Mike Beecher from Escape Wire: from Equipment Rentals to Managed IT
Title: Mike Beecher from Escape Wire: from Equipment Rentals to Managed IT
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Escape Wire Solutions is a true underdog story in the IT world, and Mike Beecher shares the hilarious and sometimes chaotic journey that led him to become the president of a successful managed service provider (MSP). Starting from a family business in equipment rental, Mike’s path to IT was anything but traditional. He dives into the unexpected twists that led him to the tech industry, including a merger that brought him to an MSP and his eventual leap into entrepreneurship. Throughout the conversation, we get a peek into the challenges of juggling a business while maintaining a work-life balance—like trying to keep a young family happy while running a service that demands constant attention. He reveals how they’ve navigated the waters of client relationships, especially in the current landscape where remote work has become the norm. The episode is packed with relatable anecdotes that make you chuckle while reminding us all that growth comes with its own set of hiccups.
We also explore how Escape Wire Solutions has successfully adapted to the shifting demands of the industry, especially post-pandemic. Mike shares how they pivoted to remote work, and how this shift wasn't just a necessity but an unexpected opportunity for growth. He emphasizes the importance of a strong company culture, even when spread out across different locations. It’s fascinating to hear how the company has maintained a collegial atmosphere where everyone feels they can contribute, all while tackling the technical challenges that come with supporting small to midsize businesses. Mike’s insights into service delivery and how they ensure client satisfaction are particularly enlightening, showcasing the human side of tech support amidst the often cold world of IT.
Towards the end, Mike discusses his vision for the future of Escape Wire Solutions, hinting at ambitious plans for growth and potential acquisitions. His passion for creating opportunities for his employees shines through, as he emphasizes that the goal isn't just to expand the business in terms of revenue but to build a place where employees can thrive and grow. The episode wraps up with a lighthearted yet profound message about the unpredictability of entrepreneurship and the importance of being adaptable while staying true to one’s core values. It’s a must-listen for anyone in the service industry or considering diving into entrepreneurship, sprinkled with humor and heartfelt moments that make you feel like you’re chatting with a friend over coffee.
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker A:Mike, why don't you start off by giving us a little bit of, you know, your.
Speaker A:Your background on what your company is today.
Speaker B:Yeah, sure.
Speaker B:So, you know, Escape Wire Solutions is, you know, a traditional managed service provider.
Speaker B:You know, it services in the industry.
Speaker B:Our focus primarily is on small to midsize businesses.
Speaker B:Anywhere from 10 to, say, 100 employees.
Speaker B:We're located in western New York State, Buffalo, New York.
Speaker B:We have clients, you know, throughout this region.
Speaker B:We have some clients out of this region in the Northeast.
Speaker B:And I run the company.
Speaker B: nt and company was started in: Speaker B: I joined it in: Speaker B:I had another MSP that I had, which is another story we could certainly delve into, because it was the genesis of how I got into this industry.
Speaker B:I didn't.
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker B:I didn't come from this industry, and I certainly didn't come from, you know, a garage putting PCs together.
Speaker B:I took a different path.
Speaker A:Well, neither did I.
Speaker A:So that's.
Speaker A:That's interesting.
Speaker A:We definitely want to dig into that.
Speaker B:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker A:Revenue, employee size count?
Speaker A:High level.
Speaker B:Yeah, we're about 2 million in sales, about nine employees.
Speaker A:Cool.
Speaker A:Sounds good.
Speaker A:And then you're geographically focused in the.
Speaker A:In the New York area?
Speaker B:Primarily, yes.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:Primarily.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, awesome.
Speaker A:Yeah, let's.
Speaker A:I would love to dive into your background.
Speaker A:How did you get into the MSP industry in the first place?
Speaker B:It's not a traditional way, I can tell you that.
Speaker B:I mean, I started off actually my family back in the.
Speaker B:Well, when growing up, and then, you know, through high school and then college, my family was in the equipment rental industry.
Speaker B:We had a couple of handful of equipment rental stores in western New York that was, you know, mostly light industrial contractor and homeowner equipment.
Speaker B:And so I was in that business and grew up in it, you know, worked it when I was a kid.
Speaker B:My dad ran it, my family owned it, and I went to Syracuse University for college.
Speaker B:When I got out of Syracuse and graduated, I actually went to work for the Hertz Corporation because I was interested.
Speaker B:I wanted to remain in the rental industry, but I wanted some experiences as my.
Speaker B:My family to work for in the same industry, but for a different company, a bigger company.
Speaker B:Well, at the time, you know, Hertz is known as the rental car company, but Hertz at the time also had a huge equipment rental division.
Speaker B:They were at the time the largest equipment rental company in the country.
Speaker B:And they rented mostly a larger contractor equipment, you know, backhoes, excavators, dump trucks.
Speaker A:More of the industrial.
Speaker B:I went to work.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, or large contractor, for sure.
Speaker B:And so I went to work for them out of school down in New York, in New Jersey area.
Speaker B:I worked for them for a couple years and then went back to Buffalo to work for my family.
Speaker B:I worked there for seven or eight years.
Speaker B:And I just got to a point where I was like, you know, I think this is really not what I want to do with the rest of my life.
Speaker B:And my sister was in the business at the time.
Speaker B:We decided to sell the business.
Speaker A:What about the business?
Speaker A:Did you.
Speaker A:You not.
Speaker A:Not like or.
Speaker A:Or came to that point?
Speaker B:Well, you know what, honestly, it was lifestyle, you know, when you are operating in the.
Speaker B:In the part of the market that we were in, we had equipment rental stores.
Speaker B:So we get a lot of contractors, homeowners who would come into our stores and rent equipment.
Speaker B:They'd rent a bobcat, they'd rent a sewer cleaner, they'd rent a floor sander, they'd rent, you know, whatever.
Speaker B:In order to do that, you had to be open like seven days a week, you know, and, you know, I had a young family, just started a young family, and the weekend grind was getting to me and I wanted to have a bit more control over my lifestyle.
Speaker B:My sister was also in the business because we had a event rental business as a kind of a separate subsidiary that she was involved in, and she was feeling the same way.
Speaker B:And my dad was like, listen, if you guys aren't going to take this over, I think we're better off selling it.
Speaker B:So we did.
Speaker B:And in the course of running the business those previous seven years, however, I had computerized that business.
Speaker B:This is, you know, this is the early to mid-90s.
Speaker B:And I had computerized that business by hiring a high school friend of mine who had a computer services business, and I hired him to network our stores and we bought software to.
Speaker B:You know, to.
Speaker B:To do inventory control and invoicing and ordering and all that stuff.
Speaker B:So I had gotten a taste of that world and when we were.
Speaker B:When we were getting ready to sell it, I had to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life, at least the next phase of it.
Speaker A:Did that.
Speaker A:Did that process of modernizing that business, like bringing.
Speaker A:Did that help you sell the business or what did.
Speaker A:What role did that play in that.
Speaker B:In the sale the business?
Speaker B:It wasn't really an issue.
Speaker B:We got the whole.
Speaker B:All the stores networked.
Speaker B:And again, I was looking for what I was going to do next.
Speaker B:I looked at a bunch of different Things.
Speaker B:My one caveat was, is that I was going to remain in Buffalo, New York.
Speaker B:My family was there.
Speaker B:I had been married, I had gotten married.
Speaker B:I had a young daughter.
Speaker B:My wife had started her career.
Speaker B:We loved the area.
Speaker B:And I was like, I'm not leaving.
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker B:Like, it just wasn't in the cards.
Speaker B:So I was really looking for what the next step would be for me in terms of a career.
Speaker B:And I was really wanting a career that didn't, as I say, didn't have a roof on it.
Speaker B:And I didn't want to go into a traditional business.
Speaker B:In other words, I was a little bit entrepreneurial at the time.
Speaker B:I was running my rental stores with my father, and I love the independence and the ability to run your own show and all those good things.
Speaker B:So I went to my friend who I had hired originally to network our stores, and I approached him and I said, what do you think about the computer and services industry at the time?
Speaker B:There was no MSP term at that time.
Speaker B:And we chatted a lot about that.
Speaker B:And ultimately he offered me a job.
Speaker B:And I said to him, you know, I'm traditionally kind of a, I'm a sales and marketing kind of guy.
Speaker B:I wasn't an engineer, certainly.
Speaker B:And I said, you know, maybe, you know, sales and marketing.
Speaker B:What does it look like in your company?
Speaker B:He's like.
Speaker B:And he said to me, he's like, mike, you know, this is a technical business.
Speaker B:It's got a technical language.
Speaker B:He's like, if you're going to come in without any background in it and try to do sales and marketing, it's going to, it won't be easy.
Speaker A:You're going to get crushed.
Speaker B:If you really, you could get crushed.
Speaker B:Yeah, because you don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker B:You just don't.
Speaker B:And he said, if you're interested in an opportunity, I would, I, I, I, I give you an opportunity to come in as a systems administrator, as an engineer.
Speaker B:And I was like, dude, I don't know anything about that.
Speaker B:I mean, I know what you did for me, you know, but.
Speaker B:And I understand it, and I can work a computer and do all that stuff, but I don't know that at all.
Speaker B:He's like, well, we train you, you know, you'd learn the ropes.
Speaker B:Kind of like how I did it, you know, he kind of picked it up because he was, he was the guy, the kid in the garage with a computer.
Speaker B:He was, he's always a tinkerer.
Speaker B:So, you know, like I said, I was young, I Had a young family.
Speaker B:My wife was working.
Speaker B:I was like, I don't know, it's really kind of interesting.
Speaker B:And I am kind of a tinkerer by heart.
Speaker B:I love gadgets and things like that.
Speaker B:So I decided to take the offer.
Speaker B:And it's funny, I tell this story all the time.
Speaker B:So he hires me as a systems engineer.
Speaker B:I don't really know anything I walk into.
Speaker B:And at that time he was a partner in a larger, pretty good sized IT company.
Speaker B:He had about 30 employees.
Speaker B:He had merged his company in and joined them a couple years previous.
Speaker B:And I walked into the engineering room where all the guys are every day.
Speaker B:You know, you meet in the room and you got your, you know, all the equipment on the desk and guys are coming in and out and getting their stuff ready and all that good stuff.
Speaker B:And I walk in and introduce myself.
Speaker B:I'm like, hey, I'm Mike Beecher here, I'm starting today.
Speaker B:And I, I, I had met a couple of the guys because I kind of did a ride around with one or two of the guys prior, just kind of figuring out if this was really the right fit for me.
Speaker B:And I walked in and they're like, all right, cool.
Speaker B:Well, here's a la we're going to issue a laptop.
Speaker B:Why don't you f disk that, load the OS.
Speaker B:Windows 98 at the time, why don't you load the OS and we'll get started.
Speaker B:And I looked at the guy and I said, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Speaker B:And he's like, what do you mean?
Speaker B:I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker B:What, what do you mean, F disk?
Speaker B:I don't have no idea what.
Speaker B:He's like, who hired you?
Speaker B:And I was like, well, McCarthy hired me.
Speaker B:And he's like, jesus, you know, come on.
Speaker B:So, like, I survived the first day.
Speaker B:I'm like, well, just give me the laptop, show me what F disc is, and then show me the basics of how to load the operating system and, and I'll work on that today.
Speaker B:So I just kind of put my elbow, I rolled my sleeves up.
Speaker B:I, I just got into it and I learned from those guys.
Speaker B:And I would study and tinker every day and night.
Speaker B:Like I would come home and just open up my lap and just trying to figure it out.
Speaker A:Are you a natural learner or was that like, because of the situation you wanted to.
Speaker B:I think I'm a natural learner in that respect.
Speaker B:Yeah, you know, I can pick things up, you know, I, and I'm decent at that.
Speaker B:So you Know, I.
Speaker B:I worked my way up.
Speaker B:You know, I figured out how to do it.
Speaker B:I was doing engineering work.
Speaker B:I was learning the business.
Speaker B:Windows 98, you know, Windows Server NT4.
Speaker B:All this craziness.
Speaker B:It was really just when the Internet was starting to get connected, you know, and we'd have these servers that.
Speaker B:We'd have a server and we'd stick a couple modems in it, and then you'd get, you know, you'd get your Internet, and then you use the mo.
Speaker B:The phone modem, analog phone modems, get your Internet gateway so you could get actually Internet, you know.
Speaker B:And that started to take off and email servers and all that stuff.
Speaker B:Back then, it was crazy comparative to what it is today.
Speaker B:It was crazy.
Speaker B:So I worked there for five years, but I just kind of ended well.
Speaker B:So I worked.
Speaker B:I work as an engineer for, I think, two and a half years.
Speaker B:And I'd be out with clients, you know, assigned to a client.
Speaker B:And I just be talking to them and be like, you know, what do you do?
Speaker B:What are you doing with this?
Speaker B:You know, this thing that I'm working for.
Speaker B:On for you?
Speaker B:Like, you know, tell me about how you're using technology and what other things.
Speaker B:And I was always looking for ways to be better at it.
Speaker B:And it got to a point where I was just like, recommending to clients.
Speaker B:I mean, you should do this.
Speaker B:You know, you.
Speaker B:If we did this, we could get you to here.
Speaker B:We could do this for you.
Speaker B:And if you thought about this, it was just kind of n.
Speaker B:And I would go back and be like, I'd go tell the sales guys.
Speaker B:I'm like, I want you to call this company.
Speaker B:Because I was just talking to them, and they're ready to do an upgrade on this, these two things.
Speaker B:And I also talked them into this thing and go call them.
Speaker B:And those sales guys would roll out and they would go call the customer.
Speaker B:We close deals, you know.
Speaker A:Sounds like the beginning of a sales engineer.
Speaker B:Yeah, more so like that.
Speaker B:Very much like that.
Speaker B:And the.
Speaker B:The part.
Speaker B:The other partners in the company, my friend, was the technical guy.
Speaker B:The other partners were kind of the sales guys.
Speaker B:They came to me and they're like, beecher, why don't you consider switching over to sales?
Speaker B:And I was like, because in those days, their sales model was you get a draw.
Speaker B:You know, you got to get your.
Speaker B:You got to earn your commissions.
Speaker B:I had a young family.
Speaker B:I was relying on my salary as an engineer.
Speaker B:I was like, they're like, dude, don't worry about it.
Speaker B:We'll.
Speaker B:We'll get you there, you know, but we really think you could sell.
Speaker B:And I was like, yeah, all right.
Speaker B:You know, and I made me think back on what I.
Speaker B:My original conversation with my partner, which was, I'm kind of a sales and marketing kind of guy by nature.
Speaker B:So I did.
Speaker B:So I made the jump.
Speaker B:I left the engineering group, I went over to the sales group, you know, moved across the office, got my cubicle, my laptop and my desk, and just started selling.
Speaker B:And I think I got, like, in a year, maybe year and a half, I think it was like the number two guy, and there was like six guys.
Speaker B:So, you know, I got.
Speaker B:I had some success there, and.
Speaker B:But I also realized I'm like this comp.
Speaker B:Like, I don't know.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:I don't think there's.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:It's a small company, relatively, and I.
Speaker B:I didn't think that it had a lot of opportunity beyond where I was.
Speaker B:And my partner at the time also was getting.
Speaker B:He was getting a little disillusioned with his partner and that company as well.
Speaker B:So either one way or another, we decided to leave.
Speaker B:We started our own company.
Speaker B:We had a bit of a fight to get out, more so him than me, but we had a bit of a fight.
Speaker B:We got out, and it was just him and I.
Speaker B:And at that point, my concern about my salary was zero, because then I just didn't have a salary.
Speaker B:There was no salary.
Speaker B:We didn't have an office.
Speaker B:We tried to take a couple clients with us.
Speaker B:A couple went, couple didn't.
Speaker B:That's what started the fight.
Speaker B:And we would operate out of my.
Speaker B:He's not my partner today, but we're friends.
Speaker B:But we would operate out of his house and his kitchen table.
Speaker B:So we bought laptops and he.
Speaker B:You know, we had a couple things.
Speaker B:You know, we did have a couple clients, and then we just go to work every morning.
Speaker A: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 A:The mission of this podcast is simple.
Speaker A:To have authentic conversations with IT owners about their journey, how it started, the challenges they faced, and where they're going next.
Speaker A:Every episode, I personally walk away with a new actionable item to strengthen my own business.
Speaker A:But a quick word about my company, Datatel.
Speaker A:We are actively acquiring MSPs who align with our service and culture.
Speaker A:So if your company is generating between 1 and $10 million of revenue, I want to talk to you.
Speaker A:But wait, you're probably thinking, why me and why datatell?
Speaker A:First is I get you.
Speaker A:I understand the challenges MSP owners face.
Speaker A:Being one myself, feeling overworked, overwhelmed, constantly being on call, struggling to bring in new business.
Speaker A:I have the solutions and people in place to address these pain points.
Speaker A:Second is culture.
Speaker A:We run our business on EOS entrepreneurial operating system, which has been transformative for our employees and clients alike.
Speaker A:I believe that building a great company comes down to finding and retaining great people who are in the right seats.
Speaker A:Everything else is noise.
Speaker A:If any of this resonates, it probably means we're a fit and we should be having a conversation.
Speaker A:Until then, let's get back to the show.
Speaker A:How did you get the confidence to go out on your own?
Speaker B:Like, what did you think was confidence?
Speaker B:I think it was just stupid.
Speaker A:Just pure.
Speaker B:I didn't know any better.
Speaker A:Yeah, naivete.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Just brash.
Speaker B:Because.
Speaker B:Because my goal, Ben, was to get to a point where I was back running my own business and getting myself being.
Speaker B:Being an entrepreneur or owning my own show.
Speaker B:I mean, I had taste.
Speaker B:I had a taste of that early.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:And I wanted to get back to it.
Speaker B:So my goal was by.
Speaker B:By hook or crook, I was going to get there one way or another, and nothing was going to stop.
Speaker A:And your partner's name is what?
Speaker B:Mike.
Speaker A:With.
Speaker A:With your partner.
Speaker A:Did you guys come up with, like, an initial vision?
Speaker A:And this was what.
Speaker A:What year was this?
Speaker A: This was like: Speaker A:You said no, God, no.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:This is not my current partner.
Speaker B:This was 97.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker B:Okay, so we're still early in the game.
Speaker A:So what was the initial founding vision for?
Speaker A:That you're, like, disillusioned with your own work and wanted more.
Speaker A:More autonomy, more authority.
Speaker B:Yeah, we wanted our own company.
Speaker B:We wanted the independence.
Speaker B:You know, he didn't like his partners, and I didn't like working for him anymore.
Speaker B:I mean, not them personally.
Speaker B:I just didn't like working for anybody anymore, you know, and then so we're like, let's do this together.
Speaker B:And we did.
Speaker B:We just jumped off a cliff.
Speaker B:I mean, it was literally like, hold hands and jump.
Speaker B:We'll figure it out as we go.
Speaker B:We had a couple credit cards and we had a kitchen table and a couple laptops, and that's what we did.
Speaker A:And for people who are newer to the industry, like me, I didn't.
Speaker A:I didn't.
Speaker A:You know, I was like 7 years old at that time.
Speaker A:What did the IT industry look like in 97?
Speaker B:You know, honestly, I mean, it wasn't tremendously different than it is.
Speaker B:Today, I mean, it is because the technology has certainly evolved, but the concepts, the basic of it is the same.
Speaker B:You know, I mean, we were charging hourly then.
Speaker B:We don't charge that way now.
Speaker B:We charge monthly fees.
Speaker B:The technology wasn't evolved, but the concepts were the same.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:There's users, there's devices, and there's Internet, and away you go.
Speaker B:And all those things have evolved considerably, obviously.
Speaker B:But the concepts are the same.
Speaker B:Company comes to us, they have computer systems that they need to run.
Speaker B:They don't want to do it themselves.
Speaker B:They outsource it to us, we run it, and we use whatever technologies are current and available at the time to do it as best as we can.
Speaker B:And that is the way we do it.
Speaker B:It's no different, really, than what we do today.
Speaker B:You know, the concept is the same.
Speaker B:Everything else has changed.
Speaker B:The concept is the same.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, it seems pretty consistent.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And the.
Speaker A:How is the.
Speaker A:Your initial company different than what ultimately Escape Wire developed into?
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And how.
Speaker A:How did that transition happen?
Speaker B:We went off on our own.
Speaker B: It was like the early: Speaker B:We started around the kitchen table.
Speaker B:We finally got ourselves.
Speaker B:We got some extra clients.
Speaker B:We actually.
Speaker B:We got a really big boost because we would go out.
Speaker B:What we would do is we would go and we would just go out and network.
Speaker B:And, you know, back in those days, you know, you'd go out in bars, you'd meet people in bars all the time.
Speaker B:We go to.
Speaker B:We had this, one of the favorite bars, and we'd meet, you know, other business people are always in there and people having drinks.
Speaker B:And we had a network of people.
Speaker B:We grew up in the city, so we were looking for clients and keeping our contacts going.
Speaker B:And at the time, someone said, hey.
Speaker B:We were in a bar, and someone said, hey, you know, you guys should meet this guy, Larry Quinn.
Speaker B:And Larry Quinn, at the time, was a very successful businessman in this area, but he had also become the managing partner and part owner of the Buffalo Sabres NHL team.
Speaker B:And he's at.
Speaker B:He was at the bar, and we got introduced to him, started, broke, sparked a conversation with him.
Speaker B:He's like, what do you guys do?
Speaker B:And we're like, oh, we just started our own IT company.
Speaker B:He's like, no kidding?
Speaker B:He's like, I just.
Speaker B:He's like, you guys know him at the Sabers now?
Speaker B:We're like, yeah, we know that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:He's like, listen, we need some help down there.
Speaker B:He's like, we got a customer service and Ticket operation.
Speaker B:That's a mess.
Speaker B:He's like, our business, our IT stuff is a mess.
Speaker B:You guys think you can help us?
Speaker B:And we're like, sure.
Speaker B:And we had got the CRM system that we, that I found that was made by a company called acpac, which is now called Sage, which is a huge software company.
Speaker B:But they had a CRM platform.
Speaker B:And we pitched the Sabers like we got in a, we got them into, into down at the arena, we got them into a room and we pitched having us do their CRM system for it and they hired us and then along the way they also hired us to run their network.
Speaker B:We were running their network.
Speaker B:This is way back, right?
Speaker B:Like nothing like it is today.
Speaker B:They didn't really have much technology back then.
Speaker B:And so we, we, we did their CRM system for a number of years, ran their network for a number of years and all and we went through all that and then we did an acquisition again like this.
Speaker B:Like, sure, we'll do it.
Speaker B:We didn't know much about it.
Speaker B:We got kind of, it got it kind of dropped in our lap like dude, you should buy this company.
Speaker B:Like the guy who was running it, we knew he was, it was a part of a bigger telco.
Speaker B:It was like this small web hosting company.
Speaker B:But that bigger telco, it was just like a little nap for to them and they didn't want to deal with it anymore so they were just going to like off.
Speaker B:They were going to close it.
Speaker B:But then they were like, well if we could sell it.
Speaker B:We basically sold it to them for.
Speaker B:They sold to us for like nothing.
Speaker B:Like they're just like just take it off.
Speaker A:Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker B:It was crazy.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was just bizarre.
Speaker B:So we did.
Speaker B:What we didn't realize is it had all these problems under the hood.
Speaker B:Like there, there we had all these websites we were developing and hosting, but the hosting platform was a disaster.
Speaker B:It was all this old technology would have cost us God awful amounts of money to upgrade.
Speaker B:We had gone from like, it was like we were at that point we were like four and five employees to like 20.
Speaker B:Like literally overnight.
Speaker B:Like we didn't really know what we were doing.
Speaker B:I mean it was crazy and it started to go sideways on us and ultimately we, me, my partner, and then at that point we had a third partner.
Speaker B:We decided we're going to split it.
Speaker A:Why did, why did it go sideways?
Speaker A:What, what, what caused that?
Speaker B:The business itself had issues with the investment needed to keep the platforms running.
Speaker B:So we're having technical technology problems and there Were too many employees, not enough people.
Speaker B:People that we didn't even know what they were doing, you know, and like, it was sucking cash big time.
Speaker B:And the.
Speaker B:What we didn't really realize is that the parent.
Speaker B:The parent company was really underwriting this company, and it really wasn't solid enough to stand on its own.
Speaker B:But we didn't know anything at the time.
Speaker B:We didn't know.
Speaker B:We just.
Speaker A:Yeah, you just.
Speaker A:You just jumped in.
Speaker A:You probably didn't, like the property.
Speaker A:Didn't do the proper diligence that you now probably would have done.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:Absolutely not.
Speaker B:It was crazy.
Speaker A:So how did you get out of.
Speaker A:How did you get out of it?
Speaker A:Or how did you.
Speaker B:So what we did was.
Speaker B:So we.
Speaker B:Our accountant at the time knew we were having a problem, and he was a really network guy, and he came to us and said, listen, I just.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:I got these two guys, they just sold a company and they've got cash, a lot of it, and they're looking to get into other businesses, and I think they could help you.
Speaker B:It would be an opportunity for them.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:Do you want me to enter?
Speaker B:Do you want us to introduce them to us?
Speaker B:Well, we said, yeah, for sure, because we got to do something here or we're going to get killed.
Speaker B:These guys came in and they loved the business.
Speaker B:My partner at the time, you know, the original partner that I started with, he had a.
Speaker B:He had a good relationship with them.
Speaker B:And the part of the business that they liked was this web development business that my partner really loved.
Speaker B:I was never part of it.
Speaker B:I was never really.
Speaker B:That wasn't really my gig.
Speaker B:I was always doing networking and service and stuff like that.
Speaker B:I stayed true to that throughout the whole period.
Speaker B:So these guys did a deal.
Speaker B:They basically bought us.
Speaker B:They bought.
Speaker B:They bought us out, per se, really.
Speaker B:Just we went out even for the most part.
Speaker B:But I got out and my partner and I said, you know, it's not going to work the way we thought it would.
Speaker B:He's like, I will stay with them because this is the business that I'm interested in.
Speaker B:I said, well, I don't want to do that.
Speaker B:I will take the.
Speaker B:The IT services portion of it and I will start my own.
Speaker B:I'll restart my own gig.
Speaker B:So I did.
Speaker B:So we split it up and he stayed with them.
Speaker B:I went off on my own solo and I took three or I had.
Speaker B:I think I had three people at the time.
Speaker B:And I had a friend who's now my partner today, who had started Escape Wire a year before we had started Our company.
Speaker B:And I knew him really well because his company was part of a larger family company that they had started this escapewire division.
Speaker B:They're a hotel management company and they had started Escape Wire because they own these hotels.
Speaker B:And back then in those days, the brands like Hilton and Hampton and whatever, they were starting to mandate their franchisees, of which they were put in all this new technology.
Speaker B:Like, well, we can have guest Internet and we need some digital signage and we've got these TV distribution systems.
Speaker B:Now we can put like cable TV in these rooms and all this crazy stuff.
Speaker B:Well, we were.
Speaker B:The company that I originally worked for, that company was a client of ours.
Speaker B:So I got to know the family and my current partner.
Speaker B:So I called him because I was looking for office space.
Speaker B:And he said, well, come on in and shoehorn your way into our offices.
Speaker B:So this is like, BY now it's 97, 8.
Speaker B:And I did.
Speaker B:I moved a couple guys over and we operated out of their.
Speaker B:Their offices for a couple years.
Speaker B:And then in the, like through 99, we're like, you know, maybe we're better off just kind of merging these companies together.
Speaker B:And that's what we did.
Speaker B: ged the companies together in: Speaker B:And that's the company that kind of.
Speaker B:There is.
Speaker B:That it is today.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A: And so I guess in: Speaker B:Or.
Speaker A:Or that was a big chunk of the client base.
Speaker A:Or.
Speaker B:No, it was for him.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker A:It was a portion of the business.
Speaker A:Had a lot of the hotel.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker B:And they were doing a lot of project work.
Speaker B:I was trying to build a services business, you know, and then at that point, we kind of, kind of came into the understanding of what we could do with managed services, you know, and going out.
Speaker B:And instead of billing the hourly rate and chasing the hourly rates, which is impossible, I started building this model about how to do this on a monthly basis.
Speaker B:And I started, I build packages together and I'd sell them and I'd be, you know, I'd go out to customers.
Speaker B:I'm like, listen, you don't like the hourly rates because it drives you crazy.
Speaker B:I don't like trying to track and administer hourly rate work.
Speaker B:What if I gave you a flat fee and I'll manage it all for you and we don't have to worry about hourly bills and things like that.
Speaker B:And I got clients to say yes.
Speaker B:And that's how we did it.
Speaker B:And we just kind of built on it and built on it and built on it and continue to do it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Recurring revenue is, is the golden goose, right.
Speaker A:It's, it's something you can build over time.
Speaker A:It's, it's something you can, you can grow, you can nurture it.
Speaker A:It's, it's, it's the end all, be all in our industry now.
Speaker A:I mean, that's very common, but it seems like you were a, you were a quick mover in transitioning that model.
Speaker A:I mean, there's still.
Speaker B:Yeah, I got in.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Taking years and they're just starting to get into it, Right?
Speaker B:Correct.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I mean probably close to 70% of our revenue now is, is recurring on a contract on a monthly basis.
Speaker A:Did you read a book?
Speaker A:How did you transition to the recurring model?
Speaker A:Like, what was the, A lot of.
Speaker B:It was just like I would, you know, I still today do, but not maybe as much, but I would try to get out and do industry conferences.
Speaker B:And so we bought this, we bought, I knew we needed to automate a bunch of stuff and I don't remember how at the time, but I purchased, we purchased ConnectWise PSA.
Speaker B:And then I started going to the ConnectWise shows, the IT Nation shows.
Speaker B:And I would learn, I would come back from there and I, my whole brain would be filled up with stuff.
Speaker B:I'm like, we could do this, we get to do this, we can do this.
Speaker B:And I got so many good ideas.
Speaker B:And then I joined a peer group.
Speaker B:I did True Methods for a number of years and that was all about that, that flat fee recurring model.
Speaker B:So I was, I was getting that information, I was tracking the industry and listening and watching, you know, and I was seeing where the trends were and people started talking about it more and more and this is the way we're going to go.
Speaker B:And, and people were like, well, you know, there's, you know, that was the days of the various, you know, a VAR was a big deal, like a value added reseller and everybody was a var.
Speaker B:And then the MSP kind of terminology started to creep into the lexicon and you could see what that meant.
Speaker B:And you know, that's kind of how we did it.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:And the peer group, I've, I've been impacted massively by, by joining peer groups in my industry, just generally entrepreneurs.
Speaker A:You, you went into True Methods, which is a MSP specific, I would say knowledge group.
Speaker A:But can you tell me, tell me a little bit about that format and why you chose that and why you liked it.
Speaker B:I was at an IT Nation connectwise show, an early show, which before they got, before they got huge.
Speaker B:No, they Started out pretty small, and one of the, they, you know, they, they'd line up, you know, a bunch of speakers.
Speaker B:They do a lot of workshops, but a lot of different topics.
Speaker B:I would go religiously and one of the speakers was a guy by the name of Gary Pica, who was the founder of True Methods.
Speaker B:And Gary had successfully built an MSP in the Philadelphia area and he sold it and he started this thing called True Methods, which his, his whole point was to teach other companies how to, how to, how he did it.
Speaker B:And, you know, he came out with this whole program called True Methods.
Speaker B:And I bought, I got into that early with him and, you know, we, I was, we were just trying to figure out how to navigate this world and how to be successful at it.
Speaker B:And we were in True Methods for a number of years.
Speaker B:And that's kind of how we live it.
Speaker B:I mean, the peer group, I'm not in one now, but I'm, I'm kind of took a break from it, but I'm kind of thinking maybe we're going to go back to one again.
Speaker B:There's so many now.
Speaker B:But, you know, I really, I, I learned so much from, from, from Gary's group because then you'd get, so when you joined it, you'd get put into a, you know, you, a group within the group.
Speaker B:So you'd have like six or seven other MSPs of your similar size and profile and you just learn a ton.
Speaker B:You know, you got.
Speaker B:We're trading information all the time.
Speaker B:How do you do this?
Speaker B:What do.
Speaker B:We weren't competitors.
Speaker B:That was the whole thing.
Speaker B:Like, you weren't competitors, you were geographically dispersed, but you're, you know, had the same profile.
Speaker B:So people were very open about sharing their info.
Speaker A:That is the, that is the thing that I love about this industry is that it is so fragmented.
Speaker A:There are so many owners, so many small shops that are doing multiple millions of dollars of revenue a year.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Pretty decent sized companies, but it's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the, of the.
Speaker A:Even within your own local markets, there's not as much competition as like, you initially perceive.
Speaker A:And so I've really enjoyed that about, about the industry generally.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I think it's kind of what we're thinking now.
Speaker B:Like it's also an opportunity because, you know, private equity is in this business.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:They're actively acquiring companies, but there's so many of them and there's a level where the private equity guys aren't, don't really care, like it's too small.
Speaker B:But within that group.
Speaker B:There's opportunities, too, right, that you could, you could, you could.
Speaker B:You could do some deals where someone would be like, you know, not big enough to be attractive to private equity.
Speaker B:But I still want to, you know, I want to sell this business, you know, or whatever, or merge it or whatever.
Speaker B:So I think there's a ton of opportunity in there.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:There's so many in this, and it would be hard to completely consolidate this entire industry.
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker B:It's not like.
Speaker A:I don't know, I mean, just the.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The size of the industry is so big, and there's so many.
Speaker A:There's so many buyers.
Speaker A:There are so many sellers, too.
Speaker A:And every seller wants something different.
Speaker A:You know, I talked to a ton of owners, and a lot of them hate private equity.
Speaker A:They hate the idea of selling to someone who doesn't actually own the company, because guess what, like, you have no idea what that means.
Speaker A:And for people who care about relationships and people, you know, sometimes it's a bridge too far.
Speaker A:Some.
Speaker A:Some not so.
Speaker A:It's a really interesting time and market going on here.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's very interesting.
Speaker B:Cause I think about that all the time, Ben, because, you know, I was like, you know, where we are with our company is like, we.
Speaker B:We've got to figure out what our next steps are.
Speaker B:You know, what are we going to end up looking like or where do we want to go from here?
Speaker B:You know, we're good at what we do, but we're relative.
Speaker B:We're relatively small, per se, but we're not really that.
Speaker B:We're not too small, but we're small, right?
Speaker B:And, you know, I.
Speaker B:I'm like, okay, maybe we do.
Speaker B:We look for.
Speaker B:To start with a merger.
Speaker B:Maybe that will give us some resources and some size to move off.
Speaker B:Do we look for, you know, a company that's half our size that we could, you know, that we could acquire and do it successfully?
Speaker B:And I was thinking the same thing.
Speaker B:Like, there's.
Speaker B:There's a lot of guys out there who, like I said earlier, like, they.
Speaker B:They don't want to sell to a private equity thing because they know what's going to happen to their employees and to their.
Speaker B:Their.
Speaker B:Their customers.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But they would, you know, they've been in the industry a long time and they want to keep that going, keep their business going.
Speaker B:And could it afford an opportunity for people like, maybe you and I have, like, mine where, you know, we're like, we could.
Speaker B:We could grow this business, you know, by doing that and just bull, you know, and acquire on and build a bigger entity that way.
Speaker B:And then, you know, who knows at that point maybe you just run it for a long time, maybe you sell it, who knows.
Speaker A:Yeah, there's also another aspect too of the, the people who are typically running these small, these companies that are, you know, anywhere from $500,000 of revenue up to, you know, probably 3 or 4 million.
Speaker A:Like up to 3 million.
Speaker A:A lot of the founders and the people are running those businesses are engineers by nature.
Speaker A:They don't think and run businesses.
Speaker A:They're, they're, they're running their baby.
Speaker A:That started out as something that was one and then multiplied and they made, they found themselves in a business owner role and position and they still are running their business as an engineer.
Speaker A:And so I see that time and time again.
Speaker A:And you can walk in and it is the telltale signs of, of, you know, excellent technology stack excellent operations and processes.
Speaker A:But you know, maybe they're not making any money.
Speaker A:Forgot about that.
Speaker B:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker A:So are you interested in going down the.
Speaker A:I mean you've made some acquisitions in the past.
Speaker A:Is that going to be like a core focus as your growth over the next couple of is trying to find, you know, partnerships or you know, acquisitions?
Speaker B:100%.
Speaker A:What are the.
Speaker B:It's got.
Speaker A:What do those look like?
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker B:That's the question, right?
Speaker B:That is the question.
Speaker B:What does that look like?
Speaker B:We have a, A lot of, I know a lot of people in the industry, you know, that, you know, people that I've known from peer groups and things like that.
Speaker B:You know, I had a, I had lunch with a friendly competitor two weeks ago.
Speaker B:Local competitor, bigger than us.
Speaker B:We had lunch a year ago.
Speaker B:We're just talking about instead of like what is your guys exit plan.
Speaker B:And this goes back to like what you said about this industry.
Speaker B:Like you can talk, people will talk.
Speaker B:You know, like these guys are my competitors locally, but I also happen to know one of the partners really well.
Speaker B:And you know, I said let's have lunch and, and I'm like what is your, what is your plan?
Speaker B:Like have you thought, you guys thought about it?
Speaker B:And they're like, yeah, we haven't really thought about it.
Speaker B:Maybe we would sell it to the, our employees or.
Speaker B:And then, you know, he looked at me, he's like, maybe we, maybe we should just merge together.
Speaker B:Maybe we should merge our guys together.
Speaker B:Like that's not a bad idea.
Speaker B:You know, maybe we could do it that way.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:That's what we're trying to figure out, Ben, honestly.
Speaker A:So what do you see as the, you know, say you get bigger, you acquire.
Speaker A:What are the things that, that solves in your mind from like a business operational standpoint?
Speaker A:Like why, why, like why get bigger?
Speaker B:Well, it's a good question.
Speaker B:I, I think I was talking to my partner about it the other day and you know, we're so, we're, you know, middle aged guys, right?
Speaker B:We're not young, but we're not old.
Speaker B:We're not old, but we're not young.
Speaker B:You know what I mean?
Speaker B:Like, we're still active, you know, and have a lot of energy left.
Speaker B:Don't feel like we're anywhere near the end of this road.
Speaker B:Kind of feel like we're still in the middle of it.
Speaker B:But on the other side, we're, you know, got to be realistic about how, you know where you are in your life.
Speaker B:And I said to my partner the other day, I'm like, you know, let's say we found a, another MSPR size that we wanted to buy.
Speaker B:I said, you know, we're going to do the traditional SBA financing, you know, that everybody knows about.
Speaker B:I said, you ready to, you ready to put your house on and you're on the, on the line.
Speaker B:Are you ready to sign personal guarantees for all that?
Speaker B:And you know, and, and, and you know, we don't blanch from it, but you got to be realistic about it.
Speaker B:Where are you in your life?
Speaker B:Are you ready to do that?
Speaker B:You know, all those things go into that equation.
Speaker B:And one of the things that was of interest in a merger type of situation to me is you could get, you could get bigger faster, you could spread the risk and the liability out, right?
Speaker B:So you could say, okay, you could merge the companies together.
Speaker B:You immediately get your, the size that you need, you have more resources, theoretically, you've got more time in some respects that you can devote to specifics.
Speaker B:Like if you have, you have a couple extra partners, you can specialize a little bit, as opposed to today where I kind of wear, still wear a couple different hats on a regular daily basis.
Speaker B:And then if you did decide to do something like, okay, now you have an acquisition target and your balance sheet's a little bit bigger, your P and L is a little bit bigger.
Speaker B:And if you decided that you were going to have to go into some debt to finance it, you just can spread the risk out.
Speaker B:So there's all those kind of things that play into my mind as I think about that.
Speaker A:Those are all reasons that I think about too, because as I'M growing my own business.
Speaker A:I'm thinking about, okay, when I, when I acquired this with, when I acquired Datatel last year, we're at 6 million of revenue.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And I'm seeing, okay, these are the gaps.
Speaker A:These are the things that we need to do.
Speaker A:This is where the market's going.
Speaker A:And then, you know, when I was looking for acquisitions, I was looking to find one, expanding technical capability.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Two, customer base.
Speaker A:And, you know, those are kind of the two key things that, that drove, that drove me because I want to have more capabilities, more offering.
Speaker A:I want a 24, 7, internal or internally staffed knock.
Speaker A:Like, I don't want to outsource that.
Speaker A:Like, that would be awesome.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:My customer, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So just like expanding on that capability set in the same way that, you know, we talked about recurring revenue, it's like, oh, we got a base.
Speaker A:Like, let's build up that base further because it just means there's more opportunities and less risk too.
Speaker B:Yep, exactly.
Speaker A:So it sounds like you're doing some, some digging locally to find partnerships or acquisitions.
Speaker A:Have you thought about a more national approach?
Speaker A:Like, would you buy someone outside of your geography?
Speaker B:100%.
Speaker B:100%.
Speaker A:So how are you going to go about doing, making that a reality?
Speaker A:Do you have a plan in mind?
Speaker A:Are you doing outreach?
Speaker A:Like, does that look like.
Speaker B:And we haven't gotten to that point yet.
Speaker A:Gotcha.
Speaker B:But we are, but we've been talking about that because I'll tell you what, the pandemic, the lockdowns told us a lot of things about this company.
Speaker B:It changed escapeware.
Speaker B:Like, it's significantly, you know, when we were in the.
Speaker B:When, when, when.
Speaker B:So, you know, we're a relatively small MSP in a, in an off, you know, in an office, at least at the time.
Speaker B:And when we saw what was coming, you know, when, when the, when the, when the.
Speaker B:Everybody was going insane in the.
Speaker B: In March of: Speaker B:What's going on?
Speaker B:People are dying.
Speaker B:They're.
Speaker B:They're gonna, the States are telling businesses to close up and get out of their offices.
Speaker B:And here's a business like us, we're in an office, we got our people together.
Speaker B:We're all in a relatively tight space confine.
Speaker B:We're certainly sharing the same air.
Speaker B:And, you know, how is that going to impact us?
Speaker B:And our business is servicing other businesses who are also, it looks like, going to be shutting down their offices and going remote.
Speaker B:What are we going to do here?
Speaker B:And I was like, dude, if we get, if we all get sick like, we're never going to.
Speaker B:We can't service these customers.
Speaker B:What are they going to do?
Speaker B:I mean, we've got dozens of customers out there that are all calling us and saying, what are you guys thinking about this?
Speaker B:And we're like, we're concerned.
Speaker B:And they're like, well, we're thinking about saying everybody to go home for next week and work from home.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And by the way, half those people have never worked from home.
Speaker B:They don't have.
Speaker B:They don't know where their Internet.
Speaker B:They probably have desktops.
Speaker B:They have.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:They have desktops.
Speaker B:They have laptops.
Speaker B:I've got to get these people online.
Speaker B:It was like.
Speaker B:We were like, holy shit.
Speaker B:So the Friday before the lockdown, when New York State was like, get out.
Speaker B:Everybody's shutting down.
Speaker B:I turned to my partner and I said, we better.
Speaker B:We need to get ahead of this right now because we're going to get.
Speaker B:What are we going to do?
Speaker B:So we decided before the lockdowns were announced, I could see it coming that Friday.
Speaker B:I told everybody, I'm like, hey, on Monday, we're going to go remote.
Speaker B:And a lot of our business, probably at the time, maybe we had got.
Speaker B:We had built it up to a point where 70% of our service delivery was remote anyways.
Speaker B:You know, we had remote control of every device, you know, and most of our guys were.
Speaker B:We weren't going out on the road very much.
Speaker B:We would, when we needed to install equipment, things like that, but a lot of our daily service was still.
Speaker B:Was remote.
Speaker B:So we had.
Speaker B:So we were very fortunate in that respect.
Speaker B:We and our business had evolved to a point where we were.
Speaker B:We weren't relying on that.
Speaker B:So I said to everybody, I'm like, Monday morning, we're going remote, and we're going to see how it goes.
Speaker B:We'll test it for a day.
Speaker B:Worse comes to worse, if it doesn't work, we can go back to the office and we'll.
Speaker B:We'll come up with a plan B.
Speaker B:Plan A is on Monday morning.
Speaker B:And then I said to them, everybody unload, download, and get logged into teams, because we're going to use teams to do it.
Speaker B:Because Teams was just like, nobody really knew a little bit about it.
Speaker B:Like, Zoom was the thing.
Speaker B:And I was like, we're already a Microsoft.
Speaker A:Teams was pretty crappy back then, right?
Speaker B:It was, yeah, but it was.
Speaker B:It was what we needed.
Speaker B:We needed video, we needed chat, and we needed to be able to keep this company together, not being in the same office the way we had operated from years and years.
Speaker B:And years.
Speaker B:So I said, 8:30 Monday morning, everybody log into teams, get your laptops set up.
Speaker B:And we have our PSA is cloud based anyways, get that, get that organized and let's treat this as if we're in the office, but we're not in the office.
Speaker B:So at 8:30am we all logged on.
Speaker B:That Monday morning we had a group meeting.
Speaker B:We looked at the service boards and we just said, let's operate as if we're in the office.
Speaker B:If you need me, instead of walking down the hall to me, just send me a note on teams or, or buzz me and we'll talk.
Speaker B:And we, and we operated that day.
Speaker B:And I said, at the end of the day, 4:30, let's do an end of day call and see how it goes.
Speaker B:So we all got back on it at 4:30 on that Monday.
Speaker B:And we're like, all right, well how'd it go?
Speaker B:We're like, well, what's the service board?
Speaker B:Looks like all the tickets are, are set.
Speaker B:We're good.
Speaker B:We got some tickets that are carrying over for tomorrow.
Speaker B:But we did it, we did it.
Speaker B:I'm like, all right, let's do it again.
Speaker B:Let's just stay remote.
Speaker B:Let's do it again and see what happens.
Speaker B:And then like that Wednesday, they, the state said, you're everybody closing their office.
Speaker B:Get out.
Speaker B:We were prepared.
Speaker B:And we've never gone back.
Speaker B:We never went back.
Speaker B:I mean, we literally, you know how long we were locked down for months.
Speaker B:And we just operated the company on teams.
Speaker B:We couldn't go to anybody's offices anyways.
Speaker B:And we were trying to buy laptops for people.
Speaker B:As you probably remember, you couldn't get a laptop in the United States to save your life, right?
Speaker B:Like, the entire supply chain was just emptied.
Speaker B:So I was like, people are like, Mike, we need six laptops.
Speaker B:Customers will be calling us like, they need four laptops.
Speaker B:They need 10 laptops.
Speaker B:They got, they can't.
Speaker B:Like, they were taking their PCs home.
Speaker B:It was crazy.
Speaker B:So, like, I, it was the, like, I was like, I got to find a refurbished, like, network.
Speaker B:And we never bought refurbished equipment.
Speaker B:It was always brand new.
Speaker B:I found all these crazy suppliers.
Speaker B:I was buying these HP laptops that were like three and four years old.
Speaker B:I'm like, I call clients, I'm like, listen, I got six laptops, first come, first serve.
Speaker B:Because otherwise someone else wants, like, I'll take them.
Speaker B:So I would be buying these laptops from these guys in Chicago down in, in, in Texas, anything I could get my hands on.
Speaker B:And we were buying all these refurbished laptops, repurposing them, getting them shipped out to clients, and we got every one of our clients remote.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:It was crazy.
Speaker B:It was hairy as hell.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:What changed?
Speaker B:But we never went back.
Speaker A:What changed about your company culture?
Speaker A:Like, I assume that there is some sort of impact, right?
Speaker A:Or, or can you run your business remote as good as you can in office, do you think?
Speaker A:Better?
Speaker A:Worse?
Speaker A:The same.
Speaker B:Same?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think we can.
Speaker B:I mean, I think we've done it.
Speaker B:I mean, our culture.
Speaker B:One of the great things about this company, I think, is our culture.
Speaker B:You know, we're a very.
Speaker B:This is a very collegial operation.
Speaker B:It's a team and nobody's afraid to do anything here.
Speaker B:And I'm the first person, along with my partner, to roll up their sleeves and go out into the field and get it.
Speaker B:If they, if they.
Speaker B:One of the guys needs a hand, you can.
Speaker B:They know they can call me at any time and they trust me and I trust them.
Speaker B:And it's a.
Speaker B:My hand, it's.
Speaker B:One hand washes the other around here.
Speaker B:So we've been able to keep that, you know, even though we're primarily remote, we still have the same office.
Speaker B:I'm in it today and it's funny, I'm still, I'm starting to go back to it more after all these years.
Speaker B:Funny because it's a little quieter, you know, and I can, it's whatever.
Speaker B:It just.
Speaker B:I needed a change of scenery.
Speaker A:Look at the technology industry.
Speaker A:This is just cycles on premise, cloud.
Speaker A:On premise, cloud.
Speaker A:In office, remote.
Speaker A:In office, remote.
Speaker A:Like, this is, this is just human nature, right?
Speaker B:Totally.
Speaker B:100%.
Speaker B:100%.
Speaker B:So my guys, you know, my, our team, they, they, they come in and out of this office.
Speaker B:A couple of them here today.
Speaker B:Sometimes I'll be meeting with them on teams.
Speaker B:Sometimes they're like, hey, I'm going to be in the office.
Speaker B:Can we meet?
Speaker B:Sure, we'll sit down and meet.
Speaker B:You know, I've got a transition going on.
Speaker B:I got one service systems engineer who's taken another opportunity.
Speaker B:I got two guys I'm promoting.
Speaker B:I met with one today via teams.
Speaker B:The other guy was in the office.
Speaker B:I'm like, let's get together Monday.
Speaker B:So, like, we've been able to keep this company just as good as it was before.
Speaker B:Even though we're primarily remote, we still need some kind of physical presence because we still have to receive equipment, we've got to bench equipment, we got to prepare it.
Speaker B:But everything else is in the cloud.
Speaker B:There's nothing really here.
Speaker B:In this office anymore.
Speaker B:We've gotten all the servers out.
Speaker B:The only thing really here is our Internet connection.
Speaker B:In that respect, we're good, you know, and we'll figure out, you know, where we go from here.
Speaker B:I don't, you know, look, I don't feel like we need to be in a physical office.
Speaker B:So that goes back to your original point about would you look for acquisitions outside of my geographic area?
Speaker B:So what was what I learned from that, Ben was I said to my partner, I said, you know what I've learned?
Speaker B:A, we don't need a physical office space to be.
Speaker B:Have a really good company that's got great culture.
Speaker B:I mean, so we could have, we could have a group in Peoria, Illinois for all we care.
Speaker B:Who the hell cares?
Speaker B:We just use teams to do it, you know, and there may would be some things that you'd have to figure out to kind of obviously, you know, the fact that you can't.
Speaker B:Can't.
Speaker B:The guys in Peoria are not coming into my office and I'm not going to running down to peer.
Speaker B:We get that.
Speaker B:But we also learned was.
Speaker B:Which is really the bigger hurdle to me.
Speaker B:I said we can service any client anywhere.
Speaker B:It doesn't matter where they are.
Speaker B:Sorry, my phone's going.
Speaker B:We could service any client anywhere we want.
Speaker B:It doesn't matter anymore.
Speaker B:You know, everything can be done remotely.
Speaker B:It also started a request to get continue to get equipment out of our client premises.
Speaker B:You know, at.
Speaker B: In: Speaker B:They were on prem and I was like, get rid of them.
Speaker B:We got to get them out of there.
Speaker B:Because if we truly want to say that we can manage a company anywhere they are, we don't really care.
Speaker B:The one thing that you still are beholden to is hardware issues with that stupid server.
Speaker B:So we started to do stuff in Azure.
Speaker B:We start building servers in Azure.
Speaker B:We're trying to figure that out and Azure and Amazon and it's such a pain in the ass and the support sucks.
Speaker B:And I'm like, if I've got critical servers for clients, even if it's just a domain controller and it's up in Azure, okay, it'll work.
Speaker B:But if something goes wrong with it, I know we've been doing it for years.
Speaker B:The Microsoft support is, is.
Speaker B:It takes time and it's slow.
Speaker B:And I just said I couldn't live with it anymore.
Speaker B:So I found a private cloud provider that basically would provide me all the virtual servers that I wanted up in their private data center.
Speaker B:And they were, they're, they're a good size and their customer service is, their tack is like you call them and you're in it in two minutes.
Speaker B:You got a problem with a server.
Speaker B:Two minutes.
Speaker B:And they got an engineer, a level two engineer on that server dealing with that problem.
Speaker B:I can build VPN connections to them till I'm blue in the face.
Speaker B:I can do all this stuff and I don't have to deal with Azure and AWS and all like that.
Speaker B:So we've been, we've been removing servers from clients for the past couple years and we continue to do that.
Speaker B:We've got a, it's not the bulk of them yet, but it's close.
Speaker B:Where there's no servers in our client offices.
Speaker B:The only thing there is a firewall in a switch.
Speaker A:Yeah, there's just a massive cloud transformation going on and, and yeah, and has.
Speaker B:Been going on for years.
Speaker A:And it will still go now.
Speaker A:It's for many years.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker B:We'll still go on.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Started with it started.
Speaker B: at client locations like late: Speaker B:And honestly it was, it was the most horrific on premise system to have because if you had any problem, email goes down and then you, you want to talk about a 911 alarm going off when your clients are calling you, like, the email's down, the email's down.
Speaker B:It terrified me.
Speaker B:I, I, I lost sleep.
Speaker B:I mean it really drove me into like, I, we, we invested a lot of money into our backup and disaster recovery platforms because I was like, dude, if I lose that Exchange server, I have to be able to recover it in like no time.
Speaker B:So I, I went through the, I mean that's a separate discussion.
Speaker B: recovery platform starting in: Speaker B:And that actually saved our bacon a number of times.
Speaker B:And then it became Crypto locker.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Like, like people getting crypto locked.
Speaker B:I was like, our backup platforms have to be like bulletproof.
Speaker B:Absolutely bulletproof.
Speaker B:And it, and it saved our bacon so many times.
Speaker B:But either way, trying to get those Exchange servers out.
Speaker B:And when Office365 started to gain some traction and then they kind of built it to a point where it was actually really reliable and you could actually do a migration off an on premise Exchange server, I was like, get these things out of here now.
Speaker B:And we migrated so many exchange service to Officer 65, but our last one was only like four or five years ago, you know, like people still had them.
Speaker B:And you know, I just got to a point where I told clients, like, if you don't, you, you are, you are.
Speaker B:It's not, it's not negotiable anymore.
Speaker B:You are migrating that exchange out of this premise and we're getting it in Office 365.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:Crazy.
Speaker A:On the sales front, I'm, I'm curious how you think about this because it's, it's sales is, is known as the, one of the hardest parts of this industry because of the nature of the relationship with the client.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And how sticky it is.
Speaker A:How do you think about that?
Speaker A:Because you're, you're running sales for the company, I assume, and you probably don't have, you have any salespeople at your team.
Speaker B:Nope.
Speaker A:So, yeah, you're running it.
Speaker A:So how do you, how do you think about growing?
Speaker A:What are the best tactics that you've seen work for you guys, you know, long term to, to grow?
Speaker B:It's the constant challenge in this business, Ben.
Speaker B:And we've tried everything, you know, we've had inside sales guys, we've had telemarketers in house, we've used third parties, we've used, I mean, a whole host of things.
Speaker B:None of it is really like, what.
Speaker A:Were the top two out of all the ones that you tried?
Speaker A:Methods.
Speaker B:Well, the true methods method, which was get an inside sales guy and have him pound the phone.
Speaker B:That was decent but not foolproof.
Speaker B:I think really what we found was, and this is like part of our next evolution is that we got a little bit better, but not great, but we got a little bit better with online marketing, like email.
Speaker B:Getting a good list, constantly sending them emails because as I said, my partner, I'm like, our last three good customers have come from email for us.
Speaker B:Like, like I remember one in particular.
Speaker B:We have a really nice law firm as a client and I said, how did you find us?
Speaker B:And they're like, oh, we, we get your emails and we finally just called you because we had a need.
Speaker A:You got a recurring newsletter or what exactly do you mean?
Speaker A:Or you mean outbound?
Speaker B:Like you're touching outbound newsletters.
Speaker B:Some social media marketing.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker B:Some email marketing and we're actually, we're actually going to tear, we're tearing that up.
Speaker B:That we're tearing it down and building it back up.
Speaker B:That's kind of where we're getting there because we had an in house resource that was doing that for us who left to pursue another opportunity.
Speaker B:And I'm like, well, we got to keep that going.
Speaker B:To my partner, I'm like, we got to keep that going.
Speaker B:So we're, I'm really actually looking about rebuilding that because I think we've been, some have had some success with it, but the outside inside sales piece is the bane of existence in this industry for so many people.
Speaker B:Some guys do it good, other guys struggle with it.
Speaker B:We're kind of somewhere in the middle, maybe more to the bad.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I feel like we've done a good job with it and we've got to figure it out, I guess.
Speaker A:When you're going to clients, what's the differentiator?
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker A:Like that's where I see this because there's so many providers, there's so many options out there.
Speaker A:That's the thing that I'm personally seeing in a lot of this is like the go to market and clients kind of can't tell the difference between everything.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Like all of the different options on their plate.
Speaker B:I think it's partly, I always say, and this is not, I'm not being arrogant or bragging.
Speaker B:I'm like, if you get me, if you get me in front of a good prospect and they have a need and they want to make a change, I will close them.
Speaker B:I will close them.
Speaker B:And I, I think we're good at it because we're exceptionally honest the way we operate.
Speaker B:We run a very ethical business with, with a high level of trust between our clients.
Speaker B:And I'm not afraid to tell people that when I first meet them as a prospect and I tell them up front, I'm like, this is the way we do business.
Speaker B:And when you have a problem and you're, you're scrambling to fix a problem, you, you, I want you to know that you can call me at any time and I will take care of you.
Speaker B:I will never leave you.
Speaker B:I will always take care of you.
Speaker B:And you, we will do it in an honest and ethical way and you can trust us to run the IT for this business.
Speaker B:And then I, you know, I always have a good plan as to how I'm going to do it and, and a good presentation of it.
Speaker B:And I, and I often rely on, you know, I will constantly run like let me, let me, let me look at, let me look at your current costs.
Speaker B:I, I take it from the VCIO perspective.
Speaker B:Like I tell people you're hiring a partial CTO vcio.
Speaker B:That's what, that's how I think about you.
Speaker B:And I'm going to act in your best interest.
Speaker B:And, and it's when I go out and I look at this for you.
Speaker B:So first off, let me start.
Speaker B:What are you guys doing now?
Speaker B:How is it working?
Speaker B:What's your costs?
Speaker B:And let me see if I can come back with a better solution and a better way of doing that for you.
Speaker B:And if, and I tell them, I'm like, if my way is better, great, and you want to work with us, great.
Speaker B:If you've got a better way to do it and you don't want to work with us, that's fine too.
Speaker B:I have no problem with that.
Speaker B:But I think I'll be able to give you a really good solution using, you know, utilizing the technology that we have, the service that we provide.
Speaker B:Provide.
Speaker B:And I tell people, I'm like, clients who come to us do not leave.
Speaker B:I've had clients for 10, 15 years and they do not leave.
Speaker B:And they do not leave because they trust us.
Speaker B:We do a really good job for them.
Speaker B:And our service delivery is top notch.
Speaker B:And we pay quite close attention to our service boards, our response times.
Speaker B:And I always tell them at the end of the day, every single one of my clients has my cell phone number and they can call me.
Speaker B:And that may not be easy to scale, Ben, but you can push that down.
Speaker B:You know, if you had a bigger organization, you know, maybe it's not you only giving out your cell phone number, but Maybe it's your two VCOs or account managers and you tell them you will give your cell phone number to that person and you will be beholden to them because they are the ones who pay the bills.
Speaker B:Those are the things that, you know, that you have to do as you get bigger to figure out how to continue to push that culture into the, into your staff so that they can develop that relationship with the client.
Speaker B:Because like I said, like, when we get a client, they don't leave because we do a really good job for them.
Speaker A:How do you handle that?
Speaker A:Always on mentality that you just described, which is like, hey, client, I'm always going to be there for you all the time.
Speaker A:Here's my personal cell phone.
Speaker A:Like, like at some point that probably breaks or is bad, right?
Speaker A:Or like, how do you.
Speaker B:Well, so, yeah, so.
Speaker B:But realistically, what really happens, Ben, is, is that I don't get a lot of calls.
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker B:And the reason why is because we build a really good organization here that's really good at what it does.
Speaker B:And I don't have, I don't get a lot of calls because we run it right.
Speaker B:So if we're running it right, if we're, our service delivery is really good.
Speaker B:If we're, if our network administrators are doing a good job, if our project guys are getting project work done, we as owners are tracking it and on top of it every day.
Speaker A:I don't get a lot of this makes sense.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:If you've got a good team to, to make sure clients are taken care of, you're not going to have a lot of those emergencies or escalations at the end of the day, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B: call, this is: Speaker B:We have never missed that ever.
Speaker B:In the almost five years now that we've been working as a remote company per se, we've never ever ever missed that, those two calls.
Speaker B:And when we get on that call in the morning, the first thing we do is, you know, our operations coordinator calls out the board and the board is, the board is life for us.
Speaker B:Because the board tells us how busy we are, how much demand we're experiencing, what are the acute problems.
Speaker B:And we're delivering that service religiously and, and, and I'm always on that call.
Speaker B:One of my partners is, is always on that call and we call it out.
Speaker B:How many tickets are on the board?
Speaker B:How many tickets came in overnight?
Speaker B:That's from then the morning call.
Speaker B:And who's on the road that day?
Speaker B:Is there anybody going on site?
Speaker B:Where's people where, people where resources, what's going on?
Speaker B:And then the end of the day is how many tickets are left on the board, how many came in, how many closed that day?
Speaker B:One day close, how many closed and what do we have going into the overnight?
Speaker B:Are there any issues or emergencies that have to be dealt with?
Speaker B:And then we close the day out and we're off and doing our own thing.
Speaker B:And then so that's the service delivery stuff.
Speaker B:But then there's our project work, you know, our network administration work.
Speaker B:That's the, you know, kind of the behind the scenes work, you know, and we track those we have.
Speaker B:We just actually just put in a brand new project management platform that I love.
Speaker B:We're able to enable, track all of our projects.
Speaker B:Every single task within each project.
Speaker B:Who's assigned to it, what's the status of it all that stuff again so that I don't have to answer 42 phone calls a day from clients who are upset or pissed or blah, blah, blah.
Speaker B:I don't get a lot of.
Speaker B:I don't, I just don't get a lot.
Speaker A:That's a sign of a good business.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:More, more often for me, it's actually me calling them and saying, hey, let's set up a quarterly meeting.
Speaker B:You and I have a meeting.
Speaker B:Because I have a list of things that I have for you on your roadmap that I want to start talking about in terms of what we're doing for the rest of this year and next year.
Speaker B:I build them a three year budget.
Speaker B:I got a great application that allows me to build a roadmap for them.
Speaker B:So oftentimes me being proactive and by me being proactive and our network administration guy who's also always looking out for problems within the networks, we tampered problems down and are also thinking way out, like, I'm thinking a year out, two years out, like, okay, you know, what's the age of that equipment that you've got on premise?
Speaker B:The firewall, the server?
Speaker B:Let's get ahead of the facts so that when that thing goes end of life or expires, that we've already replaced it six months before or three months before so that it doesn't cause an emergency.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And oftentimes I'll get, you know, things like, hey, Mike, we're, we've got a new software application that we need to deploy in the plant.
Speaker B:We're going to need to have, you know, virtual machine to run it and it's going to have to be, we're going to have to cable out to this, you know, these devices that we've got in the plant and I'll be working on that with them through the course of the life cycle of that project.
Speaker B:And then I'll bring the project guys in to deploy it after I quote them.
Speaker B:And it just makes everything flow really smooth so that I can just stay focused on client account management, VCIO stuff so I can make sure clients are happy.
Speaker B:Because as you know, it's hard to get a client in this business.
Speaker B:Once you get them, if you do it right, they'll stay with you forever and they won't leave.
Speaker B:But if you do it wrong, they will leave and the cost of replacing that client is huge and you don't want to lose one.
Speaker B:So be focused on that.
Speaker A:What's as, as, as you think about where you want to take Escape Wire over the Next few years.
Speaker A:What do you want Escape Wire to look like, you know, three years from now?
Speaker A:Can you paint that picture?
Speaker B:I want it to be bigger than it is today, let's put it that way.
Speaker B:Double, triple, maybe.
Speaker B:I want it to be.
Speaker B:I want.
Speaker B:One of the big things for me is I wanted to.
Speaker B:One of the reasons why I want it bigger, Ben, is I want to give more opportunity to the people that work for us.
Speaker B:I want more opportunity for everybody, certainly for me, you know, of course, but I want it for my people.
Speaker B:Like, I.
Speaker B:We worked really hard to grow really good people in this company.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:And I want them to have an ever expanding opportunity to, to make more money, learn more things, grow more things.
Speaker B:Because that's the other part of this business is good people are not easy to find.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And for instance, right now.
Speaker B:So we had an engineer come to us.
Speaker B:He was our, he had started.
Speaker B:So our philosophy is we do not hire into upper level positions.
Speaker B:We hire level ones and then we grow them up.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Because when you, when you, when you hire into those upper level positions, you gotta pay it more money generally.
Speaker B:And they come with a whole host of bad habits, different, different theories and all those things.
Speaker B:And we tried it before and it was, it was never smooth and it disrupted service.
Speaker B:It was, it was difficult to systemize the way you deliver because they always wanted to do it something differently.
Speaker B:So we said, you know what, enough of that.
Speaker B:So we started hiring level ones and we figured, we'll grow them up.
Speaker B:We'll find a smart young guy or girl, we'll grow them up.
Speaker B:So we had, we, we.
Speaker B:It's happened multiple times.
Speaker B:We have, you know, a young person come up higher on a level one desk, they get promoted to level two, they maybe get promoted to level three.
Speaker B:And at that point I'm like, okay, what am I going to do here?
Speaker B:Because this, I'm reaching a point where I'm that person now.
Speaker B:Now some people might get there, be like, I love this.
Speaker B:This is where I want to be.
Speaker B:This is my career.
Speaker B:I want to do it.
Speaker B:And I'm happy where I'm at.
Speaker B:Perfect.
Speaker B:But you might also get people that are like, you know, I want to go to the next level.
Speaker B:So we had one of our engineers came to us, started on level one, rose to level two, rose level three, became our primary project engineer.
Speaker B:Came to us two years ago and said, for personal reasons, I have to move to South Carolina.
Speaker B:My family's my, my wife's in laws are older and there's no other family there.
Speaker B:And We've made a decision as a family that we're going to move to South Carolina.
Speaker B:So I was like, damn it, I'm going to lose this guy.
Speaker B:You know, really talented.
Speaker B:And he came to me and said, I don't want to leave.
Speaker B:I don't want to leave a skateboard.
Speaker B:I love it here.
Speaker B:I love the work.
Speaker B:I love working for you guys.
Speaker B:Would you consider allowing me to go remote?
Speaker B:Fully remote?
Speaker B:Now, we were already remote, but this would literally make him remote.
Speaker B:You know, we could call him and say, hey, I need you.
Speaker B:Leave your house.
Speaker B:I need you to go, you know, over here and take care of something.
Speaker B:Well, so we were like, all right, well, listen, why.
Speaker B:What do we have to lose here?
Speaker B:We have nothing to lose.
Speaker B:He's already primarily remote.
Speaker B:We don't want to lose the guy because we really like him.
Speaker B:So he moved to South Carolina and went remote.
Speaker B:And it worked great for two years until he got recruited out by a bigger company because he's in a bigger market, right?
Speaker B:And he came to us and said, I gotta leave.
Speaker B:I don't want to leave.
Speaker B:I hate leaving.
Speaker B:But it's an opportunity.
Speaker B:I can't.
Speaker B:I can't let go.
Speaker B:I don't want to be in that position anymore.
Speaker B:I don't want to lose people like that.
Speaker B:I want to be in a position where I'm like, you know, the world's your oyster, bro.
Speaker B:You could go and do whatever you want.
Speaker B:You want to take over this part of the business and run it and make more money and do it?
Speaker B:Let's go.
Speaker B:But right now, we're not at that point.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's the goal, really.
Speaker B:It's not because I want to be a $10 million MSP or 12.
Speaker B:I don't really.
Speaker B:That's not what the driver is.
Speaker B:The driver is provide as much opportunity for people so that you retain good people.
Speaker B:They don't leave.
Speaker B:And then you can really build the business, because if you don't have those people, you can't build.
Speaker B:You can't grow the business because you can't deliver it.
Speaker B:You can't deliver.
Speaker A:A service business, right?
Speaker A:Requires.
Speaker B:I tell people all the time, Ben.
Speaker B:I tell people all the time.
Speaker B:I tell my staff all the time.
Speaker B:We are not in the IT business.
Speaker B:We are in a service business that happens to.
Speaker B:To deliver IT services.
Speaker B:We are not in the IT business.
Speaker B:We're in the service business.
Speaker B:And the service to the client is the only thing that you should be concerned about, and the only thing that I care about, you know, like we put.
Speaker B:Years ago, we put CSAT buttons on every service ticket.
Speaker B:So when every client service ticket, they can hit good, bad, what is it?
Speaker B:Good, bad and great.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And when we get a bad, my promise to all our clients is if you get a bad, my guarantee is I will call you within.
Speaker B:Within an hour, and I will find out what the problem is.
Speaker B:And that I can't.
Speaker B:Just that little thing and just the mere fact that I personally picked up the phone and called them like that, that.
Speaker B:That goes a humongous way with clients in terms of, you know, earning their business, keeping them sticky, you know?
Speaker B:Cause if, you know, I get an email, bad, bad rating, and I pick up the phone, first of all, I go to the engineer.
Speaker B:But what happened?
Speaker B:Oh, this.
Speaker B:Blah, blah, blah, okay, let me call the client.
Speaker B:What happened?
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And I'll.
Speaker B:Let me go fix it for you.
Speaker B:And I would just go fix it.
Speaker B:Whatever had to be done, you know, and clients really, really appreciate that.
Speaker B:So where we want to be in the next three years, Just bigger for sure.
Speaker B:How we get there, not for sure about that.
Speaker B:Working on it.
Speaker B:But ultimately, the goal is have the organization big enough where you can.
Speaker B:I can meet some personal goals.
Speaker B:My staff can meet their.
Speaker B:They can build a career here, and they can stay here for a long, long time, and I can continue to challenge them, allow them to make more money, all those good things.
Speaker B:That, to me, is key.
Speaker A:That seems like some pretty incredible goals that I hope you.
Speaker A:You accomplish and.
Speaker A:And figure out the path.
Speaker A:I mean, it's life, right?
Speaker A:We don't.
Speaker A:We don't exactly know what direction we need to go, but we kind of know where we want to end up, so let's make it happen.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:It's cool.
Speaker A:Well, thanks for joining me today and really appreciate it.
Speaker A:It's been.
Speaker A:Been awesome.
Speaker A:Thanks again, Mike.
Speaker B:Good.
Speaker B:Yeah, you're welcome, Ben.
