EP224 – What’s the Perfect Structure for an MSP? with Alison Whitfield & Ian Luckett

IAN: In this episode of the IT Experts podcast, we're going to help you work out what the perfect structure for your MSP is.

INTRO: Welcome to the IT Experts podcast, the only podcast to help MSPs scale to 1 million and if already there, get to 5 and go fast. At the end of the day, isn't it all about building a business that works for you rather than you for it? I hope you enjoy the show.

IAN: So good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Welcome to the IT Experts podcast. Today, we're going to straighten you out. We're going to help you work out what the perfect structure is for you to scale or grow, scale, and really get some good traction in your MSP using your people. And we've got Alison Whitfield from Humnize in the house today. Hello, Alison. How you doing?

ALISON: Hi, Ian. Thanks so much for having me.

IAN: No problem. I feel a little bit honored because we've got a people expert who's worked in some of the largest MSPs in the UK, although they didn't all start off that way. So stories that I'm sure are going to come out in today's episode. So what we're talking about today, Alison, is the perfect structure for an MSP. We know that many MSPs start off single person or very few people in line of technical people, then we build an account management, new business, marketing, et cetera, et cetera, butas they scale and grow, I was only talking about this the other day with some clients, there’s the, sometimes we end up just bolting on people ‘cause what they do and now they're a good person, they’re a good person. Oh, let's put that person in here. And we don't necessarily look at the values and the skills and expertise. So today we've spoken to Dean from Humnize before, amazing guy, great recruitment company for MSPs. And they do much more than that. But before we get going out and let everybody know, who are you, what you do and who'd you help?

ALISON: Yes. Thank you very much. So I'm Alison Whitfield. I am people and culture director at Humnize and I work with mainly MSPs, but companies across the tech business, tech industry to help them do exactly what we're talking about today, get their structure understand their people and actually find that the way that they do the things that they do, it all stems back to people. So looking at those business structures and business growth through a people lens and I found that actually is really helpful because it's a bit of an underutilized asset at times. So yes, that's what I'm doing at the moment.

IAN: Give us a little bit of your your interest. Backstory on where you came from with a smaller MSP and then you had some acquisitions and maybe some of the challenges around that because that's very interesting, isn't it?

ALISON: Yeah. So I started out in the MSP world about eight years ago. I actually started as a customer relationship manager, so very operational and on the customer experience side and through my time with that company, IT grew and grew, and we had lots of acquisitions. But actually I made the shift from operations into people because I could see that a lot of the issues that were coming up in the customer journey were stemming back to things like learning and development, structure, all of these things that actually are covered under the HR umbrella. But we didn't have an internal HR person. Overseeing that and facilitating it, I became head of people and the business grew by multiple acquisitions, as I say, so lots of different cultures coming together, different management teams, different operating styles that really needed a huge period of integration. So it's taught me a lot about how to prioritize people in that process and make sure that you're covering all of your bases.

IAN: Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to make a mental note and we might come in and do a do another podcast around acquisition and how to integrate different cultures and people and things like that. Because know like from experience, when you bring in lots of different people into a different organization, it can be very hard. And sometimes the shiny ball from the MSP might be, yeah, we'll just buy that company and it'll all bolt in and everything will just fall into place. Like the marbles used to fall down, it'll all fall into place and everything will be tickety boo. I'm sure you've got some stories that will prove that that is not necessarily the case. And there's a certain…

ALISON: definitely a conversation there,

IAN: conversation there. So yes, I wish you'll pick that one up. But looking at the structure which, to be quite fair, it's quite a dry subject, isn't it? We ask people to, put your 12 month structure together and then put your three year structure together and things like this. And you can see sometimes the clients are going, oh, what have I got to do this for? I'm busy. I've got loads of us. So why do we need to plan this structure out. Why is this such an important thing to start with? To have, a proper chart, a proper roles and responsibilities and this. Key document in the business.

ALISON: Yeah. So I was thinking about this earlier this week to think, how can I put this? That is, in a nice way. You seem a bit more interesting and that there's that old sort of analogy of oh, we're building a house and we're putting the foundations, and all of that kind of thing. But I think it goes a lot deeper than that. And actually earlier this week, I was sorting out my son's bedroom and he's got this book about an orchestra. And I thought that. is exactly what it's like. So you've got this person. It tells you all about the orchestra. You've got this person or with people who stand at the front and they're the conductor of the orchestra. They're setting the pace. They're making sure that everything's going well. They're keeping the direction of the group, but they're not the ones jumping in and telling the musicians how exactly to play the violin or that they're sitting in the wrong seat or to do all of these things. They're just standing at the top going, this is the pace that we're doing things. There's then lots of other people across along that musical group of people that are telling each group that what they should be doing. So there's someone in charge of the violins, there's someone in charge of the trumpets, there's someone making sure that the trumpets are not sat with the violins. There's all of these things that are going on, making sure that people have got the right sheet music, that we're on the same piece of music. All of these things are done in the background without the conductor having to jump in and do that. That made me think, actually, that's a bit like what we're talking about in structure that you've got to have all of these things done in the background and the foundations and the framework set up to make sure that you can be the leader and that you can actually set the pace and bring the business forward. So that's my new analogy now.

IAN: I love that. And I haven't heard that and I'll probably end up stealing it from you as well, but it was great. When you're the conductor, as it would be looking over across the business, what's important when you look at the structure in terms of, I guess that, let's start at the top, what's important to be sitting, in terms of key measurables and look and feel of a senior leadership team. What does that, look like? Because they need to, show and demonstrate and celebrate the success. If you just let everybody get on with things, you can probably get quite a flat work culture, can't you? But that's not what people listen to this podcast for. We want to be ambitious. We want to be, we are ambitious and we want to grow and scale. So what's the first level of consideration, with a senior leadership team.

ALISON: So I think ultimately you all have to be on the same page in the senior leadership team of what your business is doing and why it's doing it as well. So in a lot of the MSP world and the businesses that I've spoken with and worked with. Ultimately, a lot of them are selling the same product, so there's not many out there that are doing something completely different. But it's why you are doing it and why you want to be different than other businesses. And if everyone in the senior leadership team is on the same page there, then you can start thinking about, okay, so when we, now that we know what we're doing and why we're doing it, we can start thinking about how we're doing it. And I think it's really important to then. Think about what every department does that leads into that strategy, what every single individual in every single department does that leads into that strategy. Cause if everybody feels that they're part of that and they're taking the business forward, come away from a little bit of that clashing nature that you get in an MSP. Sometimes you do get a little bit of service. Don't feel as important as sales. The sales get all gory and all of that. You get this internal conflict so that if everybody knows, actually, I'm a part of this success, and this is the part that I have to play in the business strategy, then you come away from a little bit of that conflict on people start to really understand their role and responsibility in driving the business forward. Because I think if we don't have those defined roles and responsibilities, actually, the outcome is a lack of operational growth efficiency. So we don't have things working in a way that we want them to. If everyone understands their role, they can then make it more streamlined. They can standardize elements of it. They can drive consistency. And if you have consistency across your customer experience, then you're much more likely to be able to get those customers into long term contracts and predict, have better predictability across the business. It feels a lot much less clunky. So it all it's a bit of a domino effect if you get those things right at the beginning for something that can seem so almost like insignificant as a job specification and an org chart, that's just the start of something that really then develops into what your operating model is.

IAN: Love it. Love it. What you're learning very quickly here Alison is that we have a structure for for the podcast and we haven't even touched it yet. And we're just going to dance around it with any questions I seem to ask. Let's just dive into stay on the SLT side of things at the minute. Know 95.7 percent of MSPs don't get past a million turnover, which means that a lot of MSPs don't have an established senior leadership team. There also isn't a shop called anymore. SLTs are us where you can go and buy your predetermined SLT and slot them all in. Let's just dig into two things in your opinion on what you've seen has worked well and hasn't worked well in.

Let's go with number one. Promoting. So you've got a really good service desk manager or you've got a really good, really good egg. You've got a great team player. They're just solid. And you want to keep them in the business because you enjoy working with them. You cut them in half, they'll bleed the company colors. And then one day you think, I need to have you on my SLT. This will either be amazing or it will be an absolute disaster. What are some of the pitfalls, the tips, the tricks that you can offer in terms of how to identify people, that you're going to elevate and promote and what's your kind of view on that?

ALISON: I think so. I think I'm really passionate first of all, about promoting from within and finding that talent in your business. I think that's great. And I think the biggest thing that I would think about is it might not necessarily come from. A linear route. So I spoke before I went from customer relationship manager to leading service delivery into head of people on the SMT. It might not necessarily be that your best account manager becomes your sales director. It might be from a different area of the business. So I think not necessarily being blinkered by those linear routes is really important. And it's actually looking at skills and capabilities. So what do you need from someone who is on a senior leadership team and what is that senior leadership team going to be responsible for? In my experience, senior leadership team was the first people to start being included in the merging acquisition conversation that being included at a board level and some really sensitive information is up there. Being trustworthy and having discretion and integrity, they're all really in parts, important parts of that you might have someone that's a fantastic manager and is a great people person and is the person to G everybody up that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be the best senior leader. If that's what you're looking at, you might want them to be a more of a middle layer. And what, something that I did. In my last role was implemented and we have, we already had a senior management team, but implemented an operational management team. So all of the people managers, all of the people that were responsible for teams rather than department level came together every couple of weeks and had members of the senior management team on those meetings where we could say this is what we talked about at SMT level this week. How can you be part of that to make sure that that information is flowing from us to the teams, especially if you're working in hybrid or remote, or you've got people all over the country or all over the world, you want to make sure that communication flows into the business really well. And again, that is about structure. So where are your staff at the ground level getting their information? And is that accurate? Because if it's coming through lots and lots of different levels, then it's a little bit like Chinese whispers, things get changed and people have different agendas around comms. So that all leads into how you set those teams up for success.

IAN: So it's funny, you should say that when I was in corporate, I've got to SLT level and got exposure to the board and had the employee engagement surveys come out and we were party to the delivery of these and we'd sit around this board and everyone would be going, yeah, everything's fine. Everything's tickety boo. Everything's good. Our performance is good. Everything's fine. And then you like you turn around, you walk back into the office and everyone's moaning and it's there is a massive disconnect in this line of is exactly what you just said there, that line of communication, we actually just covered this off recently with our clients at one of the intensive sessions, which was all around, how do we take the vision and the mission, the strategy, and then break it into departmental plans, build the authority, the accountability, and, the measurement of that with the right people. And it's just so true that it's the orchestra, right? Why is the guy in the, you're going to love this, why is the guy in the corner banging his trumpet on the drum because no one's doing the wrong thing. It's really interesting. Really interesting viewpoints there, on that. What about you've got a hole in your SLT, your SMT. And you need to recruit. I have just, I've had the same conversation with our leadership coach Julie yesterday on a separate podcast. So I'm not going to say anything I just mentioned there. But how would you approach that? If I need somebody in this position, how do you assess their, their roles, their profile, how they're going to fit in? What do you look for? I guess this is playing straight into human eyes.

ALISON: Funnily enough, I've actually one of my newsletters has come out today a little bit on this subject. So I think When you feel like there's a hole in your management team, whether it's a senior level or a middle management level, wherever it is, I think you have to reassess what are we looking at here? What is the gap and why have we got it? So going back to why I think in any, before you make any decision is always really important. Why do we need a CTO or a CIO or a head off or whatever it might be? And it comes back to what that business strategy conversation was. This is what we're trying to achieve as a business. This anchor that we've talked about, we can't do that without a really good person in this department or whatever it might be. So once you've got your why, I think then you start thinking about, okay, what, how do we need them to work? What kind of person do we need them to be? What kind of business do they need to have worked in before? When I worked in as a head of we grew pretty considerably in the space of a few months by acquisition. If you're someone that's not been in that space before in that sort of startup mode, when you walk in, it seems like absolute chaos because you think what is going on? Everybody, you've bought all these businesses together and you're in this integration project. If you walk in at that point and you've never been in a startup before, you’re just going to feel like you're drowning it. And I think looking at where people have worked before, what sort of businesses, what size of businesses, it's really important. Even when I got to the point that we had a pretty clear and a decent size senior management team, there were still people that were wearing multiple hats and still at a culture of the sales director can get on a call with a customer. The commercial director can do all of these things, everyone's still got to mock it. And we had that as a very clear part of our culture, but other businesses might be like, no, everyone's got very clear roles and we don't need you to stray over those.

So I think it's about what you need as your individual business, what fits in your culture and then those scape of skills and capabilities, as we spoke about before, what are you going to be expecting them to do and are they actually skilled enough to do that?

IAN: You've just hit the, I've never ever thought about it before, but , I went through, I got my redundant at the same company every year for eight years. So I'm not really resilient to change. When anyone said to me, are we going to get my, there's going to be with some redundancies. I go brilliant. Yeah. Oh, come on. What opportunities are there, right? That's how my brain worked, but they're also people who are just absolutely crapped themselves in one thing or another. And I think what you've just said there is really interesting. Any MSPs out there who are looking to acquire, are your SLT-M and a ready are they ready for change? Can they change? Do you need to bring in people who can help orchestrate change? And I guess when you're interviewing those people asking what M and a experience have you had, how did you feel with it? How did you deal with it? And all of that sort of thing, because, as we know, through DISC and all the other behavioral stuff is I just stood up right now as we were talking, getting ready. I elevated the desk. I moved it into a completely different part of the office, turn the lights. And then away we go some people are going to absolute meltdown with changing the desk around and it's just really interesting. That's a great viewpoint.

Let's talk about operating models. And I want to be a little bit careful here but I always say from the beginning of time, since King Herod was around, there are very few ways and things you need to know about to build a great business. There's three things we see. Number one, you need to know your numbers. Number two, you have to have a working sales and marketing engine that's delivering leads, and number three, you need to be able to build a great world class team. That's it. Yeah. Simple as that. And we see there's lots of variations of different type of operating system models, which have been marketed very well, but it's actually really like quite basic. What different operating systems have you seen in the areas and what do you think of the different versions? Are there different versions?

ALISON: That's a interesting question. Yeah. I think when I started looking at structures and I studied my CIPD and all of these things, I think you find all these different names for things and there's all these different brands of how you do things. Ultimately, they all actually achieve the same thing. It's about building your structure and knowing what your business is trying to achieve and how you're going to achieve it. And I think the thing that gets missed off so much is how are we going to measure success? So whether it's that operation at the whole organizational level or whether it's with individuals, I go into our coach managers quite a lot and they'll sit and speak to people about, Oh, you've got a goal to go in. Get some Microsoft certifications, whatever it might be. How are we going to know that they've done that? Where are they logging that? What are they, what system are they logging into to say I've created this? Did they get a certificate? It's that really minute detail stuff that actually is, this is how we have achieved those tiny goals that all go into this big strategy, because now we've got all of these certifications. We can be a Microsoft goal partner, but now that we're a Microsoft goal partner, we can go and get different discounts from vendors. Whatever the strategy is, they all build into that. So I think it doesn't necessarily matter to me what business operating model you use and which brand you put yourself under. It's making sure that you've got a really strong why of what you're doing, of what the business is doing and why, and that every single person in the business understands that. So what I have seen happen a little bit too often is that the why and the strategy is completely understood at board level and everybody in a really senior role understands it, but nobody else in the business is ever spoken to about it or it gets spoken about on an annual town hall that people may or may not properly listen to and they don't really understand how they fit into it. The difference that I see is when you work in an MSP that everyone does understand that strategy. Everything shifts because it comes down to when you then start making decisions on what you sell, how you sell it, which customers you bring in, all of those things, people start sitting there and going does that really fit with what we're trying to do? This customer that we're bringing on this massive estate of X technology and that's not what was in the strategy. And it starts bringing those decisions to the fall that the people actually in your management team can make on their own without having to come to the CEO for every single thing because they know the strategy. They know that does or doesn't fit with what you're trying to do. And I think that's what's important rather than which specific. methodology or framework you use.

IAN: Yeah, is it this because it is ultimately, isn't it? In 30 seconds, it's, vision values, missions, get that clear, having a clear strategy, having departmental plans, having high level plans, having each individual, every single person who's working in an MSP, whether they are tightening screws on a laptop in the back office, or they are at the front delivering a presentation to thousands of people about cyber security. Every single person must be working out and working a way to deliver the strategy. Is that increasing revenue? Is that increasing, client retention? Is that increasing new sales? What's going on? Is that increasing the portfolio? And I think, yeah, it's really easy to get caught up with some of these things. But I think what you just said right at the beginning was, it's your structure. Just because another MSP and we hear this a lot. I was talking to a guy yesterday and he said, yeah, we've got a guy and it wasn't one of our peer groups, but he says, we've got a guy in one of our peer groups. And I did recognize his name and I'm not telling you it, but it was, but he's turning over a million pound MSP, a million pound MSP, and he hasn't made money. He hasn't made any profit for seven years because he's been too busy tinkering around with other bits and pieces. Now that's just clear, lack of vision, where are we actually going? What do we want to be doing? And it's actually quite frightening how many MSPs that we bump across who are bumping along, that kind of break even line, which is frightening because that's why we're working in this area, right? Cause it's such an incredible, exciting model. You've got such an opportunity to automate leverage, build this great business with loads of monthly recurring revenue and. Massive profitability. And when people don't, it's like, Oh, it's just a lack of direction or a lack of way, isn't there?

ALISON: Yeah. And I think ultimately, it's important to remember that you should never ever assume that every single person knows their part in that. So it's communication is absolutely critical, especially if you have grown by merger acquisition or you're planning to grow by merger acquisition. You've brought different people, even if you've grown organically, you've brought different people into the business and the business has shifted along the way. So if you've not had a conversation with someone about their role for five years, the business could be in a completely different space and their view of what their role is might be completely different to the senior leader's view of what their role is. So having those regular frameworks set up to support managers in those, having those conversations goes a long way.

IAN: Let's just quickly touch on before we start to close in on leadership models, lots of different styles of leadership, isn't there? We always talk an awful lot, which is a term that I heard and was trained in a shadow of the leader. Make sure that your shadow of your leader is very important as you're going through and self awareness and all of these types of things here. But how important is this? And what's the you know what? What elements of leadership is? Running an MSP important from a leadership point of view?

ALISON: Yeah, I think again, ultimately it comes down to a little bit of what kind of business do you want to run? So i've never really been in a business where everyone sits there and says I am an autocratic leader. I am this type of leader. We don't use those terms in normal day to day work, but what we do is make sure that we build senior leadership teams that are on the same page. So if you want to build a business where the senior leadership team is hands off and they want to be doing the strategy and not getting involved in the day to day. Then you have to have a really strong management team underneath you to be able to do that because someone's got to get in the weeds and someone's got to do the detail. Whereas if you're maybe a little bit smaller and actually you don't need a senior leadership team and all these managers and all of these heads of department and whatever it might be, you've got to then put senior leaders in that are passionate about the detail, because if you put a commercial director or a sales director or a CEO or whatever, that's actually not that bothered about how you do things, people will get frustrated because someone's got to deal with that detail. Someone's got to decide which specific technology you're using for project management. And if someone just sits at the top level and goes, I don't care. Just go and get on with it. Then that's not diverse. That's not directing a strategy. That's not keeping things consistent. So I think it's understanding that what kind of business do you want to run and what then that filters down into your structure and what kind of levels that you need and what type of leaders you need. Oh, you mentioned disc before, doing all of those personality tests and things like that. They're really important because we learn a little bit more about that person, but ultimately it's got to be what kind of thing are we trying to run here and why are we trying to run it that way?

IAN: But it actually just boils down to, doesn't it, whatever. You've just me mentioned there four layers of structure because you were working in MSP where there was 120 people, I think at each peak.

ALISON: Yeah. Object 40 I think is 40.

IAN: Sorry. So there's a lot of people there. And in many MSPs, I would say in the UK are, a sub 30 - 40. Yeah. So the right people in those white roles is really important. But just putting a wrap around the whole thing, what do you want each department to deliver? Are they delivering it? And if they're not delivering it, is it a people problem, a capacity problem, or is it an understanding problem? So actually gets even easier as you get down to the smaller numbers, because it's just simply, are you delivering what you should be delivering? Because we've connected all of the departmental goals and all that to hit the numbers, know your numbers, know your people, build a sales and marketing engine as we said before. So it's we do like to complicate it as technical people, but the MSPs, we do like to complicate it which is which makes it quite interesting some days.

ALISON: Yeah. And I think there's a great trend emerging at the moment where. A lot more leaders and people with leadership experience are looking at fractional roles. So if you are a smaller business and you think I can't afford to have a full time CIO, or there's no need for me to have a CTO because we're just not that big, that’s fine. Maybe until you come to do that merger acquisition, or you come to do that big project and there's options now to bring someone in on temporary basis. And for them to really understand your business quite quickly, because they've got that core skillset of a leader. And all they've got to do is then meet your key people and kind of slot in, do the project and potentially go away again. And you don't necessarily need to have someone there all the time and commit to this big six figure salary. That's, a massive job that are in some big tech companies. There are options and flexibility now around how you do that.

IAN: And I'm going to, absolutely just go against all the grains and do a reverse plug. That's what you guys do at Humnize, isn't it? Yeah. I know you were trying not to say that but when I first met Dean this was the thing I loved was the fact that, and he is concept enough to let me know if this is slightly out of date, but it was that we're going to recruit the right people. But if you can't find the right people, we're going to help. We're going to put some people in your place that you've got on the books that will help technically wise or whatever it is that kind of goes in and then the thing like that. So when you are recruiting, a fractional person, which you can do through Humnize, should you wish the phone, what do you need to look out for? What's the thing? Because , this is something we don't really deal with that much. We do have, you end up with a couple of people who kind of Bob around the channel. And it's normally finance is where we normally see senior people. Not necessarily technically they've grown up on their own. And most MSPs, if you get the account management and the and all of that kind of good stuff working properly, then sales and marketing needs to be fairly lightweight anyway, for most MSPs. But if you want to bring in a, senior fractional person who is going to cost some money what do you need to be thinking or considering or to do that?

ALISON: Yeah. So I think again, it's we talk about role and expectations. So I think any good project that you're running, you need to make sure you've got a really good definition of what that scope is going to be. So when you're bringing that person in, what are you bringing them in to achieve? Because it's not a long term plan. You're not bringing them in to do a three to five year plan. You might even be talking three to six months. So what is the key deliverables of that person coming into the business on that fractional basis? You want to make sure that's really well defined. I think bringing someone in that, makes understands the industry, understands the business that you're in, has worked in that type of an environment before. And again, maybe thinking about as I said earlier, not necessarily that linear route. I read a really interesting article recently about how a lot of ex HR directors are coming into chief operating officer roles because they have that sort of bird's eye view of the people and how to join all of those dots together. And actually when you do. people, you naturally become involved in operations anyway, because people are operations. So the role that they're doing, you might not know it necessarily in real detail, but I know like when I was in my head of people role, I would sit there in any senior management meeting and say, yeah this person does that, or that person's responsible for that part or that customer. No, this person, I know exactly how those teams work because I'm having the conversations with the managers. I'm understanding what those people are doing day to day. There's lots of different. Leadership roles necessarily on someone's CV. They might not have been CEO before, but there's all of those transferable skills that actually they've worked on massive merging acquisition projects. They've worked on business transformation. What can they bring to the business in that really short amount of time because they've done it before.

IAN: Brilliant. Absolutely. Love it. Alison thoroughly enjoyed our time today. I think we could sit here and chat all day long, which which we're not going to do, but just as a bit of a summary, what's your headlines for walking out of this show today and leaving with the MSPs.

ALISON: Yeah, I think if you're an MSP and you're looking at your structure and you're trying to understand your operating model or implement something, I think don't be concerned too much about what other businesses are doing. There isn't a one size fits all when it comes to this. It's about understanding your why as a business, understanding your own people and culture. Yes, go out and do the research and look at the different options. But ultimately I think your data is the most important thing, understanding your management team. And I think a really key thing is having someone in the business that can facilitate that. All of that. So if you are thinking about having this big change project, who is going to manage it? Who's going to facilitate that? Because if, again, if you have got quite a small management team, it might already be, too much on top of the day to day. So there's thinking about how you're going to implement it as well. Cause it's definitely not something that happens overnight.

IAN: And that's the conductor we were talking about at the beginning. And it also, the conductor doesn't have to be the MD or the business owner, does it?

ALISON: No, exactly. I think there's leadership qualities across your group and with potentially even the, if you bring in an external, it could be that person who's the conductor and the facilitator of it all, because they can take that bird's eye view of everybody in the business. So yeah, if you want to keep your MD or your CEO at that strategic level, they don't necessarily need to be the one to get into the detail.

IAN: Because it's only a project at the end of the day, isn't it? If you are having a restructure and reorganize and you're going to spend three or six months just working out what's the who's the right people in the right roles, then it's only a project. It will be done. It's just like the fractional thing you were talking about, wasn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. Great stuff. Alison, if anybody wants to continue the conversation with you, how do they get in contact with you?

ALISON: Yeah. I'm on LinkedIn. So Alison Whitfield on LinkedIn you can connect with me there. My email address is Alison at humnize.com. So that's H U M N I Z E. Or you can just go to humanize. com and read a little bit more about what we do. We've got a contact form on there. And once the team will be in touch with you and yeah, they're probably the quickest ways to get hold of us.

IAN: Fantastic. Lovely stuff. Look, good luck this year. Good luck with everything in your role and everything you guys are doing.

And I'm sure we will be speaking very soon.

ALISON: Yes.

IAN: Thank you.

Take care. See you soon.

ALISON: Thank you.

Bye now.

OUTRO: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, just before you go. And if you're curious about how this episode links with the ability to scale your MSP to a million or, or if you're already there, accelerate to five, then we want to invite you to come and take the MSP mastery quiz. And in just three minutes, you're going to get a 360 degree scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that can help you find more time.

engaging along your people and help generate more leads in your MSP. It's really simple. Just click on the link in the show notes. And if you have enjoyed this episode, we'd love to get some feedback from you by means of a rating review on Spotify your podcast platform of choice. We really appreciate every single one of them.

Now you can go and enjoy the rest of your day and we look forward to catching up and connecting with you soon. All the best.