dnsUNFILTERED: Brian Hoppe

[00:00:00] Mikey Pruitt: It's great to be here with you, Brian. We haven't actually had the chance to meet in person. We got to know each other a little bit on LinkedIn, and I was just fascinated by your MSP experience and I wanted to chat with you about it and graciously you accepted. Introduce yourself and tell us a bit about how you got into the MSP space.

[00:00:18] Brian Hoppe: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So I'm I'm Brian Hoppe. I'm an MSP executive coach. And I've been in the MSP world since for the last 20 years. I started back in 2003 as a technician with with one other person. We started growing a company in short order sold it to a family office and grew that.

Company you're, that MSP inside of a family office here in central Texas. And yeah, I would say learned of the ropes of managed services, but first by being a technician. And then, grew up in the era of when most, most companies were switching from break fix model.

Two managed services model and learning through that through that transition moved from technician to kind of manager to director of operations to eventually CFO, eventually CEO. So just grew up in the MSP world over a number of years.

And, later left that initial company bought a couple of companies, integrated them, and then in just about a year and a half ago, sold sold by company to to private equity. And so I worked with the buyer for a little over a year and transitioned out of that recently.

And so now I'm. Really focused on helping other MSPs do the same thing that I did as much as they'd like to. So that's the quick and dirty story. Yeah.

[00:01:40] Mikey Pruitt: I want to get back to the, you said family office, which we'll get back to first. Do you think MSPs like their ultimate goal is to, essentially be acquired or s sell or like some type of acquisition merger event?

[00:01:55] Brian Hoppe: I think that most of them get there eventually. Depe it really depends on where you start, right? Most MSPs I would say start with hey, I've got a skill. And either they're working with somebody and they maybe have a little bit of a falling out, and then they're like I can go do this on my own.

And so they're a really good technician and then they, and they pick up one or two clients and it's okay, suddenly I have a business. Now what do I do? And then they're either really good tech or they're pretty good at sales and or a combination of both. And sometimes it's accidental. And other times it's purposeful.

And so it depends on where you start. I think eventually most people get to that point where it's yeah, I know that. I built something really really interesting that provides a good income and maybe they start to feel stuck in it. Or Hey, I've been in this spot for a really long time and I don't know how to move from where I'm at to the next level.

And or, and or you just get to, to a certain age and say, Hey, eventually I've gotta stop doing meth. So what's next? And then that, that selling becomes a something that they start thinking about. And so yeah, people start in a lot of different places, but but you do it long enough.

You end up thinking about, okay, what is what's the end game? And how do I eventually get out of this? In one way or another.

[00:03:12] Mikey Pruitt: And that doesn't mean you have to actually pull the trigger on whatever that in end game is, if it's a merger or acquisition, but it, but to be prepared if that were to happen is going to just make your business better in general,

[00:03:25] Brian Hoppe: right?

Oh, absolutely. And that's what I always encourage people that I work with is, Hey, you may not wanna sell in the next five or 10 years, but. Have it ready to sell regardless, because if it is ready to sell, it's gonna be running better, it's gonna be returning more profit to you. And then it's gonna also be more valuable whenever you can get to that point and eventually you'll get to that point in one way or another.

And, yeah, some people choose not to sell. Some people pass it on to their family. Some people do it in an esop. An employee ownership type of program. There's a host of different ways to do it, but but yeah, being ready at any time is always very important, I think.

[00:04:04] Mikey Pruitt: For sure. So you said family office, and it just made me think of some wealthy family with a lot of heirs or something that needed help with technology. Is that what you meant or was it something else?

[00:04:15] Brian Hoppe: No. Basically, a family, yeah, a family office is a term. That's used generally for Yeah.

Wealthy families that have that run. Some kind of an office that generally owns some companies and or just manages the investments of that family, of that wealthy family. Yeah, that's you you pretty much got it right,

[00:04:33] Mikey Pruitt: so that but, and that's really interesting, like that is when, that was your first MSP like foray into the MSP world, so you was that basically your sole client or became your sole client?

[00:04:43] Brian Hoppe: No, it'd be, it was our ownership. It was our ownership. So event, so we had several we were very small, like two or three people when we got acquired by the family office. And so we were owned by the family office while while we grew that MSP.

[00:04:57] Mikey Pruitt: Gotcha. What are some of the unique needs for a family versus a group of businesses? I understand there's businesses involved, but there's also like people and Hey, my granddaughter, it's got hacked or whatever. Can you, what do you do in those cases?

[00:05:11] Brian Hoppe: Yeah. No, there's a little bit of that, but for the most part, for the most part it's run like a it's just run like an MSP, it's a business and it's meant to serve business purposes.

Occasionally, the, the owner will be like, Hey, I need help right now. And of course you go and help that owner or hey, my, my son or my, my nephew or this other business that I own needs help. So that, that becomes the most urgent or important thing.

But for the most part, no, I'd say it's run like a, like any other MSPI mean you're trying to grow the business, you're trying to get outside clients you're working on, profitability and EBITDA and all the other. Metrics that a normal MSP would, it's just it, the ownership is a little bit different.

[00:05:47] Mikey Pruitt: That. Yeah. That's really cool. That's an interesting place to start. I don't think I've ever heard that before. Yeah, it was very interesting. So I wanted to go into you have an ebook, a available on your LinkedIn profile. That's the Yeah. Five Secrets to Success for MSPs and leadership and just briefly, I come from, my family runs an electrical contracting business.

And my father is the. Owner operator, electrical genius business person, and he suffers from exactly what you point out in these handful of pages about, working in the business instead of on the business. Sure. And I you have this, the mindset of you need to remove yourself from the situation, have it run without you.

So that it can run without you. So you've really laid out some steps and five key ingredients to get you there. And so let's just talk about it. Like, how did this come about? I assume this is from your learnings as an MSP. Why did these five things stand out to you?

[00:06:43] Brian Hoppe: That's a great question.

I think where I first started learning about it was I read a book called the E-Myth. A long time ago, and it I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with that, but but it talks about it talks a lot about that working on the business instead of in the business and kind of mapping out what, what the ultimate structure of the business looks like.

So if, even if it's just three people, okay, so once we grow, what does the org chart look like? What are all thete that are available? And and then saying, okay, maybe I fit in eight of these 15 seats currently as the owner, but how do I start to move myself out of those seats so that instead of just working in the business, I can actually run the business?

So that's where it, I think that's probably where it started initially. And then, as practically running the business as the CEO. My, my mindset shifted over time to, okay, I, I have to make this into something that is in, in not a job for me, but an asset for me, right?

Yes. And there was a shift that sometime in there thinking about, okay, so I can, I have an, i, I own an asset. This asset is a managed services business. What is beneficial to me about owning this asset instead of owning whatever other asset there may be. It might be real estate, it might be Google Stock, it might be Apple Stock, whatever.

Why would I own this instead of owning that? And so when you make a mindset shift from, okay, I have a really good job and I get to set my own hours, or, you know what, whatever the case may be, to. I own an asset that I have to steward as the CEO, as the owner. There's a mindset shift that happens there and you start to think a little bit differently about your business.

And so that's what I think kicked off some of that thinking is okay if my, if this asset that I own, pays me a salary and then and then loses 5% a year. How good of an investor am I? Probably not. Very good. Okay. So I need to think about, okay, so if I am, if I own this asset and I'm taking all of this risk and I've got all of this headaches, I've got employees and I've got clients and people are calling me at all hours of the night.

What am I, what am I doing? Am I willing to do that for X dollars or would I be better off just selling this and buying some stock and getting a job somewhere where I don't have to worry about all that stuff? So once you make that shift, you start to think about things a little bit differently.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Do you want to dive into some of the different things that, that I talk about in the ebook?

[00:09:21] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, sure. And you pointed out like some other things, do physical acts like call yourself, like your title is CEO instead of president or owner, because that is a physical manifestation of what you want to be and that's gonna cause you to act a certain way.

So I thought that was really important. Important to call out.

[00:09:42] Brian Hoppe: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah so I think as and what I'll say to that is I think that. A lot of MSP owners as they're growing their company, it's, it becomes kinda like their baby. And they feel very important when people have to come to them for answers.

I made it my goal to be to be as irrelevant to the day-to-day operations of the business as possible, and I wanted nobody to come to me with questions other than my very senior leadership team because. Because I didn't want to be a bottleneck. I didn't want to have, to be required on a, on an hourly basis to keep things running, to keep all the, the balls in the air and all that kind of a thing.

So I think yes, I think that's a very important it's a mind, it is a mindset shift, right? So if you're used to okay, I'm the smartest person. I'm the best technician. I'm the best salesperson, I'm the best, everything in the business. You start to feel that, that starts to become part of your identity and you start to feel like, oh my gosh, what if I was not the the best technician or the best salesperson, or, the one that everybody came to all the time for, for for all their questions.

A really good CEO is, they're not good. If you think about whatever, a Fortune 500 CEO, guess what? They're mostly inaccessible to customers and employees and all that kind of a thing because they're, they've got a huge game plan and they have to be super focused on executing that game plan in order to in order to get the business strategically where it needs to go.

And so when we start to shift as MSP owners into that CEO mindset, that doesn't mean okay, I'm gonna, cut myself off from my employees and my customers and all that kind of a thing. It just means that I'm making a mindset shift to, okay, I'm the CEO of this company. I'm not the salesperson, I'm not the technician, I'm not the service manager.

I'm not the account manager. I'm not the VCIO. I'm strategically running this company. So yeah, I think it's I think it's a big thing to, to make that mindset shift for sure. Like you said. Yeah, it's huge.

[00:11:46] Mikey Pruitt: You said it, I was just re I was just commenting on it.

[00:11:50] Brian Hoppe: There you go. Yeah. Like you, as you commented on. Yes. So the and

[00:11:54] Mikey Pruitt: and that kind of leads into like your kind of number two in your ebook, which is like delegate and Elevate, so that's i'm not the best salesperson, or maybe I am, but someone else could also be. And how do I get that that to happen?

Like a lot of people, they want to be that, that go-to person like you were saying, but the really the true end goal is to not be. Like whether you are the best or not. That's not your position. Like you have a different job. CEO is a different job than operations manager or sales manager or sales executive or whatever it happens to be.

[00:12:26] Brian Hoppe: Yep. Absolutely. Or, marketing manager or whatever the other, whatever else may be. Yeah. So I think, delegating elevated. It's actually a tool from the EOS toolbox if you're familiar with that. So entrepreneurial operating system, traction system.

And that's a, it's a super powerful tool because it helps you really think through, okay, what are the things that I am truly the best in the world at and the greatest at, and that provide the most value to the company. And what are the things that are just not that, like what are, like, so what's my highest and best use as a CEO and what is everything else that just needs to be delegated to other people?

So generally speaking as a CEO of the company, you're gonna be, you're gonna be focused on okay solving the biggest problems that exist you might be focused on strategy, vision. Perhaps some like very high level sales. If you get pulled into some of those things mergers and acquisitions the big, high level stuff and the other stuff tends to be a distraction.

For me my company wasn't huge, so I, I filled multiple seats. And so what I would do is I would sit down and I would go, okay let's look at all of the different seats that I have. So I'm the, I'm the CEO, yes. I'm also maybe the director of sales and marketing.

I'm also maybe the CFO because I don't have a, financial executive. So looking at all of those different roles. And saying, okay, what are the things inside of those roles that I do? So that might be. Create the marketing plan. It might be do a webinar, do sales webinars, go to conferences, do sales calls calculate sales commissions for people.

So I'm gonna list out all of those things under each of those roles, and I'm gonna say, okay, what are the things that I love and that I'm great at? What are the things that I like? Yeah. So it's love and or don't like, right? And then there's things that I'm great at, that I'm good at and that I'm not good at.

And so put those things into buckets and by, when you do that analysis and say, okay, here are the things that I don't like and I'm not good. I should never do those things ever again. Like I should never touch it. Somebody. Yeah, they're first on the

[00:14:44] Mikey Pruitt: chopping block.

[00:14:45] Brian Hoppe: Absolutely. And whatever those things are, and generally CEOs look at those things and they say, oh my gosh, those are terrible.

I would never wish that I'm my worst enemy to do that thing, so I have to do it. It's no, whatever thing that you hate, there is somebody that absolutely loves doing it. And you, all you gotta do is find that person that loves it and they're great at it, and they're gonna take that thing and do it a thousand times better than you ever did it.

And it's gonna be awesome because you delegated it to somebody else. And I think we have a lot of trouble as, when we're growing into that CEO role saying, okay, I can truly delegate that thing. And there's a lot of steps to become a successful delegator. That's another conversation, but.

But getting those things off your plate so that you can actually work into your highest and best use or your zone of genius. There's different terms for it, but it's like the stuff that you love and you're great at because that's what's going to take your company to the next level instead of leaving it where it's at.

Yeah, absolutely. It's

[00:15:44] Mikey Pruitt: You're you're essentially like doing a workshop with yourself, this delegate elevate step of your ebook and you're writing essentially a job description for the next step, which was, build a leadership team and talk to me about some of the key roles that you've identified through your years of experience in MSP land.

[00:16:05] Brian Hoppe: Yeah, absolutely. So generally speaking, and again, it's, it's gonna depend on the size of your MSP and how you have things set up and all that kind of thing. Generally speaking and again, I use the EOS model. So how that boils down is you would have a visionary, you'd have an integrator, and then you'd have you'd have, functional leaders. So generally speaking, those functional leaders would be a sales leader, an ops leader, and a finance leader. So a classic leadership team might be five people and or the CEO might handle both the visionary and the integrator role. Depending on your size, it generally takes a, a sizable company to, to be able to afford executives at all those levels.

Right? So a lot of times you have one person filling two seats, which is okay. As you grow, that's that's happens all the time. But yeah I, at the end of the day, yes, you have, you've gotta build a leadership team. To, to grow successfully and to scale.

And so that, yeah, that's, that was my focus as a, as an owner was okay, how do I find those people that are going to fill those seats in, in that I can successfully delegate a lot of those things to, that they're much better at than I am. So yeah sales leader. Operations leader, finance leader those are generally speaking the people that you're gonna need in place.

And that doesn't mean you don't help out a lot. You don't provide direction or vision, all that kind of stuff. You're meeting you should be meeting on a weekly basis with those people. 90 minutes talking through, okay, here's, here's where we're at. Here's our rocks, our big goals for the quarter, how are we doing on those?

The kind of the weekly meeting cadence. But but yeah, the those positions are, I feel are such a key as you grow your company. And the more talent you can get in those places and the more you can let go of stuff as a CEO to those people.

The better your company's gonna run. So yeah, that, that was a good

[00:17:57] Mikey Pruitt: point You made. Like a good observation is oh, this thing that I hate to do, like I, I don't want anyone to have to do this, but somebody does eventually have to do it. And the truth is, somebody loves doing it. Just like you said.

There's just because your personality or whatever your traits just make you abhor this specific task or project or whatever, doesn't mean there's not someone. Dad loves it.

[00:18:21] Brian Hoppe: Absolutely, a hundred percent.

[00:18:23] Mikey Pruitt: So the next thing you mentioned in your ebook is focus on value creation.

This is the first time you mentioned a very important acronym, ebitda, or however you pronounce it. Ebitda. Ebitda. I've heard it a few different ways, but. I think, and this is like my, when I mentioned my dad's company, this is like where he suffers like, tell me your numbers. What is the most profitable segment of your business?

He's like in the phase of his life where he's looking for retirement type of questions. And if you're gonna sell a. These numbers need to be at the ready to deliver to a potential buyer, investor or whatever the circumstances are. So tell me about like how you arrived on that being as one of the core pieces of MSP business.

[00:19:07] Brian Hoppe: Yeah. I, I was involved in peer groups for a long time then, and they were eventually became ConnectWise peer groups. One of the, one of the things that we did inside of those was benchmarking through service leadership, which is also now a part of ConnectWise.

Lots of acquisitions and all that kind of stuff. But but yeah, that's where where that comes in because at the end of the day you're looking at profitability, right? Bottom line, what are we shooting for at the end of the day, there's a bottom line.

And, your goal as a CEO may be to maximize that. It may not. That may not be your your goal. But if you're looking to. Create value. And if you're looking to ultimately sell your company, then that number ebitda is what, that's what's going to be looked at. At the end of the day, if you're, if you sell to private equity if you sell to another MSP, that's, down the road, whatever at the end of the day, that's what they're gonna look at.

And those who have strong ebitda can, when you look at enterprise value. A 5% EBITDA versus a 20% ebitda. The the dollars and cents at the end of the day, it's a huge difference no matter what, no matter what size you are. And the larger the company and the larger the ebitda, the more the more value there.

But but a a small percentage versus a large percentage makes multiples of difference when you go to sell. And yeah, so that becomes a very important metric as you're, not only as you're running it, because that's makes up a good portion of what you actually get to take home if you're the owner.

But also when you go to sell, it's a huge, it's a huge thing.

[00:20:47] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, and it really ties back into the CEO mindset. Like who is your boss, like as a CEO, and like this EBITDA number may be a good boss to have, like on the day to day. Like you can track it, you can reflect on it to see if it is a what is the trend?

But getting into more who is your boss as the CEO? And you mentioned this briefly, your last kind of tenant is to find your success partners, which is kinda like a peer group, kinda like you mentioned. So tell me more about that. And I actually recommend the same thing to other MSPs.

[00:21:17] Brian Hoppe: Yeah, absolutely. For me I think that every MSP owner should have, should. Being a peer group they should have a coach and they should have a mentor. And those three things, and they're, those are all different, completely different things. So yeah, so peer groups I feel like were probably one of the biggest growth things for me as I was as I progressed in my career.

'Cause you just learn so much. You get exposed to so much that's outside of your bubble. Because you're so heads down, you're focused on running your MSP you don't. A lot of times stop to look up and see what's going on around you. Being in a peer group kind of forces that it says, okay, I'm gonna take a couple of days, a quarter and just, and get out of the weeds and look at what's going on in the industry, what's going on around me.

I'm gonna engage with with peers, I'm gonna engage with potential vendors. I'm gonna engage with experts that, whether it may be sales or finance or, security experts, whatever, just get out of the weeds and say, okay, here's what's, here's what all is going on. And then the second thing for me was was a coach was like, Hey, I, and coaches I'll say this is that a lot of people misconstrue what that means. There are a lot of people that call themselves coaches that I would consider to be consultants. So if you think about somebody who's like a business process person and they call themselves a coach, actually it's like they're a consultant.

They're saying like, Hey, you should implement this process, or you should implement this framework or whatever. A coach is somebody who's really. Working with you on an ongoing basis, on you as a leader, on your leadership, on your work-life balance, on your strategy, perhaps on saying, okay, here, I'm dealing with these issues and helping you figure out what, what do you need to do to be more efficient?

What do you need to do to be a better leader? What do you need to do to be more self-aware? All of those kind of things and helping, just helping you work through those things and less of. Hey, here's my process. I'm gonna teach you how to do it so that you can go implement it. So I had a coach like that and the, I think the number one thing that he was good at was just asking really good questions and saying, Hey, not telling me what to do, but asking me really good questions that helped me find what was already inside me and become a better leader because of that.

So that's an, that's another thing. And there, and there's a lot of other, success partners out there. There, good accountants, good CBAs, good attorneys there, there's a lot of other people that can help you along your journey. But those two in particular I feel like are.

You can, A, they're easy to find and b probably provide a lot of impact for MSPs that choose to engage with them.

[00:24:00] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. So you've got peer groups, consultants and coaches, which are three distinct areas. But so you, Brian, are actually an Ms. P coach. So tell us, tell me just real quickly like what's your elevator pitch?

Why should someone pick you as a, as their MSP coach?

[00:24:17] Brian Hoppe: That's a great question. I think that I am I'm different from almost everybody in the industry. Because like I said earlier, I think there, there's a lot of people who will, who are, who call themselves coaches, which they definitely coach in a way.

My coaching is focused on you as a leader. My coach is my coaching's focused on looking at where you're at. And, we'll do assessments we'll, we'll look at a lot of different things. Say, okay, where are you at? And how do I best help you get to where you want to be.

Hold you accountable to what you say that you want to do, help you set goals help you develop your leadership, help you develop your leaders inside your company. Figure out fi help you get to the root cause of issues that you're having, help you figure out exactly why you're stuck, where you've been stuck for a long time.

And routinely when I talk to my clients, they're like, man, I've just never thought about. This issue in this way. And it's not because I told them something, it's because I asked them questions about where they're right. You're not prescriptive. And

[00:25:18] Mikey Pruitt: you're like, you already know this answer.

I'm just gonna pull it out of you. I'm gonna make you say it out loud.

[00:25:24] Brian Hoppe: Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's not, and I'm not grilling, I'm not grilling you. I'm just hopefully holding up a mirror. And say, and showing you what's reality. Just based on questions that I ask that are that, that kind of get to the root cause of issues that you may be having or.

Places that you're stuck. So yeah, I think it's, I think it's very different than what most people experience in coaching. And and it's very, and it's hard to find as well. I think in, especially in the MSP space there are not many people who coach like I do. And and yeah, they're few or far, few and far between and difficult to find.

Yeah, there's a lot of strategic coaches, there's a lot of operational coaches, there's a lot of sales coaches that, that focus on very specific areas of your business or process things. And they're great. They're fantastic. I just take a very different approach than most people do.

[00:26:13] Mikey Pruitt: And you would describe yourself as a leadership coach.

[00:26:17] Brian Hoppe: Yeah, I'd say an executive coach because I'm, yeah, 'cause I'm not coaching necessarily their leadership. I'm coaching the person. I'm not coaching an issue in their business. I'm coaching you as an individual. I think of it a lot as like a, as sports coach in, in a way, in, in that it's like that coach is there to.

Improve their game, take them to the next level. And even the best performers in the world, they've all got coaches, right? No, there's no tennis player, golf player baseball, football, everybody's got a coach. And they've, and that person is there to help them see things they can't see, to look at, to look at their swing and say, Hey, you, what are you thinking when you're doing this?

Is that what you want to happen? Or do you want this to happen instead? And maybe there's a way to tweak things to make it a little bit better. So that that's what I liken it to in a way. Yeah.

[00:27:04] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. That's an example of asking one of those, like mirror questions.

What do, what are you expecting to happen here?

[00:27:11] Brian Hoppe: Yep.

[00:27:11] Mikey Pruitt: That's really cool. So you've been doing

[00:27:12] Brian Hoppe: This way for a really long time. What would happen if you changed the way that you did that? Do you think things would end up different? I don't know. Yeah.

Worth, worth looking at, right? It's yes, worth reflecting on it.

[00:27:22] Mikey Pruitt: The answer is yes. Yeah. So you have a ton of experience in the MSP space you've bought. You've sold several MSPs. You've been a CFO, you've been a technician, you've been an owner so let's talk about the MSP industry for a minute and just.

Just okay. Maybe if you can pontificate on what you think is most important for MSPs right now. It may be like sales, marketing, it may be like leveling up. Like we, we've always seen a lot of consolidation in the MSP space, so maybe that's something important. Or it could be like cybersecurity or anything like that's really important to be focusing on.

[00:28:01] Brian Hoppe: Yeah. What I'll say about, I think there's there's a lot of things we could talk about as it relates to that, but yeah, I know I see the m and a trend continuing to increase. I think that there are, there continue to be more and more, funds and private equity and all that coming into the space.

And so kinda like everybody's trying to find a platform, right? And then they're trying to, find MSPs to acquire, to bolt on to that platform. And I think that's just going to continue on over time. I don't see that slowing down anytime soon. And then from there, at the end of the day.

Yes. Obviously everybody's talking about cybersecurity and a lot of people want to transition from being an MSP to an MSSP, right? That's a big, that's a big trend. And so people have to decide owners have to decide, Hey, what, what business do I wanna be in? Do I wanna be, do I wanna be an MSP?

Do I wanna be an MSSP? Do I want to focus on a particular vertical? What do I, what's my strategy? And I think I think an important thing for MSPs to think about is, okay, what's ultimately, what's my differentiator? And. I think that when you ask people that question, when you ask owners that question most people cannot articulate what makes them different from the guy down the street.

For me, I really focused on. So two, so a couple of things. One is that we focused on a very specific industry and that was banking credit union. So financial services industry. And it was like, I am laser focused on serving these clients because I don't want to be like, I'm just serving, I'm just serving everyone.

It's this is what makes me different from every other MSP down the street. And then number two, wa and as an offshoot of that was compliance. Because it, it's

[00:29:49] Mikey Pruitt: huge and financial especially, arguably,

[00:29:50] Brian Hoppe: yeah. Yes. Arguably one of the most the most regulated industry.

That's, that there is. And and there was a lot, there were a lot of benefits to that because they, for, I, I'm sure there are a lot of Mies out there that are like, man, I just can't get my, clients to upgrade from. Windows server 2012 or whatever. Guess what? If you're a bank and you don't upgrade from Windows Server 2012, they're gonna shut you down.

Right?

[00:30:11] Mikey Pruitt: It's, yeah, you're out of business, you gotta

[00:30:12] Brian Hoppe: do it. But yeah. But then in, in addition to that, we got into a lot of the a lot of the cybersecurity stuff that people are getting into now. We had to be into, a long time ago because that those things were already being enforced in the, in the banking industry.

So all that to say you, I think figuring out, okay, what is it that truly makes me unique and it can't be my team is awesome or We're really good at customer service, or that kind of thing. Like what, what is like the real unique thing about my MSP that sets me apart from everybody else?

And thinking through that and really understanding that, and really having that be a true differentiator, I think is a, is gonna be a big thing for a lot of MSPs.

[00:30:53] Mikey Pruitt: What would be an example of a good differentiator statement? Like one that you've heard or one that you could just make up?

[00:31:02] Brian Hoppe: Yeah, so I think like we we're the, I'll make some, making something up. We're the premier provider of of IT services and security to accounting firms in the state of Oklahoma. Like we're number one. We, nobody does accounting firms in Oklahoma better than we do.

And so that's what we're focused on. That's where we grow. Those are the people that we service and nobody can do it better than we can. It's and going back to like good to great. What can you be the best in the world at, and you can find a niche. It's just that most MSPs have grown in a, in such a way that makes it really difficult for them to do that.

It's to niche like fire

[00:31:40] Mikey Pruitt: certain customers to specialize just to meet their niche goals.

[00:31:44] Brian Hoppe: Absolutely. Absolutely. But if you're not, think about that. Not outset. Yeah.

[00:31:47] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. If you're thinking about that from the outset you're more likely to get there. And have that differentiator.

[00:31:52] Brian Hoppe: Absolutely. Yes. And again, I have that, that also is gonna make you more valuable when you go to sell. That's gonna be an increase in value as you go to sell. So something else to think about.

[00:32:04] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, so like the AC acquirer would be like, we want to buy accounting firms in West Texas and Ms.

P services for, and I'd be like that's Brian over there.

[00:32:13] Brian Hoppe: There you go. Yeah. And I just made that up. That wasn't me, but the, but that's what I made up. And going back to the trends at the end of the day, I think. There, there's been a lot of a lot of transition over the years and in the managed services world, right?

So like when the cloud started becoming a thing, it was like, oh my gosh, the clouds, like all these big companies are gonna come and steal all of our clients, or, like security or whatever. But at the end of the day. MSPs own the last mile to the customers. And every, and I won't say every, but most every company that's tried to skirt around MSPs and go straight to, small businesses has been unsuccessful.

It's you've gotta go through the Ms. P. So so owning the relationship and being that, being the trusted advisor is ultimately that's what, that's the thing, and that's what makes MSPs amazing, is that they could be so close to the customer and all of these big companies need you as an Ms.

P in order to for them to be successful and for them to get into your customer base. Continue owning that, that relationship. And I think that's going to be a thing for the long haul. And even, even however many companies that there are that are doing Rollups and they're, you've got these mega MSPs and all that, they're, the bigger that they get, the harder a time they're gonna be, they're gonna have retaining that last mile.

And so it's generally speaking, the smaller MSPs that are gonna continue to own that, and I think it's gonna. I think that's gonna continue. That's gonna be a trend that's gonna keep going over the years, so

[00:33:46] Mikey Pruitt: that is really interesting. I've never heard anyone put it so succinctly that the MSP is the last mile provider and that's, and that, makes me think of like Amazon for example. Like they're, they struggle with that last mile of deliveries. But MSPs are already sitting there waiting for it to be that last mile deliver of it services to businesses around the globe. So yeah, that, that's a really cool way to put it.

[00:34:11] Brian Hoppe: Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks.

[00:34:13] Mikey Pruitt: So yeah, that's gonna be a clip, Brian.

[00:34:17] Brian Hoppe: Awesome. I love it.

[00:34:20] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, that was really cool. Tell me, tell us where you, we can find you on the internet.

[00:34:25] Brian Hoppe: Oh, absolutely. brianhoppe.com. Hard to spell, easy to say. B-R-I-A-N-H-O-P-P e.com. That's my website. Very active on LinkedIn.

And I'd love doing, podcasts and stuff like this, so you can probably find me around the MSP space doing stuff like this. 'cause I really enjoy talking MSP stuff, so

[00:34:45] Mikey Pruitt: don't we all. Thank you Brian. Yeah. I appreciate you joining me.

[00:34:49] Brian Hoppe: Absolutely. Thanks Mikey and have a good one.