EP182 - HELP! I Need to Get Out of My Own Way - Success Stories with Mark Stevens

In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast, we talked with Mark Stevens and help you to get out of your own way.

Welcome to the IT Experts Podcast, the only podcast to help these scale to 1,000,000, 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. Wherever you are today, we've got another one of the amazing MSP growth Club clients. We have got Mark Stevens in the house. Good afternoon, Mark, how you doing today?

MARK

Good Afternoon, Ian. Yeah, very good. Thank you, very good. How are you?

IAN

Oh, I'm good. Thank you. We're looking excited, looking excited again, excited, ready for the show today. This is a really interesting one, I, you know, been working well now just for over a year now, haven't we? But it was possibly one of the longest closes in the growth hub history. He nearly took two years to wrestle this man, put his head round and what’s this episode is all about.

It's about helping you to share with you an inspiring and motivating story about someone who's reached out for some help to grow their MSP. If you're feeling stuck, if you're feeling you in a bit of a rut, if you don't know which way to learn which way to turn, and all of these kind of things, this episode is going to help you to get. You know, get some focus, get some motivation and get the right support, that whatever matters for you right now. So I'm going to start the show off by saying if everybody who listens to this podcast goes out and gets some support to grow their MSP and to grow themselves as a business. Then my day is one, okay. If some people come and join the growth hub and you're right fit then that's great. But that's kind of like not the purpose of this. It's about the ripple effect of sharing with people. There's nothing hurts me more, Mark, when someone says to me I never even knew this community existed of people who help and support each other in the channel like CompTIA, like Tech Tribe like you know, the PAX 8 events, where the vendors are available. And all the other great events that kind of go on around there. And today I want to share and really dig into Mark's mind about what was going on, what was happening in his head and if it resonates with you and you go and work with Paul Green or you go and work with Dan Welling, or you go and work with any of the other guys, the wingman guys, or anybody else like that, I don't care because I want you to get the right support for your business at the right time – that fits for you. So I just wanted to frame that to start off with. So Mark, introduce yourself, my friend. Who are you? What do you do? Who help? Where are you? And uh, we got this whole thing about this electric car thing going on, but we need to talk about that another day because that's just the complete delta where we are on that sort of thing. But anyway introduce yourself, Mark.

MARK

Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. So my name is Mark Stevens. I'm the managing director for more NIT. We're based in a smallish town sort of encapsulated between Nottingham, Leicester sort of Lincolnshire Rutland Way, called Melton Mowbray. Yeah. Famous for the pork pies and Stilton cheese as well within the area. Yeah. If you like that stuff, if you like that, what do we do? So, yeah, as Ian says, MSP probably only really identified as an MSP within the last or probably three years, maybe three or four years, you know, so sort of come away from that traditional sort of break fix IT, support company mentality. You know, my background really came from corporate, you know with 13 to 15 years in corporate. So that traditional IT support understanding of how you do things and trying to you know remodel that into a business was one of the biggest challenges. So yeah.

IAN

Okay, cool.

MARK

That's kind of where we are.

IAN

So I can't quite remember when it was, when it was, we first met. I think it might have been exchanging about the podcast, wasn't it? Some of those, the thing they really liked that episode. It was great. You came along to a Discovery Day and you learned, learned about kind of what we do. So let's just rewind. You know, back a couple of years you're going to go into, you know, a great level of detail. But life was pretty hard, wasn't it, mate? There's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of moving parts in your business and your, you know, kind of like at that time you're kind of like sub-half-a-million, weren't you had a had a team around? What was life like at that time when you got to the point where you go, I need to do something what was going on in your head then.

MARK

Help. It was just literally help. You think you know what you need to do. You think you know the best way to do it and maybe there are, you know, a multitude of different ways to achieve the thing. But it was just understanding. Where's that help going to come from? So, yeah, going back. You're right. And body goes back now two years, maybe just around there. When we first started talking. And I remember sort of picking up on picking up on one of the podcasts, you know, and really being able to resonate with yourself. I can't remember the time, whether you were LinkedIn with Stuart or whether you guys were just coming together.

IAN

At the time, no, we weren't married then.

MARK

Yeah. So you are now, yeah.

IAN

Don't you dare tell me not away that the reason you join the growth hub was cause of Stuart's velvet voice. Because if you do, I'm just going to get this point off cause I hear that too many times, sorry mate.

MARK

Yeah. Clearly, clearly, I've clearly, I've scared you with that comment and clearly I've. Scared you with that comment? I was I was one of them. I was one of them. He's just going to silky voice. That's what it is. So where were we? Yeah, going back.

IAN

Shut up. Shut up. Keep talking. I want to talk about you, not him.

MARK

So about two years ago, you know, MSP had been running approximately 7 years, I think 7 years, you know, nice growth, nice sort of growth leading. The COVID didn't have our stalling order going into COVID got it wrong, you know, didn't really understand the whole Mr. you know, the monthly reoccurring revenue didn't really God got it, but didn't really get it. And going into COVID that put us into a difficult position because it meant we were, we were leaning on too much project income project revenue. And of course, COVID, where you we had the immediate upturn, you know, which was everyone's working from home. Everybody needs a laptop. We haven't got remote access. We need VPN for those clients with on Prem servers. Yeah. So we had that sort of upturn of work and then everything just fell off a Cliff and went quiet. So yeah, that's kind of where we got to full code and then going through COVID and then I think really the biggest challenge and when I really knew I needed to reach out for help, you know, the turning point was around those first sort of year or two of COVID. It was understanding that something was wrong, something wasn't quite right. Something didn't feel right, and I think I'd caught you within just a, you know, a social media channel somewhere saying, you know, getting out your own way and using that terminology, that's where it came, came from. And that really resonated. It was like, well. What does that? Actually mean let's actually spend a few minutes to really comprehend that and pull it apart. And it was then that I thought to myself. Well. Why? Why have we got, you know, why's our attrition rate in the business high? You know why? You know why aren't we sort of making the progress we need to be making? Why didn't I get things set up properly? Little bit of imposter syndrome started creeping, you know, being completely honest, you know, completely transparent. And so I started to do a lot of self development and the book that really turned things around for me was The Chimp Paradox and realizing where we come from, who we are, amazing book. It's one of those books that I'll never lend out because I want to make sure I never lose it. You know, it's my reference material never, never going to lend it out. I'm happy to buy people copies. And I have subsequently gone on to buy people copies. But that book and listening to what you had said all those years ago, yeah, really started to resonate with me. And then it was a voyage of self discovery. So figuring me out, you know, and why am I, in my own way, what am I? Doing you know, and being brutally honest and transparent, you know, there were two main problems. Number one was ego, which, having gone into that I now understand that's quite common within MSP owners. You know whether it's an IT thing you know cultured from having all the keys to the Kingdom you know and all that. Well, the old way of looking at Tech was power, you know, which it's not a modern way of looking at it and arrogance, bit of a mix of the two, I know that's you know we're not here to sort of self regulate, but it's the reality of what the problem was, you know and understanding.

Okay. So because when I started to pick that apart, I realised that I needed to get out my own way. I then came across and stumbled across yourself and Stuart. And it was like, okay, what do these guys do? You know, really try and sort of unpick and understand what is it that these guys can offer. Is it going to offer value? Because at that time revenue had taken a steep turn. You know, we picked up a little bit of business debt for the first time, you know going into COVID and I know a lot of businesses. Did you know? Going through that and it's like. Okay, well, there's extra expenditure here to work with these guys. I get it. No one works for free, but can we justify it? Are we going to be able to get our money back? You know, turn it around. And I remember coming along to the Discovery Day with yourself and Stuart. And you guys filled me with so much confidence around. Look, Mark, this is what we've done. This is our sort of, you know, this is our track record. This is what we've done with other businesses and we wouldn't be telling you this if we weren't genuinely confident that we could help you and really help you to move forward. You've just got to start to put things into the right order and focus on the right things and get out your own way again, you know and so yeah, you know, going through the personal development, linking up with you guys, yeah. I paused for a year. Just that money I kind of needed just to get by at the time.

IAN

Yeah, you’re really in the right place, didn't you? And you needed to be comfortable that you were, you know, the money, I mean, at that time, you know, you had a lot of people involved in the business, didn't you almost have, like I did.

MARK

Yeah, we did.

IAN

Mini ball, didn't you? And

MARK

Yeah. Well, that's right. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right.

IAN

All these people that people advise, yeah, very to bring that one back up again we had we had all these people offering you, then it was you know the thing for any type of business support is that you've got to be in the right headspace and you've got to have the time, you know, obviously. And the money to invest in it and go wholeheartedly and then you get your ROI super quick, you know, and I think at that time, from our point of view, there's a lot of stuff going on and we know straight away, you know, from an intro call when. You know when someone's going to be successful with the hallmark of what they've got kind of, you know looking at their business, looking at how they are looking, if they got business part. And there's, you know, some of their profitability, their attitude to sales and marketing, their attitudes to change and things like that. And we always knew that that you were going to be a great fit, but it was about you having the right time to have the right fit, you know, in that time to in to do that. How did how was all of that stuff kind of impacting you because it was pretty tough time as well.

MARK

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. It was. So yeah, at the time my then partner as well was working within the business. So with all that additional financial pressure and you know that self discovery that you're, you're absolutely right. And there was a lot of change going on. You know, a lot of change. And it was, you know, change is good. You know too much change too can be bad because you people don't have time to adjust, you know, or to adjust to you. And the way that you're changing. And I think ultimately, the working with and you're right, we were working with two other business consultants at the time.

One of them was through some government backed scheme innovation or I can't remember now the name of it. But there was something there that there was, yeah, a business consultant. We were working with and we had a virtual Finance director that was heavily engrossed into the business. And was costing the business quite a lot of money doing it wrong. The value that we were being given with the bulk monthly board reports except was brilliant. It was great. And at the time whilst we were going through a bit of a recovery period coming out of COVID. We definitely needed that you know, we really needed that help and support. But then it was a case of I guess the information was being fed is that well. Look, you can do this on your own. You don't need to invest in more business, consultants and support. You can do this yourself. You know, we're signing up for things like Tech Tribe. You know, again you mentioned our I'd almost like to call him a friend sort of Paul Green. You know it's such lovely.

IAN

Yeah. No, I'd call in a friend because if you call Paul Green, your friend, he just turns up for some your lunch. Find out that have gone out. If you listened to my podcast or not. I'll get a message now.

MARK

Kim used to work, and so my partner Kim used to work with him years ago at the...

IAN

Really.

MARK

Yeah, was. Uh. What? What was it? Something trader. Wasn't the Grantham Journal. It was somewhere sort of Lincolnshire way. So she actually knows Paul from a long time back. A long time back. So, yeah, that's the connection. So, get started to sort of get myself into that MSP community more, you know and start to, you know, get in the tech drives, start collaborating with these sort of global MSP's. Yeah, seeing how they do things a little bit differently. And it was then that it started to open my minds that I can. Yeah, absolutely, I can figure this out. Right. You know, I'd like to consider myself a reasonably intelligent person. There's that ego kicking in again, you know, reasonably in the intelligent person, but not getting any younger, you know, don't want to wait around forever to get the business to where it was or have been doing it for X amount of time, want to accelerate, you know. And get there within a certain period of time and things were getting better working with the clients closer. You know, building those relationships with the clients, you know giving more value and really starting to understand the profitability of the business really got into that. And that really started to turn things that they then enabled us to have the discussion you know and start and actually press the green button.

IAN

So it was your confidence around, you know, the money, your ambition, your passion to drive it forward, the energy that you wanted, the vision that you could see these other people doing great things and you wanted to be on that on that bus, was that the minute when you press the button.

MARK

Yeah, it was. It was everything aligned. You know, as they say, the stars aligned, everything was in. It was the right time, the right place, and I already knew that I had, you know, the right people yourself and Stuart, you know, to go to. Yeah. Look, it was absolutely, looking back, maybe I could have done it a bit earlier. Maybe I should have done it earlier. I'll give you that, I'll give... general

IAN

It was so it was so funny, cause your friend. Well, you literally found me up. You said, Ian, I'm ready and I went. OK, let's get a call in so we got to answer to. Stuart said, I said, he said it was that, says Mark Matthew, Mark Matthews, that's another, that's a whole another MSP legend Mark, Mark things he said. I said he's ready. He said, really, I said we'll find out. Right. So that was great. You kind of knew what we did and obviously what other people can do for you. And help as well. What was the biggest you know when you joined? Obviously it can be quite overwhelming. We as Stuart and I are not victims of our own success, but we are big givers. We're big, you know, remembering the passion and the reason we put this together was want to help more people make more impact, change more lives, have a bit of fun and really get some, get some traction going, you know. So we're always trying to over deliver. So a lot of people, sometimes they get a little bit overwhelmed when you joined. What was going on in your head? How did you feel? What was the impact of that? What was the most powerful. Yeah, so sort of start off with impact.

MARK

The biggest I remember the first call, the first sort of Wednesday afternoon session it was and all of a sudden you're in this room with all these other MSP owners and you're a bit, you know, you kind of looking around thinking ohh do I do I know that company are of a competitor at mine you know and the thing being. They're competitor syndrome. Do you know what I mean? And all that was kicking in, all that was kicking in and I was seeing myself. Okay, do I know any of these guys have? We have crossed paths, have we off board with the client to one of these MSPs you know before and what you very quickly. I mean, just to step out into a small Ave. and step back into that discussion point again. What you realise after a short period of time is that you're actually all friends, you know you're all fish swimming in the same sea. You know there's plenty of food around for all of us and there's no need for that competitive. I mean, yes, it's competition because we're trying to make our businesses the most attractive and the most suitable, you know, to the clients out there. But at the same time, the knowledge share in there is just outstanding. It is mind-blowing what the guys prepare to do only the couple of days ago I asked for something on business premium was your, there's just some checklist. I think Phil, the guys name was not really spoke to him before much. And yeah, he just sent over the document is like ego Mark, have a look and that knowledge shows amazing. If that expedites the process for us, so we're helping each other and I've done the same, I've also given back into the into the group as well. So yeah, look floodgates, you know, floodgates, absolutely the floodgates open. We pressed the button we got in there. You gave me access to all the portals, and I'm clicking through it all my where the hell do I begin?

IAN

Tell you, but I think you ignored that bit as your shiny ball syndrome kicked in and that was it. You were over it like the tip.

MARK

It did. It did. And I was. And I was like, okay, so we did it like that, you know, so let's, let's quantify it in percentage of efficiencies. Okay. So how Mark one does it currently is 60% efficient, 55-60. Wow. We do it like this.

IAN

Stood on the divers mark.

MARK

We're going to get a 90 to 95% efficiency. You know that's my own personal calculation. You know the big one, you know, the big one that stood out for me, the game changer without a doubt, is the know your number.

IAN

Wow. Brilliant. I didn't know you were going to play?

MARK

Then I know you didn't.

IAN

Have you seen my face? Go. Oh.

MARK

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did did you think I was going to say Stuart?

IAN

My God. Are you going to say Stuart? No, but times again.

MARK

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. Know your numbers that that single bit of guidance support training alone gives you the confidence to make decisions that without doing now. It's finger in the air and gut feel which is which is okay, right, you know, and Stuart's giving us that feedback that it's okay. And from my experiences in the past, it's okay to make good decisions because it got you so far it got you so far, but the reality is, you know, what was the that there was something that Stuart did during one of the sessions. There was like a was it like a dart board or a a square broken down into four small square boxes around confidence and it's about risk taking and decision making based upon facts, can't remember what it is escapes.

IAN

Yes, yes, yes, yeah.

MARK

But yeah, that puts you in the top right corner. It just gives you that confidence to make those decisions and think to self. You know what? Yeah, by adding that extra head by bringing that the bringing that you know for us the the service desk manager in the difference that that has made into the business has been huge and you know other, you know, the peers within the growth hub have been saying to me, well, isn't it a bit early? You know, you haven't really got enough text to be taking on an SDM, you know, service desk manager, I'm like, well. You know what? It's one of the best things I did cause I've got an inbox full of requests, you know, quotes that I've got to get out that, you know, get out for the size of the business, where we are now. Sales admins coming soon. So I've got a batch of quotes I've got to process through. And if my head's in OPS, I ain’t got time to be doing quotes unless I don't want to sleep, which I quite like sleeping.

IAN

You're quite do you know what I was going to say? I'm not quite sure. When you do sleep, Mark, because the conversations people have had is the fact that you're up at 5:00 in the morning. You might get a bit a little bit earlier, but you kind of got me into that into that thing. But that's just about that passion. It's really interesting. You know, you talk about the headline numbers when you know when Stuart and I got together, he was mainly focused.

MARK

Off it off it yeah.

IAN

And on high 6 figure early 7 figure businesses and mine because of my love for sales and marketing and getting that right was generally the smaller guys and then we just basically and you know getting our operations together and how we can coach our vision is to get to 100 MGS help 100 MSPs by the end of next year is do the little guys need to know about knowing their numbers and I'm going. I don't know if they're ready for it, and we did it, and for some of the guys it took 6-7 months to get their head around this, but right now we can open up our headline numbers exercising our. Crap. And we can see who's putting what effort, who's doing what, everything shows up in your numbers. The amount of people that you've got, your profitability, what you're spending, what you're taking out, and the motorbikes you're buying all this kind of stuff and it's all in those headline numbers and you know we have one of our clients on the Q&A yesterday and he is the busiest guys just joined and small and he got really busy and he said, you know what, hour and a half out yesterday to come on a session with Stuart and our fine. That's coach and he says it's really made me think this is actually the most important thing in my life right now, is understanding my numbers. So, you know, just we'll come on to a minute kind of where you're at right now. But what I just want to just pause just for a second and say whatever help and support you get wherever you go, you know, as an MSP in the space.

MARK

Yes.

IAN

Number one, make sure you're anchored around a plan. A plan of action. What you're gonna do. Don't just recruit someone. Ahs would be nice to have a little chat every month, and then that'll be another little chat next month. And before you know it, you've done six months. You can all be actually achieved. So build a plan around what you want your business to deliver. You know, building a business that works for you rather than you for it. You know, that's the key. You know, knowing your numbers and knowing your ROI, if you're bringing in, you know, marketing and sales support, okay I'm going to invest. It's going to be an investment. But when am I likely to get my money back? What does good look like from you? What do you need from me to enable goods to look like? How is that going to show up in my numbers? And I'm going to hold your feet to the fire to make sure that you do deliver that you know, and also make sure that you're surrounding yourself, Tech tribe, Comptia, you know, vendors do amazing community events. Be the smallest person in the room. Be the smartest person in the room so you can kind of like learn. So you know, if you take anything away from this podcast, please take those last two minutes and just do that. You know, what's life like now, Mark?

MARK

Life now is. Ohh God. Yeah, much better, much better and yeah.

IAN

No, it's about that one as well.

MARK

No, no life is much better. I mean, don't get me wrong, we have just recently gone through a few staff changes. You know we've brought in some people and we know how hard it is to find the right people, right. The right fit. You know you've first you got to develop the right seats and then you got to get the right people to sit on those seats. You know that sort of bit for me that focus has been. Do you know what, take more of that gross profit and blow it into the right people and employ people that are smarter than you. You know you want to be the dumbest person in that room. You know, when you surround yourself within your team, you really do, because you use the...

IAN

Use the frameworks didn't you to help you to build, design and build your new team as it affected you weren't so you got the right people in the right roles.

MARK

Yes. Yeah.

IAN

How did that you know, how did that kind of like feel for you when you were going through that cause? It was a bit clunky for a while, wasn't it?

MARK

It was key to invest in the right people to make sure that you're not just cutting a few corners and saving yourself. Maybe 5K-7K-8K maybe 10K in some cases and not investing in the right people. Make sure you understand what that seat looks like. Get those job specs clearly defined, you know, so you you've got clear demarcation point on what you expect them to do, so there's no ambiguity, you're going to get overlapped within a small business. We all sort of share hats and swap hats occasionally when we're on holiday, you know, but ultimately get those seats defined, invest in the right people, make sure when you bring them on board, you've got that, you know, in the duction. And that training plan so that they see where their careers going didn't really focus on that as much properly before, so all that frameworks really helped. And yeah, you know ultimately that has some where are we're at the point where, you know, we've got another tech senior tech joining us Monday, you know, next week. You know, we're lots of experience in the MSP sector again investing in the right people. And what you realise is and even though you know it, you don't do it. And I don't know why you don't do it. Because you should just do it so really, logically, I'm kind of sounding stupid saying this, but logically if you invest in you know, okay and let's go to cars, because you mentioned cars at the start of the podcast, so let's do it so you know, if you want to do a sort of quarter mile Sprint, you know, and you want to perform quite well, you're not going to buy an entry level. I don't know what car we're thinking at entry level. Fiesta mini. Are they still on for sale today? I think they are. You want buying entry level one and think I'm going to knock the competition out the park with my one litre engine and my, you know, quarter mile time of 35 seconds. You got to buy a race horse. You know, you got to buy your Ferrari or your Tesla or your Bugatti you know or what was that one that you said that you are that?

IAN

Tesla. You know you want to hear it? Come on. You need to hear it. Come. I know you're going to flip it in there. What you said if you wanted your call mile but sound like you're doing 1/4 of mile, then you need to buy a car, not a an electric milkshake that goes far, not a big go Kart.

MARK

Yeah.

IAN

Yeah, I get your point.

MARK

Yeah, you have a point. So the point is spend that money on the people and spending that money on the people that frees up your time. That's a bit I've not mentioned yet. Freeze up your time. It gives you, like you all say to me in and you know, I like to steal some of your terms here, you know, borrow them is the headspace. You need headspace because without headspace, you're just doing the do all the time. You know you're working in the business. You're, yeah in your own way. You're stuck. So that headspace that they create. You know, if you've got that growth mindset, if you've got that ambition to take your business to the next level and really accelerate, you need headspace and look, yeah, like you said earlier, yeah. Look, I'm in bed eight, half eight up at sort of 4:30, getting the gym for an hour, start working at 6:00. That's my routine. That's my life and, you know. I know it sounds like wow, that just.

Who would want to live a life like that? But I enjoy it. It isn't a job, it's a hobby. And I genuinely mean that well, I want to work this hard forever. Probably not, but right now, whilst we're trying to build a business that, as you say, works for me and I don't work for it. I've got to put the energy in, you know, and whilst young enough to put the energy in as well. It's probably worth saying that.

IAN

We just recently done your reset your annual plan. When you came in, we looked at some of the targets we put for the first year, which at that time were quite aggressive and you smashed the life out of him. So that's the last time on on leaving what you say. What does the next year look like for you? What does success look like?

MARK

Well, success for us is definitely gonna be an extra head within within sales, you know, sales admin person to take us up to account of eight in the total. And I would like to think you know where we're gonna be. I think we could at least hit maybe 600,000, maybe more by the end of next year. Which for us is. Yeah, it's kind of over, yeah. Hundred 8000% growth in, yeah, quite a short a period of time, but it's just because we're doing things differently and apparently. I've got the gift of the gab when it comes Sales that this is what I'm told. This isn't me. You know, I'm just passing it on, which kind of helps when you're running a business to be able to sell stuff right.

IAN

And from it you don't need to share the exact number as well, but one of the key things that we we always work on day one is that profitability level isn't it because turnover's great, it's nice and flashy and it's you know it it's all that good stuff, but it's about that profit level and you know or you know where we're trying to get to not trying, sorry we don't try and do anything where we get our clients there's anything more for 50-60% gross profit and north of 20% net profit and you know the terminal that you went into. And trying to build that profitability up and you've got money to invest in the right people, you've got money. So you can, you know, enjoy the things in life that you want and all of that kind of good stuff as well as it is ever so important. So getting some more people hitting 600K and what does home life look like you're going to build that garage, yeah.

MARK

It's a cabin. Well, you know. Look, it's good. It's balanced all when you remove financial pressure. Right? Because we had something that I didn't mention earlier going into COVID, things were good growth about sort of 20 percent, 25% a year on year growth going into COVID. We can't just set our stall out a certain way. And I think I mentioned to you that we bought a house. You know, we moved into a bigger house during lockdown when the rules were relaxed. And so we set our stall out, you know, and put a lot of financial pressure on ourselves. You can imagine what that was like, you know, from, you know, things I've mentioned earlier. So home life now. Well, that pressure is gone. You know, it's probably been gone for sort of 9 to 12 months now. So you can start to breathe again. You know, you can actually start having holidays again. You know, you can actually start to think about how do we sort of invest, you know, back into the business, you know, so, okay, so you can have that salary and this is a key thing for business owners. So you can have that salary. But action. If you can survive on less and you reinvest that into the business, what could you do with that money? Do you know that way of thinking is not something that I was used to sort of pre COVID I use pre COVID as a term it's going to be a thing, isn't it for generations, especially I remember pre and post COVID.

IAN

Also, yeah, I remember that pandemic thing? When we bought all those masks and queued up outside Sainsbury's for six hours.

MARK

That's it. That's it. So it's much better in. Thank you. It's much, much better. Yeah. Work from home. Much better work. Life is better. We're still working our socks off, but we're actually excited. We're genuinely excited. And the team I've got here are excited, and they want the same for the business. And that's the key thing as well. Is trying to recruit people. Into the business that that can see that vision, you've shared that vision with them, you know, share that. You should and make sure whatever you do, they want to come with you, you know, and that they're massively invested. You know, I don't know the secret to that. That's a bit of a good feel by, you know, asking and listening and understanding what they're giving you. Back but really pay attention in those interviews to what they're saying and the first sort of three months. The probation period really listen, really dial in and you know what? If they're not right. Something I didn't do. Pre COVID was make the tough decisions which is if they're not right, just get rid of them and I know that sounds a little bit sort of you know a bit of bullish and harsh. Don't get me wrong, always spend time developing people you know, put them through. But if you feel like you're just not getting anywhere like you're stuck in a quagmire. Don't be afraid to make that tough decision, which is to recruit and replace.

IAN

Mark, thank you very much for your time this afternoon and been, you know, open, honest, vulnerable and sharing with the community. I know the only reason you've done this is so that. Can help more MSP's and the channel can help more MSPs and help them from stopping to, you know, suffering and going through all the horrible things that we kind of hear as a techie business owner, most people and when they go through any last comments, summaries, suggestions from yourself, mark before we sign off.

MARL

Yeah. Thanks. And yeah, look, I would say that you're actually right. I don't think tech is, you know, people who come from working in corporate that were natural business owners, you know, that were natural leader. And I think working with the growth hub absolutely will help shape you, you know, amongst other communities, you know will really help shape you into being that business leader and to really not be afraid to reach out and get help. And I remember in I remember a time not too long ago where you know, there was that there was that feeling of despair. You know, when sort of we have a couple of members of staff that were leaving at a similar time. One was a surprise. One wasn't. I was parked in a car park in Nottingham, some somewhere. And I just thought I'd call you. I thought, you know, is it available, you know, is it, you know why I'm calling you? One calling one of my guys that you know, I thought I'd just give you a call. Just want his head just to tell him what's going on. If you can give me any Nuggets and you know. You were really it was great because you had the time you picked up phone and yeah, look, it was 5 minutes, wasn't it? You know, it's five to me, you were driving somewhere. You know, I think your car was breaking down or your wife's car was breaking down or something. At the time you were mentioning. Yeah. Couldn't have been a Tesla. And and yeah, look, you just put my mind at rest. You just absolutely put my mind. At rest, I came off the call getting much better you said. Look, Mark, let's get a 20 booked in and you know I'm just super grateful for that support. Really super grateful. And like I said to you the other week, you know, it's nice to know you're there, you know, I know we have all this, the work, the framework and everything we're going through. You know this whole process, but you're always there. So whenever things get tough and if you're like me, you're 100% shareholder, 100%, you know you're the only director. It can be lonely when you don't have a business partner and who do you talk to? You know? And you guys are there you're like a business partner, will help us to get to where we need to be and do whatever it takes.

IAN

That's also, you know it. You know, Mark's obviously been very, you know open today about the growth, but that's also the same with all the other things. And I I know I know. Really mean that? You know, if you listen to this podcast, it's made you think go and find the right support for you. If you don't know what the right support is actually, just ring. Get hold of myself and Stuart and meet him and have a chat. And if we're not the right people for you, we'll go and point you to someone. Who is the right person? For you, for where you're at in your business right now. Thanks again, Mark. Thank you. I hope this has been a massive use and massive help for everybody listening. Here's to your success mate, from the next year and watch out, we'll start talking about upgrading your programming so you can get in the room with some bigger boys next year. Then I think that'd be a good idea to put that on the plan. Thanks again Mark been really grateful and I totally appreciate your help. See you later, take care now. See you next one.

MARK

Thanks, Ian.

OUTRO

In a minute, 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 you're already there, accelerate to five, then one invite you to come and take the MFP master quiz and in just three minutes you're going to get 300 and seats. You scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that help you find more time engaging. And your people help generate all of these. In your hands. It's really simple. Just click on the link in the show. Note and if. You have enjoyed this episode. We'd love to get some feedback from you by means of erasing review on Spotify or iTunes or your podcast platform choice. We really appreciate every single one. Now you can go and enjoy the rest of your day and we look forward to hearing tonight and connecting with you soon.