679 Dawn Sizer's Secrets to MSP Success

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast powered by NetAlly. This is the Wednesday live show and if you came here at 8 p.m. and found that the show was already done, well that's because we are at a special time today, 4 p.m. eastern on this Wednesday and that is because my guest today, well she's that special that I made an exception and let me bring her out, Dawn, the darling of the channel, Sizer from Third Element Consulting. Dawn, how are you?

[Dawn Sizer]
Good, how are you? It feels like it has been forever since I have seen you.

[Uncle Marv]
Seen, yes, because you've missed all of our video meetings.

[Dawn Sizer]
I've been traveling, yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, you're on the ASCII tour so that takes up your summer.

[Dawn Sizer]
It is, it's taking up my Thursdays which is like the worst part of all of it because that's when I normally see you.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, yeah, well, hey, so two Thursdays from now I'll see you.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yes, you will. I'm very excited about that. We'll be in Boston at the same time.

[Uncle Marv]
Yes, for the ASCII EDGE event there July 24th and 25th so that should be a good time. My first trip to Boston, although I have to split my time between my tech friends and some old work buddies from Junior Achievement that live up there. I almost was able to connect with a college friend but oddly enough he'll be here in Florida while I'm up there in Boston.

[Dawn Sizer]
Doesn't that figure?

[Uncle Marv]
Yes, it does. So, all right, Dawn, well, so I got you here and I wanted to bring you on because I really wanted to try to get some MSPs back on the show. It's been vendor dominated mainly because of the IT Nation pitch-it and a lot of the vendors try to gobble up spots but I want to focus on MSPs, IT business owners and get back to talking about, you know, what is it that really makes us tick, makes us successful, makes us go and I wanted to find some people that were doing it right and according to all the buzz out there in the channel, you and Dave were doing it right.

[Dawn Sizer]
Well, one, I appreciate that. Most days it does not feel that way so I appreciate that because it definitely doesn't feel that way. I don't think it feels that way for anybody, right?

Like, you're always doing what you think is the right thing, maybe it's the right thing, maybe it's the wrong thing and then you hear somebody else doing something you're like, I should have thought of that. Like, that seems so much better than the I'm doing it, right? So, appreciate it.

Not sure that's the case but happy to tell you what we're doing and maybe somebody will be like, hey, that's better than what we're doing. So, cool.

[Uncle Marv]
So, let me start with what you may be thinking what's going to be my last question but I'm going to make it the first question and...

[Dawn Sizer]
I'm excited.

[Uncle Marv]
Yes. So, I've been really focused on this concept of one thing. You know, what is the one thing that you can do to get better?

What is the one thing you can do to turn things around? So, I've kind of rephrased this question that I've been starting to ask and it's, if you had to attribute your success to just one thing, whether that be a decision, strategy, practice, whatever and it had the most, you know, significant impact on your business, what would that be?

[Dawn Sizer]
I think this the answer is twofold. So one, I have, as well as you do, I have the opportunity to work with my husband every single day. You have your wife because having my husband to work with you every day would kind of be weird but, whatever.

But realistically, I have that scenario where I have somebody to bounce ideas off of 24-7, which not everybody has that opportunity and has that scenario going on. So, I think that gives us a big leg up. The other thing is we have multiple people in the business that are all in it.

We talk all the time. We have a really good leadership team and all of those people want us to grow and do the right thing. So, I think that's, like I said, it's a twofold kind of thing but I think that's really what has made the difference.

For the longest time, it was myself, Dave and our service manager, Jason. We've added Ian. Jason Petrini came to join us from the Datto Kaseya group and we have an amazing operations director, Heidi.

So, that team has really kind of come together and is starting to really propel us forward.

[Uncle Marv]
Interesting. Now, you started working with Dave early in the business.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah. So, Dave and I, we met in college and through multitudes of jobs, we have worked together. So, this isn't the first time we've worked together.

We've actually worked together our entire professional life from one company to another, which is insane. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

I don't know how to function without my work husband and home husband at the same time.

[Uncle Marv]
Listen, as long as they're the same, that makes good sense.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
So, all right. Well, I was going to go down another route, but we can do that another time. For people that are new to the show, Don has been on the show previously.

We have a couple of episodes from years ago. We actually had Date Night, which was an episode and if I had planned properly, I'd be able to give you that show number but I'll try to get it before we list the show notes. So, you can go back and listen to that episode because we did talk a lot about working with the person that you also live with and making sure you guys...

[Dawn Sizer]
It's hard.

[Uncle Marv]
It's hard. Well, it's hard in our situation because she didn't start out working with me. She's not tech-minded and her coming into the business, it was hard in the senses that I had to educate her as to what I did and then justify why I did it.

[Dawn Sizer]
Sure. And from her perspective... Yeah, we don't have that issue.

It's more along the lines of... Occasionally, we have fundamental disagreements on how to do things. So, the other folks that we work with look at that and they're like, oh, mom and dad are fighting again and they all kind of scatter, which is kind of...

And it also kind of kicks off like, oh, hey, maybe we should talk about this later, take it to a different level, whatever we need to do. But there are times when husbands and wives see things very differently and you just see things... I see things in a more empathetic way than Dave does.

He sees things more in black and white than I do. So, there's just fundamental differences at times that we have to work through.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So, yep. So, I'll have those episodes listed.

You can go back and listen to... We'll probably get into that on another show. But today, I want to really talk about the MSP side and stuff.

And let's go back to the reason that you're on this ASCII tour is you're doing a lot of talk about automation. You're talking about things. Now, you've...

I don't know what your talk is because I haven't seen it yet. So, if you want to slide an answer so that people don't get your ASCII thing, I understand. But I know that you've talked a lot about co-pilot.

And I wanted to ask, how has adopting something like co-pilot impacted both your operations and your client services?

[Dawn Sizer]
So, what we're finding is that on the highly skilled side of things, people that are highly skilled workers, doesn't matter whether it's in your MSP and client service, it doesn't matter where it's at, right? They have to be highly skilled to start with to be able to interface properly with co-pilot or any AI, quite frankly, to be able to give it the right prompts, to be able to make it truly work for you. Otherwise, you're just throwing essentially spaghetti at the wall and garbage in, garbage out.

You're going to get stuff back from it, but it may not be truly relevant. It may not be the exact answer you're looking for. It may not be usable information that's coming back.

So, you're spending way more time interacting with prompt after a prompt after a prompt than you would have just doing the work yourself. So, I'm not sure. Maybe, did I answer the question?

[Uncle Marv]
Well, that was part of it. Yeah. And I understand what you're saying because I've been chatting with some of my users about the way that they're trying to use it.

And they're, you know, for them, they're trying to answer a tech question so they don't call me. But then it turns out that they end up, you know, way off the path that they started because they're following the prompts and they're going in the completely wrong direction.

[Dawn Sizer]
Well, and if they didn't start out with the right question or the right prompt to start with, then obviously they're going to veer off sideways. Yeah, very quickly.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So, are you using Copilot in the business to help your staff, your techs work more efficiently? Or are you starting to do it where you're coming up with something for the customers?

Maybe a KB knowledge AI so that if they have problems that are reoccurring, that they can go to your portal and they'll get the answer based on what they put in with a little better result than just...

[Dawn Sizer]
Right. So, our clients aren't using chatbots or anything like that currently. We do have KBs that they can get from our portal.

As far as that goes, they are written by our techs. Our techs have the ability to write those KBs using some AI should they choose to do so. The biggest, I think, lift that we have gotten, whether it's through Copilot or any other type of AI, is in policy writing procedures.

Some of the KBs are great for that, especially if you already have a direct format. Marketing has been a huge lift with AI, as far as that goes. And not just from, oh, I can create an image in Canva.

But coming down to, hey, I need to build a case study. Here's the information that I have. Can you build something directly off of that?

And it's done really good on some of the case studies and white papers that I've needed to create for marketing materials. So, again, it's having the information formatted in a way where you can write a prompt appropriately and then get back what you need. So, I think there's...

I mean, I've put months into learning how to write prompts, which sounds ridiculous. But the first couple I wrote were really bad. And you had to go back and rewrite them.

But now I can sit down. And if I know where information is on the internet, for instance, there's a policy I was able to do during a ChannelPro event, actually, to pull directly from ThreatLocker's KB articles to write a CIS control based on our information with that KB article, exactly the way it needed to be formatted for CIS control. So, it's doable.

But you have to know where the information is, exactly what you're trying to do, how things are exactly in your environment, and then the exact phrasing in the prompt. So, it takes a little bit of practice.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. I was going to ask, you started to give an example there, and that was more for the CIS control. But I was going to ask, is there a case study you can share that you use?

What would you be building it for in terms of, is it customer use, marketing, and is it based on something you guys yourself did?

[Dawn Sizer]
It is. So, we did some digital signage for one of our cannabis clients. And what it does, we built a bespoke device that runs a VM, and it pulls data from their inventory in real time.

So, when you go into a dispenser, you can see exactly what inventory they have on hand. And as people buy, it actually changes.

[Uncle Marv]
Interesting.

[Dawn Sizer]
That's the case study on how that's functioned, how that created a customer loyalty program going forward, because people could easily buy things. They knew what the inventory was, and they knew the inventory across multiple states even on what's in every store. So, they know which store to go to based on what inventory is at what location.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I'm going to take a left turn here.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
Because you mentioned cannabis client.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yep.

[Uncle Marv]
And I know you do a lot of government and municipal police type stuff.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah. And legal in the middle. So, yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
So, you're on both sides of the aisle there. So, what types of... And this is...

I don't know. I'm assuming that there are other MSPs out there that are in a similar situation to you. I just don't know them.

So, my question when it comes to that, what are some of the unique challenges that you have trying to provide services to the government agencies, the municipals, the legal? Then you throw in a cannabis shop here.

[Dawn Sizer]
Right. So, everything that we touch is all about high availability and compliance, right? Anything that has a high risk piece to it, that's where we spend most of our time.

So, we're very used to everybody that plays in that high-risk compliance scenario, whether it's a law enforcement officer that you have to make sure that they are online 24-7 because you never, ever want them walking up to a vehicle without having all the information that they need at hand. Or whether it's a cannabis client where they need to be online because it takes about 7 minutes till they actually start losing money if they're down. So, there are nuances of different business models and everything between them, but the commonality is the compliance levels that they all need to keep or their governance risk, whatever you want to call that, the high availability of what they need and, like I said, the risk level.

So, that's just where we live.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. So, I actually did a little digging on you guys.

[Dawn Sizer]
Oh boy.

[Uncle Marv]
Just because I wanted to see, because, I mean, we've talked and, you know, I know a little bit about what you do, but I wanted to see what the world thought of Third Element Consulting.

[Dawn Sizer]
Oh gosh. Is it good? Is it good?

Well, yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
I mean, you're an IT support company based in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. With a satellite office in Houston, Texas?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, we do. We have a remote office in Houston.

[Uncle Marv]
All right.

[Dawn Sizer]
We're looking at putting one in Atlanta, so I might be visiting you more often.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. That's not close enough. You know that.

[Dawn Sizer]
Move north. Move north.

[Uncle Marv]
I'm not moving you. Make your trip to Florida and start that second business.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yes, sir.

[Uncle Marv]
Let's see. When it comes to you, let's see. With over two decades of experience in the IT industry, Dawn has established herself as a prominent figure in the managed service provider sector.

Third Element Consulting aims to provide superior and reliable IT support, particularly the clients in government, law enforcement, professional services, and highly regulated industries. The company's core values emphasize white glove service, minimal downtime, and a strong focus on client relationships.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yep.

[Uncle Marv]
Pretty true, huh?

[Dawn Sizer]
Pretty true.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Dawn Sizer]
It's on the walls even.

[Uncle Marv]
Really?

[Dawn Sizer]
It really is. Yeah. The core values are actually on the walls.

[Uncle Marv]
Do you have a pair of white gloves up there?

[Dawn Sizer]
We don't, but the awesome comes standard, rock solid service, and am I allowed to curse?

[Uncle Marv]
Yes, you can.

[Dawn Sizer]
We give a shit on the walls. You bet.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Now, we've not talked about this, but in terms of client retention, so I've had some discussions with some other business owners who are complaining about retention. Some of it stems back to COVID.

Some of it stems towards, you know, the way they build out their stacks and pricing and customers are getting a little more knowledgeable about what things could be costing from other MSPs and stuff like that. Sure. But one of the things that I've enjoyed over the years and why I've kind of kept my model is my clients have stayed with me for a long time.

Now, I've never really measured retention, but I know that somewhere you guys have.

[Dawn Sizer]
We did.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. Yeah. Do you know what your number is?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, I do.

[Uncle Marv]
Do you not want to say it?

[Dawn Sizer]
It's obscenely high. How's that?

[Uncle Marv]
99%?

[Dawn Sizer]
It's probably 99% over the last 20 years. So, we've lost one client due to price. We would have fired them anyway because they weren't adhering to the regulations that they needed to adhere to as a health provider.

And we recently fired another one.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. So, mine's up there in terms of percentage. I don't know what it is.

I'll have to go back and look. But I did fire my largest client at the end of 2017. And I had not lost a client since then until last year.

And both because they were acquired by larger companies. And one of the things that I heard from the one customer during their transition was how they just were so frustrated with the new IT. And they literally made the comment to me about, you know, can't you just continue to support us?

And I'm like, no, I can't. You have your own company. But I wanted to ask about how you guys maintain that high ratio.

I mean, it's got to be more than just putting on the walls, you know, awesome comes standard and we give a shit. I mean, what are some of the things that you think really stand out to make customers want to stay?

[Dawn Sizer]
Being authentic, being transparent, I think is some of it. I think some of it too is that we don't do three-year contracts. We have a contract that renews yearly and you can leave at any time.

We own your business every single month where you're free to go. There's no reason why I should have to keep someone when they don't want to do business with me. That just makes everybody miserable.

They're unhappy. We're unhappy. That's silly.

So I think that's some of it for sure. I want to believe that we do a really good job. You know, I think everybody wants to believe that everything.

Everybody has, you know, different opinions and there's, you know, one side, the other side, and then the truth is somewhere in the middle.

[Uncle Marv]
Right.

[Dawn Sizer]
So, you know, do we fall down? Absolutely. Do we fall on the sword?

100%. So there are times when we hold other people accountable though too because that's the appropriate thing to do. But a lot of the time it's, you know, you fall on the sword.

You do what you need to do. This is the service industry and you do the right thing by the client. And that makes it sound way easier than it is and it's not.

[Uncle Marv]
No, I get that. That's why I wanted to kind of ask and dig down because in a sense, there's an aspect I think that is really more of a relationship-focused approach as opposed to a tech-focused approach.

[Dawn Sizer]
There is. There is. And I want to pull this back around.

I had a conversation with a vendor yesterday. Okay. And it was a really good conversation.

And typically, I mean, depending on your business model, how you do things, you know, whatever in your business, either you're going to have a transactional relationship with a vendor or you're going to have a relationship with that particular vendor. You're going to know exactly who your account rep is. You've probably talked to them a million times.

Maybe you see them monthly on a QBR that you do with your own vendors. Right. And the conversation that we had around this, it was for as a project management scenario, you guys probably know who it is, but they were lovely to talk to.

And I said, look, we can make this transactional. I can pay your fee or we can create a really good relationship. I can help you.

You can help me, you know, and we form a really good relationship going forward. I've done that with a number of vendors. And not only has it worked out very well for them, it's worked out very well for us.

We're very happy with the product stack that we have. And we go forward. We have that same type of relationship with our clients.

So it is a relationship, not just a transaction. We're not just a vendor, per se. And that's usually a red flag for us when we become just a vendor for a client.

Then there's no relationship. It's just a transaction. They look at us as a money line item that they would rather not pay, you know, that kind of thing.

And that's when you start getting into that issue. And a lot of times it's because you don't have that relationship. You didn't build the relationship or the relationship has changed fundamentally because maybe you got a different point of contact.

Maybe there was an acquisition in the company and all kinds of different things can happen. So then either you have to go rebuild a relationship or you simply can't because either you're not compatible with that person and maybe you need to change out to a different person in your company. Do you have an account manager?

Do you have a salesperson? Do you have somebody else that can manage that account that may have a better relationship ability with them?

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, I've found that the way that you have conversations with your clients makes a big difference. And if the question ever comes up, how can we pay you less?

[Dawn Sizer]
Right.

[Uncle Marv]
It might be time to, you know, have a new conversation.

[Dawn Sizer]
Exactly. And there is a time for that conversation. Because if you look at that client, if they've shrunk, if something has happened to them, right, then you should be going to them proactively and saying, hey, things have changed.

[Uncle Marv]
Right.

[Dawn Sizer]
Here's the scenario. This is what you should actually be paying. Let's make that happen.

Because that's the appropriate thing to do by the client.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Dawn Sizer]
The right thing.

[Uncle Marv]
And that makes perfect sense. So I did have that question asked to me one time, but it was by the client that I fired that had grown from about 40 plus users in one office to over 100 users in five offices. And I'm like, you can't pay me less because how am I going to support you and all these offices and all these users?

I said, in fact, you should be paying more and I'm giving you some nice credits and here they are. And this was before I fired them. This was several years.

So I stayed with them a few years after that. But having those conversations is critical.

[Dawn Sizer]
It is. Right. And you should be meeting with them on the regular, whatever the cadence is that you have both agreed on is when you should be meeting, not just once a year or twice a year or, you know, I was told I should do a quarterly business review.

So here we are every three months and you should be going into it with a really good agenda. Things you want to talk about, projects that you have upcoming, all kinds of stuff, but also leave a little bit of time for personal.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. Let me go back to the fact that you mentioned you were talking to a vendor yesterday. So I've talked to a ton of vendors recently because every time I show up at a conference and get scanned, uh, and I have gone against what I normally do.

I normally don't look at my stack until the end of the year, but I looked at a couple of items this year.

[Dawn Sizer]
Oh, what did you do?

[Uncle Marv]
Well, I tell you what I didn't do and I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to do this because it annoys the living hell out of me. So I have no idea if the product is good or not. I've really not talked to anybody about them.

I've heard them.

[Dawn Sizer]
Cyrisma. And you bought it?

[Uncle Marv]
No.

[Dawn Sizer]
Okay.

[Uncle Marv]
But they've been at the conferences.

[Dawn Sizer]
Okay.

[Uncle Marv]
I'm sure I got scanned because I grabbed a swag. I got their shirt hanging up somewhere.

[Dawn Sizer]
Okay. And you're just going to, just going to talk to them randomly and see what they've got.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, no, they of course are doing their thing with emailing and calling, emailing and calling. And finally, you know, usually if a person's persistent and I'm here in the office, Kim will say, do you, you want to talk to them and get it over with? So I'm like, yes.

So, so the quick pitch that I got, I'm like, you know what? I'm good in that area right now. I've got my stack.

I don't really want to look at anything. Um, and of course the person said, well, can we reach out to you again later at the end of the year? And I'm like, yeah, you can reach out.

So literally two minutes after hanging up from that phone call, there was a calendar event sent to me for a demo.

[Dawn Sizer]
Was it at the end of the year?

[Uncle Marv]
Well, it was, but I'm like, not a demo. That's quite presumptuous.

[Dawn Sizer]
That's the activity that they get ticked on. Right. So they've made the call and they have to show that they've done, you know, X, Y, Z things that day and so many demos booked.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. Well, that demo got canceled.

[Dawn Sizer]
I bet it did.

[Uncle Marv]
So I just, there are vendors that I love and there are vendors, there really hasn't been a whole lot of vendors that I hate, but I do hate some of the practices and that just gets annoying.

[Dawn Sizer]
That one and the ones that call in and try to start a relationship on a lie, that's the one I don't like. She asked me to call. Do you all know me?

[Uncle Marv]
So Kim gets those a lot. And I have actually heard her respond by saying, no, I doubt very seriously that Marvin asked you to call. And she's like, I bet you didn't even talk to him.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah. Heidi, who is our director of operations, typically takes a lot of those calls. And she's so nice.

She's so nice. And they lie to her. And I have to tell her, like, they lied to you.

Like, I'm sorry, but they totally lied to you.

[Uncle Marv]
Here's the one thing I would say to vendors, and I don't know why we, this is not the path I wanted to go.

[Dawn Sizer]
This is not on our agenda.

[Uncle Marv]
But the vendors I love are the ones that never, ever reach out to me, even though I've seen them time after time after time. And they just never call. And they're like, look, when you're ready, you know who we are.

I'm like, all right. But it's, I know the problem is the people that are making those calls after the show are not the people that were at the show. So they don't know.

And I feel bad for them, because I know that they're trying to figure out a way in. They're trying to get past the gatekeeper. I get it.

And I understand. Listen, cold calling is hard. Call even with a soft leave, it's hard, which is why I don't do it.

I can't do it.

[Dawn Sizer]
What's funny is a couple have sent emails instead of calling. And I'm on newsletters at this point. They've sucked me into the point where I'm on the newsletter.

And I'm good with that at this point. And even when I go to a couple of the shows or whatever, I'm like, I'll drop by, I'll talk to them a little bit, see what's what with this particular product. Because I've been reading the newsletter.

I'm kind of intrigued. I'll go take a peek. That's like the mistake, because then they scan you.

Then they've got you. But no, I genuinely enjoy the quick touch on the newsletters, that kind of thing. But when they're calling and they're essentially using my resources and tying up my resources, I'm not excited by that.

[Uncle Marv]
So originally, before we went on this tangent, I was going to ask you, you probably have a much better relationship with vendors than I do, based on your size. Yes. I mean, there is a size matters component to this.

[Dawn Sizer]
When you have a selling part of it.

[Uncle Marv]
OK. All right. But you think after this, once you get past the sale, it's the same?

[Dawn Sizer]
I think it depends. It depends on the person on both sides. I wouldn't doubt that there are some people in the channel.

I don't they wouldn't care. You, me, wouldn't matter. We're all the same.

Some of us have a bigger dollar sign above their heads than others. But the relationship would be the same, notwithstanding the dollar sign. Larry Metter, I can 100 percent tell you Larry Metter is the same.

Right. That's 100 percent. I would say that that would be the case there.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Dawn Sizer]
And there are some other folks, too.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So let's pivot a little bit. I want to stay on the channel aspect and ask you, from your experience now, you're on ASCII tour.

You you're now on the what is it, the executive board for Fast Company?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
You're a big part of a bunch of groups in the channel. Exchange, Degenerates. You are more active than I will ever be.

So not from a vendor perspective, but just from a participation in the channel perspective, seeing other MSPs. Can you, you know, share anything that you think has really benefited you by being that active?

[Dawn Sizer]
Conversations are always really good. You tend to learn from your peers, good, bad, and otherwise. Right.

Because we all tell horror stories. And I think we learn a lot from those. We learn about what not to do.

Or, you know, you tell somebody and even you and I have had this conversation of, hey, I was thinking about doing X, Y, Z. And you kind of like laughed and went, oh, I was like, OK, surely, surely I didn't do that. Yeah.

But we've all done that. And I think those types of things have saved us all from stepping in it at least once or twice. Right.

So I think those are really good. I think for some really good vendor relationships and conversations to be had at events as well. I've learned a lot from some of them, especially on the sales and marketing side.

I've learned so much from Alicia over at ASCII. I've learned a ton from her. She's amazing.

And I mean, just there's so many people in the channel. I mean, whether it's on the event side from the channel company, Tracy Fisher and Anastasia and a couple of the folks there, I've learned tons from them. I mean, just so many people out there in the channel that are amazing.

And then there's all of the degenerates, most of them, you know, on the MSP side of things, whether it's Henry Timm or JP Kesey or Othell and, you know, all of all of those guys. I mean, they're amazing. You can call them up anytime and say, hey, I've got an issue.

Here's my situation. What have you done? Have you known, do you have, you know, other options?

What are you guys doing? How did you fix this? And immediately they are like, here's the situation that we were in slightly different than you.

Here's how we fix it. This is what it looked like. Here's the documentation.

Here's the processes. And you're like, oh, my gosh, this is thank you for saving me. It's literally a lifeline sometimes.

And it's the same thing with vendors. A couple of times I have asked them like, hey, how have you approached this? What did that look like for you?

You know, how did you approach this particular thing? Can you show me the steps that you took to fix this? And they have I mean, I've even, you know, texted, you know, some folks and said, hey, you know, what does that look like for you guys?

And, you know, they've come right back with this is exactly what it looks like. These are the steps we had to take. And that's why we did what we did.

And it may not be the exact answer because it doesn't necessarily apply vendor to MSP, but it gets you going in the right direction pretty quick.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Do you have anything that is on the immediate horizon besides your speaking stuff that you're looking to do in the business to take the next step?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, we've got so we hired a sales guy. That's new for us. That's we've never done that before.

And it's been it's been a wild ride of the last four weeks, getting everything ready for like the first big campaign that's going to go out, what that's going to look like, what the follow up is going to look like, what the sales funnel looks like building out this huge sales process that we didn't have previously. It is it's amazingly painful, but very eye opening and exciting in a strange way. I think I think at this point we'll see how I feel a couple months from now.

But there's I'm learning a lot and I'm learning a lot in a really good way.

[Uncle Marv]
OK, let me go back a step and ask why.

[Dawn Sizer]
Why did we hire a salesperson? Yeah, we decided we wanted to grow. And we had been friends with this person for a while and just the stars aligned.

You know that kind of thing happened. And we did one of those. What would this look like if you came here?

And we all chatted about it a couple of times and he actually came to visit, you know, that kind of thing. And we're like, you know what? Let's see how this plays out.

So here we are.

[Uncle Marv]
Hmm. Any details yet about like how much you want to grow and what those are, are you still kind of planning that?

[Dawn Sizer]
You know, I think it's we're in the like to the moon stage, right? But realistically, I mean, we're up significantly this year. We're starting to go up by a quarter, which is scary.

We weren't anticipating that this year. We had a like don't grow last year and we still went up. We're going up again this year.

But I mean, I would love to see that 10 million mark in the next couple of years.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Dawn Sizer]
I think that would be really exciting to see. We're going to see five. So this year.

[Uncle Marv]
So a lot of money down here in South Florida, you know?

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, I hear that. I hear that. We'll see.

[Uncle Marv]
You can't be near me though.

[Dawn Sizer]
No, no. Cause I wouldn't want to compete with you. It would be tough.

It would be tough to compete with you.

[Uncle Marv]
Listen, I'm a boutique.

[Dawn Sizer]
So you are, you are white glove boutique. Can't beat that.

[Uncle Marv]
I'm not for every client, not every client's for me. So there's some for you, although, although leaving me, leaving me your drags, Joel, Joel might be a little upset. He's right down the street from me.

[Dawn Sizer]
Is he really?

[Uncle Marv]
Yes. He's less than two miles. I never, I never see him.

That's cause he's too busy playing pickleball or going to Florida Panther games and all that stuff.

[Dawn Sizer]
No doubt. No doubt.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, Don, let's see, we're moving along here. Let me take a quick break and thank some of my partners here and we'll move to one of your favorite parts of the show.

All right. Folks, if you are watching and or listening, yes, this is the show where I really do break down the partners that I have. The sponsors, of course, we mentioned net ally, our presenting sponsor the network testing and analysis experts.

The show is also partly funded by super ops to the all-in-one platform for service desk, invoicing and project management. Not only are they a supporting sponsor, they are the mug sponsor for the show. If you're watching live, I have there, their mug here that I drank my, my pineapple juice or my angry tea from on a regular basis.

They also sponsor the upcoming Florida man segment. And then we have our newest sponsor partner, true grid, secure, remote access to your windows desktops and act apps with true grid, secure RDP. And that has been a fantastic tool that I use.

I use true grid. I use net ally. Haven't yet dipped my toes into super ops, but they are doing some great things in the channel to support the show.

Folks head over to idbusinesspodcast.com, click on sponsors. All of them are there. Use those links so that I can show them that yes, my listeners support them.

And I want to do a very special request. Prime day is coming up next week, two days where you get some amazing deals and Amazon prime. I'm going to be putting some links out.

And one of the best ways that you can support the show without becoming a patron or not being a sponsor is to do your shopping on Amazon using the link that I have at the idbusinesspodcast.com page. All you do is click there first, go to my store, and then everything you put in your cart after that, the show gets a little bit of commission, 1%, 2%, I don't know, somewhere in there. But I want to thank folks.

We have had a great, I think the last 40 days has been fantastic. So I don't know who's purchasing what I'm going to have to go in and look there, but look for my Amazon prime link, or just go to the page and click on the store and save that as your home Amazon link. That way, every time you go there, anything you purchase, one or 2% comes back to the show.

You can support us, do great things. And I can get to hang out with my friends at events like Boston and ASCII.

[Dawn Sizer]
That'd be great.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. All right. Just to finish up here, I know, like I said, I asked the big question first because I wanted to make sure we got through it because I didn't want you to get nervous if we got off track.

[Dawn Sizer]
No, we always get off track.

[Uncle Marv]
I know. So sometimes I like to ask if there was a recent customer story that was either a big fat hooray or a big fat nightmare that you'd want to share. Do you have one of those?

[Dawn Sizer]
I don't know that I have anything that's overly crazy. We onboarded a client late last year, which you know about this, and they've been acquiring companies ever since that point. It's the never ending onboarding.

So that's its own horrific story and yet hooray all at the same time. So they're phenomenal to work with. Can't say enough good things about them, but they just, they keep getting offices and moving things around and adding people.

[Uncle Marv]
Now, in that particular case, do you have to regularly update your onboarding because their acquisition doesn't necessarily match what was in line before or is it kind of worked itself out that whatever they do falls in line with what you guys have set up?

[Dawn Sizer]
It's slowly falling in line. It's, we're acquiring some things that maybe we wouldn't necessarily want, but we're replacing them out as time is going on. So it's fine.

It's just, it's a lot of balls in the air kind of thing, but you live and learn like everything else.

[Uncle Marv]
So I asked that because, so the two clients I lost last year that were acquired by larger companies, one, they literally ripped everything out and said, take everything back. I mean, computers, phones, iPads, just everything. And the only thing they kept was a server.

And the only reason they kept that is because they crashed it over the weekend when they were doing the transfer. And I said, just go ahead and keep it and do what you want, but literally switches. They just wiped out everything.

The other client took what the customer had and reintegrated into their stuff. So when you're acquiring, well, you're not acquiring, but when you're getting these new offices and stuff and you say rip and replace for some stuff, is it everything or are you trying to make it work?

[Dawn Sizer]
It's mostly old stuff. With 365 licenses, I don't necessarily care about what laptop it's running on for right now as long as it's updatable and firmware still good to go and stuff like that. But other infrastructure pieces, a lot of that has been old and the appropriate thing to do is replace.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. I mean, if you see a Windows 7, get it out.

[Dawn Sizer]
Right.

[Uncle Marv]
Get it out. All right. We are at your favorite part of the show.

Florida man or random question. What do you decide?

[Dawn Sizer]
Can we do both?

[Uncle Marv]
Both?

[Dawn Sizer]
Do both.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Dawn Sizer]
Because we talked about Florida man already and I, you know, I'm kind of like, oh, it's, you know, we've already talked about Florida man.

[Uncle Marv]
Talked about Florida man all the time. Okay. So let me pull up the random question generator because I didn't think that's where you were going.

[Dawn Sizer]
So keep you under toes. Come on. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
It's just like, yeah, I know this is live, but let's kick him off guard as much as possible.

[Dawn Sizer]
Well, I mean, I can talk about Florida man while we do this. That's totally fine too.

[Uncle Marv]
Nope. I've already got a question up.

[Dawn Sizer]
Okay.

[Uncle Marv]
And this actually should fall right in line with you and your company. If you were offered the position of mayor of your city, would you take it? No, it's quick.

[Dawn Sizer]
Nope.

[Uncle Marv]
Nope.

[Dawn Sizer]
Nope.

[Uncle Marv]
All right.

[Dawn Sizer]
Well, I'm just going to stop there.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. Well, okay. So let's move on to Florida man.

So Florida man has been busy.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
I mean, we have had, you know, hands blown off with, you know, fireworks.

[Dawn Sizer]
Well, I mean, it's July.

[Uncle Marv]
So we've had, uh, we've had men in Daytona beach dropping babies from balconies.

[Dawn Sizer]
That's sad.

[Uncle Marv]
Yes. Baby lived. Uh, we've had, uh, a Florida man that was in a shootout in the Yellowstone national park.

[Dawn Sizer]
I like how Florida man stories now are across the United States.

[Uncle Marv]
Of course we've had Florida men hiding in the swamp to evade arrest.

[Dawn Sizer]
That one was good.

[Uncle Marv]
Your favorite Florida man arrested for allegedly shooting down a delivery drone.

[Dawn Sizer]
That one was my favorite with a nine millimeter.

[Uncle Marv]
Yes.

[Dawn Sizer]
I mean, guys, a good shot.

[Uncle Marv]
I mean, it's hard to shoot things in the air as they're moving with a handgun, but the one I'm going to go with is one that I think a lot of people like just because of what it involves. I'm going to bring up the video here. And a recent viral video was captured when a boater in Florida, using a live alligator's jaws to open a beer can.

Uh, the footage shows an unidentified man, which they're looking for him of course. And if you're watching the video, there it is. They had a video in the canal that they brought up to the boat, opened the gator's mouth and uh, got a can open.

So while the video has generated humor and amazement, it's important to note that such actions are not without risk or legal implications. Florida state laws prohibit the harassment or feeding of alligators due to safety. So the incident, uh, serves as a reminder of the unique and sometimes controversial relationship between Florida residents and the state's abundant wildlife.

Um, an investigation is underway.

[Dawn Sizer]
So my brother used to live in Florida, so I guess technically he was a Florida man for a time. And we went to Mount Dora one day in a beautiful lake, lovely evening.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice lakes up there.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah, it's gorgeous. But one of the signs that they had was do not entice the alligators. I was like, how exactly does one entice an alligator?

Oh, there's, I don't know.

[Uncle Marv]
You really, you want to do a YouTube search on that?

[Dawn Sizer]
No, I really don't. But it was amusing. It was like, hmm.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So I want to thank, uh, we had some listeners in the chat here. Uh, Keith Nelson, uh, has a great comment for you, Don.

You'd make a great mayor.

[Dawn Sizer]
I would not.

[Uncle Marv]
Uh, and I did show a comment earlier, Bryce, who said love the, uh, we give a shit comment. And, uh, Mike Wise joining the show there, uh, on the LinkedIn folks. Uh, thank you all for tuning in.

Uh, the show is going to continue on Wednesdays and we may be going back and forth between the regular 8 PM time slop and the 4 PM slot that we have that we did today. Uh, we are streaming on LinkedIn, YouTube, the Facebook and, and the X. So catch us anywhere there.

Of course, you can always head over to idbusinesspodcast.com and catch the latest shows, whether they are audio or video. And let's see what else do we want to do here? I should probably give a plug to Eric Anthony's all thing MSP.

Normally at the eight o'clock slot, we are following his show and he always pushes people towards me. So I need to return the favor. So tonight, uh, they are continuing the conversation.

I believe they're going to be talking about business stuff as well. Uh, so check them out either on Facebook at the LinkedIn, uh, the Facebook group, all things MSP, or they've got on all things you MSP channel and, uh, check them out. 7 PM Eastern is that time.

So do that.

[Dawn Sizer]
Uh, don't use another one of those truly good people too.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Dawn Sizer]
Yeah. I'm just going to go with an awesome guy.

[Uncle Marv]
He is. Uh, Don, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for making time.

I know that Wednesday is a family day. It seems a lot of people are doing stuff on Wednesday nights now.

[Dawn Sizer]
So, well, I appreciate you adjusting, especially for this. So thank you for having me. This was always good and I'm always happy to, to come on and chat.

[Uncle Marv]
Thanks. And then of course, we'll see you live in person in two weeks in, uh, in Boston. If anybody is up in that area, check us out.

We'll both be there. And let's see, where else will I be? I'll be at, oh, I'll be at, uh, the ASCII cup later this year in St. Petersburg, Florida. I will be in DC for TechCon Unplugged in September.

[Dawn Sizer]
I will see you there as well. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
Better.

[Dawn Sizer]
It's getting to be a thing.

[Uncle Marv]
Better check in with Dave.

[Dawn Sizer]
I did.

[Uncle Marv]
Seeing each other that much there. I'll be in Indiana, uh, Indy, not Indianapolis, Bloomington, Indiana in August. Has nothing to do with tech, is a junior achievement reunion that I'm doing there.

Uh, I will be making an appearance at DattoCon and then IT Nation Connect. A lot of traveling this year.

[Dawn Sizer]
That is a lot of traveling.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. But, uh, that's it folks. Thank you all for hanging out with us.

Thanks for tuning in, downloading, subscribing, all the things you do. Be sure to check us out on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and all of our social media platforms.