dnsUNFILTERED: Todd Drunagel, Tech Team Solutions

[00:00:00] Mikey Pruitt: Hi everyone. So we're live. Thank you for attending the first of many MSP spotlights. This is a new series from DNSFilter, and I'll be your host. I'm Mikey Pruitt. I'm the MSP evangelist here. And that just means my whole job is to confirm that you are valued. MSP partners have the tools you need for success.

And that's not just success with DNSFilter but success with your business. Todd has nearly 40 years of experience in the IT field. He's seen trends come and go. He's celebrated 20 years owning and operating his MSP Tech Team Solutions. Just a few months ago, we're going to discuss your ideal customer profile, hiring and training, and who makes up your board of directors.

So without further ado, Todd introduce yourself better than I have.

[00:00:44] Todd Drunagel: Thank you. Glad to jump in and be here. My name's DNSFilter with Tech Team Solutions. I come from Winchester, Virginia. Started in, I guess it was maybe even before, it was called Break Fix Days in 84 with the IBM PC and working business service and computer sales, and have seen that evolve over the years through in, or evolved into DOS and Windows and the worldwide web and virtualization today.

Like I said, it's with 20, 20 years at with this shingle out. So moving along, put your shingle out.

[00:01:23] Mikey Pruitt: So tell us a bit about Tech Team Solutions. Like how do you guys, or how did you get started with Tech Team Solutions? What made you decide to begin an MSP?

[00:01:31] Todd Drunagel: I was between jobs or not in a job and needing to eat and provide for my family.

Started back in with what I had done and knew well in 2002, right after September 11, and all of the things there that sort of in the business world brought a lot of changes. So put this shingle out in 2002 and have just built and grown it slow and steady over, over the 20 years.

[00:02:05] Mikey Pruitt: So you were an accidental entrepreneur and it turned out to be 20, a 20 year career,

[00:02:10] Todd Drunagel: right? I had done this prior from the mid eighties, and then went to work in the corporate world locally. And then when that ended, then for, from necessity's sake started this again, so did round two. Very cool.

But still here, hometown and local. It wasn't unfriendly or unknown territory.

[00:02:37] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. So let's talk about that, that local geography. Todd and I had a chance to chat earlier so I already know these answers, but it's gonna be great for the audience to hear them. Tell me about your the distance to your nearest large metro area.

[00:02:52] Todd Drunagel: We're about an hour and a half without traffic. From Washington, DC So we're outside of all of the federal business market, the government market. So we're more rural though. It's a it's a good business community and solid is just not the government world here. So we're more rural. We service small, medium sized business, locally owned.

Locally grown business.

[00:03:25] Mikey Pruitt: So the draw of the city, I guess never called to you

[00:03:29] Todd Drunagel: that commute, that two hour commute to and from work. No, it's, I never heard that phone ring.

[00:03:36] Mikey Pruitt: And you mentioned something to me yesterday about how you're close to the DC metro area geographically, but in mindset, you're light years away.

Can you explain that a little bit?

[00:03:46] Todd Drunagel: Like I said being removed from the government market, we, my company, we don't do a lot of government work. There's a lot of companies in every industry here that do, does do government work, but being removed from that, we're just where our customers are.

We don't get into that area. We just focus more locally and close to home.

[00:04:14] Mikey Pruitt: So it sounds like you're focusing on small and medium businesses. Is there any specific vertical that you're targeting?

[00:04:22] Todd Drunagel: We don't target a specific vertical. We end up in our area. We're very dense with healthcare as probably most areas are.

But the, we do a lot of healthcare insurance, professional offices. Manufacturing. So a wide variety where it's not vertical where we don't only do like 3D modeling with solid works and things. We work with that and help and support actually that one product with several customers. So we're just very familiar with a lot and a wide area and a wide range of products.

[00:05:00] Mikey Pruitt: So when you're, so you're dealing with a very large segment of your customer base, like they're representing a lot of different verticals. Sounds like they have a lot of different security stacks. How do you think that the tech team solutions, like what has your niche become now?

What is your focus in the market? If you're dealing with all these different verticals?

[00:05:20] Todd Drunagel: Work, work towards a common stack among what we're offering to customers. We're gonna do like an Office 365, we still do some hosted exchange, so we don't have, what a take it or leave it stack.

There's different tools and things that we can add in as customers build and develop a need for. More sophisticated products. We're gonna add in different types of backup solutions we're gonna add in security awareness training and phishing tools and all of that. As people encounter what this is or already have, pretty much, then they're looking to add those.

Being familiar with those.

[00:06:03] Mikey Pruitt: So what would you consider your ideal customer across this broad spectrum of different styles of companies? What type of person are you looking for?

[00:06:14] Todd Drunagel: Most of our customers are a business location, an office building, an office suite or something with 10 to 20 users.

Obviously we have some that are smaller. We've got some that have, several locations throughout the state and hundreds of users.

[00:06:37] Mikey Pruitt: Are there any specific characteristics that stand out as common across this large spectrum?

[00:06:44] Todd Drunagel: I think a lot of ours are locally owned. The owner is local in the area and active at different levels within the business so that we're able to.

Communicate directly when necessary to the owner, or, if they have an IT staff or A-A-C-F-O, that usually ends up picking up the, that department within their company that, we're getting that level of engagement with the customers whenever possible, that it's more relationship based than transactional.

[00:07:19] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. That, that sounds like a really good takeaway. So you're saying. That you have a customer profile, but it spans multiple industries, different verticals. You're looking for the type of business that fits a mold, but the mold is not healthcare or manufacturing. It includes almost any style of business within a certain class.

In that segment,

[00:07:41] Todd Drunagel: Where there's, an active, engaged owner and a larger company, you're not gonna always engage with the owner. It's gonna be a family feel like we are as a company. Most of our customers are the same. They feel like they're a small family business, even if they're larger.

It just allows you to create that relationship and build, at the owner level, even at the staff level, we get to know the customers.

[00:08:07] Mikey Pruitt: So you've mentioned the word relationship twice, so let's dig into that a little bit more. It sounds like that's a really key driver for the success of tech team solutions.

What is that relationship that you're trying to build?

[00:08:19] Todd Drunagel: I think it's just that of a resource that they can go to become a trusted advisor. Obviously if they have health insurance questions, they're not gonna ask me. But if they have questions, along technology, telephone, printer, copier, network, anything in a technology area, the one that they would ask.

Maybe one of several that they would ask, but it would be answers back to them that they would have value and respect for.

[00:08:48] Mikey Pruitt: So when you're building this relationship, you're becoming the trusted advisor, in the tech realm of things. Is, are, is it solely you that is being this advisor or is it other members of your staff that are acting as in that capacity?

[00:09:02] Todd Drunagel: We've got other staff as well that, some, a lot of the staff is more on premise and in front of the customer on a day or weekly basis than I am. So instilling in the staff to listen for what they're asking or maybe inadvertently asking, or not directly asking, but what input and questions are you getting from their staff.

And are you comfortable, competent and capable to give that answer? And if not, relay it back to me or someone else in the office that can engage them with the proper level of discussion that, that they're needing.

[00:09:46] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. So we're talking about building the relationship, building a rapport, being an advisor, and that you alone can't do this job.

So how do you, how do you look for people that can be this advisor role to improve the tech team solutions, customer service, essentially, what are you looking for?

[00:10:04] Todd Drunagel: I'm looking always for staff that can have and present this kind of discussion. If they don't have the answer, get the answer and still be relay it back to the customer.

Are there any

[00:10:19] Mikey Pruitt: personality trait that you see stand out?

[00:10:23] Todd Drunagel: I think that, that you can only improve on customer service skills if they're there to begin with. I don't think you can educate yourself into customer service. You can elevate yourself within customer service, but, I just tell, all of our staff that treat the customers the way you'd like to be treated.

A vendor came to you, or a customer came to you, give. Be professional with them. Be honest. No answer or I'll get back with you is 10 times better than a bad or a wrong answer and that, so often people are so gung-ho to have an answer. That sounds good. It might be completely off base or inaccurate, it had a bunch of big words in it and it sounded good to the customer.

But when the customer goes to digest it or share it with somebody else, you haven't done them a favor at all.

[00:11:18] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. Or they try to implement based on bad information.

And then you're digging a bigger hole for them and you.

[00:11:24] Todd Drunagel: That's right. Yeah. And then some, sometimes you can't un dig that hole. It's better to have, I'll get back to you or no answer.

[00:11:32] Mikey Pruitt: And you said something earlier about that, that Tech Team Solutions is not an IT company, but a customer service company. Is that

[00:11:40] Todd Drunagel: something that you, in a lot of ways it is. It's, we just happen, maybe there's our vertical or market specialty you were talking about earlier that technology is that, but yeah we provide customer service that's from.

Our administrative staff, they're providing customer service for the clients. That's the tech staff, it's customer service. We're giving them the service that they need, whether it's, I've got a question about the invoice. My printer doesn't work. Hey, the printer doesn't work. I can't print your check.

There's two reasons for customer service

[00:12:15] Mikey Pruitt: that, that's a good one. I would like my check this week please. So you're looking for advisors with good customer service skills. How does that play into, or like how, what type of tech experience do they need or do you require

[00:12:29] Todd Drunagel: that?

We're always looking for some strong basis of tech in some area and field. They might be a networking expert or a printer service expert, but something that they can. Build and expand on from what they already have. If you're good at networking, then obviously you've been able to do a little bit of desktop service and support in order to build the network.

So if you're not super strong in Windows 11, but you're great with server, you've got the, intuitive kind of mind processing to be able to take some training, work with some of our other staff. To expand your skills into different areas, but nobody's gonna be a wizard in all areas. We get, we try to get some staff that's, a first string for a product and then build some depth under that with second string and third string.

But at least everybody's got a clue of the products that we offer. But no, nobody can be a, the champion of everything. Just be familiar with it all, and then have your silos of strength.

[00:13:42] Mikey Pruitt: So you have someone who really knows how to administer a DNSFilter. And then if other people are, knowledgeable enough to do stuff.

But if something comes up where they are unsure, they have an expert to go to. That's on staff,

[00:13:53] Todd Drunagel: right? Yep. And then build your second string. Your third string. And if you lose a technician. We just take our grid and say, all right, they were the champion for this. They were third string for these four things.

And then who can we move around? 'cause who we bring in and our next hire? They may not have a clue of what, DHCP is. They should, they're not gonna be, they're not gonna be strong in all the areas, but they can come in and maybe be second string right off on some things that we're weak in.

Or even if we're strong there, they've got a good basis and we do some training and education, work them with our champion and get them up to speed with those products that they're gonna be someday working towards being first string one.

[00:14:43] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, that makes sense. And we hear that a lot from our successful MSPs like yourself, that are, they're forming like a pod, like a little team that can be expert or can triage most things and reach out to other pods if necessary.

So that's really good to hear. But let's switch gears for a second and talk about your history in the industry like you've been. It for 40 years. You've probably seen a lot of things, like you were mentioning dial up modems earlier before we jumped on this call. So what are some of the trends that you've seen and you've seen come and go and like, why do you think they left?

And we'll end up with what do we think is, what do you think is next?

[00:15:19] Todd Drunagel: I know when I started, we had an IBM pc, so you know, we had some offices that might've had two, they had two standalone computers, and then along came NetWare. And anybody that knows NetWare probably agrees that it was a fantastic product that only lost a marketing battle.

It did not lose anything else. But when you don't have the Microsoft money behind you you're gonna be the. The fastest car that didn't win the race. But

[00:15:48] Mikey Pruitt: that sounds like a beta max versus VHS argument where That's right.

[00:15:51] Todd Drunagel: Beta max is

[00:15:52] Mikey Pruitt: superior. Technol technologically.

[00:15:54] Todd Drunagel: Exactly. Yep. I've heard a few people make that exact same reference.

The end of net wear and then I remember the dos and Comdex days that when Windows came out, even before it was Windows three one, it was just Microsoft Windows and. Ha, half the auditorium was sticking with Dawson, half was moving to windows just over, the decades.

You get different big milestone things in the industry like that. And, the evolution of the worldwide web and I don't want to say like cyber things, ransomware not so much a landmark event, virtualization brought a whole new area. That came frame the As 400 kind of things that VM was there way before it was in our industry at the desktop and the PC level.

Interesting to see all the way from standalones only all the way up now, where you've got WVD and all of that. That used to be the thing in the office. Now it's, grabbing a piece of candy out of the dish. There's a whole dish of 20 pieces of candy there. We just grab a PC outta there,

[00:17:06] Mikey Pruitt: something that seems so out, outlandish and that it's finally here, and then five, 10 years later, it's oh yeah, of course we do that.

So you mentioned networking and then you mentioned like virtualization and it seems like we're in a virtualization transition to more cloud server resources. Is that something that, that you and tech team solutions is experiencing?

[00:17:26] Todd Drunagel: Yeah. We have not beaten the door down demand so we're more of a rural than a.

Big city things. So a lot of technology things are slower to get here, but as the business managers, owners, as they're a younger generation, they're already looking for these things. So we're not five, seven years behind where. The larger providers, the big city providers are, you're almost having to be right there at or near the front, at least from a very educated or experienced standpoint with, Azure or AWS, things like that.

You've just got to be in tune with it. Pardon that pun with a different product, but just, you gotta know what's out there and when it may apply to a customer that it fits them. And either they don't know it and need to or it doesn't fit them, and they need to know why.

[00:18:31] Mikey Pruitt: So you're you're having to actively.

Train yourselves on these up emerging things. And like you said, you're more rural, like some people may be experiencing a more cloud heavy environment already. Some may be fully cloud, and you probably have customers that are fully cloud, some that are hybrid, some that are on-prem. Is that the situation that you're seeing?

[00:18:52] Todd Drunagel: Yes. Yeah. Def definitely have more on-prem historical things and. A lot of inquiry and slight interaction or migration to cloud things. A lot of people don't think email's a cloud, a lot of end users. Oh, outlook's on my computer. Email came from the cloud. I email's always been a cloud product.

Before it was the cloud,

[00:19:20] Mikey Pruitt: the original.

[00:19:23] Todd Drunagel: Everybody's in the cloud. They, they just don't know it. Or don't realize the scope of where and how everything flows.

[00:19:32] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, I think I think you just answered every question there is, you're already in the cloud,

[00:19:36] Todd Drunagel: you're already there, right?

Yeah. It's just Do you wanna recognize and acknowledge it and call it that? Or do you want to call it, my email's local 'cause it's on my machine.

[00:19:47] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. And like DNSFilter itself, I'm not trying to make a pitch here, but. We are a cloud-based service, taking a job, say your firewall used to have, and doing them, more effectively in the cloud, right?

But yeah, the cloud is, the thing it's happening, people are migrating to it. It seems like there will probably be some balance or some hybrid model going forward that everyone will agree certain things belong on-prem, certain things belong in the cloud, but what do you think, is the next transition, like after this cloud hybrid thing is settled? What is coming up on the horizon that we should all be thinking about?

[00:20:23] Todd Drunagel: I don't know. I guess the next thing obviously, we're all knee deep or more into Azure AWS from a server standpoint. And windows Virtual Desktop is beginning to, I'm seeing that in more places.

We're probably not implementing it anymore. Over the past year than we were before, but I think that's gonna, it's gonna evolve rapidly or it's, it's gonna pull back and it's just not gonna become what servers in the cloud are. That it could all become WBD or I think it's gonna rapidly move ahead or not.

I, there's no way of knowing one. That could be the big quick mover.

[00:21:10] Mikey Pruitt: So you're like, it's either gonna be huge or not,

[00:21:13] Todd Drunagel: right? Yeah. And

[00:21:15] Mikey Pruitt: you're right, we're like on the edge of this. Is this thing gonna happen or is it just gonna be another, a flash in the pan type of thing?

The cloud,

[00:21:23] Todd Drunagel: right? Yeah, it sounds like a great idea. And it just never, doesn't get a foothold.

[00:21:29] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, and I think a lot of things just like email and like you said, are more in the cloud than people realize anyway. Like every application on your phone is basically a cloud application,

[00:21:39] Todd Drunagel: right?

Yeah. Talking

[00:21:39] Mikey Pruitt: to server resources and

[00:21:41] Todd Drunagel: whatnot, interact locally, but it's, you turn the phone off, it doesn't work.

[00:21:46] Mikey Pruitt: Yep. How, so let me ask you another question. Just since we're a security company, how, what role does cybersecurity play for the tech team? What does your kind of lineup look like your stack, and is that consistent across most customers?

[00:22:02] Todd Drunagel: For all of the customers we work, in an ongoing relationship other than like break fix, we've got a solid stack of cybersecurity. We implement the DNSFilter and we're gonna do A-A-M-D-R antivirus solution. We use Sentinel One, but, some type of next generation, we're beyond the nor antivirus days that's, coming on.

[00:22:26] Mikey Pruitt: That was the trend. That was the trend. You forgot antivirus.

[00:22:29] Todd Drunagel: Now it's just a, it

[00:22:31] Mikey Pruitt: just happens and no one even cares,

[00:22:33] Todd Drunagel: right? Yeah. It is just assumed. But, you gotta have a product and it's gotta be a good one. Then,

[00:22:39] Mikey Pruitt: So when you're selling, when you're selling your security stack or your entire stack or whatever, is it does it vary a lot by customer or is it pretty, pretty concise across the lineup?

[00:22:50] Todd Drunagel: What we install is pretty concise. We've got different levels of customers that understand what it is or don't, or some don't want to know, just are you taking good care of it? And, we're able to prove what we've got if they want, then, we'll go through the stack with them.

Otherwise, they just want to know that we've got everything in secure. To the, as reasonable as it could be.

[00:23:19] Mikey Pruitt: I gotcha. So the deployment looks very similar across your various customer base,

[00:23:25] Todd Drunagel: right? Yeah. The only where we get into variance is with a backup solution and the business criticalness of.

Maybe each server or the environment, whether, a file and folder kind of OneDrive, Dropbox kind of solution would work. Or if you need, true BDR to do a Datto device and spin up a server, we'll probably have it spun up by the time we get out there to figure out what went wrong.

Big price difference, so that, they can pick what. Works best for them.

[00:24:00] Mikey Pruitt: I hear you. And that is another takeaway that we see a lot from some of our successful MSPs is that this, they serve a menu to their customers. Do you want X, Y, or Z? Or do you want good, better, best, or, you're in this industry, you have to have why?

[00:24:15] Todd Drunagel: If you gotta have compliance and most people are in some kind of compliance. Requirement, and they may not realize it, obviously a financial planner, they realize they're in a compliance industry, but somebody that might sell just items to the government, they may or may not even know that they've got requirements related back to their contract with, a state or a local government that they've got certain hoops they gotta jump through that, some don't know it.

Or they bring the contract, they review that with us, and we say, all right, here's to meet the things within here. You're gonna need a business grade firewall with active services, things like that. Then you get into, like you said, the DNSFilter. We put that out as part of our normal stack. You're gonna have that, whether you know it or not.

[00:25:10] Mikey Pruitt: And yeah, and that's important. That's. From you building this relationship and becoming a trusted advisor, they're giving you the leeway to tell them what they need, and that's a very important position to be in for to make your MSP as profitable as it could be.

[00:25:27] Todd Drunagel: And a lot of times in our contracts we're not stating we're doing product X and these seven things by name are what we're providing. We provide. A description of that product. So if we need to change the product that we don't have to redo contracts or anything, it, we're gonna provide,

[00:25:49] Mikey Pruitt: The layer

[00:25:50] Todd Drunagel: of security.

Yeah. Some type of SOC service or whatever it is that if we need to change that, then we don't have to redo contracts and really go back and explain it. We do, but it's not holding up. The install because somebody didn't wanna sign off on it.

[00:26:11] Mikey Pruitt: Yep. That makes perfect sense. So we have one question in our chat that kind of alludes to our last topic.

So I'll ask the question. Is there MSP community site where MSPs can help each other and offer advice? This is asked by Theresa. One of the things. That we had talked about earlier was like you as the owner of Tech Team Solutions, like who do you go to for advice? Where, who is your board of directors?

[00:26:36] Todd Drunagel: Oh yeah. Locally, it's me 'cause I signed the checks. But getting towards the spirit of the question I'm a member of MSP Ignite and I am in an owner peer group. They have peer groups of other job titles that would be within an MSP. So if you had. They have a help desk peer group. They have, a facilitator, peer group all kinds of peer groups within different job titles.

And we meet virtually monthly every quarter. We meet in person for two days. You've got 10 or 12 days a year you're committing into the peer group. But that's my board of directors if I need some. Questions, some advice from somebody that's been there. Then I bring it to my peer group members and the same with them.

Sometimes I've got a good answer, but I've got another question that I have no clue about, so I can provide excellent feedback from prior experience and get the same kind of answer back from some someone else in the re.

[00:27:44] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, peer groups sound really really important, especially for you at the highest level of a company. Like where do you go to seek help?

[00:27:52] Todd Drunagel: And it, it's all geographically different. So if it's something that maybe isn't a real great situation, it's not like you're gonna print it in your local newspaper or anything, it's can be handled responsibly and hopefully obtain good counsel and.

Take care of whatever a problem might have been. More often than not, it's all helpful and positive kind of things, the, you can get into some personnel discussions and, other things that are important in the business and run into some issues and somebody else has been there.

[00:28:27] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, I was just thinking like, why not? Why not just go to r slash MSP on Reddit and ask your question there? They can get

[00:28:36] Todd Drunagel: a

[00:28:36] Mikey Pruitt: little unruly on that

[00:28:39] Todd Drunagel: if you've got a help desk person. There's help desk manager, peer groups, and all of the discussions and things there evolve around help desk and service delivery and things important in that job title.

So that's whatever your job function is there, there's probably a peer group that can provide you awesome input and help. And give you a platform to share and help others too.

[00:29:08] Mikey Pruitt: So in your in your peer group, what are some of the most important lessons you've learned that you can share with us?

[00:29:15] Todd Drunagel: Probably implementing or getting a grasp of performance metrics and, key performing areas in your business and what to look for and trends, productivity per employee and being able to measure that and then having eight or 10 others in your peer group that are comfortable sharing that information and compare it, if my numbers are in line with eight others, then I'm feeling really good.

I'm doing well there. And if I'm way above, I'm probably not doing something better than eight other people, so I'm probably. Having a reporting issue on the numbers, and if I'm way underperforming everyone else, then there's a great area to work and tune up my business. Find out what are others doing to obtain.

More profitability or better ticket closure time, first call resolution, things like that. If I can't meet those, then I'm going to look to those that can and seek their counsel on, Hey, look at what I've got and help me get to that number.

[00:30:26] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. So I think that's really important to know your numbers, to know what to track, know how to track them, and then once you're, confident in them, compare them to others that are willing to share.

And that way you'll, you have a scorecard for yourself in your business.

[00:30:40] Todd Drunagel: Exactly, are you trending down?

[00:30:41] Mikey Pruitt: Are you trending up? And how can you change those?

[00:30:44] Todd Drunagel: And not just your scorecard. And you say, oh yeah, I feel good about that number. If everybody else is doing 40% better, if you're not.

Having it to compare, then you don't know that you could do better.

[00:30:55] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, exactly. And you wouldn't, and you wouldn't know, you wouldn't know that without your peer group, your trusted advisors essentially.

[00:31:02] Todd Drunagel: Yeah. I'm not gonna go across town and ask a competitor how they're doing in that me, it's, that's.

It's just not how you're gonna get something measured and accomplished.

[00:31:11] Mikey Pruitt: Y'all don't have a a Virginia MSP Show me your numbers. Meet breakfast every two weeks.

[00:31:16] Todd Drunagel: Yeah. No, over here. I work close with a couple of them here locally and, we're. Been around a long time and good buddies, but some,

[00:31:24] Mikey Pruitt: something held the competition

[00:31:25] Todd Drunagel: right.

That's right.

[00:31:27] Mikey Pruitt: So we're done with the kind of topics we had laid out, but I did get a couple of questions from the form that some people submitted pre the event. And then we'll go through these as a rapid fire to wrap things up. And if anyone else has any questions in the chat, just drop those there and we'll answer those too.

So the first one is, do you offer co-managed IT services? When customers have onsite IT resources,

[00:31:51] Todd Drunagel: We do. We've didn't realize it was so much co-managed in some cases where clients had grown into having an IT staff and we were working together. But over the last two years, that term has come more full circle into everybody's vocabulary.

So yes, we've got some clients where we've. Evolve into co-managed. We've got some clients where we onboarded in a co-managed environment.

[00:32:21] Mikey Pruitt: Do you think it's beneficial in that a co-managed environment, is it a hindrance or does it help

[00:32:27] Todd Drunagel: if you can define it well, and, build good fences between lay levels of responsibility of who's responsible for what?

Are we providing tools only or are we providing. Break, fix, backup, know that going in or agree to have frank and honest discussion after 90 days. And, 'cause if it's new to them, they don't know how it will work. We'll do co-managed and then evaluate on their expectations.

After. But some, like I said, some of 'em we've evolved into, they've added IT staff, and usually what we find is that IT staff is more in their line of business software or their business specific equipment and manufacturing equipment that interfaces with computers and is on the network. More so than providing the managed services to that business and working closely with.

Because they can be your best friends or your worst enemy,

[00:33:32] Mikey Pruitt: right? They can be if managed properly. If their relationship is managed properly, they can be a big asset to your business, right? And you don't have to pay them,

[00:33:41] Todd Drunagel: right? You're usually gonna discount your fees, but there again, depends on what, how you define what, who's doing what.

Are you truly doing less because they're doing the initial break fix, evaluation, and determination. Or are they only managing their line of business software and they end up being the one that fields most of the questions because they're in an IT role, but they're not gonna be the one that goes and fixes things.

[00:34:09] Mikey Pruitt: I gotcha. So let's move to the next question. This one's kind of broad, but maybe you can answer it. It's how do you onboard new clients and what is the typical timeline? We, it's like the motions that you would go through to onboard.

[00:34:24] Todd Drunagel: We've got a really good checklist. Started with the checklist from a peer group member who had a really good onboarding process and started with that spreadsheet.

So that was an excellent start and then had to fine tune it to adjust for our tools and the way we work. We on try to onboard as far as getting our tools in place rapidly so that we've got, a good handle on the environment. If we can get a good network scan and evaluation beforehand, depending on the situation, that's always helpful.

But yeah try to run through our checklist to at least have a full grasp on the network as soon as possible. Then go through the. Getting the tools, things like that in place so that they're not any more vulnerable than they were before. And get on through that checklist rapidly. And we've got different points where we don't stop or halt, but interact intentionally with different folks at that organization at different times.

Either status report or, if you find. Something that really needs reported to management, something might need to stop or get acted upon sooner.

[00:35:48] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. It sounds like speed is your friend in this. And also you mentioned that there may be like, say the customer was managed by another service provider previously and you may have to uninstall some things to then uninstall things that, that you're going to use.

And there is a time period in there where these machines or devices are potentially vulnerable. And that,

[00:36:09] Todd Drunagel: that part you always try to coordinate with. Fortunately, I don't think we've ever had a bad situation with the incumbent MSP that we had clients that were in that position. It was as friendly and cooperative as it can be, which maybe is one good thing of being in a small geographic area where good or bad, everybody that you're working with.

It's, and when we have, when we're offboarding a client, we try to, return that favor and work with them in the same way we like to be worked with.

[00:36:42] Mikey Pruitt: That makes sense. So I got two more questions. One of them is self-serving. So I'll do that one first. Do you use DNSFilter to offer blocking of inappropriate material, like adult content, or do you use it strictly as a means for se threat protection?

[00:36:57] Todd Drunagel: We use it for both. We've, from adult content, I'll just speak to that briefly, is it's hard to define and to a medical office, you almost can't do, you got the, they're doing medical search, right? Different things. So a lot of what in one office might hit that trigger and not be wanted.

It's needed for. The right reasons at a medical office. So yes, we do utilize it for that. And other categories in addition on us, we use Sonic Walls in most locations and utilize the content filtering there.

[00:37:40] Mikey Pruitt: Yes. Layers of

[00:37:41] Todd Drunagel: security. It might, right? It might be who catches it, does it become a DNS lookup issue?

With DNSFilter or the SonicWall first, I don't know who might hit it first, but

[00:37:53] Mikey Pruitt: Yep. Yeah. The, and that's why it's important to have unique policies per customer.

[00:38:01] Todd Drunagel: And that's what we found that you've got to have, it would be nice to have a global category. So like I could say all of our customers, the local newspaper is okay.

Not have to go to each customer as part of our onboarding and defining what content is. Okay. Having to state, the local newspaper, to be able to do that globally for our clients. But yeah, for other good reasons, it doesn't do that. And part of that probably is speed and performance.

[00:38:33] Mikey Pruitt: I would, wouldn't be doing my job very well if I didn't mention our new feature, global or sorry, universal Lists, lists.

So you can basically create an allow and block list for all of your organizations. So if there's that local newspaper, you can add it to the global allow list and it will take precedence over any policy anywhere in your orgs or sub orgs. So we are making strides towards that global management area, starting with that universal list.

So if you're listening to this or Todd, you Yeah. Should check that feature out.

[00:39:04] Todd Drunagel: Go find my DNSFilter champion and

[00:39:07] Mikey Pruitt: yeah, tell em to call me. I'll walk through it.

[00:39:10] Todd Drunagel: Yeah. No, that's great.

[00:39:12] Mikey Pruitt: The last question is, where do you find new customers?

[00:39:16] Todd Drunagel: Most of our new customers we've gotten from referrals from ISPs chamber of Commerce or word of mouth.

We, we do a fair amount of advertising more as a courtesy or business promotion like golf tournaments and things like that. For individual charities. May maybe some of that is seen there, but we work close with ISPs locally in the area. And as, as employees come and go from places where we do service and don't, a lot of times, they're.

They're calling us or getting us introduced where they're going. If you've got a relationship with that office and the staff, you've got more than just a one person relationship with the owner.

[00:40:02] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, with the whole team, basically. And then I was gonna say, that makes a lot of sense with your your rural location and the typical size of your businesses, like a word of mouth and referral.

Getting new business that way is gonna be. Probably the most appropriate means to do right? Running a massive Facebook campaign may not help you as much as someone in a bigger or different geography,

[00:40:26] Todd Drunagel: right? Yeah. I'm assuming that's right because that's how I'm,

[00:40:32] Mikey Pruitt: you're like,

[00:40:32] Todd Drunagel: probably we should ask

[00:40:34] Mikey Pruitt: your, you should ask your peer group and then you can come back in a month or two and let us know what you found out.

[00:40:40] Todd Drunagel: But not big. And we've got Facebook and do that, but it's not an active part of our marketing plan. Yeah.

[00:40:47] Mikey Pruitt: Referral word of mouth and that's really solid leads. You can't go wrong with that if you can.

[00:40:53] Todd Drunagel: You already start warm.

[00:40:54] Mikey Pruitt: If you can get enough of those, like you hardly have to do much else.

Todd, I think that, wraps everything up. I really appreciate you being the first MSP spotlight on this webinar series that we're gonna do. Thank you. An opportunity, and we are very appreciative to have you and we look forward to chatting with you in the future. And thank you everybody for joining and we will sign off.

Thanks Todd.

[00:41:15] Todd Drunagel: Yep, you are welcome. Have a great afternoon.