EP232 – Stop Fixing and Start Leading - 5 Steps to Stop Being the Bottleneck with Ian Luckett

IAN: In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast, I'm going to help you work out how to stop fixing and start leading. But I'm going to share with you five steps to stop you being the bottleneck in your MSP.

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. Hope you're all doing well today. And this, could be a bit of a break fix edition, depends how long I rattle on for. But one of the things that I'm constantly. Working with our clients on and helping them with is to understand where they're spending their time, understand how we can find those missing minutes in a day now. The thing that's important, everybody's got the same time, and you've heard that hundreds of times before. I'm almost certainly certain, and it's quite boring when someone says to you, oh, you just need to get better at time management. Oh, you just need to get better at delegation. But sometimes it's hard, sometimes you just can't see the wood for the trees, and you've got clients coming at you from one end, you've got your team coming at you from the other end, and you do what you've always done because the business has grown up around you and normally either an inspiring business leader or you are a technical person who is just like stuck and get stuck in the weeds. Now, some of the fears that, that revolve around delegating and revolve around freeing up time, I think that's what it is more about. It's not really about delegating so much, it's about losing control of those technical standards. As your business has scale and grown over the years, you've maintained a very high level standards. And I know that because they, people only listen to this podcast because they're at that level where they want to learn something, they want to do something a bit differently, and they really want to just take their business to the next level and then take their life to the next level. That's what this is all about. But the worry is that if you start to pass on some of the control to other people, you are going to lose those technical standards. And the other thing that we hear a lot of the time is that, clients as well, you think that all the clients are going to leave you if you are not the one who they can call on Saturday morning while your kid's watching football or while you are, you are out doing something and they're interrupting your day 'cause they've always had your mobile phone number. You've been the bottleneck in that and the rest of your tech team is sitting back at the office going, why are you dealing with that? Because we should be dealing with that. But you have that relationship with that client, which you may have had for many years, and you are worried that if you give that away to somebody else, they're not going to service them as well, your reputation is going to be, is going to be tired, they're going to leave. You are going to lose some money, and then the whole world's going to end. So it is really great how we can manage to catastrophize on a lot of these things many of the time. Sometimes, when someone says to you, we're going to confuse this time back, you're going to have some time, you're going to, you could, you can sit there and I bet you to put your hands up right now and there's going to be a few of the few of you that are going to nod right now and go, yeah, but what am I going to do if I'm not doing the tech? What am I going to do if I'm not involved in everything? What am I going to do if I'm not getting involved in, the day to day and the running and believe you, me, there's plenty to be getting on with strategically with what we call thousand pound tasks with an MSP, with running an MSP and for you not to worry about that, but it is a fear, right? Because it's like some people sometimes fear retirement. What am I actually going to do when I stop working?

For me, I've solved that one 'cause I've said I don't think I'm ever going to retire because I love what I do and I might slow down and play a bit more golf and choose what I wanna do and who the family I want to men spend some time with. I don't intend on sitting there like my grandparents did and retired, finish working. Sit there, go and get the paper in the morning. Watch the telly go to bed at night. That's it. That's not how I'm wide and that's not how many of you are wide either. So worrying about the time afterwards, it's more about, wow, I've got to choose what I want to do and I've got time to choose where I spend it and enjoy what I'm doing. And if you don't feel like you are adding value and you've got that energy that's running in there, then there is a chance that you are that you are going to think that do you know what, without me doing this and without me having that energy level in the business itself, that's just not going to grow, which, you know is actually not true, “SLV” – shitty little voice in your own heads, in our own little heads. We get it all the time. Okay? While you are stuck in the tech, you are not going to get the opportunity to think strategically and to think at a different frequency and a different level, we meet up with our clients six times a year, every eight weeks. And that's time where we just pluck them out of their businesses. We bring them to Sunny Luton Bedfordshire, we drop them in immersive environment with all of their other peers and friends and great MSPs all on the same journey.

And we stop, we stop. We think we help reflect on what's working. We help having that strategic time to think. It's so important, someone said to me back in the day when I was in corporate, I need time to think in my day. And I'm thinking, no, you bloody don't just get on with your work, man. What you talking about? Time to think. And I'll tell you what, if I ever met him now, I'd just say to him, you are absolutely right, because you need that strategic time to think, contrary to the laws of work life balance. When I go on holiday and I'm sitting on that sunbed bored, I'm thinking strategically about how Stuart and I can help more MSPs. And every time I come back from holiday, the team sit there and they go, oh my God, what's he thought of now? But it's that strategic time. It's not work time, it's thinking time, most of the time it's probably inebriated with alcohol, that's probably when some of the good ideas come up and some of the great things, and it's when you take yourself out of working in the business and you're working on the business. But while you are that bottleneck, you're always going to struggle to do that, and the amount of opportunities that we see on a daily and a weekly basis because of that lack of strategic thinking, prticularly, with account management. We know that in most MSPs right now that are anywhere, like mid to high six figures, there's anywhere between 80 and a hundred thousand pounds worth of low hanging fruit through their account management.

And the funny thing is as well, is when we mention that to MSPs, they go, yeah, you're probably right. And I sit there and go, I'd like 80,000 pound right now. That'd be quite nice if we could do that without any sales, without any marketing, without any effort, without any cold calling, and all of those kind of great things, because it's that thinking time. It's that strategic time to have that account management, conversation either with your team, how you can scale it with your team, with your customers, and making sure that you are finishing that process off rather than just farming, farming, farming into the future. But when you, when you have more of a control over your client experience, you will build in consistency. because most of the time there isn't, because you've got to be involved in it all of the time. But one of the key things that we see a lot of the time is people getting burnt out.

Last year we was talking to one of our clients, they hadn't had a holiday for 17 years. I don't know about you, but, we talk, a few phrases that we repeat a lot of the time is, building a business that works for you rather than you for it. The one that I absolutely love is the reciprocal. The reciprocity, which is all about if you help enough other people get what they want, then you will get what you want and, we are running this business from a value led a value led point of view about our center values, which is all about the fact that we care. And Stuart and I have got some amazing plans to help leave a legacy and help people less fortunate to us over and above what we're doing at the Growth Hub. And I'm going to share those with you one day for an accountability point of view because it'll happen then. And then that'd be really cool about the impact we'll make on the world. But the thing here at the moment is that if you are going home. And you are getting to Friday night and you are frazzled, you are absolutely burnt to a crisp, like a piece of toast, your family are not going to I suppose the first thing is this is not healthy. I did a podcast with Rachel Williams from Zest Life, have go and check it out. It was really interesting. She talked about the fact that most people, the average person in the UK has 26 years of ill health. 26 years of ill health, which, you know, and that's before you croak it, that's a long time. And that's an average time. So what are we doing now? As business owners, wherever you are, wherever you're in your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties to build that resilience against illnesses. Build up your strength so that when you fall over, you don't hurt yourself, keep your mind active. So you're keeping all these bad gremlins with all these horrible little things that you keep hearing about these mental health issues and all that sort of stuff. Now how do we keep ourself healthy and our bodies healthy? And then, you can enjoy the family time, right? There's no point working five days a week, 70 hours a week, whatever it might be, and flake out and half croak it on the sofa. That's no fun. What's that all about? Your family are not going to enjoy that, you want to have the energy go and run around with the kids, go and run around with the grandkids, go and run around with your friends and your family and get involved in all of those kind of like sports. So it's such a powerful thing. And this is just time management I'm talking about here, right? This is all we're talking about is time management and delegation. And we're going to give you some five points in a minute, which is going to help you out. So you know when you get more time back and we talk again in the Growth Hub about the 10% formula. If you can spend 10% of your working week working strategically on your MSP, you will blow the doors off Rodney, that's not right, was it? It wasn't only falls and horses, was it? It was, I can't remember Brad Pitt or someone like that. Anyway, someone let me know who that is, put it in the comments. If you're, see this on LinkedIn 10% formula.

If you just spend 10% a week on your business, you will take it to a completely different level because you're having that strategic time to plan. And when you plan properly and you plan strategically and you plan your team and cascade the targets down from your vision into your annual plan, into your quarterly plan, monthly plan, and that almost down to like daily tasks for your team. Not saying you get involved in their daily tasks, but at least you get yourself in a really strong position of understanding how the work's cascaded. Then you get more time to lead, which will what that mean. It'll mean that you will be building your monthly recurring revenue up and the business is going to be worth much more money, 90% of MSPs we talk to are looking to exit at some point or another, but when we talk to the M&A experts and we're getting some insights into what's going on in, in the world of world of MSPs, most MSPs aren't even re aren't even ready to sell. Nowhere near a chance of even getting an offer, let alone actually getting an offer that you want, if Exit is something that you want and you want to, I don't know, 5, 6, 7, 10, 15, 20, whatever it is, multiplier on it. You need to start planning. You need to start working out where are you now? You need to start working out. Where do you want to be in how many years time? What's in the gap? And what are you going to do in the gap to help put that back in place so that you can actually start to then drive that processes and drive it forwards, but clearer processes, better client satisfaction is going to mean one thing. Great SOPs and great SOPs means the value of your business will go up. Great SOPs mean that your team can operate autonomously. Without you, great SOPs mean you can go on holiday and leave your bloody phone at home, right? And you can just chill out and you can relax and get all these things together. SOPs are boring. Most MSPs, they're not actually, but for most people, actually having them documented down so that you understand how the business is operating, is the most important thing that, that we need to, that we need to build into a business.

Because it is building that autonomy, a stronger, more empowered team will help lift you up. They'll help lift you up. They'll help lift your thinking up. Some of the most amazing things that come from our team and we ask them, Hey, what is it that you do differently? What are you hearing? What do you think would be help benefit our clients? How can we get our clients results, better results quicker? That's like the three words that rolls off our tongues. All day long. It's just like really important, sometimes you are so close to it in that right in the middle of that wine bottle, in that bottleneck that you can't see yourself out of it.

So stepping back and building that resilient team, no matter how big it would be. Because “ONN”- owner not needed, that's what we need. Again, another key measure for a successful sale is the fact that you are not needed in that business. You are not needed. You don't want to be stuck into a three year earnout, two year earnout. You just want to show them the ropes, tell them where the controls are, and then get yourself on your way and enjoy the rest of your life. So it's really important that we understand what those, what that team looks like and what those SOPs look like.

And then you time out to spend the holidays without any disruption, without any stress and all of that kind of great stuff.

So what do we do about it? So, we've got probably hundreds and hundreds of ways to help to overcome, overwhelm through the Eisenhower Matrix. We've got the ICE framework that we use here at the Growth Hub to help our clients to properly delegate, set targets and everything like that

But I've got five, five key things for you that I want to share with you today.

The first one, I want you to try this one out on a Friday, work out what a good week looks like next week. Now, there's a bit of a precursor to this one because I want to make sure that you've got a really clear annual plan goals, quarterly planning goals, monthly planning goals. You know exactly what you need to be doing. So you need to plan that out to work out what you're going to be doing, but on a Friday, before you turn everything off and before you go home for the weekend, have that amazing weekend with the friends and family, I want you to set up next week for success, right? So block out two hours, at least two hours, four hours a week, 10% rule to working strategically on your business. Block it out in your diary, put an agenda in it. Know exactly what you want to achieve that's going to help you achieve that monthly, quarterly, annual plan. What do those things need? Who do you need in that team meeting to make sure it's going to happen? Who do you need to understand what the goals look like so that you can delegate properly and who you know? What does your power team look like to help you get that done? Okay.

Second one is document and delegate. One task, one big, hairy, horrible task per week, right? Whatever that might be. It might be around creating new SOS, it might be around, cascading the targets and making sure the one-to-ones are done, or your job descriptions are all in place, or you've been holding, the reviews or the annual plans or whatever it might be. But every single week, agree with your team. Agree with a buddy, agree with whoever you want to agree with, but just make sure that you've got a really big, horrible blooming thing that you've been putting back and putting back. But it's a strategic task and strategic thing that's going to help you drive the business forwards. Okay? That's number two.

Number three, you are going to love this one because I'm going to let you tinkle with a little bit of tech, right? Make sure you're using your PSA tool properly. Make sure you are managing and tracking and all of the systems and processes that you've got, make sure that you are using the functionalities. What we see so many times is MSPs, they stack fiddle as our great friend, Paul Green has coined the phrase they're just fiddling around with a stack all day. I'm just doing a bit of this. I'm do a bit of that all as a new shiny ball. Let's go and put that in all little bit of ai, another security. Another backup bit of this, bit of that. And before you know it, you've got probably more direct debits than you get scared to imagine. It's absolutely frightening, probably how much, unused direct debits have been spent in your accounts. But all the time, every single week we're having conversations in the growth hub about automations that you should be having within your PSA automation so that you can enhance your service desks, skills, their skills, the culture, their accountability, the purpose that they're living here. No one wants to be sitting on a service desk bashing out tickets all day long. The basic tickets, the password resets and all of that kind of stuff, think about what tools and systems you can employ to help you use your stack properly and to help talk to your vendors, talk to your account managers and ask them, how do I use these tools better? How do they connect together better? And this isn't a case of going out and buying more stuff. It's a case of consolidating and getting rid of making sure that your, you're building yours, SOPs around your business, and then your tool stack and your technical tool stack is then helping you to deploy that. Great, the great SOPs. Okay.

Number four is get yourself a buddy and get involved in the community, for accountability and ideas. So it may be a fellow MSP, it could be a coach, it could be a mentor, it could be somebody else, within the channel itself. But accountability is the key thing. Make sure that you've got someone that you are saying, I'm going to do this week, and then you've got to report back to them, and I'm not going to make myself look silly and say I haven't done it. I want to say, make sure that I've done it. We are in a fair few accountability groups ourselves, and it's really powerful to make sure that you are, you're holding yourself and holding other people's to account because it can be a lonely place running an MSP, right? It can be a lonely place running any business. But when you're on your own and you're kind of like making up your own version on what you want to do, depending on the weather, and if it's all sunny out there, you might just go, do you know what? I'm going to go and cut the grass instead of doing something else. Then you need to make sure that you've got that accountability. And also ideas and suggestions. As I said before, sometimes you're so close to the lens, you have no idea what on earth you are. You know what focus you are working on, you're just working firefighting. But I'm not going back into all that again, get yourself a buddy, get involved in the IT community. There's amazing groups and communities out there, that will help you, build that accountability and drive that forwards for you.

And finally, focus on hiring leaders and not doers. So you know, your leadership team, your senior people, depending on what level you are at, we want these to be these guys and girls to be wired in such a way that they're going to help lift you up, they're going to help push you, they're going to help drive the business forwards because they're going to take off your plate and they're going to help you to stop doing all the thinking if you are one of those people where you've got to do all the thinking all the time. Otherwise, nothing moves forward today. It is the time for change. Let's do something different. Let's do something different and change, and just take those five key points there and try them out. Test them out. Let me know what you think, get in contact on LinkedIn if you enjoyed them, let me know what you need to do. But the last thing I just want to mention before we before we part company today, and you go and get on with your day, is that we have just released the ultimate MSP Growth Guide which is a comprehensive guide to work out what support you need when. You know that you are ready to scale your MSP. We do some comparisons there on different groups, different support services, so you can help sort out the wood for the trees and what you need to do as and when you want to decide to as and when you're ready to grow and scale your MSP.

So I hope you enjoyed the show. I hope you found this one useful. Please put it into action. Take the plan, take those five points, talk to your team about it, get accountable, and let's stop being that bottleneck and let's really start to get that business moving forward and really start to see some trajectory.

That is it for me today. Have an amazing, incredible day, and I look forward to catching up and connecting you soon. Be good. Take care. See you soon.

OUTRO:  Oh, but one last thing just before you shoot off. And if you're curious about how this episode links with the ability to scale your MSP to a million or, or if you are 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 degrees scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that can help you find more time, engage in, 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.