644 The Secret Sauce of IT Nation Evolve Peer Groups

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast here live at IT Nation Secure in Orlando, Florida. And just happen to be walking by another ConnectWise person and we're going to chat real quick. With me is Andre Gilmore from ConnectWise.

Andre, how are you? Pretty good. How are you, man?

I'm doing good. So I'll just let everybody know, Sean Lardo roped you into doing this, so.

[Andre Gilmore]
He's good at that.

[Uncle Marv]
He is, he is. Now, I understand that you're with ConnectWise and you run the peer groups. Absolutely.

[Andre Gilmore]
IT Nation Involved Peer Groups, formerly HTG, we were acquired in 2018. And the peer groups are all about getting our partners ready for growth and acceleration through their entrepreneurial journey.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Now, what was your history with ConnectWise before you actually took over that role?

[Andre Gilmore]
So as I said, I was with HTG Peer Groups. Prior to that, I had my own small business for 10 years. And then I was with an MSP that Arlen Sorenson had founded on the operations side of the house, moved into some consulting that we were doing, and then started with the peer groups.

So I've been facilitating, oh, for about a decade, running internally before we acquired peer groups. And then it kind of translated to what I'm doing now.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Now, you know, HTG has a historic name when it comes to peer groups. What do you think makes them so unique compared to some of the others in the industry?

[Andre Gilmore]
I'll tell you what. I think the secret sauce, and there's a lot of benefits and attributes. But really, we take on both the personal and professional.

And what that does is it creates an environment that really creates the closeness that you need to get to the real truth, right? We talk about getting truth in the room. We talk about getting awkward.

But really, it's a relationship play where we bring the same people together on a quarterly rhythm. They get to know each other. They need to get to know each other's problems and all that.

And then quite frankly, like you do with your close friends, you refuse to let them fail. OK? So not only do we have a great planning framework, but we’ve also got all kinds of industry content and experts that we bring in.

But really, the secret sauce is that relationship play. Once you have a vested interest in one another, it leads to great things.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. So not allowing friends to fail sounds like an admirable thing. A lot of us try to do that.

You guys seem to do it well. Let me ask, do the meetings quarterly, because I think those are face to face, right? Correct.

OK. So I'm assuming that that has a big part of it.

[Andre Gilmore]
Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
If you can't see anybody, if you see people on Zoom, it may not be that easy. But Zoom in person.

[Andre Gilmore]
Yeah, I think that goes to the, you know, we talk about our meetings are two day meetings. And there's a lot of social activity outside. So there's happy hours, there's dinners and all that.

So there's a lot of time to really get to know one another. That's where those real relationships come from. Now we make the most of that time with our planning framework.

So we have what we call the four plans. And that's basically a legacy plan, a business plan, a life plan and a leadership plan. And we review every quarter, as well as we use what we call the member performance dashboard.

And that's where you gather and collect all of your goals, OK, as well as service leadership benchmarking. So now all of a sudden, not only are you in that relationship, but you have a really good visibility on what's going on in your peers companies. And that, like you said, together, we like to say evolve as a contact sport.

So bringing them together on a regular basis with that information, equipping them with that. The other thing that we always talk about is we do not define, nor does your peer group define your definition of success. You define your definition of success, and we hold you accountable to it collectively.

So I think that's part of why we've been able to be so successful, because we get down to the heart of the matter of what's really going to matter. Is it five or six more points of EBITDA or is it more time for you to spend with your family? And once we dictate what that success looks like for you, we can help you achieve it.

[Uncle Marv]
Now who actually decides, for instance, if somebody is actually struggling in an area and you guys get together, how do you decide which things take priority in terms of a group meeting? Is there a focus on everybody equally, or sometimes you have to focus on one company in particular?

[Andre Gilmore]
So there's generally around 10 companies in a peer group, and we rely on our facilitators. So we have a framework, we have a suggested agenda and all that, but it's really facilitator discretion, because generally speaking, I'll give you for instance, we like to say that the peer group acts as your board of directors. So if you were in the peer group, you'd get approximately a half hour to run through your financials, your goals, your successes, your failures, what went right, and then we talk about the one big thing, the thing that you need help with the most.

So everyone's going to get that time. Now that being said, if a company is struggling or whatever, it's facilitator discretion to say, hey, let's go into overtime with this one. And I've had meetings before where we drop everything and focus on one member.

Typically if it gets to that point, the relationships are such where a couple of members will say, hey, we'll fly out to your place and we'll figure this out hands on. But typically we use it for a facilitator discretion to make sure that we use that time wisely. I like to say after facilitating for a while, as long as I've been doing this, a 16 hour meeting is probably more time than you can keep everyone's attention.

So we definitely prioritize and make sure we hit the most meaningful topics over the two day period.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, I can tell you what that would also do. If I had to commit to 16 hours, I'm going to make sure I get the best and the most out of it. So there's some motivation there.

[Andre Gilmore]
Absolutely. We say that the cost to IT Nation Evolve, although there is a monetary cost, but the real cost is your time and your commitment. And when a peer group is working really, really well, when one, you have that commitment, but two, you do not want to show up the next quarter not doing what you said you wanted to do.

And that feeling that you've got, anybody who's ever had like a workout buddy that's going to call them at five in the morning to go running or whatever, if you get that pattern right, you do not want to disappoint. So we always say, hey, you have to be ready for it. You have to put in the time.

And as you're saying, once that commitment's there, people are like, I might as well leverage this. And that's where I think we see that upward trajectory more often than not.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, Andre, I want to thank you for your quick time here. I will make sure we get links so that if people are interested, it's not something you can just show up to.

So I'll give them a link for them to contact you guys and see if there's a spot open. And I can tell you what, peer groups have been a big benefit to me. I haven't had to do that sort of commitment.

But if I had to, I know that I would definitely make the most of it and ensure that I got help from all the other members.

[Andre Gilmore]
One of the comments we do that the commitment gives people pause, one of the comments we always get, though, is, man, I wish I would have done this earlier. So it's definitely one of those commitments that once you do it, most people are glad they did.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, Andre, thank you again for stopping by. And we'll make sure we get the links and get you notified when this is out. And I want to thank everybody else for watching real quick and or listening, depending on how you are consuming this content.

And we'll be back with more from IT Nation, IT Nation Secure in Orlando at the Gaylords Palm Resort. See you, everyone. Holla!