Podcast main page: www.mspvoice.com/

Show-notes: www.mspvoice.com/msp-voice-episode-72/

Guest: Yigal Behar

Company: 2Secure

This week’s guest is Yigal Behar with 2Secure out of the New York City area. Yigal came to the US from Israel where he had an IT consulting firm and also worked at a company providing security services. Taking his enterprise expertise to the US, he decided to open up a consultancy to help smaller businesses be more secure. Yigal doesn’t like to place his business solely in the MSSP box as he also offers MDDR (Managed Defense, Detection and Response). MDDR has aspects of MSSP but also offers more proactive detection and remediation.

Yigal has also written the book “Digital War: The One Cybersecurity Strategy You Need to Implement Now to Secure Your Business.” Which you can download in ebook form from his website: https://www.2secure.biz/#free

Yigal and I have a great conversation about a number of security issues related to MSPs

Podcast main page: www.mspvoice.com/

Guest: Larry Bianculli

Company: Contemporary Computer Services, Inc (CCSI)

This week’s guest is Larry Bianculli, managing director,  with CCSI who provide MSP and MSSP services in the New York City/Long Island area. CCSI (which stands for Contemporary Computers Services) has been around since 1974. CCSI has always been focused on services, the founders coming from IBM. CCSI has a range of customers from SMB to fortune 500. They have customers around the US as well as overseas.

Larry has been with CCSI for 4 years and is focused on growing the enterprise and commercial business. Prior to CSSI Larry spent over 15 years working for vendors (both big and small). For their large customers, CCSI helps to augment their IT staff in specialized areas. They’ve seen some great opportunities with co-managed SIEM. CCSI focuses mostly on financial, healthcare, insurance and manufacturing.

Listen to the full episode for more information on how CCSI has been so successful over the years by essentially thinking of themselves as a startup.

Podcast main page: www.mspvoice.com/

Guest: Nigel Moore

Company: The Tech Tribe

This week my guest is Nigel Moore with The Tech Tribe who joins us from Australia. Having been in the business since 2002, Nigel has an interesting story about how he came to own his own MSP in 2007. Starting as break-fix, it took a few years to convert everyone to MRR but along the way, he learned quite a bit. Nigel has documented what he learned in a book he wrote called “Package, Price, Profit - The Essential Guide to Packaging and Pricing Your MSP Plans” available from Amazon. Nigel shares a lot of his experiences in this episode that you can put into use today in your own MSP.

While Nigel is no longer running his MSP, he does own a company called The Tech Tribe where he coaches MSPs on how to grow their business. During the podcast, we kept the topics to MSP business and I hope to have Nigel on the MSP Voice Webinar Series soon to talk about The Tech Tribe.

Podcast main page: www.mspvoice.com/

Guest: Andrew Lassise

Company: Rush Tech Support

Andrew started off with a degree in finance in 2009. Unfortunately, because of the recession, he had to switch gears and focus on IT instead of finance. He found a position at a company doing break-fix remotely and then was approached by some friends about starting their own IT company. While the company didn’t last long, they had managed to get a large number of customers. Andrew worked out a deal with previous owners and was able to transition many of those customers to his own, new business...Rush Tech Support.

Rush Tech focuses mostly on residential and through previous work relationships was able to grow even more through mergers with other tech support companies. Andrew was able to grow from just $36,000 in his first year by himself to over $1.75 million the next year. With a lot of continued merger and acquisition growth over the years, Rush Tech is still about 90% residential and 10% MSP. Andrew says they’re going to continue focusing on business and MSP work moving forward even though he still feels there’s a great market for residential.

Andrew also hosts his own podcast called “Self Made and Sober” - With long-term sobriety, Andrew views this podcast as about the necessity for like-minded people trying to maintain sobriety while achieving more in their lives, whether it be personal, in business or spiritual. Each episode will feature guests, people Andrew looks up to in sobriety, in business, and in life. They discuss the ups and downs of their lives, how they achieved sobriety and success in all its many forms.

Podcast main page: www.mspvoice.com/

Guest: Thomas O’Brien

Company: IDEOLITY

This week I welcome Thomas O’Brien with IDEOLITY to the show. Thomas is in the Kansas City area and has been in business since 1988.  While it took Thomas and his partners about 3 years to settle on IT services, they have been going strong ever since. In 2008 they changed the name of the company to IDEOLITY to better reflect what they do and it’s also much shorter than the previous name. Even though Thomas has been doing IT services for over 30 years, this is actually his 4th career. With the introduction of the Microcomputer, Thomas taught himself the platform and started up a training company to train companies on how to use these new computers. This experience eventually led him to IT services.

With an educational background in psychology and government, Thomas went back to school in 1991 and got his master’s in computer and information management. He says this additional education experience really helped him to better understand the business. Interestingly, IDEOLITY has always been “the IT resource” for their clients and has basically had them on monthly contracts. They were doing break/fix in the early days, mostly because things always broke. While they have a core group of clients who have been with them since the ’90s, many of their customers have been with them for about 10 years. Thomas also recommends continuing education and found some great resources at the Kauffman Foundation which helped him tie the technical to the business aspects at IDEOLITY. Listen to the end to understand the meaning of the title of this episode.

Podcast main page: www.mspvoice.com/

Guest: Phillip Poarch

Company: Tolar Systems

This week’s guest is Phillip Poarch with Tolar Systems out of Abilene, TX. Tolar has been in business since 1999 where they started with high-end consulting. In 2012 they switched over to the MSP model. Phillip has been with Tolar since 2012, the same year the changed their model. After educating their customer base on the MSP model they’ve had great success in Abilene and surrounding areas. By targeting verticals that have to deal with compliance they are able to use their expertise in security and compliance.

To help their customers understand the importance of technology they share a book by Les McKeown called “Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization on the Growth Track-And Keeping It There”. The book talks about the life cycle of businesses and the importance of technology if they’re on a growth trajectory. By looking at the business's level of maturity, it helps them to recommend the technology they should be implementing.

When I asked Phillip what technology he’s most excited about, he replied it’s is the upcoming release of the Rivian EV. It’s billed as  the first adventure based electric truck. Tolar has already pre-ordered one and they’re very excited for its release. You can find more on Rivian here: https://rivian.com/

Podcast main page: www.mspvoice.com/

Guest: Eric Rieger

Company: Webit Services

This week’s guest is Eric Rieger from Webit Services out of the Chicago area. In business since 1996, Webit actually started under a different, less fortunate name which Eric explains. Eric had a few different careers before starting Webit which helped him to prepare for running his own business. Besides MSP Webit also helps companies with business intelligence and analytics and has developers on staff.

Inspired by the book “The Great Game of Business” by Jack Stack (Amazon), Eric has adopted Open Book Management at Webit Services. We discuss at length the concepts of Open Book Management and how Webit has implemented it in their business. If you want to learn more, check out the website for The Great Game of Business here: https://www.greatgame.com/

One of the other concepts that Eric talks about is the power of purpose. He mentions a presentation by Clark Gey at the annual Gathering of Games conference. You can find it on YouTube here. After returning from the conference Eric and his team adopted their purpose, “keeping American business secure and productive”. Eric puts this into more perspective about how what they (and MSPs in general) do to keep the economy running.

Podcast main page: www.mspvoice.com/

This week’s guest is Dan Sadlis out of Gulf Shores, AL. Dan runs Tech Solution, focused on both break-fix and MSP. Because of his location in the Gulf Coast, a lot of his customers are seasonal but he also has managed customers. He only considers himself doing true MSP for the past 3-4 months since he just recently acquired his software stack but he’s been doing services for over 2 years. Dan has enjoyed working on computers from a young age and attended Capitol Technology University in the DC area where he focused on cybersecurity. After school, he returned to Alabama but couldn’t find work in the technology field. After working a few non-tech jobs and doing IT work for people on the side, he realized he could make more money by opening his own business. While he prefers the MSP work, he plans on continuing the break/fix side and getting to know his customers even better.

Podcast main page: www.mspvoice.com/

Guest: Esther Deutsch

Company: RCS Professional Services

This week I am joined by Esther Deutsch from RCS Professional Services in New York City. Esther is the Operations Manager at RCS and she gives some great insights into her role and also about a peer group she’s forming aimed at MSP marketing professionals (more information on that down below). Started in 1999 by Jeffrey Tebele, RCS Professional Services traces their roots back to Rockwell Computer and Software, a chain of electronics stores in NYC in the ’80s. By focusing on services Jeffrey has built RCS Professional Services into a multi-state provider of IT services and support. When I asked what vertical markets RCS servers, Esther said that it’s the wish to serve all companies who a Phish Phans (Jeffrey is a huge Phish Phan).

Podcast main page: www.mspvoice.com/

Show-notes: www.mspvoice.com/msp-voice-episode-63/

Guest: Nancy Sabino

Company: SabinoCompTech

This week’s guest is Nancy Sabino with SabinoCompTech out of Houston, TX. Nancy is the CEO and co-founder of SabinoCompTech, her husband, Angle, is the other co-founder and also the COO. Their getting started story is very interesting and they even feature it on their website. In business now for 10 years, Nancy says they’re basically on version 3.0 of their company after some trial and error (and changing business models). They’re now a full-service MSP serving several verticals.