Episode 48 - 8 Visits a Day: One MSP Prospecting System That Actually Works (w/Guest: Aston Fortuna)

Speaker A: All right, today, very special episode. I had the privilege of interviewing Ashton Fortuna. He runs sales and marketing for an MSP in the Bay area of California called Valley Tech Logic. What's cool about Ashton is that he was a field tech, he was actually a cable puller and he moved into sales and marketing, uh, which he'll talk a little bit about in the interview. For some, he had some personal reasons, wanted to change his job and he fell in love with it. And then he sort of had to build a sales and marketing function and kind of out of thin air for this, uh, msp. So if you are new to sales and marketing or this is also really helpful if you're an owner and you have somebody doing this for you, it's, I think it might be an enlightening perspective to hear the story. But super cool guy, super smart, and he's going to tell you exactly what he's doing. So that couple of days a week he does some in person prospecting and he's closing a couple of thousand MRR a month or more from only a handful of qualified conversations and you could be doing the same thing. Let's do it. Ashton, it's good to see you man. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Speaker B: Nah, thank you for having me. It's great to see you too.

Speaker A: We linked up in person, uh, again, this, uh, only a week or two ago, I guess. A week ago for, in San Francisco.

Speaker B: Yeah. That was awesome. It was a blast.

Speaker A: So for those who don't know who you are, real, uh, quick, set the stage. Tell us who you are and kind of what you do.

Speaker B: Yeah, I senior sales for an MSP in Central California, um, right here in the Valley, Merced. Been um, in sales now for approaching two years. But I've been at this MSP now for three years.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And so yeah, I started off as uh, as a tech.

Speaker A: Got it. So yeah, let's tell me about that real quick. How did you hear about managed services or learn about managed services? Like what got you in and then what's been your sort of journey through the company you're at now?

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So I honestly, before I started working for Valley Tech Logic, I had never heard of msps. You could have asked me a thousand times what MSB stood for. Never would have got it. I actually worked for an alarm company pulling cables and, and setting up and programming alarm systems. And a buddy of mine who left that job was working here and he's like, it's you, you just got to come, you know, you, you got to come work here. And I was like, all right. And so after some life changes, I decided, all right, I'll go work with you. And, uh, started off as a cable puller, and then from cable pulling, learned a little active directory, little password reset, you know, just basics. Um, but as I was doing that, and I really did enjoy it, really loved that aspect of the job. My wife was pregnant with our second child. And, uh, being a cable puller, we do up and down California. So there. There were. Literally, the. The last month of my wife's pregnancy, I stayed in a hotel more than I did at home, just because I was in Sacramento pulling cable. Then we're in Napa pulling cable. And so once my son was born, he was born on a Monday, and I was back at work on Tuesday. And that's when it was just like, something's got to change, man. I talked to my boss at the time, and I told her, is, uh, there anything else I can do? Anything? And she's like, hey, you know, we don't really have a salesperson. You know, you. You seem decent with the clients. Do you want to try that out? And I was like, all right, let's. You know, at least. At least while my son's young. Let's. Let's do that. And three months into it, and I just. I did not expect to like it, let alone fall in love with it and been doing it since.

Speaker A: So you went from being a field guy pulling cable to sales so that you could be at home with your baby?

Speaker B: Yes. Yes. And I got. I got two. So it was an added burden on my wife being home with just the two.

Speaker A: Right. Okay. Out of curiosity, I mean, like, the travel and all that stuff aside, like, the parenting dynamic aside, do you miss being in the field?

Speaker B: Oh, all the time. I do. I. I truly do miss pulling cable. It was just like, being able to see the fruits of your labor is always great. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, being able to look back and be like, man, I did a good job on that one. Or being able to see, like, where you could improve on. But overall, just like, the kind of. The challenging aspect of it, I really

Speaker A: did, like, yeah, yeah, for sure, man. So I love that you came into sales. They just kind of nudged you in, and I think we actually. You looked me up right around that time, did you not?

Speaker B: Correct. So around that time, my first month in sales, I asked for some time at home to be with my newborn. And so they gave me a couple weeks to basically be at home, learn how to be a salesperson. Right. Learn, learn what we offer and everything like that. So you know, first I'm pulling up all of our old contracts to just kind of see exactly what we offer, how our pricing works. And then I'm an, I'm an audio learner. Right. With everything. And so the first thing I did was I looked up on Spotify, different podcasts, start downloading any podcast I could find and then I go on LinkedIn and just same thing. Anybody who is like teaching anything in the MSP industry, I just pulled it all in. So you know, you, Taher, Paul, uh, Green, all those. I just started collecting all the information I could on. Mhm.

Speaker A: I love it. And I remember you seeing your name around in my CRM essentially like you were an MQL for me. You're a guy who's clicking on every, on all the buttons. That was how I first learned what your name was. But you've been at it for a long time and that's what I'm excited to get into today. Especially for the listener who might not know. I, maybe I set this up a little bit and I'll set this up in the uh, the intro. But you are, you're selling now. You're not just trying, you're, you're closing business pretty, pretty reliably. But let me ask you this to, to get into, I want to get into some of the tactics. Would you consider yourself a salesperson or a marketing person?

Speaker B: Oh man, that's tough. Um, I feel like I'm more of a salesperson. I felt, at least I feel more comfortable in that area. I guess I could say, uh, why?

Speaker A: Is it because you do both?

Speaker B: I do. Uh, marketing doesn't give you instant gratification. Right. And that's what I need. I, you know, sometimes marketing is working and you don't even realize it's working. I should say most times marketing's working and you don't realize it's working.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, but with sales, like you could say something and you could see somebody's face change.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: For the good or for the bad.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so I get that instant gratification. I get that, okay, this is working or I need to pull back a little bit right now. And that's why like I always lean towards sales because I feel like I'm better in that area and mainly only because I get that instant gratification.

Speaker A: Yeah. It's like being a sitcom writer versus a stand up comic. The stand up comic, um, there is no feedback loop. The feedback is instantaneous. They hated it. Or they didn't. And if they hated it. Yeah, right. Because then if they hated it, you go, oh, shoot. Then you go up and do another spot later and you try it different versus the, the sitcom writer won't know if that joke is funny for four months.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And then like, even, even to continue that analogy, like, uh, as a comedian, what's funny in this area might not be funny in that area. And so in sales it's the same thing. Like in this industry, this might work, but in another industry it's just not going to work.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure, man. For sure. Okay, first of all, you're a little bit of a unicorn employee. You're one of those guys who will just do whatever. I will spare my, my opinion on your one day paternity leave. Um, and you, you just wanted a job.

Speaker B: Yes. And if I'll, uh, add a little bit of context to that. My wife was 11 days overdue.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And so there was a lot of like, all right, I'm going to be home this day.

Speaker A: All right?

Speaker B: I'm going to be home this day. And I know that through the project. And I, I guarantee you, had I told my boss I absolutely cannot go tomorrow, they would have been okay. All right. Yeah. But my, I was just like, uh, like you said, I'm, I'm. I always describe myself as like a worker bee.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like, I just, I just do and ah, thinking about a job that's like 90 done. That's where my mindset would have been.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I stayed home with my child. I went two days in Sacramento and then came back home. But yeah, it, it was, I knew that if I stayed in that avenue, they would keep asking me to work and I would just keep saying yes.

Speaker A: Uh-huh.

Speaker B: Huh.

Speaker A: Right. Which is, um, probably there's a life lesson in there for anybody who's listening, especially trying to ascend the career ladder in your company.

Speaker B: Right? Yes. And, and saying, yes, sir, may I have another? Because that's typically what it is.

Speaker A: Yeah, tell me about that a little bit. I mean, how has that, how do you think that has played out or how has that supported you or maybe caused problems for you, your new role, your sort of worker be mentality.

Speaker B: Yeah. I will imagine that at first my boss probably didn't like it, uh, because I, it wasn't push back. Right. I never pushed back. But what it was, when something didn't work, I would get very frustrated. Right. Because it's just like, well, we should be doing this and, and we're not doing this but this is what we should be doing. And, you know, it was a lot of just go with the process. Let's just do this. And then finally got to the point where they said, all right, do it your way, right? Just let us know what you're doing, but do it your way. And once I got to that point, that's where I felt like just things kind of took off, right. I. I started canvassing on my own. They want me to do phone. And I. There's a lot of benefits to cold calling, lots of benefits to cold calling. But I realized at that point, at least that point in my sales journey, it was. I wasn't for me yet. But then I jumped to canvassing and, man, these cold visits of just popping in, introducing myself, it just took off, right? And so going through that, having to just like run through doors and hope that's the door that's going to open when I hit is just kind of my whole sales journey. And I mean, I'm still doing it to this day. Just the, uh, nice thing is, is I do have, I guess you could say, like, leadership that says, okay, like, I don't get it, but do your thing, go ahead, have fun.

Speaker A: I mean, that's amazing. I want to hear more. Let's talk about this canvassing, because some of the listeners right now just like, puckered up when you said that you're walking into cool businesses, but you are doing it and it's working. So tell me what you're doing and how you're doing it, and then we'll talk about what it, uh, what working means, like what the results have been.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So, uh, the first thing I always do is at first, again, it's one of those trials and errors things. I was just drive, right? And then I would stop at this place. Oh, look at that place. Looks great. And then I realized, man, I could be way more effective if I targeted a particular area, right? So, like, I'm going to do this, you know, 1 mile radius, and I'm going to go to as many businesses in that one, uh, one mile radius as possible. And then I started to narrow it even more. I'm only going to go to engineering firms within this one mile radius. And by narrowing it that much, it allowed me to know exactly what I was going to be talking about that day. I knew which information to bring with me. So, for example, we do rubber ducks, right? That's part of our little tchotchkes, I guess you could say. So, like, we have this little duck that is Has a tablet like we usually hand this to like medical fields and then we have this little duck that does like, you know, it's a construction duck, right. So I just knew what to bring with me because of that. And then I would just go in. And at first I was trying to make like a big deal out of coming in, right. Trying to have this long conversation. But I learned, man, just keep it simple, just go in. Hey, Ashton Valley, uh, Tech Logic. I don't know if you guys already have an IT provider, but if you don't or if you're unhappy with it, we service your area. Here's a little information, blah blah, blah. From just walking in you get so much information, right? A lot of times you use LinkedIn, Navigator and they'll say 10 to 20 employees or 20 to 50 employees. But you go in and there's three people, right? Well because the rest of the employees are field workers, they're not really going to need or maybe they don't fit your icp.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: But by walking in you could tell immediately whether they kind of fit your ICP. But on top of that, nine times out of 10 whoever's sitting at that desk will say, oh uh, let me, let me get you the card of the person you want to talk to. There you go. And on top of that. So like in California there's, it's pretty strict on the laws on emailing, right? You have to have permission to email them. Well, the second somebody gives you their business card that has their email address, they've basically given you permission to email them to contact them. Yeah, this is the person you want to contact. So because of that, now I know they fit my icp. I know estimated about how many users they have and I know who to contact the next time I go in. So at the end of every single day I shoot an email to everybody I've talked to and if I could get the front desk person, the one that gave me the card, if I could get their card as well, it's even better because then I use her as a champion, right. Hey, thanks so much for getting me in contact with so and so I, I appreciate next time in the I'm in the area, I'll drop you off some donuts, you know, just something along those lines. And um, yeah it's, it's so much easier for me at least conversation face to face.

Speaker A: Mhm. So you started doing this, tell me about how many appointments you were doing in a day, week, month and how many follow ups or meetings were you Booking from it.

Speaker B: Yeah. So at first I was honestly doing like 20 a day.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: But again that's just like the shotgun effect. Right. I was just like going in, leaving whatever I had, talking to whoever I had. Once I got it narrowed down, I'm at like eight a day and I do it about three times a week. Uh, so I'm hitting about 25 businesses a week, say 100amonth. And I'm probably setting up at least two meetings and then I'm closing probably 50 of that.

Speaker A: So you talk to eight people three times a week and you. And every four weeks you're locking down a contract?

Speaker B: I'd say I am locking down a, a meeting that turns into a contract because typically like I'll give you an example. So there is a, uh, there's a town, uh, nearby, what's about an hour away called Sonora.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It's up in the mountains and business up there just moves much slower. So much slower. So I met this person in May and it took from May to November for them to sign of. Uh, just. But it was crazy though because in like June they told us just to let you know we're signing with you. Like we are going to sign with you.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And you hear that a lot. Right. Uh, but I, I'm finding out now more than ever like if they feel that way, maybe they don't sign now, but they're going to. Right. And so it's just for, so for that business it took five months but I knew it was coming. So I have a few and more in my pipeline where it's just like, I know this is only going to take a couple months, but I know it's going to go through.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really important distinction I think especially when the MSP owner that you know, with no sales training traditionally or no sales experience, I should say, it's hard to set reasonable expectations. But I think this is an important thing is that just because you want them to buy today, and frankly just because they want to buy today does not mean that they will or should buy today.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's very uh, it could be very disappointing because I've had pen on paper and then them call me and tell me, hey, I was wrong, we didn't sign a one year contract. We actually signed a three year contract. And so it's going to be a couple more years. Just like, okay, all right, all right. And so like for ones like that, for example, that, that one every about three to six months, I door dash donuts to Them. Right. Because I want them to remember I still exist. And it's great. We still. I actually have the owner's personal cell phone number and we'll text maybe like once a month. So I know a year from now I have something in the pipeline, but it's just you got to be patient.

Speaker A: This is huge, man. And you told me, um, are you comfortable sharing like ballpark, how much MRR you're closing per year?

Speaker B: No, no, no, no, not at all. I don't mind at all. So, um, so we just reworked everything last June. June. So my new quota is 30k a year. Um, and I already exceeded that for the next 12 months. So I think quarter, uh, four of last year I closed 14,450 sick.

Speaker A: So you're quoted at 2500amonth. Ish. Or you know, 7500 a quarter. But you, but you basically overshot. You're 100% up. Are you a calendar year quota?

Speaker B: Well, yeah, so calendar year, yeah, but a rolling calendar. So it just keeps going. So like for example, quarter four will hold me over for three more quarters. Quarters and then it'll get pushed out.

Speaker A: I see. Okay, got it. So here you are, you're closing, you know, between two and five thousand MRR a month.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Would you say that this business visits are how many of these meetings that you're closing are from these business visits versus other sources?

Speaker B: Oh, I'd say at least quarter four. 50% of them was from canvasing visits.

Speaker A: Okay, so you're locking down, call it six deals a year from canvassing. At least six to eight. And then another six to eight deals a year from your other stuff.

Speaker B: Yep. Yeah, that sounds actually pretty accurate.

Speaker A: Okay, so now tell me about the other stuff. Where are the other six to eight coming from?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, I'd say so let's say 50% canvassing, 40% networking. So, so I'm in three networking groups and then I go to like everything. So like tonight there is a tiny little networking group that's mainly candle makers, you know, different things like that, home goods. But I'm going to go because a lot of these individuals I know are married to people who own construction companies. Right. Um, I know one of them there, he's a caterer and he caters for so many big companies. So I'm going to keep going because maybe something good will come from that. Um, and so I do a lot of networking. I'm in a lot of association of realtor groups. And then I would say the last 10% comes from like inbound, from marketing.

Speaker A: Okay. And the inbound would include all of just your generic. I mean do you have any just referrals from your network that just come in without you going out and hunting for them?

Speaker B: Um, so uh, it's funny enough, most of my referrals from the network were actually other people in the group. Right. And so one of my big ones last year was a construction company that the project manager is in our networking group. And so because of that, eventually working with them for a year. I was in the networking group for a year with them before they finally moved their services over to us. I'd say it, most of it comes from like within the group itself. Not really referrals and even right now, so I don't know if I even mentioned it to you. We, I, we recently hired a account, uh, manager because in the last three years we've only gotten one client from referrals from uh, another client. And it's just like that's not enough. Our customers are always telling us they're extremely happy. Right. We have almost 60 clients. We have 59 clients and it's like one every three years is not enough. And so now we have an account manager which part of his rotating task is reminding them, hey, we have a referral program. And since then we've at least we've gotten two leads from this referral program.

Speaker A: Mhm. Man, it's like it makes me think of Robert, you know, Robert Gillette's Sweet Sixteen he used to call it. He's like, Get 16 people that send you a deal a year and go to lunch with each of them twice a year. You got a lunch every three, three lunches a month. And you got 16 logos a year, which is probably more than anybody, near the limit of what you can handle anyway.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: And he added like 10 million ARR in, in his time or something and he sold a lot of managed services and it was almost all from that provisors and networking and just building this core relationships. Um, so okay, here's what I love about this story is that everything you're doing is first of all, it sounds a lot like my journey in my msp. A lot like it. Like, let's just go do it now without really any help and without any disrespect to your leadership team. It sounds like they don't really have any ideas either. They just were like, we need somebody to go and do this and we don't care how you do it because we don't really know how to tell you how to do it.

Speaker B: Yeah, that, that sounds about right. So there hadn't been an actual salesperson in years before, before I got on. Right. So there was a CRM that we used and then, um, we had somebody in inside sales, so if anybody called, they would just transfer them to her. And then if it got to meeting time. Right. Um, then ownership would go on the meeting. But those, I think in 2022, 2023, around that time, um, is when it's just like, okay, there, something has to change. We can't live off of adding two clients a year. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and so that's when I jumped in. And uh, last year we added eight, nine clients. So, you know, just going from two clients to nine clients. And then hopefully this year my, my goal is to eventually get just a client a month.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And, and keep that, keep onboarding team busy.

Speaker A: Yeah, right. And keep in mind going from two to eight, basically with almost no help. Like, this is sheer willpower. You didn't buy feel good MSP membership and get a bunch of coaches and plat. You didn't get tools to support you. You're just kind of doing it live.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. 100. It's all, it's all been trial and error and, and just. Yeah, that, that sheer willpower of like, man, today was really bad and if, if I go into tomorrow with this mindset, it's going to be even worse. So wake up and smile and go to the next one.

Speaker A: Yeah. It makes me think of, uh. You may have heard this before, but I just, I just heard it from a, an athlete. I think she was an Olympian or Junior Olympian or something. She called it the rule of thirds because she did a workout and she like, couldn't complete her workout. And her coach said, well, remember the rule of thirds. When you are chasing your dreams or chasing your goals, you feel good a third of the time, you feel fine a third of the time, and you feel terrible a third of the time. And if those ratios, if you have that ratio, you're going at the right speed.

Speaker B: Mhm. That's, that's, that's good to hear. Because I would say that's probably about right, right there. There. There are days where it's just like, why didn't I say yes to taking this job?

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And then the other days it's just like, okay, I could do this. And then you have those days where you're just like, I'm gonna close somebody today. I just know it. Like, you know, and, and yeah, I mean that, uh, I would say that's about the right ratio.

Speaker A: Yeah. And there's those days when you're like, I could be. I could have some AirPods in just, like, listening to Biggie pulling some cable in some hallway somewhere with nobody bothering me.

Speaker B: It'd be Tupac, not Biggie, but that's okay.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Uh, I, uh, took a guess, uh, which rappers you like. No, man. Like, it could. It could be so much easier, like, if you don't say to yourself once a month, this could be, why am I doing this? Then? You're. I don't think that your goals are big enough.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, no. And. And it. Honestly, like, I always find a way to seg my wife. My wife into everything. So just, uh, warning you now, my wife is. Is the best one to just, like, remind me on those days, because I. I've come home and I've been just, like, I don't know how much longer I got left in me in this avenue. And she will be the first to be like, just last Friday, you were saying, man, I love my job so much. Like, it just the old adage of this too shall pass. Yeah, it's just reminding yourself that this too shall pass.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, and I've met your wife, and she kicks ass, and she is awesome. Um, and it's actually, you know what? I think it's a good segue because I want to talk about the. I want to talk about support system for you as a salesperson. So, uh, obviously, good advice is, hey, have a great life partner who supports you and also challenges you and holds you accountable. That's good life advice. That's not necessarily action everybody can take right now, but what role has having her and any other supportive, like, support system around you that you've been able to build, what role has that played in you being able to quadruple the business's growth rate as well as start a new profession? Everything you've been able to do in the last two years.

Speaker B: Oh, it's. It's every. It's literally 100 everything. Uh, at least for me. And now I. I know some people are. Are those lone wolves. They rely on themselves and. And they succeed. That's great. For me, I realized having somebody like my wife in my life who's just. When I'm having a bad day, she's not always just going to be like, come on, Ashton, you. You got to get through this. Sometimes she's just like, yeah, have a bad day. That's okay. You know, it was a rough Day today, go lay down. I'll take care of the kids for a couple hours. Then, you know, then you can get up. And then, you know, then there are other days where she's just like, you got this, like, I know this is tough, but like, get out there and you can do this. And then just having somebody you could celebrate a win with is always fantastic. Right. Um, knowing that like I'm in a meeting and I can shoot my wife a text message saying it's, it's not going great. And then she's probably going to reply something like, you're overthinking it. Just keep smiling, keep your head up. And you got this in the home life, that helps. Right? And then even having like a supportive. The owner of the company, super supportive. Right. He celebrates my wins with me and he knows if, if I lose something, probably don't talk to me that day because I take, I take my wins as that's my job and my losses as it was 100% my fault. And you know, it's just the way I've operated and. But having that kind of support system in there where it's just like, I don't understand what you're doing, but just keep doing it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, it's, it's been everything for me.

Speaker A: Mhm. I think it's good, It's a good reminder for everybody that the lone wolf thing. Yeah. You know that the old African proverb, which is amazing. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. So this whole lone wolves succeeding, I am actually not convinced that anybody's doing that. I think there are lone wolves achieving what they set out to achieve, but I, I very rarely see a, quote, lone wolf actually achieving their potential.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I can say that true, because I, I, uh, would say a lot of my, uh, I probably on my own, I probably would have exceeded my own expectations. Right. But knowing like hearing my wife tell me, no, Ashton, you could do much more than this. And then hearing ownership say, man, that's great. Next year I know you could double this. Uh, you know, having those things, like, it is a realization that like having other people in your corner don't. Doesn't just help you get where you want to be, but it helps you get to where you, you didn't even think you could be.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. Um, I want to do something that's a little bit bizarre.

Speaker B: Oh, I'm all for it.

Speaker A: Okay. Um, could we do so for the listener? You and I have talked candidly About? We've talked casually about working together one day.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And that's not why you're here. But I have never coached you. You have never had a co. A sales coach, me or anybody else. You've been, you've read books and I know you've got like, the MSP camp crew has always been supportive to you and you've got vendors with whom you have good relationships.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: But, um, I wonder if just as an experiment, you would let me ask you some questions, Some coaching questions.

Speaker B: I'm all for it.

Speaker A: Okay, so let's start with some practicals and then I want to pivot into some mindset stuff. Okay.

Speaker B: For sure.

Speaker A: And, and later, if you're like, this was weird, we'll cut it all out. Deal?

Speaker B: Deal. Deal.

Speaker A: Okay. First of all, I just, I just used two sales tactics on you. The first thing I did was I, uh, well, I just created what Sandler would call an upfront contract. I just told you what was going to happen. What we call feel good, we call it the glass door. I told you what was on the other side of the door so that you knew whether or not you wanted to walk into it, and then I gave you permission to leave. That's, that's psychology 101 in sales. I didn't even notice I was doing it. And then I realized, oh, wait, hang on. This is a coachable moment. So what's your ballpark?

Speaker B: Me?

Speaker A: What's your average? So your average deal size is what, 2,000, MRR?

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, that's. I think when I did it earlier today, it was like 19 something. 1975, something like that. So 2000. Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. Which is like roughly how many users?

Speaker B: Uh, let's see, probably like 15.

Speaker A: So you charge in the 125 to 175 a seat.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yep.

Speaker A: Okay. Um, how do you feel about your price? Like, do you want it to be higher or do you feel like you're, are you guys making enough money with it like this?

Speaker B: I feel like right now this is great. Right? The, the price is good, uh, for, for what they're getting now. I do know eventually as we grow as an msp, that price has to go up.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, in order for us to be able to, to offer what we want to offer them. Uh, but in, in our area, I feel like the 125 to 175 is, is competitive but also palatable. And that's kind of where we're trying to stay.

Speaker A: Okay. Um, what are you doing in total

Speaker B: revenue Again, total revenue probably just over 2. 2 million.

Speaker A: 2 million. How much of that is the cabling projects and stuff?

Speaker B: Oh, that's none. Sorry. That's. That's annual reoccurring revenue.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I actually do not know how much we get on project work anymore.

Speaker A: Okay. Because that's a separate division or a separate company.

Speaker B: It's a separate division. Same company. Um, so we, we call that the quality assurance team. So.

Speaker A: Got it. So you're, you're specking out. You're doing RFPs for obviously, big cabling jobs. If you're traveling multiple states, you're doing big cabling jobs and access control or whatever, uh, as well. But that's a different team.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker A: Okay. Was it a cabling company turned msp?

Speaker B: No, it was a software company turned msp. And then during COVID it was like, how do we keep the guys busy?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so we started offering the companies that we managed, like, hey, if you ever want us to replace all your cabling, you know, jump you up to Cat 6, let us know. And it's just kind of gone from there. Cool.

Speaker A: Okay, so a couple million in revenue, your goal for 20, 26. What's your MRR goal for 26?

Speaker B: 30. Uh, 35,000. I want to, I want to exceed the 30,000 by a couple of deals.

Speaker A: Okay. 5,000 divided by 1800 or 1900 is your average deal size. So that's 18 average deals.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay, so that's a good, it's a nice and aggressive goal. Or we go for bigger than average deals, of course.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Now you already know how you're going to source 12 of those.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: If you just do exactly what you did before, you should get close to that, barring any kind of global differences. Uh, by global I just mean like, um, overriding factors like economic downturns or whatever. So where are you going to get the other six?

Speaker B: That's where I have been starting to do a little bit more outreach. So I've started to do like we're doing a golf course in, in two weeks, Right. We're going to do a golf tournament. I'm going to try, try that out. Um, we did get one client last year from setting up a booth at a small business expo. And it's like, okay, maybe if we got one client from a small business expo, maybe doing a little bit bigger, we could get two clients. Right. And so that's. It is, it is a lot of hopes and dreams from it coming either inbound or non organically.

Speaker A: Okay. Are you running any ads?

Speaker B: Uh, no, okay, okay.

Speaker A: Um, so look, this, this, this is what we do. And adding more deals. It's really important to set, important to set good goals. And I think it's very important that your goals are aggressive. It's also very important that your goal is rooted in a. Like that you can reverse engineer the goal.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker A: Because if you can't reverse engineer the goal, the word for that is wish.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Um, you can reverse engineer it, but you're still, I mean, we're already a quarter of the way at this, at the time of this recording, it's early April. This probably won't draw for a month or two because we're, we have a bunch of banked interviews. But at the time of this recording, how much MRR have you done year to date?

Speaker B: Done year to date? 33.

Speaker A: 3300.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm a little behind the eight ball there.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And then, uh, right now I have 32,000 in my pipeline.

Speaker A: Okay. And you said you typically close 50%, is that right?

Speaker B: Yes, correct.

Speaker A: So we're going to decay. We're going to do 50% of that and then what we're going to do is decay 10% of the pipeline, of the total pipeline, to call it time atrophy and things that might not close within the calendar year. So we're going to go to 32,000. We're going to reduce by 10% down to 28. 8. We're going to cut that in half. And you're looking at, you've got about 14, 4 in your pipe. That should close.

Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds about right.

Speaker A: Okay. Plus the 33 got in the bank, that puts you at 17. So that's exactly, I think that's exactly half.

Speaker B: Mm, mhm.

Speaker A: So you need to source another, call it 38,000 in pipe. That will be again a 10%, kind of like total attrition, uh, as a buffer. And then you'll close half of it. So you need to close 38k in pipe. I think that's a very neat 20 deals. How's my math? 1900 times 20. Perfect. You need to source 20 opportunities that can close, which really means if you have an average of 90 day sales cycle. Mhm. You need to source all of those by the end of Q3.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Does that sound right so far?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: All right. It is right now the beginning of Q2. That means you have six months to find 20 deals. I'm not trying to make you sweat. I know this isn't fun, but you need to source 20 opportunities in the next six months. Some people love being in a program where they can learn a little bit of information at a time, over time, and build some habits. But some people, they don't have 12 months, they don't have six months. They need to come up now. They need to increase their confidence, increase their skills. They have leads coming in and they need to close them at the highest margin, highest rate of efficiency. I'm speaking to those people right now. We are launching the first ever Feel Good Close certification in a three day boot camp in person in Burbank, California. With me, August 25th, 6th and 7th of 2026. I'm going to be leading a group of 10 individuals through the first ever certification, which means you're the first people in the world to be certified in this sales methodology. And I'm going to go through about 25 hours of intensive, small group in person training where you're going to get role played to death. You're going to learn all of it with repetition. You're going to leave with a tremendous amount of confidence and a certification that you have to pass, that you cannot purchase, that validates that you now know how to sell using the Feel Good Close. If you're interested in this, you can go to feelgoodmsp.combootcamp to learn more and grab your seat. Each seat is $6,000 plus travel and many of those seats have already been filled, which means right now there are less than 10 opportunities left across everyone listening to this podcast to be in this inaugural group. If that's you, don't wait. Feelgoodmsp.com Bootcamp we'll see you in Burbank. But you need to source 20 opportunities in the next six months.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. Let's even break that down further. That is, call it one opportunity a week. Meaningful opportunity a week. That's all. Mhm. Mm. You're kind of doing that already. Well, you're sourcing. You said you're getting two a month from your eight business visits. Three days a week.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker A: So is there anything stopping you from going to 16 business visits on each day instead of eight?

Speaker B: Is there anything stopping me? No.

Speaker A: Okay. Is the city big enough? If you added probably 30% more research time for 100% more contacts. Right. Because you're already doing the research.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Do you think that there's enough out there for you to do that?

Speaker B: Yes. The hard part is we're kind of sandwiched between two larger cities. Right. And so in order for us to, to get these healthier businesses right, the more ideal clients, it's about an hour drive, maybe 45 minute drive.

Speaker A: Okay. But in a way of making it especially worth it to if you gotta drive two hours roundtrip just to get into the city, it's a lot more efficient to get 16 visits done or 20 visits done versus eight. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's uh, it's. Yeah, correct.

Speaker A: So if who's doing the research for those visits? All you? Me? Mhm. Okay, how are you scraping those that business contact information? How are you putting it in the CRM? How are you doing that?

Speaker B: Yeah. So first, uh, thing I'm going to do is let's say I plan my route, right. And I typically plan my route around what other meetings I already have. Um, so for example, let's say I have a meeting in Fresno, California, uh, which is about an hour drive from us at 10:00am Right. So I am now going to ensure that I use something like

Speaker A: ChatGPT, um,

Speaker B: or Claude, uh, to I take a screenshot of the map within and I'll add a 1 mile radius and I will do the thing, what I always do. Give me all the engineering firms in this one mile radius. Right. So it pulls up this list. Let's say it's 17. I look up every single one of their websites and then on top of that I go to every single one of their LinkedIns. If they have a LinkedIn M using that list of 17, I've usually whittled that down to that 8 to 10. And then that's the list I take with me. And then I use Apollo to ensure that if I could get the CFO or the controller or whatever case like that.

Speaker A: Okay, so Apollo is your like formal data sourcing tool, but you're using AI to help you jumpstart this centralizing of those offices.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker A: Okay. And then you're checking their websites or LinkedIn to make sure that the company's still in business and is real and all that.

Speaker B: Correct. And then it also gives me like, I mean I love when businesses have meet our team. That's like the greatest thing in the world.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's easy. I mean you can see their headshots and stuff.

Speaker B: Um. Right.

Speaker A: Okay, how ballpark me. How many hours does it take you to do that to prep a day?

Speaker B: Um, maybe about an hour, hour and a half per day.

Speaker A: Okay, hear me out. A bunch of the text listening are going, I could build a robot that could do that for you. And they could, and we all know that. And you could sometimes people over engineer stuff before I think you should do something wrong for like six Months before you engineer it to do it perfectly.

Speaker B: I, I couldn't agree more.

Speaker A: If I was you or if I was in your corner, if I was your coach and we needed to sell Valley Tech on you getting a new asset, here's how I would do it. I would go through the numbers and this is all recorded. You could go back, you could show them this clip right now, okay, and say, hey, this is our goal for the year. This is our year to date performance. These are our projected metrics. This is how much pipelining needed source. Because we essentially need to run a, call it a 2.1x pipeline, which is that math that I did, right? If you close 50% and then I think if you have a high close rate, it's always a good idea to have a buffer on top. Specifically when you have long sales cycles because to your point, you might source 20,000, but they, they're in contract for six months, right? Uh, and they're not going to close this year, so they don't count. So we say we need to run a 2.1 or 2.5x pipeline. Our average deal size is this big. So we need to source this many opportunities. It takes me this many hours to do those. Blah, blah, blah. If so facto, I don't want to invent a new sort of communication vector. I want to use the one that already works. However, if you let me hire a virtual marketing admin in Armenia for $12.50 an hour, I will teach them how to use this and their job. By the way, if you don't want them to have access to your CRM, what CRM do you use?

Speaker B: Uh, we use a homemade CRM.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: We're a software company, so it was built by ownership.

Speaker A: Do you like it?

Speaker B: I like it. I don't mean to throw any names out there, but it's way better than keep. Ah, because that's what we were using before. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. All right then I don't want to, um. Okay, yeah. I don't want to pick any unwinnable fights on uh, the CRM side, but if you're going well, you don't have a seat cost for a license. So you could just give this admin a license with custom permissions to upload lists. And you say your job is source contact records by radius to city center or by radius to other place. Here's the checklist of parameters. They have to have X amount of employees, X amount of time in business, blah blah blah. And then we have three categories of high degree of Confidence, average degree of confidence, low degree of confidence, and you make that field. And this person's job is to spend five hours a week sourcing records.

Speaker B: Yeah, that would be fantastic.

Speaker A: That would be. That would cost you. If my math is any good, that's $300 a month. Like you probably pay more than $300 a month in marketing, in other licenses that people aren't even using.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's probably true.

Speaker A: So if they go, hey Ashton, we don't want to spend any money right now. You go, yeah, great, thank you for sharing. You asked me to double my performance and here's how I'm going to do it. I could have pitched to you, Mr. Owner, hire me a cold caller for six grand a month. But I'm not doing that. Instead you give me $300 a month. We'll use the tools that we have at our current disposal. But now, by the way, Ashton gets three to five hours of a week back. That's 10% of your work week. Think about how much you can do in a week. Add 10% to that. That's what you're going to get back instantly for the low, low cost of $300 a month. And then you'll have all of those records and then you can have them organize them for you. Or if you are um, much of a vibe coded guy, this is one that I'm in the middle of. Like this is the vibe coding tool that feel Good is trying to build. So this'll be a tool that I have pretty soon which is you just upload either a lead list from your C, it integrates with your CRM or you upload a CSV and it will make you a Google Maps route of where you should go. And then a simple like pop up GUI of like the fields that you want to remember so your notes and then you ha. You have a voice detect function on it so that when you walk out of the business you go 17 users. This, the CEO's name is Sally, the controller's name is Earl. They have a contract right now, but they definitely want to talk again. Send them email uh, tomorrow and send them donuts in six months. Click Enter and then it goes okay. And then it will just auto Google Maps you to the next person on the list.

Speaker B: And that's what's being launched tomorrow, the map.

Speaker A: No, I don't have the map feature yet but it's on my uh, that's something I'm trying to build, right? I'm, I'm actively trying to build this. By the time this airs, that map function might already exist. But if you went go on Tech Tribe and tell some techie to be like, hey guys, who wants the notoriety of being the one who built this for me? And one of them will vibe code this for you in one day. But if you did everything I just said, I think it's actually reasonable to expect that we're going to hit 35k. Mhm. But if we wait until July to go, God, what are we going to do? It's not very likely you're going to hit that goal, just statistically.

Speaker B: No, I, I mean that. That all sounds 100 accurate. Right. Um, and last year, you know, like, I, I think I told you, we had one of the best Q4s we've ever had. But that was built on what we did in Q1, Q2, Q3, and then that was just. That was the fruits of our labor. Right. And so that's why right now, you know, even in, in going to that, you know, the, the Feel Good MSP event last week, that was all on the work that I'm putting in now. So it, you know, the, the return of that meeting is. I'm already seeing the, the dividends from it. Right. So being. Being able to talk to you more on, you know, on a podcast like this. But on top of that, it's so nice to be able to say, you know what, I am doing those things, but being able to show ownership that, like, other people are doing those things too and they're finding success. So let me just keep doing this. Yeah. Uh, and so it's just. You're right. I mean, if I wait until July, none of this is going to work out. Yeah, well, more than likely it isn't going to work out.

Speaker A: It's just going to be way harder for you than it needs to be, you know?

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker A: But the. A lot of times people set bigger goals and they forget that the easiest path of the bigger goal is just take the thing that works now and do it way more and then take the thing that works the least and edit it out of your work life.

Speaker B: It's. It's funny because you talked about how everything needs to. You need to be able to deconstruct every successful thing you do. My, My favorite part of this job really is creating SOPs. Uh, because I'm a firm believer that if it worked and then you could replicate it, if you could do it, make it work again, then you just need to just keep doing it that way and then work to improve. Don't try to redo it, just continue to work to improve it.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Um, and I think that's why you're never going to stop being successful. I'm going to ask you one more coaching question. Let's say 2026 comes and goes. You hit your goal within 10% of variance, everybody's happy. 2027. And the powers that be say, great, now we need to double it. We have to do 70,000 net new MRR. And you are only allowed to change up to two things. So these need to be, uh, they need to at least be quasi realistic, reasonable. Meaning you can't be like, I gain psychic power so that I can speak to everybody at once. That's not what I'm talking about. But any two decisions, we can, we can suspend belief a little bit. Meaning, assuming there's some budget for it, you're allowed to make two decisions that change what you're doing today, next year. And those are the only two things you get to do to double your results. What are those two things? And why?

Speaker B: Call me selfish, but the first thing I'm doing is giving myself a promotion. And there's, there's logic behind, uh, the, the logic behind it is it'll allow me the freedom. So little fact about me. I work two jobs. This isn't my only job. Well, yeah, I, I, I also, I also clean model homes on the weekends so I stay busy. And I, and I do this so my wife doesn't have to work. Right. Being, um, able to cut that out. Right. Because my income has increased by 50%. Uh, that allows me to use that time to reinvest into the company itself. And I've already seen the more I invest in the company, the better it does.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay. So that's my first thing is, it is put myself in a position to be able to invest more. The second thing I'm doing is I'm hiring a true sdr.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I, I'm not at that point where I feel like I could hand off what I know to somebody else. I wish I could. Uh, but I just, I, I don't feel like I'm at that point yet. But if I had somebody who can take 30% of the mundane things that I know I have to do, but let them do it, and then I get my 30% back. Plus I get whatever I got from being able to quit that second job, well, now I know I can hit 70k a year. I know I can do it with myself and an SDR and our account representative.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: That would Be my two things.

Speaker A: Okay, so these are great answers. And then if there's one thing that's. If you had to pick one more thing but it isn't related to personnel, what would that be? A process to improve. A process to eliminate a tool to migrate from a new uh, whatever a new function that you want to build.

Speaker B: Oh man, that's a good question. Um, I will say uh, you got me excited about the whole map thing. Reason being is I'm very big on like make your blows count, right? Any one of us a shotgun's effective, right? Like you're gonna hit something eventually. Uh, but it's. I have seen when I've had some of my best days is when I fine tuned it to where I knew exactly who I was going to go see. Right. I knew beforehand these people qualified. I knew beforehand that my time wasn't going to be wasted. I mean any tool that makes your time more effective is, is like the only tool you should be using it honestly should because uh, with, with everybody else like your time is the most valuable resource you have. And so uh, I never even thought about having something pre built and using having somebody else scrape, throw it on the map. I open my map, my notes are there. So I don't know if you set it up for that, but that's a good one.

Speaker A: I didn't that honestly. It's just an idea that came to me uh, not that long ago and I've been working on it. I think a lot of people are working on it and some people might have already built it but we did build, I do some, some work with uh, an MSP in Canada and we vibe coded something for this. So when they wanted to do basically customer visits we say like the, the top 10. We built this tool that says the, the clients who need visits, like when they drop below a certain client health score, then uh, they're triggered that they need an in person visit. And then we map out uh, X amount of them in a re by region and then we order them by basically what is the most logical, straightest path. Like Google Maps does like what is the least amount of driving to hit every one of these destinations from portal A to every destination back to portal A and then it just goes here's the order and then it just Google Maps is that sequence. My CTO at ah, that company, he built that in four hours. So in the first time it was like oh oops, it has you trying to like drive through Lake Ontario. Okay, we fixed it, um, and then it was fine. And it exists. I don't know how, what he built it on, I don't know. But he built it. The reason I'm asking this question, Ashton, are this. I think that your goals should be astronomically larger than they are. And I don't just mean, hey, try to sell 300,000 this year. What I mean is I think that you need to start thinking five years at a time, not one year at a time. Because. Well, the reason I say that is that you have this student mindset. And this is what I told you when we were at uh, that speakeasy in San Francisco. Shameless. Plug lead gen roadshow dot com.

Speaker B: Fantastic. Worth it.

Speaker A: Go. Thank you. We were there and I was like, dude, everywhere you go, you just show up like this humble student. You're taking notes and listening to everybody and nobody knows that you're out there doing the work. You're crushing it. And you're not stuck in student mode where you're not hiding behind learning so that you don't have to do it. And your ego is not in the way where you're like, I don't need to learn anything. So you're a, uh, you're a worker bee who's willing to upskill himself. And for that reason, I think you need to start thinking big picture. Like, what do we do? How do we sell 200,000 mrr a year? What three things would you need to build? Because it's gonna start helping you make deeper cuts where they need to be. And there's probably some editing. I'm guessing there's some editing you could do right now into like, who has access to your calendar, what other side. I'm guessing. And I hope this doesn't sound like I'm, you know, Valley Tech. I've never met anybody else at your company. They're obviously know what they're doing, they're growing. But I'm guessing because you're such a get it done guy that you get pulled here or there into things that aren't your job from other people who are like, well, because Ashton can get it done. Let's just bug him. Let's just ask him real quick if he can help us with this thing.

Speaker B: Oh, for sure.

Speaker A: But if we start thinking of your time as, hey, every single day he is, uh, worth $100 in mrr. Think about that. Because you only work 21 business days a month, your goal is actually, uh, 3000 mrr a month. That means every day is worth 150 mrr with a 10 year lifetime average. Think about that. That's 1800 times 10. Every day of your time is worth $18,000. Lifetime average over the next 10 years. So should you give two hours to you plunging the toilets in the office? You know, how do you know what

Speaker B: I did the other day?

Speaker A: I mean, you know, or uh, or whatever like you, hey, could you help us move the water cooler? Hey, could you do this? Hey, we' for delivery. Can you stay here and wait for it? No, you should not do any of that. And I'm not telling you this so that you, you become self important. I'm telling you this because it's actually very humbling to remember that your time is worth a lot of money to other people. And I think we should be thinking of you as a long term wealth creation resource for the owners of ValleyTech.

Speaker B: No, I truly get that and that's ah, I think the hard part. And, and I, I have a hard time saying no. That's like my biggest thing. Um, honestly, uh, you could ask me right now if I can go do something for you and I'd probably say yeah, yeah, I got you. Don't worry about it. You're absolutely right. It is. There are days where like afterwards I, I realize only 50% of my day was dedicated to something that's going to bring in money. Right. In one way, shape or form. Uh, when you talk about it in the term of more than one year, that's where you do see the value. Right? Because you're right. $180, 150 a day. Uh, that's, that's, that's decent chunk of change. Right. Uh, but when you, when you scale it up to $18,000 a day. When you scale it up, I mean, just not. You don't even have to scale it up that high. You realize the value of like how much this person's day affects the business. Yeah.

Speaker A: So then all of a sudden we start thinking of your time like more of a asset and less of a resource. Right. We can invest you because everywhere we point you improves. So we should be pointing you at the most critical things. That's my food for thought for you and I want you to think about that. Um, and that's part of what I mean by you should be thinking. Somebody once told me, if you don't have a 100 year plan, nobody will ever remember you. And I. So I have a 100 year plan now. I don't have every year fleshed out. I'm not that egotistical to assume I know what's gonna Happen. But I know what I want the world to be like because I did what I did 100 years from the day I die. That's my objective, and that's how I roll. Okay. I'm just a grandiose guy, but I think this was helpful. I think, hopefully it was helpful for you, and I think it's helpful for every listener to this, uh, isn't a plug to get coached by me. I'm not that impressive. But having a benevolent third party who is constantly pulling your chin upwards and forcing you to look at everything that you've already achieved, and then also holding you accountable to the greatness that you're capable of, I don't see how that doesn't significantly impact your success, your net worth, your income, and your results.

Speaker B: No, I mean, that. That all makes sense. It's.

Speaker A: It.

Speaker B: It goes back to the whole, like, uh, if you. If you don't stand for anything, you'll fall for anything. If you don't stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything. Right? And it. It just. It reminds you that, like, okay, what am I here for? Like, what. What is the end goal of all of this? And then I think sometimes, uh, especially myself included, my end goal is the end of the day. Right. Like, what do I want to accomplish at the end of the day? But stretching that out further, Right. My end goal for the year is to close $35,000 in MRR. That's it.

Speaker A: Yeah, but.

Speaker B: Right, but there's got to be more to, uh, that.

Speaker A: Yeah, but could we. Could we accomplish that by building infrastructure that will create more money for you next year? So that next year, just by showing up, you close 25,000 simply because of the infrastructure that you put in. You know, like, you could spend your days watering your field, or you could spend your months building an irrigation system.

Speaker B: Uh-huh.

Speaker A: So the next year you don't have to do anything. And then the next year you can build. You can buy more land with all your time and scout more places. So the last thing I'm going to say to you is my encouragement is, uh, this whole, like, you say yes a lot, that's a huge asset to you. But consider this, that if you say yes to everything, then your yes doesn't mean anything.

Speaker B: That's deep.

Speaker A: So, um, when somebody comes to you and goes, hey, could you close this ticket for me? Could you handle this password reset for somebody? The answer can be yes, but the yes should be associated with the true cost. This is something that my EA does to me all the time. Because I go, I'm going to start doing this. And she goes, great. What would you like me to delete from your calendar so that you can say yes to that? And I go, what? No, Everything on my calendar have to stay there. She goes, I see. So what do you want to do? And it's drives me up the wall every time because I have this imaginary. We talked about this. We're both neurospicy. We both have, we both have, uh, uh, when you have adhd, time is not linear. Time is binary. It is now and not now.

Speaker B: Yes. Yes.

Speaker A: So if you go, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna do that. Because you're an opportunist, you're a yes man. You're excited. But also because that's how your brain is works, and it's, uh, a, it's a huge asset, and it's also a massive liability. So when people ask you for, for a yes, make sure that they understand that your yes has a price. Yeah, I could, yes, but it means this. Or you say, unfortunately, that is not in alignment with what my goals are. So I, I don't see that being helpful to us long term.

Speaker B: Brian, you're really starting to sound like my wife.

Speaker A: What a compliment. Look, man, I appreciate all you're doing, and I, I, I also, I want to put a button on this interview here. I want to make sure that you get a chance to talk to the listener and, and give some advice. Because I, um, hope that nobody interprets the fact that I wanted to give you some feedback as a lack of respect for what you do and what you're capable of doing, what you're already doing. So to the average listener right now, like you've listened to this podcast, you know, um, we always try to make sure that there's, we're above reproach on the question of was this a helpful episode? What advice do you have to the salesperson, marketing director, VP or head of sales, whatever you would categorize yourself as, who's looking at this goal, looking at an empty calendar like you were maybe looking at what they don't know how to do. What's, uh, what's some advice that you'd give to somebody in that situation, to yourself? Two years ago?

Speaker B: I don't feel slighted by anything you asked me whatsoever. And even if I did, that's a good thing, right? You, you should always be learning. Even if, if what you're learning right now isn't applicable right now. Uh, sometimes it's really important to learn what you shouldn't learn, right? You. You need to learn what you, what you shouldn't know, because you just filter all of that out. Um, I, I went on a learning escapade when I first started, and I took in every information I could, and every single one of you, you know, you teach a little bit differently, right? There are some, there are some themes, uh, throughout, but the nuggets that are, that are in there, like, you pull from it and you apply it to yourself, and you just, you just can't stop learning. It sounds so cliche. Um, but, you know, I, I think of. It's funny because, um, I'm a huge football fan. Love football. Vince Lombardi, the Super bowl trophy is named after Lombardi trophy. Used, uh, to walk in to the locker room holding a football and tell the entire team, this is a football. Everybody in that room knew what a football was, right? But he, he always ensured that the basics were so ingrained into their mind. Every single time you learn, every time you read a, uh, a book, every time you listen to a podcast, every time you watch a YouTube video, you just need to ingrain those basics and then pull what you want from it. I talked to Jacob a couple months ago, and, and I said, like, the feel good msp. And this is, uh, look it, we are not a benefactor of your services. We're not a client of your services. Uh, but if there was going to be a training we would use, it would be yours. And that is not just me trying to inflate your ego. It's because I have listened to all of these different individuals, and it's just like, okay, I relate. I resonate with this person the most. Find who that is for you, right? It might not be Brian. It might be somebody else. Find who it is. But also, don't limit yourself to that knowledge that they give. But love of all that is holy. Take everything you can, filter what you don't want to know, that's fine. But take it all in. And. And I wish I would have even taken more in when I first started that. Like, that's my only regret. And I think back, like, I don't know how I could have found more time to listen to more, watch more, read more. But I'm sure I could have found it somewhere and maybe I would have found success a day, a week, a month earlier.

Speaker A: Hmm. I love it, dude. Um, you're. As I said, your trajectory in life is up and to the right, not just in sales. And so that's uh, it's cool to hear what you do and it's. I love hearing your perspective. I got a lot out of this. I'm. I'm really excited by the business stuff you're doing. I hope I. Well, I know for a fact people did and they'll email me if you liked, uh, Ashton's interview. I want you to. And if you got something out of it, email me, Brian Feel good MSP.com and tell me and then I will tell Ashton because I bet he would feel really encouraged. Or, Ashton, if anybody wants to get a hold of you or be in contact with you for any reason, are you open to that? And if so, how do they do?

Speaker B: So, yeah, 100%. I connected with so many people. I. On, um, LinkedIn, on everything else. I love it because you learn something from, from anybody. So reach out to me at Ashton. Ah, valleytechlogic.com um, and yeah, like, let's jump on a call tomorrow. Like, honestly, I want to learn from everybody.

Speaker A: Sick. I love it, man. And I'll probably link your. I'll put your LinkedIn profile perhaps in the show notes as well. Just so, uh, you know, good people should be connected with good people. Dude, we. I held you way longer than I said I was going to and, uh, I, I had a lot of fun. But thank you so much for being here on the podcast, for everything you do and keep at it.

Speaker B: Thank you. Appreciate it.