How Agiliti Wins Clients for Life with Business-Focused Tech

Speaker A: This is Start Grow Manage, where we help managed service providers achieve the impact, freedom and wealth you imagined back when you started your company. At Start Grow Manage, our tools, practices and processes help, uh, you engage, energize and execute on building a business that empowers an extraordinary life. Learn more about our programs and how they can fuel your fire@startgrowmanage.com learnmore.

Speaker B: Let's go. Welcome to Start Growmanage. I'm Jeff Lehrer and today I have the privilege of interviewing Stuart Garzarelli and Michael Ratka or Stu and Mike as they are affectionately referred to of uh, Agiliti. And we're going to talk a bit about how they have developed their business over time and how the economy in 2008 actually pushed them into understanding the businesses of their clients and now how they are developing business focused solutions for, for their clients and how essential that is to their business and growing their business. And one of the things that I really appreciate this is actually not in the interview itself because we talked about it afterwards, was two of the ways that their clients define them or, or when their, their clients are offering descriptions of agility. They, they use two terms and one of them is curiosity and the other one is tenacity. And that seems like a great way to describe. These guys are very focused on making things work and it's that curiosity, that drive to understand that has allowed them to uh, differentiate their business. And Stu also has one of the most interesting origin stories that I have heard. So if you are looking at how to improve your MSP and how others have done it, then join us for this conversation. And with that we will just move on over to chat with Stu and Mike from agility. So really where I'm just kind of starting with everybody. I like the stories, right? Like where do people come from? Why are they here? You know, what, what led you here? So I just like to start with the idea of how and why did, did you become an MSP and start agility?

Speaker C: So the uh, the long, the long story is I was in an industrial accident and I have brain damage on both hemispheres. And part of the seven uh, year recovery process had to do with, with neuroplasticity and regrowing brain cells. Part of that process was math, writing, computers. And I, I found that I really enjoyed working with the technology which drove me to push harder against those difficulties. And it became my calling. So it started with an injury.

Speaker B: It's almost like it, it really is a calling. It's like you had an injury that Caused you to go to this. And then. And the, the way that you retrained your brain was through technology. That's crazy. This is, that's the first origin story that I've heard that starts with. Nobody else has come up with I injured my brain. And so.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker C: I, I dare say that I wouldn't have recovered if I hadn't found something that I was that passionate about to drive through the, the issues.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, so I'd. I'd more likely say that it kind of saved my life.

Speaker B: That's, that's, that's impressive. What about you, Mike? Or do you have brain injuries that led you to. Or, uh, maybe like a back problem or something? You're muted, I think, on your side.

Speaker D: No, don't mute it.

Speaker B: I, uh, have you using,

Speaker A: Uh.

Speaker B: So Michael Rucka, you're. You're using the steel series sonar, is that right? Well, well, Mike figures out his.

Speaker C: I can, I can speak to what led to innovative and agility.

Speaker B: Yeah. So that's. So that, that would be the next step. What, what led you to innovative? What. What is innovative? Is that what you first were and then it became agility?

Speaker C: Yeah, we were originally innovative IT concepts, and we, we became innovative IT concepts in two. Late 2002. I had, I had worked with Honeywell for a while. I hit a, uh, I hit a ceiling. And I went, I left there and went into consulting, which gave me better options to grow and develop. And I, I left consulting and opened my own company because I was uncomfortable with what my employers were asking me to do. Technology. As my former employee told me, when I complained about them asking you to do half of the work, they said technology is really confusing. Most people don't understand it. Do the bare minimum so that we can get paid and move on to the next job.

Speaker B: And I know you well enough to know that that is not your approach.

Speaker C: No, I, I was coming dangerously close to losing my marriage over that because I was scheduling my time in the evenings to. To finish work that I wasn't allowed to. Allowed, uh, to do on the company time. So working 70, 80 hour weeks. And my wife came to me at one point and she said, look, you're not making any extra money doing this. You're spending all your time out of the house and working. If we want to stay married, you need to make a change

Speaker B: and that out. But you're like, no, no, I do actually want to stay married. So.

Speaker C: So, yes, I absolutely did.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker C: Yeah. And 24, 24 years later, that was a pretty good choice. To abandon, uh, consulting and start the business and save my marriage. So that, that's how I led, that's what, that's what led to innovative IT concepts.

Speaker B: Well, what, and what, that's, it's interesting. 24 years. What's changed over the last 24 years in, in your, your mind?

Speaker C: Well, every, everything has changed. When, when I started the business, I was, I, uh, was probably a high level tech with zero business skill. Yeah, I had, I picked up a, uh, pretty decent customer base. Everything business wise was driven around technical capabilities. And it, it worked. People say the first five years is the hardest. If you can make it past five years. I blew by five years. It was the easiest five years of my life. I was doing exactly what I love to do and it didn't matter if I made a wrong decision because there was money, you could, you could make mistakes and it really didn't hurt the business that much. Come 2008, things changed. And in order to be successful as a business person, you needed to actually have business sense. And I had to switch from, um, technical person to business person. And that was not what I really thought I was signing up for. So that was a, that was a hard, that was a hard road.

Speaker B: Like, no, no, take me back to the tech.

Speaker C: Let me just go back and do the tech stuff. I, I enjoy that.

Speaker B: I built my whole brain around it.

Speaker C: So that was a, that was a shock.

Speaker B: What led to that transition? What was what like, why did it change, do you think?

Speaker C: Well, they, when the economy shifted in late 2008, we had, I think we, I think we lost $300,000 worth of projects that were scheduled for the last quarter. They just went away.

Speaker D: Mhm.

Speaker C: Because everyone decided, hey, I don't know what's going on, we're just gonna, we're gonna pull back. We're gonna, we're gonna see where this goes. And it, it took a few years for that recovery to occur. So we went from thriving business can't make a wrong decision to every decision has to be right.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And, and business focus. So it's not just about fixing the computers anymore. It's, it's making sure that you're engaging clients and working with clients and building that, that client portfolio. Right?

Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: Are you back, Mike? Or is it still not?

Speaker D: No, I am back.

Speaker B: Oh, he's back. All right, that's good. So, so if we could just take a step back. I'm curious, what, what brought you into the MSP space? Like I was joking around that maybe you had a back Injury or something?

Speaker D: Well, no, no. I actually I started college prior to computers. I'm that old. My degree is actually electronic engineering. From there I went into work for a company that serviced IBM mid range computers. Uh, was there for two or three years. Left, left that company and formed my own company doing mid range computers and integrating them with Novell Networks, believe it or not. And started that way.

Speaker B: Uh, I remember Novel Networks.

Speaker D: So when we started the, the conversation between the two, the two systems from there. Ran my own company for about 10, 11 years. Took a job with my largest client until they went out of business and decided I wanted to get back into the field and met Stu and interviewed with him and I've been, been with Innovative since and the reason I'm there, it's, it's, you know, I had a couple, few interviews and I just like the way Stu did business. He does the right thing for the customer and that's why I'm here and that's why I'm still here. It's, it's a place where you can go and you know, you're trying to do the right thing most of the time. Not always the cheapest way.

Speaker B: But you guys have, you guys have great solutions. I'm sure that uh, that the customers love them because I, I, you're you. One thing I, I really appreciate about the way you guys approach business is that completeness. It must come Stu out of that experience in the past. Right. Because it's, it is, you do have all of the pieces, they all work. It all kind of comes together. Right. And, and that's, I think that probably creates a great customer experience.

Speaker C: It usually is that last 20% that gets kind of forgotten.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And that's where, where the real value comes in.

Speaker B: You know, it's funny, I think that's, that's true uh, in so many things. Even you know, marketing, communications or like it's sort of that first 80% is, is the easy part, but it's the last 20 that makes the difference.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker B: Like it, that that's what separates the, the exceptional from, from the good. Right. At least that's, that's my experience. So what do you think the key is to success? I mean, what if someone's listening to this and thinking about well how, how am I going to build my msp? What is, what is the key?

Speaker C: Culture. Choose who you are going to be as a company and stick to that regardless of how difficult it becomes.

Speaker B: Why does it become difficult?

Speaker C: Um, I like to say in business, and maybe this is a bad thing to say, but there, There's. There's rarely a right and wrong choice. Usually the better bad choice. I think we'd all be successful if it were right and wrong. I think everyone knows how to choose right from wrong.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: And we would rarely have people who were choosing choosing incorrectly. But it really is strategically choosing between the better of two evils is what I've found in business. There's all. There's. There are a lot of bad options. And choosing the better bad option, it can be difficult.

Speaker B: It's kind of like. It's like a gray area. Right. Like you just don't know. And so you're choosing these things that might turn out to be good or bad, and there's. There's never really that point. Uh, I'm just sort of interpreting what you say. I kind of like this idea with. There's never this thing where you say, oh, that is the perfect decision going forward. Right. That. That's, that's the thing that's going to do it. Because if it were that easy, it would already be done.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker C: Yeah. Usually when it seems that clear, it's because you're delusional.

Speaker B: Well. Or you're 21 years old. Right. Because I think when you're 21, you say, oh, uh, I know exactly what it is, and you put it out there. And maybe, maybe it works, you know, And. And then if they get lucky, then they think that they own the world and that they can do everything in their magic in every way. But, you know, I guess we have a bit more experience in that. What about you, Mike? What do you think is key, key to success? Is it culture?

Speaker D: It's without, without a doubt of culture. It's. I mean, it's how we hire. It's how we treat our customers. Uh, you know, one of the things that I like to say is that we don't really lose customers. I think every customer, what we've lost since I've been here have been because they were bought up by a bigger company or they went out of business. I don't think we have one. One out of business, I think. Right. Maybe not. Maybe they were all bought up by somebody, but it's never because we weren't doing the right thing by them. You, uh, know, we don't. We don't lose customers for that reason. And, you know, as I said, uh, I think that's proof of our culture. I mean, we go. You know, we make decisions not based on money all the time. Sometimes we could do a lot better if we made the other decision, but we don't, you know, and, and it's, it's that you can go home at night and look at yourself in the mirror and know that, you know, maybe we didn't make as much, but we did it the right way and it's the right way to treat a customer. And it's, you know, it's honesty, you know.

Speaker B: No, that's great. And you've had some real success actually going in and, and elevating the conversation with your, with your clients. Right. We're using strategic business reviews to, to actually get into a more strategic realm with them and, and bringing sort of that business thinking to the way that you're interacting with, with clients, not just how you're running the business.

Speaker D: Yeah, I think one of the, one of the biggest successes we've had since we joined joined the start grow was, you know, we went and did alignment meetings, technical alignment meetings, which if anybody's ever done done them, nobody enjoys them. The customer doesn't enjoy them. The tech doing them doesn't enjoy them. The VCIO does not enjoy doing them. They're just boring. We got an education when we, from you when we started to take that more of a business approach, which we've always been more of a business approach company. I don't know why we were doing technical alignments ever, you know, so, so now those alignments went from 100% technical to a little bit of technical because part of that is, is, is what we do. But it's grown more into a, um, business side. And I found that from doing that, we've started to migrate from talking to the technical people only to the business owners and the CFOs and the CIOs. You know, it's, it's those type of people that we talk to. And we've been able to come up with more solutions for the company, not just on a, uh, technical term, but on to help them improve processes and the way that their business runs.

Speaker B: What are some of the things that that's led you to do?

Speaker D: I think it's driving our avatar or our niche is, you know, we go after manufacturers. That's who we'd like to deal with. We have a few, especially biotech manufacturers, but it's let us solve problems. I gave this example a month ago in the, the uh, meeting that we had that, you know, I would go in and talk to them and one of the things that a lot of our manufacturers talk about is labor, labor, labor, labor. Well, I can't fix the labor Problem, problem. And I can. And we realized that by, by getting some education on some of our vendors, robotic vendors that deal with the manufacturers, we can solve some labor problems. And, and we're starting to introduce some of those solutions to our customers where they, they take a menial job that they can hold somebody for. They only last for six to eight months. Maybe you're. Because it's just a boring, repetitive, I can't stand this anymore job. And handing that over to a cell or a robotic cell that can take that, move that person into a job that they like better, that it gives them more programming the robotics or, you know, or doing the management of that type of stuff, which solves the label problem both ways. You don't lose a good employee and you're not paying somebody a lot of money to do something that they hate and they're not going to be there.

Speaker B: Well, and I think that that's so key. We get into this conversation a lot like how do I solve business problems? And people do ask me. They say, our clients say that they have, you know, labor issues and, and, and, or you know, retention issues. And, and it's interesting that there are actually a lot of things that you can do with technology to improve the way that you run your business. And, and that's like a perfect example. So the problem with retention isn't so much the way you're managing hr, it's the definition of the job. So you can use technology to change the definition of the job, to change that dynamic, to really change how the business is functioning and that leads to increased retention. I mean, we've also seen people implementing performance review programs and different ways of structuring their business using tech so that they're able to improve the business itself. So I think, uh, that's a great example. When. What do you say now? What, what do you say to somebody who is nervous about going in and asking business questions? Because this is one of the things that comes up to us, uh, all the time. I said, oh, you know, often I start working with somebody and I tell them they should do this. And it takes like three months just for me to get them to not be scared of it anymore. And then they go do it and they come back the next day like, oh, that was so easy. But, uh, what would you say to somebody who's nervous about it or scared, scared about it?

Speaker D: I think if you, if you've been having conversations with them, it's a pretty easy transition. You build a relationship if you're a vcio, that goes in and talks to people. You should already have some type of relationship with them sometime. Trust. So you're introduced things slowly and it's easy to talk about something in our field. Let's talk about lifecycle of computers. And you start off by saying, you know, you should be on a replacement plan every four years, five years, whatever, whatever it may be. And rather than talking about why you should do that on a technology, they say, well, let's talk to the accountant about that. Let's talk to the, uh, CFO about that and see how that affects your. Your bottom dollar with taxes. Should I write these off in here? Should I depreciate them? And you just move the conversation in the same realm of technology into something that, oh, uh, that might help us. Let's talk to him about that. And then you get the CFO in the room, which is a good thing. And, and you keep moving the ball forward just a little bit more by introducing things that those other people want to be involved with.

Speaker B: And I think the key is that you're not. You're not claiming accounting knowledge. You're not claiming to be the cfo. What you're doing is saying, this is the technological solution to that problem. Or, now I understand your problems. Here's how tech can, can play a role. And now I can have a conversation with the CFO to help define this better or. Or more effectively for your company. Whereas if. And I think that there's. That's part of the reluctance is there's a feeling that, well, I have to pretend that I'm good at something that I'm not good at. Um, but it really comes back to listening and just having a conversation.

Speaker D: Don't you think so? Uh, and they appreciate it. They do appreciate it. When you start talking, they do appreciate it.

Speaker B: And this is universally like, we haven't had anybody go in yet and take this approach where the client says, oh, we hate you for this. It's always appreciated. What were you going to say, Stu?

Speaker C: I was going to say that for the most part, people don't think of technical people as being business people.

Speaker B: Yeah, we live.

Speaker C: We live on the other side. We live on that weird, dark side of, of the business. And, you know, everyone's heard the. It is the foundation for your business now. You go and build the structure that lives on that foundation. And I think, uh, I think business owners are used to that. And they don't expect to get good business advice from technical people. First of all, they, they rarely can understand us. Yeah. So there's that Gap of, of, um, that bridge that is very difficult to cross in communication. And then you also have, on the other side of that, a lot of business owners that we've dealt with over the last few decades, they started very much like we did. They weren't business people. They were good at something, um, that's interesting. Get into a business and they muddled their way through the business piece. So I know in some cases I've come in to conversations where the business owner is very reluctant to talk about things and then I get them alone and he'll say, well, I really didn't understand that thing you were talking about. And it might be something like ebitda. Like that's probably something that's pretty relevant to business in general that you should know. And they just never really dug in that far. They never, they were successful enough never to have needed to cross the barrier into real business operational strategy. And when, when we start talking about business strategy, they're kind of, um, I don't want to show that I, I don't know. Efficiency.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So it's part. They don't expect us to talk about it in a valuable way. And when we do, it might not be received that well. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's a problem in the industry in general for the companies like us that do have a very good, that have developed a very good business solution mentality.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Over a technology first. And of course it's going to be worth something to your business.

Speaker B: So how do you overcome that deficiency? I mean, it sounds like you at least have built the trust enough that the leader can come to you and say, you know, that thing you were talking about, I don't quite get it. Right. But how, how would you, how do you generally overcome that?

Speaker C: Typically there's enough of a driving story there that the business owner is trying to achieve that allows you some latitude if you can figure out what it is the business owner is trying to accomplish and give them. We're not spoon feeding them business theory. We're providing an opportunity for them to solve a problem. And in solving that problem, we can help them to develop into a better mindset of solving those problems themselves. So it's.

Speaker B: Yeah, you haven't quite said this. Uh, but what you sort of brought to mind is almost this idea of going down the journey together. You know, it's like, yeah, we're also learning this stuff. Uh, we're also figuring it out. And I do think there is an element of that. Like there's we all. Well, I think. I don't know, but most of us, at least I do have this fear of, of I don't want people to know that I don't know things or, or like, there's, there's that, that imposter syndrome at some point. And I think going in with, with the openness to, to not know and the openness to have those conversations and be on the journey together, that can actually be very disarming, I think, and can be very endearing in terms of these guys are legitimate and authentic and they're not just trying to bullshit me the whole time.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker C: And typically, we find even, even businesses that operate almost identically, they have different, they have different needs, they have different goals. And we can't just come in and say, here's how we're going to fix your problem. We don't know how we're going to fix their problem. When we have that first conversation, you have to learn uniquely what that client, what that partner needs in order to be successful, what is their measure of success. And, and it's, and it is, it's. It is a journey, and it's much easier to go on that journey. I've, uh, heard people say, you know, as a, as a salesperson, you really want to be the dumbest guy in the room. You want to ask the dumbest questions, because, yeah, they're the. You don't want to ask the question you expect the answer to. And you uncover a lot. You disarm. You disarm by asking those kind of questions. The five whys. Yeah. You know, what are you really trying to get to here? And it's the same kind of strategy we do, we use on the technical side to, to discover the root cause of things. It's really no different. You just, you have to come in with the mindset of I don't understand your problem completely. And, and in. And in understanding your problem, we will together be able to come up with a solution that works.

Speaker B: Yeah. So when the problem is retention, well, then why is that? What's causing that? What's driving? I don't fully understand this until you get to the point where you can say, well, there's something that we can get to work on and then we can fix right now, which is, is really what people are ultimately looking for. But that just comes out of, of listening, having the conversation, like you say, asking why and, and being curious and, and not, um, not feeling like you have to have all of the answers just right out of the box and it's that curiosity that's, that's, that's great. Well, anything. What, what else would you say? So you work with manufacturers. Like, what would you say to them? Like, if, if what is, what is the problem that you really solve for manufacturers?

Speaker C: I really feel like manufacturing is such an easy target to talk about because they have a fixed number of hours per year that they can produce. And not being able to produce can be catastrophic to the bottom line, period.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: The other side of that is the standards are changing. They're always in flux. So what you have as a solid contract today might be in jeopardy, and that could be catastrophic to the business. Additionally, there are newer, there are new opportunities arising that require higher levels of compliance and higher business operational procedures in order to chase after, and those are usually much more profitable because there are far less companies that can accommodate those needs. So there, there's, there's a lot of movement and there's a lot of opportunity in manufacturing. There's also the pot. There's a great potential of loss.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. Because it's got these fixed assets. Right. And it's really the whole game is how can I sweat the fixed assets to get as much through, through the, the plant as I can? Right. And so it, and I hate to belabor the point, but that's a technical problem, right? Like how, how can you, how, how can you make a machine more efficient? How can you improve quality control? How like all of these things come back to really meaty technical issues that are, that are fun to solve?

Speaker D: Right. Yeah.

Speaker C: Ah, one of the, one of the, one of my first clients, the owner came to me at one point and he, and we were, we were having a conversation about something being offline and he said, he says, do you know that every, every shift that, uh, one of my production lines is down cost me $26,000 and they run two shifts across 36 lines. So one shift at $26,000. Thousand dollars times the number of production lines that could be down. If they have a complete outage across their three sites, that's catastrophic. That paid, that paid for my entire IT support budget for the year in one shift of downtime across the entire company.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, that was a change in the way I thought about things when that conversation happened. It was a one, uh, minute conversation and it totally changed my perspective on what's important to our clients.

Speaker B: So what did you, how would you express that change?

Speaker C: Well, it, again, it was, we were, as a, as an early msp, we were operating from that operational Stability as, as a foundation. And it really highlighted that we didn't understand their business enough to know what was really important to the bottom line.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So we immediately took the approach of I need to understand more about your business. I need to understand more about the little things in your business that can have big effects. Not the um, you know, not that the Internet is offline or the uh, Internet being offline, how catastrophic that might be an issue.

Speaker B: So you put in the redundancy to make sure that, that, you know, but what you're getting at is even more, more specific. Right.

Speaker C: And it definitely made it easier for us to have better conversations. When you go to a client and you say, I would like you to spend an extra thousand dollars a month for an Internet circuit, they, they laugh you out of their office when you say this much downtime happened on your only circuit last year. And that uh, translates to this much lost revenue.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: And here's the fix for it. And it's a fraction of the cost. The, the pen comes out so fast when, when you can explain it as a business problem with a business solution

Speaker B: and put it in numbers that they can understand. And I was also working with somebody the other day who's trying to sell $200,000 project as an MSP to someone that they consider to be very price sensitive, you know, and, and, and we said, well, you know, what, what, what's the benefit? They said, well, you know, if they did this, they'd get $800,000 in, in revenue. You say well wait a minute, that's

Speaker D: not a hard one.

Speaker B: Right? Like that, that's a four time return on, on investment. Like, you know that if you can go in and say I'm going to unlock $800,000 or uh, I'm going to unlock the revenue from all of this lost time last year with this type of investment. That investment can be very attractive income for you and still be amazingly beneficial to them. Which is, which is kind of the idea, kind of the benefit. As technology changes, as things shift, you can develop these new solutions that have a massive impact.

Speaker D: Yeah. Understand, understand the value, what's valuable to your customer. We have a joke in the office on one of our first voip clients. It was a plumber. And you know, it's just, it's just a phone to us. Right. And we learned very early by sitting in his office for a morning when we were in them, implementing that the phone between 8 o' clock and 10 o' clock does not stop ringing. And I said okay. So they got A busy phone system. He doesn't care if his server goes down. He doesn't care if QuickBooks is not available. He doesn't care if email goes down. If the phone doesn't ring. He's out of business. Because the ne. Jeff, if, if you, if you needed

Speaker B: a plumber, all the business, um, if

Speaker D: you needed a plumber and you picked up a phone and you made a phone call and he didn't answer, what would you do? Go to the next. We're on the Internet. You search for. Right. And that was his thing. I can't miss a call ever, you know. Uh, yeah, so the, the thing in the office was it's like, you know, hey, we don't care if the server's down, are the phone's up. You know, it's like to that customer, you have to understand what's the most valuable piece of a customer's business. And that's what you have. You have to get into his is a phone system. If 10 phones, it may be the, the most menial thing to you, but it's the most important to his business. And you should know, you should understand him. That can't go down.

Speaker B: And that doesn't mean. I just want to bring. Come back to this a little bit. That doesn't mean that you have to understand plumbing. What you're understanding is his needs. The plumber has these needs. Those are specific needs that the plumber has or the plumber is out of business. And so there's a technical solution for how you're going to make sure that the plumber can, can get all of his calls between 8 and 10 in the morning. That's beautiful. So where are you guys going to be? Where, where. What's the vision for agility? What's the next five years?

Speaker C: Well, the, the, the change of name that we, that we made a few years ago, we went from innovative IT concepts to agility. And that uh, that was to reflect who we'd become as a company. Innovative IT conc. Concepts was at the time innovation was really important. It was something that was greatly lacking uh, in the pre MSP space. And our move into agility. We feel better defines who we've become as a company. Fast, agile, thorough, accurate. Uh, and that's really what we're continuing to build on in moving forward as a company is just streamlining those things. There's always room for improvement in business. There's always some change that requires adjustment and we're, we've gotten good at shifting and maneuvering and, and staying Very relevant.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: To our clients. And, and that's what's really important to us.

Speaker B: So you're going to continue to build on that and, and you guys see a growth trajectory for the next few years?

Speaker C: We do, we do.

Speaker B: How about the market? I mean, that's the next question I like to ask, just in terms of like, trends in the market. I mean, what do you guys think about the MSP market in general?

Speaker C: The MSP market is. There are a lot of msps.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, I, I feel like generally everything is closing in on the MSP market to some degree. There's a, there's a lot of unskilled MSPs entering the space, a lot of inexperienced MSPs. There are a lot of ineffective tools. There is outside capital that's coming in that, uh, are buying up some of the bigger players in the msp, uh, tool space and a lot of that money is being funneled out to shareholders as opposed to going back into R and D. So tools are an issue going forward in the MSP space. And uh, again, with all that consolidation, you end up with a couple of really good tools and you end up with some really crappy tools. So, uh, there are opportunities for companies that have experience with integrating multiple different tools and not really buying into the stack mentality that allow us to provide superior services. The real, the real question is how do you relay that value in a way that makes sense to your customers, uh, and your prospects? Because there is so much noise about things that are not that important and things that are not solvable.

Speaker B: And uh, I think it's fair to say that the noise is not going to abate. Right. We're going to see more noise. We're going to see, you can see they're useful AI solutions. And then there's a ton of hype. Right. And that's, we're just going to see more and more of that as, as, as we go forward. So certainly it seems like one of the roles that the, uh, MSP is going to be playing is cutting through the, cutting through the noise to get to those, those solutions that really matter to their clients.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm glad you brought up AI. AI is, is a great tool if used properly. It's not a magic wand.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: But, uh, used properly, very valuable tool for things that historically have been very difficult. Cybersecurity for one. A lot of the new tools are incorporating AI, which takes a lot of the manpower needs out of the evaluations and allows for much deeper dives into situations. So great place for that. But again, it's not a magic wand.

Speaker B: Clients think it is, though. It's gonna.

Speaker C: I. That I wear when I'm not, you know, on camera.

Speaker B: No, that's. That's. That's brilliant. Well, any. Any parting words of advice for anybody who's listening? Any. Any thoughts for. For new MSPs or people who are just trying to figure out how to make it work?

Speaker C: Figure out who you're going to be as a company. Make sure everything aligns with that.

Speaker D: Absolutely.

Speaker B: That's great. All right, well, Stu Garzarelli, Michael Ratka, thank you very much for taking some time. It's been great to chat with you and, uh, until next time. All right, guys, well, thank you for, for taking the time and, uh, look forward to few future conversations. And as always, remember, you are loved. So I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. I really appreciate Stu and Mike's approach to their customers and how they're able to work on solving those problems. If you are interested, we have a couple of templates and tools that you can download. We will put a link to our SBR blog post which describes how to have a better qbr, how to have the strategic business reviews that really engage your clients, and we'll also include a link to our SWOT template. That template helps you think through how to have a conversation with your clients about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And if you combine that with asking why, you can often take some of these problems that seem to be completely unrelated to what you do and bring them back to technology, back to real solutions that. That you can deliver that make a huge difference to your clients. So check those out in the show notes and we'll see you next time at uh, Start, Grow, Manage.

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