Episode 43: Transformational, Not Transactional

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Erick and Rich discuss what ConnectWise buying Axcient and SkyKick says about the future of managed services suites and techniques for optimizing service delivery. Then in a two-part interview segment they’re joined first by Corey Kirkendoll of 5K Technical Services and Brian Weiss of ITECH Solutions for a look at how two leading-edge MSPs are incorporating AI into their client service roster. And finally, one last thing: The nightmare every parent who brings a four-year-old to a museum full of priceless artifacts dreads.

Discussed in this episode:

ConnectWise Accelerates Next Generation of Data Protection and Cybersecurity for MSPs with Acquisitions of Axcient and SkyKick

5K Technical Services

ITECH Solutions

The ancient jar smashed by a 4-year-old is back on display at an Israeli museum after repair

Transcript:

 

Rich: [00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the MSP chat podcaster weekly visit with two talking heads talking with you about the services, strategies, and success tips you need to make it big in managed services. My name is Rich Freeman. I’m one of your co hosts. I am also the chief content officer and channel analyst at channel master, the organization responsible for this program.

I am joined as I am every week by our chief strategist. At Channel Mastered and my co host on this show, my friend of many years, Erick Simpson. Erick, I kinda know the answer to this question, unfortunately, but how you doing?

Erick: Feeling a little bit under the weather today, Rich, but hopefully, I’ll get over it in the next day or so.

When you do a bunch of travel and you haven’t traveled for a while it drains you. Hopefully that’s all it is, and I’ll be back on the road to recovery for our next episode.

Rich: You are suffering from a bout of road warrior itis, and yes, I rest up and hopefully this will be behind you in no time.

But Until then let’s go ahead and dive in and start out with our story of the week. By the time you are listening to or watching this episode, folks, this news will be close to two weeks old. We didn’t talk about it on the prior episode of the show. It, it came way too close to press time for two weeks ago.

We didn’t talk about it last week either, because I was hoping to be able to do some interviews with the parties involved before we brought it up. Let’s just go ahead and do it now. Cause it’s a little hard to tell when I’m going to get a chance to talk to the parties involved. And I’m talking of course, about really big news in the world of managed services.

Connect wise buying axiant and Skykick I’m going to guess most folks in the audience are familiar with those companies. Axiant is a business continuity and disaster recovery company. Skykick has been around for a long time. They do cloud management backup and security. And I can speak to this both from a parochial, a local point of view for what it means to ConnectWise and ConnectWise Partners.

Erick. And then maybe what it means from a bigger picture perspective. Connect wise, like other vendors in the industry is building out a an increasingly comprehensive and integrated suite services. They’ve been doing backup both endpoint backup and cloud backup for some time. Adding Axiom to the picture adds appliance based local backup as well.

And that, if you’re looking to level the playing field with your top competitors, our number one competitor clearly is Kaseya. Kaseya owns Datto. Datto has a whole line of appliances. So now ConnectWise is going to have appliances as well. In addition to a more robust suite of products.

Backup solutions that will include a cloud backup system from Skykick. So that actually is the piece of the Skykick portfolio that the ConnectWise folks foregrounded as a nice addition to the picture for ConnectWise. But the cloud security piece of what Skykick does. Is also something that’s going to round out the security story at ConnectWise.

Interestingly enough, from my perspective, Erick, ConnectWise did not talk very much about cloud management, which is actually a big part of what Skykick does and was a leader on, but this will also. Give them additional and more robust cloud management capability. So that’s what it’s all about for ConnectWise.

From a bigger picture perspective I think this kind of gets to a theme that we’ve been talking about on the podcast and I’ve been writing about in my blog, Channelholic. For some time, which is just this idea that what MSPs want and need is more of the tools they use from fewer vendors, tighter integration among those tools.

This is something that Kaseya in particular is especially fervent and aggressive about ConnectWise is very much committed to an ecosystem of partners and made a point of emphasizing that they will continue to work with security and backup and appliance based backup partners, and they’re going to do so as they have in the past on an equal footing meaning that they are saying at least that any integrations they build into their suite at ConnectWise will be available.

The APIs utilized will be available too. Third parties as well. But this is just another step in that larger trend. We’ve talked about Erick of the the leaders in I. T. Management software for M. S. P. S. Building out an integrated suites single platform, single interface in a bid to enable M.

S. P. S. To be more productive. To lighten training loads and fuel growth. And as we’ve discussed before, the I just ticked off a few of the [00:05:00] pros of that trend, the con, as you’ve pointed out before on the show. Is that to the degree you make a bet on one of these platforms, you’re putting a lot of eggs in one basket.

But with that, Erick, I will go ahead and ask you for your take on KinectWise buying Accent and Skykit and what it means for them, but also maybe what it means for MSPs more broadly.

Erick: Yeah. And bravo congratulations all around. But bravo for the KinectWise partners. This is going to provide them a way to compete.

In the market and as you mentioned, Rich, we’re trying to, we’re trying to figure out the balance between sprawl and leanness, in terms of platforms and vendors that we’re using as MSPs with an eye toward efficiency, an eye toward scalability and, it’s a cage match right now, right?

With these top vendors trying to deliver that value proposition for their in, for their independent partner channels. It’s very divided between ConnectWise and Kaseya and one last thing I’ll say. Rich is, Skykick is a client of Channel Masters.

So just wanted to, let everybody know that they are a client, but this had nothing to do with this week’s story of the week.

Rich: Yeah. I’m glad you flagged that actually. Cause it it did not occur to me, but you’re actually right. We do work with, I should also say I’m recording this week from my home office here in Seattle.

Skykick headquarters is maybe half a mile up the road from where I’m sitting right now. I’ve known. Todd and Evan, Todd Schwartz and Evan Richman, the co founders, co CEOs of that company since 2016. And so it’s, it just, for me personally, having closely tracked the arc and evolution of that company.

It it was an interesting piece of news. I like I said, I’m trying to arrange interviews. The ConnectWise folks are trying to set me up with Jason McGee, the CEO of ConnectWise. I would very much like to speak. With Todd and Evan about this a little less clear if that’s going to be in the works or not.

But yeah, this is not, Skycake is not a company we’ve heard of. Erick we know a little bit more about them and have some connections inside that company that go beyond the basics.

Erick: Yeah. You could always just show up and knock on the door. It sounds like. There’s a thought. There’s a thought.

I’ll bring donuts.

Rich: They’ll let me. And

Erick: of course they’ll let you go.

Rich: All right. Let’s move on to your tip of the week. Erick, I was alluding to the fact that truism really in the world of managed services that if your technicians are more productive, you’re going to be more profitable. And that has something to do with your topic this week.

Erick: Absolutely rich. And this may sound like a broken record for me. But it’s, I’m talking about increasing inefficient, overcoming inefficient service delivery challenges in MSP practices. And for me, rich. I see three areas from a service delivery perspective where we can be tremendously successful or very not so right.

And those include help desk. Those include project management and those include sales engineering, scoping, but I’m going to focus today on just the service desk processes and platforms. As Rich, I. Back in my enterprise days I used to build out and train and turn over call centers and services for Fortune 1000 organizations.

Now these were the days, Rich, when everything was very expensive and only the, Fortune 1000 organization these top tier organizations were building out these world class services with this technology that was very costly and did not integrate well. And there was a lot of manual labor, a lot of inefficiency in the enterprise back then.

Today it’s the opposite, right? We just, talked about ConnectWise acquisition of Accient and Skykick and how they’re integrating and how Kaseya is integrating and making it easier to improve automation and workflow optimization. So just, let’s just take those two pieces right there, right?

Because I know that surveys that we’ve done and other surveys out in the field that we’ve read MSPs are trending like over 15 platforms and services and solutions. And I’ve seen higher numbers, on average that they are repurposing for their own operational. Efficiency and to deliver service to their clients.

I think it’s, it may be way higher than that since I saw some stats a while ago, so the rush to reduce this platform sprawl and to create these integrations is not something that MSPs can do by themselves. That’s why it’s so important that these upstream vendors are allowing this to happen and creating these open APIs and this ability to do this, I sat in a session at the MSP summit this week, Rich.

When they had a couple of vendors up there talking about how they’re integrating AI into their platforms. And they were very careful rich to note [00:10:00] that this is, they’re not using it for, LLM and any of that kind of stuff, but it’s basically to, to identify and optimize workflows and make integrations better and things like that.

I’m not an expert of everything they explained rich, but It sounded like AI in this use case is going to have a much greater impact than I had thought of before in terms of automation and workflow optimization. I use AI generative AI basically for writing and marketing and things like that.

I don’t. Anymore, do any kind of coding or programming or any of that, but there’s some value to that and the attention that was given around the safety and security of how these vendors are leveraging AI, I think was showed a level of maturity that, that gives me hope if you will, rich, so automation and workflow optimization, absolutely.

And again, a broken record standardized procedures and documentation. If you’re not using a documentation platform. It is the third platform that MSPs that are pulled say they need as an MSP, RMM, remote monitoring and management, PSA, and IT documentation. If you don’t have IT documentation, then you’re basically shooting from the hip, and it makes it harder for you not only to deliver service, But also to onboard new technicians, right?

Because it’s all in Erick’s head and I haven’t documented anywhere. So I can’t scale and labor and service costs more and roads, my margins, because I have to be competitive. And then skilled resource allocation. I’m talking rich about optimizing, and this is difficult when you’re a small MSP, rich, when you say I don’t want my level three technicians closing level one tickets because it just costs too much.

Sometimes they’ve got to tag in. It’s just the way we are. But at a certain point in the growth of an MSP practice, Rich, we have to start identifying and routing tickets only to the tier or level of technician or resource that can close that ticket without having it being escalated through multiple levels of escalation.

And then that erodes You know, client satisfaction and more morale for the team, because a lot of times we are compensating and bonusing our technicians on hitting KPIs that are directly tied in many cases to how many tickets they close on the service desk. Yeah. It’s interesting. You talked a little bit about documentation there.

Rich: You talked a little bit about AI and using a generative AI responsibly. And it immediately reminded me of an interview I did earlier this week. The CEO of Ninja one because Ninja this week announced that they’re giving away three licenses to their documentation product to their users.

Those are like free forever seats. Beyond that, you pay an add-on fee on top of the rest. What you pay for the rest of what they do there. But the ai piece, so you were saying, it sounded like fingers crossed. That the people who are creating this technology are mindful of the potential harm and doing it responsibly.

And I really do think every single vendor I’ve spoken to pretty much any vendor you can name about this topic Kaseya ConnectWise, Enable Ninja Atera, Synchro. They are all very mindful of the the safety and responsibility issue and they’re all trying to walk the line appropriately.

There are companies out there that are being a lot more aggressive than Ninja. Ninja has not done anything in that area yet, and it has a few, Modest things coming, but they basically decided where, this scares us a little bit and we’re going to be super certain that we get it right before we do anything.

So I’ll, help you rest more easily about the way the industry is approaching that particular issue. And at the same time just point out that there is plenty of. A. I. Productivity boosting technology in RMM solutions today, and there’s more coming all the time, and all of that is going to contribute very much to the efficiency of service delivery.

Erick: Absolutely. When we automate things and we’re leveraging AI properly, then that means that we can scale our services more broadly, we can, raise our rates because it’s costing us less in terms of labor or raise our, increase our margins, I’m sorry gross profit, because it’s costing us less to do the labor part of it.

And then we can assign higher value roles and responsibilities to lower level. Technicians and engineers, which, is a boon for MSPs and their customers. Cause you can build that time

Rich: at higher rates and collect even higher margins on that higher value work. And it’s going to contribute to the stickiness of the relationship.

Yeah, it is absolutely good stuff to free that time up as opposed to laying people off and shrinking the size of your tech staff. Yeah. This is actually a perfect segue, an unplanned perfect segue to the interview [00:15:00] we’re going to do this week, which is actually for the first time.

This is an unprecedented spotlight interview twofer Erick, that we’ve got for you this week. We actually tried. To get both of our interview guests together at once so they can talk to each other and with us and From a timing perspective to get the four of us together in one place at one time even online proved impossible So here’s what’s going to happen.

In a few moments here when we come back from the break is initially I will be joined by cory kirkendall. He’s an msp from the dallas area doing some very interesting work leading edge work in artificial intelligence and not even so much in terms of using it internally. Yeah, he’s doing interesting things in terms of how he makes money with generative AI and and uses it to assist his clients.

Same goes for our second interview guest and you and I both interviewed Brian Weiss an MSP and solution provider in San Luis Obispo, California. And he too, he’s a little bit earlier in the process, but he’s also thinking very big, as you’ll see he’s literally Building an AI roadmap that’s a decade long.

We are going to get into it with both those guys, give you some concrete ideas, real world suggestions for how to think about approach monetize AI. And we’re going to do all of that right after the break. In just a few moments stick around folks. We will be right back

And welcome back part two of this episode of the msp chat podcast or spotlight interview segment which is a twofer for this episode We actually have two spotlight interview guests joining us and to kick things off right now is guest number one He is cory kirkendall of tv 5K technical services in the Dallas, Texas area.

He is also an innovator very forward leaning with respect to artificial intelligence, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about both with him and with our second guest. Corey, welcome to the show.

Corey: Hey, Rich. Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here. So I always look forward to spending time with you, man.

Rich: I appreciate it. I’ve known you for a long time. And in fact, I’ve known you to be a leading edge on a lot of technologies that went on to become mainstream. So it’s no great surprise to me that the same is true of artificial intelligence, but for folks who are new to you, new to 5k, et cetera, just tell folks a little bit about yourself.

Corey: Yeah, sure. Again, thanks for having me here, man. So Corey Kirkendall, president CEO of 5K technical services located in Plano, Texas. Been in doing the MSP since 2006. So we’re getting into our 16 plus year. So it’s been around for a while, been around when MSP was just a fad and now it’s, full blown and growing up and we’re still trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up.

We support, many different industries out here, a lot of nonprofits, legal, financial services. And we just enjoy solving problems. I tell everybody, Hey, I’m in a relationship business. I just happened to do IT and that’s really how it comes across.

Rich: So I was doing an interview not too long ago with an executive from D and H the big distributor.

And they were telling me about how a lot of their road shows and events, and just a lot of what they’re doing this year is around educating MSPs about artificial intelligence and how to get started. And the reasoning behind that is. What the MSPs are telling them is that they are very interested in AI.

They understand it’s going to be a part of their business going forward, but they lack the confidence right now, a lot of them to get started. And so DNH is trying to, bridge that gap a little bit. But you’re doing stuff out there for your customers already. First of all, how long have you been.

Delivering AI services to your clients. And what gave you the confidence to go ahead and start doing that a little bit ahead of some of your peers?

Corey: Yeah. In this industry, since you’ve been around a while, you always figure out that you’re always looking for that unique selling proposition, right?

What makes you different from everybody else? I guess I’m in the Dallas area and there’s probably an MSP. I could probably throw a rock out my window and hit three, four, five, and how it is. So it’s always about pushing the envelope. But also thinking about it is if we’re truly that trusted advisor, when it comes to our customers, we should be looking at technology that is coming or forward thinking.

Because if I was internal to their organization, I’d be doing that as well. So I look at ourselves as a true I. T. Provider. So therefore I am their I. T. department. So therefore, I need to be thinking about how do I help the business growing those needs? And how do we go down that path? And so once we put that head on across, no matter what that is, whether it’s I O T cybersecurity, infrastructure or whatever that is, we need to always be thinking like that.

So it makes us easy for us to always push that envelope. And so we’ve been delivering these services probably now over the last nine months, but we’ve been into it probably about the last year and a half really started to plan. And then when it really kicked off, we really started saying, What do we do with this?

And how do we do with that? And a lot of that really came from what we learned from our cyber security conversation is sitting down having conversations about it. What the customer’s business are doing, what are they doing? And what are they going out there? Because when I [00:20:00] when AI hit the board, every product, every trade show, everybody had it in there and say, here’s what’s going on.

And so what happened is that was that new shiny ball. But what’s unique for us as an MSP perspective was, is. We’ve been having cybersecurity conversations, infrastructure, upgrades, and doing things, but we didn’t have anything tangible that shiny ball for anybody to latch on to. It’s a, I really know why I want to do this.

I know I need cybersecurity, but why do I really want to invest? AI to me is that cog that we get to move out of the wheel that will push all that along. And that’s conversation comes for us having those business conversations about where do you want to grow? How do you want to grow?

What do you see yourself growing and how do you see yourself as a company at ball, then how can we, as your it provider, help you get there changes the whole conversation, it’s not about the technology and how fast your computers are and network infrastructure upgrade, it’s really about how can I help you meet your business goals and help you be successful?

That’s where it comes down to for us.

Rich: So just to bring this into concrete terms for the folks in the audience, what’s an example or two of an AI related service offering or AI related projects that you’re doing for clients right now?

Corey: For sure. Right now we have one actively going on where we’re actually going in there.

The first part we do is when we go and work with a lot of nonprofits. So nonprofits are in grant writing season right now. They’re trying to figure out how to pull all this data together to go out and compete and answer grants in the most efficient way to win the grant. And so they consume a lot of data from statistics and reports from other cities and how they differentiate and things in that perspective, which is like.

Like baby food and cakewalk for AI, because that’s what it wants. It wants that data. So we go into a nonprofit and work on that right now with them is we’re going in there and understanding how they write the grant process, what they’re doing in a grant process and what that ultimately looks like, and we take it and we’re creating customized LLMs for them.

To actually go out and help them be successful in writing those grants. But we’re taking it and saying we’re going to train up a model based on your mission, your values, how you do things, what you do things, and then we’re going to allow it to feed all this data of the grants and the PDFs and the websites and all this information in, and help you formulate to answer these grants quicker.

Sometimes the grant can, if you’re writing, it depends on it is. It costs a lot of money by outsourcing that, but it can get anywhere from three to six months before a grant is even ready to be proof and say, I’m hitting from that perspective. And what we’ve been able to do is seeing that we’re getting that grant process of getting that birth, we’re getting it down to as little as three to four weeks.

That they can come out there and start pushing it forward. So that means the more grants I can respond to, the better chances that I get that revenue to fund the projects and the things that supports my mission, the quicker we can get them out there to go forward. So it’s a no brainer for them is that it really works well.

And what’s really cool about that is they’re seeing the benefits of that right away and saying, Hey, I can correlate this data, pull up the data together, and I can respond to a lot of grants because now the model knows what we do, how we do, And what’s been really cool about that is, is that because the model now knows what they do and when they can’t do, we also are working on the model to be able to execute and say, here’s the thing that you do well, but here’s the thing that your partners do well, if you guys come together with this, you’re actually a stronger candidate for this grant at the end of the day, that’s really cool for them.

Rich: It’s interesting because things move so fast in, in AI, but two, two years ago at this time, a lot of people were saying, if you’re not Bank of America, you’re not going to be creating your own LLM, right? And anytime soon, there are other interesting things you can do with AI, but the idea of having your own private LLM and keeping it updated and, tuning the data and all that is just going to be out of reach.

For the typical SMB, but certainly sound like the case for your client base.

Corey: It’s not, but what you’ll find out is we go down this path and this is where I think a lot of MSPs get stuck is they want to go and immediately say, how do I turn this into a recurring revenue process? That’s not instant.

The part of it is that there’s several projects that happened before. But I think where it comes from is going to be us doing exactly what you just said, helping them maintain that model, update that model, tweak that model and continue to do that. And we’re going to be supporting it more, not necessarily for how we support, how much can we fix your email or doing help desk?

We’re looking at it more from a software development business process side, right? Because it’s going to constantly change. Their values are going to change, where they get the data is going to change, their back end systems are going to change, where they get access to data is going to change, and that’s where they need us to help maintain that to continue to move it forward.

So it’s one of those things, it’s like the gift that keeps on giving. Once you get to that project, you become integral into how that company functions. And so they’re going to need you to continue to walk them down the path to make sure they’re one, implementing it correctly, it’s updated correctly, and it’s working and functioning in the way that it does.

And that’s just one department. Once you started off in the grant writing, we’re working with the execs on how they provide reports to be back to the board. We’re working with a marketing department of how they market and go out there and market to [00:25:00] their people who use their services and go out to get donors and other things.

So it just continues to grow. Once you see the success in one, it just automatically organically grows inside the organization to where you’re so integral to that organization that they need you to maintain it. And that’s where that recurring revenue comes on. But now you’re maintaining that model for them.

And continue to guide them through the right way instead of letting them figure it out by themselves.

Rich: You said something a little bit earlier on that reminded me of an interview we did on the podcast just a few episodes ago with Wes McDonald of Go West AI. And I know you and he are working together on, on some stuff.

But the biggest, most important point that he made about AI is you need to, Stop thinking about it as a product opportunity, a technology opportunity. It’s not about the licensing and the margins. It’s really all about the consulting and the business process optimization. And it sounds like that’s a hundred percent where you see the opportunity for enterprise here as well.

Corey: It is. It changes the model because you remember it was a rush to get away from projects, right? It’s called break, fix work is what we want to relate it to what we used to. And now he went into, we got to get into that monthly recurring where it comes from. This kind of swings the pendulum back to where it’s going to be a whole lot of break, fix or project work up front that can eventually swing into a true long consulting effort that looks very similar to a monthly recurrent in that perspective.

So you got to, You got to change your mindset because if you get stuck on that It’s very hard to go in there because you want to go in immediately and start pushing a monthly recurring right away But what am I going to be paying you for? I don’t really know what it has. There’s no proof in the pudding yet I gotta get to that point. I gotta crawl Walk and then run to that. But, and that’s the kind of conversation that you have to have, but what you’re going to figure out is that you’re going to become so integral into their situations and you’re up front with that. And not only are you consulting them on that, you’re helping them understand their line of business apps that wants to bring out AI into it, right?

How they thinking about it. And so it really opens you up to the technology and says, all right, let’s talk about AI as a whole. How do we help you navigate that? And how do we help you? Differentiate yourself by leveraging in the most efficient and the best way for your organization. That’s what’s been good for us.

Rich: As I think about the AI journey if you will, for a typical five case technical services client. It sounds like the first step on that journey typically is. A strategic assessment of the the company and the opportunities where AI might be able to help them grow faster, spend less, et cetera.

What are some of the, what are some of the immediate follow on from that you don’t go, I assume, straight from that conversation to rolling out an LLM. What are some of the projects that you’ve got to do to get that client ready to actually be leveraging an LLM? Yeah.

Corey: The first thing you want to do is have the conversations about AI and know that it’s out there and introduce it to your customer.

And I tell every MSP, if you’re not having that conversation about AI to your customer, that’s great. I will. And they’ll be my customer. That’s the truth of the matter. The next conversation you have is that you want to make sure that you bring in that hat of being good leaders and good access to your technology and say, you need to put in an acceptable use policy and tell your company how you as an organization want to leverage AI and put a stake in the ground and say, we will use.

Barter, we will use open AI, we will use co pilot, whatever that is. This is our acceptable use in the AI that we have determined in the direction we want to go and let them know that this is where we’re going from that perspective. And we do that and we give that away to our customers or potential customers for free, just so they can use them a line in the sand.

The next piece we do is we come in and look at it and say, let’s talk about assessing each of the organization. Talk about how much they’re using AI in their organization. Figure out what they need to do in a, and then come back and say, here are the best way that sales want to use it. Here’s the best way that the execs wanna use it.

Here’s the best way that marketing wants to use it. Here’s the best way that, product development wants to use it. Here’s the best way X wants to use it. And then we work with each individual organizations in that company and start to assess what they need and how it gets done. And then we help them find the right model, the right tools to go down that path and implement it and walk them through that process.

And sometimes they’ll say, great, thank you. And they’ll do it themselves. Or they say, Hey, this is great. Now, can you help me? Yes, we can. And we continue to walk down that path with them as well.

Rich: How big a project, how discreet a project is just preparing the data for the LLM to

Corey: use? Yeah. And so in that assessment piece, what we find out is that there’s a huge cyber security pool that comes along, right?

And that’s the piece where you got to look like their data classification, where your data is it structured, unstructured? What does it look like? And then you’re going to find out a lot of that within a situation. But if we all remember, if we go back just six months ago, a little bit longer, Everybody was scared of cyber security when it came to data classification, because it’s a herculean effort to go out there and say, [00:30:00] all right, we’re going to mark and classify the data of what can be shared, what cannot be shared, what’s confidential, what’s not confidential, what’s internal.

You’re like, oh my gosh, that’s crazy. But now what you’re finding out is in order to move forward, you have to do those due diligence. So that’s one project that comes up right away. It’s saying, hey, here’s what I want to get done. Next thing is figuring out which model that you want to use. Is it going to be chat GPT 4.

0 or 5. 0 or whatever it’s going to be? Or is it going to be, something else? What am I going to use and go down that path? And it comes down to, as you see the models coming down is it’s relaxing some of the requirements of having large systems, large data sets. I can’t afford that. And you have a smaller models to be able to do that, but in really having a security conversations of.

Hey, what do we want to do with your data? How do we want to protect your data and how do we ensure your data? And then one of the unique things we do is once we do this Now we’re able to figure out now that I’m leveraging AI and I’m leveraging security that we’re doing. How do I give it back to our customers or end customers and say, how do you describe that and use that as your competitive advantages against your competition out there?

Here’s things that we’re doing better. And how we’re securing ourselves and how we’re leveraging technology want to bring our cost down, but to ensure the efficiency of the data and being snap perspective. So that’s what’s been really cool. So we hit him on the A. I. Side tied back into their marketing, just like we would if we were the internal I.

T. Business organization is saying, How do we close the loop and not be on the outside looking in still trained that we’re trusted advisable? We’re really not.

Rich: So you help the client set acceptable use policies, you help the client inventory and categorize data. All of that goes to the cyber security preparation before you go into full production with an LLM.

Are there other security measures, steps, projects that you like to do before you Roll something out to the entire company.

Corey: Yeah. And we look at it as a whole. So we do some AI assessments that are out there. There’s some cool partners out there. I got some really cool tools that can help us do some assessments on what it looks like, whether I’m in a three 65, I’m looking at server based things in that perspective.

We’re also saying that if I’m doing it, sometimes it’s very difficult to say if I got a whole lot of. On prem servers with big file servers and things like that. I’m going to something like a copilot, something like that. It’s better to be in SharePoint or in the cloud. It just makes better. So the project comes out is I got to do a data migration and get you off of those traditional servers.

And move you to the cloud. We know in some cases that had been a conversation that’s been going on for years. They just never wanted to move. Now they’re willing to have that conversation and that those projects are coming up to saying, all right, now let’s move our data up to a cloud and let’s do something different, which starts that process of making sure I got the right conditional access policies, security back there, make sure I’m classifying it right.

And you’re seeing those things. So there’s a lot that goes on to that. And then the bottom line is we spend a lot of time training. The employees and the people, one, here’s what AI, here’s what AI is, what cat GPT is, what artificial intelligence is, how would you use it? And then we’re really encouraging the employers to embrace it and be open with their employees about what they’re doing and what their direction is.

But yeah, because people, there’s a lot of foot out there Oh my God, it’s going to take my job or, Oh my goodness, this is what we want to get done. What we’re saying is, Hey, let’s be straight up with them and say, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s the things that we’re functioning, focusing on. There are some places where AI is going to help us get stronger.

So I’m going to probably repurpose you or move you to do this at a different place. Having those upfront conversations, remove the elephant in the room or talk to it right away is really helping at that point. So a lot of it is just educating the end user on truly what the direction of the company is.

And what AI is and what it is not.

Rich: So you mentioned before you, you’ve been delivering AI services to your clients for about nine months at this point. But the the work required to get to that point began significantly longer than nine months ago. How heavy a lift was it to get yourself ready to start delivering services to your clients and what did you do?

Corey: Yeah, it was a heavy lift. One of the things you had to immerse and be aware where I sit on the county A. I. Security Council to be ahead with the leaders and saying, I want to know what’s happening, not only with a from my perspective, but all around us in that perspective of governments using how they use it, how security is using it and how it’s handling automation.

I’m always in a podcast. I’m doing things I’m reading. And I’m playing with it myself. I have copilot turned on. I got now working with a partner with hats, which we do a lot of stuff with as well on how we do AI, you really immerse ourselves into it. And then one of the first thing we did is we brought it internal to start working on some of our own stuff to say, how is it going to change our business model, how we deliver services so that we can talk to says, Hey, The customer says, you know what?

I’m not really feeling the AI because they’ve been working with us. They’ve been playing with it as well. So they’ve been comfortable. But remember when you asked the question, yep. And it responded, yes. Did you get a good answer? It says, yes, I really enjoyed that. But yes, that was AI that was talking to me.

Then go, Oh, [00:35:00] I didn’t know. Here’s what it is. So it changes the conversation and you can’t. We live on that, eat your own dog food. So that’s exactly what we do. We play with it ourselves, we implant it ourselves so we can have intelligent and strong conversation with our, with that stuff, but I play with it all the time and I’m, it’s like a kid in a candy store I’m turning up, turn this on, turn that on, listening to this and figuring out what works, what doesn’t work, looking at everything it’s extremely fascinating of what’s out there from that perspective, you gotta live and breathe it.

Rich: In terms of your team, to what extent are you trying to make sure everybody in the organization is getting familiar with AI and getting more confident in it, as opposed to maybe picking out 1, 2, 3, some specialists who really go deep on it. And that’s pretty much. What they do.

Corey: Yeah. So first thing we did was is get them familiar with chat, GBT and some of the other side we’ve built out. Sorry. So a lot of engineers, when it comes down to, they don’t like to write SOPs and don’t like to do a lot of case notes and respond from their perspective where AI is great for that. So we teach it the way we want to respond to power 5k response to customers, what our tone, how we do it and what our temperament is.

It’s very easy to feed the information of what we did and it spits out, Hey, here’s what it is that can either create an SOP for us, a knowledge based article, or even put up a note for what we did, how we did it, and what the resolution is in the case. So now all of our engineers get an opportunity to leverage it, to write better, to save time on having to document and push that back into our thing.

So we get consistent documentation, consistent messaging, and we can continue to feed back. So it’s a win for across the board. So everybody gets exposed to it. Because it’s speaking the way 5k speaks as a team, as a whole, not me coming in from one me coming up something else. We taught it. Here’s how what I’m messaging is what we believe our values are and allow it to work in that perspective.

So you’re seeing it change that way in marketing that we do. It changed the way we respond to cases. And we changed the way we respond to our customers in email. And so that across the board is how we work through that process. But then there’s certain others that we have a couple that are more digging into it, like I do is really digging into and say, Hey, let’s think about what we can do, how we support the customer and how can we support to have these interviews and talk to customers on what a real value.

But not, but the entire organization is using it and leveraging it and get to see the power of it. But not everybody is involved in the development and the maintaining that side from the customers. You mentioned Copilot a little bit ago. Microsoft certainly the big distributors, they’re all positioning that as the low hanging fruit the entry point to AI for most MSPs out there right now.

Rich: What role does Copilot play in your strategy? What place does it have in your thinking about AI and your end users?

Corey: Microsoft, when they came out with Copa, I think it’s probably one of the best releases I’ve ever seen them do a product for all the training, all the sales material, all everything that was pretty amazing from that perspective.

It, I think it’s integral. All of us, I’m a big, we sell Microsoft 365 to all of our customers. Most everybody that came in on a basic or standard license. So right off the boat, the low hanging fruit is to get them to a a premium license and things. So you get a license up cost upfront to get them to a place where you can start leveraging co pilot in the co pilot licensing.

But then that’s when the DLP and all the other stuff comes out of really training the model and leveraging it, how you lose it at teams, how it focuses across all of the organization. And that’s the training for us is that. Hey, I can go out there and search for something in SharePoint and it pulls back what was in my email, what was in a chat between me and Rich on a Teams message what, when did I have a doc about that?

Here was the Excel spreadsheet that showed me the budget for that and ties it all together and give reference points to that. Pretty powerful stuff. If this was a team’s meeting with us and I was had co pilot running and we were sitting here having a conversation that I could show up late, I can, but I can come in and say, can you tell me the five points that was going on before I got here?

And he says Rich said this, Corey said this, and this is what they asked you. Then at the end of the meeting, I can say, all right, summarize me with the, what’s the next action item? And it spits out the summarization of who said what, who did what, and here’s the 10 things you need to go follow up on.

Drops it in an email and send it for, that’s powerful, right? Saved me time. ’cause I’m sitting back okay, I gotta go back and list the message. I think Rick said this, rich said that. I don’t know about that. I don’t know what just happened. It brings that productivity again. Doesn’t take the need for the human away from it, but it does bring that productivity back and say, Hey, give me a starting point of what it hurt, I can modify it, add to it.

I’m not starting from a blank sheet of paper. Great cool stuff.

Rich: You were talking before about the grant writing solutions that you do for nonprofits which is very strategic workflow related kind of stuff, but it also sounds like it takes some time to, to identify the need and design or that.

Visualize what the solution will be, prepare the data, get the security in place, et cetera. Is Copilot sort of an in the meantime way to get [00:40:00] started immediately with that customer to the degree that anyone in that end user environment who is using Microsoft 365 can potentially benefit from it very quickly in different ways as soon as they get that training you were talking about?

Corey: 100%. Copilot does, if everybody’s in a SharePoint environment, they have the environment set up, And they’re doing it definitely copilot. So is a way to go to get to that point. You still have to make sure you do your due diligence on securing it, making sure you got the right security in place where everybody can access to anything.

If I go out there and I don’t have anything in place and I turn on copilot by default, literally at that point, I can search for anything and get back information. I probably shouldn’t have access to or where you get that. So you have to go out there, even in the middle of minimum size, create a couple of friendlies out there that can work well together, small focus group, understand this is what it looks like, but then also use copilot studio and other things.

So really look at how it’s accessing the data, what it has access to, and you still got to ratchet it down. To say, I need to make sure the data is secure so that just doesn’t fall in the wrong hands from that perspective and follow, your security best practices, at least, those who don’t need access to it shouldn’t have access to it.

But if you don’t do the due diligence, everybody will have access to it. You just want to turn it off. We’ve had customers come to us and say, I won’t compile it. I want it now. Turn it on. And we’re like, nope. You tell me two or three people you want to have it on, we will turn it on to them, let you play with it, get familiar with it, train you on it before we open up the kimono.

They’ve argued, they yelled and screamed, but after they played with it, they came back and said, thank you for being tough on us. That, that saved us from ourselves, right? And it’s a hard conversation, but yep, I got it. I’m gonna give it to you, but I need you to take these baby steps with me because if you don’t, we’re going to have a different conversation here in the next month or so, and it’s not going to be a good one.

Everybody has access to your payroll data. They know all your personal information. They know things that they shouldn’t know. And you’re wondering what happened? And you turned it on. Without those things in place, then you opened up the door.

Rich: So you are ahead of the curve on AI with respect to most MSPs out there right now.

So we’ve been talking about what you’re doing today. Which makes me curious about what you anticipate you will be doing. 12 months, eight months from now when everybody else is caught up to where you are right now, what, do you have a vision, a roadmap for where you want to go in AI from here?

I do.

Corey: Yeah. So one of the things that we started looking at here is when you saw all the new Snapdragon and all the new AI based devices coming out, And you can see the writing on the wall, and as an MSP, you’ve been doing it for a while, you can see this thing in the wall. What you’re seeing is, I was just hanging out with the Noble reps and talking to dealers, a lot of these PCs almost come self healing, where the PC is now phoning back the distributor saying, Hey, I need a patch, I need a certain thing, they’re smart enough to say, here’s what it is.

So then you look at it and say a lot of MSPs make their money based off of that. That level one junior tech of doing that work. Here’s what a price per device or price per user is built into that. If I take the need where my PC is like my car is telling me when it needs to go in for service.

It tells me when it needs to do what it needs to get done, then it’s hard to justify that price and that costs. On that level, I think it’s going to be more up and I see everybody pushing it up to more on a consultative basis of having that need to say, how do I take it up to be that AI strategy is very similar to what we’re doing with the VCSO stuff is how do I help roll this out, put the guardrails up and manage it throughout that process where I’m that guy, I’m that AI person that’s teaching them how to implement this into their business.

Being not necessarily the doer, but also more like the orchestra, the orchestrator, right? Being that conductor of how things move forward. And then if I am doing it, then I’m doing it on that recurring basis where I’m maintaining that code, maintaining those products, maintaining those integrations, but constantly being that leader of how we integrate to make sure that business is running better.

They’re becoming more profitable and it’s it’s definitely helping their bottom line down. And that’s how I see it coming is I see the role is definitely transitioning into that level. That, that junior tech level one tech help desk thing is probably going to figure out how to fall down, but a lot more consulting roles, a lot more engagement on that higher level, more business strategic side is where it’s going to come from.

And that’s why that’s why I’m hanging my bat on it. And from what I’m seeing right now, I definitely see that from that perspective.

Rich: Yeah, I believe you’re already positioning yourself to to clients as a, you mentioned VC. So you’re positioning yourself as a virtual chief AI officer for your clients and calling attention to the expertise you have already.

Corey: Sitting up there having that conversation with those C level people and saying, let’s figure out how we implement AI. And I hit him with this kind of this Trojan horse everybody’s getting, right? I’m sure you have it. And everybody’s gotten this new email. And it says, we’ve updated our privacy policy.

And if what we’ve done is we’ve implemented all these new things. Essentially, they’re saying, Hey, we implemented, turned on AI. We’re using your data in our AI model. And if you respond, To tell us not to [00:45:00] then we will not put your data in but if you don’t respond We take that as yes, and we’ll continue moving forward.

Most people didn’t read that email, but everybody responded So therefore their data now is part of their model, right? Yes, it’ll get anonymized It won’t be there But in the day you’ve given permission to your vendors or whoever’s out there to take your identity and your data To do whatever they want with it in their models and share it across the board to get better, right?

We should be in front of that saying, you need to pay attention to what you’re reading, what you’re getting, and what does that ultimately mean and how do you protect yourself? So that’s the conversation we come back to and have that conversation with the vendor. What does this email mean? What are you doing with the data now that you have access to my data?

How do you ensure that I protect my data and that my data is being used in the right way, right? That was another piece where we come in and have those conversations they need to have that because most people don’t read it They don’t see it. You don’t have it, but everybody has gotten those emails several over the last couple of months It is and then basically has said sure no problem.

Do what you want to do I can’t believe my date is out there. You gave him permission. No, I did Yep, you did. You got to go back and read.

Rich: Corey really interesting conversation as always. Anytime I get a chance to speak with you I really appreciate you coming on the show for folks as interested in what you’re doing as I am where would you point them to learn more about you about 5k, maybe get in touch.

Corey: Yeah, you can always catch me on LinkedIn. I’m always out there. You can hit me up at See Kirk in there, 5ktech. com or come to www. 5ktech. com and I’m out there. Please reach out. I love to have these conversations. I always live by this motto and MSP. I don’t share it. I’m an open book because when one MSP coughs, we all catch the cold.

I want to make sure we stay as immune to certain things as we possibly can and doing the right thing on behalf of our customers. There’s enough out here for us to eat. Looking forward for us all to grow in any way I can do that to help. I appreciate it.

Rich: I love it. I love it. Thank you again, Corey. Folks, we’re going to take a super quick break right here.

On the other side of that we will be joined by our second spotlight interview guest for this episode, Brian Weiss of iTech Solutions, also a thought leader in AI. So stick around. We’re going to be right back with another. AI related conversation.

Okay. And welcome back to the second of our two spotlight interviews in this episode of the MSP chat podcast. This time we are joined by Brian Weiss of ITech Solutions. Brian, hello. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. You are the CEO and Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at iTech Solutions.

We’ll get into the second part of that title because it’s one you share with the prior interview guest on the show here. But before we dive into our subject matter today, tell folks a little bit about yourself and about your company.

Brian: Yeah. Brian Weiss. I’ve been doing this it thing since high school, pretty much.

And very entrepreneurial, how do I say that word? I’m an entrepreneur. There we go. In the sense that I felt like I’ve reinvented myself quite a bit over the past years. We’re currently labeling ourselves as an it firm because we have been getting back into software development and we’re really focused on data and AI moving forward, but we’re going on our 20th year.

As an IT service provider and yeah, AI has me really excited. It’s, I’ve been a sci fi geek since a little kid, never once thought I’d have a chance to play around and be a part of this journey. And it’s really reinvigorated me to on my next chapter in life, if you will, especially from a business standpoint.

Rich: So our previous guest, Corey you were pretty early. You’re ahead of the curve a little bit on on getting into AI. Tell folks a little bit about when you got started and how you got started, what that initial vision was for what you maybe wanted to do in artificial intelligence.

Brian: Yeah. I guess really, I just started out playing around with it, which is funny, cause that’s how I got into IT is I was playing video games. Which turned into LAN parties, which turned into having to understand how to, troubleshoot a computer that’s not working for your video game.

Um, and as I played around with it more, I realized it was a tool I could learn, or I could use to learn a lot quicker. I’ve always been self taught. And part of my struggle is just accessing the information that I need at my fingertips where I don’t get too frustrated or have to read a big book, right?

I’m a speed reader, so I can read books, but being a speed reader, I almost, I tend to miss details almost like an LLM does. So it’s funny that I can relate to an LLM in the sense that it kind of speed reads data, but I, my, my mental physical health, I’ve leveled up. Tremendously using LLMs to just learn more about how I could improve that.

Now as I’m working [00:50:00] with a Microsoft first approach I started using that to really understand how to better use Microsoft because there’s a lot of white papers out there, but your eyes can glaze over, right? And you can get distraught. And it was really helping me just cut through the the gobs of data.

To get to the specifics I was looking for. And naturally as I was doing that personally, I realized how am I going to use this in our ITSP to improve workflows and started getting my team using it a lot more. And. And ultimately just hyper focused on AI. So I used LLMs to learn more about AI.

Could I have learned as much about AI without an LLM? Definitely not. I don’t know if I would have had the patience to read through a bunch of books. And books, as fast as AI moves, books are printed at a point in time and How out of date is that information the minute you get around to reading it?

Or how many books am I buying on a regular basis? So what I quickly learned is that there’s this old adage of not putting all your eggs in one basket, and spreading those out. And we had done a fair amount of that, especially with all the vendors we’re using to try to accomplish, certain processes that we had put in place where not any one tool was really handling that full process for us.

And I and AI and LLM really needs to have access to all your data to be able to be useful. So what happened then as I realized, oh, wow, if I wanted to implement AI into my business, that’s going to be really hard. I’ve either got to get my 30 vendors to support it out of the box, which they’re all kind of small business vendors, maybe mid market.

They’re not coming from the enterprise. Or I’ve got to. Develop a bunch of API connections so that all of these products are sharing the information that AI can see, or I’ve got to get rid of that old adage and start putting a lot more of my eggs in one basket, and then the question was what basket, right?

And as I learned more about AI and how fast it’s moving and the fact that, high level it’s relies on chips and energy. And the most efficient way to get that is in a data center. And okay who are the enterprise companies playing around? You got open AI, you got anthropics, you’ve got, Microsoft, Google, you’ve got Grok now.

Maybe one or two, I’m not thinking about, but it made me feel like I, okay, I got to pick my flavor now. I got to, who am I going to put all these eggs in what basket with? And. And as I looked at which vendors were truly supporting the IT industry the best, it was really Microsoft to the point where they had already built out a whole data governance layer to help properly train AI in understanding how to look at your data, what data it shouldn’t look at, who to give access to what data.

So it made me realize that, I’ve got to put everything in the Microsoft Dataverse. And so that’s the trajectory we’ve been on maybe over the past year. Is understanding how do we do that? How do we make better use of Microsoft? We’re really more in the infrastructure port part of AI.

Cause it is new, right? You mentioned we’re new on this. It’s not like we’re using it in our day to day process other than basic, co pilot features that you might have that are out of the box. It’s more like I can see AGI coming out and maybe five years. What’s going to prepare us to make full it, take full advantage of that, where there’s a lot less human training needed.

It could essentially train itself. If it doesn’t have access to your data, it’s going to struggle training itself. So that’s what made me realize we need to pivot as an IT service provider and ultimately focus on data and AI. And then I also realized that AI is, some people will fight this idea in my mind.

It’s turned cyber security into a simple math problem, a simple logic problem where the future it’s going to really be AI versus AI in the cyber security space. So cyber security, which, where it’s been a focus, of our IT company for the obvious reasons, right? We went off to go into that. I realized now our focus is really data and AI.

And cybersecurity just comes with it by necessity at that point. So that’s really what we’re focusing on is this new approach where, we help our clients and ourselves internally prepare for the future of data and AI essentially.

Erick: Brian, that’s quite a journey. I had, glimpses of Skynet, while you were talking, you mentioned you’re a sci fi geek.

I’m a sci fi geek too. So we connect at that level. Are you, do you feel that you are leading edge with everything that you’re doing? Because you have gone deeper, faster than the majority of [00:55:00] MSPs that I work with. Are you leading edge or would you say you’re bleeding edge right now? And love that question.

Yeah. So I’m going to answer that question. I might have a follow up.

Brian: Yeah. So, there’s two things that are prominent in the it channel. There’s FUD and FOMO. Fear and certainty and doubt and fear of missing out. And I’ve fallen prey to both of those. And, in the past and the, and then the question becomes, how do I avoid that with AI?

Because you can get into trouble, right? FUD sets you up for failure in the sense that maybe you’re not preparing yourself properly for AI. FOMO is maybe I’m diving headfirst in this a little too fast and not understanding the implications of what might happen, right? Where might I shoot myself on the foot when it comes to FOMO?

And so Using LLMs I’m teaching myself how to take a better approach to technology. And so I decided to call myself a technology stoic. And what does that mean? I’m taking a stoic approach where it’s not trying to stay on the bleeding edge and feeling like that’s where I need to be, but be on the leading edge where I’m not adopting new technology until I completely understand it inside and out.

As well as be able to define the value that I can then measure later, right? And it’s always inspecting what to expect. If we make a step forward, we need to be able to measure how did that step help us or hurt us. And then, and what I’m realizing is with a stoic approach, it can be a lot more nimble.

In the sense that, I’m not preventing myself from taking on technology because I might be afraid of it, but I’m also not jumping headfirst into it, doing something I might regret later. And how do you do that? It’s just constant education and really working with my team too. I would say that my team has made comments in the past where it’s like, Hey, Brian I feel like you jumped in the car and you’re driving down the road and you didn’t give us time to jump in.

We’re running after you trying to catch up to you in the car. And my personality can be compulsive at times when I get really excited about something, I want to jump right into it. So it’s that understanding also to, to use my team to help me, help keep me grounded. And I think the team approach is great too, because it helps give them ownership and the things we’re doing moving forward.

So that if we do make a move that we regret, it’s not just Brian that made us make that move. It was something we all agreed with. And then. We’re a very process based company. So as we move forward, we’re developing processes around that and having my team involved with helping develop those processes and having ownership in it makes it easier to fine tune those processes as well.

They’re more willing to speak up. They’re more willing to see something, say something, if you will, to where they’re not just feeling like they have to do something because it’s coming from me especially with all the excitement I have around AI. Bye.

Rich: Yeah, a lot of what you’re doing, it sounds like is education preparation for what you’re anticipating will be a bigger market push around AI.

What kind of a vision do you have right now for the kind of monetizable service or solution or software? You mentioned you’re doing development, the kind of AI offering that you will eventually bring to market and how close are you to beginning to realize that vision? That’s another great question because I feel like in our industry, typically when there’s some new technology coming out, we’re immediately pushed to try to sell it to our clients.

Brian: And I’ve gotten in trouble doing that too. And what I’ve realized is we really have to drink our own champagne. So while I am developing, we are working we partner with tech stack dev company. Cause I, I had a dev company for 12 years and sold that part of the business. Decided I don’t want to bring another in house dev company again, especially because, we’re focusing on dynamics in the Microsoft dataverse.

So I found tech stack who’s been living and breathing that as our debt dev arm. Not only for us internally, cause we don’t want to have to manage our test dev and production environments, right? They do that for us. But then when we go to market with clients, we need them to have a dev company they can lean on as well.

So we’re not having to manage that. But the short answer to your question is we’re not really thinking about marketable items. I am thinking about it, of course, but we’re not going to market, I should say until we’ve tested it internally and we’ve got literally case studies we can build around how we’re using it to where we’re going to then go to our clients and say, Hey, here’s what we’ve done with AI proven.

We test, we can stand behind it. And [01:00:00] ultimately what it comes down to top level is. It’s trying to eliminate, human hours that are being spent on processes. So unfortunately, there’s a big lift of going into our clients and understanding what their processes are, learning more about their business than we ever have learned before.

Understanding, probably starting with the execs or the people on the tech committee that we call it, we assign a tech committee of different ownership roles. And asking some high level questions around, where do they feel like there’s wasted time? Where do they see mistakes happening as well?

So two things, what are the repetitive processes that humans are having to spend time on that we can use AI for, and then what are the repetitive or non repetitive processes? Where mistakes tend to happen, human error, right? Where can we eliminate human hours and human error using AI? And it’s really a more methodical process.

It’s not a checkbox item. And that’s what’s different about this. Doing a data driven approach is much different than the traditional dealing with users and devices, even from a cybersecurity standpoint. The channel typically, you’re selling security products. It’s based on users and devices.

Well, a cyber security framework looks at those as cattle, right? Cyber framework, security framework looks at the data. It’s there to protect the data. And what’s interesting is that’s all AI cares about as well as the data. So a security framework aligns very well with the type of framework you need to set up for AI as well, because if a security framework doesn’t know where all your data is, you’ve already got gaps on pillar.

Number one, nest, identify. Okay. And so we’ve been really focused in the past on let’s identify all the users and devices and build a security framework around that, right? But now it’s more about, do we even know where all of our clients data exists? That’s the first step. The second step is how much of that is shadow IT?

Where it happened without our knowledge and we’ve got to wrangle it in and get these end users to understand we’re not just going to use any app anymore, right? Shadow IT is a thing. How do we wrangle that in? And then once that’s wrangled in and you know where all the data is and you start mapping that to processes and how it’s being used with processes, you can then start to understand better where AI might fit in.

And you’re always looking for the lowest hanging fruit first, you want to, in my mind, I don’t want to go to a client and be like, Hey, we’re gonna have to spend 50 grand before you, you can use AI. I want to go in and see what do they have now that we can make use of. Or with a little bit of investment to give them some quick wins to get them excited about wanting to invest in it more.

Erick: Brian, what you’re describing can sound a lot like a, a service, an approach, a value proposition that we’ve heard from like business process, optimization, organizations, business analysts, and things like that. Do you see this as being Ace a, the AI opportunity optimization you talked about, the first step is to identify where all the data is normalized and the data make sure that we are leveraging the correct data to train the LLM to identify these opportunities and things like that does not sound to me at first blush as something that MSPs would initially think that they could do and add value to their client relationships, or, Maybe even think about in general is AI this, this, phenomenon that’s happening, going back to what you said earlier, creating, creating some of this FOMO and all this stuff.

Is it right for every MSP or is it something that is unique and different and good for. Much more mature types of organizations that see it as a way to add much more sticky, strategic value. It seems to me like it could be its own. Authoring by an organization that just specialize in this stuff. And here we’re talking about MSPs delivering it.

So what do you say to those concepts?

Brian: They thank you for bringing me back to that. Cause we do play a lot in enterprise space, right? So a lot of times my conversations could venture off into something that may not relate to an MSP. I don’t want to discount the fact that AI isn’t ready for MSPs. I think the right approach is treating it almost like cyber security.

Before MSPs were really dealing with that, right? We had antivirus and firewalls. If you’re going to sell EDR or MDR or [01:05:00] XDR or whatever the acronym is these days, to your client, you really should be using it yourself first and understand how it protects you, right? Before you’re going to go and protect your client with it.

And it’s that inspect what to expect idea where this definitely isn’t something where you’re just going to go hand it to a salesperson And go have them sell licenses, it’s a more methodical approach. So if you don’t have the time to invest and using it yourself, I would recommend definitely not trying to sell it to your clients.

Now, that being said, there are some low hanging fruit things that are out there right now, copilot, for example copilot’s tricky because you got to get the data governance layer properly configured with our clients and I’ve been an MSP, right? And the idea is we haven’t always had focus on where the client’s storing the data.

We give them a, we give them folders to store it in, but how do we know that they’re labeling it correctly, putting it in the right spot. And those are all things that we have to tighten down before we can even use Copilot. The lowest hanging fruit, if that’s a thing, would, I think that’s huge even for us internally.

In fact, we have a kind of a mandate now is using it in meetings. There’s even not using copilot. There’s third party options out there. I want to give a a shout out to fathom dot video, which is what we use. And we could use copilot. We’ve it’s got a little bit of a leg up that we’ve seen from meeting recordings and copilots current capabilities.

Not that copilot won’t get there. So we’ve chosen to use temporarily this again, me trying to be a stoic here. Am I just going head first into CoPilot and only using Microsoft products because that’s where we’re going long term? No I’m measuring the value that we’ve tried out CoPilot. We saw the value, tried out Fathom, saw the value right now.

Fathom has more value. We love using that. And that’s an easy service to sign up for. It’s an easy service to refer your clients to where they’ll see immediate impact on meeting recordings, summary notes. Where you get more value out of your meetings now. So the, again, these are human hours spent in a meeting where you’re hoping to walk away with value, not forgetting action items, making sure things were discussed that were discussed, aren’t forgotten, especially if they’re around process changes.

And I am the worst at taking notes during meetings. And so that was something I suffered with a lot for a long time until something like this came along. And now I feel like a rockstar coming out of a meeting where it’s like, Oh, there’s everything I need to know. I don’t even have to worry about forgetting things because I know I can go back to these notes and even watch the recording, click a note.

It’ll take me to the point in that recording where it was talked about even. So I think if there’s something that. That MSPs could be doing right now to just show their clients because, the clients have no AIs out there. It’s all over the news. And so they’re asking themselves is my MSP thinking about this too?

How are they going to help me with this? That is a nice little baby step, not only to use internally, but to help assist your clients with to to get them realizing, okay, my MSP is thinking about AI. And then get everyone a little more excited about it. But again, back to my point, try to maintain a stoic approach.

Rich: Just FYI, Brian Erick and I, and the whole channel mastered team are Fathom fans as well. This is not a paid endorsement, but there was a, if you saw a look of recognition on our faces, when when you mentioned that product, we’ve been using it for a long time and we’re in particular, we’ve been So folks should know it integrates very nicely with zoom.

Zoom meeting ends and you automatically get a summary of that meeting that’s bulleted out for you and it’s, it is pretty handy. And yeah, that is something you can show a client. And that they will probably appreciate and understand immediately. I’m curious, you’ve touched on this a little bit, but it, clearly you’re, you, there’s training and enablement going on and learning and education and so on, as we’re saying, how elaborate, how expensive, how time intensive a process has it been?

And is it turning out to be to get your organization into a place where it. It can begin to go to market out to clients with more sophisticated AI solutions.

Brian: Yes. We are in a unique position in the sense that we’re very cashflow positive. And we’re not doing all of this by ourselves. If you looked at our financials this year, we look like a startup.

We’re not the average MSP financials where you don’t have, nearly the amount of reinvestment into building IP that we have right now. I will say that it’s costing us less money because we’re not trying to do it all by ourselves. We’re really orchestrating this using other vendors and, tech stack, [01:10:00] like I mentioned earlier who have the resources that we would normally have to hire ourselves or train up ourselves Out of the gate so that we can start quicker.

And in some cases, even partnerships where we’re sharing resources. So it doesn’t cost as much money. I will say that to properly adopt AI and keep up with it, we have to get back to the startup mentality. I’m lucky that we’re only 3 million with 13 people. We’re nimble enough to make changes, right?

They’re the eight, nine, 10 million MSPs that are ingrained in a lot of these MSP channel products. That are spread, across 20 vendors, maybe they’re going to struggle to make moves because they’re a bigger ship. They can’t be as nimble. And where do you get your investors to accept the fact that you want to invest in R and D if you do have investors or owners, when you’re, if you’re too dependent on the profit margin for some reason, and you can’t.

You can’t reinvest into R& D. So I do see a divide happening in the channel where there’s a clear commoditization of products and MSP services and you have to pick which direction you want to go. Are you big enough to where it’s going to be such a heavy lift in order to be able to focus on AI and turn into startup mode?

And maybe you want to just go up, grow with more of a commoditized approach, right? Or can you actually pivot? Are you small enough to where you say, I’m not interested in the commoditized approach. I really want to start building my own IP and have a little more value or stickiness with the clients.

Then that’s the other option. So I see those two convergences happening right now in our channel. And we’ve luckily stayed small enough to where we’re not one of the bigger companies which I can be empathetic with the challenges they have of trying to make this move.

So I almost wonder if it’s easier for the smaller companies to do this.

Erick: That is an interesting point, Brian, about being nimble. But also an organization that is still small is juggling lots of fireballs all the time, right? So finding that common out or that middle ground that allows you to do the R and D while still serving your clients while you’re thinking about shifting kind of your focus and your revenue, into different areas can be a challenge for smaller organizations.

I’m glad. Oh, go

Brian: ahead. I’m sorry. I was going to say, I’m glad you called that out because there’s something that I meant to say that I forgot, 13 people, right? We’re small. I’m just lucky to have a leadership team built out. Worked with C level operations for, I don’t know, maybe three years now, really helping refine our processes.

We studied EOS before that EOS was I don’t want to pay that much for an implementer, but I understand the concept. I think we can do this on ourself by ourselves. It, and the minute you have a leadership team I’m able to spend about 20 hours a week just on CEO items, which have now turned into CAIO items really is what they are.

And my normal five year plan that I have realized, I realized wasn’t enough. So I’ve got a 10 year plan now, mind you, it’s flexible and it changes depending on how my five year plan’s working out, right? I need to understand that 10 year plan needs to be nimble. But I’m really trying to look 10 years out instead of just five now, and it takes time to do that.

If you don’t have a leadership team built out I’m very, I’m not really involved in the day to day when it comes to our small business clients. I’m more involved in the day to day with our enterprise clients and because they’re bigger and they bring in more revenue, they don’t demand as much of my time as small business.

So that’s another kind of, secret item we have that maybe the average MSP doesn’t have is I am still driving revenue for the company, but it’s with larger clients that demand less time.

Rich: Brian, I always appreciate talking to somebody who invests in envisioning in whatever is next. AI is obviously a big part of what’s next for the industry here.

I, if we had time, it would be fascinating to take a glimpse at that 10 year plan, because if you’re looking at. AGI in five ish years. I can only imagine what you’re thinking about 10 years down the road, but I’m sure we will get a chance to speak again and revisit this topic and get into that a little bit at some point.

Cause that would be an interesting conversation to have. For now though, for folks who would like to get in touch with you, learn more about what you’re doing in AI, ask some questions, learn more about iTech, where should they go?

Brian: I’m embarrassed about our website. We’re in the middle of Of redoing it, we’ve signed with Equilibrium Consulting.

Just want to give them a shout out. They’re really helping us quite a bit and we are going to redevelop our site quite a bit, but I’d say for now, just follow me on LinkedIn. That’s where I’m sharing a lot of our [01:15:00] story, our journey, trying to rise the tides with, um, sharing the things I learned, that maybe other people don’t have time to spend on right now.

And we are going to be also rising the tides with a Microsoft first approach. Microsoft has always struggled connecting the dots from enterprise to SMB. Naturally, the SMB feels like Microsoft may not be there to support them or guide them on how to properly use their products. Their white papers are a little daunting at times.

So as we go down this Microsoft first journey, we plan to share the easy button that we figured out. www. microsoft. com and we’re actually even going to be having a second website called itech. partners, no paywall, where we’re just going to throw up all the content, knowledge based articles, whatever, it’ll be LLM’d, we’ll have a little bot on there, I’m sure to help people find stuff, but we’re really looking to help help connect those dots from enterprise to SMB, because, Microsoft does have the time to give enterprise, support and guidance around this.

And sometimes we feel lost as small businesses, even though I deal with enterprise, I’m still a small business myself. And so navigating that can be hard. But yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best place right now.

Rich: Okay. Excellent. And we’ll be keeping an eye out for the new website as well.

And all the. Undoubtedly interesting content that’s going to show up there. Brian, thank you so much for joining us on the show. With that folks, Erick and I are going to take a quick break here. When we come back he and I will share some final thoughts on the two AI related interview segments you just listened to or watched have a little fun, wrap up the show, stick around.

We. We’re going to be right back.

All right. And welcome back to part three of this episode of the MSP chat podcast. And once again, we thank Corey Kirkendall and Brian Weiss for joining us on the show, two very interesting conversations, two very different thought processes about approaches to artificial intelligence, but plenty of stuff for MSPs in the audience to ponder in both cases there.

I would say. Quick thing. And this really is a quick note from the conversation with Corey that I’ll just highlight. Cause it came up in passing. He was talking about the fact that in conversations he’s having with vendors, the AI PCs that are really just starting to show up.

In end user environments now in a lot of ways, in a lot of cases, they are self managing and getting more so all the time. And I’ll say about that before moving on, Erick is if you needed any more reason to believe that end point management device management is not where you want to be betting your future, that’s it right there.

The, the PCs in particular that you’re managing right now are going to need less and less. Of your management time and assistance going forward. And you better be thinking about other things along the lines of what Corey and Brian are thinking about. And then the, there was a theme, very much a theme to the conversation with Corey.

That was very much a theme to the conversation with Brian. And very much a theme to the conversation we had, Erick, with Wes McDonald of Go West AI, just a few episodes ago on AI, which is just the idea. That you need to think about the opportunity here, not as a product opportunity and not even really as a sort of management service opportunity, but as a business process optimization opportunity, a an opportunity to really cement your place with your clients as a trusted advisor, a solution provider, a thought leader, somebody who is going to help them do more with less.

Grow faster, spend less utilizing artificial intelligence. It is a strategic opportunity and not just a a license opportunity.

Erick: Yeah. Rich, I was I was on a call or I think it was a call I was on, or maybe I was I can’t remember if it was a conference where I heard this phrase and it stuck with me and I’m going to start using it for us.

And the phrase is. Transformational, not transactional. And it stuck with me because I thought, Oh my goodness, that perfectly encapsulates, MSPs and vendors, and suppliers and distributors need to be striving for in these client relationships, transformational, not transactional.

So I’m no longer having these QBRs where I’m just bringing my report card home to mom and dad to try to get their approval. Rich. And clients lose interest in that. How many of our listeners have had clients over time, just stop, or reschedule or stop showing up to these QBRs so that’s transactional.

Cause it’s just the same thing over and over when we’re starting to see. Conversations turn into more of a virtual CISO conversation where we’re helping do assessments with our clients from a risk perspective and we’re making optimization changes to help them align with their with their cyber liability insurance policy requirements or their [01:20:00] regulatory compliance regulations and show that progress month over month, quarter over quarter, that’s transformational.

Business owners, CFOs, COOs. Can get that it’s oh, we understand that we’re trying to move towards maintaining and demonstrating compliance. Same thing with AI, having conversations like stuff that Corey is doing with his clients, sitting down and understanding this, how does business process optimization and workflow enhancement.

It’s almost harkens back to the tip of the week that I shared, right? It’s process, workflow, automation, AI. But we’re now turning that over into into delivering those services to our clients rather than breakfixing these intelligent laptops and desktops, that already have AI in them. So I’m going to keep harping on that phrase, right?

Because I really like it.

Rich: Yeah, I like it too. And I’ll simply point out if you are transactional, you are also replaceable. Whereas if you’re transformational, maybe you are replaceable anyway, but nobody is going to want to replace you. All you’ve got to have to do is do that once you come into the client environment and you transform one workflow, one business process, you really make an impact on the business, not just their technology infrastructure or their IT spending.

And that client is going to take your next call. With a suggestion for the next thing you can move on to. Guaranteed. And you, they will not kick you out of that account for as long as you continue to be a transformational provider to them. Yeah, I love it, Erick. That’s that’s a very nice twosome or twofer there.

Transactional or a transformational, not transactional. Very good. And it’s very good, and it leaves us with time for just one last thing, Erick. And I will say right up front here, you are a parent, I am not, but I’ve got to believe, correct me if I’m wrong, This particular story, which comes to us from Israel, is every parent’s nightmare, and it concerns a visit, a father and son were visiting a museum the Hecht Museum in Haifa in Israel having a great time looking at the artifacts.

Dad was looking at something or other when behind him he heard a crash, and the first thought he had to himself was, Boy, I hope that wasn’t my son. And it was I’m afraid. His son, who was very curious, maybe a little touchy had tipped over a jar from the Bronze Age which smashed into a lot of little pieces and just an awkward moment for dad.

The good news is that it apparently took a very long process to undo the damage done by this, meaning man. But clumsy four year old but the museum has done that it has been pieced back together again It’s back on display now And I don’t know maybe they’ve got it behind wire mesh or something to make sure kids Don’t do this again in the future.

Erick: Yeah an irreplaceable relic from the bronze age like No, no other in existence from what I read on the article. Yeah, i’ve uh, i’ve i’ve busted a few things and you know when I was a kid, nothing You Nothing quite that valuable or that newsworthy, let’s just say, Rich.

Rich: And for any kids in the audience, just keep that in mind the next time you do break something. Mom, dad, it could have been worse. I could have broken an irreplaceable piece of glass. Bronze Age jar in an Israeli museum and you win basically at that point. All right. Thank you very much, folks.

We really do. Thank you for joining us on the show. We’re gonna be back again in a week with another episode for you. Until then, I will remind you that this is both an audio and a video podcast, which means And if you’re listening to the audio version of the show, but you’re curious to check us out on video, you can go to YouTube, you’re going to find us there on or under MSP chat if you’re watching us on YouTube, but you’re into audio podcast to go to wherever it is to get your audio podcast, you’re probably Bye.

Bye. Going to find MSP chat there too. Wherever it is you get to us please subscribe, rate, review. It’s going to help other people like you find and enjoy the program. That program is produced by the great Russ Johns. It is edited by the great. Riley Simpson your son, Erick, who has never, as far as I know, broken a bronze age jar.

They are part of the team with us here at Channel Master. They would be very happy to create a podcast like this one for you. And podcast is one tiny sliver of what we do for our clients at Channel Master. If you want to know more about that, please visit. www.channel master.com channel mastered has a sister organization, MSP Mastered that is Erick working directly with MSPs to grow and optimize their business. And you can learn more about that at www.mspmaster.com. So once again, we thank you for listening. We’ll see you in a week. Until then, folks, please do remember, and always remember, you just can’t spell channel. Without M. S. P.