NSITSP Spotlight: Andy Higgins (EP815)

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals, managed service providers, and anybody that supports business. We try to help you do that better, smarter, and faster. Today I have an interview with another member of the NSITSP, the National Society of IT Service Providers, and we're going to do another member spotlight and talk about some things that are good in the industry, some things that are needing to be better that we all can be a part of.

Today I am joined by Andy Higgins, and Andy, we didn't properly prep because I didn't ask you about your name, but IM Collaboration is your company, right?

[Andy Higgins]
That's right. Yes. That was founded back in 2000 when I was working for IBM.

I did a lot of instant messaging and collaborative work through Lotus Notes at the same time, the products that were in the market back then, and I created the name of the company based on that, Instant Message Collaboration. That was my idea.

[Uncle Marv]
So, a nice little transition from Instant Message to MSP, right?

[Andy Higgins]
That's right, yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Andy Higgins]
Yes. A lot of people think I'm saying I am collaboration, and I probably should have got the IAM collaboration too, but I didn't, but I can be considered collaboration if you'd like.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I hear you. So, my name, I thought I was going to change my name after the first five years.

I actually got what they call a fictitious name registration. MB Systems, it was the quickest thing I could come up with, and I thought, I'll find a better name later, and here I am 28 years later, and I'm like, yeah, still haven't found that better name. Yeah.

[Andy Higgins]
I know how that is, yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, Andy, I mean, your career actually begins before 2000 when you started this company. I understand that you've been in the industry for quite some time, so let's start with your journey in IT.

What's the short version?

[Andy Higgins]
The short version, oh, well, in 1980 when I was deciding what to do for college, my father suggested that I get into IT because it looked a promising career. Really? Yes.

So, he was very correct in the end, and yeah, I was a mathematician, you know, people say and become a chartered accountant or something, but I'm so glad I didn't do that, even though I like numbers and problem solving and things like that, but IT turned out to be the place to be. I went to college, got a joint honors in math and computer science in England, and then I worked in England for about four years, then I got out of England. I went to work in Switzerland for about seven years.

I worked for the Swiss government for two years, reporting indirectly to the Swiss president who I met a couple of times, which was a lot of fun, but Switzerland is a small country, so one might expect to meet the president if you work for the government, and then I met and married an American, or Texan, should I say, from San Antonio.

[Uncle Marv]
Those are two different things.

[Andy Higgins]
And moved over to the States, where I worked for Lotus, IBM, Bank of America, and then IBM again, and then I decided, hey, I need to do something a bit more for myself company wise, and I formed my company. I was a contractor for about four or five years, and then I decided, yeah, I need some recurring revenue, which will cut into your question about why I decided to be an MSP, because an MSP is really a computer contractor who has recurring revenue, something they can rely on. And at the time, I did a lot of domino stuff, which is from, I was large domino, but mainly email migrations, instant message migrations, integration, and I worked on large projects like I worked with, am I allowed to say names of companies?

[Uncle Marv]
Sure.

[Andy Higgins]
Okay. So I worked on Continental Tires, which has 150,000 users. They migrated off the domino platform mid last decade, and I provided them with an instant message integration feature, where, excuse me, where 150,000 people could speak between the Microsoft solution at the time and the IBM solution, which was an ad hoc solution because you couldn't get that, you couldn't buy it off the shelf.

But that was an example of a very large migration. I've done other migrations to the cloud, Office 365, I concentrated mainly sort of 2014, 15, I was concentrating mainly on Office 365, because it seemed to be the thing. And since then, I've become an SME in that product, and I've become an MSP, both supporting smaller businesses directly, and I've got a couple of co-managed clients that I work with as well.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So thank you. Even short, that sounds awfully long, but it sounds awfully good.

Well, let me ask you this, before we talk about the current state of where things are, what stands out as something you were like, super proud of from back then?

[Andy Higgins]
Well, let's see, I remember I represented Switzerland at the ITU, the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, when I worked for the government, and I got my name down in some of the standards at the time, some of those standards are now no longer really kept to, because it was the X 400 standard, which is the email standard that was around for a long time before the ARPA stuff, or the X, you know, the SMTP stuff. But I did do some X 500 stuff, and that stuff is still stands the test of time.

So those type of things, representing the country on committees for intercommunication and integration of systems, which is really my background to working with the NSITSP, because I think stuff like that needs to be done. And in unregulated societies, those things don't get done, and we need to get them done. So somebody's got to stand up.

And I'm not just talking about keeping the government in check, you know, somebody has to stand up and represent the industry to a certain degree.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. Now, you just mentioned the NSITSP. Let me ask, when did you first hear about it?

And what made you join?

[Andy Higgins]
I think I heard about it when I first talked with Karl Palachuk in Montreal in around 2014 and 15. And it was just a glint in his eye. I don't think he'd even thought about the name.

And he's one of the founders. But we talked about stuff exactly like what I just said, you know, regular, you know, keeping, you know, keeping tabs on the industry, making sure we regulated or not regulated, make sure we kept the regulators in step. I think that's the most dangerous thing.

Uninformed politicians making rules about something they know nothing about. We see it every day. And we need to make sure that they don't do stupid stuff.

So that's when I first heard about it, really. And then it went away for a few years because I kept in touch with Karl. And then I heard it.

It was coming up right when it first started. So I don't know exactly the date, but as soon as it came up, I joined because it was very low. It's a low commitment to join.

It's just a bit of money. And then they're looking out for you, you know, right.

[Uncle Marv]
So let me ask this. And I don't know how much of it you can really hearken back to, you know, when your days when you were overseas and stuff. But is there a real difference in the IT sectors in other parts of the world as compared to here in the US?

[Andy Higgins]
I always remember remarking when I used to come over the email conferences in the early 90s from Switzerland and remarking how many women were in the marketplace over here. I just it just blew me away that the equality of the marketplace and, you know, not just I mean, well, that's just America. I think the different people from all over the place being in the business, you know, in Switzerland, it's just a bunch of white guys, should I say.

But they're all Swiss, you know, they're Swiss-y looking people and I could get taken as a Swiss. But yeah, the diversity is not there. I don't think.

Interesting. For one thing. Well, you know, maybe a little bit more in England and of course, things have changed.

I mean, I've not been there in 30 years. I've lived in the States for 30 years. But back then I did notice it and I always thought it amusing that a lot of Americans didn't think it was enough over here.

But you should try it in Europe. It wasn't as much. I mean, there was only one woman I ever knew who worked in IT in Europe, you know, I think.

Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
Interesting.

[Andy Higgins]
So that's noticeable.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, that's good. Let me ask this question.

This is going to be another sideways question. But in terms of you being involved in Swiss government, is it true what they say about the money? Do you have any money in Swiss bank accounts that you're keeping?

[Andy Higgins]
I wasn't allowed to keep my Swiss bank account when I left Switzerland. Because I had a normal Swiss bank account, Union Bank of Switzerland, UBS. There's two or three banks that are like normal banks.

What you're talking about is the banks that, you know, hold the money hidden. And yeah, those banks exist, they're tiny little banks, they're down little back streets in Zurich and Bern. And I never had enough money to get one of those accounts.

[Uncle Marv]
So it's not like the movies, because for some reason I thought every bank in Swiss was like that. So that's not exactly true.

[Andy Higgins]
No, I don't think so. I think there are commercial banks for the people in Switzerland. When I left, I was told I need to close my bank account.

I'll tell you something about Swiss banks. I always thought this was wonderful, leaving England and just managing to pay off my credit card debt from college. And in England, it was always easy to get a lot of credit, you know, just like it is over here, which is stupid easy in this country to get credit.

Right. So people live under these piles of credit. Well, in Switzerland, they don't allow credit cards.

And I mean, it may have changed in 30 years, but back then, I went to the bank and they said, “We’re going to give you these credit cards. They look like credit cards because they got Visa and MasterCard on them, but they don't function that way because at the end of every month, we're going to take how much you owe on the credit card out of your bank account. That's the way they work in Switzerland.

So they don't allow credit effectively on credit cards.

[Uncle Marv]
So the original debit card, then.

[Andy Higgins]
Exactly. They were they functioned as debit cards, but basically debit cards weren't a thing 30 years ago, I don't think. That's the way they functioned.

It was more like an Amex card, the way the Amex card functions nowadays. Now, you could get credit, but you had to go in and talk to the bank manager because I after living in Switzerland for four years, I decided to buy a car. I didn't have a car for four years because the public transport is so good.

But I decided to buy a car because I needed to do a certain things. And I had to borrow a little bit of money. And it was just it was an interview.

But anyway, there you go.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So back to your role in the NSITSP and being an MSP here. So when you joined, I mean, you did mention earlier about, you know, keeping regulators at bay and, you know, allowing the people that are in the industry to kind of self-govern.

It's the way I like to look at it. What do you think would be a reasonable goal that you would like to see that the organization does?

[Andy Higgins]
It's a good question, because there are a lot of other groups around that tend to say they represent the MSPs or represent the IT providers like ASCII, like Channel Pro. Is it the channel program? What is it?

There's one called that. There's a bunch of them. And I think they do represent us, but mainly from a commercial interest vis-a-vis the channel, whereas I don't think NSITSP really is interested too much in the channel.

They're more interested in the professionalism, professionalism of our of our business, so to speak. And in that. We don't get unprofessional behavior in the business, which would hurt, you know, hurt us in general, right, because people will start making laws about it then, because, as we all know, laws are made to stop the people who do bad stuff from doing it again.

Right. Most people are respect respectable and we could get by without even having laws because we don't we don't take advantage of people, you know. But then, you know, when the money comes in, people take advantage.

And, you know, so I think that that part of it all intrigues me. I'm not sure what they're going to do about it. But yeah, I think having it's almost like, you know, let's go back to my original thing about chartered accountants and accountants.

If I had been a chartered accountant in the 80s in England, I would have joined the Chartered Accountants Society, which is a professional organization dedicated to chartered accountants to make sure they're all professional and they all do what they said they do and maybe providing certifications and things for of their professionalism. And I think that's what we need in our business today. And that's what the NSITSP can stand for.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Yeah, I believe that as well, in the sense that we have, you know, regulated industries, we have the auto mechanics and we have the HPAC guys and the AC, you know, and unfortunately, we still have people doing bad things in those areas, too. But there are some penalties that you can place.

You can, you know, there are some licensing things that can be done to help regulate that, even though we don't want all of that regulation. We do want a professional image. We do want a set of guidelines and standards of say, look, this is this is the way to do it the right way and all of that.

[Andy Higgins]
Yeah, exactly. There's always a nice balance between regulation and being able to do what you need to do as well.

[Uncle Marv]
So when you made the transition to MSP, let me ask you this in terms of when you started. I mean, it sounds like you were, you know, probably around somewhere between 2010 to 2015 was about your transition time. Is that right?

[Andy Higgins]
Yes.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Were you I mean, did you come across the set of guidelines that determine what you would do as a business? And how is that, you know, 10 years later?

[Andy Higgins]
Well, as you may know, most IT, most IT people in MSPs who own MSPs are IT guys. They're not business owners. The ones who are business owners or business businessmen who went and got an MBA, they're probably doing really well.

They do well because they understand business. I didn't go to school to understand business. I just love IT.

And so you learn all this about the business, running the business. And it's tough. I'll relate to Karl Palachuk again.

I think his seminars and his information online really helped me back in the day to set myself up and understand the business side of IT, because I could do all the work and tap on the keyboards and build the computers and everything. But doing the QuickBooks and all the admin and hiring people and all that other stuff, that's what you need. You need to be a business owner for that.

And that's the tough stuff. And I mean, now there's a lot more information available. And maybe NSITSP should help with that as well and make information available to people to be able to run businesses.

And so, yeah, that's my short answer to that.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, I was going to lead into that because it does sound like in addition to just being professional, it's not just about how you act and how you look. It is about how you run the business.

And most of us, most of us started as, you know, the guy in the van. The trunk slammer. And we kind of made it up as we went until we found somebody who was more successful.

So, yeah, having a model or a standard that we can all. You know, strive to mimic, you know, I'm thinking of some weird adjectives, but something that we can at least all come to some consensus on as this is what the MSP community is and this is what we do.

[Andy Higgins]
Well, I think you something you the direction you go in there also leads to something that drives me a little bit crazy, but a lot of a lot of the channel partners are jumping onto this. These are partners that are providing me with services and provide MSPs with services. I need best practices.

Best practices for running my business with your product, but also best practices when I buy a PSA. I need a best practices running an MSP my size when using your PSA. I don't want you to just give me this tool and for me to figure it out, because those things are so important.

And if you get them wrong to start with, you start your operating for years without having proper contracts or without having a proper support system. This, that and the other. And having we call them best practices because you can read them and you don't have to do them, but it's a bunch of people who are experienced in the business saying this is what we've done before.

And this is sort of this is the way we suggest you do the business and add your little bit of flair to it. You know, that little that little badge of flair as in the office space thing, you know, a little bit of flair, not too much flair, but yeah, that's I mean, that's what I mean. That's again where we should help.

I think the ITIS NTIA said, sorry, It's always hard to say. I can't say that acronym too many times. I have pointed out that we need a better acronym, in my opinion.

But, you know, the logos have all been printed. So it's yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
It is a tongue twister. The NSITSP.

[Andy Higgins]
Yes, exactly.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, Andy, let me ask you this one last question in terms of, you know, if somebody were to come to you and say, hey, I've heard about this. I heard you on the show.

Tell me more about it. What is it that you could say to kind of, you know, not necessarily convince, but maybe nudge somebody to come be a part of this?

[Andy Higgins]
Well, it's a community of individuals that are just like you. And so. That's why you should join, because we should join together in, you know, strength lies in unity, lies in, you know, a community and we can help each other move forward, because as one of the most common things I understand when I talk to MSPs is there's so much business out there, we're not really competing against each other.

It's we're in collaboration to provide IT services to the general public and companies and things. And I think you can only you only get good things when you collaborate. You do, you know.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. That sounds fantastic. And this is one of the things that I'm hoping that people see is that, you know, the NSITSP TSP, there we go.

It's an organization of us. You know, it's not some, you know, big guy in a suit off in a room somewhere that never is out in the field. This is us trying to do this for it.

So exactly what you're saying, collaboration and as many people as we can get to join us that will help the cause. So there you go. Andy, thank you very much for spending some time with me.

[Andy Higgins]
Well, you too. Thanks for inviting me. And it was a pleasure speaking.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. And if anybody out there has a story similar to Andy and wants to chat or wants to get some information on his history and how he's done it for 30 years, his information will be in the show notes. Reach out to him.

And then, of course, we're doing this to help support the NSITSP, the National Society of IT Service Providers, to help us be a much more professional organization and group of MSPs and keep the bad guys from doing bad things. So that's going to do it, folks. We'll see you next time here on the IT Business Podcast.

We'll see you soon. Holla!