660 Growing a Successful IT Business: Matt Forman

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IIT Business Podcast powered by NetAlly. And yes, I used my tools today. They are fantastic.

So this is the Wednesday live show. We are getting ready to close out the month of June. We've got this week and next week.

For those of you that were wondering what happened last week, well, I was at Pax 8 Beyond in Denver and the plan was to be back Wednesday night for the show. But South Florida decided that it was early time for storm season and we had hurricane type thunderstorms come in and flood all of South Florida from Palm Beach all the way down to Miami. They shut down the Fort Lauderdale Airport.

I was at the Denver Airport getting ready to board the plane when they canceled the flight. I was flying American Airlines and we tried to find a way back but flights would not be available until Friday. I ended up having to change airlines, fly into Orlando on Thursday, and then rent a car to get back home.

So that is what happened last week. And I apologize to our guest that was supposed to be on last week. She has already rescheduled so that will be coming up in the next few weeks.

But I will be having a conference review later on probably this Friday. I will evaluate swag from both conferences, the Pax 8 Beyond and the IT Nation Secure. There was no swag at the Super Ops Super Summit but we can talk about them as well.

So that is going to do it. But tonight we are joined by my good friend Matt Foreman from Local Circuit IT, the man from Texas. Matt, how are you?

[Matt Forman]
Doing well, how are you sir?

[Uncle Marv]
I am good. And first I should say it was good to see you at the Pax 8 conference and good to see that you let Trent out of the back room and you had some new people with you.

[Matt Forman]
Yeah, I brought Trent and one of our new guys who has been here a year, Tyrone. Tyrone. Yep.

So brought them both, got them out of the caves and took them on a trip.

[Uncle Marv]
Alright, well let me first ask what their thoughts about the conference was?

[Matt Forman]
They, for one of them it was their first conference of this type of any kind. And then for Trent, he has traveled around with us a little bit so he has had a little experience. They got some good stuff from it.

They weren't overly wowed by it just from some of their feedback. I think they were looking for some more in-depth educational stuff. And I think they got more just kind of overall overview type things of certain vendor products and some of the breakout sessions.

They just, it just, it was good. Just wasn't for me and for our guys. I think last year was better.

But we had a good time.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. And did you stay for the floor-shaking R&B artist?

[Matt Forman]
We did. We had a good time that evening. It's always, the party's always, always interesting to see who they're going to bring out and surprise us with.

But had a good time. It was a little, little concerning when the, when the floor was, was moving. So, but yeah, just, but yeah, had a good time.

It was good to catch up with a lot of guys that, you know, we're really only see face-to-face at these events and whatnot.

[Uncle Marv]
So, yeah, yeah. Speaking of people you don't normally see, unless you're at a conference, do you remember the very first time we met?

[Matt Forman]
I do. I don't remember what conference it was, though. Was it, I remember the interaction and It was the solar, it was the SolarWinds conference.

Mr. Sean Scott, I remember.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, Sean Scott was there. Who else? Zach was there?

[Matt Forman]
I believe so. And I don't know if Chris was there or not that day. But I don't recall.

[Uncle Marv]
Don't know. But that was many moons ago. Many, many moons ago.

I just had to put this up here. Mr. Nelson trolling in stealth mode is what I'll call that there. Thank you for hanging out.

Thank you folks for joining the show. And as you see what Keith just did, if you would like to comment, just go ahead and put it in the chat if it's relevant or pithy. We'll show it here on the screen and we will try to answer questions as well.

As a matter of fact, let me do something. I was actually chatting with somebody earlier about an issue they were having. And I asked them if they wanted me to ask for help from the group here, but I don't think that they responded.

And of course, I can't find it now because I'm blind. So let's see here. Where is the message?

And okay. So I will throw this out there. This is an impromptu text support question that was brought to my attention and asked for my help.

Basically, I won't say who it is, but they factory reset an iPad. They installed Microsoft 365 and OneDrive. However, OneDrive instantly closes every time you open it.

This person has tried uninstalling it and reinstalling it and it just does the same thing. And the one suggestion that I had whenever I've run into this, which hasn't been much, was to do the soft reset by going into the OneDrive app and doing the advanced options and reset. And this person was not able to try this tonight, so they'll have to wait until tomorrow to try.

But have you had that issue on the iPad where an app like OneDrive just opens and closes?

[Matt Forman]
I can't recall having that. I have seen some issues on the iPad where they weren't using an up-to-date version of the iOS and it caused problems with apps. So that might be something for them to look at.

I mean, it's pretty basic, but that may be something.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. I assume that when they said they removed and reinstalled, they would have gotten the latest version. So I tend to believe that it's something on the OneDrive side.

Of course, we talked about the fact, was there enough storage on the iPad if OneDrive is full? But that didn't seem the issue. And of course, from the cheap seats, the answer is always a sign from the gods to buy a new one.

[Matt Forman]
I wonder if it's happening before they sign in. Are they signing into the app before it's crashing?

[Uncle Marv]
You know what? I did not ask. I don't think so.

I think they're just trying to open it for the first time after the reset. But I did have to give that advice to an end user yesterday morning. And I will say this.

So here's an AJ story for you. So we haven't even gotten to our topic yet. But here's an AJ story.

So I get the email in the morning that a user is having issues with TruGrid and that it's opening and shutting. And do I have any suggestions? And I'm like, okay, I need to know exactly what's opening and shutting because I don't know if it's the TruGrid connector app that they're using.

I don't know if it's their RDP after they get signed in. I don't know if it's anything else. So I just ask if I can call the user.

They say sure. So I call the user and she basically said that she's been having issues ever since the night before when Windows decided to do an update. And the update took forever, first of all.

And she has trouble with a bunch of stuff. And she had been trying to get in for about an hour. And I had her check a couple of things.

And as we're going through the things, I'm also asking about the computer. How old is it? What is it?

Is it Windows? Is it Mac? And she said, well, it's definitely older than five years old.

And it's super, super, super slow. And as I talk about what's super, super, super slow, she mentions that, well, it takes five minutes or so to open up stuff when she clicks a button. And I said, okay, that's probably pretty slow.

And then I asked if she had a local computer person that could help because she's on the other side of the state. And technically, we're not allowed to help end users for this client. They want us to make sure the internet connection on our side is fine, the server is fine.

But she was logging into a server with 30 other people, and they were all having no issues. And so she agreed that this computer is probably old and time to get a new one. And she would go do that.

So when I relayed that back to AJ, his response to me was, I think we need to look at something other than TruGrid. It causes too many problems. So I didn't talk to AJ for the rest of the day.

So that is just ridiculous. All right. That's my AJ story.

So let's get back to talking about you and Local Circuit. So one of the things that I really want to do this summer is to get back to talking to IT business owners, especially ones that are having success, finding out what's working for you, what's not working for you, maybe getting some inspiration for some others. Maybe you have questions that you would like to ask.

So let's kind of talk about that. So I think when we last talked on the show was two years ago, and you were still just you and Trent. I don't think you had hired the third person, let alone fourth.

So walk me through that.

[Matt Forman]
Well, Trent has been with me for ten years this year. So actually, March was his ten-year mark with me, which is scary that it's gone by so fast. Also, he's my number two.

He helps with everything. Growing to three and then to four was just a matter of keeping my sanity and trying to step out of doing the tickets. I'm very OCD.

I'm very hands-on and bringing these employees in has been good for the business but challenging for me. The business is my baby, and I've built it into what it is now. And letting go of some of those responsibilities and watching the ticket dashboard every day, it's been a challenge for me.

It's been a learning experience for me to somewhat increase my stress while I've battled with it, but it's played out well. Bringing guys in that I feel are going to fill a specific role that I need for the business. Right now, we've got what I would consider a solid level two, three kind of guy.

We've got a level one guy, and we've got Tyrone, who we brought in, who's really going to be—we're trying to utilize him for not just tech work, but also client management, service tax management, that type of thing. So, I'm hiring specific areas that I need taken care of in the business, and that seems to be what has worked for us. I know some people advise me, hey, get an assistant first, or do this first.

I just basically looked and filled the gaps of what I needed to keep the wheels turning, essentially. Finding staff is not easy. Finding staff that I'm happy with.

We've gone through our share of people who quit, who we've had to fire, whatnot. So, I think from a business owner standpoint, employees—and I'm sure every business owner out there can attest to this—employees are one of the hardest parts of running the business. But yeah, we've worked two, three, four people now, and probably October, I shall be looking for a number five if we keep moving like we're moving.

[Uncle Marv]
Alright. Is it a steady growth, and is it intentional?

[Matt Forman]
Yes and yes. I have owned the business since 2006. It is not in any way, shape, or form the same type of business as it was back then.

We have grown every year. The first year when I bought it from the gentleman, he wanted out of the IT computer repair business. He said he spent more time listening to people talk about their problems while he fixed their computers, so he was going to go back to school and get a counseling degree because he thought it would pay better.

So, that's where he ended up, and I was looking to get in, so it was a pretty easy transition. But that growth from the first year of doing $60,000 total to seven figures now is huge. But it's just been intentional because that's what you want for a business.

Has it been as fast as I wanted? No. We've had life issues happen and business issues happen, but we have continuously grown every year.

I've never had a down year, knock on wood. Even through the pandemic, we grew. I didn't lose any customers because of that.

I do have a good foundation of local government customers, and they're not going anywhere no matter what as far as going out of business. But we're also not really vertical specific. While it's not intentionally that way, I do have a lot of vet clinics and government.

We run a bunch of police departments and things like that, but we are very spread out from manufacturing to legal and doctors and everything. So, I think that's helped us that when part of the economy is suffering, it's not necessarily going to impact us a huge amount. I know there were a lot of guys that do what we do that specialize in dentists over the pandemic, and they got screwed hard because of it.

So, not saying verticals are bad, but I do things the way I think they work best for our business, and I like being spread out.

[Uncle Marv]
So, I remember when you decided to get rid of residential and go fully business MSP style. I remember the fun transition of dumping clients. Now that you've done that and now that you've kind of settled in, I guess is the way I'm looking at it, you got the new space.

Has there been one thing that has stood out that has really made the difference in keeping this momentum going and getting you to the point now where it's really starting to grow the way you wanted it to?

[Matt Forman]
The right staff. That, to me, makes all the difference in the world. Like I said, I've had good, I've had bad.

I've had to fire people. Like I said, it's been here 10 years. I spend a lot of time when I'm looking to hire somebody.

I'm very unorthodox, so my interview questions aren't necessarily – there'll be some tech stuff, but I want to know, are you going to be a fit here in how we work? And I think having those people that have kind of passed that and I know are going to work well with each other employee and as a team, that is what I think has helped our business. Finding those people that are doing this because they want to.

They love it. They love this type of work. I mean, we're in a small town and they could easily go 30 miles down the road to Dallas and probably get paid more than what I can pay them here.

But I mean, I think providing that type of work environment that makes our employees happy and makes them want to come to work has paid off. I mean, we do things like I have unlimited PTO. Some people may balk at that, but nobody takes advantage of it.

I mean, I think people want to come to work, but also have a work-life balance. As the owner, sometimes I'll take off earlier than they are. I want to be able to reciprocate that and make sure that they're working, but they're also enjoying their home life too.

If you need to take off to go to a kid's ballgame, go to a ballgame as long as everything at work is getting taken care of. I have no issues with it. I tell everybody when I hire them, we've got unlimited PTO, but we enforce the Wheaton's Law, if you know what that is.

It translates, don't be a dick. This is here for your benefit. Just don't take advantage of it.

And so far, nobody has. It's just one thing. But I think having those key players that are doing their job, that I don't have to look over their shoulder, they know what to expect or what is being expected of them, even if I'm not here.

That's been key for us.

[Uncle Marv]
Now, unlimited PTO, okay, that's interesting. But now in terms of pay and hours and stuff, are you tracking their hours? I mean, not for billing purposes, but for work purposes.

Are you checking to see if they work 35 to 45 hours, whatever the state law is? Florida, they have to work 35 to be considered full time. And if you're on salary, you don't have to track the hours.

If they're on wage basis, you have to track the hours, blah, blah, blah. Do you have those types of issues there in Texas?

[Matt Forman]
For us, I just consider everybody's salary. And that's agreed upon whenever we offer them the job. They know they're getting paid off 40 hours a week.

But also, some of the stuff I do with Trent, for example, he does a good bit of our evening work. So, if I know he's got work to do and he takes care of it in the evening, I'm considering that part of his work. If he comes in 9.15 instead of 9 o'clock, I'm not getting on to him for it. I know he's spending time doing that. And we've got coverage in the morning. I'm usually here.

The other guys are usually here. So, I work with everybody individually for that. I don't have to track their hours for the way we're set up.

But everybody gives us their workday. Everybody's work ethic after hours is what it is. Some people will jump on stuff.

Some people will have on-call stuff for. But I try to make it fair. I'm not going to work 60 hours a week just because they're on salary or 40.

It's just not the way. It's not fair.

[Uncle Marv]
You said evening hours. Now, do you actually have evening hours? Are you open 10 hours a day, 8 to 8, or something like that?

[Matt Forman]
Not right now. Our standard service ends at 6 p.m. Central Time. What we do in the evening would be server restarts, things that we need to tackle that are going to interrupt an entire office's workflow, that type of thing.

If it's stuff that we need to do or are initiated by us after hours, we just include that kind of thing. If it's stuff the client wants us to do after hours, then we go into the after-hours type stuff, just depending on what the need is and what it's for.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Now, are these clients that you're billing as part of your managed service agreement, is it flat rate, all you can eat? Is it remote only and then you charge when you're on site?

How does that work?

[Matt Forman]
Our current plan is everything's the same. I've got SANS on site or not. We have a standard service and support plan.

One includes on site, one doesn't, but both of them are unlimited either way. Then we have our more security type offerings that we have on top of it. That type of work would be included in our all-inclusive, but our all-inclusive does fit within our operating hours.

But there's that flex of, hey, I need to do something on your stuff to do my job. I'm not going to shut your server down in the middle of your workday. I'll just log in at 630 and do it and take five minutes, something like that.

If it's work-work where we're in it for hours and hours, then there's after hours work. We don't give it away.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So what's bugging you right now? What's eating away at you?

[Matt Forman]
What's not, man? As far as work, let's see. My office.

We're on the hunt for something bigger and better at this point. So we I was literally going to build a building up until a few months ago. And I just didn't think I could get it done before our lease here ended in the end of September.

But we're having some other problems with the building structurally. So we're decided we just can't hang out here any longer. And we're on the move.

We put in a floor plan design idea with a place a couple blocks away. It's going to need a full renovation. But having that way on me is my I hate moving.

I hate it with a passion.

[Uncle Marv]
I was going to say when you got that space, didn't you gut it or was it gutted before?

[Matt Forman]
It was a glorified giant storeroom. So it had an overhaul. We put a little office in it, floors, paint, you know, redid the flooring, paintings, paint the walls, you know, all that kind of stuff.

So it doesn't look like what it did when we got it. But still a basement. We're a typical I.T. business or I.T. department in a basement of a big building. Oh, we run TVs on the wall with Google on it, just rotating nature photos, just to give us some semblance of outside.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So basically the floor plan, you just need more space. And you said structural stuff is it stuff you can mention publicly?

[Matt Forman]
Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to I mean, it's we've just got some leak issues and things like that that have been ongoing. Things that haven't been fixed and should be fixed and whatnot.

So, you know, we've been dealing with it a while and just feel like I've given them ample opportunity to take care of it. I mean, literally, we, you know, all the stored storms I mentioned before we started, we literally rearranged the entire office to move certain pieces of furniture out of our, quote, flood zones that where the water leaks through the ceiling. And then the next big storm, those areas got hit with water.

They hadn't been hit with water in four years since we've been here. And then we move our furniture and then all of a sudden it rains on those desks. So that was kind of the breaking point, I think.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I hear that. So I've got I don't want to say I've got issues with the building because it's a nice space.

But our landlord is not doing much to help.

[Matt Forman]
So that's hard. I mean, I think where I'm at in the last 20 years or so, I've been through most of the bigger landlords in town and not a lot of them get the five star reviews.

[Uncle Marv]
Gotcha. So what's real estate like there? Because down here, I probably could have bought something before covid, after covid.

[Matt Forman]
No, it's not horrible, but not great. We are one of the fastest growing cities in the country. I mean, I think top 15, like most half of them were in Texas and was one of them.

So we have nonstop construction going on. You know, I was looking at a building just a couple of blocks over here downtown. You know, it was you know, it's a how we have a lot of houses that have been converted into offices surrounding our square downtown.

And I mean, it was built in the 30s, I think. And they, you know, it was just a little nice house. They converted it to an office and everything.

Still want, you know, six hundred thousand dollars for it. So it's the commercial stuff is, I think, up there, but not a lot of options as far as renting right now that that really fits our needs. I like the bullpen type environment.

All my guys are in one big room. I think it's easier for what we do to do that. And so that's part of what we're doing.

Our proposal for this other place is to open it up a bit so that it's more conducive to how we work.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, you got some advice from Keith and Chad. If you can swing it by a building with a lease back helps with your retirement allocation and taxes.

[Matt Forman]
Yeah, that's all about not paying rent to anybody. And I'm most really hoping to be out of that by the end of the year. But this the situation is really thrown a kink in that plan.

So I'm sure with renovations, they'll want, you know, a three year lease or more at the new building. So we'll just have to see. I haven't made a final decision yet.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, we were considering. So I was trying to consider if I would buy it as me and lease it to the business or buy it as the business and then have those options there. And this building actually has two sides to it.

So we would have the option of buying just our side or buying the entire building, which is what I would prefer to do. But it's absolutely ridiculous even to buy our side. It's too much money.

The valuation is OK, but everybody's paying probably 50 percent more than valuation.

[Matt Forman]
So some of the small ones here, like just seven figures and you just look at them like I don't see seven figures where the material there. So even we're close, but, yeah, I would my suggestion always buy it separate and lease it back. That's what I would do.

Gives you more options on the on the exit.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So let's just take a quick break and pivot here. I've been sipping from the cup here.

So I want to recognize the sponsors of the show. Of course, I mentioned NetAlly at the beginning of the show, the presenting sponsor for the podcast. I'm drinking from my sponsor labeled Mug Super Ops, the all in one future ready PSA slash RMM.

They are also the drink sponsor and they sponsor some of the audio podcast here. If you had been watching the videos of the shows that I taped, recorded at both IT Nation and Pax8Beyond, you would have seen on the travel banner. We welcomed TruGrid as a sponsor for the second half of 2024.

Yes, it is a product that I use. And they saw me out and about and thanked me because they said that they were still getting referrals from me, even from a show that we did, I don't know, three years ago. And I said, well, why don't you kick some of that back to me?

So they are sponsoring for the second half of 2024. We'll be doing a show with them a little bit later to give an update on some of that stuff. And then you would have also seen a sponsor Thread, last year's winner in the Pitch It Accelerator course.

And Thread gives you magic when it comes to handling your service tickets. So they are sponsoring all of the IT Nation podcasts that I'm doing, both the shows that are live streamed at the IT Nation events and the vendor interviews that we're doing for the 26 contestants in this year's Pitch It. So those are our sponsors now.

And yes, we had to say goodbye to a sponsor here. So there are some opportunities available, somebody to sponsor the live stream here and we have other opportunities. So if there's a vendor out there looking to park some money and wants to give back to the MSP community, reach out.

Got some stuff here at the IT Business Podcast. We're working it. We are working it.

So let's see here. Got that. And let's move along.

All right, Matt, I'm going to obviously give you time to prepare for your Florida man or random question segment. I didn't ask you ahead of time, but do you have a story or are you going to answer a question?

[Matt Forman]
I'll probably have to answer a question.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. We'll get to that a little bit later. And so let's go back to – so we talked a lot about your business.

Is there anything else that you think would be helpful to other IT business owners as to what's worked for you, whether it – I do things the way I want to.

[Matt Forman]
I guess I get that privilege for being the owner. But I do a lot of research. I look at what works for other people and try to picture if it's going to work for us.

Some stuff does. Some stuff doesn't. As far as just how to – what to offer, how to handle clients, that kind of thing.

I think our biggest thing is – and I hammer it into our guys – is customer service. When we take over a company, they're complaining about the service. And so I've taken that and ran with it.

I want my guys doing things for clients that they would expect them to do for them, hands down. Even if it's going the extra mile when you don't want to or don't need to or smiling when you really want to strangle somebody, that kind of thing. It's important, and I think it matters more than what most people give it credit for, especially in this industry.

I think the interactions we have with our client – nobody calls us to ask us how we're doing. They always call us when something's wrong. They're angry.

They need us to fix something. So that interaction, I think, is important than a lot of things. I don't know how else to really explain it.

Just going that extra mile, stopping to visit a client on the way home when he's 10 miles out of the way just because you know it's going to make things better. Things like that. It's all about we are in a service business, and that is the foundation of it, period.

Without those people, we're not getting paid, so we have to take care of them.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, looky here. I'm sorry.

I got to pull up a – I got a little throwback here. A friend in the chat, Tracy. We chatted a while back.

Hello, hello. Welcome to the show. So let me now reverse this, and is there a question that you have that you would like to ask me or the listeners in general that, you know, business-related?

You know, I'm a master at marketing, so.

[Matt Forman]
I mean, now that you bring it up, marketing is really my fail point. I'm an introvert by nature, so I don't like, you know, talking to people. So it takes a lot for me to do that kind of stuff, especially group things.

So, I mean, I would be curious what other people, you know, medium MSPs are finding effective in marketing. I mean, I struggle with, like, the social media for our business because it's one of those things, you know, people pay us to fix their problems. They don't want to deal with this stuff.

So, like, why follow a computer company that shows you, you know, here's my dude installing a rack on the wall. You know, they don't care. I don't know how to make our job interesting to where we can get that kind of attention, if that makes sense.

People pay us because they don't want to do this. I don't pay somebody. I don't want to do that work and then go follow them on social media to see more about their job.

Like, I don't, you know, so I struggle with the marketing aspect, especially in that terms of, like, what do I post? What do I not post? How do I get these people engaged?

You know, I'm a tech turned business owner. Marketing is not what I do. So that's a struggle for me.

Most of our business comes from, you know, word of mouth. We try to design our website to where it steps through some of the sales process for us. And that's about to get overhauled.

But, yeah, I mean, if you've got anybody has marketing pointers or things that have worked for them or not worked for them, I'm all ears.

[Uncle Marv]
So the first question I was going to ask you is how do you get your current customers? Because you have been growing. So you said word of mouth and then you said website.

So let me first ask the word of mouth. Is that something that you encourage people to do for you or have people just done it on their own?

[Matt Forman]
Primarily on their own. You know, we do every now and then, you know, try to do the whole 80, you know, anybody could benefit from our services type deal when I'm talking with people, you know, doing their, their, you know, reviews, annual reviews and types of type stuff. But, yeah, I mean, most of it's just organic, organic growth.

You know, we've had we've got a decent amount of competition in the area. You know, I don't tend to go down into the Metroplex area where I know, you know, it's the Wild West down there as far as the number of competitors we have. But everything we've done has just been kind of an organic growth.

And it's worked. I would love to grow a lot faster when I can have that much time on my hands. But we're growing steady and I like it that way.

I think that organic growth, especially when it's not pushed by us and it's just customer to customer or customer to new customer. Those are the guys that, you know, they're the in my opinion, the warmest lead. And, you know, they're going to stick with you if they're happy.

We have clients that I've had for over 15 years. And, you know, when we were still doing the break pick stuff and not even doing this, they've just been with us for the ride. And I've transitioned with us to what we do now.

So it's worked.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. OK, so we'll come back to that. And then you mentioned the Web site, walking people through the sales process.

The first question is, how are you doing with your SEO and visibility? Like, how are people finding your Web site?

[Matt Forman]
Well, actually, I have just started engaging with some people for updated SEO work. So I haven't really dug into that. I was burned by some SEO companies years ago.

It's one of those, you know, it's one of those industries that you can pay a lot of money and see great results or see nothing. So it's hard to pay for that type of stuff. For me, I have it on.

This is my third business. One of my other businesses that I built and sold. We engage in SEO company and they I mean, brand new domain, brand new everything.

And they got Google so mad at us that we couldn't find our Web site unless we went, you know, exact domain in the search bar. If you try to search our name, we wouldn't find out anywhere. So, I mean, it put a bad taste in my mouth for SEO work because not everybody's like that.

And I know that, but it made it very hard to go back and try to pay for that kind of stuff again. So I learned a little bit of it myself on our old Web site. But now I'm just too stinking busy.

We put up a new Web site, I don't know, about a year ago that had more of a sales approach. You know, here's what we do. Let's schedule a right fit call.

It works with my calendar, you know, in 15, 20 minutes. I'm going to find out if you're going to work with me. You know, if I want to work with you.

And I'm to a point in my business to where I like that. So we're not just taking on anybody that needs it anymore. We're very strategic with who we pick out and work with.

So I use the Web site to kind of try to funnel some of that. We're actually going through the process of getting it updated a little bit more right now to kind of fine tune that, update our services and that process of kind of guiding people through it on our Web site. I'm going to change a little bit here in the coming weeks.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So the site now, I just pulled it up myself to look at it. I won't go too much into it.

But it actually says right on the front page, their client driven security focus providing award winning service for 15 years. So where did you get the award from?

[Matt Forman]
Most of those have been, you know, just community awards. You know, I think there's a lot of towns that do it. You know, we've had, you know, been for several years.

We were awarded best IT specialist in the county. We've been on, you know, best in the city, nominated and winning. That's what kind of all this stuff is here in the background.

[Uncle Marv]
Right.

[Matt Forman]
So that's, you know, that's pretty much, you know, voted by the people that we work for and support.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. But so now this goes back to the beginning where you talked about the word of mouth. So in order to get that award winning service, you had to be seen by people.

So are you attending community events, chamber events, networking stuff?

[Matt Forman]
Not all the time. I mean, I'll do some of that stuff here and there. But again, you know, it's one of the so many hours in a day and a week kind of thing.

I'm hoping that probably one of our new hires that I'm planning on is going to kind of take on that role of being the not the face, but just going around meeting, greeting, shaking hands, kissing babies kind of deal. But it's not it's not where I'm comfortable.

[Uncle Marv]
Right.

[Matt Forman]
So I want somebody who goes back to hiring somebody to take care of the needs. And for me, that's one of them. I just not that I can't do it.

I just would rather be doing other stuff.

[Uncle Marv]
That's fine, because I will be honest. If there was a marketing thing that I did that was successful, it would be getting out, being seen with networking events. And I was lucky enough that when I was with a previous employer, I was part of a networking group that was much like B&I and it wasn't as aggressive as B&I.

So it wasn't something where you had to show up every week with leads in hands and that sort of thing. But it was accountable. So people made sure that, you know, we were there with an earnest effort to grow the business.

Now, again, this was, you know, this was almost 30 years ago. So a much different time when, you know, at the beginning stage of the business where I was hungry to get the business. But that worked.

And I think being involved in the community, I did go to chamber events. I did do things where I associated with people that they saw a lot of other people, which really was all it was. You know, finding the people that are very good at talking and referring people and using them.

So that's that. But, of course, having a good website is a good thing. Now, I didn't have a good website back then.

I wasn't about the SEO because back then I don't think we even talked to SEO. It was just something to say, yeah, I'm legit. I have a website.

See? Right. Absolutely.

But nobody went to my website by looking for me. I think that's changed now. So I have redone my website.

It's still not as good as it should be. But I'm going to start getting back out there myself because I will. So our business has been similar to yours where we've grown every year.

I think I did have one down year when I fired our largest customer, which that was an expected drop off. But I quickly replaced that. And this past year we actually – we did already lose two clients that were acquired by larger companies.

So they had IT staff and did not retain us. We thought that we had the next replacement client in place there. But they are just sitting on their hands, not wanting to sign an agreement and just wanting to pay us as needed.

They are paying a little bit of a retainer because I would not do anything unless we had something. So they had to pay a retainer, which is basically my weak-ass agreement. It's what it is.

But they won't sign a real agreement. So I'm going to go out and look for another client to replace them. So at some point that will be bye-bye.

Let's see. Keith had a comment in here. Another secret sauce.

Get on boards of large charities. You hang out with the CEOs of the customers you want. That's a good deal.

[Matt Forman]
We do a decent-sized charity and a significant discount. Really just trying to cover our cost. I like what they do.

They're one of our biggest ad column champions as far as word-of-mouth recommendations and advertising. They're good to us that way.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, that's about as much marketing advice as I'm willing to give. And you know I've had tons of shows with marketing.

We've done a marketing emphasis in the last couple of months. I think I have two more coming up. And then I have one we're actually going to do a little bit of a twist.

And it's going to be something along the lines of marketing from within. So that will give you guys a little bit of a teaser for an upcoming episode. Uncle Marv knows marketing.

All right. Let's go ahead and switch over to our Florida Man segment. And that also was presented by our good friends over at Super Ops.

And you said you wanted to do a random question. So I'll let you do that first. Let me pull up the random question generator.

And that is not a very good question. I'm going to move on to the next one. That says, what was the last gift that you received?

[Matt Forman]
The last gift that I received. Literally my Father's Day gift from my kids. And it was a combination of handmade cards that they spent a lot of money on, I'm sure.

And a picture of a hand drawn. A skewer that had the different cuts of steak on it. And it was like, well done, medium, well, medium.

And then at the bottom it was like, dad, because he was rare. So that was their little drawing that they made for me. So they put it in a frame and I've got it sitting in my office at the house.

[Uncle Marv]
They should have given you a set of steak knives to go with that.

[Matt Forman]
Oh, my. I had to pay for them myself. So I don't know if I would give them the money to go buy me a gift.

[Uncle Marv]
That's right. Your kids are little, right?

[Matt Forman]
Twin 13-year-old girls and a 7-year-old boy. So I have my hands full.

[Uncle Marv]
13-year-old twin girls. Oh, you've got some hell coming, boy.

[Matt Forman]
I do. I've already told my wife if I make it the next five years without going to jail, then we'll call it a success. So we'll see what happens.

I keep telling them, I keep telling my girls, we moved to the country. I've got a lot of land to make people disappear on if you bring the wrong boy around. So we'll see what happens.

[Uncle Marv]
All right.

[Matt Forman]
It's going to be fun.

[Uncle Marv]
So I had a couple of stories here. I was trying to figure out which one to choose, but I think I'm going to go with this story here just because it is so Florida man. A Florida man named Colton Vanhonheinstein, age 33, was caught on surveillance video purchasing a mask at a gas station around 7 p.m. this past Saturday evening. He then walked across the street to a nearby Wells Fargo bank, which was closed but left unlocked. Van Hon Heinstein entered the bank and rummaged through drawers and cabinets but found nothing of value. Despite the bank's security system detecting the intrusion and alerting authorities, Vanhonhenstien, I can't believe that name, had already fled the scene by the time deputies arrived.

He was eventually apprehended and charged with the burglary, even though the only item he took was the $5 mask from the gas station. The Martin County Sheriff's Office is investigating why the bank was left unlocked and why the alarm monitoring company responded with a delay. So I don't know how long the delay was.

And so he stole a mask at the gas station across the street to walk into Wells Fargo.

[Matt Forman]
So walk into a closed Wells Fargo.

[Uncle Marv]
Yes.

[Matt Forman]
Sounds to me like something else was going on. I mean, the bank unlocked and the alarm delayed. Sounds like something fishy.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So that is in Martin County, which is about 30 to 45 minutes north, depending on where it's just north of West Palm. So that is how close Florida man is to me.

[Matt Forman]
Got to compliment you on a couple of your bottle selections back there.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. Which ones?

[Matt Forman]
Buffalo trace. I think that's what I see. It's kind of blurry.

[Uncle Marv]
Oh, that's the four rosy. Yeah. The Buffalo trace is down there.

Yeah.

[Matt Forman]
Yeah. Well, there's not too bad either. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
I think the Weller's is compliments of solutions granted when they were here. And of course, once they open the bottles, they can't take them on the plane. So I usually can scoop things up that way.

So when people come down for conferences and they don't want to fly stuff back.

[Matt Forman]
Perks of the job.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Matt Forman]
That's where you get all the most swag is the last 30 minutes of the vendor shows. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
But I can't wait. I got to get in early to get the swag because if I miss out. So it'll be interesting this year as I go through the swag because vendors are.

Let me say I don't want to say they're getting smart because that's not the way I like it. But they're getting stingy with their swag. The good swag you cannot get unless you sign up for a demo.

[Matt Forman]
Yeah. So. Yep.

Yep. I saw one of the. What was it?

Somebody was counting a booth visit if you stop by and got some of their ice cream at the conference the other day. Yeah. They had it.

I wasn't sure. It looked like part of the conference, but it wouldn't. But.

But yeah, my wife threatened me. Not to bring any more tumblers home, any more T-shirts. Really?

So I took one shirt home. Didn't even bring enough space in my bag intentionally to pack it full of things.

[Uncle Marv]
So don't tell me what shirt on the air because I have two finalists that I'm picking between the apparel department as to the best shirt. So I don't want to comment on it if it's if it's the one you brought home. So we'll talk about that later.

Gotcha. So. All right, Matt.

Well, hey, thanks for coming out and hanging out. It's been too long. You know, we got to get the crew back together.

[Matt Forman]
Absolutely. Yeah. We were just talking about it the other day, trying to see if we can get that spun back up again.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So for listeners to get the full history, not only did we meet at the SolarWinds conference, but a group of us, we were a peer group for a while. It was kind of an informal peer group.

Was it every Thursday or every other Thursday?

[Matt Forman]
I think we started out every week and it was a bit much and we moved it to every other week.

[Uncle Marv]
So we were part of a peer group. This was back before COVID days and all of us hung out and kind of helped each other and then things kind of fell apart. I know what it was.

It was we tried to do the thing with teams and that didn't work.

[Matt Forman]
Yeah. There's a few of us in there still. Still straggling along with it.

It's hard to have so many different applications open.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. And then we all were busy with our businesses. I think the others also were like you, trying to hire and grow.

And me, I was being Mr. Boutique and you guys were kind of like, well, whatever, go do your thing and come back when you want to be.

[Matt Forman]
We'll always let you hang out with us. It's fine. It's fine.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching. You have just hung out with Matt Foreman and I.

Matt of Local Circuit IT out of Denton, Texas. Very nice man. Very good company.

Yes, a seven-figure MSP if you want them. And looking to grow again, get bigger space and doing well. So Matt, thanks a lot.

And folks, that's going to do it. Thank you for hanging out with us here on the live show, Wednesdays at 8 p.m. And you can always check out the podcast. We are putting out a plethora of shows between all the interviews that I did at IT Nation Connect or IT Nation Secure.

I'm sorry. PAX 8 Beyond. I still have about six or eight episodes to put out from that.

[Matt Forman]
You don't have to worry about that when you're in a basement.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, well, that body shop is literally two blocks over. So they can only go one way when they peel out. So they love to take off here.

So, yeah. So I've got I think it's six or eight episodes left to publish from that. And then I'm also doing the Pitch It vendor profiles.

I just started those. So we've got 26 of those. I think four were released this past Monday.

And I will be releasing another batch each Monday until that is through. And then conferences coming up. I will be in Boston for an ASCII event.

I will be in D.C. for TechCon Unplugged. I will be in Miami for DattoCon. I will be in Tampa for the ASCII Cup.

And I think there's one more. But we'll figure it out. You'll know about it.

We'll do some hollering when I'm in the town. Next week, Michelle Accardi from LionGuard will be joining us. So come in and check that out.

And I believe we're going to be talking about their first ever RoarCon, or whatever they've named that conference there, LionGuard conference happening this next month in Dallas. All right, folks. That's it.

Thank you for hanging out. We'll see you later. And until next time, holla.