In this episode, the Adam and Daniel welcome Alex, an inspiring one-person MSP, to discuss his unique journey. The conversation covers his experience working in various IT roles, including his time at BBC and the 2012 Olympics broadcast team. Alex shares his decision to avoid hiring staff and instead leverage outsourced services, describing his model’. They discuss the nuances of managing small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) without servers, focusing on client resilience and immediate support solutions. Additionally, Alex sheds light on his networking strategies, particularly through BNI (Business Network International), and emphasises the importance of building quality referral relationships. The conversation shifts to the debate on artificial vs. actual intelligence, where Alex gives his perspective on ChatGPT and Microsoft recent innovations in AI. Finally, Alex shares a unique, offbeat request related to his work with coal power station ash waste and its applications. The episode provides invaluable insights into creating a sustainably successful one-person MSP and navigating the evolving AI landscape.
00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:05 Meeting at Tech Tribe
00:25 Inspiration Behind London Tech Tribe
00:45 Today’s Topics: AI vs Actual Intelligence
00:58 Alex’s Business Journey
02:52 The Catalyst: Outsourcing IT Helpdesk
04:17 Focus on Small Clients and Resilience
05:33 The Importance of 24/7 IT Helpdesk
07:01 Running a One-Person MSP
08:48 Field Service and Onsite Needs
14:15 Marketing and New Business Strategies
16:07 BNI: A Pillar of Growth
17:48 The Importance of Networking Groups
18:48 Strategies for Effective Networking
20:40 Building Quality Relationships
22:50 Artificial Intelligence vs. Actual Intelligence
24:54 Microsoft’s AI Integration
29:44 Opportunities in AI for MSPs
34:09 Concluding Thoughts and Shameless Plugs
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Connect with Alex Stanier on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/astanier/
Connect with Daniel Welling on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-welling-54659715/
Connect with Adam Morris on LinkedIn by clicking here – linkedin.com/in/adamcmorris
Visit The MSP Finance Team website, simply click here – https://www.mspfinanceteam.com/
We look forward to catching up with you on the next one. Stay tuned!
Transcript:
Daniel: So welcome along to the podcast, Alex. Great to have you with us.
Alex: Thank you very much for having me.
Daniel: So Alex, I, I think we, we originally met at, Steve, Pretlove’s, precursor to Tech Tribe, the SBSC meeting in Redding. Is that right? Maybe
Alex: Tim’s Valley users, SBS user group. That’s the old name.
Daniel: There we are. That’s the, that, that’s the original name. Brilliant.
Daniel: and, a really good group. And, and Alex, for those that don’t know, you were my inspiration for starting the, London SBSC and now London Tech Tribe Group. Given the fact you were having to travel all the way to Reading. and, and I felt that was a little unfair.
Alex: That’s very kind. Well, there was once a London one and then it sort of floundered a bit, so you’ve given it new life, so that’s grand.
Daniel: Excellent. So we, we wanted to talk about two topics today. the, the first and we’ll do that at the end. the, the. The artificial, versus actual intelligence, debates. and, I know you’ve got some interesting views on that. but first of all, I actually wanted to, to just understand and really share your journey with our listeners.
Daniel: ultimately we’re asking the question here, is it quite right and proper to have a one person MSP and that be. The target and, what are the pros and cons, the benefits and risks and, and there are a lot of, sub million pound MSP businesses in the market.
Daniel: and so, so, yeah, I thought that was a really interesting topic of discussion, but perhaps, we could kick off just with a little bit of background, how you came to be in business today.
Alex: Yeah, okay, well you added quite a lot of sort of parameters there, you’ll just have to chip in and ask me some of the bits, I’ll tell you the life story. So, My first business was sort of 1990 through to 2000, working BBC education. They did all the schools, television, educate, adult education stuff.
Alex: it was with a couple of other directors and it was a lovely business. We were the IT department for part of the BBC for a long time. I’ll come back to the details later. Then there was a phase where I started another company. Then we were doing not enterprise IT, but we were doing SMEs for three years.
Alex: Grew that company very large. 17 staff. It collapsed pretty spectacularly. I learnt a lot of things. Very painful business lessons, but that’s how you do learn business lessons and sort of vowed after that. I don’t really want to have any more staff. How far can I go without having any staff? So went for about six years, just me doing small SMEs, but it was all fine.
Alex: Then I got headhunted to become an IT director for one of the clients. Did that three years, went and did the sort of London IT manager, if you like, for the company that did the Olympics television broadcast in 2012.And then went back to being an IT person, and I was always looking for that enterprise service for the SME market.
Alex: So about seven years ago, I think, I came to, I found Continuum as they were then. They were offering this outsourced IT helpdesk service, and for me, that was fantastic. That became my cornerstone product. They didn’t see it as a cornerstone product. For them, most of the things, people they were, most of the MSPs they were working with, wanted out of hours support.
Alex: Whereas for me, it was like, no. I want the middle of the day all the way through and 24 sevens, even better. Fantastic. I don’t want anything else. So that was a real catalytic moment. That was the, like, this is the way to do it. Outsource, outsource. So on top of all of that, I then add a load of services, which I acquire through Brigantia, a few through Pax 8 and, A few more through ConnectWise, who’ve since swallowed Continuum.
Alex: So I kind of have three main distributor, vendor, whatever you want to say, partnerships, and that’s my model. And the other thing I do is I don’t do servers, really don’t get excited by servers, haven’t for a very long time. They’re so complicated. The customers never get it. They always complain.
Alex: Why would you do servers? Let someone else do servers. the other thing I do is spend quite a lot of time, especially with the small clients, planning for when their computer goes wrong. So I have to put a bit of emphasis on, right, it’s going to go wrong. What are you going to do? Do you pop down to PC World and get that laptop?
Alex: And just buy whatever you’ve got. I don’t really mind. It’s, you know, it’s got to be an average machine. We then got to get the software agent on it somehow. So you either have to on a USB key or whatever. Once you’ve got that on the IT help desk guys can help you set up everything else. So that kind of turnaround time, I find that interesting because they could be up and running in a morning.
Alex: So say the computer doesn’t turn on at nine o’clock in the morning. Pop down to PC World, they get the computer, they fire it up, install the wizard. They’re probably up and running by, you know, Two o’clock in the afternoon, you compare that to a traditional route where you phone up your IT people and they go, well, we’ll order it.
Alex: Oh, we’ve missed the deadline. it’ll be ordered tomorrow and then it might come in a couple of days and then we’ll set it up for you. You should have it by next week. Well, that’s not, you know, that doesn’t really work for most people. So I really geared my whole model around. You’re small, you’re nimble, you probably work at home or the local cafe or whoever’s office you happen to be in, and you need to be resilient.
Alex: So there’s real kind of core cornerstones to the whole package, and I really don’t like it when people try not to take the 24 7 IT help their service. I mean, okay, I admit, I’ve got one or two who’ve Sort of weasel me out of it, but you’ve got to have they’ve got to have somewhere to call and then I’m meandering a bit But the last part is I’m very interested in Heimdall’s Service that they’ve just launched this year with the sort of proper knock service Don’t know if I’m allowed to talk prices.
Alex: Let’s say well, I’ll take a gamble. Yeah, it’s to me. It’s four pounds through Brigantia. And I think that’s fantastic. I think you could, you should be marking that up at three times or more. Because this is the way I present it to clients is, this is an enterprise level NOC watching your laptop 24 7, waiting for something to go wrong or out of alignment.
Alex: And then they will call, and I’ve had to work with them a bit on this call, they won’t call me, they will call your user direct to fix it. And then if they’ve got a problem with anything else, they call the IT help desk. And between those two, that is a really powerful combination, because I’m not in the middle of it.
Alex: And that’s fantastic. And that’s the, if you’re going to be a one person operation, you can’t be in the middle of the day to day. You just can’t. Sorry, I could go on about this for ages.
Adam: so, so Alex, my, my, I mean, it all fits together and makes an awful lot of sense. And I guess my first question is, so how does it feel now running this business compared to how it felt running the previous businesses where you had people to work to
Alex: Oh, so much better.
Adam: payroll?
Alex: So much better. I can’t. There was this time with a company with I shut down. That was very painful. I was in the office all the time dealing with people issues and I like people, but I was in the wrong place. I should have been in the front line, meeting the clients, talking about their challenges, finding out what they needed to do.
Alex: That’s where projects happen. If you sit in someone’s office and you just talk about what they’re doing and find out what their business is doing. Something will come out of that. That’s where the richness is. So that’s where you should be. Not just solving HR problems back in the office. And yeah, so, so, so that’s crucial.
Alex: But you’ve also got to stop doing things like password resets. And you just, you’ve got to find a way of that has got to be outsourced. And so, it’s just nicer now. It’s just nicer. I mean, how should I put it? I do have to go and visit the occasional broken computer, maybe twice a year out of 200 computers. I mean, that’s not too bad. It’s okay. you get to meet the clients again. I mean, it’d be awful if I was doing it every second, every two weeks or something. To me, that’s torture. Fixing broken computers is just dull.
Adam: So, so how do you, how’d you get around that field service?
Alex: well, I always make them buy new ones with a next day on site hardware repair. So if I tend to go with Dell, I’m not that wedded to them, but I tend, I just, their support’s really good on their website. if you know, an engineer is going to turn up the next day with the parts and just fix it.
Alex: Great. Easy. It’s 40 quid or whatever it is to have it on top of the price of the laptop, or maybe it’s more, maybe it’s maybe it’s 70 pounds. It’s still worth having. and then you have that conversation where you say, look, you’ve got this cover for the next three years. If your laptop’s still going after three years, great.
Alex: Keep going. But you won’t be paying for repairs after that, you know, that’s now you’re into bonus territory. So if it goes wrong, you’re gonna have to go and get a new one.
Adam: and what about just physical onsite needs like projects, installations or
Alex: Look, the little guys, yeah, the big ones, I have a regular it meeting and I do sometimes pop in and see them because they’re talking this. It gets more complicated with GDPR related staff and information management and document storage and sort of slightly dry stuff. But it’s better to do that in person.
Alex: But the little ones. It’s mostly teams, when it happens, annual reviews, fine. I wish I did quarterly reviews for everyone, but I’m afraid I don’t. yeah, most people who are in the kind of, have locked, have laptop wheel travel, they don’t really want to be that bothered, but they do want to be protected.
Alex: They do want to know they’ve got everything.
Adam: and your, outsourced support team do the installations as well. Do they for a placement or a new
Alex: no, I, so I tend to do that, especially for the sort of ones and twos and threes. I, that’s part of the startup journey. Charge. Like, you know, yeah, welcome aboard. We’ll take you on. I have to make a call. If it’s an old, if it’s a brand new laptop, that’s quite straightforward. If it’s an old laptop, then I’m probably going to charge.
Alex: That’s roughly the balance. Because if one is brand new Microsoft subscription, brand new this, you’re done in, well, you’re done in about two hours. It’s never less than two hours to set up a laptop now. Not when you’ve got all the things you have to set up, the last pass and the Heimdallr agent and the agent for the, for, ConnectWise and dah.
Alex: But you have to make a call. That’s a business decision about when you take someone on. What price have you signed them up at? Things like that.
Daniel: I think Adam’s question was more, more related to the actual resource for the delivery.
Alex: Yeah. Well, it’s me.
Daniel: yeah, so you’re doing the project work and it, and in most cases, it’s remote. and, and so effectively the roles that you are, focused upon our, project delivery, and, account management, being, being that, provider of the roadmap, the guidance, managing customer service issues.
Alex: I think you’ll make it for me in my world. Project sounds quite grand. There aren’t many projects like the core of my business is recurring monthly income where I just sit here. Well, that’s not fair, but I mean, it’s not the projects that I’m trying to use to generate the profit. I’m trying to get enough machines on that kind of basic monthly ticking over.
Alex: That’s the goal. Absolutely the goal.
Adam: You know, that, that makes perfect sense. And so the sweet spot demographic for you then, based on the fact that you don’t want to do servers, that’s for somebody else. Based on the fact that they’re not looking at complex migration projects, and particularly in an innovative and whizzy solutions, what’s that sweet spot for you?
Alex: so it can be down to one person. One to two to three, especially if they’ve got the right attitude and they kind of get the fact they need to do it. Well, it’s great to lay the foundations. And because I’m old and I have some corporate experience, I can speak SME. I can speak enterprise. I can speak enterprise coming out and becoming SME.
Alex: I can kind of. use a lot of history of knowledge of the right way to set stuff up. I mean, that’s one of those, you know, you’re only asking three questions. How come it’s charging? How come you charging a thousand pounds? Cause you know, the right answers for those three questions because of 40 years of doing it.
Alex: because once it’s all set up, it’s the same stuff almost to everybody and the IT helpdesk guys, they can do that.
Adam: there was a 10 seat business, would
Alex: You know, lovely.
Adam: You take that on. You take that on.
Alex: yeah, ten. I’ve, I mean, I’ve got one that’s gone from ten to twenty five. But it’s very stable, really stable. it’s really kind of boring in quotes.
Alex: I shouldn’t do that on a podcast, putting quotes up. But, yeah, the more boring, the better. Talk to them about information and process. That’s, they like that. That’s really good. But the whole tech of the IT stuff. They’re not interested. I’m not interested anymore. I mean, I’m describing a bad model if you really get a kick out of repairing a computer and take the pieces out and put them together.
Alex: If that’s what you love, that’s not my model.
Daniel: think, the majority of the MSP market now would concur actually, they, they want, they want recurring revenue. they don’t want to be, they don’t want to be dealing with break fix type issues. but, The other role, which I’m interested to hear how you tackle is the, of course, the new business role.
Daniel: so if you’re doing some delivery, some account management, are you deliberately committing a certain amount of time to marketing and to.
Alex: right. Well, this might be a standard answer or cheesy answer, but basically I do 6am on a Friday morning until 9am, 10am. That’s my B& I weekly slot. I’ve been on B& I for 20 something years, 24 years. It works for me. I know I’ve met loads of people out there in the I. T. world who go, Oh, we tried it. It didn’t work.
Alex: And it’s like, well, tens, well, hundreds of thousands of people find that it works. So if it’s not working for you, I’m willing to go that you, whatever it is, you don’t want to put in, you’re not putting in, but for me, it works fine. I’ve learned to tailor the way I speak and what I ask for to fit the. what the room can handle.
Alex: So I can’t ask for everything, but basically I get my referrals from there. It’s fine. It does my job. So that’s marketing. and I would say it costs about 2000 pounds a year. I’m happy with that. It’s my marketing budget. yeah, I mean, you do one to one meetings with BNI members, but some of them are customers, so that’s their kind of reviews. kind of, I don’t know what, I don’t know how to describe it in sort of pragmatic terms. You can get, you can do a lot of, I’ve, and I have in the past tried out lots of different, marketing forums, different chambers of commerce, get togethers. It’s not that I wouldn’t say I exclude gatherings with MSPs because that’s different.
Alex: That’s when you’re sharing war stories and it’s like, you wouldn’t believe what happened this month at all. that’s not the same in pure marketing terms. So I’ve just settled back on BNI because It works for me.
Adam: and it, you know, it’s, again, interesting that it works for you. but I would, well, it would seem to me at least that it, it is, your demographic fits very well with the BNI structure. that sort of sub, sub 10, 10 user. Target, maybe a lot of startups in there, maybe singles, twos, threes.
Adam: Um, I think for those other MSPs that are looking for larger clients, more, complex, more established clients, that’s when they get disillusioned with networking in general or formal networking and BNI specifically, because of course it doesn’t really align with those kinds of, clients.
Adam: So, so I think that’s often. Sort of misunderstood. so it’s interesting that, you know, you are saying it has worked for you and in fact has been like a pillar actually of your growth overall.
Alex: Yeah, well, the crucial one is, for example, let’s say we have an HR consultant in the group and he’s referred me to two great businesses, one of which was 12 staff and has grown to 25 and I think the other one was five or six staff and like the kind of people he was connecting with were perfect for me.
Alex: Same way the accountant. I’ve had some very obscure referrals from the accountant, where I’ve needed to go in and do some fairly delicate people stuff as well as IT stuff. They’re great referrals. Again, it’s recognizing who are the people in the room connecting with, not, it’s not the people in the room that I’m particularly trying to sell to.
Alex: So if you’re in a BNI group where you don’t have those sort of professional services people, you might struggle because they’re not coming across the people that I want to connect with. So it’s kind of who’s in your group. I get that. It’s what messages you give out. I get that.
Daniel: One of the, one of the complaints I’ve heard from, in particular, the sort of BNI model is, is if you’re in a group where there’s a lot of trades rather than small professional services. but just listening to you talking, you’re absolutely spot on that. It’s not who’s in the room, it’s who they are connected to.
Daniel: And, there’s plenty of trades people that. that do work for professional people and professional people that own businesses. So in some ways it’s how you energize the person you’re talking to and enable them to go and open their network for you.
Alex: Totally. And I’m not like, we don’t want this to turn into a B and I evangelist podcast. That’s not what I am either. It’s like, it just, it works for me. I figured out how to do the tactics and they don’t always, the tactics are not obvious. You have to just figure it out and then it works, but let’s pop B and I, let’s do it.
Alex: Let’s move on. So
Adam: famous story. I have, it wasn’t being eyes with a different organization, but there was one guy that I don’t know. It’d been there six months or something. And, he was moaning to the owners that it wasn’t working for him. And. The first question they asked is, how many referrals have you given? None. And then of course there was a period of reflection. So, so, you know, there are strategies to, to good networking and BNI is just a group of people, isn’t it? At the end of the day. And it’s up to you to work that group of built group of people and build the right relationships and give as much as you possibly can, and take a view whether it’s right for you and your demographic.
Adam: I think certainly in the early days for a lot of startups, I think it’s a great. a great organization, you know, roll your sleeves up, get involved, join two or three different network organizations, because that’s when you’ve got a lot of time in your hands and just crack on. And then later on, you know, when you’re more, more established, you can sort of define your market more and decide, you know, where you want to fish.
Adam: but it’s, yeah, it’s really interesting, hearing this actually, Alex.
Alex: Well, it’s, there was a sort of anecdote off the side of that is that I went to some chambers of commerce meetings and then applied my B and I membership. meeting techniques. And I just adapted it one way. When you go to a meeting where you don’t know anybody and there’s no formal structure, you’ve got to track down the cornerstone members, the people who’ve been there for years.
Alex: And you, it’s easy. You go to the person on the desk and say, who are the people who have been here for it? You go and find them and then you make sure they know what you’re looking for because they will nearly always go, Oh, in that case you need to speak to, and then they’ll go and introduce you.
Alex: And then you’ll work in the room. And. When there’s no structure,
Adam: that’s a good point.
Alex: go with that. And that will get you somewhere. I mean, I’m, you know, can’t promise, but sometimes you look at a hundred people randomly stood in a room with a glass of wine in hand. You’re thinking, well, where do I start?
Adam: Yeah, I was, I paid quite a lot once for some consultancy around referral marketing in general. And, the main theme behind it was selecting your team, like your 10 other players of your football team, who are the 10 other, the 10 others who can refer you don’t look for a hundred. Don’t look for 200, maybe only four or five actually.
Adam: and just work really hard on building those relationships, you know, meet for coffee every week, you know, at least every month, you know, keep sending things their way, invite them to, to your events, really look after them, build that relationship. I think it was good advice. I think that kind of focus on a small number.
Adam: and focus on quality, deep relationships rather than wide, is the right way to go. And I think you just need to find them, whether it’s via formal networking, or whether it’s via different sort of events. Just, just get out there and try and get your A team together. So,
Daniel: Absolutely. I mean, like, yeah, it’d be on a chapter. You’re not going to know everyone. You’re going to have your favourite 10 who you do the most with. I mean, they’ve got labels for all this kind of stuff, but basically that strategy is everything. It’s just the packaging. We’ve, we’ve actually got quite a few recommendations coming out of this episode. So we’ll, we’ll make sure we, we, we highlight all of these in the show notes, but, just to give a shout out to, our, our friend and peer, Richard Tubb, who’s just released a book actually on networking, for, network business networking for geeks, I think is the title.
Daniel: So, it’s on my, on my, Christmas wish list. So assuming that Santa brings it. for me, I’ll be able to perhaps, report on it. But,
Alex: I’m not sure who you’re giving a very heavy hint to out of the two of us, but I’m sure it will come your way one way or another.
Daniel: I, it’s probably more a hint for you, Alex, yeah, Adam often talks about a lump of coal around Christmas time, so I’m not holding out to, to, too many hopes.so, so no, it’s really interesting, Talk of, talk of tips and partners and, and how you’re bringing these together to create the business that what you want from the business, I think is, I think it’s really fascinating.
Daniel: so we did want, though, to make sure before we run out of time that we. We talk about the artificial versus actual intelligence debate. and I think you’ve got some, you’ve got some views here. So, keen to kick us off
Alex: Well, so I set the context. So, so I, as a industrial trainee student for Ford, I was in the expert systems group doing various projects around 1988. And I’m a big fan of Alan Turing. So just for my definition of what’s intelligent, the Turing test, and it annoys me that young journalists don’t even mention it when they do it on the BBC news, the Turing test is you’re sat in front of a computer and there’s a computer in the other room.
Alex: So you don’t know who’s on that computer. You can type any question you like, and the other person will receive the response and send something back. If you can’t tell whether you’re talking. to someone, a human being, or whether it’s a computer program, then it must be intelligent, whether it’s a computer or a pro or a human being.
Alex: Obviously, human beings are intelligent. Therefore, the computer program must have be intelligent. Now that’s the Turing test. And That’s about the only one I’m willing to go with. Everything else is not, and so far is not. Now, okay, let’s choose our words carefully about what ChatGPT is. It’s a very sophisticated, incredibly clever, and billions of pounds have been spent on it, word predicting algorithm, using a vast database of knowledge to build up its predictions.
Alex: But that’s what it is. So, it’s a very useful tool, and especially Copilot, I mean, Copilot is more useful because it’s woven properly into sensible IT structure and management, but, basically that’s kind of where I’m coming from. So, and have I, so I, having been annoyed by most of the things claiming to be AI over the last three decades, finally this year.
Alex: After being annoyed by some of the marketing emails that you get, which have obviously been chat GPT’d, I mean, just painful. I did come across this thing that used to be called Syntex that Microsoft bought, that they’ve woven into Microsoft 365 and SharePoint. So now they call it SharePoint Advanced or something.
Alex: And basically you set it up, you set up a subscription in Azure. It’s free until June next year. And then it allows you to add these extra columns. to, or fields, to a document library. And I really like this because you can now extract the name from the text of the document library. You can extract whatever you like.
Alex: You write a free text question like, What is the attitude to risk, where the values might be low, medium or high? And it gives you the answer. Brilliant. I think this has a great application because that’s turning very unstructured information from a transcript of a conversation into heavily structured text, which can then be used to automate producing reports, like a client review meeting follow up report.
Alex: If it took three hours before and it takes one hour now, That is really important.
Daniel: this though, artificial intelligence, would that pass the Turing test,
Alex: probably not. No.
Daniel: but a very useful tool nonetheless.
Alex: Let’s go with that. That’s fantastic. But it wouldn’t pass the tool because you still need your human to read those notes and go does that, is my memory of the meeting like that? The difference is they’re not having to write it. They’re just having to check it.
Adam: this tool you just mentioned, I’m not familiar with it. Tell me why it’s better than a standard chat GPT prompt. Is it accessing lots of different formats, document types, the whole library that Microsoft can get to
Alex: yeah, so, so basically I did two things. Firstly, I did the transcription from a Zoom call, and then I uploaded the audio file into Word Online, where it has that trans transcribed function. So that’s how I got my text to save as separate documents. So all of that, you could have done it from anything, but that’s just what I used.
Alex: And then, the reason I think it’s important is There are sufficient horror stories of people typing, doing stupid things with chat GPT, like sort out my finances. Here are my bank account details, that kind of stuff. And you really have to have, like I concentrate quite a lot on policies and procedures for clients.
Alex: You really need to have a, an AI tools usage policy that you’ve talked to with staff and go, you know, you realize you have to be careful with the dates you put
Adam: Sounds like something you could sell, Alex,
Alex: Ah, well, it’s funny she said, well, I, Yes, it’s evolving. It’s crystallizing into something. but in this case, you just, I think you’re much better off with a tool that’s been woven into the infrastructure of the Microsoft 365 with all the permissions and the segregation, you know, you know, for example, when you in teams and you do a search in the bar at the top, the search results you get are not all the documents in the company.
Alex: They’re the documents you have been given permission to have access to. Well, you need that woven into your AI filtering analysis stuff. You just need that baked in. That’s why it took Microsoft quite a long time to kind of get all this woven in correctly. So that’s why I prefer the co pilot route than the chat GPT route, which is pretty unfiltered.
Alex: So there are other tools out there, I should say, I’m sure, but I’m just, I going with what’s in the Microsoft ecosystem and getting as much for free out of that as possible. That’s, yeah, that’s good. the one caveat with this thing is it’s not a licensed model. It’s a per computational unit model.
Alex: So you basically set up these formulas to extract this information out and it doesn’t charge you or use up a computational unit until you hit the button saying, Do it. And then it kind of does all that calculation and you’ve used up one unit or two units or three units and you basically rack up a number of units over the month and that will eventually be what you’ll be billed for.
Alex: It’s just a different model to what people are used to. People are very used to the kind of, well, it’s at least it’s a fixed cost per month. I mean, some people resent the fact that it’s monthly still, but they should be used to that by now. maybe there’ll be a, maybe there’ll be a kind of. All you can eat for X pounds per month, maybe.
Alex: I don’t know. They have them. It’s all new territory, isn’t it?
Daniel: is, straight back into the fixed price versus block hours versus pay as you go,
Alex: kind of thing.
Daniel: computational units. yeah. yeah, no, interesting. And, and I think we are still very much at the, at the beginning that, of a lot of these, a lot of these, opportunities, not least what can you do and how do you bill for it and what value does the end user take from it?
Adam: So, so I think we’re still building use cases, and, yeah, we’ve got, just got to keep, just got to keep at it and find that next level of, office productivity, value that, that our clients, MSP clients can ultimately on unlock and take advantage of so, and Dan, I was just adding to that. This is always good for MSPs and IT, you know, organizations in general, because we’re building complexity and change, right? And wherever there’s complexity and change, there’s opportunity because all of our clients out there, you know, they just want to do what they want to do.
Adam: And so, There’s this opportunity to sell them additional services on the back of this. So, so I think, I just think it’s, you know, it’s great. It’s great that we still, you know, get all these new innovations coming through all the time.
Alex: I think to add to the whole, you’ve got to be ready for the innovation now. Like we’re all old enough to remember. First we had small business server and that was great. What a product for every small business. And then suddenly it went away and suddenly it was like, it’s got to be cloud only. It’s like, no, but that’s our income stream.
Alex: It’s gone. And then it was, there was another one, which was like the telephonies going on the IP network. That’s the way it’s going to be. and it was like, okay, you’ve got to get ahead around that one. You’ve got to own the network, including the telephony. Some people were all these big kind of waves of technology.
Alex: Some MSPs were very uncomfortable with it. And then security came along and that was something else we had to weave in as well. And you just got to get yourself to a mind space, a head space where you’re like, okay, I’m ready for the next one. You just can’t, probably when most people get going, they feel like I’ve just got everything stable.
Alex: Will nobody mess anything up? Just let me have a couple of years with nothing changing. And it’s like, it’s not really going to work like that. So don’t get too comfortable. And AI tools is the new one. That’s the one we’re going to wrestle with for the next X years, probably. I mean, there’ll be another one.
Alex: So just, you just got to keep rolling with these sort of new waves, whatever they happen to be. And you’re right, what you said about opportunity. Opportunity equals projects equals daily rate. Hey, that’s what we like. That’s really good. That’s I did. I said earlier that I don’t build my business on the daily rate, but when it comes around, great.
Alex: What a project to have.
Daniel: well, and of course you can, be, using a daily rate as a building block to establish what, recurring price, you should be charging. So, you know, if there’s a, if there’s a continual, continual need that, that the client will have in terms of, finding and implementing.
Daniel: AI within their business, then that is a, that’s a professional service, but it doesn’t have to be sold as a one off. It can be sold on a continual basis. so if it’s, you know, not recurring, repeating, and, and yeah, I know some MSPs that have effectively taken the project element of, refreshes, for example, and bundled that into their.
Daniel: they’re recurring price. So, so you end up with a very low, a low project sales number, but actually you’ve elevated and converted more of it to, to being recurring, even though what fundamentally is, you know, there’s project work in there.
Alex: Yeah. I think I’ve got a flag up in my world. Projects are quite a big deal for my clients. It’s as a percentage of their big span, it’s a huge hit. So I don’t get many of them. So I think what you’ve just described, I’m going to guess works at the sort of 50 upwards type. Computers per organization. I don’t think it would scale easily down to me.
Alex: I mean, I’d love to find a way, but you know, when someone’s got five to a 10 computers, usually it’s hard.
Alex: I think it’s probably maturity of the business rather than the size of the business. Fair point.
Daniel: and, and I think in some ways it would even be, I almost said it would be easier at the small level than the larger level, but, but I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna say that.
Alex: I think your point is maturity. The business is the mindset of the customer. If they can handle it great. If they’re mature enough, great. If they’re a startup and they don’t know anything about anything, it’s going to be hard. So
Daniel: Agreed. Agreed. I have to say it’s been a fascinating conversation. I wondered how we were going to get both topics, in, but I think we’ve, I think we’ve succeeded. not normally we’d, we’d offer a shameless plug to our guests. and you’ve actually given a shameless plug to a load of partners that you work with.
Daniel: So I’m sure they’re very appreciative, but, what can our listeners do for you? how can we help you?
Alex: shameless plug. I didn’t even think of it. so it’s nothing to do with IT. Can I ask one of
Adam: Yeah.
Alex: Okay. It’s very specific, but if anyone knows, I have an alternative. Oh, I have a product extracted from coal power station ash waste to put into nylon products. So if anybody knows someone who produces nylon products and they want them to be more hard wearing with a magical new formula material, that’s what I’m after.
Alex: I mean, I’m sure that’s not what you’re expecting I was going to say, but that’s my current
Adam: And how many referrals do you get by the way, BNI, when you ask for that?
Alex: Yeah, I haven’t tried that one on B& I.
Adam: They do say be specific, don’t they?
Alex: I do. I, in my defence, I went to South Wales, I’ve been to nine different BNI chapters and everything I’ve achieved on my coal waste ash processing has come through South Wales BNI. So yes, on that side, but again, yeah, I’m just asking because I don’t know where the listeners will be sat, but they could be all over the UK, maybe further.
Daniel: And you don’t ask, you don’t get. So, so no, I’m not sure we’ll have that request on any of our other episodes,
Alex: You probably won’t. No, fair point.
Daniel: brilliant. it’s been a real pleasure, speaking with you today and always enjoy, when we get a chance to chat. So, so thank you. Thank you very much for your time.
Alex: Thanks for having me.