It’s Not the Tech—It’s the Team

 I worked with a lot of people that had a lot more humble mindset where you can look around to the guys, the left and right of you and see the things that they’ve done. I don’t really wanna put anything out about me ’cause I haven’t done nearly as much as what these other people have done. Yeah. So how could I possibly do better?

So I learned that you have to really slow down a little bit, take a step back, explain why we do things, what it’s gonna do for them, what it’s gonna do for us, and why it’s critical to support the business. What you did in the military, you’re kind of doing for our clients, right? So you’re reviewing and, and you’re out there and you’re scanning, and then if.

We don’t get that. Right. It could blow up. If you think they’re implied, you’re gonna miss it. To me, it just doesn’t seem important. I, I’d rather show you who I am and the fun I’m having versus what I have, but when you’re helping without someone troubleshooting or looking into it first, it is actually hurting the business.

It’s hurting the level one’s development. It’s hurting their growth. It’s hurting their trajectory, and how to figure this stuff up for themselves. Take a step back and revisit Exactly. Each piece of the business security has gotten so good that systems aren’t the things that are breached anymore. People are breached.

I will say this, when you as a company hire the right partner in the right country, it can work greatly. Mm-hmm. There’s one thing that all champions have in common. They get shit done, so welcome to the Get Shit Done Experience. All right. Well, whoa. Well, we are back at it again. This is the Get Shit Done Experience, also known as the GSDX podcast.

I’m talking to you right now and I’m thanking you. I’m very grateful. For the likes, comments, rates, reviews, please keep ’em coming. Hey, you know, it’d be really cool if you enjoy this show, if you share it with a friend, a family member, it would help us greatly. And by the way, if you wanna be a guest on the show, I’m like a DM away.

All you gotta do is uh, send me a DM on LinkedIn or Instagram or, or anywhere, and I respond at really weird times of night. So be ready. If you send me a note, I will respond. And by the way, if you comment on our content, like within 10 minutes, I’m going to comment back. I really appreciate you and I want you to know that when you show love, I’m gonna show you love back.

So if you wanna be on the show, let me know. If you know somebody at your organization that should be on the show, I would love to talk to them. We’re all about promoting great people who get shit done, and that’s why we’re here today with Mr. Nick Zillow. He is the director of sales for GSD Technologies and TTSG.

Welcome to the show, Nick. Thank you. Excited to be back. Well, I mean, I mean, we just, I have, I think I’m starting to get a routine here. Every, every three weeks I’m on this. We got like a thing going here. This is nice, right? I mean, you just keep getting shit done. I need to keep pee putting people on the show to get shit done.

This is really happening. It’s very good. But we’ve got somebody today that we want to introduce to you because, um, you know, I’m a little reluctant when we bring somebody into the organization to like just pop ’em on the podcast right off the bat. ’cause you know, you gotta feel the vibe. They gotta get in kind of into the fold.

They gotta like learn where the bathroom is and, uh, they gotta kind of get a feel for things. And by the way, they also have to show some results. And I gotta tell you like, uh, our guests that we have today, ’cause Nick and I are gonna kind of co-host this, we’re introducing you to the one and only Jason Hoffman, who’s the IT director for GSD Technologies.

Jason, welcome to the show and congratulations on your role. You’ve been here for a few months, right? Uh, four or five months and, uh, making a tremendous impact already. I can see that Nick’s hair is growing back rapidly because he feels like he’s got a partner in crime that he can run full speed with.

Welcome to the show, Jason. Thank you for having me. I finally found out where the bathroom was. Where to get my coffee? Yeah, over square. We’re glad you found out where the bathroom was. It was getting a little weird. My office was getting a little messy. Oh yeah. It was a little messy. He kept leaving, he kept going down the street.

We’re like, where’d he go? And then he come back like 15 minutes later. He is like, I just had to go to the bathroom. Like, dude, it’s right over. You could just, so we got that out of the way. It only took three weeks. That’s it. But, uh, it was a bit strange at first, so thanks for finding that. Uh, Jason, uh, you know, before we just kind of get into the technical expertise and the brilliance and the knowledge and the, all the things that you’re working on for not only internally but for our customers, because you’ve been playing a huge role in kind of working and collaborating with Nick and our CEO Tim, to kind write out what the vision for the organization is and what the offering is going to be and how we’re gonna execute, uh, the beautiful words, the brand promise that Nick is presenting with his team to the, to the marketplace you’re making come true.

Before we do that, let’s get a little bit into who’s the man. So, uh, I always like to kind of dig into social media and see people’s presence. On social media, and especially when they’re joining the company, I want, uh, I want to know like what’s their story, right? And so I’m really curious, Jason, like why you are not telling the story of your military background, because it’s pretty, pretty awesome.

Tell us a little bit about, you were in the, in the Army reserves, right? Yep, that’s correct. And you’re working on some really interesting things. So tell us about that. There’s always savings, but it’s about way more than savings alone. Total Technology Solutions Group, redefines managed print services.

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So as you navigate business and constant change, partner with TTSG for premium advisement and seamless implementation of your technology goals. We set the bar high. Your people deserve it. Peace of mind. Powerful innovation. tsg.com. Yeah, so, uh, the reason why you probably don’t see that stuff out there very often is, uh, you know, being in the military coming from like kind of a.

I don’t know. I felt, I worked with a lot of people that had a lot more humble mindset where you can look around to the guys in the left and right of you and see the things that they’ve done, and you kind of just compare yourself to that. And like, I don’t really wanna put anything out about me ’cause I haven’t done nearly as much as what these other people have done.

Yeah. So how could I possibly compare? So kind of stays in the background, you know, oh, don’t shine that light on me, shine that light on that guy, that hero over there who’s done so much more. So you kind of sit back in the background that way and you kind of just don’t let it come out. I find that, you know, to be the case with a lot of people that I served with, I could see that be the case.

Yeah. Like I, I feel like that’s a, not only that, but I almost, I, I almost feel like it’s intimidating to put that out there. Right. Because although you’re doing great things for the country and everything, I, I could see that there’s just, it’s, there’s ranks, there’s, there’s just expectations of who you are as a human being.

So being on social media, people could miss. You know, misunderstand what you’re trying to post out there. So I, I could see that. I mean, I would be very careful for sure. Yeah. It’s, I’m careful now because I look at that philosophy of my own life is mm-hmm. I mean, I, why would I go and post personal, um, you know, materialistic things when everybody has, there’s, everybody’s always has someone more than you or, you know, it just, to me it just doesn’t seem important.

Like Yeah. I, I’d rather show you who I am and the fun I’m having versus what I have. Yeah. And you know, kind of in the mindset that way is like, I think in my mind kind of, it’s always back there is like, you know, I wish I would’ve done more or I wish I would’ve done this. Or I, you know, I wish I had the opportunity to do something in a bigger capacity there.

And so, and since those things didn’t happen, it’s kind of just like, alright, sidebar that. ’cause you know, I could have done, you know, I wish I had done more. Yeah. Well, I, I don’t want to, um, I don’t want to disagree with you, but I do know a branding guy, one or two who would tell you maybe we should tell a little bit more stories.

So hence why you guys are on here. Yeah. Um. And I would tell you that I agree with Nick. It could be a bit polarizing as well. Like there are some folks out there that, you know why I don’t understand it, but I do understand that there are people who have difference in opinion and so on that I could see from your position.

You’re like, Hey look, this is a part of my life. I did, but I’m not sure I wanna put this out there. ’cause I don’t know what the reactions are going to be. But let me just tell you from my seat, thank you for your service. Oh, I appreciate that. And thank you to all the people in the military, uh, that make this country, uh, feel safe and, um, that support people around the world and do amazing things.

And, and one of the things you were telling me about is that you were actually were helping to train, um, militaries from around the world to utilize some of the advanced technology that we have. So. Definitely like talk a little bit about like what were you doing? Yeah, so I started, uh, I joined the military after my sophomore year of college.

’cause you know, I was doing my IT stuff in college and I was like, this is great, but I feel like I could do more. And you know, I was doing my workouts and stuff like that where you can really kind of get in your head and start thinking about things. And I was just kinda like, well if I don’t do it now, then I would hate to be 30 and look back and be like, I wish I would’ve.

And I don’t like thinking I wish I would have. Mm-hmm. So I just did it, you know, I was like, I think I can run college in this at the same time, I think I can run a professional career in this at the same time. So I gave it a go and I was able to make it work. Okay. Yeah. So what type of work were you doing?

I joined as a combat engineer, combat engineer’s. Primary focus is to go and find IEDs out in Iraq or Afghanistan. You know, that’s how most of our casualties were coming in those wars to begin with. Uh, so you’re clearing the routes for everyone to be able to get to where they need to go to do the operations or get the aid to the villages or the towns that needed them.

Uh, making sure that our, our current personnel and the people I served with were safe and that, that help and need went out to those other people as well, and that then get caught up and, you know, they get put in a terrible situation that they’re already in. Yeah. It’s amazing because when we see like commercials for like wounded Warriors mm-hmm.

And some of the other amazing, I know quite a few of them. Yeah. Like typically, you know, they start the commercial often, they’re like, you know, I was taken out by an IED. Mm-hmm. Right. And, and, uh, so. Pretty cool that Yeah. That you were able to kind of be like an offensive lineman for some of these folks that are, you know, it’s exactly what was the quarterback?

The quarterback and the, and the wide receiver and the, and the running back. It’s a perfect analogy. Yeah. You throwing blocks and that’s, that’s a, like a, uh, I feel like that’s overwhelming, right? Like you’re, you’re, you have to make sure that your team can be protected out there. I think that’s, that just seems like a lot, right?

Because if you miss something, and not that you would intentionally do it, it goes off and you feel like that was like an IED goes off. You feel like that was your, you know, your job and so that’s gotta be a tough, tough pill to swallow. Yeah. And when you put it like that further in the war too, they got a lot more creative with how they were planting IED.

So it wasn’t a lot of time, your vehicle, the one that’s gonna be blown up. It was the people behind you. Mm. So you’re supposed to find it, and it was your buddies who paid the price. Oh, that’s a lot harder to live with than if you paid the price for a mistake you made yourself. So, even if it wasn’t necessarily a mistake.

So some of the training that you were doing, you said you had mentioned that you went to Germany. Mm-hmm. And, and some, so talk a little bit about like. You know, you, you, you’ve entered into a field as an IT director that is really, you know, obviously it’s technical, but there’s a lot of organization and structure, um, and it’s very technical in steps.

Yes. So like how did your experience in the military kind of help to form you in your professional career? Yeah. So, uh, you know, started as just a private, you know, went in, started learning everything from the ground up, did all that great stuff. And after I came a little bit more proficient, uh, we started going to do more training missions and helping out either sister companies or other countries, uh, that we were partnered with.

And, uh, it, it really helped. I mean, after you start training for a little bit, you kind of go, you, oh, I thought that was an implied step. And they didn’t know that, so they screwed something up. And, you know, that wasn’t their fault. No one told them that that was me. So I don’t like having faults or mistakes or continuously making those.

So you have to kind of refine that process of how you’re describing something so that the thing that’s implied in your mind is translated over to them. Especially with language barriers and things that are so, uh, what’s to say? Explosive. ’cause that’s what they were, you know, it’s explosions and that’s dangerous.

You know, one little mistake can be the loss of not just your life, but your entire, everyone that’s standing around you. So you have to be very detail oriented, meticulate about how these things go forward and get trained up. So it was something that was structured in my brain. Not so much structured at first when it was coming out, but then I developed how to properly train or explain these things, complex, dangerous things.

In a cohesive manner that, you know, has translated over into the real world where I’m not playing with bombs or anything, now I’m playing with servers and I hope they don’t blow up. Uh, if they did, you probably wired ’em wrong. Yeah. Something, something that was somebody else’s fault that was, uh, but, uh, yeah, definitely that, you know, it’s not, it’s high risk, but what you are dealing with in the real world here is these are these people’s businesses.

Yeah. You know, they might not lose their life physically, but they might lose their financial Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of a similar concept. Risk is relative, right? So you’re, you’re, what you did in the military, you’re kind of doing for our, our clients, right. So you’re, you’re, you’re reviewing and, and you’re out there and you’re scanning, and then if we don’t get that right, it could blow up.

Yeah. I don’t, don’t, and that’s, that’s the reality. Exactly. I don’t blow up in terms of like efficiency or they can be held hostage. Business continuity. Well that Yeah, of course. But also like your business stops, right? Yeah. You lose money by the second. So, you know, you’re, it’s livelihoods. Yeah. And for all mom and pop, I love say implied.

Mm-hmm. Because Right. Like we, there are some things in life, in business, we just go like, we just are moving. Mm-hmm. And we just go, well, clearly everyone knows that. Mm-hmm. Right. It’s just the, it’s the idea of communication, how important communication is like for A CEO communicating clearly the vision of the organization, the brand promise.

Like, like what? Like what is the mission at hand for the organization and then as the director of sales, right. Um, clearly defining what the KPIs are and, and how we actually execute and how we speak to customers. Those things, like if you think they’re implied, you’re gonna miss it’s, and what’s, what’s wild that I don’t know that people understand, people in the industry understand is implied in sales is more of a challenge to overcome than anything else.

For example, when you’re talking to a CEO or COO and you don’t understand how to articulate the right. Um, technology, the right language, and how the support’s gonna work. That can totally just side, just deal goes sideways instantly as soon as you sign them on. Right. So it people could say, you’re overselling, well, maybe you’re not explaining properly of how this should be working.

Right. You’re like managing expectations. Exactly. So, so yeah, you ran into this recently, uh, the, one of the potential new clients here, you know, called you the other day and was just kind of like, Hey, do you guys do this like RMM service? And you were like, I thought that was implied, because who isn’t doing that?

What’s interesting? Yeah. So I got a call last night, um, all yeah, last night. And, uh, I was at my daughter’s gymnastics and I’m just, I love her to death, but I’m bored on, I’m not No, you’re not out there doing the floor routine with me. No, no, no, no. I cut my shirt on. Fair enough. Fair enough. So, yeah, and it’s, it, we, we talked, you know, we talk about it a lot, but he was asking questions about things that are included that I, you know.

I started to question, wait, did I explain this properly? Yeah. Like, was I, but it go, it, it, it boils down to what Jason was saying is, is you have to sometimes, you know, take a step back and revisit exactly each piece of the business, explain why it’s important and what is included. So like when we talk about technology, it’s so, it’s, it’s huge, right?

There’s, there’s so much so, but then you talk about security, it’s the same like each, each small sector in technology has its own fraud range. Yeah. So, so yeah. So I learned that you have to really, um, slow down a little bit, take a step back, explain why we do things, what it’s gonna do for them, what it’s gonna do for us, and why it’s critical to support the business, right?

Yeah. So, so that’s, that’s, I’ve learned that, you know, throughout my career, but it’s, it’s interesting is what I enjoy the most about talking to these COOs is, and CEOs and, and, and owners and everything is like they’re expressing their. Want for this business to be in a different place. That could be growth, that could be budget, that could be their employee experience.

And so now I’m able to say, okay, well if you want that, we have to do these next steps for your IT environment. And that’s where Jason comes in and says, Nick, I see this. I’m a little concerned. And then we can start to build, because nobody wants to get sprung during a conversation of, oh, by the way, um, we need to spend 60,000 to, uh, migrate your server environment.

Right? So we, one thing that I will say about, about something that’s been fun with Jason is, is we will look at every deal before it even gets to a salesperson. So we take all the details, right? And we will really break it down and say, okay, well here’s what they’re doing. And then Jason will ask, well, why are they doing that?

So it almost doubled down on my sales ability. Am am I out there? Like I’ll, I’ll be like, okay, yeah. Did I ask? Yeah. Okay. Here. And that’s how we go back and forth. Yeah. And that’s how we create kind of a, a united front because. To be honest with you, I mean, I, I personally, I, I love the business. I love technology, but I, I, more than that, I like just making sure people are safe.

Yeah. Solving problems, like being safe. That’s the thing. Like I would, we’ve had clients who have had security challenges and it’s the worst feeling in the world because I, that’s that bomb in a network that you don’t know that’s there and you’re like, it’s pre, it’s, it’s preventable. That’s the, that’s the frustrating part.

Yeah. And it, it’s not because you could prevent it from an IT set, because you can never a hundred percent guarantee that, but it’s preventable from a training perspective, from a communication perspective, from, you know, some things that you can implement to help that, that team. So, so we go in there and, and we, we’ve been really just kind of in the backend, you know, we work together all day just saying, Hey, what are your thoughts?

Here’s what I think we should do. And then of course, Jason has a technical background and I’m, you know, more of the customer facing part. But, but in the end, I mean, that’s what’s critical for this business to continue to grow. Yeah. And you know, I think you said a few very interesting and important things there that I don’t see happening at other places is that we do communicate prior to any of that stuff happening.

Because how many, how many times? I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know how many times I’ve been in front of a client that like, we would be going in to take over that. And the biggest complaint would’ve been the salesman said, well, of course we could do this prior. And they never had made it happen. Yeah. Uh, they always said, yes.

And, you know, it’s been five years and that thing hasn’t happened. Well, me and Nick talked prior to these things, so that when he’s saying yes, that we can do something, it’s because it’s already been vetted. Mm-hmm. And I know that we can do it. So that is a, a, you know, I hope it helps build his confidence when, like, when someone brings a problem over, it’s like, yeah, we can do it.

And this is how we can do it. We’re not just gonna say yes and then figure it out after the yes. We’re gonna come to the table first with what those steps look like and a plan and a roadmap of how to get there and be transparent with what that costs and what that looks like. And, you know, maybe it’s not even needed.

Maybe that’s something that they thought they needed, but they could have accomplished it a different way. And then we make that happen. So you’re never taking for granted that’s, uh, anything that’s implied. ’cause it’s, it’s not very detailed, very structured. Was that innate, or, or was, was some of that kind of like, like how you approach school as a child, how you approach a, a board game, like you very, you know, analytical and step-by-step or, or some of that really, um, you know, trained into you mm-hmm.

When you’re dealing with high risk life on the line and then because it was trained into you, then it became like habitual. Yeah. I think it was more innate. I have to make things make sense if they don’t make sense to me or if I just see someone throw something out into the wind where it’s like, well, X equals y.

And it’s like, okay, but how do you know what X or Y even is and how do we even come to this thing? Yeah. Oh Lord, you’re just telling me that. Oh yeah, Nick, are you okay? Yes, we’ve had some conversations. Yeah, so it’s a lot about that. And like if it doesn’t make sense to me, then how could I possibly explain it to somebody else that you know, Hey, this is the best thing for your business.

Why? Well, if you ask me that question and I don’t know the answer, then we gotta really reconsider what we’re offering because I have to know why. Before we put that in front of a person. It has to make sense financially for their business, for us, for time, everything. If it doesn’t make sense, then it’s never gonna be offered.

Yeah. It doesn’t benefit anyone. Even, especially if we, you know, I’ve seen it in the, in the past, not here, other places where people have been sold a bill of goods. There was no why behind it. It never made sense. It got, it happened, but it killed the engineers in the back end. And you can’t do that to engineers over and over again.

I know that because I was an engineer and it’s happened to me. Okay, hold on a second. ’cause you, you’re talking to layman’s term guy here? Mm-hmm. You gotta explain that to me. What, what do you mean? What do you mean when you say, um, it threw off the engineers? Explain that. Oh, yes. So it would be kind of, um, sales would go out and sell a big deal or something?

No, no real talk with, uh, engineering or a technical side. Just kind of like a cookie cutter. Like of course we can do your right. Yeah. Yeah. And with the nature of the business, since everyone’s business and network and whatever industry, they’re in’s like a snowflake. They’re all different. They all operate in a different way.

They all did something that meets this company’s needs, even if they’re in the same ministry, doesn’t meet another company’s needs. It’s in the same industry because it’s just. They’ve done stuff slightly different. Their process, procedure, how they interact with the technology is different. All right, well then you just take that like we can go back to the implied thing.

Well, I just thought that this would be the same as the other. And now the engineer has to make something work that was never put in place but sold. And you know, they, they might be able to make that work, but at insane time, like where that would normally take three hours for somewhere else might take 50 hours in this case.

And now that doesn’t actually make sense for us as a company because Yeah. ’cause you can’t pass the 50 hours onto the customer because their expectation was for this price, this is what I’m getting. So now you’re now as an MSP, you just took your profit and just tanked it. Tanked it. That’s, that’s the number one.

Uh, oh. Yeah. How do you say this politely? That’s the number one internal cost that we, we addressed, right? Um, efficiencies. Correct. And not only that, not only is it, is it that part of it, but it’s post-sale part. Hmm. So, oh yeah. No, I, I had to go and, and run at a client and help ’em out with this. Okay, well why did you go Well, ’cause I saw this, I needed to go do it.

Well, did you talk to them about what that’s gonna cost right now? And I say that because this could be instead of a fix, let’s look at, okay, maybe we need to, to perform some sort of project for them. Right. So there’s a lot of different ways to look at that. But, um, I guess the good and bad of this, the good news is our team does it because they want to help.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And they’re, they’re very concerned about the actual client themselves. The bad part of it is, as we talk all the time about scaling and growth and accounts and this and that and where the engineers are bandwidth efficiencies, we know reporting utilization, K ps stuff for hiring triggers, all that stuff, that’s where it excuses the number.

Interesting. So I, I think overall, uh, you know, I, I always look at like the team that we have, how do we produce, you know, of course the most out of each individual, right? But more than that, we’ve started to build what Jason did, which is really cool, uh, is kind of, not that it’s military, it’s, but just business in general.

But he created a growth plan for the engineers, right. So, and service desk. Yeah, exactly. So, so here, here’s how we’re gonna bring you in and you’re gonna have a career path. I mean, for us, one thing that we talk about a lot is, is you hear turnover in the industry so much so, right? So not only account managers, but engineers, and there’s always, for some reason, there’s always like one engineer that’s like the go-to person.

Mm-hmm. Right? And although that’s not terrible because, you know, that’s impressive to have that person on your staff. You? What if they’re, what if they’re busy? What if they’re on vacation? What if they’re sick? Yeah. So, so Jason’s addressed that he’s really taken that as part of an initiative, which I appreciate because I feel comfortable, like, like I, I always want to know that if Jason’s out sick, there’s documentation supporting what we need to get by.

If I, why that changes how you can approach a situation Oh, with a customer, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And it’s a confidence level. Not only that, it’s, it’s, okay. So when we look at scaling as we’re growing, we have so much in place now from a document management, from a software management, from engineering, um, knowledge transferring that we feel good about it.

Like you, it’s, it’s hard to get there because everybody wants to, wants to, to feel like their value is beyond what they’re, they’re being paid, correct. Mm-hmm. But when you break it down and explain that, it’s not about, you know, you having to take over the world. It’s about you performing. To be on expectations for yourself, and then we can transfer that success throughout the team.

And then that way you can grow within the company. You don’t have to be working 60 hours a week. I mean, I could tell you one of our engineers, I mean, he’s been here for, for eight years, and, and the, the guy will do anything, any time. As much as I love it. You don’t really want that for him. Yeah, right. So this is where it also puts the company, especially a, uh, you know, a company that wants to scale.

It puts the company in a very difficult situation. If you keep going to the same thoroughbred over and over and over again, I guess eventually you’re gonna run that thoroughbred, uh, into bad ankles and bad knees, and they’re not gonna be the same. So, yep. So there, there’s that, there’s that wanting to go to the star player, but you gotta spread it around otherwise you really can’t scale.

Yeah. And you know what, those people, a lot of the times, it’s not so much that they will get the burnout, right, because everyone will come to them and the, and the reason why some of that burnout happens is because that person wants to help. And they have the answer. Yeah. So, you know, but when you’re helping without someone troubleshooting or looking into it first, then it has, it is actually hurting the business.

It’s hurting the level one’s development. It’s hurting their growth, it’s hurting their trajectory and how to figure this stuff out for themselves. It’s also hurting that senior engineer, whoever it is that has the answer, because they’re just giving out answers for free. What do you learn when you give out stuff for free?

You don’t learn a lot. Yeah. You learn that that guy has the answer. You don’t know what the problem was. You don’t know how to solve it, and so you take away the critical thinking. ’cause somebody could just go completely get the answer. You don’t have to. That person never grows and has to think, which means that they’re gonna maybe stay at level one.

Mm-hmm. Longer than they need to. Mm-hmm. Whereas if they were, if they had to think a bit. And that gets them frustrated. Why can’t I move up? And then they stay in the same patterns. Yeah. And they stay in the same spot and realize that they, you know, maybe feel like they’re not growing at all and they’re not moving up and then they leave to somewhere else.

That does. And turnover is expensive and MSP has high turnover. It’s just the industry. Um, but I’ve recently put something in place here, here, uh, this was two days ago. Two days ago. ’cause we’ve identified some of those issues. They happen at every MSP we’re not unique in, this is a shared problem, probably more than just an MSP space.

Um, where that senior engineer people were still going to ’em, but then me and the director of service desk came up with a plan and procedure so that that guy doesn’t get to see those messages. Right, right up at the front. The level ones can only go to the level twos right up front to get those answers.

So they’re working on those things together and then there’s a clear escalation path up and that promotes that internal troubleshooting, critical thinking skills, figuring it out. And I had to make it so I prevented those people from seeing those messages because I know that guy wants to jump in and help.

But then it also burns him out because he’s not working on the stuff he’s supposed to be doing, even though he’s providing value and helping out everybody and coming to and solving an issue and going forward. But that stagnates everything else and it’s not scalable. So how is that an advantage to the customers?

Because that sounds like an advantage to us in the ability to create scalability. But if I was a customer, I’d be like, no, gimme Michael Jordan. Right? Yeah. So, but what you’re saying is different. You’re saying, Hey look, it’s actually gonna become more of an advantage to a customer because why? So more of advantage for the customer because that those level ones and everything will then have those critical thinking skills, have those troubleshooting skills.

So when you’re first calling, you get your, you get your answers solved a lot more. The first time, first time resolutions is the KPI that we track, and that is very important to me because. Quick solving. You don’t have to call back, you don’t have to play phone tag, you don’t have to have all any of this.

Speed, the solution. Mm-hmm. And frustration and correct. Let’s say that there is an issue that might be a priority issue kind of. And that level one now is waiting on an answer from somebody else. And they only are waiting because they think, oh, well that person has the answer, so I’m just gonna wait for them to answer it instead of me just solving it.

Uh, and so that, that issue that might have really been impacting that end user. Maybe they can’t get into the email, maybe they can’t get into something else, um, is now waiting instead for that 10 minutes. Now they’re waiting for two hours because that per that level one is just waiting for that answer instead of just figuring it out.

So empowering your employees is actually empowering your customers a hundred percent. I mean, it’d be great if, uh, the whole entire, everybody can call for their most basic or normal issues that impact their business. That can solved by a level one, instead of having to go to a level three faster time to resolution, more skilled people that you’re talking to on a daily basis.

And that now that knowledge is being disseminated throughout the entire, uh, you know, staff so that they’re all learning that as well. It’s being documented and now your things are being solved by a level one. Whereas another place, they’re being solved by a level three all the time. Companies can’t afford level threes for that all the time, and they’re not gonna be doing that.

So you get a lot quicker resolution and a lot better, you know, first call knowledge, you knowledge everything back up and running. ’cause downtime equates to money and you don’t wanna be paying your staff to just sit there waiting on an IT problem while you’re paying them $50 an hour. Okay. Well I just lost 150 bucks for nothing.

Mm-hmm. There was no production there. So we had Eric ERT on who’s, uh, our director of help desk. Yeah. Oh yeah. And, uh, great episode and. But I was really trying to drill into ’em. Like I hear all this stuff happening, you know, I get, I get the phishing scam emails, you know, you get ’em to your personal and, you know, hear all these horror stories of what’s happening with Russia and, and the Ukraine and, and India and, uh, China.

And so there’s like, every country, every country’s like, just, it also comes from here. Yeah. And from here, attacks, um, cybersecurity attacks and, and, and all these different things. And he had made, he had made the claim that, like, while we were on the podcast, there was probably 5,000 attempts that hit, you know, or whatever the number was that hit our mm-hmm.

Our, um, servers, like people just coming at it and, and that there’s preventative maintenance measures in there and there’s things that are set up to, to fend those off, so. Oh yeah. Um, how often do you run into clients that. Uh, weren’t set up properly, didn’t have the right measures in place. Um, and the reason why you’re speaking with them now is because they’ve gone through absolute hell, um, and were left holding the bag.

Yeah. I’ve had to, I’ve had to deal with the FBI for cases like that where there was an environment that was, uh, let’s say underprotected with, uh, deprecated technologies that were end of life and no longer supported. But client might not have known that from the previous MSP if they never communicated that over.

We had no indication that that was, and what happened was, I mean, the people that were running the business didn’t know any better. Everything’s working for them. They don’t know. Yeah. Well, what was actually happening is their, you know, exchange server wasn’t being patched and there was vulnerabilities in it, and it was old and end of life, and there was an attack vector in there, and people got into that network through an vulnerability off of end of life thing that was still put in production.

It didn’t impact the client because things were still working, so they didn’t know. But I did get a call from the FBI because they saw it, and then that’s when we had to be brought in to start patching some of those vulnerabilities and getting that system migrated off. But, you know, going through that whole process, that’s not fun for the owner.

They don’t want to be doing that. They don’t want that, that kind of scrutinization. And knowing that some type of actual bad actor is like in their email system, they can see everything. Well, if you can see everything, who communicates in there? Your accountants, your financial people, your bank account, your bills, you know, they got, they can, they kid holds your business captive.

Mm-hmm. And. That’s a huge thing. You know, they make a bunch of money one day and the next day they’re not making anything anymore. Wait, so so you get a call from the FBI? Yeah. I mean, where, I don’t know, I, I’d be like, um, so I was not there. Yeah, exactly. He threw me. Which one of the things that I did Are you calling about?

I mean, take me through. I mean, I, I don’t know. I, I interested to know like, how was that call? Yeah. Oh, that wasn’t from Janice, was it? I swear to God I wasn’t there. Yeah, they called and they said, Hey, do you know company X, Y, Z? Yeah, we do. We’re currently, you know, evaluating their network ’cause they have some challenges in there.

Um, do you guy, do you know this account or this thing that, that’s in there right now doing this stuff? Do you know who this do? Who do you, do you know who these people are? Mm-hmm. Some of the people were the owners. That’s fine. Yep. We do know them. The others bad actors, nobody knew who they were and they were in there and it’s kind of just like.

I, is it malicious? Are they, is the company trying to inherently do something that might be against the law where maybe they’re funneling money somewhere, like they have to investigate it all to see if this is something that, you know, they’re trying to do something shady. They weren’t. They’re just good business people.

They’re just trying to go about their day like everybody else. Mm-hmm. And they just so happened to be vulnerable and they didn’t know service is a huge, did you want to add to that? Yeah, no, to, to that point. We, uh, we brought on a client, um, recently who, um, before we took them over, and we found this out after the fact, um, they were hit with a, a, a email phishing, um, attack.

Right. And their, um, higher ranking individual, I’m not gonna, I don’t wanna say anything specific on it, but he opened an attachment. Um, and initially I. Nothing. So this, oh yeah, this sat for six months. No kidding. That’s a more sophisticated one that’s targeted six months. And until the right time, they caught an invoice that he had communicated, uh, within the organization and they changed routing numbers.

65,000 like that gone. So I have a good story about this, so hold on. Let’s either, what happens with that? Which part? Okay. So what happens with the 65,000? Like what, what just gone? It’s gone. It’s gone. It’s an, it’s an undisclosed account. It’s offshore. It’s gone. It’s an offshore. Offshore, yeah. So I have an idea of what it costs to use our service.

Obviously it changes the modifies depending upon Sure. The size and scope of the company. We’re now working with Fortune 500 companies. For the most part, we’re working with, you know, those, those s and b, small, medium, seven to seven to 10 figure or figure companies in that range. Right? Sure. Small to midsize, mainly mid-size.

I, yeah, I would hope to say from like 20 to a little over a thousand. Yeah. So I employees, I like to, I like to think, you know, like, uh, that’s a great sweet spot for us, but, uh, $65,000 to a company, like, that’s a pretty big deal. That’s when you’re taking out, it’s not a rounding on your house to fund it. So, believe it or not, it’s a, it’s a larger organization.

Good. Um, I’m just gonna leave it at that. I, I will say the, it wasn’t just 65,000, right? So we had, we had to work with them. They had to hire a forensics IT company to review. Because they had to submit information to the insurance. I mean, it, it becomes a big project. So now you take your people’s time.

Yeah. You take, we had to jump in and help out. ’cause now we are the MSP. Um, and it’s unfortunate because when, when you have an attack that sits on your, it could sit on your server, it could sit, I mean they could do whichever, right? Mm-hmm. And they just watch you. That’s the scary part. So that is so scary when I think about it.

And I had, when I think about something like this, I think like attack comes, they come in, they try and do their thing, and if they can’t break it, they go. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s usually fast. Usually right away someone will get in, uh, you get a call. Because if you’re not notified by your tools, which thankfully we are, ’cause we have that set up so that we can catch it before the person notices.

But what usually happens, that person gets in, they shut off incoming email going to the email account they got. So that person doesn’t know for X amount of time that they’re no longer receiving email. That’s how they hide it. And then they have it. So they just push out. Yeah. Something that is coming from a legitimate person from that email account that people are used to getting bills from, and they push out to all the contacts.

Mm-hmm. And what it is, is it looks like a nice little remittance or bill or invoice or something that’s being sent out. You click on it, it’s, it says, okay, well you gotta sign into Microsoft to look at it. And you go, okay, gotta do that all the time. Mm-hmm. And then you put your credentials in there and you don’t get anywhere.

He is like, is my password wrong? Like, I, I know, I know this. Mm-hmm. Well, they already got your password. Wow. And that’s how they just keep compiling passwords and passwords and passwords to break into additional, uh, you know, infrastructures and stuff like that. So how, I mean, how you fix it, you, you remove the rule, you log log ’em out of all their sessions, you kick out the bad actors, you change passwords, reset up MFA, and then they’re usually good to go.

You’ll find attacks that are happening afterwards, but they’re usually blocked and they’re okay. But there are other cases that are more sophisticated nowadays, like probably within the last six months to a year. Um. Yeah, where people will get in, they’ll, they, this is crazy because this pa, this bypasses MFA, they will send that email, that person will put their credentials in and where it normally would deny them, they actually get through because that, that attack that’s happening, they’re passing that on through Microsoft and they’re taking your MFA token and then they’re, then they have it, and now the next time that breach happens, there is no MFA alert because they don’t need it.

And now you just don’t know. Oh my God. It’s, so, there’s a lot of ways I’d love to define a criminal. Um, now, now I could define them as patient. Oh, I mean, that is unbelievable. Well talk about being so patient that you would wait six months for the perfect opportunity. I mean, that’s like stalking for the perfect moment.

Well, think about it. So you have, you have these team of, we’ll call ’em hackers, right? Mm-hmm. They send out random, so you’re put into an automated situation where you’re just getting hit left and right. Soon as something pops, boom, they pull it up, they review it, they may get in, they may be patient with it.

It, it’s not like you’re like, people always ask me like, well, are we targeted? Like, we’re all targeted, everybody, it’s not like a specific, ’cause your business does X number, we’re gonna target this company. Um, so it, it’s always happening. We protect all of our partners and ourselves as best as we can, and we manage it and we, you know, and we, there’s security training, right?

So the reason why I bring that up is going back to this point, if this individual who had opened that attachment had not done it right, this would’ve never happened. Mm-hmm. And. Even So that’s part of the training you have to give to the folks that we partner with training. Right. And here’s, here’s what I wanna say, and I, and I want to be clear because I think this is not a fear tactic.

The previous MSP that had them had security training set up, had email protection services had, it’s, it’s still like when you’re targeted so often they get very creative. As Jason just said, there’s gonna find ways to get through. So you, you always have to know this doesn’t look right. I should double check it.

I will tell you, in the last two years I’ve had multiple calls of, they get in their email, okay, they give access to their email, it’s compromised. They send emails out to their clients with new routing numbers, new account numbers, Hey, we’ve changed. Please send this here. I, and, and it’s, it’s once, by the time you find out you’re easily 80,000, who knows how much out.

So I have a great example of this. So that’s the scary part. Yeah. A good example of this and it’s, uh, you know, something I like to tell clients all the time is that security has gotten so good that systems aren’t the things that are breached anymore. People are breached. Mm-hmm. People are breached because they can’t get past the systems without having those credentials where they used to be able to with, you know, modern day firewalls and things like this.

Um, people are breached now. That’s why you see these insane, like trying to grab credentials because once I have those, you might think it’s just your email, but if you’re connected, if your, uh, if your entire server network gets connected to Office 365 and you don’t have proper, like, provisioning in place and access right permissions, well that email password is good for all the servers too.

Geez. ’cause that’s how it authenticates. Um, that being said, there’s a good story I have on this is. How people are breached. Not the system is, I had a situation with a client where MFA was set up. Everything was squared, everything was good on the security side. Uh, they got an MFA prompt at two or three o’clock in the morning, which is when people like to do it, bad actors because they know they’re sleeping.

And they’ll just said okay on that thing. Uh, so they can go back to bed when you spam ’em with it. Well, she, hi. Okay on it. She was the financial person. They had someone send a million dollars to the other bank account and they never got it back. And that was very local to hear. Good Lord. Yeah. And that, that is not because the system failed.

It is because a fir a person failed. They hit a, except on an MFA when they weren’t trying to log in. So. That’s the, that’s so if you work, if you worked with, if you, if you’re a business mm-hmm. And you go, Hey, I’m gonna, I’m gonna check a box here. I know I need it. Mm. Support, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I’m gonna check a box though.

Here I’m gonna hire a one person operation. Right. I’m gonna hire a one person, because that person doesn’t have a whole lot of labor costs. I don’t have a whole bunch of overhead. So they can probably undercut price. Yeah. Cheap price. Right. They’re doing a cheap, they’re a cheaper option. So I’m just gonna cut that corner, check that box.

I’m gonna hire that one person. You know, guy I golf with, made a recommendation. Guy does it out of his basement. I’m gonna hire him. Buddy’s friend. You got 40 employees at your company. This person is just sets up the basic framework, right? Mm-hmm. You feel like everything’s going pretty damn good. Never once is that person come out and do training of your staff.

There’s no emails that are coming out. They’re not talking to your team. They’re not sending out helpful tips on a monthly basis to essentially say, Hey, just wanna remind you that you shouldn’t do this. Quarter emails. Next thing you know, $250,000 is out of your account because you cut a corner on $2,000 of, uh, MRR, uh, that you were hoping to save and you lost $250,000.

’cause you cut the corner and you went with the, with the small shop. Yep. How often does that happen? A lot. So we, I wanna be careful and that, and that’s not, it’s not funny, but it’s, it’s, it, it’s frustrating for me because. I, I, I think that I’m very, I take pride in what I do. Okay. And I also understand as a business owner, I worked my life for this.

Right? This is my, my, it’s their baby. Not only that, this is what takes care of people. Yeah. Like I always tell everybody, you know, from a sales perspective, like my job is so important ’cause I put food on everybody’s table. So when you think that I sleep well at night, when the numbers are not where they need to be, that’s not the case.

I promise you. And I could tell you, I was in Lake Geneva this week and I was up at three o’clock in the morning thinking about a potential client because, not because of the money, because I, I, I want to make sure that they’re okay. Like, when you start seeing that there’s, there’s vulnerability, you’re like, oh man, this is, like, I, I’m glad it’s working, but it’s, it’s crazy.

So, um, to that point to your previous question, John, uh, we, we had some conversations with some potential partners. And we proposed, uh, our solution with, with what was requested by the client. Right. And our fee was the, uh, highest fee. And, um, his, his comment to me was like, well, you know, there’s a company that’s willing to do it for a number that’s, let’s just say 10% of what we were charging.

Yeah. I mean, that, shouldn’t that be an indicator? Not only that, not only that, okay, I did some due diligence, not gonna go into details. You would not want to have that as your supporting, um, partner. And the reason is more, it’s, it’s not so much you could be a small company, be a great company that has nothing to do with this.

Um, you know, do you have a, an actual office facility? Do you have proper insurance? You know, we have proper liability insurance for anything that happens. How about servers? Like, do, do you have a, do you have a test environment? You know, we have, we have a. Enclosed cage. We have, we have a test environment.

We have a lot of things that we do in the back to make sure that our clients, before we do anything, we test it. Right. Um, so to your point, John, yeah. That’s not sustainable. Number one. Uh, number two, I would be very concerned that the knowledge gaps that you’re gonna have with or experience, because the best part about going with an MSP is that you have access to multiple skill sets.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Beyond the side, the, beyond the service support. I mean, I’m talking about just the knowledge of your business. That’s the best part. So it’s, it, it’s disappointing because it’s not like, take the money outta the picture. If we were to, if we were to take, take dollars out of the picture, who would you select?

This is what I, this is what I said. Well, well, you guys are, are great, but you know, I go, well take, let’s not do the, but let’s just, okay. I go, so now that you understand that this is my concern, you know, the reality is we’re, we’re, we’re never gonna, it’s just not gonna work out. Right. And so that’s, that’s the frustrating part of that.

That’s where I’m like. You know, you, you, you can’t look at the, the dollars necessarily. It just, it’s not, it’s not okay. But Nick, how often do those people come back to you? A year and a half later. Every time I. So that’s the frustrating part. Mm-hmm. Is because you could have saved him a year and a half of, of frustration, of hassle of what the, what the heck decision.

And remember they make the decision. Everything’s good for six months, you onboard mm-hmm. About the nine month mark. Maybe a year in, they start to go, what the hell did I do? Why did I make this decision? And was it really worth it? And then, and then there’s that thing, and I’ve, I’ve been on the buying side before where I was like, then the ego kicks in.

It’s like, dude, I can’t go crawling back to Nick and be like, you were right. Right. But you kind of wish that people would just be like, oh, geez, Nick, man, you were, you were right. I, I apologize. Like, I’ll never do that again. Like, come on in. But that doesn’t happen enough. But it does happen. Yeah. We, we, uh, a client that we signed last year, uh, they came back to us.

They went with a, a, a competing MSP. Um, they found that it was, um, more expensive. Uh, the services were not there, and they came back to us and, and we, you know, there was no hard feelings. It was, you know, listen, it’s business. I mean, yeah, you didn’t, you didn’t rile ’em up a little bit. Like I told you you didn’t do that.

Then I might have thrown a jab or two, but, uh, um, but, you know, in the end, I, I think that I try to be very understanding of, of their decisions. And, and I, I will always explain, you know, Hey, that’s, that’s, that’s totally fine. We work with them. We’re very, you know, Jason and I mentality is that we don’t, we don’t cause conflict in the present.

If you, if you wanna make a change, we’re gonna help you make a change, right? Um, you know, but at the same time, we’re gonna warn you of what you need for your IT environment. I’m not gonna talk about a different MSP, it’s not professional in my opinion. I’m just gonna tell you, you have projects you need to be done.

Make sure that you guys have that conversation, right? Mm-hmm. And if you have concerns, call me. I will be, you know, we, we, we still help them. They still call us when we offboard, we’ve offboarded. I, I mean, I, I think, I think four clients in at the last four years. So it’s been, it’s been a, you know, for us been great.

It’s been, damn. Yeah, it’s been great. The offboarding process should really take 30 days, 45, maybe 60 if it’s a larger environment, let’s say 90 because of vendors, right. It’s been six months and we’re concerned. We’re like, okay, so, uh, we still have your QuickBooks. Like yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of challenges with that.

And you know what, what I, what I’ve learned that in the last few years of being here at GSD is when people leave most, most of the time, it has nothing to do with money. Mm-hmm. Most of the time it’s all about, you know, expectations. So I say that because. They may feel like we should have done something that is not within the contract or, or wasn’t explained properly or was implied.

Like this is where it’s so critical mm-hmm. That we change that communication. It’s gotta be on point. That’s it. And, and it’s like so exciting now because we’re talking to companies that. We really are excited about who GSD is. Why we are what you know. It’s, we, we just, we listen. Service is what we, is what we, we strive to do.

Excellent. Okay. So, uh, IT decision makers, this might stink. Frustrated with IT issues, security threats, and the stress of your technology infrastructure. Your technology should blend seamlessly with your business objectives. Technology infrastructure management with limited resources can be exhausting and counterproductive.

Do have an MSP, but still have problems and technical hiccups. GSDs advisement, proactive maintenance, cutting edge cybersecurity, cloud solutions, data backup and local 24 7 help desk can change the game. Your technology should outpace your business operations to allow for growth and proactive strategies should prevent issues before they arise.

Get back your time and your money with GSD Drive business forward. Leave the technology to gsd gsd now.com. I gotta get into that ’cause everyone says it. Yeah. Look, I’ll play devil’s advocate if you don’t mind. Everyone says it. Sure. There’s every company out there is leading with service. Mm-hmm. And, and I, you know, take it for what it is.

You’re gonna hear this as a brand promise. Across the board, you’re gonna look up every IT company and somewhere on their website and somewhere on their, their brand messaging, it’s gonna say service, right? Their salespeople are trained to go out and talk about service. They might have a podcast or they might have some sort of content creation, social media blitz where, you know, as sure as heck they’re talking about service, baby.

Okay? So let’s just clear the air here. If everyone had amazing service, then why do so many people change their it because of service? Okay. So I, I just want consumers out there to recognize that, uh, statistics don’t lie. People do. Mm-hmm. Salespeople are gonna come in there and they’ve been informed and instructed, and it’s not because they’re malicious people, they’re not bad people.

Mm-hmm. Um, and so I don’t wanna throw people under the bus, but they’ve been told lead with service. And, uh, yet the turnover. In this industry is huge. And when you question in the initial meeting, why are you looking to make a change? Almost always they say the service was not very good. You just described that in eight years, nine years, whatever, uh, the number is, we’ve off boarded four company, five companies.

Okay. Yeah. So that would be a pretty good indication that we’re retaining our customers for a reason. And if service is so important, that would be a pretty good indication that our service is pretty damn good. Am I off? Am I wrong? I would agree with that, yeah. And I, let me elaborate. So there’s service and there’s support.

And I’m gonna say this because Yeah. We, we provide you services under contract. Okay? By services I mean your server, we manage your servers, your, your full infrastructure, um, you know, all of the agents, the security components, um, you know, not only, uh, reviewing, but also making sure that your data’s backed up, right?

And all those total solutions. So typically when you have issues, it’s because that service is not done correctly or set up correctly, right? So, for example, yes, there’s human error, but if, if your network is not properly configured or you don’t have proper VLAN tunnels out to a dun location, right? Things like that, that is where you have challenges, okay?

Then when you call for support, it’s a lot different than when you call for my email’s not working, or my phone doesn’t work, or the printer doesn’t work, right? So there’s different, there’s different parts of the businesses why they leave. So when they, when a, when a potential partner says, Hey, the service is not good, I have to ask, well, tell me more, because.

You know, there, there’s so many ways you could, you could cut that up. Right? Um, and then the other side of it is, you know, this is the economy that, that we have. Unfortunately, it’s outsourced business. So the, I thi I believe the reason why GSD is, has a better track record in that sense is because all of our team members are here.

They’re in-house. When you call, you’re calling Hanover Park. When you have an issue, we drive to you. We don’t have services outside of the range that we can get there within two hours. That’s the difference. But you’re not calling somebody from another country that is trying to relate to you and says, Hey, uh, I noticed you’re in Chicago.

I’m a huge fan of the Chicago Cowboys. Like, you know, the, and it is pretending that they’re in, you know, that they’re in Indiana and you know that they’re somewhere. And, uh, I you, I think Jason, you were telling me a story about, um, one of our, uh, customers Yes. Or somebody you were talking to like.

Literally had a poll, their CFO, not, not like somebody who’s, you know, yeah. Uh, maybe, uh, a, a less of an impact on the organization. We’re talking about CFO, like that’s a pretty important role in a company. One of them. And, and there’s one of them. And you gotta pull this person like out, out of a meeting, out of a board meeting and some sort of strategy session to translate.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. So tell us about that. That’s exactly right. You know, we went into this meeting and we kind of asked how they’re going, you know, why, why are you looking? You know, it, you know, it kind of seems like you guys have a decent setup. Doesn’t seem like there’s maybe that many issues, but like, so what’s going on?

I mean, w what causes you to look, because I’d love to address those things right up front. I mean, you obviously have pain points with it. Well, what this is, um, whether, you know, we can get into another issue here too as well, is that they current, their MSP potentially bought by a PE company mm-hmm. Which is happening a lot in this industry.

What are they doing Rollups? They’re buying five, six, making ’em on. Yep. Yeah. It’s, it’s challenging to grow an MSB to a larger size without a heavy investment just because of our, our cost of internal staff. Right. Well, there’s a lot of ip, right? There’s a lot of intellectual property. It’s your, it’s people.

It’s people. Exactly. It’s always people. And you know, instead of trying to fix, how do you get the people to stay, they say, well, what if I just don’t care about if the people stay. Okay, well then you can outsource your service desk to India. You can outsource it to Pakistan, Dominican Republic, Pakistan.

Those are like the four major players. Well now I don’t really care and it’s super cheap. Right. I don’t have to manage those people. I am outsourcing my service to a service, kind of. Mm-hmm. And then they call, and in this case they outsource it to, to, uh, India. Um, the CFO happens to be Indian. Uh, and they can’t understand when they’re calling just to reset their passwords or anything.

And something that should take 10 seconds now called on Mr. CFO. His time is now being consumed because he’s now doing the things that he needs to be doing to push that business forward and grow. He’s sitting, translating to see about how you can get a password reset and, and any world, tell me where your time is best spent doing that.

And the level of frustration that just goes on with that. It’s like, I would, I, you, that person doesn’t wanna bother the C ffo just so they can be like, I don’t know what he’s saying. Mm. And there’s no connection. And look, here’s what he brought up too. Not to interrupt you, John. Here’s what brought up too, was the bigger problem with that is you don’t get the same rep every time.

No. Yeah. So they have to. Re they ask, ask you questions about the basic understanding of your environment. So you’re, it’s like you’re starting or restarting every time. So, yeah. So a, a potentially 15 minute resolution is like 45 minutes. Yeah. It’s like every time when you call, whatever, just say a big company, I call Verizon and I get on the phone and I do their little automated thing and I give ’em all my information and then I get connected with an agent after, you know, 10 minutes of stuff I don’t wanna be doing to begin with.

And then they just go through and ask me all those same questions again. God, at that point, I’m Chase said, I just had this situation, I’ll live with my problem at that point. I don’t wanna be on this. Oh my gosh, did you hear me with t T-Mobile? I, I dunno if I can say their name. If you, I had to close the door guys.

I gotta call my, my son got into a fender bender and, uh, we took the car down to the shop. The shop says, Hey look, it’s a used car, right? So based on the value of the car and how much it’s gonna cost the service, like that makes sense. It’s totaled. Mm-hmm. And it was totaled because four seat belts didn’t work anymore.

It was a fender bender, but the seat belts didn’t work. So, okay. Lesson learned. But, um, the insurance company. Uh, who clearly outsourced. Oh yeah, this person calls me up and now I’m frustrated because you’re telling me that I’m out on the down payment. We’ve only had the car for five months, so I’m out on the, I gotta eat the down payment, okay.

Mm-hmm. And now I gotta, now I gotta go through the hassle of going to talk to a used car salesman to get another car. So now there is a night Yeah. Of my life. So I’m already amped up and I’m already frustrated. Plus, you know, I kind of wanna get my kid in a headlock. Mm-hmm. Um, so I’m a little amped up on that one.

Uh, and then I get a call from this person who’s essentially gonna break the news to me, um, in a way that I can’t even understand what they’re, what they’re trying to articulate to me. ’cause I don’t wanna understand their industry. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then on top of that, I’m really struggling with the, with the language barrier.

The language barrier. And I, I’m not trying to be mean or rude in that regard. Um, obviously I love everyone. I, I, I, I’ve, I’ve appreciate and I know everyone out there is doing the best that they can and they’re working as hard as they can. But let’s be honest, like there is a language barrier and I could see where that would be difficult for somebody else who’s gotta communicate with this knucklehead right there.

Wonder help. Look, there’s a knuckle there, there, there’s a knucklehead here talking to a knucklehead there. And we don’t speak the same language and we have thick accents and so on and so forth. And so now the frustration is, is kicking to the point where I like, I’m like, I’m conferencing my wife. I gotta hand this off to her because I’m literally gonna come through the phone and strangle you.

And the person’s like, I don’t understand what you’re saying, sir. I know you don’t, I don’t understand what you were saying either. Um, but I felt so bad for the person on the other end of the line as well because she was just doing her job. Yeah. But I can’t, I can’t operate, I can’t, I can’t understand what, what’s happening.

This took an hour and a half of my life Sure. Was taken for this situation. Yeah. Um, that could have been 10 minutes. But I, it, it just, it just was such a breakdown. Yeah. So it’s a shame, but I just do want to add to the point that collectively here in this room, like we’re not saying people are bad or we shouldn’t work with another country or whatever.

What we are saying is, there are moments that are critical in a business where you want comfort and you’re already frustrated, and it would just be really, really nice to talk to somebody that is like your neighbor next door. Um, that lends you that comfort, gives you the technical advice and solves your problem and leaves you better than you arrived.

I didn’t leave better than I arrived right when I got that phone call, but the, I’m talking about it on the podcast now. I’m still pissed. Yeah. But the problem with that, this whole situation is outsource can be great. Oh yeah. If it’s outsourced properly. Mm-hmm. So what I’m saying is if you outsource to.

India, India has a, a great IT pool. They’re brilliant. Correct. So, but you have to pay the right amount to get the right amount of people dedicated to your account. So this is where it becomes a problem, is when you have, you know, when you, when you go into a, a company that’s just outsourcing help desk and they only have a select amount of hours per month or maybe one agent or two agents, that’s where it fails.

You’re not So for the company that is, they’re outsourcing to, you’re not enough, a big enough fish for them to provide their highly capable, highly trained, assimilated, um, you know, maybe have gone through language training and so on. You’re getting the new person mm-hmm. Um, that hasn’t gone through that yet, will eventually be there three years down the road.

They’ll get to that point ’cause they’re dealing business with people overseas and internationally, so they’re gonna have to assimilate and adjust. Mm-hmm. But because you’re not a big enough, uh, customer to the outsource company. The customer of the company. The MSP gets the shorthand on that. Well, so here, I’ll, I’ll, I’ve done, I’ve done international business for years, and I will tell you that I outsourced, uh, development, believe it or not, to Columbia the best.

That’s what I’ve heard, hands down, the best skilled developers I’ve ever worked with in my life. And when I say skilled, I mean skilled for, uh, the different ranges of, of, because development is very, yeah, there’s a lot, a lot. But my, my point is I think there’s a misconception that, you know, it’s all, you know, driven out of, you know, one country or a couple countries.

It’s really not. No. You know, believe it or not, uh, Romania has a great, uh, it force. Um, Poland has a great development force. Um, you know, there’s a, there’s a lot of Europe, but also South America is actually, that’s what I’ve heard. It’s an incredible, we call it near shore. Because the time zones, right?

Mm-hmm. It’s an incredible pool of, of it individuals that, you know, they have a, a great system down there of, of education. And I will say this going back to my point when you, and when you as a company hire the right partner in the right country, it can work great for you. Mm-hmm. You know, they were on, when we were on, we, we set it up in different time zones, but Well, we spent the time building that so our clients never felt pain.

Mm-hmm. Right. Which is why, going to your point, John is like, yeah, I, I left feeling worse than I came in the call. That’s because the, the individual who negotiated that support didn’t really. Either A, they outgrew the current support, or B, it’s the wrong partner that they have in that certain location. So it could work great and it could be great financially, but at the same time it, it puts a bad reputation in the industry.

And so do MSPs. We have a terrible reputation in the industry. Why? Because of overpromising under delivery. Mm-hmm. Because of, because of saying yes. When you should say no because of, or maybe shops that can’t do the thing, took your stuff or, or maybe saying, this will work for now, but you have 90 days to make sure we address this technology problem you have.

That’s, that’s where the bad reputation, you know, there’s another thing to that point is that there’s a sweet spot for businesses, but there’s also a brand promise or a brand mission, um, and some companies. Get to a point where they start to create momentum and they lose their vision, they lose their mission, and they start focusing on profit as the leading indicator.

Now we all know that profit is the most important indicator in business. We get that, but some companies lose who they are and how they started in order to maximize that profit. So some of the companies you’re talking about, they, they, they make the change ’cause like their initial vision. Was, Hey, we’re gonna provide unbelievable service.

We’re, we’re in-house, we’re local, and they probably, you’re gonna talk to the person next door. And then all of a sudden they go, Ooh, we’re really rolling here. How can we get that extra next edge of dollars to the bottom line? Well, let’s outsource this. And then they make the mistake of not fully vetting how the impact that’s gonna have on their customers, whether or that’s gonna cause frustration and so on.

They, they’re making the decision ’cause it’s gonna be cheaper, but it creates a different brand experience for their customers and then they start to lose their identity. One thing that I think is really cool, uh, between you two and Tim, is you’re really staying the course with, Hey, look, our brand vision, our brand mission, our brand promise.

Is that we’re gonna have 24 7 help desk that is here local, that is going to make you feel like you’re calling your neighbor next door and is gonna have a rapid response time. Because you are. Because you are. And yeah, there’s a real point of pride to this. Me and Nick before this podcast, we went out to the gas station just to grab a drink or something.

You gotta find the bathroom again. I see how I brought that back around. That was, that was an hour ago. I remember. It was good. Well, people frown when I do it in the parking lot. Yeah. Yeah. It was weird. It is weird. It’s, well, so we were just going over there, the, the gas stations literally one minute away.

We can see it basically from where we’re at. Well, we pulled up to the stoplight and WIL comes by us. Uh, uh, one of our clients semi-truck. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There’s a point of pride to that because, you know, Nick was looking down the roads to make sure we’re not gonna hit, pulled out. Yep. Pointed out, Hey, there they are.

Yeah. There is a point of pride to seeing that you help someone and they’re right by you. You can see their stuff flowing. Mm-hmm. You can see them growing and you get to grow with them, and they’re literally right there. You have to kind of care if you’re gonna see that person in the grocery store. I can’t be, you know, uh, you know, the biggest dick bag to somebody and then go see them.

Yeah. You know? How’s that work out? No, I, you know, I get to smile and I get to shake hand. I get to see that. I go Look at that. They’re still out there. That’s Luke’s great. They’re killing it. And I can kind of see that on the periphery of just them being out in the world, even though I only communicate with them, you know, in the office or when I go to their site or something.

But I get to see it. So this is a new, um, this is. The new squad guys. Okay. So this organization has, has been operating successfully and scaling and growing. But Nick is a year and a half, two years in Two years In almost two years. Yeah, almost two years. Jason is under six months. Yep. Four. Uh, and have, um, they’re ham and egging it right now.

Golf term, right? Two man. Scramble. Um, and peanut butter and jelly. And they’re, they’re, um, you know, carrying out and executing the vision of Tim Ward and Tim’s vision, uh, with TTSG initially was service. Same with Bob Withers, who’s our COO. Their main thing, their point of pride, the way that they built TTSG, uh, was we’re gonna beat everyone’s service, which means we’re gonna show up, we’re gonna show up, we’re gonna put our face right in front of you.

And when you got a problem, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna show up and solve that problem. We’re not gonna put it off. So it would make sense when Tim talked to Dick Portillo. And Dick Portillo said, Hey Tim, you need to get into this IT game because all you do is get shit done. Okay. Uh, with TTSG. So, you know, this is the way the industry’s going ’cause nobody wants to no IT director, you know, this wants to deal with copy machines and printers.

No. Right? So you need to get into the IT thing because it gives you an open typically goes, okay, I’m gonna leave there, I’m gonna start GST technologies. Um, so starts, it gets a rolling. Now he’s building out his a team. You guys are on the A team and, uh, Tim is, is essentially saying, Hey look, here’s the brand promise, here’s the vision.

This is, this is how we’re gonna operate in the marketplace. I have built, uh, I have built a name. In the marketplace. I have built multiple brands on networking, using my book of business, using my relationships, using my reputation, reputation, personal reputation. And it matters to me that, uh, when somebody hires us for any of our brands, right, that they are, uh, going to get the ultimate service because his name is on the, is on the line.

But at the same time, he’s starting to step back. ’cause he’s, all he does is build brands. That’s what he just kind of goes to the next thing. So he’s handing the keys over to you guys. Now, I’m not saying that it fully, but I’m saying like he’s going, Hey look, now I got an A team. I’m gonna let these boys run.

These are two thoroughbreds. I’m gonna let ’em go, right? Yeah. And um, but he’s still dangling the carrot. He’s letting you know where the finish line is. It’s up to you guys to do it. So in doing that, he’s giving you some grace. Some, some, uh, flexibility to adjust the vision to implement different systems, controls and procedures.

Talk about that. Where like, what’s the joy in that? What’s the purpose in that? How have you taken the outcome he’s laid out for you? He’s told you very clearly what he wants the outcome to be. He does that for all of us. Mm-hmm. But he doesn’t really interfere with how you get there. He might add some, he might add some ideas.

Right. But he doesn’t really get in your way. Right. He might adjust you. Yeah, but doesn’t get in your way. So let’s talk about collectively the two of you. When you start to think, what’s the big vision? How are we gonna do this? What have you changed? What have you modified and what’s to come? Well, yeah, they’re, that’s fantastic.

You know, and something that I can say about Tim and Bob, uh, you know, I don’t know how many people know Bob, but they are fantastic because they will not let bad service fly. That is, I couldn’t even imagine, you know, Tim getting a call that saying like, bad service, and that has to come to me. Well, for one, I’d feel incredibly bad because we try to provide that for everybody, and we do.

And he cares incredibly about it. Like he should, like I said mm-hmm. Personal reputation, you know, this is something that reflects poorly on him and he has a good reputation out there. I wouldn’t wanna s that I want people to be taken care of too. Um, but as far as like how he can kind of like, he, he’s a vision guy.

Tim’s a vision guy. Tim says, oh, what would this look like in five years? What would this look like in three years? I want to be doing this in three years. Well, how do we get there? Okay, well these are what the numbers look like. This is what pipeline stuff looks like. Um, inherently I know, uh, being in the MSP business for my entire career is that you get to a certain point of growth and a lot of people stagnating in the MSP business around a certain number.

It happens everywhere. And it’s because they didn’t take the time or the know-how or, you know, whatever the case might be, of the right people in place to be putting proper process and procedure in so things can scale with you. You know, like we were kind of getting back to, uh, you know, people outsource the service desk.

It’s like, well, how can I make this cheaper? Um, and they say, well, we get this many service calls. We have to pay people in America this much to handle this sort of volume. Uh, that’s a sustainable for what we have to pay them. So we go pay somewhere else when the, the right question to ask is, how do we make it so clients don’t have problems anymore?

How do we reduce the amount of volume that’s coming on so that we can serve more clients with our good people, that we have take the time, the energy to build properly, that we have trust, that they know they’re gonna be taken care of, and that we, you know, we believe in what they’re doing so they can service more people.

Because our clients aren’t calling in anymore. We don’t have to worry about outsourcing because we can’t fix the process and the procedure and the efficiencies we’re, we’re trying to set up, we set up the systems correctly so that people don’t have to call in lower your volume. You can keep this all here, you can keep the things you believe in and continue to grow in a good way without having to cut corners and do stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean, uh, work with Tim has been, has been enjoyable. And I, and I’ll say the reason is, is because he, I agree with Jason and John, you know this, he’s a visionary. I mean, he, he has ideas, ideas, ideas for days. I actually believe that he my pee for months. I, I believe that he doesn’t sleep. That’s a personal, uh, I would agree.

Um, but what’s. W what’s great is that, so he sat down with us prior to Jason Cumming and was like, what, what do we need to get to? Where we want to go? What, what I wanna know? Everything. And he was humble enough to sit there and I just gave him the most direct response of what challenges we have, where we need to go, how we’re gonna get there, what I need from him.

And he took everything in, sat there, thought about it, came back to us in a few weeks and laid it out in the line. Here’s exactly what we need to do. Here’s where I agree, here’s where I disagree. If I disagree, tell me why I should do this. You know, he’s, he’s open-minded if it, if it’s gonna improve, the business has to make sense.

Correct. So, I mean, that’s. That’s fair. That’s all I can ask for. And I told ’em, said, that’s all I can ask for. That’s, and so we, we really made heavy investments into our people. That was the first starting point. Uh, we knew we wanted to grow. We knew when to scale. We knew, we know profit’s important, but we also know that without the people, the profit’s not gonna come.

Mm-hmm. I mean, it’s just the reality of, and without, without people, you’re not gonna have great customers for an extended period of time. Correct. Therefore, there’s nothing. Correct. So you wanna talk to another person every single day when they call. Yes. And so we, we really transformed the people. Right.

And we started doing that little by little. And then we, and then we brought in, you know, we then we, we met Jason and we were, and then I went to Tim and I said, look, you want me to, you want me to be a transparent here? He’s gotta be the IT director he needs to be. And Tim’s like, okay. I get, and he, Tim, you know what, what people don’t know if you haven’t met Tim, is he’ll agree with you.

And then he’ll think about it and he’ll come back to questions. Right. Which is fair. Mm-hmm. Um, and most of his questions were based around the current team, which was exciting. ’cause that means that Tim already saw the person in the seat. It was how do we make sure that the team can work within this new environment, and let’s make sure that it’s, it’s gonna make sense for everybody and invaluable for everybody, most importantly.

So, so yeah. So we, we did a lot of that. We did a lot of, of really looking at everything from, you know, the people, the technologies, um, the clients themselves. You know, are they set up properly? Do we need to make changes? So, so we did all that and then that’s how we really built, in my opinion, is an exciting growing company versus, you know.

A company that ’cause most MSPs, back to Jason’s point, do about a million dollars and they stop growing. Mm-hmm. Stagnant. It’s like they’re all about a million bucks. Right. Um, and then the larger ones, what happens is you get so large that your previous clientele doesn’t make sense anymore. Mm-hmm. Right.

And so it’s a runaway too. Yeah. And I will, I will say we, we have, uh, goals with, from Tim for, for three to five years. We’ve worked hard on it. Um, we have goals weekly. We have goals monthly, but, but most importantly, um, we don’t, we, we don’t look back and say, oh, we, we know we need to change this because, um, you know, this didn’t work out.

Rather, we are, and that could be a client, that could be a tool, whatever. Uh, we, we push towards that end goal no matter what. And, and that, that’s what’s helped us grow. And that’s what’s helped change. You know, I went to Tim and I said, Tim, if, if we want to get to this, this. Point or a number, uh, we have to change how we attack the market.

And he looked at me and he is like, yeah, sure. Go do it. I’m like, no, no, no. Like I, I want you to understand like it’s gonna be painful. Like I was almost like in a movie, I’m like, it’s gonna hurt a little bit. You did a little bit. You heard him, you did you a little bit. You did. Um, and that was my de Niro by the way.

It be, you just need a beauty little bit, but little bit. You did. Yeah. I ain’t doing that no more. That’s why Joe Peci, oh, PECI. I can’t say it with, without the language. So, but he, no, so he was open-minded to it. And, and that’s been the key thing, is he understood it. And you know, the reality is we have three companies under one roof.

So not only are we trying to take GSD to the next level and grow it, we have to incorporate three different companies into one building of personalities. Of brands. It’s been a lot, but it’s been fun. And, and most importantly, on the GSD side. Um, I think we just, we, to your point, John, there’s an excitement.

There’s a, there’s a, a, like a, a feeling of everybody has each other’s backs. Like there’s, there’s, there’s, for me, I don’t, I don’t care if you make a mistake necessarily. I care if you make a mistake twice and I care if, if you don’t care that you made a mistake. Yeah. So I think we have a good group of people.

I think we have a CEO that’s starting to, he, you know, he’s, he’s at a point, and to your point, John, he’s built the company with his context. He’s starting to say, go do it. Here’s everything you need, go do it. And what’s great is we’re, we’re allowing him to take more time to work on the business. Mm-hmm.

That’s kind of part of our goal. Uh, but most, you know, most importantly we’re creating career paths for people. Um, and also I feel like our clients are, I, I feel comfortable, like I, and, and I, I know that we’re on, we’re on this recording, so I’m not gonna, you know, but you would, of course he’s gonna say it, but I genuinely feel comfortable for where we are from.

I mean, our clients’ positioning in the business in terms of their IT environments and, you know. We are the backbone. Right. So it, I understand it’s a big undertaking. I get it. It’s, it’s, it’s nerve wracking. And, and we’re very, we’re very patient. We wanna make sure that everything’s laid out. But overall, it’s been, it’s been very fun to see the transition, especially over the last few months.

So, so we know who we are, we know what we do. And maybe it’s too late in the show for us to talk about this, but I’m going to anyways. Why do we do it? Oh, I was actually explaining this to someone the other day. Uh, and this is just my personal view and how I feel of the MSB industry that I’ve been in, you know, over a decade.

Uh, I think I’m a person who likes helping. I just like helping. If I can help someone, no matter what it is, if I can help you take out the garbage, if I can help you do whatever, go to the gas station. Sure. He helped me do that. He should feel good. And, uh, if I, if I can, if I can help, I feel good helping.

We’re in a business that gets to help people. And their businesses succeed because it’s a skillset that they don’t have. You know, they, they might have built this business from day one. They started just them and they’ve grown it ’cause they do whatever they do really well and they exceed at it. And I have to imagine they like at it because they’re continuing to do it and they’re exceeding well, they were the IT man when they first started and then they eventually go to a place where that that’s no longer feasible because they’re not just working on the internet.

They actually have real needs and they don’t know anything about it. But we do. And you know, maybe they don’t have the budget to go hire someone internally for sure. They don’t have the skillset to be able to interview for someone who can go run their business or run their IT because they don’t know it.

But we get to go and do that, and we can do it for a good price and give them a bigger team for less money that fits into their budget with a bigger skill set. And they don’t have to know it anymore. They get to focus on the reason they started the business in the first place, doing something they love and exceeding at that.

And we get to help ’em and grow with them. I love being able to help. We, we don’t, we’re not taking advantage of anybody. This literally financially makes sense back to my, my, my brain and things have to make sense. I don’t, I, I have always had a stigma against sales and things like that where it’s in my head, probably from my father about like, oh, people are just trying to rip you off.

We don’t have to do that ever. We’d never have to pretend like, yeah, this is gonna make you guys succeed there. You’re gonna get so much more profit if we do this, blah, blah, blah. No, we get to just propose things that we believe in and we can do. Mm-hmm. And we get to help. And we’ve got enough traffic going where if, if we don’t believe that or you don’t believe in us to do that, that’s okay.

Guess what? We’ll be next door. Yeah. We’re good to go. We’re fine. We’d love to work with you. We would absolutely love to work with you, but only if we truly believe that we can change your life. Yeah. By improving your business. If we don’t believe that, we’ll say no to you faster and you’ll say no to us.

Yeah. And that’s kind of, that’s kind of the, the, the key part to this too is like, while this episode is a bit of us talking about Jason and getting you to know in the marketplace who Jason is and talking about kind of the belief system and how we’ve gotten to this point, I think it’s important that people understand and know that, you know, um, we’re a great option.

We’re not the only option, but we are an absolutely fantastic option. Mm-hmm. Um, but we’re certainly not gonna beg for anyone’s business, um, especially if we don’t believe. That we can absolutely change your life, make your life better, have a huge impact. So that’s a huge thing. The the website that you should go take a look at, which by the way is a new website, thank you to 2020 Design and Nick Zillow, uh, partnering together to kind of spearhead that bad boy and put it together, uh, is www.gsdnow.com.

You’ve probably heard earlier in the middle of the PA podcast, a little ad read that yours truly did. Uh, and we’d really thank you if you would go to the top right corner and hit that free demo and, uh, have a consultation with Nick and his team who will come out and do some amazing work. So I’m gonna throw the ball to you, Nick.

We heard the why from Jason, uh, why should somebody work with GSD? Because we look at, are we the right partner? Uh, we, we look at your business before we look at the financial side of it, right? So, um. At GSD, our big, our our big, um, internal discussions are based around their business and how they use it and what they need to grow the company versus why we should charge ’em, what we should charge them.

Right. So I, and, and when you’re choosing an MSP, I would recommend to never look at price point should not be the first. It should be, you know, who you’re working with and what they’re gonna do for you. Mm-hmm. That’s the biggest piece that I would say. And so that’s what we do first initially, um, pricing for us comes up in discussion once we do a full assessment, of course.

Um, but I, I want to just stress that we look at your business, how you can go and, and run your day to day, how you need to do to perform your job the best, and also grow your company, right. And let us handle the business, the IT side, and make sure that you don’t have to stress out about it. So. That’s the big part.

You know, there were years in my life where I made decisions based on price and whether I was in a fantastic financial situation or a bad financial situation, I was making a lot of decisions based on price. And I gotta tell you that it came back to bite me more times than not, uh, at some point in my life.

Um, and, and whether it was on an up or a down ’cause I’ve had some ups and downs, man. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and I’ve been anything in between. And by the way, I would tell you that Rich with purpose is probably the best one. So I’m aiming for that one because I’ve been rich with no purpose and poor with a ton of purpose.

And neither one of ’em are that great. So I’m looking for rich with purpose. Um, but I will tell you that, uh, one of the things that is extremely important to me and the way that I make decisions now is can I vibe? Can I vibe with the people that I’m working with? Mm-hmm. Do I like them? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like, would I have them in my kitchen?

Like, could I work with ’em to the point where I would have them in my kitchen for my wife to make one of her best meals and we could break bread together? Like would I want to hang out with them at a Cubs game? You know what I mean? Like, would I wanna play 18 holes of golf with them? And let’s be honest, like I’ll play golf with anybody.

But I’ll be honest with you, like after three holes, I’ll probably be annoyed by a lot of people and wish that you weren’t there. Like, can I, would I want, would I want to introduce you to my mom and dad? Yeah. You know what I’m saying? There you go. Like, that’s where I started to really realize that like the value of money becomes less and less important.

When you start to look at the value of character, when you start to look at the value of actual value, when you start to look at the, the, the benefit that a human being is going to provide, are they going to be there for you when you call at 3:00 AM because Nick will be awake at 3:00 AM He just talked about it on vacation in Geneva, thinking about a a client.

And I know that’s a true story ’cause he told me the next day, I said, dude, you got some bags under your eyes. He said, yeah, it’s ’cause I was up till 3:00 AM I couldn’t stop thinking. So that’s not a BS podcast clip. That’s a real deal conversation. So I will tell you right now that if you’re making your decisions in the marketplace based on price.

I would really reevaluate that, especially when it comes down to your most important critical elements of decision making. And I think we’ve given you a case here as to why it is one of your most critical, uh, decisions because your livelihood, your baby, your brand, your pride of brand, your people, and your financial situation.

Rest on the hands of how strong your IT environment is. And that a IT environment is gonna be strengthened by people that are brilliant, that do the right work, not for price, but because they know that it’s the right solution for your organization because they’re looking out for your best interest. So the next time that you are approached by somebody that comes in with a price that you look at and you go, Ooh, that looks really good.

And another organization comes in with a price where you go, how in the world did they get there? I would maybe lean into the, how in the world did they get there? Because those are the people likely that are telling you the truth. And if they’re great people like Jason and Nick, and I’ve sat in with Nick where he said, you know what?

I gotta tell you, like I think we should eat some margin here because we could really change these people’s lives. And I’m not talking about cut the price in half, but I’m saying come down a little bit. There’s been situations where he is done that. Sure. Yeah. So, and that means that you’re dealing with somebody who understands they wanna solve problems, but also is understanding that you have a budget and is also understanding that the short term, short term gain is not why we’re in it.

We want long-term partnerships that we can watch their business grow as they watch our business grow. And together we can get shit done. Folks, I wanna thank you for being on on this podcast, Jason. As always, just dynamo. Nick, welcome to the case for Yeah, baby, you gotta get the T-shirt. We’re gonna do some picture share.

Get a champagne bottle. Yeah, let’s break that. Um, uh, judge Schmaltz, right? Uh, so I, I, I just, uh, I’m really, I’m really excited to be surrounded by talent. Nick, it’s always great to have you on the podcast. Um, you just add great energy, but I also know that you speak from the heart, ultra sincere and everything that you just talked about, I’ve witnessed and I’ve watched you do.

Um, and I’ve been on calls where, where I’ve seen it, and Jason, I’ve sat in meetings with you and I told you at the first meeting that we were at in Geneva, I was like, I looked at Nick. I’m like, whew, good hire that, that was a good one. Um, so Jason, I will tell you in that sincere, and it’s sincere because I’m putting it out in the airways right now, and I care a lot about my personal brand and what I speak and what I say.

I will tell you that you are one of the most talented people that I’ve had a chance to interact with, whether it’s in these four walls of this building, are outside of that. And, uh, the future is very bright. Gentlemen, you got shit done. Oh, love it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers.

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