EP156 - Ask Stuart #6 - Why You Need A-Players in Your MSP with Stuart Warwick & Ian Luckett

INTRO

In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast, we answer the question why do you need A-players in your MSP.

Welcome to the IT Experts Podcast, the only podcast to help MSPs scale to 1,000,000, and if already there get to 5 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. And today we're wheeling out the big guns again in the Ask Stuart Podcast series.

Good afternoon, Stuart. How are you today?

STUART

Hello, Ian. Great to be here. I'm doing very well.

IAN

Fantastic. So today's show we are talking about A-players and what on earth are A-players? Why do we need them in MSP? Why do we need them to help us scale and grow? We know it's really important that we've got the right team with us. But Stuart, what's an A player? What do we call an A-player?

STUART

Well, in life, not everything is equal. You know, there's a classic talking of cars. You've got Mercedes-Benz and you've got Škodas and you've got Fiats. They're all different, but they all do the same thing, and it's the same with people. And so, A-players are those people that want to step into effectively their potential in career and develop it perhaps more than others. And I think that's the best way of differentiating it. Because if you just have a good team of level one, steady level 2 steady engineers, you are always going to be directing them and managing them and leading them. So if you're an ambitious MSP and you want to scale confidently, you need to find those people with that aspiration and that attitude and whether it's ABC or another categorisation that you put on to it, you're looking for people with that spark that want to step up and lead people and perhaps go beyond just the sole remit of their job and their function. That's what an A-player is.

IAN

Cool! As we know when you're scaling and growing your MSP, people will bubble that they'll be pulled to the top. There'll be some people who would be quite happy to sit there and work on the help desk for the rest of their lives. But this is around identifying the ones that are going to pop and for you to invest your time in training, educating, you know, mentoring and caring with them. So if you don't identify players, the A-players, and get your structure in an organized fashion, you know, as if you were a larger MSP than you are today, what are some of the problems that we might hear in the channel?

STUART

Oh, it's classic. As you're running your business, you get to a point where you think, you know what I why can't people own this stuff? Why can't, why couldn't somebody drive this forward with me? Why do I have to be all the energy and all the ideas? And I think that's the tipping point at which you realized, you know, what have I maybe got everybody that I need or the right people here in this organization? And that's the tipping point. And you might think, well, why doesn't everyone work as hard as me? That's a good point, but you do own the business and there is a difference between an employee attitude and a business owner attitude. And that's why you get paid. I hope the big bucks. Yeah, for running your business. But I think there's that tipping point of awareness that I haven't necessarily, there's something missing, I haven't necessarily got all of the right ingredients in terms of people in my business for me to confidently start to let go. And we talked to another podcast about processes and systems and checklists and SOPs. That's one thing and getting people to follow them, but the other is able being able to kind of replicate yourself as a leader and as a manager and let somebody else step into that space. And so, you're either bringing somebody up from below or you're bringing someone in from above or from the side by hiring them in.

IAN

Excellent. And why don't people do this? Why is it such a common thing that we see these bottlenecks created many, many times, a pretty much a week, really, isn't it? You know, with the MSP business owners, what's the issue here?

STUART

I think primarily it's fear, right? It's fear of investment spending the money and thinking, ‘Oh my God, I've got to pay more than £30,000 to for somebody you know who's going to manage or lead that that part of the business’. So there's fear, there's fear of getting it wrong again and hiring someone and not working out and you just ending up back in the same place doing all the work again. I think there's also fear about bringing someone in that may possibly be older than you or more experienced than you or more qualified than you. And it's like thinking, you know, imposter syndrome kicks in and you're, like, well, how do I do it? So you don't. I think the thing is, you procrastinate, you put it off. It's not that you don't believe that you should or could, you just procrastinate. And that's when we find people or clients that have been with us a while that that go, ‘Oh, I wish I'd done this 5-10 years ago’. And even back then, they would be running their business 12 years already, or you're a few years in and you do procrastinate on this need to invest and scale up and bring people in as good as you and another five or ten years go by and you tick along. But actually, what you could have achieved by you stepping up and maybe working more with your clients, you're working more, whatever it is, you're bringing people in to do, what you're not doing as a consequence, cause you're then still in the detail, running the business and everything, is that lost opportunity. And so, whether you're, you know, you move your net profit from a nice 5% to a consistent 2025% and having a good team, and only working maybe 25-30 hours a week or 40 hours if you want to, but making a really healthy 100, 200, or 300K a year net profit. That's an amazing business, not one that breaks even every year. You pay yourself 50K, but you've been working 80 hours a week or 70 hours a week consistently the whole year. But it's an OK business.

IAN

It's funny, isn't it? Because sometimes when we're talking to MSPs, you can almost see this fear that if they're not busy being busy in their day running around, you know, kind of like a blue-arsed proverbial fly, ‘what am I going to do with my time’ and when you fast forward to people have really nailed this whole growth easy, you know exactly, so we're just explaining spending time with the family, great profits and all that sort of thing, they look back and they've got time to do these what we call like the £1000 strategic tasks. And there's a real fear, isn't there, around well what am I going to do? And I don't do this and if I am, am I still going to add value to my business if someone else is going to take on my work, isn't there?

STUART

It's the imposter syndrome and we proverbially get in our own way. And the longer and more we get in our own way, the slower we go or the more things stay the same. And staying the same is OK because it keeps us safe. But actually, you know, you see people that have achieved so much and they probably take risks faster. They fail faster. But we're not all built to cope with failing fast every day. However, if you just look at your own personal situation and go, I don't feel I've got all the people I need, I'm working too hard and I'm ambitious and I want to make sure I get to this goal, whatever it might be. I feel I'm, you know, mediocre people good, you know, steady eddies. Yeah, aren't going to put, like, the put the heat and light into like to ignite things. And so, it's a really, really difficult question because for many years, you can just sit there in that lukewarm water place where nothing changes, but it's OK, it's semi comfortable and it's not looking back and saying I wish I wish I had and having those regrets. So, get out of your own way, you know. And if you recognize this, go and share with other SMPs, go to some tech tribe meetups. Go and join some online accountability pods. You know, go and find out what's going on and talk to other people.

IAN

OK. Brilliant. Nice. Good. Stuart, what is it that we need to do? What are the five key points that every MSP needs to get off this podcast and do to get themselves to understand why they need A-players in their business.

STUART

If this is ringing a bell and you're ambitious, it's kind of a bit of 101 planning. But what does your team need to look like in three years or five years time and three years is probably, you know, far enough ahead, for you to be able to let go of the stuff that you want to be able to let go of that you don't want to be doing in three years time. Because if you don't put a plan together and think, OK, what are the functional roles that I need to let go of? And what are the actual people roles that I need to hire, If I haven't already, that will allow me to let go of that stuff and step into the more important stuff. You know, the £1000 tasks that Ian talks about.

IAN

That's great, Stuart. So, what's #2 then?

STUART

#2 is all about being brave. Being brave is go and hire people better than you, older than you possibly, definitely more experienced of you or more experienced at those things that you need them to be doing for whatever role they're bringing in for and get out of your own way. Because actually, that's the way we shortcut experience. You know, by paying the right price for the right product and in this case the right experience, because somebody who's been and run help desks successfully and evidences it at interview and you can reference it post-interview and can hit the ground running and take over that team and accelerate bringing in IT-related help desk practices, bringing in great SOPs, run great huddles because they're great at managing a team and connecting the team and building rapport with the team and sitting down and having those one to ones. If that's not your thing, then that suddenly creates an incredible amount of heat and light in that team, and you can then go ‘you know what I can step away and I just need to deal with that person’. Instead of dealing with the whole technology team. So be prepared to hire people better than you and more experienced of you, but that requires investment and we'll talk about that in a moment.

IAN

One of the things that I heard while ago, which is, which is so poignant for this is, 80% is good enough. So, if you go out there looking for someone who's going to do your job to your quality, your standards and everything you want, you're never going to find them because they're not going to be there. But it was one of our clients that said, ‘yeah, but if you can find someone to do 80% of your role, you need to learn how to work out that that's good enough and that is really, you know, really is good enough’. But it's one of those things to just step back a little bit and just give that person the expectation exchange. They know what they're supposed to be doing, the clear goals, but don't go looking for perfection is kind of what I'm saying. It's just, make sure that you you've got someone. If you get 8 out of 10, then that's a great place to be. Isn't it? Great! What's number three?

STUART

Well, that 8 out of 10 comes down to being able to quantify the recruitment process. So, if you haven't got a recruitment framework, you know, our brains play tricks with us and actually we end up forgetting what it was that we were talking about from one candidate to the other, and we end up basically hiring the person we like the most or who threatens us the least or who we feel, you know, the impostors kicks in, you know, won’t maybe make us look like we don't know what we're doing. And that's when it goes wrong. So having a recruitment framework, we have a five-step finding an A-player process that we use with clients, and it's as simple as having a set number and structure of interview questions you're going to ask. Looking for the evidence that sits behind people's statements instead of taking it face value because there is that old adage that people are at their best in or they are the best salesperson in the world, selling themselves in an interview. And after that, everything else is second in quality. So you get them at their best in their own interview day. And have multiple stages of interviewing and have a scoring process. So if you are asking them identical questions to three or four candidates, being able to score 4 out of 10 or 8 out of 10 and even some qualitative words around it, that allow you to remember what it was that person said at the time. So when you go back and look at the scoring sheet, you can score them on building rapport and communication skills. And then you look at the technical evidence of the technical skills that they perhaps demonstrated and talked about. And you can see whether there's a gap about how you scored different candidates. And depending on the role, you may be looking more for human skills and the soft skills as opposed to hard, because of that particular role. But it also allows you to weigh up the whole, the most important thing is, ‘do I feel as confident as possible that this person can be a success in this role?’ and that comes down to evidence. Have they done it before? Do they know what they're talking about? Do I feel confident they could do it with me? And are they ambitious enough to get out of this role? What they're looking for in their career at my company? And so, when you've got that alignment between their past, their experience, their skills, the role here, your environment and your culture and what they're looking for, you've got this win-win. They're gonna win by working with you. You're going to win by them working with you as well. And more importantly, your clients and your business is going to win through having their skills and experience in your business.

IAN

And adding a couple of my favourites to the interview process is if you can ask questions around the company values, your company values, and then ask them for stories and examples of where they've done certain things, where they've had to meet a deadline over chief for client, blah blah blah, that's when you really get to understand and know and learn those people as a steward. Just saying like a deep understanding of them.

STUART

And it's scalable. Because once you've got an interview framework, because your resources, your people resources are going to be the most expensive resources, most likely you ever have in your business, you've then got a framework for interviewing that your staff can then use. So, the person you hire, this manager, could then be able to use that exact same framework for hiring people beyond it without you having to be involved in the process. Because many, many MSP business owners that we deal with say ‘I never want to be involved in hiring anyone ever again because I hate that process’. Because it’s time consuming. But if you can quantify it through standard questions, standard testing approaches, then you've got a framework for learning and also standardization. Make sure you get the right person.

IAN

Brilliant stuff. Love that one. Number four?

STUART

Keep the world class approach going. So, when they agree to join you and you start doing the paperwork and you exchange contracts and they've got their garden leave to sit through, keep them engaged. I know this seems obvious, but, touch base with them maybe every two or three weeks. Have a postcard sent to them saying, hey, really looking forward to joining us in three weeks time or two weeks time. The day before they turn up or the week before they turn up, put in a phone call to them. How are you? How are you getting on? If they are on a three or six month garden leave with their other company, maybe you got a keeping-in-touch days, invite them into the office. Invite them out for lunch with some of the team that they’ll work with. Keep them connected to the decision they made and that's before they even joined. And then on the day that they join, I always encourage our clients to build out not just the member of staff to kind of have a 100-day plan. But to have 100-day plan for them. You know, how do you want them? And it's an expectation change about making them feel that they've made the best decision of their career by joining you. On day one, how do you want that member of staff to feel at the end of day one, but also how do you wanna feel? What are you looking for? End of week one, end of week two, end of month 1, end of Q1, end of the first six months. Because if you can map back that expectation of how do you want to feel and how do they want to feel and you put in place the various trainings, developments, KPIs, projects, team activities to make sure that that person is onboarded because even if they've got 20 years experience and they're quite senior and you might be paying them 60/70/80 grand, remember, they're brand new to your business regardless of their experience. So let's make sure that we embed them and onboard them the most memorable way. And that takes a little bit of thinking. But again, once you've thought it through, it's a process that can be rolled out for every employee. Because you want to keep them. And if you've done the A-player recruitment framework up front and you really have got the right person, why don't you start off in the right way and make sure they absolutely stay with you through that. So they don't get dissonance, you know, buyer’s remorse of saying, ‘do you know what, I think I've joined the wrong company’.

IAN

I was just about to say cause this is exactly the same as if you've onboarded a new client. You know people are going to come and work for you because they love the value, the culture, what you stand for and the ambition of the business. Treat them just like an account management expectation exchange. What are they getting? And as soon as they say, yeah, you're that's when you're onboarding starts. So real powerful one there, Stuart. And a lot of people just go, yeah I'll onboard them, that'll be absolutely fine. But this is the bit you know you remember that there are other people that they may have been talking to that they might have turned down and you've only got to do one or two things for them to go, ‘Do you know what, I'm going to go back and see those other guys. I think they were better than this, cause it's not really panning out’. Real powerful one. Right, what's the last point that we're going to share today?

STUART

The final one is be prepared to pay more for the right person. Depending on where you are on your MSP, and you're looking to hire a service delivery manager or support manager, you're looking to hire an operations director, you know, depending on the maturity of your business. So, sub a million, you're perhaps pushing past two or three million. You're building your first supervisory team, or you're building a formal management team, or you're building a senior leadership team. There's subtle differences between those two, three things, but you're looking for the right experience and the right attitude and the right behaviours and the right background and the right alignment. And if that requires you, you know, you can look on Google to find out, or Indeed to find out kind of salary ranges. But a really good OPS manager or service delivery manager depends. Of course it all depends. It depends on also where your ambition goes. If you're trying to build a senior leadership team, let's say you're 2 million, you're turning over 2 million, or you're close to that and you're thinking, do you know what? I've got a really good team of probably 12-15 people, but I'm the management team currently with some really good supervisory, you know, high technical people. But actually, if I'm really going to have confidence to let go, I need some proper leaders. And that seems unfair to people you've got. But you know you need a tier for you to confidently let go. And it's like, if I'm going to go and hire an OPS senior, OPS person, or a Senior Finance Person, I could be looking at 50-60, possibly 70 grand and depending on your ambitions and your complexity, you might be looking at close to 100K. That isn't for MSPs that are sort of sub a million and trying to build out their first support manager role or service delivery manager role. But again, don't limit yourself, because if you find the right person who's the right fit and it costs you an additional 5 or 10K to get that right person and you'll onboard them appropriately and they are absolutely feeling like they've made the best decision of their life to be with you, they will pay you back. Heaps. But it doesn't stop at the recruitment point. Having paid more for them, it doesn't mean you can just let go. You've still got to be the ultimate leader. And we talk about that is moving from managing and doing and directing and empowering by being good manager. And then we're up into inspiring your managers, these people you're hiring to be the best that they can be and be excited about driving the business forward for you. So there is a shift in you to hire A-players in terms of mindset and what you step up into your new role, but also in terms of how you approach the interview process, the hiring process, and the planning process.

IAN

It is a process at the end of the day. Great points there, really, obviously resonate with many of us. They're not as complicated, as complex as they could be. This is just about being consistent, isn't it? Because you get the right people, you got the right data, then the business is going to, you know, really start to move forward. You'll have the confidence to drive the business and start to take on more the strategic tasks that's going to help you to scale and grow quicker.

STUART

There's another point to see and we covered it on another podcast. If you haven't already got the right performance management process in place and by that, I mean regular one-to-ones, things like that, be careful. Because if you're quite small and you think you just hire someone, bring it in, yes, they might help you build it out, but if you're not already doing it, you may not be actually ready to bring in an A-player because there's still more to be done in terms of getting the most out of the people you've got already. So, I don't know which what podcast is, but it might be worth finding that.

IAN

While we're in the middle of the podcast now, you want me to try and look back, scan back through my phone to see if I can remember in the next couple of minutes. Let's do that.

STUART

I think we might cut that bit.

IAN

Now leave it in and we'll just find out what it is.

Just coming back in their first small little interruption there from my dear friend Stuart, Episode 143 is the one you want to go and find, which is ‘How do I get more out of my team?’ where we went deep into understanding your existing team to help them become more engaged, more productive, more excited about coming to work for you. So, go and check that one out as well. And just before we wrap the show up, so if any of you on this podcast and you’re just thinking, where do I start with all of this stuff? It's really, really simple. Come and take the MSP Mastery Quiz and it literally takes 3 minutes to complete. You'll get a 360-degree scan of your business to identify literally the one or the two tactics that can help you find more time, engage in line your people, and help you generate more leads. And you get a personalized report as well. It's available on the link on the show notes. Go and take it right now and Stuart is now going to wrap up with his summary.

STUART

Yeah, it's really simple, Ian. If you're feeling like there's something missing in my team and there's a personality or a set of skills that is missing that's allowing me to really step into growing this business and not just doing the same thing, same out. Take a look at your people and work out exactly what's missing and follow what we've talked about in this podcast. It's as simple as that.

IAN

Brilliant stuff. Thanks ever so much, Stuart. I look forward to catching up with you. On the next one! See you soon!

STUART

See you!

OUTRO

So, I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, I'd love it if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to learn more about how to take your MSP to a million or if you're already there, go faster, then come and join Stuart Warwick and myself in the Scale With Confidence Facebook group. The link is in the show notes. You go enjoy the rest of your day and I look forward to connecting with you soon.