702 MSP Mindset - Insights from Damien Stevens

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals everywhere, where we talk about products, stories, and tips, all in an effort to help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. So, today is one of those shows where I'm going to sit down with a friend of mine and we're just going to chat and see how some things go. And the person I am talking about, Damian Stevens, the founder and CEO of Servosity, and I've talked about them before.

They've been on the show. They specialize in backup and disaster recovery solutions. And I didn't actually sign up with them, so I hope he doesn't hold that against me.

But Damian, how are you?

[Damien Stevens]
I'm doing well, Marv. No, I appreciate the candor, right? Just what's funny is just because somebody has been a guest on my show or if I'm a guest on your show, it doesn't mean we have to do business.

It just means that there might be a season. You never know. But I'd much rather get at the heart of it and add value for other MSPs than just say, if you're not willing to do business with me, I can't associate with you.

You know, I think that's a really narrow viewpoint.

[Uncle Marv]
It is. This is a big space. Not only are there a lot of vendors, but there are way more, not just managed service providers, but just IT professionals in general.

There's so many out there and, you know, we're learning. You can't do everything with everybody. So you find what works with you and, you know, every now and then you have to make a change and that's where knowing who the other players are is a big thing to do.

[Damien Stevens]
Yeah, completely.

[Uncle Marv]
Completely get it. Well, we'll talk about Servosity in a little bit. What I really want to do is chat with you about your podcast.

You do a show and I think it's what, three years old now? Yeah.

[Damien Stevens]
Yeah. That sounds about right.

[Uncle Marv]
It's called MSP Mindset with Damian Stevens, so you got your name in there and all of that. And it seems to be just kind of an open platform where you just talk about topics. So explain that a little bit more for us.

[Damien Stevens]
Well, I started it for two reasons. Number one, my best MSPs, partners, clients, whatever word you want to use, they would call from time to time, not to talk about backup or usually even technology, but they would say, I'm having a challenge with hiring or I don't know what to do with culture or who do you know that's actually good at selling and generating leads or, you know, whatever the thing is. And that's kind of, that's the kind of relationship I want to have because if you have an issue with what we're delivering, you should certainly let us know.

But I want to know what your top challenge is. And so this, I was introducing people and now I look at this as a lot of times I bring on some of the best ones instead of just introducing Marv to that person. Now I can introduce the whole world and I love learning.

I'm curious. So now it's just been wonderful because I get to interview best-selling authors, top MSPs, just starting out MSPs, everybody in between. And it's called MSP Mindset because my, the other reason is I have a core belief that even though I used to be a one-man shop and now we've got a number of folks on the team that I'm still the thing holding the business back.

And more specifically, it's my mindset. So when I see myself, you know, brushing my teeth in the morning, I know that's the, that's the guy holding me back and he's a good guy, he's trying, but if I can change my mind set in the right way, I can unlock a whole another viewpoint, another frame. And so that's why I invite and get to interview people that have been there, done that, and they can help me unlock.

And I do my best to put myself as a former MSP and somebody still messing up running a business in that seat and ask questions very first person, like, well, I'm screwing this part up. How did you do that right there? So that's always important to me.

[Uncle Marv]
So one of the things that I kind of got from listening to a lot of your shows, there is this big emphasis on helping people that start out as, you know, the solo tech and making that transition from technician to business owner. It's a mentality. It's not just, you know, you don't just wake up one morning and say, all right, I'm done being a tech, I'm going to be a business owner and let me go hire people and it's going to, you know, magically happen.

It's a mindset that has to be in place before you start that process, right?

[Damien Stevens]
Absolutely. Yeah. I'll never forget the day that happened to me because I, if anybody listening can relate, I felt like I needed to know all the things.

I needed to be the MCSE and I needed to be the, you know, M365 expert. I needed to know all about, you know, whatever version of XDR, you know, security, you know, stuff that you're running today. I felt like I needed to try to understand all of it and be the super tech.

And then I realized if I focus on helping businesses and kind of get out of my comfort zone in a different way and speak business, then I can grow. And the light bulb seems obvious, but it was light bulb for me at the time was I can hire people smarter or at least more specialized. Now, in my case, they're all smarter than me, but they can be more specialized.

And it was a big weight off my shoulders because I didn't have to say, I got to know every ecosystem, every platform, every technology play. I got to be the super tech that can do it all. And that was a huge weight off my shoulders to realize that.

But I also had to put myself out of my comfort zone because I was the introverted tech guy. I know we both host a podcast, so you probably think we're like natural extroverts and I won't speak for you, Marvin, but I am not. I showed up like at first, like business after hours, networking, and I looked down at my feet and I hope people wouldn't come talk to me, you know?

And so I've had to get myself out of the comfort zone to talk with business owners and not show up and talk about speeds and feeds but try to understand their needs and figure out if I can help them and what that might look like.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, you're trying to call me out, you know, a little underhandedly about my personality because most people do assume, you know, as well that I am an extrovert. And you know, to some degree that's true, but there are a lot of times where I don't want to be the extrovert and I will, you know, be quiet and sit off in the corner. You know, sometimes it's because I'm in a headspace where I'm like, you know what?

I don't want to talk to people. You know, I just, I need some quiet time too. And, and, uh, but you're right.

There is this, this persona that as a leader you're expected to have and not everybody has to have the same one.

[Damien Stevens]
Yeah. Just because you're the leader doesn't mean you're always ready to charge the hill and, you know, and take, and take that other army or whatever it is. And I think, you know, the reality is most of us in technology are probably going to be more introverted.

Um, and you know, that's how I started. I was a, I was a tech guy and introverted and not a business guy and I didn't understand. And I don't think those are totally correlated, you know.

Um, but I did have to put myself out of my comfort zone. Um, and that's, that's kind of the beginning of, you know, mindset shift for me.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. I don't think I asked you when we last spoke about the transition from, you know, being the tech to the business owner, but more importantly going from running the MSP to running Servosity. I mean, what type of a change did you have to go through, you know, during that journey?

[Damien Stevens]
Oh man. That's it. That's it.

All right. Well, I will, for the, for the sake of this, I, the short version is I was an MSP and we were very blessed to grow in one year from four to 17 people on our team. And that's crazy growth and that's crazy growth.

If you know what you're doing, it's really crazy growth if you were me. Um, and so we just were, we were, it was, look, the other part of that is we were just in a time where technology was booming and it seemed like if we hired and we kept asking, people would say yes. And so we just kept growing, but I kept backups to myself because I didn't take the time to train people.

And it's not that they weren't smart. I just didn't want to teach them the processes and those sorts of things. And even so, one of my biggest clients called five servers, I remember it like it was yesterday, all down.

We all dread that call, but I thought I get the email every day and says, it's good. And if you guys take nothing else out of this, the one takeaway I would give you is just because a backup vendor, including mine as a backup vendor, just because that email says success does not mean you can recover. And a lot of you guys are like, yeah, I get it.

But that's when I learned the hard way I couldn't actually recover. The other thing about that is I had to go to my client and it wasn't a version. Every single version was corrupted.

I was backing up corrupted data. So according to the vendor, I successfully restored the data, but it was corrupted data, which was, as you can imagine, useless. So I was shell-shocked to my core.

And the only thing I think that saved me from a complete tailspin is I started talking to other MSPs. And I was like, what do you do for backup? That's kind of how it started.

But then it turned out, what is your process? And then how have you avoided it? And what I learned is most MSPs have either had something like a data loss event or been much closer than they would like to say publicly.

And so that's when I realized there was a much bigger problem. And that's what led me to create Servosity because I didn't want anybody else to ever feel that way again. And when I first started it, I naively thought, I'll make a better tool, right?

Better than whatever exists. I'll just build something better that will be perfect. It won't, you know, that it would be impossible to take a bad backup.

And then it took me far too long to realize that is not really a thing. And so if you fast forward to Servosity today, that means that really the difference is it's the process and the people. So I'm just a big believer of if you don't test your backups, you don't know what you have just because I've been burned.

And so that's why it comes down to that process. And at the sake of maybe sending less business our way, you can use any good modern backup tool if you have a good process to test backups and know that you're good. And so maybe that's crazy, but that's part of what I've done is written the guide and the download that you can take advantage of if you want that says, here's that whole process guide that I've spent the last, you know, 18 years figuring out, basically collecting all the ways you can screw up between me and all of the hundreds and hundreds of MSPs that I get to work with.

And it's kind of fun to be on the other part of that. The other thing I will say to everybody listening is I really like that I can be an expert at one thing, not having to be an expert at 100. It's so hard.

And I think it's even, to a certain degree, harder than what it used to be to be an IT provider, you know, 18 or 20 years ago.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. Everybody assumes that because you're in IT, you know everything. I had a client just before we got on this call, called the office and I've only worked with this company for a year.

And they had an employee that left six months ago, around that time frame. I was asked to, you know, remove their access from the network, you know, forward their email account and then disable stuff. So I didn't know anything about this user, didn't know very much.

All of a sudden today, they want access to the person's old OneDrive that apparently people need stuff from. And apparently there was an iPad that this person had used that I had never known anything about. Didn't know existed.

Didn't know existed. And they're like, oh yeah, well, you should have the Apple ID. And I'm like, why would I have the Apple ID if nobody ever told me?

Right. And then the owners, you know, with the person there and he's like, well, we have a corporate, you know, Apple ID. And I'm like, oh really?

All the things that you try to do to, you know, discover and stuff like that. And I'm like, well, when I asked you guys about all the stuff that you had, that never came up. Yeah.

But yet they expected, well, you're IT, you should be able to figure it out.

[Damien Stevens]
Like, no. That's like, you know better than I do, that seems to be the norm. The only analogy I've had that seems to land on business owners a little bit is like, do you just call your PCP, your primary care provider, and ask them to do brain surgery?

Right. Probably not. Do you see, you know, do you see somebody different for this issue or that issue?

Yes. And IT is very similar, right? It's saying, you know, everything about IT is about like saying, I'm going to go to one person for everything from allergies to brain surgery to check-ins to physicals.

It's like, it's just not out of care how smart you are. Nobody can do those things and do them well. I think it's very similar with IT.

[Uncle Marv]
It is. It is. Well, let me ask you one more backup related question and then we'll move on to the MSP mindset.

I think there's been a lot of change in the landscape of backup and disaster recovery from the time that you started till now. I mean, I'm thinking that when you started, there really wasn't cloud backup at the time. Was there?

[Damien Stevens]
No. None of the... We weren't using the term cloud, right?

So maybe off-site or remote was kind of a concept. But on-prem was the thing and like, you know, back then it was like backup exec or something, you know, like that. So very much more rudimentary.

But, you know, it was just a few years later, some of the modern tools we use now started to appear on the scene, whether it's Servosity, whether it's Datto, a lot of the others that, you know, a lot of folks are familiar with started to appear just a few years after that.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. Well, because the landscape has changed, are you finding that MSPs are struggling in managing backups? I mean, it's not something where we can install a system and tell the user, hey, just make sure you change the tapes every day and, you know, it's out of our hands.

But, you know, from your perspective and not just, you know, with your product, but in general, do you see anything that's, you know, standing out in that challenge based on what's changed over the last several years?

[Damien Stevens]
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you don't have to go back 15, 20 years. You can go back five years and five years ago, for example, most cyber threats were these nice fluffy variants of like an encryption or ransomware was like the kind of thing that like encrypted your data and you restored to your backup from yesterday and then you were all set.

[Uncle Marv]
Right.

[Damien Stevens]
And now the cyber threats are so advanced and there's many stories I could give you that have actually happened to our customers and it's so much harder. You're lying on now, where is your data? It's in multiple different locations from your OneDrive to your on-premises to your, I promised I wouldn't put it on my desktop, but then I did.

And then you layer on things like all the different compliance frameworks because now you not only are my IT expert, but you must know PCI, you must know HIPAA, surely you know all the things about CMMC, right? And so it's just, you know, how do you, how do you understand, never mind backup, but how all those tools fit in with all the different kind of goals you need to achieve and they all relate.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. It's a lot to think about.

[Damien Stevens]
Yeah. Yeah. So the one thing I would say like just on the positive note is a lot of what we've done at Servosity is what I recommend a lot of MSPs do, which is pick something that you're good at.

Whether it's a vertical or a set of applications or whatever that is. But the more you can specialize or niche or whatever word you want to call that, then you can get to be somebody that is actually really fluent in a certain set of applications or a certain vertical use case or something like that. And then the world goes from a million tools to at least 20 tools or something that might be manageable.

And that's a lot of what, like what we've done at Servosity is we manage the backups for you and we test them for you. And that takes, you know, one thing off of your plate, but we're trying to eat our own dog food. And what I mean by that is we don't, we don't just support, you know, the other tooling is good enough.

We could take our process and use all the, any of the major backup vendors. But if we did that, we'd be back in the spot where a lot of MSPs are, which is I'm managing two or three or four or five backup vendors, and they all have different capabilities and they all have different security levels and patch schedules and, you know, updates. And so, so we've tried to do what I thought I should have done back when I was an MSP, which is try to simplify so that I can build processes or SOPs or something replicable.

Because especially once you start hiring and trying to re-explain that to somebody else, at least in my experience, if you don't have that, that's just, I got away with it for the first couple of hires. And then after that, if we didn't have the documentation, we were done for.

[Uncle Marv]
Yep. That's fun. All right.

So, Damian, like I said, I really wanted to chat with you, I guess, podcaster to podcaster. And see how you enjoy, again, folks, the, it's called the MSP mindset. And, you know, you mentioned earlier that you talk with, you know, MSP owners, bestselling authors, coaches, and the whole idea was to help people enhance their business and, and personal development, which I, I like that in there.

And I mean, everything from, you know, automation, how to be more profitable, changing the wealth mindset, you know, becoming emotionally mature. But I want to ask you, from your perspective, I, I get the sense that you are asking a lot of those questions, because you're genuinely curious as to what makes people tick, how things are going, and how that can be applied to yourself or to others. So I guess that the best way to ask the question is, what are some of the most impactful things that you have, you know, either learned or taken away from doing your show?

[Damien Stevens]
Yeah, yeah, thank you for that, Marvin. I, and you're, I would say you're dead on, like, what's, what I enjoy about this, I'm not sure if it's really driving a ton of revenue or other things. But what I can say is, I now know, not just my existing clients, but all the gift from every MSP's time, author's time, other coaches, what they're thinking.

And especially MSP's, like, what are your challenges? What are those problems? So I get to know that, understand that.

And then that's why right now I'm working on a new project to interview 100 of the top 500 MSP's. I'm going to distill that once I'm done into a guide or book, because I want to help you figure out, like, what's the commonalities? I don't really expect to find a silver bullet.

But I think there's some common patterns that I want to know. I know by doing these interviews that I take something out of every interview and I go take it for my own business. So even if we're not an MSP, every time I learn on each one of those, because none of these am I showing up with the arrogance and hubris to say, I've got it all figured out and I am genuinely curious.

What I've tried to evolve as a podcast host is, now I'm putting myself in it. So I'm not just saying, tell me the way to do this or how to grow your MSP, but I'll just raise my hand like, hey, I'm not very good at marketing. Like, how do I even get started?

And when I'm doing that, if you think that's like not genuine, it's totally real. I'm not very good at marketing. So I'm asking the questions as me.

But I also talk to enough MSP's to try to understand, like, you don't have a marketing team or gigantic marketing budget. And if you're like me, you're maybe not naturally good at it. And so I put myself in that seat.

And I hope that makes it more valuable to you. But selfishly, I get to, you know, ask amazing MSP's, top-notch authors. One of the coaches that comes to mind is they coach the Fortune 10.

So if you're smaller than, let's say, Google or Microsoft, you can't afford them. And so, but I got to spend over an hour with them and ask questions that were actually about my business. But it's really wasn't about Backup or DR. It was about mindset. It was about how you build process, how you talk to your team, how you communicate. And, you know, whether it's an abundance mindset, whether it's not micromanaging your team and making sure that you're actually not, not that just I say that, but how do I understand if I am or I'm not. So every one of these has been a gift to me and I hope is a gift to you in terms of you can watch that or listen to that or whatever you like to do and get something out of that.

And so that's why we've interviewed from everything from a solo entrepreneur all the way to literally the fastest growing MSP in the nation and everybody in between. And then also that's kind of why I hope it's valuable, but I've reached out to best-selling authors because I think sometimes learning within our industry is what we need. And sometimes maybe what we should do is look outside our industry and say, what are these folks doing?

So it doesn't become an echo chamber because this is genuine curiosity, not who knows who or I want to follow the, you know, if everybody's buying IBM, let me buy IBM, right? You know, that's, I don't want that. I want to know what's working and if this is the way you're, you know, crushing operations or you got a better culture and you have a longer tenure than anybody or you've figured out the secret to marketing or just the secret to get out of your own way and get up and be hungry and curious and invite others to join you along the way.

That's what I get to learn and share. And I, you know, I just, it's one of those like, it feels like play. And so the thing is, if that's worked to you, it's hard to compete with somebody when it's play because this is what I want to do, you know?

And so that's what I really enjoy about it is it's, it feels like play because it's so interesting to me, at least. And I get to show up and ask those questions and some of them are MSPs of all sorts of operational maturity. Recently, we came out with one by Dr. Alan Bernard, who's literally the leader in the world in constraint theory and which is basically, what's the top constraint?

What's your top challenge? And we get very deep in that. So I think that's just another example of like, most people probably don't know of that.

And I have an amazing team. You know, I personally read their books. We research them and we show up prepared to ask hopefully really, really good questions.

And hopefully you're not only here for some really cool MSPs, you'll hear some things like constraint theory or just different ways of approaching things that you might have not heard at just an MSP event.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. Well, that's interesting. I don't remember that episode.

I keep thinking about the one that, I don't know how to pronounce the name, Britt Lefty. Yeah, Britt Lefkoe. Yes.

Lefkoe, that's right. Overcoming the I'm not enough. Yes, that's pretty good.

[Damien Stevens]
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for saying that's a good.

I put myself in that because it's just true and I don't feel like I'm enough all the time. So I just stopped a year or so ago. I wouldn't have showed up that way.

So part of the things I've asked along the way, help me mature and make me, give me the courage to show up and be a little less or be more vulnerable, a little less scared and realize like I admitted in the episode, here's cases where I don't feel like I'm enough. What do I do? And I did that.

So if you're listening, hopefully you can relate. And I don't want to sit back as the host that's got it all figured out and knows all the things. And I did that to help you.

But I also did that to help me because I showed up and, and what I've learned is the more I show up and just am who I am, ask the real questions, hopefully the questions you're thinking that you haven't said out loud, but they're rumbling around your head and I'm dumb enough to say it out loud, then you can get like Brit Lefkoe, who's an amazing coach. Yeah, that one frankly is one of the ones that helped me so much that I took the transcript afterwards and put it in the AI bot and had chat conversations about why they say about this, how do I take away the most out of this? So there's, there's some of those that have actually helped me in that way.

And I, it's, it may sound a little nerdy, but I like to do that and reflect on those and go deeper.

[Uncle Marv]
No, I've, I've done stuff like that, but I do it for myself. Is that something that you've done just for yourself or have you shared that somewhere? I haven't, I'm open to doing that.

[Damien Stevens]
If, if, if there's other folks like, like me, that they would be interested in that. We'll chat off air on about that one. Okay.

[Uncle Marv]
Have you had a lot of people reach out to you after some of these episodes and say, Hey, you know, what can I do to get in touch with that person? Or is there a place that I can go to get more information? Or can you, cause I'm sure what they'll think is that it's your podcast.

So you're now all of a sudden a conduit for expertise in that area. But have you found that happening where you're getting people reaching out to you?

[Damien Stevens]
I have, reaching out to me. I always invite the guests to, you know, it's their LinkedIn or their website or some of them will leave their email or what have you so that you can reach out to them. But I have folks that will ask me about that episode or, you know, I think I could use their help.

How do I, you know, get in touch with them? I'm happy to do that. I would love your feedback, anybody listening or you Marvin, because what I think the next evolution right now, I'm working on this and I don't have a clear answer is I want to create a community where anybody is allowed.

And that way the experts that interview can show up and not only, you know, put the episode out there, but can show up and maybe answer some questions, do some Q and A. But that way we can all show up, me and you and anybody else and just ask some of these questions. And so I'm not trying to follow my own advice.

I'm not really asking a technical question of is it a Discord server or Facebook page? I mean, that needs to be answered or, you know, or this kind of, you know, product you can self-host as much as just like, what would that look like? Because I don't want to create a community for the sake of creating yet another thing for you to subscribe to or get an email about.

I want to make it different, but I found that I want to engage with some of those people in an ongoing way without asking them to be on my show again a month later. But I want to engage with them and I get questions and I'd love to thoughtfully engage in a way that's a little bit easier for you to reach out than feel like, you know, some folks, just as many reach out, I assume don't reach out to either the guest or me because they don't want to be a burden. And so I appreciate you being self-conscious there, but if you're listening, I'd rather you reach out.

And that's what I'd love to hear anybody's feedback on is, is there something that would draw you in from a, you know, a real actual tight knit community, not just numbers.

[Uncle Marv]
You, if I remember correctly, you're a church going man, right? Yes, sir. So what you were talking about right there just triggered in my mind something like a Bible study slash fellowship where it's, but not necessarily as structured as a study or a peer group, which is what, you know, we're always used to.

Sometimes our peer groups are a little too structured. Sometimes they're not structured enough. But if you do find the right balance of chemistry, you can find those people that you can have those meaningful chats with.

Sometimes it can be technical, but, you know, understanding your mindset of where you're going as an MSP, as a business owner, or even as a tech, sometimes you have to have people help you along the way. That's what I'm envisioning in terms of that. And yeah, I am the same way.

I didn't want to create another community for my podcast because I'm a part of a bunch of others and I'm like, why am I reinventing this? But that sounds like a good idea, though, to hone in on those types of things where it's not just, you know, it's not just an MSP peer group.

[Damien Stevens]
Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that feedback. I love the Bible study group metaphor, right?

And I think there's some study part to this, right? Just like I want to study on the Bible and review it and read and share when you want to also engage. But I think there's some of these topics or guests or whatever you want to call it that, you know, what are you doing?

Like a lot of folks are talking to me now about AI, not from a technical perspective, but they're like I've been talking to my team openly and some of them think it's the greatest thing and some of them are very afraid of it. And I think there's a place for us in the IT provider world to be talking to our clients and saying, how are you going to deal with this? Because this is a cultural thing.

This is an opportunity to have a leadership moment to help people understand. Should they fear for their job? Should they be putting in the resumes?

You know, can they even bring this up with you? And so, again, AI is a buzzword, but I bring it up not from an AI technical perspective. We can talk about that, but it's just like that's another example of something that's very current.

And a lot of people have just said kind of, you know, off air, like, how do we deal with this? What do we do? How do we talk to our team about it?

And it's even tougher, depending on the industry, where some of them are like, you're safe and maybe they just need to communicate it. And others, they're like, well, some of you, we won't need as many of you in the next 24 months, we don't think. But the right people, at least the kind of people I want to be in community with, will not just catch people by surprise.

They will tell them what's going on. They will tell them, here's our intent. We're going to try to keep as many as you can in a different capacity.

Like, if your job or parts of your job are at risk due to just this unprecedented technology change, how do you communicate that? How do you get ahead of that? Because I think as we have more automation, we're going to want more trust.

We're still going to want to have people that we absolutely can trust, whether that's I'm working for them, or they're working for me, or vice versa, or we're just collaborating together. I think there's going to be more and more trust needed as we go through somewhat unprecedented times.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I wasn't planning to go back this direction. But because you brought it up, you said you were talking to your team about AI.

And my first thought in my head was, OK, how are you implementing AI in a backup and disaster recovery process?

[Damien Stevens]
Sure, sure, sure. Well, the first thing I would say about AI is the last thing I want to do as a company is slap it on there as a buzzword and say, you know, next version now with AI. Buy it.

It costs $10 a month more. I think there's too many poorly thought through strategies, if you can even call them strategies, where you bolt on AI. It doesn't really provide much value.

There was a tweet the other day where somebody said I would pay extra if I could remove the AI features out of most apps.

[Uncle Marv]
Yep.

[Damien Stevens]
So we can all probably relate to so many of those things, right? I don't care if it's Teams or Slack. It keeps popping up like there's one over here right now just off the side of my screen.

Try AI in your chat stuff. And you're like, no. And so I think what that tells me is there's a lot of work to show that it's really useful.

Same thing with what we're doing. We're doing some interesting things right now that is basically helping our support team gain new hires, gain the knowledge of level three hires, because it can look at all the tickets and suggest tickets that are related. So it's kind of augmenting them to make their search for knowledge less tedious.

We're doing some things that I think are pretty cutting edge with voice AI that you can actually call and talk and ask it things and have it told you things. So if you're a solo entrepreneur, you're driving down the road and you just want to get an update, you can talk to one of our humans. But sometimes, you know, 24-7, you just want to say what's this or what's the status of this or where's this drive you're shipping me?

So they're fairly basic things. Where I come down on it is really twofold. One, I only want to use it in a way that is enhancing the experience.

So what that means for me is I don't want to stick a chat bot on my website and then pull back our support.

[Uncle Marv]
Right.

[Damien Stevens]
But chat with that. Would that save us money in terms of paying my team if I didn't have to pay as many of them? Sure.

Is that the kind of business I want to build? Absolutely not. I think a lot of our customers would leave if that's what I did.

And so it's got to enhance the experience. And I think too many of us are missing. It's not enhancing it.

And then the second is people are still the reason that I want to be in business and I want to be in community and in doing business with people. And I don't think that's going to change because an MSP is built on trust. And we're built on trust that you're giving us.

And so, you know, if an MSP is no longer needed or a backup is no longer needed, that's a whole different conversation. But I don't know. I can't see that far into the future.

And so my point is part of that trust comes back to this fear. And I think there's a lot of fear, not only amongst our team of like, are you taking my job away? Are you taking parts of my job away?

But I think I don't care if you're an MSP or your backup company or one of your clients. I think we're all, at least I am, I'll speak for myself. I'm sitting there going, am I missing the boat?

Like, is this like Marvin knows something I don't know? And he's about to like just crush it because he's figured out the secret, you know, AI thing that's moving so fast. And now, like, I just can't keep up with him because he's got these superpowers.

It might be in lead generation. It might be in efficiency of support. It might be in who knows what way.

But I think, you know, there's some fear of like, some fear of missing out, some FOMO going on. And then some fear of like, how am I going to do that? And how is my team going to evolve?

And I imagine we're going to evolve, but I'm just trying to have an open dialogue about let's evolve together. Let's be open about it.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. My perspective right now is to not worry about whether it's going to replace me, but worry about how much more efficient can it make me? Yes.

And that's it. I'm not trying to, you know, go beyond the ramifications of that, you know, where they can be. I mean, we know that they're out there.

But for now, it's one of those things where, you know, was it the horses out of the barn? Yeah. You know, we just got to figure out how to, you know, keep it in the corral, I guess.

[Damien Stevens]
Yeah. This is going to make, date me, but I've been in, you know, around this stuff long enough. Before, Servosity had a company where we, it was novel to build websites.

Like we were one of the first to say, that's what we do. We build websites and web applications. And I remember like some of the earlier clients, one of the first 10 said, well, I guess we'll invest in building a website, but I don't know if this internet thing and websites are really going to, you know, stay around.

So now this is over 20 years ago, but, you know, I feel like this is a similar kind of, you know, revolution or evolution. Like we just, it's hard to imagine a business without a website just about nowadays. And, and so, but back then I couldn't have told you this is how, you know, 2024 is going to look.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, I'll go, I'll do you one better. I wouldn't get an iPhone when they first came out. Yeah.

I was like, I don't, I don't need a smartphone. I just, I need a phone. Yeah.

And if I want to, if I want to do other stuff, I'll do it on my computer or I'll do it on my laptop. And now I can do almost as much on my phone, if not more, because of the technology and stuff. I mean, we just had a conversation with somebody over the weekend where, you know, the kids growing up today look at people, you know, I'm going to say my age, I don't know how old you are.

I'm not going to ask, but they look at people like me and it's like, you know, what are you coming at me with this cash for? Why can't I just pay for it on my phone or what? That's right.

Everything is, I need to be able to do it on my phone. And my first idea was, I don't want to do other stuff on my phone. I want it to just be a phone, but obviously things have changed.

[Damien Stevens]
Yeah. I mean, I love that. That's a great example.

I, I did not understand, and I'm not sure I still understand the human psychology of people like camped out for a couple of days when the first iPhone or, you know what I mean? Like, I just, I was like, I might get one down the road, but I don't, I don't think I'm going to camp out to get one. Cause that, you know, back then I thought, well, if it makes phone calls reliably, that's a good thing.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. Well, camping, camping out to me was just, I don't want to use the word stupid, but I didn't get it, but you know, camping out for a phone, camping out for concert tickets, camping out. I mean, standing in line to eat at a restaurant is something I don't want to do.

Yeah. And my wife hates it because, you know, if we talk about going out, the first thing she's going to ask, are you going to be upset if there's a line?

[Damien Stevens]
Yeah. I'm the same way. Like I'd rather go at a little less busy time or just have a reservation or do something instead of like spend half an hour, you know, especially if, if I knew to plan for it'd be one thing, you know, but especially if it's unexpected.

Yeah. So I think, I bet that plays a lot into what's going on, right. We with AI, with technology, right.

We're now preconditioned to not have to wait for much information. And that's the other thing I'm curious to see how does that shape or does that shape? Because I can see like you becoming so efficient or effective that you manage twice as many endpoints, which is wonderful.

But then I wonder if they're going to, the client's going to expect responses twice as fast or three times as fast or whatever that is, because we're now like, you know, I'm kind of surprised already that the client doesn't expect to tap something on their phone and get a response from Uncle Marv.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, that is a topic we can, we can dive into at a later date because that I'm in that situation where, yeah, I probably manage more than most as a technically solo tech, even though I have subcontractors. I do have some of those clients that, you know, they expect a lot. And then I have some clients, actually, I'm going through a transition with one now where their assumption is, oh, well, if it's just you, you can't support us.

We're too big for you. And I looked at him, I said, I've got a client twice your size. So, but listen, it's, it is the way it is, but we can have that conversation later.

I want to go back and ask another question. And I don't know if this will be the last one or not, but it sounds like we can go on and on. But some of what you talk about are not necessarily things that relate exactly to your business there at Servosity, but it sounds like a lot of the conversations that you're having on your show are impacting your mindset as to how you run it and how you view things.

Where do you see this going for you in the future in terms of the podcast and its influence on you and Servosity?

[Damien Stevens]
Yeah, that's a wonderful question. I hope I get help like yours and anybody listening on things like community. I'd love to tie it in to have because there's been so much.

I want more of that. I want more of this guest. I want more thought.

And so something there to really, you know, help each other more. That's what the, this is really about it. Like the reason that mine is always interviewing somebody is because I'm always learning.

And it's not about me being the talking head. So I have learned a lot of things from those folks. And I'm happy to present on stage or talk in some other way.

But I'd always rather have an actual dialogue instead of, you know, be this talking head that assumes they know everything. And every single episode, I take at least one, often multiple things away. So I don't need to interview somebody that's like going to necessarily show me how to directly improve what I'm doing with backups or disaster recovery or testing the things that we're doing to improve my culture, improve my team, improve the way we think about things.

And so, because not the same, but also the same as MSPs. You know, I'm sitting there wondering, what is AI going to do to Servosity? Good, bad, indifferent.

And the other thing is, what's it going to do to your business? And whatever it does to your business is going to have an impact on mine. And that could be good.

It could be bad. It could be all sorts of things. And I don't think it's just good or bad.

I think it's just trying to think through those and understand them and then put the mindset around them that like, let's just have an open conversation. Because if I do that and I'm talking to you and I'm talking to enough other smart people, I don't have to be, it goes back to being the, you can be a solo entrepreneur, but you've got yourself surrounded by contractors, you've got yourself surrounded by a lot of other smart people. And if I surround myself with enough smart people like you and you guys listening, then I don't have to know all these things.

I can go and have these discussions. And whether it's six months or a year from now, I'm sure a lot of these questions will still be unanswered. But we can figure out who knows what, who's learned since then.

And that's just a lot further and faster than I can learn all by myself.

[Uncle Marv]
That sounds fantastic. Well, folks, thank you for listening. And of course, I'm going to have two links in the show notes that you want to pay attention to.

The first is the MSP Mindset podcast. Of course, you can just simply do a search for that in your favorite pod catcher. And even though we talked about it, talked around it, Servosity, I'll have a link to that that if you're looking for an alternative or replacement backup and disaster recovery solution, you can check them out at Servocity.com and get more in touch with Damian Stevens. Damian, thank you very much for doing this. This is too fun, Marvin. I appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me. All right. We have to chat again.

So folks, be looking forward to that whenever we decide that is. So that's going to do it, folks, for this episode of the podcast. Head over to ITBusinessPodcast.com and check out more episodes. Of course, you can subscribe in your pod catcher. And of course, you can follow us on any of the social medias, YouTube, LinkedIn, and the Facebook. That's going to do it.

We'll be back soon with more episodes. We'll talk to you then. And until next time, Holla!