, but probably the one I use the most is motherfucker.

Speaker 1:11:51

There you go. There you go.

Tom Foley 1:11:53

That's what he says to me when I bring on a bad opportunity. It's usually when you leave my office and I just go, motherfucker.

Jim Abbott 1:12:00

In agreement. Yep. Travis's mother taught him well, he doesn't swear.

Andrew Moore 1:12:05

Sure.

Jim Abbott 1:12:06

She might be listening.

Andrew Moore 1:12:07

Yeah, we'll we'll we'll make sure you can send her this little bitty clip. You're like, look, mom, look what I did. I didn't say a bad word. Everybody else said fuck. Um, all right, let's see. Um I'm interested because Tom's got, I'm a vinyl head. So Tom's got this background for those who are just listening and aren't watching on YouTube, but he's got a whole background there of of albums, and they're not, they're like deep albums, like it's got Ernest Tubbs and you know, Jimmy Reed posters and stuff behind him in his background. So what's your favorite band or artist? Wait, who do you really dig on? What what music are you into?

Tom Foley 1:12:45

I have loved Aerosmith ever since I can remember liking music. So um I went over to a friend's house as a child and he had just got the Big Ones album, and we sat down and listened to it together, and I was like, this band is great. I love them. And uh actually, my wife and I are both huge Aerosmith fans. She had actually seen them in concert a few times before we got together. Uh the first concert we ever saw together was an Aerosmith concert. Um we're huge Aerosmith fans.

Speaker 1:13:18

Nice. What about you guys, Jim and Trav? Dave Matthews poster over here.

Jim Abbott 1:13:25

Uh big fan there. You too. I've seen every American tour since 1983.

Andrew Moore 1:13:31

Wow. Did you see him at the sphere?

Jim Abbott 1:13:33

I did. Saw him at the sphere. I hate Las Vegas with a passion, but got on a plane to see him at the sphere. Uh you know, dressed as I am, you can probably tell I'm big punk music fan as well. Uh dropkick Murphy's Interruptors, Flog and Molly.

Andrew Moore 1:13:49

Bad Religion?

Jim Abbott 1:13:50

Bad Religion, saw them recently, social distortion.

Andrew Moore 1:13:53

They were on tour together last year. I went and saw him, and that was an awesome show. That was a that was a that was a throwdown. I had a great time there.

Jim Abbott 1:13:59

We saw him in Pittsburgh, I think.

Andrew Moore 1:14:00

Nice.

Jim Abbott 1:14:01

Because I couldn't make it to the show here in Cleveland.

Andrew Moore 1:14:03

That's awesome. Yeah, a huge day fan too. They're back come on back on tour. I'm trying to drag my kids.

Jim Abbott 1:14:08

They're not coming to Cleveland, they're pissing me off. That's true. Nope, they're skipping us. They're they're doing uh Pittsburgh's as close as they're coming.

Andrew Moore 1:14:17

Then you get to travel. You get to say you get to go see them somewhere cool. Go see them somewhere cool.

Jim Abbott 1:14:21

That's right. Been there, done that, but I'll probably end up driving anyways.

Andrew Moore 1:14:25

Travis, what do you got? You got anybody that you like?

Travis Grundke 1:14:27

Yeah. So um back in the late 80s, early 90s, I had a friend whose older brother, actually, this is it goes back to the 80s. His older brother was really big into Pink Floyd. And so I started listening to Pink Floyd probably probably about 1987, 88. And I've I've always been a big fan. I saw Roger Waters a few years ago, and even though he's kind of nutty, it was a great show.

Speaker 1:14:56

Yeah.

Travis Grundke 1:14:56

Especially at at his age. Um, so they're great. Uh the other one that's a random one, there's absolutely no connection. It's a Scottish indie band called Travis. Um I know, no joke. Go look them up. It's a they're they're out of Scotland. And uh great band. And then uh there's a guy out of Georgia uh named Tyler Lyle that I found on Bandcamp, the website years ago. Okay, and he does a lot of great, you know, uh a little bit a little bit folksy folk music-ish, but he also has a separate band called The Midnights, which does like 80s retro um music, and it's just fun and nostalgic. So yeah.

Andrew Moore 1:15:44

Ah, that's awesome. I love I love they they call it what? There's a whole genre called Synthwave.

Travis Grundke 1:15:50

Yeah, that's yeah.

Andrew Moore 1:15:51

Yeah, there's a band called the The Midnight.

Travis Grundke 1:15:54

Yeah, that's the one I'm yeah, that's that's Tyler Lyle. That's Tyler Lyle.

Andrew Moore 1:15:58

I saw them at ACL Fest a couple years ago and they have a saxophone player, and I was like, I was that was my jam. I was like, these guys are awesome.

Travis Grundke 1:16:04

So do yourself a favor, go look up just Tyler Lyle, not Tyler Lyle and the Midnights. He's got a whole other type of uh genre music that's totally different. Nice.

Andrew Moore 1:16:14

All right, I'll check that out.

Travis Grundke 1:16:15

He's a good artist.

Andrew Moore 1:16:16

Okay, awesome. Um, all right. Worst sales call, client meeting, personnel meeting. You can not name names. Um, I'm looking for something awful, like just train wreck.

Travis Grundke 1:16:31

Oof.

Andrew Moore 1:16:32

Was is there one that y'all were in together? That would be great.

Travis Grundke 1:16:35

Got it. Abby, I will tell you uh from a hiring perspective, I had one where I had two that were that stick out to me. One was a person that we interviewed for a service coordinator role, and this person was well qualified, fantastic, got the background check back. Woof. So called her up and said, Hey, um, we really like you. Some stuff came back. Would you care to elaborate? Help me help you. And uh the response was, well, I wasn't shooting the heroine, I was just with people who were. And scene.

Speaker 1:17:20

Travis wins.

Travis Grundke 1:17:24

Okay. Uh we'll let you know. Yeah.

Speaker 1:17:27

So that's the best.

Travis Grundke 1:17:29

Yeah.

Andrew Moore 1:17:30

Okay. We don't like I don't I don't think I'll ever have to ask that question again for any of my guests. Like, that's the most amazing shit ever.

Speaker 5 1:17:42

Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah, there you go.

Andrew Moore 1:17:44

Okay, well then that's that's going in the final cut. That's great. I love that. Um uh anybody that you guys think I need to have on the on the podcast, who's the person in industry or uh doing great things in the MSP space? Who do you recommend? Uh not like don't give me like a an app like an app. Don't be like, you should talk to the guys over so and so. Just like I need a person. Who y'all think?

Travis Grundke 1:18:10

Um actually tell you candidly, I would say, so again, we worked with a company called Convergo to help us do sales process.

Speaker 1:18:17

Yeah.

Travis Grundke 1:18:18

I would suggest talking to them because they're an EOS shop, um, but trying to teach businesses to uh you know how to build out a sales engine and sales process. Um Bill Poole is Bill Pool is the name.

Jim Abbott 1:18:34

I will make an intro for you.

Andrew Moore 1:18:36

Okay, that would be great. I'd love to talk to like especially if they gave you like an actual, like if if the deliverable that you got has helped you in in your MSP and you think you can help others, I think that would be fantastic.

Jim Abbott 1:18:48

Definitely.

Andrew Moore 1:18:49

Yeah, it's we don't want to help the others too much, but no nobody in nobody in your market. Well, like somebody in Florida, maybe.

Jim Abbott 1:18:57

That's right.

Andrew Moore 1:18:58

Uh gentlemen, I cannot stress enough again how appreciative I am of you spending your time with me going through what you do. Um, it's just been an honor, and I'm extremely excited to see how you guys have continue to grow and keep uh moving in the right direction. So thank you for being a part of this today.

Jim Abbott 1:19:18

Thank you, Adrian. Good to catch you up, good to see you.

Andrew Moore 1:19:21

Absolutely.

Jim Abbott 1:19:21

Take care, buddy.