622 The Pumpkin Plan for Managed Service Providers

[Uncle Marv] (0:08 - 1:09)
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for managed service providers, IT consultants, even solo techs, where we try to help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. This is an audio show presented by our good friends over at Super Ops, Supercharge Your Business, with the all-in-one ready-made RMM PSA tool to supercharge your business. I am joined today by two gentlemen that authored a book, and it is one that we knew before, and it has been modified now, The Pumpkin Plan for Managed Service Providers, by Sean Walsh and Dave Kaba.

A nice little book, Providing Lessons for IT Services to Provide Profitability, Grow Market Share, and Prepare for Exit. Sean, Dave, welcome to the show.

[Shawn Walsh] (1:10 - 1:12)
Thank you. Thanks for having us.

[Uncle Marv] (1:12 - 1:44)
All right, so I know that this is something you've talked about for over a year. I remember last summer when you guys started hinting that this was coming, and it is now here, and of course, I missed the gold rush because you've already been on several other shows talking about it, but the book is out. I got my copy, bought it on Amazon, by the way, and it looks good.

So first question is, what are your thoughts? What are people saying about it?

[Shawn Walsh] (1:47 - 2:42)
So far, the reviews on Amazon have been humbling in a good way. We've been very happy with the feedback. There's been lots of comments that it's not just for MSPs, but also for vendors and people on the channel, and I would say that one of the things when we sat down to do this, we wanted to make sure that we wrote something that had some chops, that this just wasn't a vanity project or just something to be able to say, hey, we wrote a book, and so far, the audience is telling us that we succeeded in that, and we've been very, very happy. It was, I think, definitely a lot more work than we both expected going into it, and so far, the reviews and the feedback we've gotten have told me that our time was well spent.

[Dave Cava] (2:43 - 2:54)
Yeah, sometimes I wonder if we really wrote a book that was that good, or if people are just too nice to say things to our face, but the feedback has been great.

[Uncle Marv] (2:55 - 3:28)
Well, they may be holding reservation because, obviously, the original book, The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz, is a book that has gone around the channel. Everybody's talked about it, and I guess the first question would be, well, what is it that made you guys think, yeah, we're going to rewrite this for managed service providers? Mike was in the tech space, so it kind of did hint to some tech stuff for us, but this seems to be much more specific, so what prompted you guys to do a deep dive?

[Dave Cava] (3:29 - 4:59)
Sean knows Mike better than I do, and Sean can tell the story of how they spoke on the same roadshow together, and Sean came to me and said, you know, they have these derivative books for Profit First, which is another book by Mike Michalowicz, and they don't have any for The Pumpkin Plan yet, and we have an opportunity to write the first one if we want to, and there was a significant licensing fleet associated with it, and we kicked it around and just said, you know, if we pay this money, it's going to make us write the book, and we thought it would, honestly, like, so it's not that sexy a story, it's kind of like, if we pay the money, we're going to force ourselves to get this done, you know, we may talk about writing a book for 10 years and never get it done, but if we pay the money, we'll get it done, so that was a lot of the thinking there, and then we wound up getting fortunate enough to get a speaking slot on this year's ASCII Roadshow, and that gave us a deadline where it had to be done by, and we said, that's good for us, too, so there's a whole lot of kicking ourselves in the butt, you know, because we knew we needed it in order to get it done, and Sean and I joke around about how we're not very good marketers, you know, and ideally, we would have written a book we were really proud of and been really good marketers, but if we had to choose one or the other, we'd rather write a book that we can be really proud of and look back on in five years and say, you know, that book stands up, so that's what we tried to do.

[Uncle Marv] (5:01 - 5:04)
Now, go ahead, Sean, go ahead.

[Shawn Walsh] (5:04 - 7:01)
Just going to add to that, that the story that Dave's talking about is, I think it was 2021, right after COVID, when ASCII started doing their Roadshows again, I had a speaking spot on the Roadshow, and I didn't realize until after the first one that Mike was the keynote, and I have been involved with the Pumpkin Plan coaching group that came from Mike, so he has a business partner that runs it. Mike would occasionally come in, you know, do a talk to the group on Zoom, but I didn't know him personally, and I'm up on stage, and it turned out he was coming on right after me, so as I'm starting my first time on stage talking, here comes Mike, and he sits down in the back row and wants to watch my talk, and I thought, oh, great, no pressure here, and afterwards, I went up, introduced myself, and got talking with him, and over the course of 10 ASCII shows, we got to know each other pretty well, and then he came on to a conference call in the coaching group that I was in with the Pumpkin Plan consultants, and said, hey, you know, we're going to release the Pumpkin Plan for derivatives, and he specifically had asked if I would be interested in doing it, and I told him I would talk to Dave, and you know, in a way, it was almost complimentary that Mike came from the IT space and approached us about writing it, so we took him up on that.

Like Dave said, I think, you know, writing a book is something I've talked about for many years. I love teaching, and I love the idea of writing something, but having the entrepreneurial ADD that so many of us have, I need deadlines, and the fact that we had a fee and a deadline were great motivators for us to get this done.

[Dave Cava] (7:02 - 8:25)
So we'll probably still be working on it, and I had a funny history with the book, because when I read it, I started reading these stories about Mike's first company, which was an IT support company, and I'm reading these stories, and then he mentioned the name of the company, and I was like, I know that company, you know, and it turns out that I know his old business partner fairly well. Like, I got lunch with him a few times, we were in the same, they were in New Jersey, we were in New York City, but we were servicing the same market without really competing against each other, so we got together on a semi-regular basis and talked shop, but I never realized that that was Mike's company. I knew it as Chris's company, because Mike had exited the business a few years before I met Chris.

So when I started reading about these stories in the book, I was like, oh man, this is, you know, reading the history of a company that I know, you know, so the whole thing was, it was just a lot of things that came together and felt like it fit, and really, you know, we didn't set out to rewrite the pumpkin plan. It's about 15% of the material in the book. It served as a good foundation, and then we built on that foundation and talked about a lot of the things that we felt were complementary and things that are kind of our things to hark on with the companies that we work with.

[Uncle Marv] (8:26 - 9:02)
So a lot of the book is not just, as you said, you know, parts of the original pumpkin plan, but parts of your history and experience. Now, you both come from an MSP background, so obviously that helps, and throughout the book, one of the things that I liked is you actually put in sections that go back to things that you learned, your texts learned, and all of that stuff. So when Mike came to you and asked about the idea, how much of this was already in motion with what you guys do now?

[Dave Cava] (9:03 - 10:25)
That's a good question. I think we're always hoping that our students, you know, for lack of a better word, learn from our mistakes. You know, it's kind of like when you're a parent, and you know you did all kinds of crazy things when you were younger.

You made mistakes in your teens. You made mistakes in your marriage, and it's actually really gratifying when you can own up to those things and say, I really wish I had done this differently and see someone else get it right. So there was a lot of motivation there, but I'll tell you, there's a certain...

people in this industry develop a thick skin. They're getting pitched all the time. Everyone's telling them what to do in their business, what products to use, and you kind of go at conferences and you see these guys in their chairs with their arms folded, right?

And it's just because they've been pitched a hundred times on a hundred different things, and it's just like, well, what does this guy have to say? And we really felt like it was important to establish, like, no, we are you. We've experienced a lot of pain in our business.

We've made a lot of mistakes. We're not coming at this telling you that we have the magic elixir that we found on the top of a mountain. You know, we're not trying to snow anybody, you know.

So we tried to be brutally honest about the things that we wished we'd done differently and what we learned from Yeah.

[Shawn Walsh] (10:25 - 12:14)
And several of the stories, Marvin, that I tell in the book were stories that I've been telling for years and I've used them. I use all those pieces at appropriate times when we're coaching a client or when I'm telling a story to a peer group but assembling them into a cohesive volume and how they fit in the process and how things took place, that was kind of the new part. So it wasn't hard coming up with the stories and the material.

I think, if anything, they were probably a lot we cut, but it was how did they fit the narrative in telling from a story from beginning to end of the concepts that Dave and I learned to build a company. And notice I said concepts and not process because one of the things we tell clients is we're not here to tell you, follow our recipe. When we work with companies, they get so much of that from the pitches they hear, you know, a trade show safe, you know, buy our magic process and, you know, you'll make money and just do it my way.

And we're firm believers and that's not how business works. Strategy has to be unique and it has to be unique to what you do uniquely well. And when I say unique, I mean, unique and not better.

I hear a lot of why do this better and I do that better. No, there's things you have to do uniquely different from somebody else. And we really want the experiences that we share in the book to be used to help you figure out what is your strategy to go forward with and not copying somebody else's.

[Dave Cava] (12:14 - 13:53)
Yeah, let me add a little nuance there because there obviously are best practices and things that work or we'd have nothing to write about, right? It's just that there isn't a perfect blueprint, you know, for an MSP. And if there was, we'd all look exactly the same and you can't look exactly the same.

And a lot of the differentiation revolves around how you deliver service and the customer experience and how you present your company, right? And there's a million different flavors of that and you've got to find yours. You know, Sean and I went through a professional marketing study in Q4 of last year and a big part of that was kind of understanding our own identity, you know, and then being able to take that to market and find the clients that fit well with it, you know.

And I thought, I hope this isn't a big waste of money. This seems like it's sort of silly, you know, find yourself as a company kind of thing. But when we were done with it, I said, wow, it was really important.

You know, we understand how to do business together a whole lot better. And MSPs need to have that, you know, what value do I bring to the marketplace that's unique, you know, and how can I use that to my advantage and position my company in that way? You know, not everyone's going to be for everyone, but when you find that sweet spot, Sean, maybe Sean can talk to that a little more, you know, it's really what you're best at and the clients that are the best fit for that thing you're best at.

That's so much of hitting your groove in business.

[Uncle Marv] (13:54 - 14:31)
It's going to look a little different So find your sweet spot, of course, a reference to chapter four in the book. And the way that you guys described it, when you look at the book, it talks about finding a path. It talks about the concepts, but you're right.

It doesn't give too many specifics because we can all be on the same path. We could all be looking for the same destination, but the steps that we take, we're not going to take the same steps. You know, you can't follow footprint for footprint or pedal for pedal or anything like that.

[Shawn Walsh] (14:32 - 16:49)
Nor should you try to. I mean, you know, there's great case studies about what happens when a company tries to copy another company's strategy. And, you know, Continental tried to copy Southwest strategy and start doing low fares.

And they failed miserably because you can't copy somebody's strategy exactly and have it work. The strategy has to be has to be yours. And that's, you know, that's kind of what the what finding that sweet spot is all about.

How do my unique talents and my unique audience knowing your clients, how do those things combine into something that nobody else is offering that I can uniquely offer? And the funny thing is, is whenever I talk about differentiation and finding your unique value, everybody says, well, you know, we're just doing technology. We're fixing computers just like everybody else.

And I'm doing the same thing the MSP down the road is doing. So there's nothing unique there. And the reality is differentiation can be very simple.

It can be just in the experience that your client has with you that they're not going to have with the other one. And people really underestimate how nuanced differentiation can be. And when Dave and I are doing the talk, one of the things that I when I talk about finding the sweet spot.

So one of the areas of the sweet spot is finding that thing that you do uniquely well or how do you differentiate? And I tell the audience, I say, you know, all right, I'm calling BS on this. I can't differentiate things anymore.

And I hold up a can of liquid death. And I say, does everybody know what this is? I hear finally, somebody will say water.

I said, yeah, it's water, except it's in a can. And people are paying three times the price for it. And the company's only been around since 2017.

And they've, they were valued last month at $2.4 billion. And they sell water in a can. It's not vitamin water.

It's not fortified water. It's plain old water. And it's how they position it in the marketplace, and that the people who are buying it feel they have a different experience with the product.

And, you know, it's as simple as that.

[Uncle Marv] (16:50 - 17:35)
Funny, you use that analogy, I did a show, probably late last year. And now, let me say this before people email and start yelling at me. I'm, I'm not a marketer.

But I titled the show stop marketing yourself like a bottle of water. Because there was a whole bunch of memes heading around on the social medias, where they were talking about that, you know, that paradigm where, you know, here's a bottle of water, and it costs this much at the grocery store, it costs this much at the convenience store, it costs this much at Disney. And everybody was saying is, how are you marketing yourself?

And I'm like, okay, we were not a bottle of water. You know, it's just a can of water.

[Shawn Walsh] (17:38 - 19:39)
A can of water. You know, it's as simple as the packaging. Well, you know, one of the things that I do when we do the talk is I wear a suit and tie.

You know, there's people in the audience who've known me for years, they've never seen me in a suit and tie. That's because they were never my client. One of the things that we did to differentiate ourselves was I primarily sold to law firms.

And one day, one of the lawyers who I'd known for many years, and he was not only a lawyer, but a respected judge. And he looked at me, he said, why do you walk in here selling to people like me, looking like one of your engineers? I said, what do you mean?

He goes, you dress just like your engineers, a logo shirt and khakis. But then you want to talk, you want to say, hey, I know how to run your business. And he said, it doesn't come across that way.

And he really taught me, you need to dress to your audience. So we started going to all sales calls and in a suit and tie, go into these law firms. And all of a sudden, the conversations changed, the resistant factor was less.

And we started closing bigger deals at a higher average per seat price, solely because we went in there and the lawyers saw us as a peer, not as somebody who was the guy with the screwdriver in the back room. So their mindset changed just by us walking dressed differently. The funniest story is that I got all dressed up because I had an appointment with a law firm at Beacon Hill in Boston, which is right there next to the State House in front of the Boston Common, kind of the big leagues for law firms.

And I walked in in my best suit and my shoes polished. And the managing partner was sitting at his desk at a pair of cargo shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops with his feet up on the desk. And he looked at the suit, he goes, I appreciate the effort.

You don't ever have to wear that here again. I just burst out laughing. But we made the effort.

And he recognized the fact that we were coming in differently than everybody else was talking to.

[Uncle Marv] (19:39 - 19:42)
Meet your client where they are.

[Dave Cava] (19:42 - 20:12)
Yeah, exactly. White glove service for hedge funds and private equities. And that took us from a pool of 300 competitors down to a pool of four in New York City.

And it's something that not just anybody could do. Most MSPs would try that and fail. They got to find their thing.

That was the thing that worked for us and led to really explosive growth.

[Shawn Walsh] (20:13 - 20:54)
Dave and I both were co-facilitators of the ConnectWise Northeast peer group for the regional peer groups they did. And one day I had somebody at the peer group come up to me and said, oh, my God, what are you doing getting up on stage here? You're sharing all your secrets and your best practices.

These are your competitors in the room. And I just laughed at them. And I said, but they're missing the secret sauce.

They said, well, what's that? I said, me. I said, this is my strategy.

You can't just copy it, take it back and do it your way. I can share things up here all day long. It's not going to have any effect on my business because you've got to figure out your path.

Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (20:55 - 22:06)
So a lot of what we're talking about here, yes, it's in the book. And a lot of it is the same things that we hear talked about over and over and over again. You guys mentioned that, you know, we go to conferences a lot and we're sitting in the audience with our arms folded because it's like, you know what?

Impress me, tell me something new. And in the book, like the reason I asked you guys the question of why rewrite a book that we're already using, well, it's talking about the same things, but in a much different way. You know, when you're talking about focusing on core strengths, client segment segmentation, strategic pruning, all of that stuff.

Yeah, we've heard about that, but maybe we haven't thought about it in quite the right way. So if we're looking at, you know, let's talk about the big thing that everybody talks about from the pumpkin plan, you know, focus on the big pumpkins. How do you do that?

I've read a little bit about how you guys are describing it in the book, but if you want somebody to buy the book to understand that specifically for MSPs, what would you tell them?

[Shawn Walsh] (22:06 - 23:30)
Well, just to go back to what you started that out with, you know, one of the things that I tell my groups is that I am not going to teach you anything new in business. There is no magic bullet that's been kept secret that's been hidden away. Business is business.

And every business book ever written tells the same exact story for the most part. There's an exchange of value that has to take place. And one person provides it, another person wants it.

And there has to be a two-way exchange of value. That has been true since the very first person sold the very first thing. It's just that every book tells that story, maybe from a slightly different perspective, a slightly different angle, spins the story differently.

And one book is going to click with you that may not click with me or vice versa. And the idea here is that hopefully you take from this a little more knowledge of some good fundamentals of business and you put them into play. So that's I think the biggest thing is you're never going to pick up any book that if you pick it up and they claim to have some magic that nobody else has figured out in business, just throw it in the trash because you're going to go down a rabbit hole that isn't going to do anything.

So that's number one.

[Dave Cava] (23:31 - 26:13)
I feel like most MSPs really don't focus on the business side of the business nearly enough that they are focused on tech. They're focused on whatever the problem is that's right in front of them. They're focused on employees.

They're focused on keeping clients happy, but they're not focused on how to make money and how to grow the business in terms of strategy. And it shows because the whole idea behind the pumpkin plan is that you need to narrow your focus and then you can have explosive growth. And most MSPs have a lot of plans.

They have a lot of different kinds of clients. They do all in managed services. They do hourly stuff.

They do projects. They do co-managed. And they don't know, Sean quotes Michael Porter all the time, you don't have a strategy until you know what to say no to, right?

They don't say no to much of anything. And you can't be great at anything if you're trying to do everything. And there's a lot of MSPs that are doing the tech support equivalent of trying to do everything.

And they're wondering why they just can't catch on. And they think if they can just sell more of anything, that it will lead them to greater success. And the whole idea behind the pumpkin plan is that figure out what your best at.

Figure out what your best client avatar is. Build process around the services you can deliver best for the clients who fit you best and stay in that lane. Stay away from distractions.

Get rid of clients that don't fit. And ride down the highway. That's the pumpkin plan in a nutshell.

And when we're speaking, we describe it as there's seven steps in the book. There's three steps we use when we talk that really consolidate all of them. It's seed, weed and feed.

The seed is that sweet spot, that thing you're best at and people that are your best clients. The weed part is getting rid of bad clients and avoiding shying objects. And the feed part is just building process and marketing to your strengths.

So like Sean said, none of it is this incredible, it's the Kung Fu Panda. There is no secret. But most MSPs don't do that.

A lot of it comes down to fear. They're worried they don't have enough business. They're worried about losing business.

So they'll sell anything to anyone and they'll price it at a price point they can sell it at instead of one that will make them a profit. They don't even know.

[Shawn Walsh] (26:14 - 27:26)
Yeah, I think the other thing, Marvin, is that with MSPs, a lot of what I see is that MSPs tend to let the tail wag the dog. And that's the thing that the book can teach them not to do. And by that, I mean, like I saw a post on social media and somebody said, hey, I need to find a new piece of software to add to my stack that does this because this client I'm trying to sign up this client and they're insisting that I do this this way and change my process.

So I need software to change that process. And I'm thinking, what are you doing? Walk away.

You don't change your process because one person says, I want it this way. You go to the client, you say, I'm the expert. This is the right way to do it.

This is how we manage your environment. Would you like it managed properly or not? You have your stack and you sell to people who are willing to buy what you have and what you know well.

And if the person says, no, I want you to change this, you don't go running around and start changing your process and introducing new software packages to your team that they don't know how to run. You say, well, thank you very much for your time. But obviously, we're not a fit.

Thank you.

[Dave Cava] (27:26 - 27:35)
Imagine you go to a doctor and saying, this is how I'd like you to treat me. You know, you go to the doctor and say, I don't know. I don't know how to be treated.

[Uncle Marv] (27:36 - 27:52)
That's changing, Dave. You know, there is this thing called WebMD and the Internet and stuff. People Google all their symptoms before they go to the doctor.

Just like just like our clients, just like our clients Google how to fix my PC before they call right.

[Shawn Walsh] (27:54 - 28:06)
Yeah. But I guess if you walk in with, let's say, a liver problem and the doctor says, well, I'm a kidney specialist, they don't say, well, the kidney specialist, but I'll give this a shot today.

[Uncle Marv] (28:06 - 28:09)
Yeah, that is true. That is true.

[Shawn Walsh] (28:09 - 28:11)
They send you down the road to the right specialist.

[Uncle Marv] (28:11 - 28:35)
Yeah, that is true. Now, you guys, you mentioned the whole thing about the shiny object syndrome. And, you know, we talk about it all the time.

I interview vendors in the show, so I'm going to be careful how I say this. But our vendors sometimes are guilty of telling us what they think we need without asking us what our clients need.

[Shawn Walsh] (28:37 - 30:37)
Better yet. And again, you know, we're friendly with a lot of vendors. And I mean this, you know, they do it with the best of intentions.

But if one of the things that I ask every client to read before they come on is a white paper by Michael Porter, who Dave mentioned, he's a Harvard business professor that is considered the modern godfather of strategy. And I asked them to read a paper called What is Strategy? And the first time I read it, I was working on my MBA.

And at the time, I was already in the MSP space. And I'm reading this going, wow, they must have written this about technology companies, because they were talking about the progression of companies. And they said, what happens as an industry matures, they start preaching about best practices.

But what they don't tell you is that the best practices are better for the vendors than they are for the practitioners. And they seem good. But what it does is it kind of puts everybody on the same playing field, and it causes things to be commoditized.

And then what happens is, the practitioner or the MSP gets caught between the vendor's profitability increasing, the client wanting a lower price, and they're the ones caught in the squeeze. And when I read this, I thought, holy cow, this is exactly what's going on here. And it turned out that the original version of the paper had been written in the early 80s or end of the 70s.

And they weren't talking about our industry at all. So this is something that all industries go through. It's universal.

But what happens is those best practices are often better for the vendor than they are for the person that they're giving them to. And that's not true with all of them. There are certainly foundational practices that everybody should use in the industry.

But you got to be careful as to who is this benefiting at this point? And is there a better way to do it? So as with anything else, you should always be questioning.

[Dave Cava] (30:37 - 31:25)
Right. We're an industry of engineers, right? So I mean, I think a lot of the shiny object evaluation is looked at from the standpoint of, will this help me deliver a better solution?

Will it work better if I use this thing? And the question of, how does this impact the whole business? You know, is this the right decision for my company, which is created to make a profit and employ people and give me a good life?

You know, they're not even looking at those things. They're looking at, they're looking at, you know, can this do something that's going to help me and my clients, you know, in a technical sense and an engineering sense. And there's this disconnect between the technology side and the business side.

[Uncle Marv] (31:25 - 31:59)
Yeah. So let's do this real quick, because I know that we can talk about the book a lot. We can talk about the concepts in the book, but I want to mention to everybody listening that this isn't your day job, becoming authors and getting rich, that you guys do this for a living in terms of coaching MSPs and your company Encore Strategic does that.

So real quick, I'll have the link to the website in the notes but tell the listeners real quick about Encore Strategic.

[Shawn Walsh] (32:00 - 32:39)
Encore Strategic, I started it the year after I sold my MSP. I've always come from a teaching background. I've taught in college.

I've taught different levels of grade school. So I knew I wanted to go into a teaching space. And what we, we started out with peer groups and then direct consulting.

And then when Dave sold his company, he and I were talking and I said, hey, why don't you come on board with us? And Dave started up our recruiting division. So our three core services that we offer are peer groups, direct consulting, and what we call recruiting a service.

I'll let Dave talk a little more to it.

[Dave Cava] (32:39 - 34:00)
It took, it really took a couple of years for us to figure out how that offering is a cohesive one that fits together. And at this point, we're more comfortable than ever because really what we're doing is helping MSPs to get unstuck, get healthy and scale up. And so when I talk about doing recruiting, you know, I don't even like using the word because people have such a negative connotation about recruiting and recruiters.

You know, we say, you know, you hate headhunters. We do too. You know, we're really coming from a position where we're functioning more like a company's internal recruiting department than a traditional recruiter.

It's part of a broader offering and it's all very consultative. You know, Sean and I tell people, you know, of course we're in business to make money, but we're in this business because we love helping people. And we're not going to do something that we think is bad for your company because you're going to give us money to do it.

You know, on multiple occasions, we've had people come to us and say, I need X, Y, Z position, you know, and we've said, no, you don't, you know, let's run through your org chart. You know, you're about to double down on a mistake you've been making for five years. And that's why you're in such a desperate situation, you know, and people aren't open to that.

That's okay. But that's us being us. We're here to help companies not do transactions.

[Shawn Walsh] (34:02 - 35:08)
I often say that on the recruiting, and it was funny because the first year we did it, I insisted that we not call it recruiting. And we tried and everybody got confused and they go, well, what are you doing? And finally, we just say, we do recruiting, but we do it differently.

So we had to go back to using the word recruiting. But what I try to tell people is we don't fill seats. We build teams.

We don't come in and do a one-off. So if you just say, I want this one position filled, we're usually not going to engage in that. What we want to do is we want to come in and take over the hiring process because we're helping you to build a cohesive team that will work together because we're teaching you how to hire people based on your core values and based on your company culture and based on the candidates being hungry, humble, smart, as opposed to having a very specific skill set.

Because I can teach you a skill set. I can't teach you how to be motivated. I can't teach you how to show up on time, things like that.

But more so, we want to bring in candidates that are going to be cohesive with the team that you have in place.

[Dave Cava] (35:09 - 36:24)
And whether it's in the peer group side or the recruiting side, so much of what we do is forcing these people who almost never think about the big picture to think about the big picture. What are you trying to build here? How does this fit into what you're trying to build?

Does this help you to get where you're trying to get? Or does it just plug a hole and there's going to be two more holes that break in the dam the next day? We're trying to get them to think scalability.

And the industry is changing in that more and more people are starting to think that way. I think Evolve has been instrumental. Arlen's been on a crusade to get people to think about their exit far in advance.

We're very much on board with that crusade because you'll never get to where you want to get if you're not thinking about where do I want to get to and how do I get there? There's a lot of businesses that are run one day at a time when you have to do that, but it has to be in the context of, okay, what am I trying to do in the next seven years? How does this fit the 10-year, five-year, one-year, three-month, one-week plans that you need?

[Uncle Marv] (36:24 - 36:41)
Yeah. So getting businesses to stop working in the same mindset that they had when they were W-2s starting a business and they're running their business paycheck to paycheck the same way they were working in the business before. So great point there.

[Shawn Walsh] (36:41 - 36:41)
Absolutely.

[Dave Cava] (36:42 - 37:35)
I remember doing fine doing that, but they're leaving so much potential on the table. The latest stats came out said 27% of MSPs are losing money. There's another significant block behind that that's in the lowest single digits of profitability.

And this is not a hard business to make a good living on, to become well-off in. It's a hard business, but it's not hard to do right if that makes any sense if you're following best practices and principles and pricing for profitability and you know who you are and that's how you're going to market. Hey, who are you?

What do you have? Oh, I can fix it. That's really not going to get it done in terms of a solid long-term company.

You don't build things that way.

[Shawn Walsh] (37:36 - 39:32)
And Marvin, one of the things you just said is that people do it day to day and they're not really thinking about the future. And I tell a story of when we had somebody come to us that had a very unfortunate family situation and really couldn't go on with their business. And we had to tell them that I'm sorry, but your business isn't worth near what you think it's worth.

And you're either going to have to stay on or just let it go. And I don't ever want to have that conversation again. And what we try to explain to people is that we're all going to have a last day in our company.

And we all think that we're going to pick the day. At some point, we're going to say, okay, now I'm ready to retire. And it's going to be six months from now on a Tuesday.

And we're going to plan that day out. And the reality is we don't pick the day, the day picks us. And because of that, our goal is to always have our clients' companies in the best possible condition to sell that they can be in at any given time, even if they have no intention of selling it.

Because if the company is valuable to a buyer, then you're running a great company and you can keep on running it. Or if something changes, you can sell it. And sometimes the day chooses you in a very positive way.

I mean, I had a great offer put in front of me four years before I intended to leave. And Isaiah, my wife took one look at the offer letter and looked at me and said, time to go. And other people have had to leave because of crisis situations.

And you always want to, and I mean, that was Dave's scenario. But you always want to know that that business is in the best possible condition. Because for many people, it's your first or second most valuable asset.

So make sure that if the day does choose you, that it's going to at least end positively from a financial transaction.

[Dave Cava] (39:33 - 39:51)
And we did, in my company, we did enough right, that we have a good story to tell, that sounds impressive and everything else. But when I look back and think about all the things we could have done better, it could have been so much more. There's this living vicariously through other people and wanting to see them get the things right that we got wrong.

[Uncle Marv] (39:52 - 40:11)
Absolutely. All right. So you guys are now teaching us the things we need to do better.

So let me ask two more questions. The first one will be how are you guys implementing the Pumpkin Plan for Managed Service Providers into Encore Strategic?

[Dave Cava] (40:12 - 42:38)
Oh, that's a tough one, Marv. That wasn't on the prep sheet, buddy. We've had many interesting conversations that involve the phrase eating our own dog food.

It's been such a wild experience. You know, when I sold my company, I had 45 employees, right? I mean, and then going back into what is essentially a late stage startup, you know, the last few years of Encore and saying, I used to have all these people that could do all this stuff for me.

And now I've got to figure out how to do it myself. And how does the Pumpkin Plan play into a coaching and recruiting company that isn't an MSP, but has a lot of the same principles apply? How do we eat our own dog food?

So, you know, Sean can speak to the budgeting that we've done. But a lot of it is trying to build those processes from the very beginning. You know, on the recruiting side of things, I tried to say, you know, when I was in my MSP, I did what everyone else does.

And I did everything the first few years. You know, I did tech work. I did sales calls, I did, I caught the toilets.

I mean, I did account management, I did anything there was to do. I did it. And when we started recruiting, I said, before we before we take our first assignment, we're going to document the way we do everything.

And we're going to research it, and we're going to we're going to get a process in place. And I'm happy to say that the first last week was the first time I didn't interview myself in two years. You know, because we have recruiters that have a process, know exactly what to do.

And they're extremely competent, but we make it easy for them to be competent. You know, they just have to have the right the right insights and the right personality because the process is there. So we've tried to build processes from the beginning.

You know, the hard part is, like everybody else, Sean and I tend towards the things we're comfortable with and like to do, right? So over time, part of that eating your own dog food is saying, you know, is it best for the business that that we keep doing these things, you know, and we're working through that, you know, we very much are applying the pumpkin plan to our business. But it's one thing to read a book and another thing to live out the process in real life.

And we're working on it, you know, is the honest answer.

[Shawn Walsh] (42:39 - 44:22)
Yeah, man, we're not perfect. I mean, the second time around doesn't mean you don't make mistakes. But if you're smart about it, it is.

It does mean you recover from the mistakes a lot faster. And the learning cycle, the loop that you go through from making the mistake to learning that it was a mistake, to how to correct the mistake, to doing it right. That cycle goes a lot faster the second time around if you're if you're honest with yourself.

And I think Dave and I are brutally honest with ourselves and with one another and makes for some very interesting company meetings sometimes. But, you know, I think we always, you know, we're very our entire team is very comfortable with calling each other out and saying, hey, you shouldn't be doing that. Or, hey, we know better than that.

Or why don't we have this person do it? Because they're going to be the best fit for that. And, you know, we started out the year with a solid marketing plan.

We sell whether we started out with a budget, which I preach in the book, and I preach to all the companies I work with that if you're running a company, and you don't have a good detailed budget and sales forecast, it's like trying to get to a destination without a map or a GPS and hoping you're going to get there. And, you know, profit should not be something you hope for, it should be something you plan on. And but, but no, I think we I think we do a good job of eating our own dog food.

Like I said, it doesn't make us perfect. It doesn't make keep us from making mistakes. But it does allow us to be very brutally honest with our with our assessment of ourselves and the company.

[Dave Cava] (44:24 - 45:26)
One of the things that we talk about in coaching and peer groups is when you're 10 people, you really want a service team that runs itself, that the owner is not stuck in the middle of everything, right? And you want to structure your team for that you want to plan for that, right? So what does that look like for us?

That's something that we have been working through the entire time, you know, and it's, like I said, it's hard, because we have the same issues, letting go of things as other people. And then you got to get the right bodies in and you got to have processes in place for them. And it's, it's, it's no different.

And in some ways, it's a little harder, because we know how to do that with an MSP, but we're not an MSP. Right? So what does that look like when you're doing the things that we do?

It looks a little different. But yeah, we are we are, it definitely gives us sympathy for our clients, because, you know, we're like, okay, it's, it's, it's much easier to know what to do and execute on it, right? That's why it's so much fun being a consultant.

But we got to execute on it, too.

[Uncle Marv] (45:27 - 46:17)
All right, nice. So I'm going to circle back with a one a question, because I didn't mean to throw you guys for such a loop. But I want to, I want to give us a little breather here before we come back.

So what I did prepare you for was some of the key takeaways that I thought were from the book, and I want to see if I left anything out. So of course, I put in focus on your most profitable and promising clients, remove or weed out those that are less promising, streamline your operations, remove distractions, identify and leverage your biggest strengths and competitive advantages, and then create a company culture and processes that support your growth sales. Anything I missed?

[Dave Cava] (46:18 - 48:24)
I think there's something that undergirds all those things, right? So many MSPs, because we're not, we're not trained as business people, right? We haven't become, you know, shown as an MBA, that's unusual, you know, that most, most of us know.

And I think most MSP owners tend to run their business from a place of fear, you know, there, I hope this works, I hope that works. You know, I need more revenue, I can't lose this revenue. And, and the more confident they get about what they're doing, the more their business becomes operationally mature, and really has a chance of taking off.

So at some point, there's just a switch to flip that says, I'm not going to operate from a place of fear, I'm going to operate from a place of confidence, I'm not going to be afraid of getting rid of this bad client, I'm not going to be afraid of trying this thing, I'm not going to be afraid of firing this person. And just moving forward, you know, with the belief that what you're, what you believe is going to work best is going to work, you know, there, there's a mindset there that needs to, to change, you know, you got it's, it's so trite, but you really need to believe, you need to believe in yourself and what you're doing, and not allow circumstances to dictate the way that you run your business too much.

It really is a total mindset shift. And if you see how bigger success, successful companies do things, they're a lot less worried about, you know, this could go wrong, or that could go wrong, or how do I kick the world's butt, you know, and that's a that's a mindset. You know, when I'm playing softball, and I think, I can't miss this, I can’t pop it up.

And I get up there and say, I'm just going to crush this thing. It things go different, you know, and more MSP owners need to get up there and say, I'm going to crush this, I'm going to make some mistakes along the way. But that's okay, because I'm going to get there.

And I'm going to, I'm going to develop a plan, I'm going to execute on it. Everything goes different. You know, it starts, it starts in the mind.

[Shawn Walsh] (48:26 - 49:34)
And to that, it has to start from a position of lifelong learning, you have to be willing, if you want to go on this journey, and you want to go work through that process, Marvin, like you just laid it out and improve your business, you need to be prepared to be learning the entire way. I'm still learning right now. I mean, and so was Dave.

And, but there's so many things I learned along the way, but some of it, you know, a lot of the problems when they happened early on, I was very quick to say, Oh, I got the wrong person over here, that was going on over here. And what I really needed to do was learn to look in the mirror and say, Hey, you're the one who's supposed to be leading the ship, you know, you know, maybe you need to improve first. And so, you know, you you've got to be willing to be a very hard critic on yourself, first and foremost, before everybody around you and make sure that you're taking the right steps and, and learning the things that you need to learn to be a good leader and a good business person.

[Dave Cava] (49:34 - 49:53)
I think the bottlenecks most MSPs is the owner, and that was me. And that was Sean. And, you know, we say that not to point a finger, but because it's true, and competencies we were there, are not are not opposites, you know, you really need ego does not fill your 401k.

[Shawn Walsh] (49:54 - 49:58)
So suck it up a bit when you're wrong and fix it.

[Uncle Marv] (49:59 - 50:49)
That is so true. And just the concept of leaving the ego at the door. And if you have to say I'm sorry to a client, they appreciate that appreciate that so much more.

Guys, this is absolutely fantastic. I appreciate your taking the time to come on the show. I will tell people so there's a couple of places you can get the book.

You guys have it on your site. I've got a link to the Amazon page, the pumpkin plan for managed service providers, the subtitle, which we didn't talk about the roadmap to MSP prosperity, how the right focus leads to real freedom. And of course, I think the book lays out a very nice, simple framework for MSPs to grow their business in a sustainable way.

[Shawn Walsh] (50:50 - 50:55)
So thank you. And thank you for having us. Thank you for having us, Marvin.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

[Uncle Marv] (50:55 - 51:06)
It's been great, guys. And we'll look forward to it. Is there anything else coming after the book?

Is there going to be an addendum, a workbook, workshops? What's coming next?

[Dave Cava] (51:06 - 51:21)
So we have the audio. So we hope to have a few months. You know, we've got we've got a pretty heavy trial schedule.

The next couple of months, my daughter's getting married in July. Oh, congrats on the schedule because we get asked about it all the time.

[Shawn Walsh] (51:21 - 52:16)
So, yeah, we've had several requests for the audio book. We do have workshops coming out. They will be on our website shortly.

We're just firming updates, but we're going to be doing a series of pumpkin plan, your MSP workshops. We do have one currently scheduled for London coming up June 2nd and 3rd. I believe it is Tuesday, Wednesday, 4th and 5th.

OK, 4th and 5th. It's Tuesday, Wednesday. It'll be in London.

And that will be the first of that. And as Dave said, we'll be working on the audio book. And we've already been batting around some ideas for a follow up follow up book or two now that we've now that we've learned the process.

But I don't know that we'll have that. But I don't know that we'll have the fee of the deadlines on this one to keep us as focused as we were on this one.

[Dave Cava] (52:16 - 52:40)
Well, you'll write a book and I think it would be easier the second time around. But the fact that we brought it together and it was the first time for both of us and we wanted to put out something that was real quality, you know, it took us over a year to get that done. So before we start, you know, digging into follow ups, there's a little bit of let's squeeze all the life we can out of this one, you know.

So absolutely.

[Uncle Marv] (52:40 - 53:03)
Well, there will be a community of managed service providers to help you do that whichever way you go, squeeze stuff out and congratulate you and push you to the next one. So we'll be looking forward to that. Hope you guys come back and give us an update.

But Sean Walsh, Dave Kaba from Encore Strategic. Thank you guys for coming on the show.

[Shawn Walsh] (53:04 - 53:05)
Thanks, Marvin.

[Uncle Marv] (53:05 - 53:27)
All right, listeners, that's going to do it. You'll find all the notes on the show page in your favorite pod catcher or head over to itbusinesspodcast.com and subscribe and find out whenever we release a podcast, whether it's audio or the live show. That's going to do it for this episode.

We'll see you soon. And until next time, Holla!