731 Tony Hawk's Skateboard & Spark

[Uncle Marv]
Hello and thank you for listening to the IT Business Podcast. Before we begin, I want to acknowledge that the audio quality of this episode may not be up to our usual standards. As you know, we recorded live in St. Petersburg at ASCII EDGE and the settings were less than ideal, so you're going to hear background noise, echoes, etc. But I don't want you to worry, you can find detailed show notes and a full transcript available for reference, so you won't be missing any of the valuable insights that we discussed today. Thank you for your understanding and let's get on with the show. Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast presented by NetAlly.

And we are once again coming at you live from St. Petersburg at the ASCII EDGE event. We are finishing up the year 2024 here in St. Petersburg. We've got a nice little after party that's happening tomorrow night.

And just to let everybody know, you don't see them in the background, but this show is powered by Rhythms, the internet in a box, so that I can live stream and provide internet on location. And you should have heard the earlier episode with Steve Copeland. And they are going to be around the industry pitching themselves, because you could use the internet in a box for any type of event, backup internet, all sorts of things.

But let's move on because I think we are in a time crunch. The man that I have sitting next to me, Mr. Sean. Summer Lovin.

The summer man.

[Sean Lardo]
How are you, sir? I'm doing well, Marvin. Long time no see, right?

It's been a while.

[Uncle Marv]
Did you feel unloved this year because I didn't have you on every pitching episode?

[Sean Lardo]
Yes, I felt neglected. My therapist said that it's just abandonment issues, and I can work through them if I try my best. I've apparently not done a good enough job of working through them yet because I'm still feeling some type of way.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, but I gave you time back that you could now spend with your family. We are family. Your real family.

[Sean Lardo]
We're real family. Don't you have kids that you should spend time with? Moving on.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, we have crunch. Runtime crunch. So of course, we should probably get a couple of things out of the way.

You're with ConnectWise, IT Nation specifically. Yes. And we are just weeks away from the culmination of the pitching competition.

[Sean Lardo]
Absolutely. We're actually as of today, within two weeks from today. Two weeks.

Two weeks from today. Two weeks. Actually, at this time, we will be figuring out who the winners of PitchIT are at this time.

Okay. At this very time. That's right.

That's right. I know. So yes, you're talking about the granddaddy of events of the year, IT Nation.

It's a big event. I didn't realize how big. Last year, the room was full.

Yep. PitchIT is, we progressively doubled the size of the room each year. So I'm hoping for over a thousand people in that room this year because we had over 600 in the room last year watching.

So this year, if we can get over a thousand, that makes us the biggest event inside of the event.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice. So for those that don't know, PitchIT is the annual competition of new and emerging vendors. And yes, most of them are going to end up being a part of the ConnectWise family, but this is for the industry as a whole to get new vendors in that can provide innovative solutions for us.

It has been a great event. I've met some great vendors. Rhythms actually came out of the PitchIT competition.

Thread has come out of that. So fantastic thing. So real quick, tell me what some of the highlights of this year has been, starting with the number of participants and how things have gone.

[Sean Lardo]
So the first highlight was we had the most amount of applicants that we've ever had. When I first looked over the program, we had about 25 applicants come in. We accepted 18 companies.

Second year, we had about 50 applicants. We took in 26 companies. The sweet spot is 26.

We can't take in more than 26 because it becomes sort of watered down. There's just too much going on. But this year, we went well over 150 applicants in this year.

And we're talking globally too, not just in one part of the country or one part of the world. We ended up having three companies from APAC, three companies from EMEA, and then even a couple of companies out of Canada and then the rest in the US. So the reach has gotten so much larger.

We have people like you and other regions that are actually following these people. So it's going well. So that's the first highlight.

The next piece is the fact that we add on a bunch more Cameo coaches in to do things. And they literally got to the point where there was so much being learned and so much being shared that these start vendors have probably quadrupled their size in network. So it's exciting.

It's been great. We're blessed to have the program we have. And we have such strong competitors.

And each year has gotten better. It really has.

[Uncle Marv]
So we're down to the final three, PC PowerSave, Senteon Cybersecurity, and Seedpod Cyber.

[Sean Lardo]
Yes. We're talking about three different companies all together. Again, we've been fortunate that every year, we were concerned going into even the first year that it was the same thing with the sexy topic, cybersecurity.

Now it's AI. So we were a little nervous that we would see just those ones be the finalists. We have such a good, wide array, diverse crowd of judges and MSPs that are involved in this voting process to make the finalists.

That again, this year, like every year, they've been from three different segments of the business, essentially. In this case, we have cybersecurity. The only thing that sort of complements it is cybersecurity insurance, which is Seedpod Cyber.

But really, you're talking about two different animals. And then PC PowerSave, they're coming over from the UK. And talk about a great program, talk about a really good platform to be able to minimize the usage so you can save money, especially over in the UK.

Because if you didn't see the UK utility bills, they've gone up. The government have put a cap on them, actually. That's how bad it was getting.

We need to have that happen here. Right. So yeah, again, very diverse group of people pitching.

It's exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing them go at it.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So IT Nation is going to be in two weeks, actually November 6th through the 8th in Orlando, Florida.

[Sean Lardo]
Is that the Rosen? Rosen Shingle Creek. Rosen Shingle Creek.

We have Tony Hawk as keynote. We have the Stone Temple Pilots as entertainment. We also have our philanthropy for K9s for Warriors.

And we're the top five donors. It's a direct donation to them. We'll get autographed skateboards from Tony Hawk.

Nice. So the number one, the top so far donors, $1,000. All right.

I can top that. Well, I'll look forward to that.

[Uncle Marv]
Actually, he could top that. Yes, he could. We just did a shout out here to Michael Crane from SonicWall.

Yes. Michael, we just committed SonicWall to donating to K9 for Warriors. Are you okay with that?

How much am I committing? $1,001.

[Sean Lardo]
You serious?

[Michael Crean]
Yeah. $1,001 from me.

[Sean Lardo]
You autograph Tony Hawk's skateboard if you're one of the top five donors as well. It's easy. You're the man.

That's why I love you. There you go, folks. Live at Ascii Edge.

He meant $5,001.

[Michael Crean]
Now you want to change it up.

[Sean Lardo]
That's Sean Lardo. He heard it wrong.

[Michael Crean]
Oh, Uncle Marv heard it wrong. I've never seen that happen.

[Sean Lardo]
I misspoke to him, actually.

[Michael Crean]
Just to be clear, I don't believe you, but I do believe you.

[Sean Lardo]
There you go. I misspoke it to him I meant.

[Michael Crean]
It's too late, man. Too late. Already done.

All right, sir. So I know that you've got a speech soon. Let me give you two opportunities.

One, I've been allowing anybody that I interview to give shout outs. So do you want to give a shout out to anybody here? A shout out to anybody home who's not here or should be here?

[Sean Lardo]
No, you know what? The shout out is pretty simple. I have to keep everything with PitchIT.

I really do because those guys work so hard. I do. I feel so bad for them.

But apparently you were smacked.

[Uncle Marv]
You had a little hand smack.

[Sean Lardo]
Stay on topic. Yeah, no. So no, I have to because they've worked so hard.

We put them through a lot. It is a lot of work for them. So, you know, the finalists themselves were Senteon, SeedPod Cyber, and PC Power Save.

I can't wait to see you guys in a couple weeks go at it. My daughter, Sophia, is stuck at home without me. Just texted me about some stuff.

Going to a concert. I have no clue what we're going to.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, the Taylor Swift concert was last weekend in South Florida, so it's not that.

[Sean Lardo]
She's not a Swiftie. No, no, she's not. Let's see.

He's scrolling through his phone, looking. I am.

[Uncle Marv]
So wait a minute. So is she asking your permission to go or is she telling you that that's where she's going?

[Sean Lardo]
No, she wants us to go to Tyler the Creator. She wants you to go with. Yeah, we do that.

Tyler the Creator. Really? Yeah.

Look at you. Good, good, good daddy. Yeah, man, we went to Chalice Gambino a couple months ago.

I don't know who that is. Yeah, I didn't know either until she told me. And I was like, oh, I realize I like some of the music.

But yeah, you and I are different. You're not going to my concerts.

[Uncle Marv]
Probably not. No. Would you go to Marshmello?

[Sean Lardo]
I probably would.

[Uncle Marv]
OK, that's what my nephew. Well, actually, he's kind of fading out of Marshmello. He's turning into a Swiftie, which is not good.

[Sean Lardo]
I mean, I appreciate, applaud her. She does some good work. But there's all kind of music out there.

And just to be dedicated to one.

[Uncle Marv]
Wait a minute. You're telling me that there's all kind of music out there?

[Sean Lardo]
Well, you should know because I don't know where. You should show your playlist to the world. Because my Lord.

So yeah, so yeah, I'm looking forward to everything. I'm looking forward to seeing you there too in two weeks.

[Uncle Marv]
I will be there. So that'll do it. Let me let him get set up for his speaking and mic'd up.

Sean Lardo from ConnectWise. More specifically, IT Nation and pitching. Yes.

Lardo, we'll see you out there. Absolutely, brother. All right, folks, that's going to do it.

I got to sign off here. And there'll be more from ASCII Edge in St. Petersburg. Holla.

Hello, friends. Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast. And once again, we are here live in St. Petersburg at the ASCII Edge event. And I don't know if I'm hosting this video, but I'm going to throw up here. We've got a live shot outside of the main room here at the Hilton Bayfront. But what you're really going to be interested in is who my guest is.

And interestingly enough, I didn't know he was going to show up because it's that far south. But Stan the Man is here in the house. Stan Louissaint from Fluid Design.

[Stan Louissaint]
Thank you for having me, Marv. It's always a pleasure. It was a very pleasant surprise checking into the hotel and turning around and seeing who was behind me.

And that was you with all this podcast gear.

[Sean Lardo]
Yes, yes.

[Stan Louissaint]
Very, very pleasant surprise for me. Happy to be down here in your home state and get to hang out with you, bud.

[Uncle Marv]
That's right. So I'll just go ahead and ask this to get it out of the way. You normally don't make all of the ASCII events unless you're on the stage and all of that stuff.

So what was it that brought you down here this time? They just had one in Jersey earlier this year.

[Stan Louissaint]
That is correct. That's correct. So I typically would try to do two ASCII's a year if I'm not presenting.

But the main reason why I came down here was because I'm actually an ASCII squad leader. So I run one of the squad peer groups. That is a membership benefit of ASCII.

And this last ASCII Cup, right? The last show, ASCII makes an attempt to get all of the Spark movers together in one place so we can share some of our issues around some of our groups or share some of our positives. It obviously helps to uplift one another to essentially better the community and better what those groups are.

So I made an effort to be here. I made an effort to be part of that event. And of course I'm happy I did because we met this morning and it was a fantastic session between 13 minutes.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So let me ask you this because I am not a part of a Spark group and I know that ASCII restarted these peer groups. I know they did it a few years ago but Spark has been the latest iteration.

It seems to be a lot better in terms of how they got it set up, how the groups are designed to kind of be, they put you with similar members that are in size, revenue, services and that sort of thing. So what is something that you've gotten out of the peer group that wasn't the direct result of you being a leader?

[Stan Louissaint]
So you just hit the nail on the head and I just want to reiterate it. As you mentioned, ASCII is putting together the groups based on a certain revenue ranges. So there's groups that are people that are sub 500,000.

There are groups that are people that are 2 million plus. We are all geographically dispersed. So there's not an issue in sharing and being upfront and honest and opening it up.

So in my group, we have members that are all over the country from I'm in Jersey. We have people in PA. We have members in California.

We have some members that are out of Toronto, right? So everyone is geographically dispersed so that there is no issue with talking and feeling like, oh, if I say something, my competitor next door, it's going to use it. So we do create that openness and that type of community.

One of the things that I've found valuable outside of being Spark Leader is honestly the openness and the willingness for everyone else to help a member that has a problem or has a concern overcome the challenge. And of course, even being Spark Leader, I can be in the same position, right? I can bring a problem to the group and say, hey, look, this is a problem that I'm facing, whether it's an issue with a client, an issue with a prospect, an issue with a vendor and say, have you dealt with this challenge before?

And if you have, what have you done to overcome it? Or what advice do you have for other people? So it's actually been fairly rewarding being Spark Leader, having a group of individuals, like-minded business owners who are trying to elevate themselves to the next level and willing to help other people do the same.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, so that sounds like a very good thing. If you are a member of ASCII and not a part of a Spark group, I would say reach out to them and find one. There are tons.

And I don't think there's a limit to the number they can have. So it's not like you're going to miss out on being a part of a group if you don't ask.

[Stan Louissaint]
Correct. Oh, that's correct. And I just wanted to throw it out there.

Like, you know, if you hit a certain size and a new group in that revenue range needs to be formed, it'll be formed, right? So like I said, I think as of now, I think we're up to 13 or 14 individual groups. That count may be higher.

I don't know the exact number, but it will grow as the amount of people who want to participate.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. So it's been a while since you've been on the show. And I want to ask if there's anything that you can share business-wise that has changed.

I think it's been, what, six months or so? So any new, you know, projects, any new inspirations, anything, you know, super big happen?

[Stan Louissaint]
Honestly, it's been status quo, which isn't a bad thing, right? I do like consistency. Maybe that's a, I say sometimes that might be a flaw of a person aside, but on my personal growth, right?

But in all fairness, I do like consistency. Still knocking at the park. Clients are happy.

Maintaining. Actually, there's one thing to tell, I have a client who's going to be acquiring someone else. So that'd be fun.

You know, it's funny that you just mentioned Spark earlier. One of the things is we have, there's a member in the group who works a lot with, you know, PE and venture capital firms. So he's always getting a new client because they acquire someone.

And I was saying to him, like, you know, that really hasn't happened much in my life, right? You know, that happened. And then all of a sudden, you know, I get a client who goes, hey, we're buying another firm, right?

But that's what we do. And we're going to expand. Don't worry.

We're going to take them over, not they're taking us over. So you're perfectly fine. So, you know, that's fun and exciting because I love just dealing with, you know, any business that's growing and just be a part of that process from the IT perspective.

As of now, only the partners know and I know. So I feel very included in that inner circle to be able to help these folks. But all in all, still making money, is still doing well, still keeping clients happy, making sure that first and foremost.

But, you know, as I said, there's nothing huge to report, but it's been pretty status quo and I'm okay.

[Uncle Marv]
That's good. That's good. I was just thinking about the fact of acquiring.

So I did have one of my clients acquire another client. It was a law firm and they acquired an office and that was fun trying to integrate, you know, machines and software. They used a different platform.

So it was not an easy transition and having to keep both networks up and running. We did it probably six, seven months before they fully integrated into the existing infrastructure. So that was fun.

[Stan Louissaint]
Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that's also important to note is, you know, making sure that the clients understand that. Hey, you know, we do need to be involved.

We do need to know this because it may not happen overnight. And you might want this as part of your planning process in terms of, hey, how are the companies going to run? You know, maybe side by side or how do you integrate?

What's the first step? What's the next step? Look, I'm just going to be very transparent here.

We've all seen it on the vendor side, right? You know, a vendor acquiring another vendor, merging. We've seen it happen successfully.

We've seen it happen not successfully. It might have been, you know, on the end of that. So of course, you know, by taking our own experiences, being able to bring it to the client and make sure that we have a successful outcome, you know, that's obviously a priority.

[Uncle Marv]
Very true. Very true. So let me ask this.

Do you have anybody that you want to give a special shout out to? Oh, shout out.

[Stan Louissaint]
Ah, listen, listen. We have to. We have to.

We were just busting about our buddy Chad. Our buddy Chad Kemp from the North, the true North of Canada. He was sitting there in his compound probably as we speak.

I know he doesn't like to come outside. I like to tease him a lot. I don't think you got to the Toronto show.

[Uncle Marv]
I did not. I thought about it. I was going to try to make it happen.

I also didn't know that if I, you know, could go through his approval process to get into the castle.

[Stan Louissaint]
Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, I don't, you know, I think he could have stopped you at the border. You know, I think he could have made sure that you didn't get to the border.

But no, we'll give him a shout out, of course. And it's fantastic. And honestly, I'm going to give a shout out to Dawn Sizer, right?

Just heard her presentation here at ASCII. Yep. On automation.

That was fantastic. Very good insight to bring towards, you know, to the industry and to the folks that are in attendance to help them understand, you know, when things make sense to automate. And of course, not everything should be automated.

Just because it can doesn't mean it should.

[Uncle Marv]
So since you brought that up, I'm going to ask you, what were you trying to get at with that question?

[Stan Louissaint]
Well, no. Well, the question really, so, right, you're highlighting the fact that I asked the question, what should not be automated?

[Uncle Marv]
No, no, no. The way that you asked it was, do you have an example of something that you tried to automate or thought about automating that you decided not to automate?

[Stan Louissaint]
Yeah. And I'm going to tell you exactly where that... It was not a shot at Todd, or any way, shape, or form.

It was, I've read a lot of things about automation and also read how you can over-automate. Or how, you know, you can spend so much time with a dedicated tech trying to automate something that you now have reached the point of diminishing return before you've even gotten the benefit of the automation. So, you know, Don shared a, I guess a scale of some sort, right?

Showing how much time and then showing costs of automating, you know, based on what you can get out of it. So what I was trying to figure out is if they had that experience in their business, where they go, yeah, we thought it was good to automate that. It's taking too long to get it automated or it's costing us too much money.

So let's just scrap that and throw it away. Because I believe we can all have that experience. Like, yeah, this was a good idea from the beginning and it was with good intention, but it's clear that we're going down the wrong path.

So let's just stop this and keep it moving.

[Uncle Marv]
It's not much different than what we went through with trying to, you know, write a script or create a PowerShell to do what we wanted to do. And, you know, you're trying to do something to take, you know, 15 seconds off of a process, but yet you've spent two hours and it's still not working.

[Stan Louissaint]
So, I'm going to give you a real life personal example of this for a minute. You know, one of my brokerage accounts is at TD Ameritrade. TD Ameritrade has gotten purchased by Charles Schwab.

TD Ameritrade, you know, gave me multiple formats of file exports, okay? That I was able to do with the data what I needed to do with it continually, right? Well, Charles Schwab doesn't have those file formats.

You can have a CSV, a XML, and a JSON, right? So here I am, and I can tell you, I wish I can tell you how many hours I was sitting there in all seriousness trying to write a script to take this information, convert it to this other format. I spent hours on this, hours on it, and did not yield a successful result, just so you know.

And all in all, I said, well, you know, and no lie, I wish I was lying. I manually handled the transactions and brought them into the application I needed to do, and it took me less than four hours, right? And I completely missed the step of trying to even figure out how many transactions there were.

And then when I look at it, I say, what am I doing? Why am I sitting here trying to automate this? I'm trying to automate this process for no reason, because once I got the bulk of the stuff in, and I'm not going to lie to you, it was about two years’ worth of information, which show how kind of behind I was on some things.

But once I did that, now you're talking about two or three transactions a month, which will take me nothing. So sitting there and trying to create an automated procedure or a converter tool or whatever it was that I was trying to do to get it from format A to format B, ended up I wasted more time than it was worth ultimately. And that was kind of the thing.

[Uncle Marv]
Sometimes you just got to embrace the suck.

[Stan Louissaint]
Yeah, yeah. And you know, there is a model I go by, which is every day, you got to do one thing that you don't want to do. Every day, one thing, right?

I don't care, that could be making your bed, that could be going to the gym, that could be cooking a meal, right? I don't care what it is. Do one thing that you don't want to do.

So that day, it was entering those transactions.

[Uncle Marv]
Oh my, all right. So folks, if you are not attending Ask the Edge, these are the types of nuggets that you're missing out on. Unless you listen to the show.

[Stan Louissaint]
Yeah, well, you're missing out on it, and you get to hang out with us when we're in attendance. But yeah, it was... Look, and I'm just going to just throw this out there.

I mean, one of the things that I love about this show is the fact that they're asking members that are presenting, right? It doesn't mean that vendors aren't here, and you're not getting informational sessions from those folks. But it's very different having a conversation with a fellow peer or listening to a fellow peer, share about their business, share about something that's new and important to them.

And then they're obviously trying to bring that information to us, and hopefully with some actual items that we can take and apply to our businesses.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, and the fact that there's a lot more networking opportunities, built-in breaks where you can actually take time, talk with somebody, and not feel rushed to get to your next session. Correct. So fantastic event.

Well, Stan, thank you very much. Good to see you here, my man. As they say, it's good to be seen.

[Stan Louissaint]
So I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Maybe I won't wait so long until next time.

But like I said, pleasant surprise. I didn't know you were going to be here, and we got to make it happen.

[Uncle Marv]
We got lots of events down here in Florida, so you can make it anytime. I know you want to get down here. So that's right.

All right, folks, that's going to do it. And we'll say goodbye here from St. Petersburg, Florida, ASCII Edge. And I probably should have said this at the beginning, but everything here that we're doing, of course, the IT Business Podcast is presented by NetAlly.

We've got our sponsors, travel sponsors, TruGrid, Super Ops. But for today, we are doing everything live streamed over Wi-Fi through the power of Rhythms. Rhythms has provided me with a box to do internet on site.

So I need to say a shout out to them that I can do everything over the Wi-Fi and stream as needed. So thank you to Rhythms. And that's going to do it, folks.

We'll be back with more from St. Petersburg. And talk to you soon. Hala.