EP300 - 300 Episodes later, What We Have Learnt with Ian Luckett & Stuart Warwick

IAN: In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast, 300 episodes later, Stuart and I share with you what we've learned.

INTRO: Welcome to the IT Experts Podcast, the only podcast to help MSPs scale to 1 million, and if already there, get to five and go faster. 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. My word, 300 episodes, Mr. Warwick. That's an achievement.

STUART: I know it's years.

IAN: And I didn't even know you when we started it.

STUART: You didn't?

IAN: No. Well I did, because I was on your email list, but you probably didn't, you probably didn't know that. because I was...

STUART: You were stalking me.

IAN: I was down as somebody else. Yeah. Welcome to the show. Today is another one of these monumentous big occasions, 300 episodes on the 16th of November, 2019, 2019, before the COVID thing. I launched the IT Experts Podcast which was around the business that I had at the time. And I think it must have been around that time, we knew we'd got to know each other and everything just after.

STUART: Hadn't heard of you.

IAN: You hadn't heard of me.

STUART: Hadn't heard of you.

IAN: Of course you had.

STUART: It was...

IAN: You must have.

STUART: No, it was about 2020, wasn't it?

IAN: Don't you don't know about me because I was on your email list. I was, I went on your...

STUART: I have no idea.

IAN: We went on your webinars.

STUART: You were?

IAN: And you don't even know, Joanna and I went on your webinars. I said, this guy looks like he knows what he's talking about. Nicky's stuff. And then look at that five, five years later, he didn't know that, did you? Right, anyway. Yeah. Yeah. 16th of November, nearly seven years ago. So that goes to prove that I haven't been as consistent as I should have been doing weekly podcasts for the MSP channel 300 episodes. Wow. Amazing. Great achievement.

STUART: And I think that isn't a huge achievement as well, it's, you know, the secret of most things in life is consistency, so...

IAN: Which I haven't been that great at before I met you, but now we are. And I just want to start off just by saying, thank you to all of the number one, the listeners number two, the great guests that we've had on the amazing stories, the connections, the friends that we've made, the clients that we've made, the results that we've got from MSPs and some of the stories about the podcast. It's like that guy at the Managed Service Summit who came up to me and he wanted to give me some money. Do you remember that one when he said, I've listened to every episode of your podcast and this must have been minute, it was about 250. And he says, I've implemented them, I've done really well, and I just wanted to thank you for this. And he went off. I was so chuff with what he said, he just kind of went off and it's like, man, that would've been a great little marketing exercise, getting him on the podcast. But we love it. Because it adds massive value. When we got together, which was early 2020 we were, I'm in an RN about the branding and the podcast and we left it sitting as the IT experts podcast. And it was a pillar of what we do because people value the stories and the learnings and the bluntness and the maybe the old F-B*mb every now and then about what's going on in the channel, because we're so connected to the channel and to, our clients and prospects and must be over 200 MSPs over that time. We've now helped through various programmes, webinars, training, coaching, all of that kind of stuff, which is a big number and it's amazing. So today we are going to, we're just going to share with you some of the stuff that we think has changed over those 300 episodes in our thinking.

STUART: Yeah. What we, what we've learned.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: We've recognised as still true.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: And yeah, share that goodness.

IAN: Yeah. I remember the first couple of days when I got you on a podcast and it was like, well, what are we going to talk about? Are we going to script it all out? And it's like, nope. Just come over here and we're just going to chat about it. And mind you, for this one, we've actually, we've, it's been the most structured show and it's just taken 45 minutes to try and work out what we're going to say. So apart from the arguments, I think we did very well in that 45 minutes.

STUART: We've done very well.

IAN: So, yeah. So we're just going to, run through some of the, we've got five questions here, which I think are really key. I'm going to ask you first, Stuart what's the one belief over the last seven years, now that you've completely changed your mind about what was, you thought one thing and now you think something else. What's this one thing for you that's changed over these years?

STUART: Well, the big thing is that, and it's still true to be fair, is that, all MSPs need a plan. If they're ambitious to scale and they want to build a business that works for them rather than for it and they want to be more profitable and more successful, then they need a plan. And whilst that is still true, actually the way the belief has changed is that it's actually what they need is the accountability to do what they know they need to do. Because I don't think there's a lack of knowledge anymore. I'm not saying the Internet's changed that, but I think in the last five years, the awareness of what to do is much is much clearer. I think people know what they need to do because they've listened to podcasts, they've downloaded stuff, they've gone to events. But actually what they want and what we give them is the accountability to execute and implement and whilst they need a plan. And I think five years ago it was like, MSPs don't have a plan. If you want to scale, you need to know where it is you want to go to where you want to get to. It's not about the plan. You need one of those. But actually what they need, really need is the accountability to execute and implement because we get in our own way.

IAN: Yeah, absolutely.

STUART: We get in our own way. Absolutely. And we see it all the time overwhelm. We do more sessions on overwhelm and getting stuck and being too busy than probably anything else.

IAN: I just want to dig into that for a minute because, there'll be a load of MSPs on the podcast. This is just going Yeah, well I've got a plan. I know what I'm doing. Yeah. I can keep myself to account. I just want to unpack the fact that so many times we see MSPs trying to eat the whole elephant in once the account management, the sales and marketing, the new leads, the team building, whatever it is, and where they choke. Here we can come up with some new phrases today. Where they choke is they create a task that's so big that's almost 'un' understandable that they can't break it down and then they get caught and go and do something else. So...

STUART: I'll tell you what it is.

IAN: Go tell me what.

STUART: It's the list of a hundred things. So they, yeah, they know what they need to do. They think, they know that they know they need to do it and they need to execute it, but it becomes this blurry list of a hundred things. Therefore they get overwhelmed. Therefore they stay where they are. And I think whilst yes what got you here isn't going to get you there, is so true. And that remains a massive truism, but your business isn't growing because of the stuff it's lacking. It's growing because of who you are today and the work that we've done for so many years is about actually helping the business owner, the MSP business owner, change how they show up in their business. The plan is important, but actually the accountability is more important because, and this is the real key piece is that whilst you might know what you need to do and you think you need to do it because it's about you changing, you will be resistant to it, because you don't know how you need to change until somebody holds the mirror up to you. And that's what being part of this community and working with us is all about. And that's the thing that gives us that great satisfaction because we see clients come to us and they see the light bulbs go on and you see the for some it's quicker than others and the confidence starts to change as they do the things that previously they didn't want to do or were scared of doing, but they didn't know they weren't doing or were scared of them. And also most of them come to us and they're still busy. And how can you go away and change what you're going to do when you're still too busy and you don't know how to value it?

IAN: Great point. Great point.

STUART: The blurry hundred list of things to do...

IAN: Blurry list of a hundred things. I can see that being a new podcast title coming to you very soon. So for me then with that one, the one belief that's completely changed my mind, I've always been fascinated by human behaviour. And when I was in, in corporate, I worked for a business, no surprise, at UK Power Networks. And they were very... six and a half thousand employees very keen on living the company values, where's the business going? What are we trying to be, we trying to be the best, distribution, network operator, whatever it is. So I had ingrained very early on about the vision, mission and company values and where you're going and set in that direction. And the thing that I've completely changed my mind about is I thought probably seven years ago, this was just for the big MSPs and for big businesses, it's not for the little guys because they won't get it and they won't understand it and everything like that. And I've changed my view on that now because when, I sat there when I was creating coaching programmes, back in 2019, if not before then. And I tell this story sitting by my sofa, glass of wine on my hand, a load of post-it notes, and you start off by writing your own values and who you are. And if you were to clone yourself or clone parts of your team and how would that look? And then where you're going and what you're going to try and achieve and things like that. But that gives that clarity that then drives the plan that you were just talking about. And when we got together, we started pulling our resources and our coaching and our training and our models and all of this kind of great stuff. And I remember you, you were brilliant in the early days because I was so excited about what we were doing.

STUART: What's changed.

IAN: Well, that's another thing I was going to talk about in a minute. That's changed. Because you were so good at listening to what I was and I remember you kind of understanding the whole vision, mission and values thing, but we don't, we, I got a video that I sent with my clients, whereas I think you just like spoke to your clients about it and it was one of those things that over the years we go, this is absolutely such a pillar. Now this is such a key thing. We didn't think it was back then, but now we see the impact. And I suppose when you see the impact of someone who's gone through your training and they go, oh my God, I now get X, Y, and Z from this and I didn't realise I needed to do it and now this is the outcome. That's what we get up for in the morning, isn't it? So that was that was my thing that I think's changed. So everybody should be spending time, and it's different levels, yeah. Your vision, your mission, your values on where you're going. Right. Okay. Next question we've got is what's one piece of advice that's still very true after 300 episodes in seven years?

STUART: You don't need more leads.

IAN: Awee

STUART: You don't need more leads.

IAN: It's going to get boring, doesn't it?

STUART: Sorry. Sales market.

IAN: That's alright.

STUART: Yeah. But everyone comes towards us going, I need more business, I need more clients, I need more business, I need more leads. And it's like, yeah. I get that. It's logical. It's absolutely logical. But you don't, you need a better business to bring leads into in the future. And that better business is structure and it is the right people, the all the stuff we talk about all the time.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: So structure, people, process SOPs culture, vision, values, because you can't grow and scale something that's, well, we talk about the three legged stool, don't we? Yeah. And if one or two of the legs of that stool are shorter than the others or not as strong, then that, yeah, that stool is not going to support. The weight that you might put on it in the same way the MSP, if one of the, or one or two of the key pillars to scale an MSP are missing or not as developed, mature as they should be. You can't scale it. The people don't know where the business is going. The sales and marketing doesn't work because you're not really positioned properly. You don't understand what your value is in the marketplace. You account management doesn't work because you don't know the data and you don't know how and so on.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: And so, yeah for us it's, or for me it's like you don't need more leads. You need a better business first. And then we can talk about the leads.

IAN: I think one of your biggest, your most successful blogs back in the day was about what's going to break first. Yeah. Isn't if I put one new client a month into your business, what's going to break first and nine times out of 10? It'll be your team won't.

STUART: Yeah.

IAN: So, that was interesting. I did read, see, I did read something.

STUART: You did read some stuff.

IAN: Something. Well, I heard about it anyways. It was, apparently it was quite good. Right. So the piece of advice that's still true for me is that MSP you know, and it is around the marketing side of things. You need to understand the fundamentals around who your target market is and MSPs don't do this and it's still absolutely valid. Who are you? What you do? Who'd you help? Why'd you help them? And you see, so I mean literally every MSP who comes into the Growth Hub serves everybody. It's a race to the bottom. They get beaten on price all the time.

STUART: Yeah.

IAN: They say that they're different because a customer service and all of this great stuff. And I was talking to someone the other day going, that is just absolute tosh. He'd actually done a, an aggregation of about 1100 MSP websites. And what he read out was exactly the same as every MSP says. And it's around, it kind of goes to the back of, why you do what you do rather than anything else. And and we see so many times people trying to do marketing because they think that if I just get some more leads, I get some more money, I get some more people, and then that's going to make my business the bigger business. But as you've just said, it doesn't kind of work like that because you need, if you get your account management right and you get the people right, you'll be building a much more profit, a much more profitable business with less moving parts, less noise, more fun, less bottlenecks. So it's around setting up properly. And MSPs are not generally, you know, as a technical, business owner and technical, people, they're not wired to think in marketing terms. It's not their happy place. Yeah. They don't like it. They want someone just do this for me. And there's plenty of people out there who can tell a very good story around marketing, oh yeah, I can do that, yeah, we can do this. I can, they don't know how to measure it. They don't know what success looks like. And that's obviously what we help our clients with, but not setting up the foundations and understanding and once you set it up, it's just set and forget. You run it because that's your little playbook that you give to whoever it is. You come within your business. It's like when we put together the we did our branding, we did, we merged our branding together and the lady who helped us doing that put together like a it was a storyboard, wasn't it? It was a vision of the brands and why is the brands put together and what's this all about and everything. And you give that to everybody you come and work with and you go, this is who we are, this is our business. Can you help this business? And it's really understanding around that. So, so that's the thing for me.

STUART: Excellent. Nice one.

IAN: What one mistake do you repeatedly see MSP owners making?

STUART: They wait for a crisis before they do anything.

IAN: Oh God, if I had a pill to fix this problem.

STUART: They and the other element to that is they then wish, you hear them say, oh, if only I'd done this five years ago.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: And I think yeah, it's true. It's true. A little bit of regret in there, you know, suddenly the metal hits the road and you're like, oh wow, I should have done this, years ago. But, hey, that, that's the case. But yeah, it's the thing I'd love to not see repeatedly is that they're waiting for a crisis. All they're aware that there is a, perhaps a crisis looming. We've had so many times where people have joined us and then within six months their biggest client has left them, which they was one of their fears, because they've had them 10, 15 years and they've been fine, but they don't really have a proper relationship at the top. The management's changed recently. They've perhaps picked up on, maybe there's some m and a work going on. They're not meeting the people they used to meet before within the client account. And they're like something's going to change. And, oh, I know I need to do something different maybe. And so that big fat cat that you've lived off for so long now becomes the raise on Detroit to survive. And actually it's about survival as opposed to growth. So we can end up spending six months helping them kind of, in emergency measures, special measures, even to try and unpick the problem rather than coming in on the front foot with a business that it's like, well, okay, I'm open to, I am ambitious and I'd like to understand the principles of how I grow this, rather than, oh, I think I know what it is. Oh, that sounds expensive. I'll save that cash, put it in my own pocket. But actually, if you have got ambition and you do want to one day sell it because you will have to one day sell this and you haven't run a business before then. Get some help. Get some help. Because no one teaches us how to run a business. Why wait for a crisis when this business is your core business and your perhaps, I don't know, late forties, fifties, possibly even sixties. And suddenly you've got a business that isn't worth much, because you've just lost the 40% of the business out the back door.

IAN: And it's funny, isn't it, because it's when we call the phrase, eating your own dog food, put in the mirror up, whatever it might be. I kind of like visualise, people all across the world just because we've had a rather nice summer out having barbecues with their friends and family. And someone might have a business that's struggling and they'll go, oh, what you want to do is this. And oh, what you want to do is that. And oh, because MSPs just want to help, but they won't go back in the house and look in the mirror and go, well what do I actually need to do in my business to do that? And that's where we kind of like bounce so well off each other because we kind of keep grounded on the things that matter, what's going to move the needle.

STUART: Yep.

IAN: And don't kind of get caught up with this shiny ball, but it's it's funny about how that kind of like help is.

STUART: Yeah. I don't know if it's just natural human condition, but you know, it's not until there's a crisis looming or you have a heart attack and you go, well you need to lose weight mate if you're going to, live another healthy 20 years. It's like, oh, well yeah. Why did I wait 20 years, full stone overweight before I bothered to get fit and look after myself.

IAN: Do something you've had it, yeah. But to your point, the mistake that I see is. It is the same, it's the same mistake that I've just mentioned a minute ago, which was about understanding the business model. Virtually every single call that I have with an MSP, who then comes into the Growth Hub starts off with, we've tried a marketing agency, didn't work, we've bought in a sales person that didn't work. We've done some lead gen that didn't work. We bought in an apprentice that didn't work. And they literally list off everything that they've done apart from what you mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, which is get a plan, get accountability, work out what's wrong and what needs fixing first before you then go and move forwards. And, marketing agencies, as I kind of mentioned before there are some MSP specific ones out there. But you've got to understand what they're going to do and how that's how what they're going to do is connected to booking calls and to moving people down the funnel activity consistency. It took me seven years to get out, 300 episodes. It should have been six, but it wasn't. because we probably forgot a few. And we had, I woke up one morning and went, oh shit, we haven't got a podcast today. What are we going to do? But when we realised the benefit and the value that was given to the community, it's like, no, this is an absolute...

STUART: Non-negotiable.

IAN: Non-negotiable. This is exactly what's going to get done. And that's where you don't have to understand every single thing about marketing. You don't even have to understand 10% of it, but you need to understand who you are and who your target market are and why you can help them.

Because even more and more we'll touch on this, I'm sure. People don't know what you do as a tech expert, but they know that they need technology to help their businesses become more efficient, profitable, and productive and successful. And your job's to educate. It's just to educate them in why they need this thing, or Microsoft or this or that or whatever, whatever tool it might be to help them in their business. And so many times you just hear them leading with the tech and it's just like talking Chinese to people. because it's like going maybe don't understand Chinese obviously because it just doesn't make any sense. And it's just that chatter. So, really understanding the fundamentals of marketing is critical if you're going to get some outside support. And it's not with salespeople as well. And if you're under a million pound, don't bother, because you haven't, because they're not going to bring in leads for you. They're going to get bored, they're going to get fed up, they're not going to get their results and then they're going to lead leave because you haven't got this, this nurture list for you to contact people. You haven't got this audience, out there to contact people. So, get focused on that. because that's just drives me nuts. But anyway, there we go. We could go on about that for a long time. What's the one thing that MSP owners need to do differently over the next three years, Stuart? So we've got AI coming in, we've got, a lot of MSPs now spread across the, the age gaps as it would be kind of thing. Technology's moving at a ridiculously speedy rate, like something we've never, ever seen before. Banking systems are changing, but what do they need to do in the next three years?

STUART: Well, to not repeat the kind of the cliche of the moment is they need to understand AI but not for the reason you think I'm saying it, it actually goes back to the principles that are core to scaling because no one can ignore AI. And the value that is coming over the hill from what it can offer. But many people are going, oh, I need to embrace AI. And they're chasing the AI thing. What I think MSPs need to be doing differently is what they need to have been doing for years anyway, which is building out fantastic processes and documentation and governance. Because if you put Ai on a poor business, a poorly structured business that doesn't have the guardrails and the governance and the controls in place, it isn't going to help. And it may with compliance coming down the road as well with accreditation probably to government compliance expectations coming down the road. If you are going to leverage ai, which is going to drive the profit margins of MSPs over the years, because you are going to have to look at how automation supports what you do to deliver profitably, because it won't be ne necessarily about, oh, you said it earlier about having more people. It'll be about having the right people, doing the right roles leveraging the right technology. And whilst that's always been true, the dynamic nature of what AI is able to provide and the intelligence that I don't think we're tapping into yet. But certainly within three years that intelligence and that joined upness of agents will transform what we do in the back office of a) our clients, but b) ourselves. And so as MSPs, the thing we need to do differently is actually the thing they need to keep doing and should have been doing, which is putting in these great processes and structure and governance. So that technology and AI coming in will help drive their relevance over the next three to five years. And I think that's the thing they need to do differently. They need to make sure that they are relevant to the future otherwise they'll get left behind.

IAN: Absolutely. And you see it all the time now, don't you like the new vendors turning up and the new products turning up and then you've got half the MSPs in the community going wow. Look at this thing. We need this thing, we need this thing. And then the other half going, yeah, but you've already got that within your existing system. No, but you've got that. And it's like, yeah. And then all of a sudden these vendors start buying and selling each other and you realise, oh, they're actually true. And it is just a new little widget that they've got and, all the strategic stuff going on as well, in that, but yeah it's great. You know, Someone put a post on Facebook the other day. And it's about my age. So, good age and mature, like a fine wine, rich, fine.

STUART: Finally matured.

IAN: And when he put down he goes, the things that happened in my lifestyle, particularly in the last 10 to 15 years, Bitcoin, AI, all of the data processing that's going up, like my word, this speed of implementation of some of this technology is incredible. And when I sit down, like with my son and others at their age, and you sort of go, by the way, when I met your mum, I'd say, I'd see you on Thursday, and you had no contact with them until Thursday. And then you met them at the pub and it was, oh, how's your week been? Oh, it's been great. Oh, you might have had a quick phone call or whatever it might be, but away there's no constant WhatsApp in chat, in FaceTiming smack booking or any of that, whatever it might be. And it's that constant connection that changes, the relationships and changing things. Some for the better, and some for the worst. But yeah, AI's a key one. For me, what they need to do differently over these three years is that it's about people. So you see MSPs get busy, then what they do is they get more people because they're busy, so they need more people to do the stuff they're doing. They don't kind of do what you've just said, which is, let's go and have a look at this business. How do we make it efficient? How do we make it more profitable and actually more scalable as well. Because, if you've got a super highly automated business that is very scalable, how easy is it to integrate and to buy another MSP scale by acquisition, plug it in, plug and play, or do you want to then go and spend all your time working out that you've got Janet in accounts and Steve's in the help desk and this is going on and they don't like this. And then you've got to try and max and trying to work these people together. So for me I was reading something about this the other day. It's about understanding the different types of people that you need in your business. And we talk a lot about this profiling and role descriptions and scalable structures and all of this kind of great stuff. And you can whack in a bit of AI as well for some of that as well. But there was someone was saying, and I think, no, I know who it was now and I'll give him a shout out. It was Paul Hamilton from Halo and he said the businesses that are going to be, successful ones in the future are the ones who recruit the younger, more innovative people who are going to be chasing you and driving you forwards. And I remember when I was, I was at NTL back in the day my boss wanted me to be his succession planner and I didn't know what that meant, his success. And I didn't know what that meant at the time. And then he told me and I went, so you want me to do your job? And it was like, wow, you are mad. You are. Absolutely. He goes, because I'm not going to get to do my next job if I'm stuck in this role. And it was like, oh, that's pretty cool, yeah. So you are not worried about your- No, no. I'm actually really certain about my future and I want to, and there's no difference to this with this in the business. So what does your team look like that's going to lift you up? Have you got, we've been speaking to some MSP prospects in the last couple of months and they've had businesses, 20 years people have been in the business and they're great and they're steady and they're all working really well and everything's all great. But you can't help wondering, how much of that is like stuck in the process from 20, 30 years ago? And how much of it is when, a young person comes in and, I've had different MDs come into different businesses I've worked at, and you go, whoa, this guy's got some energy. What's he going to do? This is exciting. What's going to happen now? And bringing in those younger people, bringing in those inspiring, maybe some entrepreneurial type of people into the business. So I think understanding...

STUART: And being brave.

IAN: Yeah, absolutely.

STUART: Because to bring in other people and to deliberately bring people in to maybe change the dynamic the young people with more ideas, maybe less knowledge. But actually if you've got that vision of what you're building and you need to shake it up. And I think that's that realisation that to do differently. How are you going to think differently over the next three years? And how are you going to show up differently to get different result in your business, given the results you're getting today aren't the results that you know you want and need to give you what you want from your business in the next three to five years. And so, being a) aware of that statement I just made and go I don't know the answer to that. How do I work out what that should be? Which goes back to what we spoke about at the beginning of this, which was what's your plan? And then are you going to be accountable to yourself to deliver it? I think goes to the number of everything about what, how you need to be different over the next three years to grow your MSP.

IAN: And that's about lifting you up and not, that you're not being scared about people, challenging you and one of our clients said earlier on, Jason said earlier on, one of our first client joint clients, he said, look, good is good enough. And some people cringe at that comment. But he said, look, if someone else can do my job 80%, that means that's 80% of my role. I can go and do other things about growing and scaling and thinking differently and spending time nurturing relationships that's going to drive the business forward. I'll help them with the 20%. That's not a problem. But it's like that 80% is that good and good? And we are experiencing that now as our coaching team's growing. I mean, when not long after this podcast was first launched well, little while after that, we did everybody's growth planning sessions. Now we have an amazing coaching team who do those planning sessions probably better than we did because we got stuck in the mud. It had to be absolutely perfect. And the clients walking out of the room absolutely blown away. They've got their plan, they've got clarity, they've got trust, they've got the system, they've got a process. Everything's kind of moving forward. And it's like we didn't have, well, we did have to it because we built the process around it. Right. Yeah.

STUART: We built the process.

IAN: Right. Okay. Last one then we got here. What lessons do you wish you understood when this podcast began?

STUART: Oh this is a great one. This is where I throw you under the bus, because I didn't, I wasn't around when the first podcast began. So this is your question.

IAN: This is over to me. Right. Okay. I get that. I get that. I get that. So I think the one lesson or the one thing that I wish I'd understood a bit sooner was, so I'd got Innovate to Success, which was coaching IT and another tech businesses. And we had a model and it was great. An operating model and how to help you go from where you are today to where you are going. Now, it's a bit like the MSP model, you've got some challenges. How do we help you, transform as it would be both services businesses. And I did have this model and it was okay. It was all right. But when you came along we had the Scale with Confidence model that's now the MSP scale system. And I think now that the importance of having a properly connected, not that mine wasn't properly connected, but yours was a bit more thought out, funnily enough. That's why you are here today, Stuart. So congratulations on that. But actually having some real, tangible kind of connection between the model on it's going to help you to build a business that works for you rather than you. For MSP, it's going to help you transform your technology, make you become more efficient. And it's part of the education journey we talk about. And every piece of content is hung off part of this model. It should be no different for M MSPs. We do this when we build their marketing models in our new client runway. And every MSP should have an operating model that they use as an outward facing model to help understand we use this system.

STUART: The pillars of their business.

IAN: The pillars of the business, yeah. Content hangs off it, education hangs off it, conversations hang off it.

STUART: Packages hang off, it.

IAN: Packages hang off it.

STUART: Pricing hangs off it.

IAN: All the pricing and all of that kind of got the account management, everything's kind of hangs off it. So having that model is so important that when someone hits your website, we use the lucky IT system to help you to do whatever it is that we want you to do without doing all of this stuff. So I think that's been really powerful.

STUART: And so what I'm hearing with your saying about that is that whilst what you were doing back then was great, you didn't have the full connected story behind it.

IAN: No. No.

STUART: As to how to bring it truly alive.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: For the benefit of everyone. And I think that goes to the heart of so many MSPs as well, because, they're in survive, they're in drive, so they, the business is okay. But it isn't probably formed to tell the right story for their marketing, but also for their existing clients and to their people that where what this business is truly about, what it can do for them. I employee, client or prospect, and therefore what journey that would look like that they go on. And I think that's what's changed for us coming together. And what you've just said is about actually it's so important to be able to articulate your value to your employees, your prospects, and your existing clients. To be able to well scale effectively.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: But ultimately bring your message to life.

IAN: And it's have somebody else.

STUART: And win. And that's what...

IAN: Operate that model.

STUART: Yeah.

IAN: I know that you have cringed your face up like a, something that's screwed up when you've seen me delivering the model before when we've been at keynotes and things like that. And I know, because I've seen you doing it. It's like going, he's killing my baby. But it wasn't, it was my version of how that works.

STUART: Exactly.

IAN: And that's exactly what, MSPs need to do. We have this model and John and Steve and Sarah and Mary and whoever else might be, might interpret it slightly different, but it's in the way that they can explain it to their customers and they get it and they understand it. And, having that model is so important for taking somebody on a journey pretty much.

STUART: And that's it, it's the story. Why will I join you on this journey? So, yeah.

IAN: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, I mean, you look, we're coming to the end here. I have no idea where we're at on the timings, but that's all good stuff. Again, just thank you everybody for all the support on the MSP on the IT Experts podcast. If there's anything that you ever want us to talk about, just drop us an email or send us a message on LinkedIn. We're quite happy to do that. But the one thing we do want to do to give back is in couple of weeks time, or on the 8th of September, we've got a training session called the £400K to £900K MSP Growth Trap. Where we're going to be walking through the pillars on what you need to do in each areas, what you might be experiencing, how to kind of overcome it. But before we just sign off today, Stuart, that £400K to £900K

STUART: Yeah.

IAN: So you're not a lifestyle MSP, but you keep banging your head on this million pound turnover.

STUART: Yeah.

IAN: Why do MSPs get stuck in there and what's, I know we've talked a lot about some of the things that people need to do, but what's some of the things that people can take away from today? And they might have heard it before. They probably have heard it before, to help them to really build, to get motivated, to build the momentum, to move the business forward.

STUART: Sure. Why do they get stuck between £400K to £900K? I think it's because, you don't know how... you think it's more of the same. And so therefore, you work harder, you stay busy, and it isn't. And as, and because you are successful to a point, you remain busy. So you don't have that time and space to create that plan that we talked about. But actually more importantly, to show up in an accountability way, an accountability process to implement it, you know, to implement things that are going to need you to do things differently and to find time to do it even when you're busy. And it's that accountability piece that gets in the way of people changing their behaviour to do things differently, even though most people think they know what they need to do. So that's one reason why they get stuck. The other reason is that the business is built around them.

IAN: Yeah.

STUART: And so, ergo the point I just raised is that they don't have the time to think about how the structure needs to change. So it's not built around them. And so that's a classic problem that most £400K to £900K businesses have. It's built around them and therefore the processes are built around them and they're at the heart of the processes and they're the bottleneck. And the other one is that they don't understand their value. We're just talking about that they don't have this joined up story because they've been so busy selling it on the basis so that they're the expert, they're the technician, they care undoubtedly, but that's not scalable. And so how do you package up your value around your pricing, your packaging, your new business messaging, your messaging to your existing clients so that and to your people such that the business becomes not built around you. So it's those understanding your value is a problem that holds them back. The structure or the immaturity of the structure of the business and not knowing what you need to do and not creating the time and space to be able to implement what you know you need to do, but you're not doing.

IAN: Brilliant. And if you want to experience some of that and try and, you've been listening to the podcast for a while and you want to understand a little bit more about how some of the frameworks and the models we do, we work with work, then click the link in the show notes. Come to the session Tuesday, the 8th of September, 11:00. And we'll show you.

STUART: And don't wait for a crisis to do something about your business.

IAN: Please don't do that.

STUART: Please, that would really make us very happy.

IAN: Well, that's the end of the show. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Here's to the next 300 episodes, Stuart. My word. What would happening then?

STUART: Wow. Bring it on.

IAN: Bring it on. You'll bring it on. Bring it on.

STUART: You'll have even less hair.

IAN: I will have even less hair. You'll be even grayer, right. And after that, loving. We wish you all well and we look forward to catching up with you all soon.

STUART: Yeah. Fantastic.

IAN: Take care. Take care.

NEXT WEEK TEASER: And in next week's show, we've got a subject that we don't talk about an awful lot, co-managed MSP clients. We're going to be talking with Adam Monks, who helps us work out how we went from zero to over 10 million pound in revenue with a team of over 250 staff might think that's a bit of a big one, but there's some really great threads that go all the way through the journey that you went through that everybody needs to hear. You're going to love it. Tune in next week.

OUTRO: 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, engage and align 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 or iTunes or 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 now.