EP284 - The MSP Owner Bottleneck: Every MSP Needs a Superhero Until It Wants to Scale with Ian Luckett

IAN: In this episode of The IT Experts Podcast, we're going to help you stop being such a superhero and help you start to scale your MSP.

INTRO: Welcome to The IT Expert 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. Today we've got a bit of an interesting show, always an interesting show in fairness. We're going to be talking about how to help you to, I guess, understand the whole leadership role around being a founder from what got you here is not going to get you there. And many MSPs listening to this right now are, have been superheroes for many years. And what I mean by superheroes is typically techie, founders, the businesses built around you rather than being built deliberately in a systematic way, which is kind of what we're doing on this podcast, right? You've been fixing problems, delving, getting your fingers involved in all sorts of things. Whether it's to support your team, whether it's to avoid doing some of the difficult things you may not want to do as a business owner, saving clients because you don't trust anyone to do that properly, otherwise you're going to end up, you know, the clients are going to leave, there's that, what we call the SLV, the shitty little voice that's in your head, which until you're seeing some data, it's kind of like not true. And whenever the business starts to get a little bit stressed and a little bit scratchy, as we call it you step in all the time. You're just getting involved in all sorts of different bits and pieces. And you sit there and I talk to many MSPs every week, how long have you been doing this? 15, 20, 25 years, 27 years, you know, how big is your MSP? You know, half a million, 750K. And bearing in mind what kind of we see and what's possible in the environment that we're working in. It's like, what have you been doing? What have you been doing all of this time? Because it's certainly probably just running the business in fairness. You know, everybody says, "Oh, I went on holiday, I came back and everything was okay." Yeah, but did it grow while you were away? And so, you know, being a superhero is one thing, but when you decided that you want to scale, it changes the narrative a little bit, changes the dialogue a little bit.

And, you know, don't get me wrong, every single thing that you've done in the past is being, got you where you are today, and that's amazing. But when where you are today is not enough and you want to do something differently, then we've got to change things around a little bit and that phase was necessary. I couldn't be doing and helping what I'm doing right now, with Stuart and all the other members of the Growth Hub team, helping MSPs if I hadn't been through and had all the scars and the dents and the scratches and all the other bits and pieces that I had in corporate to share those experiences and boil it all down into the MSP space. So, it's kind of, it's a real, what got you there is not going to, you know, what got you here is not going to get you there.

But the problem with the heroics is that it starts to create this dependency. You know, the thing to remember here is that for those who have got children, they become little us. They become mini-MEs and their behaviour, they pick up their behaviour, and that's the dependency that exactly the same thing happens when you're an MSP and when you're, got a team around you. It's almost like they jump into the water and then look at you from the, you know, from the side and go, "Can you help me?" You know, it's like they, they throw themselves in. And what happens when this, you know, when we get into this situation here is that the leaders never fully form and many businesses of, you know, MSPs are, have some good people, some good senior people that more experienced in technically than the people that they've kind of had, you know, that they've had building in the business before, but they might not be the right people to help lift you up and help to take you kind of like to that next level. So it's really important that we understand where we are today. And particularly from a client point of view, the clients started off trusting you but they didn't trust the business and the leverage is that we now need to get them to start to trust the business. And you're not going to get them to trust the business if you're the bottleneck and you're the dependent one. You're the superhero, right? You're the absolute superhero.

One of my clients he says, "I just always want to be the thickest person in the room because I want to surround myself by the most amazing people who'd be able to lift me up and drive me forwards." And that's really no different for, you know, the way the MSPs should be written. You know, authority can get overridden because no one wants to make a decision, no one thinks they can make a decision. No one thinks that you want them to make a decision, and yet I bet many people listening to this podcast are absolutely frustrated to death about why their team don't do this and don't do that, and why didn't they bloody well ask them, "What do they do that for? That's not in the SOP, yada, yada, yada." And the kind of thing goes on. But when did you ever sit down and hand them some authority? When did you ever give them the opportunity to have that expectation exchange where you can then go and, you know, say, "Hey, look, why don't you try this project, run it on your own? Why don't you onboard this client on your own? Why don't you do this?" You know, stretch and grow and help develop your people. It's so important and that happens.

And then what happens is, escalation will replace ownership. So rather than other people taking that ownership, it's only going to be a case of like when the black stuff, brown stuff hits the fan, you're going to get involved, you're going to be the superhero, you're going to fix it all up, and then the team are going to stay exactly where they are. So they will stay doing exactly what they're doing. And if you're lucky, if you're really lucky, they'll stay with you. If they're ambitious, they'll leave. I did a podcast the other day, I was talking about recruitment, with Zoe Chatley, absolutely brilliant podcast, and we talked about how many times are you recruiting because the business is scaling and growing and you need more capacity against how many times you're recruiting because people are leaving. That is a good barometer on your employee engagement and culture and all of that kind of great vision, mission and value stuff that we talk about, getting the right people in the right roles and treating them in a right way so that they can perform in the role and feel part of the business.

But unfortunately, the e-words does come into this ego. Ego plays a role in this, you know, because while you're that superhero, you're feeling valuable, you're feeling that everybody needs you, you're feeling that you're the one that's in control when in actual fact that is true, but the leverage that you can create by relinquishing some control and letting other people have some of that control can give you absolutely some massive, super massive results. You know, client precious, reinforce it. They only ring you. You're watching your kids playing football on a Sunday morning, they're the only ones that you're going to ring. You know, they got a help desk there, you got a whole business around you, they should be phoning the help desk and following the procedure.

But you, again, like your team, like your kids, you're training your clients to make you that superhero, make you that bottleneck, and make you that problem that all of a sudden you're going to feel stressed because everything's on your shoulder and why is everyone else not doing what they should be doing? Well, they kind of are. It's just what you've asked them to do, you know, because clients are always asking for you. But the, you know, the short term wins here of you getting involved, quick fix this project, do this, get that over the line, get this done, get that done creates a much, much longer term leadership risk.

And when we talk about, exit, we talk about value multipliers, the 10 key value multipliers. One of them is owned and not needed. You're not needed in that business. You know, if you're involved in every operation, if you're involved in everything that's going on, a million pound business as an absolute minimum, that could cost you 250 grand cash in your pocket when you come to exit. Each one of the value multipliers that we talk about in the growth hub could be giving you a quarter of a million pound. We had a client two years ago now he exited, he was at 1.3 million, he got an eight times multiplier. Why? Because he followed the process. He did exactly what he should be doing. He built a great operational business. He built a great business that wasn't built around him, had great leverage, it was really efficient, it was very profitable. It had a sales and marketing engine, not an absolutely crazy one, but just one that just kept the lights on, eight times multiplier, because he's doing this type of stuff.

But, you know, this shift is not always about just stepping away. You can't just, like, walk in one day and go, "Right, listen to a podcast you lot are on your own and walking off." You know, it doesn't kind of work like you can do it. It'd be quite interesting. If you did do it, could you video it because it could be quite an interesting thing to come back around on. But that's not how this works, right? You just walking away doesn't help the situation. It's around, you know, the shift is stopping that rescue behaviour. It's helping people become more structured, helping people impact, get empowered so that they can make a decision. They can do things that they need, you know, that they can do to drive the business forward, which is 80% of the way that you would do it. And in this position, in this situation, if you feel like you are that superhero and you're the only one who can do this stuff, good is good enough. You know, the leaders within your organisation must own the decisions and outcomes. People will be coming to you, they'll be coming to you saying, "Hey, should we do this? Should we do that? Should we do this? " You'll be giving them their opinions. You'll be telling them what they're supposed to be doing. They're asking you what to do, you're telling them what to do. That is not leverage. That is not going to help you scale and grow your MSP. That is going to keep you the superhero. It's going to keep you in that bottleneck. Once you start having a different conversation with your teams, "Well, what would you do about that? Come to me with three options and then come to me with your recommendation and what do you think and why do you think we should do that?" And then you can have a coaching conversation. Then you can talk to them about why that would be a good idea or why it wouldn't be a good idea. And the impact of that, either on cash flow, profitability, client results or any of your other KPIs that you're having, you know.

STUART INTERRUPT: Hold that thought for a moment, Ian. It's Stuart here. I just got a quick pit stop here for everyone that could really move the needle. If growing your MSP is on your radar, but it feels somehow a bit foggy, a bit difficult to get your arms around the concept, then download our Ultimate MSP Growth Guide because it lays out all of the best support options that are out there in the channel, so you can fast-track what really works for you and make a clear decision. Alternatively, you may be the kind of person that likes to see things up real for yourself in action physically. So why not come to one of our events where you can do exactly that? And we'd love to meet you, so there's just a head up for you down in the show notes that you'll find the links to be able to take the next step. But otherwise, let's get back to the good stuff and back to the show.

IAN: Cheers!

Tough conversations, one of the hardest things that every MSP has to deal with, right? But they belong to the senior leadership team. They belong with the managers and the leaders that are coming up within the organisations, not all with you, because guess what? You won't do it because number one, you're busy with the clients, you're busy with a team, you're busy with your home life, and it's just something that you don't want to do, so you're going to avoid it, so you're going to go and run away, hide in a cupboard and not have that difficult conversation. Guess what happens? You have a weekend, it all goes away, comes back next week, but towards the end of the week, you're in exactly the same position as you were last week. You know, Accountability then starts to beat the urgency or the updates, you know? They then come to you asking you, "Oh, should I be doing this? Can we be doing that?" I was talking to someone the other day, and I said, I want to see a target in your appraisals, in your one-to-ones with your team, not necessarily every month but at least quarterly where you come up with a team come up with a innovation or improvement or a solution that's going to help the business operate more. It's going to help move that needle Now, everybody has got the capability of doing this. Everyone's operating the business from whoever is in accounts to your team, to the people doing your projects, your service desk, whatever it might be, what can we be doing that's even better? And if they come up with a solution and you want two or three of these a year, that's good. That does what it says on the tin, but if you help implement it, then that's you going over and above, and that's the most important thing here. So we want to build that accountability. And once you're in a position where you're in a calmer frame of mind, because you're spending more time thinking, that's going to start to replace the firefighting. And then the structure that we've got going on at the same time, on the structure and the regularity and that cadence that's going on, that's going to then replace the heroics and the need for you to be jumping off the building with your cap on to save the world, okay?

So here's what we need to do about it. Here's some of the things that I want to share with you today that's really important. Hold the line with your clients, okay? And don't undermine the leaders. Divide, design a process so that your clients don't contact with you, or if they do contact you, start to say to them, "Oh, I'm really tied up with something right now." The quickest way for you to get the result is if you go into the help desk, dial the number, go and speak to Jeff or Steve or Jill or whoever it might be, and they will deal with it for you. Tell them what I sent you, et cetera, et cetera. You've got to start training, untraining them to contact you because when you're doing that, you're undermining the leaders.

So you've got your leaders and you're senior people in the organisation, we want to make sure they're feeling empowered. But if every time that they get to take the candy, you nick it off them, it's kind of like it doesn't work very well. Help the leaders have and own the tough conversations. If someone a little bit lower down on the help desk or in the admin team or whoever it is reporting to your up and coming leaders is out of line or they need pulling into line or they need to have a tough conversation or a difficult conversation, then let them own it. Because when you take over it with your capon, and I'm not going to start to talk about maybe tightly fitting outside pants so that you look like a real superhero, maybe that was a bit inappropriate, but you're going to then steal all of that importance and the kind of like the respect that your team below you are going to start to be getting because you're taking away those difficult conversations.

So yes, by all means, role play it with your team, structure it out so that they've got a clear methodology on how they're going to take this conversation, deal with the data, deal with the facts. We've done great loads of podcasts on difficult conversations. Run with Julie, our incredible leadership coach which yeah, we know is still the best, biggest podcast we've ever done, but it's all around having tough conversations. Just go and go and Google it, Google it, search it, probably ask ChatGPT, that'll probably tell you where it is.

So from an account management point of view, let's assign some ownership to each client. So someone there is the leader, the owner of that particular client, so that everything kind of falls in line with them. They know what's going on with that client. They know the good, the bad, and the ugly, and then they can just report up to you. If they've got any anomalies or any escalations or anything like that, crikey, come on in and get your words out. You know, it's really important that you start to assign that, assign projects to other people, when you have an SLT meeting, and a lot of MSPs, what they do is they have meetings, okay? And then what they do, and they generally tech meetings and catch up on what's going on with the technology, and they'll end up probably talking about other different types of tools and tips and tricks that are kind of like coming up and things like that. But to have a business meeting is slightly different scenario. And where's the business going? Where's the department going? Where are you going according to your plan? Where are we going in terms of profitability, new clients, cash flow and all of that kind of stuff? And depending on the maturity of your MSP yourself, depends on how much of that KPIs you want to kind of share with them.

So making sure that your SLT meetings are there for your team to come and bring decisions to you on options of solutions that they've come up with, rather than you rescuing things that are drowning, you letting things go in too far, too deep, too far into the marsh, you've got to try and drag it all out again. So use those meetings for decisions, really, really important.

And kind of the last point here is around measuring leadership by outcomes, not by urgency. I was saying to one of our clients the other day, do not measure your activity, you need to measure, the achievement of what you're doing. Just because you're busy doesn't mean to say that's good. Just because you're running around like a blue ass fly doesn't mean that you're good. It doesn't mean that you're in control. And in actual fact, when you start going onto that sort of type of thing, you're talking about the shadow of the leader. And if you're running around like a bit of a chaotic superhero, people are going to start to mimic that and the business is going to start to get very chaotic and crazy. You might be in that situation right now. If you are, give us a shout. We've got some great ideas to help your tips and tricks with that. So just look at the outcomes. What does success look like for each of your leaders in their role on a monthly basis? And start to, you know, have weekly conversations with them about how you can support them, what do they need from you, what are they doing well, what could they be doing better? And just that performance management and that kind of whole engagement conversation is so important.

So look, all of this really matters for scale and it matters for exit because this is the key thing that's going to help build that valuation, that transferable value for your MSP into the business, as you're going through. If all of a sudden you decide to sell your business next month because of something that's happened, you're going to scramble because this stuff takes a long time to get in place. So get ahead of the curve, get ahead of all the other superheroes, get yourself, you know, looking at these sort of things now because buyers look for leadership depth, okay? They're looking for it to go past you, past your cape, past your inappropriate super ware, your costume that you're wearing. You know, the client trust must sit with the business rather than sit with the individual, you know, the owner, the founder, even the, you know, maybe the top people. You know, because at the end of the day, you know, hero-led MSPs, they carry all the risk.

So been a superhero, got you here, it's not going to get you there. Building your leaders is going to help you take further, and especially if you want some really great options and choices to make in the next three to five years. I think, you know, who are the people out there who needs to take action on this? Go back, listen to it again, take some notes, maybe even let your team listen to it as well. Hope it's been useful. Stop being that superhero. Let's start getting some, getting some structured leadership in place that goes through your business. That's it from me today. I look forward to catching up with you on the next show. Be good. Take care. See you soon.

NEXT WEEK TEASER:   And if you've ever struggled to attract and retain the right staff, in next week's show, we go beyond recruitment with Zoe Chatley from The Channel Recruiter. We're going to share an amazing show with you all about how to, yeah, find the right people, to keep the right people. Where does this whole company vision, mission, values, culture, and all of that great stuff fit together in building the best business and the best team you can. You don't want to miss it. I'll see you 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, a 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.