CyTek’s Chris Burcham: The Kansas City Journey from Corporate to MSP Leadership
Title: CyTek’s Chris Burcham: The Kansas City Journey from Corporate to MSP Leadership
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Chris Burcham, the CEO of CyTek Corporation, kicks off a chat that dives deep into his journey from corporate life to taking the reins of a managed IT services company. We get the lowdown on his beginnings in Kansas City and how a decade spent at Cerner Corporation set the stage for his entrepreneurial leap. After acquiring a small manufacturing company, Chris found himself leading CyTek, a business rich in history but in need of fresh ideas. He shares the challenges of stepping into a new sector without prior experience in managed services, highlighting the learning curve and the joy of building a strong team. The conversation is peppered with insights on how past corporate environments shaped his leadership style and how he’s unlearning some of those habits to adapt to his new role. It’s a fascinating look at how personal journeys can intertwine with professional evolution, and how sometimes, stepping into the unknown can lead to unexpected success.
Takeaways:
- Chris Burcham took the reins of CyTek Corporation without prior MSP experience, proving you can learn on the job.
- The podcast highlights the importance of having a solid support network when navigating the challenges of running a business.
- Transitioning from a corporate environment to managing a small business can be a wild ride, full of unexpected lessons.
- Understanding client needs and adapting your services is crucial for MSP growth, especially in a competitive market.
- Building a strong team and culture is key to success in any business, as seen in CyTek's growth journey.
- Compliance can be a game changer for MSPs looking to add value to their clients, especially in regulated industries.
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Welcome to the MSP Owner Podcast.
Speaker B:Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Krish Burcham, the CEO of SciTech Corporation, a managed IT services provider based out of Kansas City, Missouri.
Speaker B:SciTech has been delivering customized tech support to a diverse range of industries in the area.
Speaker B: ch Corporation since December: Speaker B:So we're going to hear the story of this long tenured company and then also how Chris became the leading man, having no prior MSP experience.
Speaker B:So Chris, thanks a lot for joining me on the MSP Owner Podcast.
Speaker B:To start off, we would love to get a little bit of background on where you came from and where you grew up.
Speaker A:Sure, thanks for having me Ben.
Speaker A:The kind of quick background on me.
Speaker A:I was born and raised here in Kansas City.
Speaker A:I started my career out here locally at a large healthcare technology company which at the time was called Cerner Corporation and spent about a decade there in a variety of different roles.
Speaker A:And I started to get the entrepreneurial itch while I was there and eventually took the leap and acquired a small manufacturing company here in Kansas City and I operated that for several years.
Speaker A:During that time we also acquired scitech through a family investment vehicle.
Speaker A:And about a little over a year ago I was asked to come over and lead SciTech full time.
Speaker A:And fortunately I had scaled the operations of Forte, the manufacturing company to the point where I didn't need to be there every day to operate it and was able to do that.
Speaker A:And so I've been, been here at scitech for over a year leading, leading this company and it's, it's been a wonderful ride.
Speaker B:Well, so you've got, you've got a whole bunch of different things going on.
Speaker B:You've got, you've, you've worked in corporate.
Speaker B:Start out your career in corporate, then you transition to entrepreneurship and buying an unrelated manufacturing business and then you are now running an msp.
Speaker B:So that's like a really, there's a few different stories there that are, are really interesting to me and might resonate with some people because I think some people feel like they go on, they go on the same path and they've got to continue going down it and you feel like you've made some adjustments along the way.
Speaker B:Maybe there's some more consistency there than, than, than looks at on the surface.
Speaker B:But maybe start off H.
Speaker B:Why did you go into corporate and sounds like you spent a good chunk at Cerner.
Speaker B:Can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker A:Yeah, I, you know, I, I don't have a fantastic answer to that.
Speaker A:Other than it, you know, I like a lot of college grads at the time, I was applying anywhere that would give me an interview.
Speaker A:And as much as I love to tell you that, you know, I was passionate about healthcare and.
Speaker A:And it was what I wanted to do, the truth is it was probably just the best job offer I got at the time.
Speaker A:And so I.
Speaker A:I took it and it ended up being a.
Speaker A:A great thing.
Speaker A:You know, it was during a time.
Speaker A:It was.
Speaker A:I've called it the boom era over there.
Speaker A:You know, they were hiring just.
Speaker A:Just loads and loads of people.
Speaker A:And it was.
Speaker A:It was a really fun place to work at the time.
Speaker A:You know, I was surrounded by a bunch of peers, you know, people who are.
Speaker A:Who are still good friends to this day, I met my wife there.
Speaker A:And while some people would probably say it was very kind of, you know, the cold, the stereotype of the culture at the time, because that was very sink or swim, and not everyone liked that, but it.
Speaker A:I think for me, it ended up being a valuable kind of learning ground and trading ground.
Speaker A:And I mean, there's.
Speaker B:By sink or swim, does that mean people were held accountable or.
Speaker B:It means people are thrown into things without proper guiding or training.
Speaker A:Kind of the latter.
Speaker A:You know, it.
Speaker A:Yeah, kind of like we're gonna push you into the deep end and, you know, a lot of you are gonna sink, but a few of you aren't.
Speaker A:And those are generally the people who stuck around for sustained periods of time.
Speaker A:And, well, people might have their, you know, qualms with that approach.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:I think still to this day, I.
Speaker A:I take aspects of it with me in terms of, you know, being able to drink from a fire hose, being able to learn very quickly about things that I've never heard.
Speaker A:Heard of before, and being able to action on that.
Speaker A:And it.
Speaker A:Yeah, there are still things, you know, to this day that I'm using that I took from.
Speaker A:From my time.
Speaker B:Are there things from the corporate life that you're trying to unlearn yet?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:In that.
Speaker A:In that.
Speaker A:I think that started as soon as I bought Forte, really.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:There were things, and there were things.
Speaker A:There are kind of two layers.
Speaker A:There were things straight away where I was like, you know, this is really.
Speaker A:This is the thing that I hate about corporate that I'm going to straight away get.
Speaker A:Get rid of, because I just.
Speaker A:I hate it.
Speaker A:And then there were other things that I.
Speaker A:It was almost like I had to unlearn.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So specifically, I look back at how I communicated during that time, and just like a lot of people.
Speaker A:I was buzzword heavy.
Speaker A:I was.
Speaker A:I would.
Speaker A:I would have told you at that time that I was a great communicator, But I look back on.
Speaker A:On how I communicated during that time, and I.
Speaker A:I actually don't.
Speaker A:Don't think I was because I was not nearly as direct as I am now, because I was.
Speaker A:I think I learned a lot of fluff.
Speaker A:And so I felt like there was a little bit of an unlearning for me, unlearning some of the fluff that goes into our daily communications in a corporate environment and being able to just get straight to the point and strip everything else away.
Speaker A:That was almost something I had to unlearn and relearn.
Speaker A:I feel like along the entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker B:Makes sense.
Speaker B:I similarly started out in a larger company environment, and I kind of felt that I didn't spend as much time, but I can see where that might be something you want and need to unlearn if you want to get stuff done.
Speaker B:So you spent eight years at Cerner.
Speaker B:Sounds like you start to get the itch for entrepreneurship.
Speaker B:How does that start?
Speaker B:Is that like there's a defining point where you're like, I need to get out of here, or is it a gradual burn over time and more of a strategic thought process?
Speaker A:Definitely something that ramped up over time.
Speaker A:You know, I started pretty early on.
Speaker A:I started to just get interest, just interested in business in general.
Speaker A:You know, I was.
Speaker A:I was like that guy that was looking at, you know, quarterly earnings reports from Fortune 500 companies.
Speaker A:I was always.
Speaker A:I loved reading the.
Speaker A:And still do the Kansas City Business Journal and, like, learning about local businesses that were successful that I had never heard of.
Speaker A:Of.
Speaker A:And that whole ecosystem was just really interesting to me.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:I just.
Speaker A:I was just really fascinated with it.
Speaker A:And I was curious, really curious and still curious to this day about, you know, the people who were doing it, how they had done it, you know, the ones who were successful.
Speaker A:Why were they successful.
Speaker A:That all of that stuff was just, like, really interesting to me so that, you know, that burning ember quickly kind of caught fire and within, you know, it's been a span of a couple years.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:I had become pretty dead set on pursuing that path for myself.
Speaker B:So are you looking for businesses while you're.
Speaker B:While you're working at Cerner?
Speaker A:Yes, I was.
Speaker A:I was, you know, I was actively looking both on market, off market.
Speaker A:I was in touch with brokers.
Speaker A:Spent a lot of time just getting familiar with the scene, you know, the scene, what that looked like, how it all worked.
Speaker A:All the intricacies, which, you know, I'm sure, you know, Ben, that go into, you know, making an offer, structuring a deal, financing.
Speaker A:That of course, is a big piece of it.
Speaker A:Figuring out what I could do, what I couldn't do, all of that stuff.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:So I was actively kind of keeping an ear to a ground my last couple years there and eventually found Forte and took the.
Speaker A:Took the leap off the cliff.
Speaker B:So transition from services and software to.
Speaker B:To manufacturing and selling product.
Speaker B:What.
Speaker B:What is that like?
Speaker A:Yeah, so I had, of course, spent, you know, my whole career in basically a services business.
Speaker A:And I was intrigued by the idea of a.
Speaker A:The scalability of a product business.
Speaker A:And to this day, I still feel that there's something inherently beautiful about, you know, machine makes part, we ship part.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:It in its purest form is just like a beautifully simple deal.
Speaker A:Especially if you are coming from a services business.
Speaker A:Of course, that's an oversimplification.
Speaker A:There's a lot more that goes into it.
Speaker A:There are challenges every day, just like there are in any other business.
Speaker A:But I, you know, and I wasn't.
Speaker A:I hadn't narrowed a search to only manufacturing.
Speaker A:So it was kind of a marriage of.
Speaker A:Within the realm of, you know, industries that I was loosely looking at, but also just opportunity that presented itself and that all kind of just came together at the right time.
Speaker B:Was there something special about Forte when you saw it, or was it kind of just met your requirements?
Speaker A:There were.
Speaker A:There were a couple things.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It was a really healthy, functioning business.
Speaker A:But if you walked in there at the time, you know, it looked like a.
Speaker A:It was a mess.
Speaker A:It was like, looked like a, you know, nobody had been in there in 20 years.
Speaker A:So I was intrigued by the thought that if we could, you know, bring some things into the 21st century a little bit, that there was a ton of potential there.
Speaker A:And the other thing that was really kind of an eyebrow raiser is, well, we do do custom work.
Speaker A:Forte, we have our own line of parts, which is pretty unusual for a small manufacturer.
Speaker A:So there's a lot of advantages that come with that.
Speaker A:And that was another thing that was very intriguing to me.
Speaker A:There's a.
Speaker A:There's a lot of custom shops out there, right?
Speaker A:But that's what they are, is custom shops.
Speaker A:And we do do that work.
Speaker A:But the fact that they had their own line of products was a pretty eyebrow raising differentiator for a small manufacturer.
Speaker A:And so that was another thing that made me kind of go, all right, I want to kind of take the leap with this.
Speaker B:Nice.
Speaker B:And so size wise, what was the revenue and employee count when you acquired that business?
Speaker A:Small.
Speaker A:They were doing about million bucks a year when I bought them.
Speaker A:And they had, they had three employees.
Speaker A:One was actually on work comp leave at the time, so we were really functioning with two employees.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:So it was small.
Speaker A:You know, you absolutely had to kind of roll your sleeves up and get dirty there, Especially at the beginning.
Speaker A:And, you know, it was.
Speaker A:Especially those early days, it was a challenge, right?
Speaker A:But we emerged from it.
Speaker A:We were able to, you know, we have been able to.
Speaker A:To grow revenue, get a great team in place as well, which is as intriguing.
Speaker A:I've been as important as anything.
Speaker A:And once we did that, it was kind of off to the races.
Speaker B:Hi, I'm Ben Tigelar, the host of MSP Owner Podcast and the CEO of Datatel, an IT managed service provider with 35 employees.
Speaker B:The mission of this podcast is simple.
Speaker B:To have authentic conversations with IT owners about their journey, how it started, the challenges they faced, and where they're going next.
Speaker B:Every episode, I personally walk away with a new actionable item to strengthen my own business.
Speaker B:But a quick word about my company, Datatel.
Speaker B:We are actively acquiring MSPs who align with our service and culture.
Speaker B:So if your company is generating between 1 and $10 million of revenue, I want to talk to you.
Speaker B:But wait, you're probably thinking, why me and why Datatel?
Speaker B:First is I get you.
Speaker B:I understand the challenges MSP owners face.
Speaker B:Being one myself, feeling overworked, overwhelmed, constantly being on call, struggling to bring in new business.
Speaker B:I have the solutions and people in place to address these pain points.
Speaker B:Second is culture.
Speaker B:We run our business on EOS entrepreneurial operating system, which has been transformative for our employees and clients alike.
Speaker B:I believe that building a great company comes down to finding and retaining great people who are in the right seats.
Speaker B:Everything else is noise.
Speaker B:If any of this resonates, it probably means we're a fit and we should be having a conversation.
Speaker B:Until then, let's get back to the show.
Speaker B:Man.
Speaker B:The transition from, I guess, corporate and structured to a small business is like incredibly stark.
Speaker B:And then when you go into a business that has three or four employees, that must have been pretty different than working at Cerner, right?
Speaker B:Like, I mean, I think.
Speaker B:I think back to a story about when I acquired my first small business healthcare company.
Speaker B:The first week I had two employees come into my office and basically unload their problems on me and both ended up crying.
Speaker B:One for personal reasons, one for work reasons.
Speaker B:And I was like, oh, my.
Speaker B:What did I get myself into?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Did you have a similar moment like that when you were like, what am I.
Speaker B:What am I doing here?
Speaker A:Sure, yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think I absolutely did.
Speaker A:And I would guess.
Speaker A:I'd venture to guess most people who have undertaken that journey have also had that moment, right, where they're like, oh, God, what it.
Speaker A:You know, what have I done?
Speaker A:I mean, in my case there, you know, the.
Speaker A:The two employees we had at the time actually both quit within the first six months that I was there, which was at the time very stressful, and was probably.
Speaker A:Was probably that moment where I'm going, oh, my God, what.
Speaker A:What have I gotten myself?
Speaker A:What have I done?
Speaker A:You know, And.
Speaker A:But it's the.
Speaker A:The funny part is looking.
Speaker A:Looking back now, I can't imagine us being where we are now if those guys were still there, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker A:They were actually holding us back much more than they were propelling us forward.
Speaker B:But you're six months in and you have no idea what you're doing, right?
Speaker A:So that was a problem.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So, I mean, when you look back on it now, it.
Speaker B:You can look at it, but when you were in the moment, what did you feel like when that was happening?
Speaker A:Oh, I mean, it, you know, it's.
Speaker A:It's max stress, right?
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's feelings of doubt.
Speaker A:All the things that I think a lot of, you know, business owners or business leaders wrestle with.
Speaker A:You know, I.
Speaker A:I would.
Speaker A:I had people warn me about that before I bought the business, right?
Speaker A:I had people tell you, hey, you've got some key man risk here, you know, And I was like, I know that I'm.
Speaker A:I'm going to accept that risk.
Speaker A:And it blew up in my face.
Speaker A:And the.
Speaker A:Basically in the.
Speaker A:The first six months I was there, so.
Speaker A:So, yeah, it was, you know, there was a stressful time there.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out.
Speaker A:You know, I.
Speaker A:I absolutely had those thoughts of, like, you know, I.
Speaker A:Unbelievable.
Speaker A:I'm like, I, like, I launched on.
Speaker A:Into this venture down this path, and I'm gonna fail in the first year.
Speaker A:Like, what am I doing?
Speaker A:You know, all of those.
Speaker A:All of those thoughts.
Speaker A:But that's not what happened.
Speaker A:You know, we.
Speaker A:We got it together.
Speaker A:I, you know, had a little bit of good fortune and making some good hires, which I don't know about you, Ben.
Speaker A:I still feel like to this day, no matter how good your interview process is, there's.
Speaker A:If you really hit a home Run some of it's good fortune.
Speaker A:And we, there was a byproduct of that time period too where even though those guys at the time where the guys kind of knew how to do everything, when they left and we kind of got a new team in there, the culture improved dramatically and everyone was rowing in the same direction all of a sudden.
Speaker A:And I hadn't even realized how much that was affecting not just me, but the entire business until we were able to kind of wipe that slate clean, get a new group in there who again was bought in and not fighting me every step of the way.
Speaker A:And so that was absolutely a challenging time.
Speaker A:But I really do value the experience and the lessons I learned during that time.
Speaker A:I think I've said this before, like, you know, my first year there was the best MBA you could ever get.
Speaker A:And it all, fortunately it all, you know, it all worked out.
Speaker B:So what did your support network look.
Speaker A:Like in terms of like, who did.
Speaker B:You go to when stuff was going down and who did you talk to?
Speaker A:You know, I, I really.
Speaker A:Two people.
Speaker A:One and I was very fortunate in this regard.
Speaker A:One of them was the, the prior owner of the business.
Speaker A:So I had and still have a great relationship with the seller of that business, which sometimes happens, but I don't think always happens.
Speaker A:So I was very fortunate.
Speaker A:You know, he, I could pick up the phone anytime.
Speaker A:And then, you know, the other person that I'm so fortunate to be able to, to call and pick up who has decades and decades of experience is, is my dad who was, you know, a lifelong banker here in Kansas City.
Speaker A:Had a lot of success doing that same deal.
Speaker A:Small, but any, anything I've seen or there or here at scitech he's also seen.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So I was very, I was fortunate.
Speaker A:And I think it's really important for any, any small business owner leader to, to have those people that you can call and talk to about that stuff.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Because if you can't, it can be a very lonely journey.
Speaker B:100%.
Speaker B:And you haven't done any.
Speaker B:Were you involved in any peer groups at that time or so?
Speaker A:I, I wasn't.
Speaker A:I was not.
Speaker A:And you know, if I were doing it all over again, I would have jumped into peer groups a lot sooner.
Speaker A:I, I think at the time it, it was one of those deals where I was, it felt like I was doing everything I could possibly do just to, you know, keep my head above water and then the idea of going out and trying to find peer groups.
Speaker A:So like another thing.
Speaker A:But I'm a big believer in Peer groups, like, I think being able to, to talk with, you know, whether it's industry specific or whether it's not industry specific, and it's just, you know, other, you know, young small business owners.
Speaker A:I, I found that stuff so helpful in, in so many different ways.
Speaker A:So I wasn't doing it at that time.
Speaker A:But if I were, you know, going back and talking to myself now, I would say go get in a peer.
Speaker B:Group, you know, so you grow and, and do stuff with Forte.
Speaker A:What.
Speaker B:Where did you take the business from when you bought it to when you decided, hey, I'm going to go do another business?
Speaker A:We hit.
Speaker A:So we were, yeah, we did about, about a million a year when I bought it.
Speaker A:We hit one and a half pretty quickly within a couple years.
Speaker A:And it was, we were about, I want to say we're between maybe three and four years in when the idea of coming over to run scitech was, was, was broached to me.
Speaker A:And it was a company that we had bought kind of, like I mentioned, through a, a family investment vehicle.
Speaker A:So I was just so confident in the team that we had over there that I, I tend to be an eternal optimist, but I really felt like it could be like a best of both worlds deal.
Speaker A:And so, and you know, I was intrigued.
Speaker A:I had cross at forte.
Speaker A:I had crossed paths with, you know, cyber security and managed services and, and that, that piece of it.
Speaker A:And I was the opportunity that I saw, you know, given that it's essentially a local, at least right now, a local metro area business.
Speaker A:I knew that one of the challenges that we had at 14, a lot of our customers were huge, like huge OEMs.
Speaker A:And I was like, man, I feel like I know, you know, 10 people right now that I could go and get to sign up for just, just through existing relationships.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So I was kind of like, I, I feel like there's a big opportunity there.
Speaker A:You know, there were, you know, they were going through kind of a transition period at the time.
Speaker A:And so in my, you know, million miles an hour brain, I'm going, okay.
Speaker A:I think we can keep the momentum we've got over here.
Speaker A:And I, I really feel like there's a bunch of great opportunity over here too and you know, crazy Migos.
Speaker A:Let's, let's do both.
Speaker B:It was nice with scitech.
Speaker B:You said, you said you acquired it with a family investment vehicle.
Speaker B:Can you talk about that?
Speaker B:What does that mean?
Speaker A:Yeah, so we, we, we've had a family investment vehicle for, you know, several years and have done, you know, Not a, not a huge amount, but some different dealings through that and we're always kind of keeping an eye out.
Speaker A:You know, I obviously had at least one experience with one acquisition.
Speaker A:My dad had a bunch of experience on the financing side, on the banking too.
Speaker A:And actually he had worked in a prior life.
Speaker A:He was, he was actually a client of Scitex for a long time.
Speaker A:So we increasingly got intrigued by the idea of specifically the cyber security piece.
Speaker A:It just anecdotally, anecdotally seemed like you were seeing that everywhere.
Speaker A:You know, it was getting talked about more and more.
Speaker A:And at that time I, I didn't, I didn't know a ton.
Speaker A:I just knew that it seemed to be everywhere basically was what I knew at that time.
Speaker A:We knew the, at the time the, the owners, the previous owners and you know, ultimately we, the previous owner or the main shareholder at the time was, you know, just, he'd done it for 20 years, done a good job, great job with it was just approaching retirement age and we kind of had the informal conversation of, you know, have you thought about what you're going to do?
Speaker A:We're interested in getting into this space and you know, kind of a somewhat long story short, ultimately made an offer to, to buy the business and, and we're able to do that.
Speaker A:And we actually hired someone to, to run it at the time, and he did for, for several years.
Speaker A:And that's kind of the condensed version of how we got into the MSP space.
Speaker B:So family, immediate family business funded and then you, you acquired it and then someone else ran it for a few years as like a hired gun CEO.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Did that person come with the business or were they brand new?
Speaker A:No, they were outside.
Speaker A:A friend of mine actually from my time at Starter, um.
Speaker B:Oh, cool.
Speaker A:And so he did that for a couple years.
Speaker A:He ended up leaving and going elsewhere and then that.
Speaker A:And that was when I came in kind of December.
Speaker A:Yeah, December 23rd.
Speaker B:So with SciTech, you've got.
Speaker B:So it sounds like SciTech, at least from a revenue perspective, you're doing roughly 6 million of revenue right now.
Speaker B:You know, you've got about 20ish employees, you said.
Speaker A:Yeah, about 20.
Speaker A:I think we're.
Speaker A:Yeah, 20.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So can you walk through the structure of the company as it sits today, people wise?
Speaker B:And I'm curious what your org chart looks like.
Speaker A:Yeah, so our org chart.
Speaker A:So there's myself.
Speaker A:We have a, we keep adding initials to her title.
Speaker A:Cfo, Chief Finance and Operations Officer.
Speaker A:We hired.
Speaker A:This year, we hired a.
Speaker A: last year,: Speaker A:We have four network engineers and field techs who are going on site.
Speaker A:We have a help desk staff of three.
Speaker A:We have a full time cyber security analyst.
Speaker A:We have two VCOs, another account manager.
Speaker A:We have an operations analyst who assists with a bunch of different stuff.
Speaker A:Everything from procurement to some sales support stuff, getting proposals together, that type of thing.
Speaker B:See who am I missing and who's doing sales?
Speaker B:Is the VCIO or the account managers doing sales?
Speaker A:They're doing some of it.
Speaker A:I do a lot of it.
Speaker A:That's actually a, a topic that's been a point of discussion a lot recently is kind of steering our sales efforts.
Speaker A:What do we want, what do we want that to look like in 25?
Speaker A:What's the.
Speaker A:How do we want to define the diff.
Speaker A:I be, I be really interested to hear your take on this Ben but like how do we define the difference between VCIO work and.
Speaker A:And pure hunter sales exec type of roles?
Speaker A:So I, I do a lot of it my, myself actually I like doing it but I also have recognized in order to scale I, you know we're going to need a little bit more of that.
Speaker A:So long winded answer your question.
Speaker A:You know our VCIO is certainly do a lot of that especially the cross selling and upselling into their base.
Speaker A:They're handling a lot of that and then I, I'm still very involved in it as well.
Speaker B:Do your VCOs have a pretty technical background or they come from more business?
Speaker A:One of them is, was a network senior network engineer and has been with the company for 20, I think over 20 years but had everything that like I was looking for in terms of.
Speaker A:I always say like the best engineers are the ones who you talk to them and you don't think they're engineers.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Presented well, really well spoken, great emotional intelligence.
Speaker A:Clients loved him, all of those things.
Speaker A:So he does have a technical background.
Speaker A:Our other one was a, actually a recent hire from a competitor actually and he had, he has a little bit of a technical background but most of his background is VCIO account management, that type of work.
Speaker B:Got it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:It ends up being a little bit messy between account management, sales, vcio, how you end up structuring that And I think it's different for, for every company.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You've got kind of a mix of the two and you know it sounds like you're doing a lot of founder led sales so like you're driving a lot of the sales process and you don't really have an A pure Hunter on, on the books, is that correct?
Speaker A:We've been, that's true.
Speaker A:And we, like I said, that's been like a very recent topic of conversation for us.
Speaker A:And we're actually, we have been talking to a Hunter and I, we also have invested more in marketing and that's something that the company never historically did.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:If there was a sale, it was a referral.
Speaker B:It was all relationship driven referral business.
Speaker A:Nobody.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:So, so yes, it is a lot of founder led sales outreach, outbound, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker A:And then yeah, we've had, we've had to have a lot of conversations about like what, what exactly, what exactly do we want?
Speaker A:The, the vc.
Speaker A:Do we want vcios?
Speaker A:How, you know, how do we want that to look in terms of, you know, we had arguments on rain on different ends of the scale ranging from, you know, I think it's a real value add or you know, a trust builder to be able to say that we're not sales and we're just, you know, client partner only.
Speaker A:And, and that helps to know we need, we need you guys to be driving some revenue.
Speaker A:So we've had all those conversations recently.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Because in a way it's again, it's, it's kind of a new thing for the company, you know, so I, I like where we've settled with it.
Speaker A:I don't think we've 100%, 100% figured it out like permanently for where we're going to land on that.
Speaker A:But it's definitely been a big topic of conversation for us recently with businesses.
Speaker B:That have primarily generated their, their new business from referrals and just existing business is great because you know, they have legit operations and they're serving their clients well, but they have sounds like very little infrastructure on the sales side and basically nothing on the marketing side.
Speaker B:Yep, that is very common.
Speaker A:And we made, like I said, you know, we had made the moves.
Speaker A:I thought we really fortified our technical infrastructure and which I felt like we needed to do.
Speaker A:I've seen that movie before where people like, you know, load up on the sales infrastructure and then can't execute on anything and can't keep anyone around.
Speaker A:I didn't want to do that.
Speaker A:So we made those investments, you know, in our technical infrastructure, the management of that infrastructure and I, I love where we're positioned now to that end.
Speaker A:So now it's more about how, you know, how do we want to go about putting our foot on the gas From a sales standpoint to, you know, load up that technical infrastructure, basically.
Speaker B:Are you focusing in any particular vertical or are you, are you Kansas City based?
Speaker A:95 of our clients are metro area Kansas City.
Speaker A:That said, we do, I mean we have clients in Texas, we have clients in New York, we have clients in Michigan, Arizona, so we do have some national accounts, but vast majority of it is just metro area.
Speaker A:And I still feel like there's plenty of meat on that bone here locally, especially with some of the industry forces at work with regards to like, I'm sure you see this too, like, you know, huge roll ups, you know, we've seen even just since I'd been here, one of our main competitors got rolled up and I don't know what you've seen, but you know, at a certain size level, it's really hard for them to keep up a, you know, a certain level of service if they're a $70 million company.
Speaker B:So, so you're seeing other MSPs in your market get gobbled up and provide worse quality service to their clients.
Speaker A:That, yeah, at least that seems to be what I've seen so far.
Speaker B:Is that, is that the reason, if you think back to like your last 10 prospect calls, what was the main driving pain point that you identified?
Speaker A:Yeah, you know, if I were to say like the last 10, I bet you maybe half of those, five of those you could trace back to, hey, our MSP, we loved our MSP, but they got acquired and you know, now service, you know, we're noticing bad changes basically and so we've been with them forever.
Speaker A:But this has made us think, hey, maybe we want to at least see what else is out there.
Speaker A:Everything from that to where we're done with them.
Speaker A:We would, you know, we want to, you know, get proposals from, from you guys and a few others and, and.
Speaker B:See, so what are the things that are happening?
Speaker B:It's basically like response time.
Speaker B:Or did you dig into further?
Speaker B:What, what, what, what are the frustrations coming from?
Speaker A:That's actually a good question because I actually did want to know like specifically because response time is one thing.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:But if they're going and saying, well, they jacked up our prices or they, or they restructured our, they made us restructure our agreements, I wanted to look at what, that, what, or at least to the extent they would let us, because I'm going, okay, if, if they don't like this new agreement, that, that might look exactly like what we're about to put in front of them and that might mean they're not ready to be a good client for us, you know, so I was, I did want to know specifically, like, is it, is it a service thing?
Speaker A:Is it a response time?
Speaker A:You know, in a lot of most cases, I would say it was.
Speaker A:It was a gradual degree degradation of service.
Speaker A:You know, it wasn't like overnight.
Speaker A:It was like they used to get back to us in 30 minutes and now it's several hours and, you know, you know, we have to.
Speaker A:They don't follow up and things fall through the cracks.
Speaker A:We have to, you know, remind them about X and Y and.
Speaker A:And this issue over here, We've been talking with them about it for a year.
Speaker A:It's never really gotten fixed.
Speaker A:A lot of that type of stuff.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So it sounds like most of the prospects are coming from other MSPs.
Speaker B:How, how many of the last 10, which ones are, you know, what percentage would you say have never used an MSP before?
Speaker A:I would say certainly that's part of it.
Speaker A:And then the other half, I guess, would be just, you know, us trying to leverage.
Speaker A:You know, I do feel like we just have really good local relationships and just trying to see, you know, kind of pushing that boulder up the hill to see if we can get a foot in the door somewhere that we'd want to.
Speaker A:We're not.
Speaker A:And as you know, that can be a long sales cycle.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Especially they're not feeling any particular pain.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But yeah, that.
Speaker A:And then I think, yeah, other MSPs are part of it for sure.
Speaker B:Differentiation.
Speaker B:How do you differentiate in a sales process when, you know, a client is shopping around and has multiple other MSPs that they're considering?
Speaker A:So, Ben, I listened to your last podcast.
Speaker A:I don't know if that was your first.
Speaker A:And I, I love the conversation you guys had about this because this has also been just like kind of a kryptonite for us.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And I think, I think all of us are trying to figure that out.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:How do we, you know, like coming out and saying, hey, you know, we offer VCIO services.
Speaker A:You know, we are a proactive service provider.
Speaker A:This and that we've had, we've kind of had to come to grips with.
Speaker A:Oh, actually that's, that's not special.
Speaker A:That's just what you need to do to compete now.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So one of the areas that we.
Speaker A:There's really kind of two areas that we've looked at in an effort to try and set ourselves apart.
Speaker A:One of them, I think, actually came up on your last Pride podcast and that was diving deeper into ser.
Speaker A:To service level applications.
Speaker A:SciTech was actually founded on that.
Speaker A:So we were a, the previous owner was a subject matter expert in a legal software called World Docs.
Speaker B:Sounds old.
Speaker B:Sounds very old.
Speaker A:Well, it, it completely obsoleted this year, so.
Speaker A:But the business, the business actually built outward from that and that was a huge value add for, for law firms.
Speaker A:Right, Because I'm sure you've seen, you know, software is what people are in day to day.
Speaker A:They're not in their network infrastructure day to day.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So if you're, if you're adding value through, you know, line of service business applications, that was a huge differentiator.
Speaker A:Now the challenge with that obviously is that that's just one industry and there's business to be had certainly in still in Kansas City in that space.
Speaker A:But you, if you pursue that really hard, you're closing yourself off to all these other industries.
Speaker A:The other area where we feel like there's opportunity to differentiate is in compliance.
Speaker A:So increasingly we get asked, I'm sure you guys do too.
Speaker A:You know, especially if you're in, you know, in the, you know, financial services is a big area where, where this happens.
Speaker A:Anybody who's got any of our clients, you know, anybody's got like covered government contracts, DoD, that type of thing.
Speaker A:We've had a lot of conversations about how can we leverage compliance to be a differentiator.
Speaker A:Because the way I see it is like, okay, if I'm a, you know, the president of one of our clients or the administrator or one of our, our clients, um, what's, what's bringing more value to me?
Speaker A:Is it okay, the network's up and going?
Speaker A:That's, I expect that.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:But man, compliance is a huge thing on my plate.
Speaker A:If, if scitech can come in and take that off my plate, amazing.
Speaker A:That's a huge help.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:So that's one of the areas and, and again, that's been a big topic of recent conversation ongoing is the differentiation piece.
Speaker A:But compliance is an area where we're really trying to kind of, you know, dig in and see where, where we can add value on that front.
Speaker A:Whether that's, you know, a lot of the SEC regulations for financial firms are increasingly technology based.
Speaker A:There's different obviously there's different certifications, SOC2, that type of thing that, that help with that.
Speaker A:But that's an area we think maybe could be a differentiator for us.
Speaker B:What does that ultimately look like?
Speaker B:Does that look like a service set that's provided that you can communicate what the value is?
Speaker B:Because, you know, if you don't, then it Then it feels like, mushy, right?
Speaker B:Like, so how do you, how do you end up taking that concept into something that is a, a product or a service, something that's repeatable and you can communicate its value?
Speaker B:Like, how would you do that from where you're at today?
Speaker A:I think you, I think you have to package it.
Speaker A:And this is one of the things that we've been wrestling with that's a really broad thing, right?
Speaker A:Like just, just say compliance.
Speaker A:Every industry has different compliance or just like a bajillion certifications.
Speaker A:So I think the way that, at least preliminarily we've thought about it is what's the biggest opportunity for us there right now?
Speaker A:We probably feel like it's in financial services.
Speaker A:And then what does that package look like?
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:And we, we probably start there, right, and say, hey, in addition, we have, you know, this package that, you know, certifies you'll be compliant with, you know, finra, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker A:And then there are partners as well, you know, Drata, Vanta, a few others who have the ability to take some of that data and, and make it digestible as well for, for us and for our, our clients.
Speaker A:So I think it's, and we haven't completely solved this or fleshed out how we want it to look, but I think it's pack.
Speaker A:It's picking one spot because you can't do them all, right?
Speaker A:And then figuring out, yeah, what does that package look like and what are.
Speaker A:And also there's a question of liability, right?
Speaker A:Like, are we, are we essentially, if we offer this, are we essentially accepting liability for their compliance or are we just saying we're going to help you, it's still your responsibility to be compliant, but this will help you do that.
Speaker A:So these are all things we're, I mean, talking about right now.
Speaker B:Do you want to accept liability for that?
Speaker A:Ideally, no.
Speaker A:Like, right.
Speaker A:And I think it goes, just goes to, like, to the point of setting clear expectations right up front.
Speaker A:What you wouldn't want to do is not address that, get them, get somebody started on that.
Speaker A:Something happens a year down the road and they go, well, I thought you actually, you know, and now it's a fight, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Compliance as a service feels like a, a growing area within the MSP space.
Speaker B:See it a lot with a, with a variety of different clients.
Speaker B:They've got a bunch of compliance stuff on their plate or when they get to a point in their business, when they figure out that, oh, compliance might be important after they, you know, see how poorly things are being run and now they need to make an investment.
Speaker B:So feels like a, feels like a good opportunity to connect the IT plus the compliance and provide value.
Speaker B:I've seen it be most successful in like end industries where they're specific like a manufacturing or legal or you know, whatever.
Speaker B:I haven't seen it as much on the generalist side.
Speaker B:So I'm curious to see how you develop that at least on the local perspective or if you end up focusing in particular end industry.
Speaker A:Are you guys in, are you guys into any of that at all?
Speaker A:Like are you doing any compliance as a service stuff?
Speaker B:Yeah, but it's light and it's not, it's, it's not as industry specific as what, as what you, you know, what, what, what it could be.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So, so that's where I think when, when I talk, when I've talked about, you know, what is our focus and what is our niche.
Speaker B:We want to develop more capability within certain end industries.
Speaker B:So we can provide something like that to say food manufacturing.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because it's very specific compliance needs as it relates to what they need to do and how they need to do it.
Speaker B:So that feels like the highest value at least end industry.
Speaker B:But if you think about it more on the local, I think that's more of a challenge because you just don't know what people care about.
Speaker B:And there's a long laundry list of things.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Does it HIPAA compliance for a health care company or is it PCI compliance?
Speaker B:I think it really depends.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, that's the hard part.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Where are we going to put our resources and our time so that, you know, we get to go where we want to go?
Speaker A:Totally.
Speaker B:So your business is at roughly 6 million of revenue.
Speaker B:Do you guys have a plan for where you want to be in like three to five years?
Speaker B:What does the company look like?
Speaker B:How big is it?
Speaker B:How many employees?
Speaker A:Yeah, so our, you know, our, our banner goal that we've kind of always hung up is, is how do we become a 10 million dollar company and then longer term, you know, 10 to 15 years, how do we become a $40 million company?
Speaker A:The, the good, as I have have told our team, you know, the good news is and, and the company was doing a little under 3 million when we bought it.
Speaker A:So you know, we have just about doubled it in, wow, three years.
Speaker A:And the good news is I feel like there's still a lot of meat on the bone in terms of we've done all that basically without any marketing, without any, you know, true sales hunting.
Speaker A:If you Will.
Speaker A:And so I, I feel like there's still plenty of organic growth left on the bone, but I also feel like, you know, for us to get there, you know, being acquisitive is going to have to be part of the equation starting this year.
Speaker A:So, you know, we've set a target.
Speaker A:We'd like to get one acquisition done.
Speaker B:This year and that would be local to Kansas City or are you open to other regions?
Speaker A:We're targeting Kansas City for now.
Speaker A:I think certainly down the road.
Speaker A:We're absolutely open to other regions, but we'd like it to be local, especially for the first one.
Speaker A:And I think what's nice is I'd be curious to hear your experience on this too, is like, I feel like even now, just a little over a year into it, I have a much better idea of what a good acquisition would look like versus just any acquisition.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:In terms of making sure like we, we now, you know, we know what a good client base looks like versus not such a good client base.
Speaker A:We know what a service department that has its act together versus one that's kind of all over the place looks like.
Speaker A:And we know what we would want those pieces.
Speaker A:So we know what good, good agreements look like versus bad ones or ones that don't even exist look like you.
Speaker B:You have a position now because you understand the business where.
Speaker B:What is the difference between.
Speaker B:Can you go into the first one that you talked about good versus bad client base?
Speaker B:What does that mean to you and your business as it relates to who you would potentially acquire?
Speaker A:So, so one is simply, you know, size and budget.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Is.
Speaker A:There's a lot I don't.
Speaker A:In our area, there's a lot of like one, two man shops running around taking care of four and five seat companies.
Speaker A:And that's great, but that's not really what we're interested in doing.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:We typically want to see at least 10, preferably closer to 15 seats and then within that, and within that, you know, are they, you know, what are they doing for.
Speaker A:What does their agreement look like?
Speaker A:Is it a break?
Speaker A:Is it old school break fix?
Speaker A:We're not really interested in trying to go around all those people and convert them.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Do they, what is their stance on cyber security?
Speaker A:Do they understand it's a necessary investment or have they been resisting it for 20 years?
Speaker A:You know, what is those types of metrics?
Speaker A:So you know, there's again, there's a huge difference between the one and.
Speaker A:I've met both of them.
Speaker A:I met both scenarios.
Speaker A:The one or one to three man Shop who's just kind of a break fix, you know, rolling around in his car.
Speaker A:It's a great, it's a great job for him versus you know I, I've met owners of three and four person MSPs who have you know, really great managed service agreements with all their clients who are aching monthly.
Speaker A:They have a prop, you know, a proper security stack.
Speaker A:They're you know, 20 to 70 like 70 seat clients.
Speaker A:So I guess kind of long wind answer your question Ben.
Speaker A:But that's what I'm talking about when I'm saying like examining you know, what is their client base look like and.
Speaker B:Do you differentiate on like dollar per seat either?
Speaker B:Like, like if someone's charging 60 bucks a seat or 225 bucks a seat, what it, what do you think when you see those differences?
Speaker A:Yeah, that's a good point too.
Speaker A:I, I think the first thing I would look for is just like are they charging $per se period?
Speaker A:If they are, you know, unless it's just something outrageously low, I feel like we can get those people to where we know that we need them to be if they're not.
Speaker A:And it's just like a time and materials break, fix deal.
Speaker A:It's been my experience that it's just a really uphill battle to get especially if they, that's all they've ever known to get them aligned to what we would want it to look like.
Speaker A:So I would be definitely cur.
Speaker A:We want to know what they are doing per seat.
Speaker A:But I think generally I would feel if, if they're on a per SE model I'm not super concerned about aligning it to our per seat model.
Speaker A:I would be more concerned if they weren't on a per SE model at all.
Speaker B:Got it.
Speaker B:The dollar per seat feels like it.
Speaker B:It does indicate to me the investment in the team and the services provided as well.
Speaker B:Because when I look at something that's like 75 bucks a seat, I know what their stack is going to look like.
Speaker B:I know what their service quality is going to look like versus my 175 bucks a seed and I'm like I don't know if those are the right clients for our model because we, we my business, we sit more on the you know, mid, you know, medium high to high end.
Speaker B:And when I look at these kind of low cost competitors, low quality service, those clients, if they like that model, I don't know how I'm going to get them to go to X what they're currently doing without massive attrition.
Speaker B:So that's kind of where I've run into it and I try to make sure that that gap is as, you know, smaller is better, in my opinion.
Speaker A:Totally.
Speaker A:I mean, and we spent, you know, we spent a huge chunk of this year kind of on the same topic.
Speaker A:We just called it, you know, aligning and elevating our client base.
Speaker A:You know, and sometimes that was, that meant some making some tough decisions around clients that had been with us for a long time.
Speaker B:So you functionally fired some clients as a result of transition of your internal model?
Speaker A:Essentially, yes.
Speaker A:But I will say so you know what we did, we, we did a comprehensive review of our entire client base.
Speaker A:We very, we standardized our offering this year.
Speaker A:So you either get gold, silver or bronze.
Speaker A:Like we had, we had, we had a lot of people with a lot of different stacks and combos.
Speaker A:I thought it was really important to standardize that if we were going to have any success scaling.
Speaker A:So we did that.
Speaker A:And then we also had, you know, kind of this.
Speaker A:I would imagine other msps have this too.
Speaker A:Like just, we call them legacy clients that had either refused to get on board with our new offerings and we didn't call and say we're not doing business with you anymore, but we, we did kind of adjust our pricing to where it was either going to be worth it for us to do that or they were going to kind of get it and they were going to get on board.
Speaker A:And I was actually surprised at the amount of them that said, okay, well, you know, I honestly thought more were going to leave than did.
Speaker A:And actually more were like, okay, well you know, sign up for managed services and your, your silver tier security and all this stuff.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:But I thought that was important to do both from a positioning of scitech like our own brand.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:We didn't want to be a low cost provider and also just fiscally for the business.
Speaker A:I felt like it was the right thing to do.
Speaker B:I'm actually blown away that that yours at your size, you haven't standardized or you, you didn't, you weren't able to standardize because like, usually that means you have a lot more operational constraints and issues, but you don't have like a crazy amount of operational employees.
Speaker B:So how does that, how does that work?
Speaker B:I'm like scratching my head like, wow, like how did you do that?
Speaker A:Well, you know, we, you know, the first couple months of the year we defined what those were.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:What does that look like?
Speaker A:We, we identified a, it was about this, I think it was between 20 and 30, 20 and 25% of the clients that we wanted to target with that.
Speaker A:So we had a, you know, most of our client base, great clients, been with us a long time, and they value what we do.
Speaker A:It's great relationship.
Speaker A:So I didn't want to start there.
Speaker A:I wanted to start with the ones that I didn't feel like we either straight up weren't making any money on or B, just had no prospects to, to grow with.
Speaker A:And so we, we did that and then we just systematically went to everyone and said, hey, we're, you know, this is how we, our offerings are packaged now.
Speaker A:You know, if we're going to continue to support you, you know, it's going to be A, B and C.
Speaker A:And we just kind of ripped the band aid off and it was kind of, you know, in a way it, it helped that I was new at the time because I, and I didn't mind being the bad guy, honestly, like, oh, hey, this new, you know, new management, their big business, you know, they're blah, blah, blah.
Speaker A:But we just, we just did the work.
Speaker A:Like, we just went around to all of them said, this is the deal now.
Speaker A:You know, and none of them were like, you know, they all, none of them were super happy about it.
Speaker A:But again, I was surprised at the amount of them that said, do you.
Speaker B:Have a sense for what you.
Speaker B:I'm very, very curious about.
Speaker B:When you do transitions like this, what did you think the result was going to be?
Speaker B:When you, like, planned this all out and you came up with a plan and then what did the actual results look like in terms of, okay, you were 70% successful and you had 30% attrition.
Speaker B:Like, do you have those numbers?
Speaker A:I was.
Speaker A:So I was expecting.
Speaker A:We do.
Speaker A:I was expecting somewhere between.
Speaker A:So of that bottom 20%, I was expecting somewhere between 30 and 50% attrition.
Speaker A:Like, I thought, I thought that number would just be like, either we can't do it or that's outrageous.
Speaker A:We're not, we're not going to do it.
Speaker A:I think the total number of those clients ended up being, I believe, four.
Speaker A:It was either 47 or 48.
Speaker A:Only three of them left.
Speaker B:Three clients.
Speaker B:3%.
Speaker A:Oh, three.
Speaker A:Three of that.
Speaker A:48.
Speaker B:So got it.
Speaker A:6 or 7%, I guess, somewhere in there.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And honestly, like I said, I was expecting way more.
Speaker A:And I was surprised by the number that kind of got on board when, when presented with this, you know, if you want to call it an ultimatum to say.
Speaker B:Does that cut against the argument, though, that you made earlier about break fix, not, not transitioning because if you had 6% attrition, like.
Speaker B:Or is that more the stickiness of the relationship and the stuff within the business and the.
Speaker B:And the pain of moving.
Speaker B:It's like, doesn't it cut against that argument that, like, well, shouldn't you buy break fix if you can really convert it 94%?
Speaker A:I see what you're saying.
Speaker A:I think the difference, at least the way I think about it, is like, we did in just about every case have long standing and good relationships with those people.
Speaker A:Would it be, you know, would it have been different if we were buying that company and they didn't know us for matter?
Speaker A:I feel like probably.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:I believe I don't have, you know, data on this, but I believe what happened in a lot of cases was they went out, they'd been with us for 20 years, we brought this to them.
Speaker A:They go, you know, oh, you know, f.
Speaker A:No, we're not doing that.
Speaker A:Then they went out and got other proposals and realized, oh, this is the way of the world now.
Speaker A:I guess we.
Speaker A:If we're going to do this, I'd rather do it with SciTech, who we've been with for 20 years.
Speaker A:You know, I see.
Speaker A:And it was really cool.
Speaker A:I mean, in a lot of cases, honestly, or at least several cases.
Speaker A:And I feel like it really actually rejuvenated the relationship, like, you know, kind of renewed it.
Speaker A:It allowed us to introduce the idea that, hey, we'd like to be your technology, you know, with this.
Speaker A:We'd like to be your.
Speaker A:We.
Speaker A:We talk about positioning ourselves as your technology partner, not just the guy that fixes the computer.
Speaker A:And in a lot of cases, we did have kind of like rejuvenated relationships with a lot of these longtime clients where it ultimately came out for the better, not just for us, but also for them.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:It ruffled some feathers when I said this.
Speaker A:You know, this is what we're going to do.
Speaker A:But I'm very glad that we did it.
Speaker A:And I think it's a, you know, the larger point is it's.
Speaker A:I think it's really important for us to be able to scale successfully.
Speaker B:So you've got some growth ambitions.
Speaker B:You're going to start to really develop the sales function.
Speaker B:You're going to be investing in marketing, I assume, and you're looking to acquire others within the Kansas City metro area.
Speaker B:How do you plan?
Speaker B:You know, I assume that there's not that many prospects within Kansas City.
Speaker B:I mean, how many.
Speaker B:How many MSPs that fit your criteria exist within the Kansas City Market there's.
Speaker A:Probably you know, 15 to 25 ultimately that would fit our criteria.
Speaker A:Most of those are, there's really, I don't know, I don't know about, about you guys.
Speaker A:I feel like there's, especially with the rolling up that's happening that there's basically, there's essentially three tiers of MSP in Kansas City.
Speaker A:There's the rolled up guys who are huge now.
Speaker A:There's the mid, the middle sized guys, us and a couple others, couple competitors and then there's you know, kind of the littler guy, you know, the one and a half million or below folks, the kind of 1, 2, 3, 4 man shops.
Speaker A:We're certainly not closed to off to the idea of acquiring one of our, you know, mid tier direct competitors.
Speaker A:But I, I think probably at least for the first one, the ideal one would probably be a really healthy and well run one of those kind of smaller run companies.
Speaker B:Oh, interesting.
Speaker B:I would have immediate, I would have picked the, the mid tier ones really immediately just because of the size and the scale and the capability.
Speaker B:But I guess the cost and price of a smaller company is going to be less and, and you'll be able to.
Speaker B:The integration issues are probably less as well.
Speaker A:I was going to say part of my thought process on that I'd be curious because I know you've done it is especially for you know, we've never acquired a company so I'm sensitive to the integration aspects of it and part of my thought process is obviously, obviously it would be easier to integrate a smaller company than to try and immediately go to a, you know, a competitor and integrate 25 people instead of three or four.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean it kind of cuts back to that argument that time, timeless argument about should you buy a small business or a large business.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And my personal preference is always buy the biggest business possible because it has scale, it has systems, processes, larger client base, it's got all the things.
Speaker B:And yeah, it's a little bit more of a heavy lift on the integration but there's actually people there to do it on the small side you acquire it, they're all doing the things.
Speaker B:And so I think that, I think you know, all I'll SQL the larger ones, I think they work.
Speaker B:I don't think they're any quote more work.
Speaker B:There's actually more people and resources available to execute on the things and they might bring additional value that the smaller guys might not really have.
Speaker B:Where you know, I see acquisitions as like the opportunity to uplevel your client base and up level Your people and service capability.
Speaker B:So if you, you know, bigger companies obviously have more talent and there's going to be, if there's a 10 to 15 employee company, there's going to be one, two, three employees who are, you know, the absolute game changers.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:They're contributing most of the value to the company.
Speaker B:So you just have more opportunity to get more of those is my, my view.
Speaker A:Makes sense.
Speaker B:Cool.
Speaker B:Well, I appreciate you jumping on.
Speaker B:I love your background, transitioning from corporate to owning a manufacturing company to jumping into managed services.
Speaker B:And you're still fresh but you clearly understand the market and frankly, I think it's an advantage over, over people in the industry just because we come from different backgrounds and we're able to run and jump in ways that they aren't able to.
Speaker B:So I'm excited to see where you're going to take this business.
Speaker B:I, I'll put money on.
Speaker B:You're going to be over 10 million and in three years.
Speaker A:I appreciate it.
Speaker A:I've always, I've said this a long time but like, you know, I, when I came to scitech, I felt like my biggest weakness was also my biggest strength being that I didn't come from the industry.
Speaker A:I've always said that I feel like with myself and also anybody that we hire that the best eyes are usually the freshest eyes.
Speaker A:And I didn't know, you know, I didn't have experience in the industry but also I had no preconceived notions about how things were supposed to look.
Speaker A:And sometimes people who have, and this is, I think this is true of any company that have been there a long time.
Speaker A:It's so it's very easy and I think it's human nature to become house blind to certain things.
Speaker A:And the fresh eyes are usually the ones that come in and go, why is that low hanging fruit over there and nobody's done anything with it, right.
Speaker A:Or hey, there's this huge opportunity and we in the mix of all these other things that are going on, we just haven't done anything.
Speaker A:Well, it's helpful to have again some fresh eyes.
Speaker A:Go, hey, we should prioritize that because that is really good.
Speaker A:You know, I know there's a thousand things going on, but what about this thing right here?
Speaker A:So it's, yeah, it's, I've always, I felt like to date it's been, you know, my biggest weakness and my biggest strength not having the, the preconceived notions about how any of it's supposed to work really.
Speaker B:You've given hope to naive people everywhere.
Speaker B:Thanks a lot, and we'll see you next time.
Speaker A:Cool.
Speaker A:Thanks, Ben.
