NSITSP Spotlight: Keith Nelson (EP 819)

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast presented by NetAlly, the show for IT professionals and managed service providers where we try to help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. Today, I have a highlight of somebody who should have been on the show many, many moons ago and for whatever reason, I don't know if it's because we're on different coasts or because Shawn Lardo is to blame, it hasn't happened until today. I have with me Keith Nelson in the house.

Keith, how are you?

[Keith Nelson]
Excellent. It's a beautiful day here in Southern California. Hope it's that nice there.

[Uncle Marv]
I can see that and it's nice here every time I look out my window, but I'm indoors, you're outdoors. So, very, very nice congratulations to you for that. All right, so for people that may not know because there are a handful of people that don't know, you are in charge of a company called Vistem Solutions.

They're in Irvine, California and specialize in managed IT services, network support. You also do software development, cloud computing, custom solutions, right?

[Keith Nelson]
Yeah, we're best known for a couple of big projects. We invented the automation, the dispatch of DHA systems for the shipping ports and now they're extending us across. Earlier before that, I did the shop for Boeing C-17 final assembly.

So, we try and develop a complete wrap solution for our customers, but to look through the bigger projects people may know us about.

[Uncle Marv]
Now, most MSPs aren't going to understand the scope of something like that. I mean, you talk about the marine dispatch software. That's a pretty big deal.

[Keith Nelson]
Right now, we do the largest shipping port in the United States, the LA Long Beach complex, which is about 35% of the import export business. We dispatch the longshoremen, you know, track containers coming in and we'll be moving. They've been asked us to take over San Diego, Port Hueneme in Oakland and they're pulling a competitor software out.

We've been doing that. We're kind of part of that project. We're going on our 26th year of doing that.

We've gone 26 years dispatching three times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year with no downtime. So, not five nines, 100%. Never missed a dispatch, no loss of data, no breaches.

So, it's something we're proud of and it helps us leverage into other business because that's kind of a high profile project, especially here in sunny California.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. Now, a lot of this comes from your background. So, from what I understand, first of all, you're smart.

Let's start with that.

[Keith Nelson]
I've heard that, but it's not true.

[Uncle Marv]
Got a few degrees there. Listen, you went to Caltech. Come on.

[Keith Nelson]
Yes, I was in the MIT Caltech JPL program. So, I was involved in those days years ago in Odyssey, the original Mars probe.

[Uncle Marv]
And a part of Oracle, right?

[Keith Nelson]
I was a consultant for Oracle during the Dotcom day when they were buying up businesses. And I would go into those businesses and look at business process, really aligning technology with business process and business outcomes, something I kind of preach to MSPs. That's how you make the leap.

You may ask me, how do you make the leap beyond the 300 per end point to what you're charging? I said, the biggest thing is we rate our business on business outcomes, measurable outcomes that affect the business that people want to hear about in the system.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. That makes sense. And I just actually took a call before we came on here from a prospect that their MSP is raising their rates and, you know, telling him he should probably move on because he's not big enough for them.

And he's like, I'm willing to pay, but why are you, you know, shoveling me out? So, very interesting there. So, I will use that concept there.

So, let me ask you that because there really wasn't a necessity for you to turn into an MSP. You could have just, you know, been a part of that business and just sat there and been happy, right?

[Keith Nelson]
Yeah. I mean, it could have been a good lifestyle business. In fact, we're on a push to expand our MSP business again because I'm bringing in my good son, not Sean.

He's going to be taking over our business, but it kind of just happened. You know, things are kind of funny in life. As we got exposure from that and people would ask, will you service my company?

So, we started doing some hospitality and so on. And through the local business groups and trade organizations, they actually like the approach of someone walking in and saying, I'm not just interested in making your computers run. I'm interested in knowing what those computers do for your business and seeing how we can enhance that and look at workflows and lean processes.

And you can really wrap that around your services and become very sticky.

[Uncle Marv]
Very nice. Now, you're on the West Coast. It's a very nice coast to be on.

And there's probably a different type of mindset when it comes to business. East Coast is very gritty, very hustle, bustle, make the money, all of that stuff. What's the difference that you've seen in our industry when you do decide to come East and hang out with us blue collar folks?

[Keith Nelson]
You know, actually, California, when I started the business 30 years ago, was one of the leading manufacturing states in the union. And it's one of the big things that is coming forward in our next group, grouper tutorial races. Are we going to bring that back?

So we have a mix in California and working closer to Longshore. I honestly appreciate blue collar workers. You know, some people, they don't understand, you know, my two of my kids are in unions, one of my daughters in SAG, my special needs son's a teamster.

I appreciate the blue collar hard work, roll up your sleeves. And you'll get something accomplished every day. And it ties into my work with special needs, which I know I'm segmenting down the rabbit hole.

But with special needs individuals, which I help get jobs or workforce development, giving them the dignity and respect of having a measurable result daily is huge to their self-esteem. So I do focus on that. I appreciate the working man very much.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, since you went down there, I'm going to follow you there. You mentioned the special needs son.

You've done a lot of work with special needs, have a large history there. And that's part of the reason you've been asked to be a part of the NSITSP. So let me just go back and give you the opportunity to, you know, say anything that you may want to say to people about, you know, special needs, about your background there.

And, you know, let's roll up into the future here.

[Keith Nelson]
I have a special needs son who I'm extremely proud of, who was born nonverbal, nonsocial. He's now a motivational speaker, a DJ. He's a teamster.

And when I say motivational speakers, he's been on stage with people like Deion Sanders, Tim Tebow, and other big celebrities, been featured on TV. We've been featured on CNN and Fox Sport. I got involved because there was a gap in underserved communities.

So we started VIP soccer with our family trust. I moved on and he wanted to play basketball. So we got involved with Special Olympics.

I coached a basketball team that we're very proud of. We won the state title 15 years consecutively in a row. We went 16 years undefeated.

We've won the Nike three on three, which is a big deal. I know you have some background in basketball. We won the Nike three on three at the Staples Center six years in a row, all with special needs athletes.

We used to play high school teams, high school varsity teams, to promote kind of the buddy and inclusion theories. Because I don't think those are things you can legislate. Those are things that you have to allow happen with young kids and remove the prejudices and the profiles and things that don't really fit and really exist.

We later, I taught them some floor hockey and they became Team USA for floor hockey. We won a silver medal in South Korea representing Team USA as just a city team playing against country all-stars. And we've done, I've been on workforce development and I was chairman of the Inland Regional.

I was actually on the board of the Inland Regional. So the day of the terrorist attack, the governor asked me to take it over and lead him through the recovery of the terrorist attack. So I have a background in legislation and getting things passed for homeless, for special needs and for aged foster youth.

And when Carl started his organization, he wanted someone that had some background actually getting legislation pushed through and how to talk to legislators. And so that's why I agreed to join. I think legislation and regulation is inevitable.

So I think we need to be at the table. Otherwise, people that don't understand our business will make the decisions on what our licensing requirements look like.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Let me ask this question. It's kind of going to be a little bit out of the blue is, but how in the world do you find the time?

[Keith Nelson]
I think it's important, you have to decide what's important in life. I'm very, I've been told I'm overly proud of my kids. But one of the things that was most important to me, I was driving home from Texas after taking my son to Abilene Christian.

And he said, he called me up and he said, Dad, I'm going to practice now. I go, yeah, the coach owns you. That's what scholarship's about.

He bought you. And he says, yeah, he goes, this is the first practice you're ever going to miss. And I said, that was kind of a touchy remark.

And I said, yeah, but I'll be there for your games. I think you have to prioritize things. I'm lucky that I, even at my advanced age, I only need three to four hours of sleep a night.

I prioritize things. I, you have to become very good at delegating and using the resources around you. And it just kind of happens.

[Uncle Marv]
So with that mindset, I'm sure that you probably get a lot of people that, you know, ask your advice, you know, Hey, what should I focus on, you know, to grow my business? Or how can I, you know, kind of duplicate what you've done there? What do you think has been the advice you give out, you know, more than any other?

[Keith Nelson]
You know, we hear a lot in our business about KPIs and SLAs. And I said, you know, I have a different view on our business. People want to hear, the first thing they want to hear is that someone at your company is listening to them and cares and is going to treat their problem as important.

How fast you fix a printer or their access to email is often lost if you don't provide the service or that what we like to call our Nordstrom level service, our concierge service. And to, to spend that time developing that relationship, I think we need to learn to train our people first on customer service. In fact, I'm also often lambasted for saying the technology is easy.

The service is the difficult part. I'd rather hire a good customer service guy and train him on our policies and procedures than hire someone that's really good but can't talk to customers.

[Uncle Marv]
Very well said there. We really don't have enough time in this little member profile, but let's go ahead and start to transition back to the NSITSP because you, you started to talk about it. The fact that, you know, there's a lot of areas in this country, legislation has already been started.

We have with things like HIPAA and the insurance companies starting to, you know, have their hand in what gets determined as cyber security. And yet the channel is telling us we need to be the ones to be in the lead in that category. You have made a couple of comments, you know, out and about, about, you know, how we need to pay attention, how we need to be steadfast and stuff.

Where do you think the NSITSP will fit in the grand scheme of things?

[Keith Nelson]
I think we need to develop a strategy and the acceptance of the fact that some compliance and licensing is going to occur. I think the NS, there's a few of the members there that have had experience in legislation besides me. My first report back just was what California was looking at.

And you have to watch California even if you're in the other 49 states, because we often get copied. I'm not sure why, but we do. The first run at it was they wanted to have every IT provider have at least someone on staff that had a minimum of a four-year technology degree.

Then they wanted to have a testing and a license. And I brought that back to the group, and a lot of people were offended. And I said, first of all, don't shoot the messengers.

Second of all, understand who we're talking to. We're talking to mostly attorneys who they understood, I want to be an attorney. I get my due disburdens.

I pass the bar. I pay the state a fee every year. So that's their mindset.

And we have to, as an organization, say, why does someone with 15 years' experience exceed someone that has a four-year degree? And we haven't documented that well. We have to be prepared to have the discussions.

When I was called to Sacramento to help with—I'm a personal friend of the speaker, and she said, here's what's going on. Her whole audience was insurance companies and attorneys. And they were saying, these guys are costing us money.

A legislator's looking at it. He said, people come to me and say, I paid this guy for 20 years to secure my network, and now I have ransomware. And legislators go, you don't even have a license.

I don't have a license I could threaten to pull you from. So we have to understand where they're coming from and create a deal that's really good for our members. What worries me the most is a lot of members I talk to just sometimes say, oh, we're never going to be legislated.

We're not going—I think that's a—I think we should be prepared to be legislated on compliance and legislation that we help form.

[Uncle Marv]
I understand that people tapped you for your experience, and there's probably something that they want from you. Let me ask you, what is it that you personally would want out of the NSITSP?

[Keith Nelson]
I think that increasing the professionalism in our business helps us all. And I think having things like a code of ethics, really a guiding—and I've been trying to push for guiding to training. You know, a lot of vendors train you on their product.

And if you go to product—you go to training, even if it's technically—I have walked away from those a long time ago. That was 50 percent sale, right? They were teaching me how to sell their product, upsell their product, and configure their product.

We should have some guidance to our people on what's some basic things you need to learn. You know, what are some knowledge—you know, people ask me, what did you learn when you got your degrees? I go, I was a generalist, so I understand.

Like, I helped create the communication protocols from the Jet Propulsion Lab to the Marsh Probe, which means I understand IP. I understand wrapping IP. I understand—I go, now, does that make me a better security guy?

No, but it gives me a good base to learn better. And I think we have to help people in our business understand the importance of a good base.

[Uncle Marv]
Do you see any challenges that the MSP community should be, you know, preparing for outside of things like legislation and that sort of thing, licensing, all of that?

[Keith Nelson]
I think as we move, we have to be careful of being a commodity. And I get lambasted all the time because I said—I call techniques—you're selling like the Kmart Blue Lice, which is the race to the bottom. The more you commoditize our service, the more bigger companies think they can infiltrate what we do.

And that is not good for our business, nor is it good for small business. And this is something I push legislators to do. I said, if you require these heavy requirements on MSPs, most of them will fold.

So the guys that can sustain, or the bigger people, will cherry pick the clients they want. And the guy who we're trying to protect will lose all the serving. So it's real important to our country's economy to make sure that 15 and under businesses are protected, get good service, are up and running, because they're some of the major employers of people in our country.

So I think we have to look at this as our commitment to the national economy as well.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. Now, since you've been involved almost, I guess, since the beginning, a big part of the legislative committee, you were elected to the board last year, right? 2024?

Yes. What has there been, like, for instance, a big piece of news that hasn't seeped out to the rest of the community there? Is anything you can share on that front?

[Keith Nelson]
In the last year or so, they finally started writing some opinions of representing our industry on different legislation that was pending. So they're starting the process to get a seat at the table. You know, we want in every state, in every jurisdiction, some MSP of all sizes expressing to legislators the value of the work they do, why they're qualified to do it, and to minimize the requirements of established businesses.

Can you imagine if the government came up to your business today and said, I got all these new requirements, you need to meet them in a year? Your choice is either, you know, sell to someone, close your business, and then your customers really lose. And that's what we need to express to legislators, is the people they're trying to protect may be overly hurt by over-legislating our industry.

[Uncle Marv]
So something I’ve ever done is asked, how do we do that? How do MSPs locally look to get involved?

[Keith Nelson]
Well, first of all, I'm a big believer that this is, we're in such a profitable business that you should be involved in your local community. That's just a personal thing on my note. You will meet legislators at chamber meetings, go to their events.

First of all, they're great sources for you. And imagine, you know, as you're going into a business community and a legislator's talking, the legislator acknowledges you in the audience. That is almost helping you with your other businesses.

Everyone says Marvin's important. Our state senator knows Marvin. And they can help facilitate introductions.

I've had legislators that I did work on unrelated to this for special needs, and they'll say, oh, this aerospace company's moving into your area. Why don't you give them a call? So it's a two-way street.

It's just part of your networking. And remember, I hope this isn't broadcast too widely. Our legislators are just like us.

They're not overly intelligent. They're just like us. They're approachable, and you could speak to them and educate them on the legislation that's pending.

And they're looking for that.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, I will help echo about legislatures. So our local mayor here in Fort Lauderdale showed up to our HOA last week, and he was talking about some of the projects that were going on in our city, and one of them was a big water treatment plant being redone. And he was, of course, being pelted with the questions.

And he was like, he's like, listen, I can't know everything. I'm not a scientist. I don't know about the membrane system and the RO system and all of that stuff.

He goes, we have people for that. I'm just here to kind of help let you know where we are. So I get it.

Yeah, everybody can't know everything. And they're being asked to step into an area that they probably had no clue that they were ever going to have to step into.

[Keith Nelson]
And I found that they really do like hearing from their constituents and the people they represent, especially if they're a subject matter expert. And they also get called a lot. I'm like, I'm moving into this area.

Do you know an IT company I could use? Why not put yourself on the top of that list?

[Uncle Marv]
Well, all right. Well, Keith, we have come to our time and you're probably sweating out there. I can see the sun beating down on you.

But I want to say thank you for spending a few minutes here. We have we have got to find a way to do this again where we've got a little bit more runway to talk about these things and talk more about how to be a successful MSP and make lots of money.

[Keith Nelson]
It's what we all don't want to do.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, all right. Any words you want me to pass on to Laura?

[Keith Nelson]
No, I think people, if they want to contact me about anything that, you know, I'm easily accessible and I'll be at secure. And, you know, if you see me in the hallway, come by and say hi and let's have a discussion.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, we'll do. So, Keith, thank you very much. Keith Nelson with Vistem Solutions, Inc., out of Irvine, California. Also NSITSP member extraordinaire. Keith, thanks for the time.

[Keith Nelson]
Thank you. All right.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. We'll see you later, folks. Until next time.

Holla!