641 MSP Success Story: Unbound Digital

[Uncle Marv] (0:27 - 4:49)
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the ITV. The ITV business podcast. And yes, I am back at the home office.

Some of you probably saw me on the social media in Orlando at IT Nation. I drove back today, not just because of you guys, but I had to do some work and had to see the wife and all that stuff. But I am here and the show must go on.

I would give you just a brief recap of that, excuse me. Tonight's guests are going to be the Millers and not the ones that you saw from the movie Running Drugs in New Mexico, but the Millers from Tennessee near Johnson City. And we're going to chat about what makes a successful MSP.

And let's see here. If you saw the opening clips on the video, you will have noticed a little change. We have added a new sponsor to the mix.

TruGrid is now a podcast partner. So they joined the ranks of NetAlly and Super Ops. And of course, you can see them on the website over at ITBusinessPodcast.com.

Click on the sponsor page or you can do slash TruGrid and right now it just goes to the home page and we'll see if we can get anything more specific to get you guys a discount or something. I haven't asked, so I don't know. We shall see.

And let's see here. Of course, Super Ops is sponsoring our mug for this evening. I have my typical pineapple juice.

I have been speaking three days nonstop, so I need a little bit of stuff for the throat. So thank you to Super Ops for that. IT Nation.

Let me tell you, folks, it is the event you think it is. This one was IT Nation Secure. They have IT Nation Connect coming up in November.

This one was all about security. And the big announcement, if you read my blog or any of the news out there, they came out with their ConnectWise Secure 360 and basically trying to come at security from all the different angles. They had several announcements about Sidekick.

And that is their integration along with ASIO, where everything is going to be tied together. And we're not just talking integrations and APIs. We're talking about if you're using the RMM, if you're using the security suite, if you're using backup.

I don't know what other tools they have, but every tool that they have, if you need assistance, there's going to be a little Sidekick AI that will come up and assist, provide you access to knowledge base articles, probably previous technician notes if they came across a similar problem, all those sorts of stuff. So that is a big announcement from ConnectWise. If you are in the family, you know a lot more about it.

If you are not in the family, go to ConnectWise.com, check out all the stuff there. I've got several interviews with some of the CEO brass, a lot of the C-level execs there. I think I got five ConnectWise folks.

And then, of course, we got some other folks. We got Thread, who was last year's Pitch It winner for IT Nation. They are also sponsoring the Vendor Pitch It podcast that I will be doing, same thing as last year.

I'll be interviewing all of the participants in the contest. Thread is the sponsor for those episodes, and they also are sponsoring the travel banner that I've got. So you'll see some of the logos there when you see those videos, because some are going to be video, some are going to be audio.

I had a crappy day with the video on the first day, but I got it working on day two and three, so I will apologize to those that came in on the first day. The audio is great, just no video. But we'll figure it out, and it'll be better.

And then next week, I'll be at PAX 8 Beyond in Denver, and the Millers will be there, too. We'll have a fun time out there. So I think that's all the big news.

If not, we'll mention it later, but right now, let's go ahead and bring up the Millers. There they are, Jason and Rachel. How are you guys?

What's going on? Oh, not much. You heard what's going on with me.

What's going on with you?

[Rachel Miller] (4:52 - 4:52)
Busy.

[Uncle Marv] (4:52 - 4:53)
Busy? Yes, very busy.

[Rachel Miller] (4:54 - 5:01)
Got a kid at camp, got a kid trying out for high school baseball, got a kid doing, that kid also doing travel baseball, so.

[Uncle Marv] (5:02 - 5:03)
Okay, that has nothing to do with work.

[Rachel Miller] (5:04 - 5:07)
No, but that's what I have to do outside of work.

[Jason Miller] (5:07 - 5:24)
All right. So let's rush and leave work and go do family stuff, but yeah, work's definitely busy, too. So we've been dealing with all the crazy update breaking issues we've had, and Autodesk decided to also break stuff, and our techs are about to kill somebody, so.

[Uncle Marv] (5:25 - 5:34)
Everybody wants to break stuff now. My enable got broke two weeks ago, so how bad was the Autotask breakage?

[Jason Miller] (5:35 - 5:41)
Not Autotask, Autodesk. Autodesk? Yeah, like the CAD products, so Autodesk.

[Uncle Marv] (5:41 - 5:42)
Oh, it's cozy out there.

[Jason Miller] (5:43 - 6:04)
Yeah, so they have an issue with their updater that was breaking, like locking computers every 15 minutes. I had one engineering firm that I thought was going to kill us, but we were able to solve those issues. One of my guys worked all weekend long to figure out a fix for it.

We ended up bopping and reloading a couple computers, fixed a few. Finally, I think we got to the bottom of the issue finally with that, but it's Autodesk updater being stupid.

[Uncle Marv] (6:04 - 6:13)
Now, are they working off of the Autodesk cloud, or are they just signing in to log in and working on stuff local? Because I know that there is a significant difference.

[Jason Miller] (6:15 - 6:31)
Yeah, I mean, it is cloud, but cloud equals you still download apps. It's got a wrapper or whatever on it, but yeah, it's still got installed packages of several gigs, but it's not the full-on use to download AutoCAD. They're using Revit 360.

[Uncle Marv] (6:32 - 6:33)
Revit 360, yeah.

[Jason Miller] (6:33 - 6:43)
Yeah, 360, yeah, and then also using several other CAD products, about six different products from Autodesk. All right, well, that sounds like fun. Definitely not.

[Uncle Marv] (6:46 - 7:04)
So before we get into being a successful MSP, let's talk. I don't know that we've had a nice little discussion about all your new buildings and stuff. I know you've given bits and pieces of updates, but you're fully in there now, and has it been a year that you guys have been in the new building?

[Rachel Miller] (7:05 - 7:29)
Yes, we moved in middle of March of last year, so just over a year we've been in there, but we spent six months renovating it, pretty much took it all the way down to the studs because it was built in the 1970s. So the 1970s, and so it needed a lot of work. It had parquet flooring, it had wallpaper.

[Uncle Marv] (7:30 - 7:30)
Parquet.

[Rachel Miller] (7:31 - 7:43)
Yes, it was beautiful. It had red carpet, it had purple carpet, it also had asbestos flooring in it. So we spent more money renovating it than we purchased the building for.

[Uncle Marv] (7:44 - 7:47)
All right, that sounds like an HGTV episode.

[Rachel Miller] (7:48 - 8:05)
Yeah, if you want to call it that. I do have before and after pictures. We had an open house last month, or in April, for like a one year to kind of let everybody come in, and I had big posters made of what each room looked like before and after.

[Uncle Marv] (8:06 - 8:15)
All right. Now, we should probably tell everybody, you guys are kind of a hybrid. You still have a store, sort of.

Got rid of the store?

[Jason Miller] (8:17 - 8:42)
Five years ago or something, we got rid of residential. Yeah, we don't have a storefront at all. I mean, you walk in and we have a front desk.

Yeah, we used to do residential back in the day. That's kind of how we started, residential. We did an MSP model many years ago, and then probably five years ago, I guess, we got rid of residential, sold that part of our business off to another local IT guy that does nothing but residential, so that worked out well.

[Uncle Marv] (8:43 - 8:43)
Okay.

[Jason Miller] (8:43 - 8:55)
And we still have people to this day. I think we had one today that walked in with a personal computer, and we're like, oh, sorry, you don't have a business? Call this guy.

So we turned them away. We don't want to do residential work at all. Okay.

[Rachel Miller] (8:55 - 9:06)
So our last shop, we still had like an area that looked like a showroom, like a shop area. We just didn't spend money converting it, but when we moved into this building, there's no products in the lobby.

[Uncle Marv] (9:06 - 9:17)
All right. I do remember the other location looked like a store, so. All right.

But did you have customers come to the open house, hang out, just show them around, give them the tour?

[Rachel Miller] (9:18 - 9:51)
We did. We had the chamber come because it was formerly the Johnson City Chamber of Commerce building. So the chamber come, and they kind of held the ribbon, so it made it look like they were handing over the brains from us to them, and they wanted to see what it looked like.

So we had like an MC come out there, and we had people come and take pictures, and we had customers stop by, and then just, you know, anybody in the community could come by. So it was a big event, so.

[Uncle Marv] (9:52 - 9:56)
All right. Jason, what were your duties during the open house?

[Jason Miller] (9:58 - 10:23)
MC did all the talking. He goes, hey, say something. So I said a little something, and then we cut the ribbon.

You know, it's kind of nice to actually have an MC there. Bud's trivia, so he does a lot of trivia. He flies back and forth to California doing trivia, too.

But it's kind of cool. He's a really great announcer, so it really worked out well to have somebody there who spoke way better than I would have. I'm pretty good at speaking, but he did a really good job.

[Uncle Marv] (10:23 - 10:23)
Yeah.

[Jason Miller] (10:24 - 10:28)
So it kind of took a little burden off me. I just kind of showed up, cut a ribbon. Hey, there we go.

[Rachel Miller] (10:28 - 10:39)
We had food catered in. We had cookies with our logo on it. That was kind of cool.

I couldn't, unfortunately, stay because it was eighth grade baseball night, so I literally cut the ribbon and ran. So.

[Jason Miller] (10:40 - 10:46)
Yeah. And we had quite a few people hang out, kind of network a little bit. You know, tour the place, tour the facility, check it out.

[Uncle Marv] (10:47 - 10:59)
All right. So you guys are going to have to let me ask this. You guys have a coach for your guy that's doing the baseball?

Are you paying for that private session stuff?

[Rachel Miller] (10:59 - 11:00)
No.

[Jason Miller] (11:00 - 11:06)
No. Not really. We've taken him to a few camps, you know, like catcher's camps.

Right. Travelable ways to do that.

[Uncle Marv] (11:06 - 11:09)
Any chance he'll get a scholarship for college?

[Jason Miller] (11:09 - 11:25)
I don't know. We'll see. I guess.

I mean, he's a really good catcher. I mean, he's my kid, so I have to say that. So he's a really good catcher.

He was the primary catcher for the eighth grade baseball team at school here, and he's primary catcher on his travel ball team. So he does really good at it.

[Uncle Marv] (11:25 - 11:34)
All right. So beyond the success, you know, your two years as the channel champion.

[Jason Miller] (11:36 - 11:37)
I got three this year. What are you talking about?

[Uncle Marv] (11:37 - 11:42)
Don't get ahead of your skis now. Slow down. Slow down.

[Jason Miller] (11:42 - 11:52)
No, no. I've got this. I'm begging for the vote.

I mean, asking for the votes now, you know. I've been doing my community championship stuff, you know, helping everybody out.

[Uncle Marv] (11:52 - 13:02)
All right. So I know that people, you know, a lot of people ask you guys for help and talk about, you know, the intricacies, the logistics of stuff, but I want to dig deep into the philosophy of what makes you guys successful. That's probably one of the things I spent, I don't know, probably an hour, maybe 45 minutes with somebody a couple of weeks ago asking about my success and how I made it, you know, 27 years doing this boutique thing in an industry where, you know, they want to chew us up and spit us out.

Now, you guys obviously are not in my situation, but I want to kind of get into the heart of, you know, going beyond those first days, you know, when you just, you know, just wanted to fix computers and be all that. But what was it that you think was the turning point when you said, you know what? We're going to crank this thing up and we're going to have, you know, however many people you have now, 15, 18, whatever, and do all this stuff.

Do you remember a turning point where you said, I'm going to make this happen?

[Jason Miller] (13:03 - 13:05)
What's the turning point? That's the problem.

[Rachel Miller] (13:06 - 13:32)
There was many. I would say the first one was when you lost your job, you had to figure out a way to make money. And it was just a way in the beginning for him to wait to make money.

But I would say probably the most pivotal thing. The most pivotal thing was probably when we got rid of residential. That changed our complete.

[Jason Miller] (13:35 - 13:39)
One second. Sorry. My son come home and slam the door on the house.

[Uncle Marv] (13:39 - 13:41)
I got you there.

[Jason Miller] (13:41 - 13:44)
I apologize. Try not to have those interruptions.

[Rachel Miller] (13:45 - 14:49)
But whenever residential, that made a huge turning point because residential was good for us to get our name in the community. And we got more customers that way because there's more residential people and things like that. But when we, but they also seem to take up a lot more time and not pay as much money.

Whereas we were able to turn our, turn our current staff into being able to bring in more revenue by being just business only. And so I think that was a big pivotal change for us and it was hard because we had so many customers and we were the, one of the main places in the Johnson city area for people to come for computer repair. And so we, and we had like a residential maintenance plan.

So we even had residential people on contract. So we had to calmly slowly let go of some of that reoccurring revenue just to solely focus on.

[Jason Miller] (14:49 - 15:39)
Right. And we had three employees dedicated just to residential. And I think part of the turning point was our systems, you know, like having a residential and business and same systems, slow this down and kept us, held us back.

As soon as we got rid of that residential, I mean, we skyrocketed. I mean, and we let go of a large chunk of revenue when we said, Hey, we're not going to do residentially anymore. I mean, we're fixing 200 plus computers a month through our residential office.

And when I let go of that as a big chunk, it's like, okay, now I've got three people that was dedicated residential. Now we got paid for them on the business side. So it's like, you are now a help desk guy and you are too.

So, you know, it's like one of those things you kind of change roles and super knowledgeable people. So it wasn't like they were jumping into something.

[Uncle Marv] (15:39 - 16:08)
Right now with your residential, I remember when I got started and I of course did a little bit of residential and there was a lot of having to keep inventory, keep spare parts, keep stuff around. I'm sure that that also played a part in having to keep all this stuff and looking around and seeing things that you haven't installed in a year, two years and stuff. So was that part of the thinking is we got to, we got to stop holding all this inventory.

[Rachel Miller] (16:09 - 16:44)
We still hold a lot of inventory. We hold different inventory now. There is some things that we had that we kept for residential that we still have in our office and we'll probably never use again.

Some old stuff. But with computers, there were so many different parts that you just couldn't stock everything. There were so many different types of memory and sizes and speeds.

The main things we kept were just hard drives and maybe some universal power adapters, but we couldn't keep screens.

[Jason Miller] (16:45 - 17:18)
I'm in a special order parts all the time, but I mean, we had shelves and shelves full of inventory, your cards, pieces, parts, network cards, cables, this, you know, but we, when the guy bought her out of residential business, we sold it to him. We also sold him a bunch of inventory too that we had stocked up there at a pretty decent deal. So we sold him a, you know, we had the old laptop graveyard of all kinds of broken laptops.

I mean, I probably sold him 200 laptops that were sitting on a shelf of parts. We would drop stuff like that. We just got rid of all that stuff.

So I freed up a lot of room. Let me tell you.

[Uncle Marv] (17:18 - 17:28)
So now you said screen repairs, were you guys really doing screen repairs and was it just laptops or were you also doing tablets and mobile devices?

[Jason Miller] (17:29 - 18:08)
We didn't really do tablets. We worked on iPads for a few minutes. That was very short lived, decided that's not what we want to do.

We worked on phones for a very short minute, decided that's not what we want to do. So we stuck to, you know, laptops, desktops, things like that. But yeah, we'd take a laptop all the way down and replace bezel screens, you know, the back, uh, the back, uh, you know, covers the, you know, palm rest, hinges, uh, motherboards, soldered power jacks.

I mean, we did the whole nine yards. I mean, we were full on, full on repair. I had two guys that soldered really well.

I can solder really well, uh, past life. But, um, you know, we do all that stuff. Full on repair is broke.

We fix it.

[Uncle Marv] (18:09 - 18:24)
Now you said that it, it was hard. I imagine that part of the reason it was hard is because these were neighbors, friends, people that you had serviced over the years and, and turning them away. How did that go over?

[Jason Miller] (18:25 - 19:11)
Uh, well, we sent out a letters and emails and stuff like that. And of course we got a lot of feedback like, no, you don't want to do that. And oh, you're also great.

We don't want to lose you and stuff like that. But you know, we had to make a business decision to do that. Um, like I said in the beginning, that large chunk of revenue, we're making a year and three people that were employed doing rent, nothing but residential.

It's like, okay, we're taking a huge risk to convert these three people to business. And I hope we get more business works, you know, but we've always, we've never had a year where we went down. We've always been going up, up, up, up every year.

So we weren't too worried, but you know, it's always a worry when you're cutting a lot of not only, you know, reoccurring revenue from the maintenance plans, but also reoccurring revenue from, you know, constantly fixing stuff.

[Uncle Marv] (19:12 - 19:18)
Yeah. But I mean, it was, it was there, but it wasn't necessarily guaranteed or consistent, right?

[Jason Miller] (19:20 - 19:55)
Uh, it's fairly consistent. I mean, you had your peaks and valleys for sure, but I mean, we were always busy. I mean, and you got to think in our area, uh, you know, we have the tri-cities area, there's probably 180,000 people.

Uh, so we're fixing consistently 200, you know, well, 180 to 250, depending on the month, um, computers through our office per month. So, I mean, it's pretty consistent. I mean, some months are better than others, of course, but, um, there wasn't really, there's like two other people that fix computers in our area.

You know, it's not like one of these big cities where you got 30 people on every block or anything like that. So.

[Uncle Marv] (19:56 - 20:02)
Yeah. I think we have like, uh, 150 here in Fort Lauderdale.

[Jason Miller] (20:02 - 20:14)
So it's a lot. Now MSP is here. We have probably like a dozen in the tri-cities area.

So it's not like, you know, tons and tons and tons. So, but there's also not as many people as you have. So.

[Uncle Marv] (20:14 - 20:25)
So that transition to MSP, uh, were there some businesses that were not on board that you had to either bring on board or pass on as well?

[Rachel Miller] (20:26 - 20:36)
We had a few, few businesses that were on our residential maintenance plan, which was very low price. What was it like? Was it 15 or $20 a month?

[Jason Miller] (20:36 - 20:41)
It's basically AB and patching 20, 20 bucks a month.

[Rachel Miller] (20:42 - 21:25)
So those, those people, we either, you know, they were more like home businesses or just like a single person, you know, some type of commission people. And so we just kind of said, you know, you either kind of have to go to our, our different model business model, get rid of the residential maintenance plan, or, you know, you can try and go to the gentleman we sold our business to and keep more of the residential side. And some people went to the residential, but then they would come right back and then they would pay for the business right now.

[Uncle Marv] (21:25 - 22:01)
Let me ask a question, I guess, financially, because I know that we've had you guys at tech con talk about the back office stuff and talk about it again, logistically, how you do stuff. But in terms of philosophically, do you guys subscribe to any of the systems like a profit first plan or, you know, any of the analytics, the KPIs and stuff? Or of running your business in this way to, you know, make sure you hit certain margins, make sure you're looking at EBITDA, all that stuff.

[Jason Miller] (22:02 - 22:43)
I think Rachel has the profit first plan. So she, she doesn't follow profit first, but she follows the Rachel's profit first plan. So that really helps our business out.

If it wasn't for Rachel, I mean, the money in the business, the way things flow, making sure the bills are paid, you know, all that good stuff. I mean, you know, she was an accountant and she's worked at many other businesses and CPAs and stuff like that. And first, and then, you know, as we grew, we brought her on to be our full-time accountant.

So having all that background and knowledge, it's helped us a lot, but she's always been good with money. So I think we don't follow a profit first type thing. I mean, what do you call it?

[Rachel Miller] (22:44 - 23:30)
It's the way they do it. They said open several bank accounts. I do my fictitiously in QuickBooks.

So I have multiple accounts that things are broken down to. I just don't have the physical bank accounts to do that. And then like I have, I withhold the money for taxes, for projects, for any large bill items.

So, you know, like our phone bills that's 40 grand a month or our PACS 8 bill, it's 20 grand a month. Every week I kind of take that money and move it over to be able to pay that bill when it comes due at the next month. So, but I just, like I said, fictitiously do it through different type of accounts within QuickBooks, instead of holding, having moving money constantly within the bank.

[Uncle Marv] (23:31 - 23:31)
Okay.

[Jason Miller] (23:32 - 25:43)
Yeah. She's very good at that. We get paid for a large project, you know, tens of thousands of dollars that deposit up front.

I always tell people don't be the bank. That's one of the lessons I've learned a long time ago. Don't be the bank.

If you take a project, we take a hundred percent of hardware up front, a hundred percent of network cabling. The only thing we charge after the fact is our labor, because I figured if I'm out my labor, that sucks, but I'm out labor. You know, if it's a large project, she takes that money, we're paid up front and sticks it in the account.

And then when the project's finally completed, it might be weeks, it might be a month later. That's when she moves that money into, we now have money from her project, you know, account. So it's not spent, not touched, nothing.

So our vendors are paid. Then we get the money that's left over, put into our main account. And then also she does savings.

So if you're a business, you should be saving. So that helps out a lot. What else?

And then as far as KPIs, you mentioned KPIs and tracking and this and that. We do, I guess not like a full on, like you would normally think KPIs. So we do have things like we have a dashboard up in our help desk of all of our technicians.

We've got 19 people total. So we've got all of our technicians on there. So in our help desk we have a kind of gamified a little bit.

They have a board of all the hours, ticket hours, billed for the week, the month, all that good stuff. Trying to keep up with what kind of hours they're doing. We do keep tabs on like the number of phone calls people have made, hold times, all that good stuff on our dashboards.

You know, we're not full on like we have a family atmosphere. So, I mean, I'm talking to every employee every day. You know, I come in one and I spend probably on a 30, 45 minutes of my morning talking to all of our guys, checking in on things, seeing what's going on.

You know, I'm not some boss that goes, sits in the tower, you know, looks down on everybody. You know, it's like, I want to make sure we got a hold on the business, make sure everybody's doing their job, have a good relationship with everybody there. You know, I give them the shirt off my back if they want it, you know what I'm saying, if they need it.

We've helped people out in the past with different things, you know, when they need to rise. They've helped me out with things when they need to rise, you know, so it's give and take a little bit. So, but yeah, it's kind of, like I said, family atmosphere.

We do keep really close in relationships with everybody.

[Uncle Marv] (25:44 - 26:20)
All right. So two things I wanted to go back and ask about, but I'll start with the KPIs and stuff. So even though you have dashboards up, do you have some sort of efficiency chart that you're looking at in terms of, you know, this hour, you know, these employees need to be so, you know, 80% efficient with their time or things of that nature?

Do you have like allocations of how much is spent in your PSA with regards to, you know, MSA work, project work, hardware sales, stuff like that.

[Jason Miller] (26:21 - 27:23)
We do have that kind of broken down a little bit. Now as far as the employee side, the employee side first, we do have these things that we look at and I'm sure there's some IT guy out there or business. It's like, you should be hardcore looking at this stuff.

But really and truly, I feel like I have a pulse on what people are doing because I'm talking to them all the time. I see what they're doing all the time. I can see if you're goofing off.

I can see if you're doing your job, you know? So, and at the end of the day, I want somebody that's going to be there that can keep our customers happy, that can do a good job. And sometimes the guy that doesn't bill as many hours keeps our customers happier.

You know what I'm saying? So it's like, he may not put all of this time in and he may spend two hours with this customer, but we retain people, you know, we have a really good retention rate. So it's one of those give and takes in my mind.

I mean, yeah, you can KPI this to death. You can crack the whip on somebody. You need to build 10 more hours this week, whatever you want to do.

But like I said, that's not how we run our business. I do want to pulse on it. I want to see what's happening, but that is not the, that's not determining your raise.

That's not determining if you're having a job or not, you know what I'm saying?

[Uncle Marv] (27:25 - 27:48)
All right. And then Rachel, you talked about the fact that you, you do the fictitious accounts and it sounds like it's more of an envelope system, you know, where you just make sure you've got money allocated for these things. Makes it a little hard though, at the reconciliation time, you still got to count those numbers and make sure they match the bank statement.

Right?

[Rachel Miller] (27:49 - 27:49)
Yeah. And they do.

[Jason Miller] (27:50 - 27:55)
Oh, if it's a penny off, she spent hours before to make sure something's right.

[Rachel Miller] (27:55 - 28:22)
Yeah. So, I mean, I even reconcile the accounts at the end of the month because ultimately whatever is, so I have a holding account and once, so I put a hundred thousand dollars, say in my holding account. And then the next month I take, you know, 20,000 out, 50,000 out, then take 30,000 out.

Then I go back. Those will offset each other once the job is complete.

[Uncle Marv] (28:22 - 28:26)
Right. Are you using QuickBooks?

[Rachel Miller] (28:27 - 28:29)
I'm using QuickBooks online. Yes.

[Jason Miller] (28:29 - 28:38)
And we use other tasks as our PSA, which we do all of our billing through that. Okay. QuickBooks as well.

So like every time we invoice somebody, it's in QuickBooks.

[Rachel Miller] (28:39 - 28:55)
Nobody, I will tell you, people probably could not come into my accounting system and understand what I've done, but I do reconcile it every month because I have to have to create an entry to zero it out. And then I create another entry to start it at the next month.

[Uncle Marv] (28:56 - 28:59)
So your general ledger is a mess is what you're saying.

[Rachel Miller] (29:00 - 29:00)
No, it's great.

[Uncle Marv] (29:01 - 29:07)
I mean, it's not a mess, but it just, somebody coming in is going to look at it and be like, why in the world is all this here?

[Rachel Miller] (29:08 - 29:08)
Yes.

[Uncle Marv] (29:08 - 29:32)
Because it's going to be so many cancellations. Now you guys are probably in audit territory where, you know, you make the amount of money where one day either your, you know, state tax sales, tax company may come in and audit you or God forbid Uncle Sam. So, you know, if one of those people had to come in, how would you describe this, this, the system to them?

[Rachel Miller] (29:32 - 29:44)
I mean, it'd be just like having another bank account. I mean, it's just, I mean, it even has its own name within the system that it goes in and out of. It's just transfers between the two accounts.

[Jason Miller] (29:44 - 29:54)
Well, most people wouldn't be looking at every single transaction there. I mean, typically P&L or sales tax report or something printed off. I'm sure we could, you know, satisfy the sales tax.

[Uncle Marv] (29:54 - 30:04)
Yeah. I mean, they're going to look at, you know, income and then a couple of invoices. They'll probably want to look at assets and all that stuff.

As long as there's no cancellations, you know, in that regard.

[Rachel Miller] (30:05 - 30:07)
It's only between bank accounts.

[Uncle Marv] (30:07 - 30:07)
Yeah.

[Rachel Miller] (30:08 - 30:09)
The cancellations are only within those.

[Jason Miller] (30:10 - 30:32)
Okay. Yeah. And our stuff's always on the up and up.

We're not no cash under the table or any of those crazy things. I mean, all of our stuff is run through the business properly, you know, so audit, I wouldn't be afraid of an audit. She's awesome.

It's counting, you know, does it right. So I don't think that'd be a big deal. It's just always frustrating, but we don't talk about these things.

That's when stuff happens and you talk about it.

[Uncle Marv] (30:32 - 30:32)
Okay.

[Jason Miller] (30:33 - 30:35)
So if I get audited next week, I'm blaming you.

[Uncle Marv] (30:37 - 30:42)
Hey, you'll be ready for it. Yeah. It's just frustrating.

[Rachel Miller] (30:42 - 30:51)
But I mean, I mean, you're talking about it's moving the money within. I mean, it'd be just like having a bank account within there. I mean, having the account.

I mean, you'd be making a lot of transfers.

[Uncle Marv] (30:52 - 31:11)
Well, I mean, if you had the physical bank accounts, it would probably make it more, you know, of an issue, because then they would definitely have to check, okay, did this money actually transfer. But within the system itself, no big deal. Bank statements here, they all match, income, outgo, you know.

[Jason Miller] (31:11 - 31:24)
Yeah. And she's pretty good because at the end of the year, I mean, it takes her like a day or two, and she's handing the stuff off to our CPA firm to do the taxes. You know, it isn't like a big ordeal to put it all together if you do it together the rest of the year.

[Uncle Marv] (31:24 - 31:51)
Yeah. We've got, I don't know, I've got about ten reports I print and send off, and then they send back a list of, here, put these adjustments in your general ledger. And of course, you know, our biggest issue is state tax down here, because we've got 67 counties that all decide they want to charge different rates because they have surcharges.

So you guys probably don't have that up there.

[Jason Miller] (31:53 - 31:57)
No, we don't have state tax. We have sales tax, but we don't have a state income tax.

[Uncle Marv] (31:57 - 32:04)
Yeah. Well, we don't have income tax, but each county can charge their own surcharge for sales tax.

[Jason Miller] (32:05 - 32:13)
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we do kind of have that. If there's a state sales tax, then the counties can charge it, but they're all the same in this area.

Yeah.

[Rachel Miller] (32:15 - 32:16)
All the others are the same.

[Uncle Marv] (32:17 - 33:49)
Yeah. All right. So let's take a quick break.

I'll let you guys take a rest here. And let me say thank you again to our sponsors. I mentioned that the IT Business Podcast is powered by NetAlly.

They're your partner when it comes to wired and wireless network troubleshooting, diagramming, all that stuff. And with their tools, including the Lync Sprinter, you can troubleshoot connections sometimes in as little as 10 seconds. Head over to ITBusinessPodcast.com slash NetAlly to check them out. And I mentioned that our mugs are sponsored by Super Ops, the all-in-one AI-powered PSA RMM, where they will help you supercharge your business. And I mentioned TruGrid. I don't have anything yet for them.

Technically, they don't start until next month. But TruGrid, your remote access solution that provides you the VPN proxy with multi-factor authentication that is easily set up by your customers and takes the worry out of remote access. Don't run your RDP naked.

So all right. So let me see where we are here with you guys. Is the dog going to say hello or what's up there?

[Rachel Miller] (33:50 - 33:52)
She can. Yeah.

[Jason Miller] (33:53 - 33:57)
Two dogs here, so they're both hampered princesses. There we go.

[Rachel Miller] (33:58 - 33:59)
This is Miss Mabel.

[Uncle Marv] (34:00 - 34:01)
All right, Babel. She's a wild one.

[Rachel Miller] (34:01 - 34:03)
She's wild. She's almost two.

[Uncle Marv] (34:04 - 34:05)
All right. Do they go to the shop with you?

[Rachel Miller] (34:06 - 34:07)
They have.

[Jason Miller] (34:08 - 34:09)
Yeah, sometimes. Not every day, but they do.

[Rachel Miller] (34:10 - 34:11)
If not, they go to Mamm Daycare.

[Jason Miller] (34:12 - 34:23)
Yeah. Mama comes by and picks up her kids. Now they're teenagers.

They sleep into like 11. Mama comes by and picks them up, picks up the dogs, picks them to their house.

[Uncle Marv] (34:24 - 34:25)
So yeah.

[Jason Miller] (34:25 - 34:26)
They're spoiled.

[Uncle Marv] (34:27 - 34:33)
All right. So I've asked you some philosophical questions there. We got a little deep, but what was that?

[Rachel Miller] (34:33 - 34:35)
This is Miss Izzy.

[Uncle Marv] (34:35 - 34:36)
Miss Izzy?

[Rachel Miller] (34:37 - 34:39)
Yeah, this is Izzy. She's not.

[Uncle Marv] (34:39 - 34:42)
Miss Izzy looks a little chubby.

[Rachel Miller] (34:43 - 34:46)
She is. She's very long and very short legs.

[Uncle Marv] (34:46 - 34:51)
Miss Izzy sounds like a petite name. Well, she's just Izzy.

[Rachel Miller] (34:51 - 34:54)
This is Izzy. Yeah, I'm sleepy.

[Jason Miller] (34:56 - 35:03)
She's part Basset Hound, part Jack Russell Terrier. That's a heavy mix. Short legs, fat balls, full of energy.

[Uncle Marv] (35:05 - 35:06)
All right.

[Jason Miller] (35:06 - 35:07)
What were you saying? I apologize.

[Uncle Marv] (35:07 - 35:37)
Well, I was going to say let's shift now and talk about it. I know I've asked you guys what was it that was the pivotal point for you, but in terms now looking ahead, the question really is how do you measure your success going forward? Do you have markers in place that you can look at and say, you know what, this is our path to success, and this is what's going to sustain us going forward?

She looked at me like what? Yeah, yeah. There we go.

[Jason Miller] (35:37 - 35:41)
You take this one. Really deep questions here tonight, Marv.

[Rachel Miller] (35:41 - 35:42)
Yeah, really.

[Jason Miller] (35:42 - 38:54)
So, yeah, I mean, every year we've grown quite a bit. We're growing by a substantial amount every year, so we're trying to keep that growth going. We're stepping up our game on some processes and internal things, trying to keep things in line as we've grown.

The more employees you add, the harder it becomes to keep everything straight, keep everybody on the same page, keep things rolling in the standard way. Even if you have standard operating procedures or things you're supposed to do, sometimes they don't get done that way. And, of course, you know, when you're the, you know, back when I was the sole employee of the company, you know, it's like, I want everything 100% perfect.

I'll kill it until it's done. But nowadays it's like, okay, well, if I get it 90% perfect because I'm not the one doing it, you have to kind of let that go a little bit and let them fully do it. 90% perfect.

So that's the biggest thing. This year has been really set. Our growth goals have been really set like a, hey, I'm trying to achieve this X mark of money or anything like that.

Usually, like this year I set four, usually trying to do something per quarter. So first quarter was Datto RML deployment. We signed up for Datto RML last year.

At the end of the year, second quarter was changing up some stuff with our systems. Third quarter we're going into straightening out our Autotask PSA, kind of getting some of our stuff more streamlined, a little bit more efficiency. And then fourth quarter is kind of left over to play with more on the efficiency side of things.

So my goal has been this year to try and get more efficiency in the business. Hence why we changed up some tools to be more integrated, more streamlined, things flow a little better. Especially when you have more and more people, that efficiency of all the systems working together makes a huge difference.

Used to, we had separate RML, PSA, all this stuff, and it was always just a battle. And so switching that up, it's really helped a lot in keeping the tools, any of the stuff like billing, like Rachel's doing the billing. Now we have fully integrated billing, whereas the agents would count themselves before.

We're going to PAX 8 Beyond, PAX 8 built into our PSA, counts all of our stuff, keeps it flowing. So those efficiencies are what we're really working on. But I guess to get back to the original question, now that went down three rabbit holes.

Yeah, I mean, we don't have a hard set goals of like we're trying to achieve this amount of money or that. We're just blessed in what we're doing, really thankful for where we're going. And we do try and steer the ship to head in the direction, but we don't have that hard set goal.

I guess we probably should, I don't know. But our goal in life's never been, it's not all about money, I guess is why we don't do that. It's not always about money.

We're not trying to make every dollar we can. We want to live a decent life, do things, have fun. And I don't care if I'm a quad zillionaire or nothing like that.

It's like, I just want to go to work, have a great time, help our customers, help our employees, and then just kind of live life.

[Uncle Marv] (38:54 - 39:01)
Do you play fancy like over the sound system once a day? No.

[Rachel Miller] (39:04 - 39:51)
I would say we're probably pretty unconventional as we don't set goals and we don't watch KPIs. I think we kind of more, because sometimes there's more invested in things than just looking at numbers and being number crunching. There's variances that aren't taken in in those type of numbers.

So I feel like you just can't be hard set on some of those things. I think where we both are in the business, we can kind of feel how the business is going, both on the technical side and the financial side, if it's going well or it's not. And if you feel that it's not moving in the right direction, we'll try and stop and make sure, figure out what we need to do to get it moving back in.

[Jason Miller] (39:52 - 40:32)
And we have not on paper goals, but we have mental goals. I guess you'd say, I guess I'm not a paper guy. I hate paper.

Asking my employees, if they hand me a piece of paper, I'm like send me a Teams message. If it's not digital, I don't take it. So either way, I don't have paper goals, but, you know, we have goals set in our minds and things like, you know, if we want to take on one to two new managed clients a month, things like that, you know, we want to add X amount of, you know, computers to the, you know, managed computers to the, you know, total amount by the end of the year, you know, stuff like that, but it's not hardcore set stuff.

It's not on paper, a lot of it's mental.

[Uncle Marv] (40:34 - 41:31)
So you guys, again, I, I, I think you guys fall into the camp where people will look at you and I'm going to say vendors and other MSPs that are going to look at you because they look at me. I mean, I'll, I'll, I'll, you know, share some honesty here. They look at me and say, well, you're not running your business, right?

You know, you're just doing a little lifestyle thing. And I'm like, whatever. I don't, I don't care.

But you guys would fall into that, you know, slow softball pitch down the middle of the plate for all these companies that want to look in and say, Hey, why don't you guys join our peer groups or why don't you guys join our, you know, leadership council? Or why don't you do this? And all of that stuff.

How do you battle that because there's a lot of pressure right now in this industry to, you know, follow these models.

[Jason Miller] (41:32 - 41:45)
Yeah. I mean, I don't fit their mold, I guess. I don't know.

And, and, uh, you know, I, I am a member of peer groups. Um, but, um, you know, I thought you were bringing up the, uh, the conference we went to is God. Is that where you're going with this?

[Uncle Marv] (41:45 - 42:06)
I was, I'm trying to slide into that. Yeah. Because here's the thing, here's the thing.

Some peer groups are, I mean, they are hardcore where you've got to bring in and open up with your books and you've got to have those, those KPIs and all of those things. And people are hardcore with, you know, telling you, well, you know, you're not doing it right. You need to get out.

[Jason Miller] (42:08 - 43:16)
Yeah. Yeah. We're, I'm not a member of that type of peer group.

So community peer group helping each other out. Uh, you know, I'm a community guy. You know me, I'm, I'm even our local, I know champ, a community here, the belt, I mean, a community.

But seriously, uh, I've had a local competitor, you know, come up to me and he's like, you know, and he's direct competing with me. I'm friends with most of the it companies in the area. Uh, if you're listening to this in your it company area, reach out to me.

I'm one happy talk. I'm anti-competitive. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to share my secret sauce, whatever that may be with people, but I'm more than happy to sit down and talk, have conversations.

I had one of our competitors one day, he's like, you know, I really like to learn all this stuff from you. You know, and this guy's local to me. He's like, one of the days when I grow up, I want to be like I'm foundational.

It's like, okay, well, that's kind of cool. You know, it feels good, but you know, I was like, okay. And you know, and we talked about things to help each other out, but, but yeah, I don't know if, um, you know, one of those things, you know, I'm more community driven, more people driven than I am KPIs and all that stuff.

So, but, uh, you know, I think you're sliding into Rachel's thing here. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv] (43:17 - 43:21)
Let's slide into that, you know, get, get, uh, MSP splained.

[Jason Miller] (43:22 - 43:45)
Well, this is, um, uh, to me, this is, uh, kind of introduced this here. This was, we were at the, uh, say a connect conference and my account manager introduced us to a guy standing at a table. And, um, basically he's one of those, uh, definitely a number cruncher guy, I'm sure.

And, uh, that didn't go over well with us. So we don't fit that mold. So I'll let Rachel tell you the rest of the story.

[Rachel Miller] (43:45 - 43:54)
So the gentleman, after he was introduced, he looked at Jason. And one of the first questions he said was, how many employees do you have?

[Jason Miller] (43:54 - 43:56)
This is within two seconds of saying hi. Of course.

[Rachel Miller] (43:57 - 44:36)
Then Jason said, 20. He said, what is your revenue? And I said, you know, 3.5 million. And he says, uh, what is your, uh, net profit? And I said, it's probably about 15%. He goes, mine's 27 and you're overstaffed.

And, uh, and Tom looked at me and said, you need to be watching your KPIs and kind of just looked at me like I didn't know what I was doing. And just, I'm assuming thought that I was just the bookkeeper because my wife or my husband, um, which is not the case.

[Jason Miller] (44:36 - 44:37)
That doesn't go over well.

[Rachel Miller] (44:37 - 45:24)
It does not go over well with me that I just got the job because he's my husband. Um, because I had, I have a degree in accounting and did this well before, but, um, my thought was you didn't ask me if I was happy, if we were making enough money to survive, if we enjoyed what we did, there's more things than just, you know, knowing your numbers and things like that. Jason and I are very happy with and comfortable with the loft that we have.

Um, we, you know, we, our employees are very comfortable. We lock them. Um, they've been very loyal to us.

So just because, you know, we're overstaffed is really none of your business in my opinion.

[Jason Miller] (45:25 - 47:33)
Well, we have the staff to help our customers. So yes, I mean, if you want to look at the KPIs, we probably have an extra staff or two, but we're the only competitor, the only IT guy in the area that live answers a help desk. There's no one else that does that.

No one live answers a help desk, especially with your employees in your office. That's not outsourced. So that's one of our biggest selling points is, you know, customer service.

And I need the extra people to provide that customer service. We have very little churn, very little turnover. And that's because we were rock stars.

We do a great job. And we have, um, I think our closest competitor has 15 Google reviews. We have 275 star reviews.

So, I mean, obviously we're doing something right. You know what I'm saying? Our customers say we do.

So, uh, that's the biggest thing. It's just, I don't think we fit the mold of KPIs and cracking the whips and kind of get every little piece and part out of, uh, every employee's, uh, you know, sweat equity in there or something like that. But, uh, we do try and pay our employees more.

So, you know, I'd rather give them more money than you take home more money. You know what I'm saying? It's not about that.

So I want them to live comfortable. I want them to stay with me, uh, you know, and paying them, you know, above industry average in our area. Uh, you know, they're, they're, they're more likely going to stay there for a long time.

I mean, I've had one guy that's been with me 10 years. So I celebrated his 10 year anniversary the other day. So that's awesome.

So, but, um, we give really good raises every year. Uh, we like to, you know, during the change of all these, um, I guess you'd say, um, uh, minimum wage going up or whatever. Uh, we like one year we give them, you know, two substantial raises.

I mean, there's one year that we give some, you know, most of our employees, 12 to 15% raises, you know, and it's like, you know, just trying to bump them up there to keep with the average. I mean, there's a lot of companies out there wouldn't do that. So, so a lot of that, this guy's missing.

So this guy is like, you can't judge somebody in five seconds of meeting them based off of three questions. You know, there's a lot more heart, soul, sweat, equity. It goes into the business.

[Uncle Marv] (47:33 - 48:13)
Yeah. I mean, there's so many factors. You mentioned some of them.

There's also, you know, where are you located, you know, and what are you, you know, what are you competing against in your area? You know, you guys are in an area where, yeah, you've got some competition, but it's, it's not a lot. And you guys can dominate your area down here, South Florida.

It's hard to dominate, you know, especially when you talk all three counties, you know, it's not just Fort Lauderdale. I still have to compete with, you know, Palm beach and Miami. So it's, it's interesting.

And yeah, I go ahead.

[Jason Miller] (48:14 - 49:26)
I was just going to say that's just like you mentioned. That's one thing. Our area makes a huge difference.

You know, I don't know if that guy's the $300 an end point workstation guy, you know, like you see all over the Facebooks. So, but either way, I said Facebook's on purpose, by the way, I know all my guys does that. So, anyways, the Facebooks, so you have to say it weird.

So anyways, Facebook, it's all over there, $300 an end point, $200 an end point that there's not a single one of the dozen IT companies selling a hundred dollar end point. You don't say it. I mean, it's not that type of area.

We are at the top end of the range. We used to be, you know, long time ago, we were kind of a low to mid-range person and we've increased our prices. We've added more services, more security, more things to our stack.

And we're, we're above the cost of what other, other competitors are charging. So we're not the most expensive, but right at the most expensive year, we're competing right with them. So, and I tell people we're not the cheapest guys for the guys that do it right.

So, you know, that's the thing, go along with the numbers and things like that. The amount of profits you can make is, is, you know, that per seat end point is not $300 in this area.

[Rachel Miller] (49:27 - 49:53)
There's just not one mold for every, for every business. Everybody, like you said, every location's different. Everybody stacks different.

Everything's just different. So you can't really compare, you know, us to anybody else, you know, you know, especially somebody starting off, it's just two different ends of the spectrum. And that's what a lot of people do is they just try and compare.

And it's just really not a good thing to do.

[Jason Miller] (49:53 - 50:17)
Yeah. And if I, if I said, Hey, customer of mine, even a hundred dollars, the end point, I would not have any business. You know what I'm saying?

I would love to charge $100, $125 an end point. There's people out there. It's like, Oh, it's on the value of the way you sell it.

Come to Tennessee and show me that you can sell $125 end points. You know, or $300 end points, especially as like, people here would freak out.

[Uncle Marv] (50:18 - 50:43)
Yeah. I know that there are some down here that say they charge that, but I don't see it. I've seen, I've seen a couple of proposals that I've gone up against and to be honest, we're in the same ballpark.

And even if they list a very high price, they're discounting to try to beat me to get the business. Yeah. We don't discount.

[Jason Miller] (50:43 - 51:00)
I think that shows, I think that shows a less value. If you discount, we'll discount for not for profit or something like that. But one of our other competitors in the area, they, they do charge the $125 an end point that they discount 50% of it or 70% of it or whatever it is.

[Uncle Marv] (51:00 - 51:08)
That's ridiculous. Just don't even do that. Just the price is the price.

Just show what it is. I mean, we don't do contracts.

[Jason Miller] (51:09 - 51:49)
Okay. I mean, if you want to say, we don't fit the mold, no, no contracts. Yeah.

Month to month, 60 day out. I mean, Hey, and you know what? We've had customers 20 years.

If you do a good job, you don't need a contract. The competitors we have that had contracts, we've taken over probably 60, 70 of their clients because of the contract. And they'll not do a good job.

So that contracts out there with us. And they're like, the first thing is, do you do contracts? No.

Where do I sign? Let's do this. You know what I'm saying?

It's like they've already been burned. They don't want that contracts. I mean, you know, like obviously office 365 annual commit, you know, but IP services, no phones, no, you know?

[Uncle Marv] (51:50 - 52:26)
All right. Well, these are the discussions you two can have. If you, uh, decided to come on this show and we are going to spend the rest of this year digging into successful MSPs and finding out what makes them all tick.

These are the types of discussions you can have at tech con unplugged where we will be at. I don't know if we'll have time to do it next week at PAX eight, but, uh, these are the types of discussions you can have in the hallways. And if anybody were to ever ask me three questions and tell me I'm doing it wrong, I may have to slap them or something.

I don't know.

[Rachel Miller] (52:27 - 52:29)
No, I was mad. I was hot.

[Jason Miller] (52:29 - 52:32)
She was fuming all night long and she was ready to kill this guy.

[Rachel Miller] (52:32 - 52:35)
And Jason knew it. He's like, it's okay.

[Jason Miller] (52:35 - 52:36)
I was like, let's do it.

[Uncle Marv] (52:36 - 53:17)
Let those people, you know, puff and be whatever they are. They're just, those are the ones that also are sitting in those meetings later on complaining and griping, you know, because they're struggling with something and listen, I haven't struggled in quite a while and I hope not to, uh, life is good. Like you guys say, it's a matter of, are you happy?

And listen, I fired my largest customer scared the bejesus out of us. You know, as to whether or not we were going to make it and I'm still here.

[Jason Miller] (53:19 - 53:44)
Yeah. I've had our share of firing customers this year too. We're getting rid of the, getting rid of the, uh, the annoying ones and the ones that are giving us a hard time or we just got kind of rid of a dental office, 60 workstations, just because they wouldn't upgrade stuff or do anything in the past three years.

We've been helping them, you know, that was ancient, ancient, ancient compliant. Nothing is going to buy to us.

[Uncle Marv] (53:45 - 53:52)
So got to be willing to let them do that. All right. Did you guys prepare for a Florida man?

[Rachel Miller] (53:52 - 53:54)
I did. Hold on. Let me find it.

[Jason Miller] (53:55 - 54:04)
Okay. I just want to say something here, Marv. It's like, yeah, sitting here and I was like, what are we talking about today?

I don't really know. And Rachel's like, he sent us something. You sent Rachel something.

[Uncle Marv] (54:05 - 54:19)
You didn't send me anything. It's because Rachel's the one that signed you up. Her email was the only one on the invitation.

And I figured, I figured you're not going to read it anyway. You're probably right.

[Rachel Miller] (54:21 - 54:23)
I looked at this yesterday.

[Uncle Marv] (54:23 - 54:26)
Yeah. So are you going first or are we going first? You're going first.

[Jason Miller] (54:27 - 54:27)
Okay.

[Rachel Miller] (54:27 - 54:38)
We'll compete here. A Tennessee man attempts to enroll at high school to pursue relationship with minor.

[Uncle Marv] (54:38 - 54:38)
Really?

[Rachel Miller] (54:39 - 54:52)
Yeah. So he flew to Michigan and is in jail for allegedly trying to enroll as a student at the Mason County central school district. Sheriff's office said the man told the staff he was 17 years old.

[Uncle Marv] (54:53 - 55:02)
How old was he? Oh, they usually put that type of stuff on there.

[Rachel Miller] (55:03 - 55:11)
He was trying to pursue a relationship with an underage girl. He had interacted with online. He's actually 21 is what it says.

[Jason Miller] (55:12 - 55:18)
Okay. I might be able to get away with it. So that's some serious chasing down there.

[Rachel Miller] (55:18 - 55:23)
Yeah. Flew to another state to enroll. Who wants to go back to high school and do work?

[Jason Miller] (55:23 - 55:24)
Yeah, exactly.

[Uncle Marv] (55:25 - 55:42)
So this is not a Florida woman, but that sounds like a similar story. This lady, Alyssa winter, um, basically she's 23, but she was posing as a minor to have sex with boys aged 12 to 15.

[Rachel Miller] (55:42 - 55:43)
Oh wow.

[Uncle Marv] (55:45 - 56:08)
So I forget where she was, but it was not Florida. I think she's something like Seattle or some weird place like that. But here is your Florida man story.

And it's actually the first one in my listing for today. And it reads naked man crashed car into Florida jail, said he wanted to kill everyone.

[Jason Miller] (56:10 - 56:11)
Say more than one car.

[Uncle Marv] (56:12 - 56:33)
The incident happened late Monday night at the lobby of the Martin County jail when 40 year old Joseph Leidy drove his car through the entrance. And there is a video, I'll have a link to that, but it shows the car crashing into the lobby. And, uh, he was naked from the waist down and threatened to kill officers.

[Jason Miller] (56:33 - 56:37)
Because you drive a car naked through walls? I mean, I don't get this.

[Uncle Marv] (56:39 - 57:23)
So, so he was naked from the waist down, but from the waist up, he was wearing a woman's blouse. Then he proceeded to pour motor oil on the floor, saying that he wanted to set it on fire. Motor oil is a little bit harder to sit on fire than like gas.

So that's your Florida man story. I will have two links, one to the story and one to the video. And I'll try to find this story on this Elisa Zinger.

Is it Zinger? Yep. Elisa Zinger, 23 posing as a 14 year old.

Unbelievable.

[Rachel Miller] (57:24 - 57:24)
Okay.

[Uncle Marv] (57:29 - 57:39)
All right. So next time, Jason, I will make sure we send you a copy of the questions so that you can at least be prepared for one of them.

[Rachel Miller] (57:39 - 57:43)
He wouldn't have looked at it until two minutes before we got on. I know that.

[Jason Miller] (57:43 - 57:50)
I know that. I was flying in the dark here, Marv. I mean, you're just keeping me blind here.

I mean, I had no clue what I was talking about tonight.

[Uncle Marv] (57:50 - 58:07)
Listen, that's why I asked Rachel to join us because sometimes you, you just, just like you did earlier, you'll start to answer the question and then you've got that little wandering eye and you'll, you'll be two doors down. Exactly.

[Rachel Miller] (58:07 - 58:19)
This is what I have to deal with at work and with multiple people at the office, I have to steer them back. I'm like the work walk off to like five of them but get them back on track. There'll be two doors down.

[Jason Miller] (58:20 - 58:37)
The best techs are always the ones with ADHD and OCD. So, I mean, you know, just saying it's, she has to keep me straight or my best engineers, ADHD as well. I mean, it's just, we're all over the place.

It's millions of quarrels, which can't be on order.

[Uncle Marv] (58:37 - 58:41)
I don't know what the deal is. Are your customers ADHD too?

[Jason Miller] (58:42 - 58:46)
No, I don't know. Some of them, maybe. Someone's crazy.

[Uncle Marv] (58:46 - 1:01:05)
Someone's great. All right. I should also mention that the Florida man segment is also sponsored by super ops.

And, uh, trying to think if we talked to Florida man Friday when we were in Tampa with Juan and Nancy, I don't think we did, but we'll be talking more about a Florida man with them down the road or guys. Thank you very much. And thanks for being willing to sit and chat.

I do want to go ahead and do a call out. I have sent out a request to some MSPs. We are going to be vendor heavy this summer as we deal with the pitch at vendor profiles.

And of course, going to the conferences, I have a lot of content that I'll need to be posting that will be vendors, but I do want to balance that with other it business owners, MSPs throughout the summer. And then we want to end up with a summer tech series. And I will describe that more in detail, but it is going to be an intense five or seven episode peer group, something or another, but it's going to be an intense deal with if you are just starting, uh, in this MSP industry, or you're in your early stages and you want to know what it is, what does it take to succeed?

I'm going to have veterans in the industry join us and we will do podcast powwows. And I think we're going to have maybe somewhere between eight and 10 folks join us and we will have discussions and chat almost like a peer group, but without the commitment. And that will be an emphasis for later this year.

So, uh, if you know of people that you want me to interview or have them be a part of that process, let them know, send me a message, let me know and we'll connect and focus on that. And that will be later in the summer, this year's version of the summer tech series. And if you want to try to derail the channel champ, I encourage you to get active on the Facebook and, uh, beat him to answering some of those questions there.

[Jason Miller] (1:01:06 - 1:01:14)
Yeah. Well, I've, uh, I've heard last year that everybody's going to vote for Rachel, but I am trying to beat her out.

[Uncle Marv] (1:01:14 - 1:01:15)
Keep it in the family, huh?

[Jason Miller] (1:01:16 - 1:01:19)
I don't know about that, but they said she was in the running last year.

[Uncle Marv] (1:01:20 - 1:01:54)
Of course. So, all right guys, well, uh, we'll sign off here. I'm going to let the audience go and then we'll continue on.

Thank you all for participating in this live weekly event that we have here each Wednesday at 8 p.m. Eastern, be sure to head over to idbusinesspodcast.com and hit follow. If you're not following us, as I mentioned, we are going to be having tons of podcasts coming out. Um, Jason probably listened to 20 in the last week, trying to catch up to prepare for this.

And we didn't talk about one of them, did we?

[Jason Miller] (1:01:55 - 1:02:00)
Yeah, exactly. I was like, man, all these podcasts, I was behind on podcasts.

[Uncle Marv] (1:02:01 - 1:03:13)
So, uh, yeah, that way you'll be notified whenever we have an audio version, uh, we will have some additional videos that are show up on the YouTube, uh, but just idbusinesspodcast.com follow on all the social medias. We are on YouTube, LinkedIn, the Facebook and the X. I am there as well.

So that's going to do it folks. We will be back next week. And, uh, I don't know when I'm going to do my swag reveal for it nation and packs a beyond.

Well we are scheduled next week to have Michelle McCarty from liar, lion guard on the show. And, uh, so we're going to be busy, but I will do that. I've, my swag is not yet unpacked for Orlando.

So I will lay all of that out tomorrow and start to look at that. And then of course we'll be getting new swag next week in Denver where I will see the millers. Um, anybody else in the Denver area?

I want to shout out and say hello, Mike wise. Um, any of the Denver folks out there who should be seeing you and that's going to do it. So we'll see you next week.

And until next time, Holla!