In the latest episode of “It’s a Numbers Game”, Adam and Daniel interview Mit Patel, founder of Netstar, who built the MSP from zero clients to about 60 staff over nearly 19.5 years and sold it during COVID in 2020, staying on until 2021. Mit describes early client wins, rapid growth that repeatedly “broke” the business, and the resilience needed to recover. He explains how the sale felt anticlimactic and how he struggled afterward with purpose, identity, and not being “needed,” later doing angel investing, a property attempt, non-exec roles, and investing in an MSP consulting firm. Mit says he should have planned post-exit, and the group discusses mourning, loss, and plans not always working. Mit then outlines Assurix, inspired by poor MSP security and questionable certifications, aiming to raise standards via cybersecurity and operational maturity frameworks, continuous tool-based verification, and suspending a Trustmark if issues aren’t fixed in 30 days; they also discuss MSP under-pricing, lack of differentiation, and weak profitability.
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
01:16 Building Netstar from Scratch
04:27 Resilience Through Growth
05:49 Why He Sold in Covid
07:13 Life After Exit Reality
09:20 Investing and Finding Direction
11:32 Planning Your Next Chapter
13:26 Identity Loss After Selling
15:41 Sponsor Pricing Message
16:47 Origin of Assurix Idea
20:42 Trustmark Framework Explained
23:43 Price Gap and Differentiation
26:58 Undercharging and Profit Truths
32:58 Closing Advice and Farewell
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Connect with Mit Patel on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitassurix/
Connect with Daniel Welling on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielwelling/
Connect with Adam Morris on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamcmorris/
Visit The MSP Finance Team website, simply click here –https://www.mspfinanceteam.com/
MSP Glossary: MSP Finance Glossary Explained | MSP Finance Team
We look forward to catching up with you on the next one. Stay tuned!
Transcript:
Adam: Mit, welcome to the podcast.
Mit: Thanks for having me, guys. Really excited to be on this
Adam: Yeah. No, I’m really excited as well. I was just thinking a little bit of prep before the show today, and it just got me thinking about the years we spent together back in the old evolved days and, presale days. so look, it’d be really interesting actually just to dig into some of this and hear about, your story, presale through, through your sale of net Star.
Let’s start there. tell me a little bit about that.
Mit: Yeah. So, I ran Netstar for almost 19 and a half years. So when I first started, Netstar, we had zero clients. the first client that we actually won was, through going to PC World. ’cause I used to geek out a bit back in the day and I’d go and look at all the lap, this is 20 years ago, laptops, right?
25 years ago. Look at screens, laptops. And there was a guy in, the software section who was looking at Microsoft Project in a [00:01:00] box. ’cause software used to come in a box. I mean, YouTube will know this, no offence, but maybe some other people may not on the who, who are watching this, right? So he just come in a box and I went up to him and I said, look, I just wanted to ask like what what are you looking to achieve with this?
What are you trying to do? And he was looking kind of confused. It was just a, a business owner that had to, who happened to be some type of building contractor that refitted hotels. And he was trying to work out how to manage all these things. And I explained to him, look, this is what you can use it for.
You probably need a network ’cause you’ve got five people in your office. And he said, why don’t you come down and see me and and give me a, a quote for it. So that was my first ever client at Net Start. And back in the, the early days,we used to actually have a shop. It was like a 400 square foot shop.
I don’t think we’ve ever told us. I’ll try and find a picture of it. And, ’cause we weren’t busy or really doing anything, there was a telephone box outside. So in the summer, on a nice day like this, you could go outside and sit on top of it and just take a cordless phone and no one would ring you anyway.
’cause no one really [00:02:00] had many IT problems unless the server was down or nothing was working. So I kind of grew Net star every year. I mean, in the early years we used to like double every year. And then we kind of started to grow by 25 to 30% year on year. And we pretty much broke everything that could be broken along the way of growing an MSP just because we were constantly growing.
I remember one year, I think, I dunno if it was 2013 maybe, where the numbers got a bit bigger. Maybe it was 2014 or 2013, the numbers got a bit bigger and we grew by 35% and we almost broke the company. ’cause it was just too much of a chunk,to grow by. And all the way along with the way I learned lots of lessons because I broke everything.
I had to work out how to fix things along the way. but in 2020, I sold Net Star during COVID. and then I stayed on for 12 months [00:03:00] until, 2021. so towards the end we were, there was about 60, 60 60 of us in total in the company. So I had a real life, journey of growing a business through my experience
Adam: let me ask you about that, that growth and how you kind of just dealt with it and learned the lessons on the way. Do you think how you handled that was something you learned to do or do you think that was innate to you as a as, as Mick.
Mit: Oh, I didn’t know what I was doing, Adam.
Adam: but the resilience. The resilience to believe in yourself that you could handle it.
Mit: It’s an interesting question. Like I think, as a person, I suppose I’ve always been able to bounce back pretty quickly after kind of two, two to three hours of oh, this is terrible. This is crap. To try and work out how to bounce back in some way or form. and actually I think that’s the resilience piece.
I mean, it is tough even in insure, I’m, I’ve, I’m going through those phases [00:04:00] again of Right, there’s a problem, it’s the end of the world, and then we’ve worked out how to fix it in two, three hours. And it’s a, it’s that change of being able to get back into that positive mindset that I think sometimes it’s hard to do for people.
And I think that’s probably,a skill I suppose I have of being able to, see the positive in a
Adam: Yeah. there’s definitely a skill having something deep down within you that tells you, do you know what? You’ve beat, you’ve been in this situation before. You can fix it. You fixed it before, you thought it was the end of the world there and it wasn’t. You got, you dealt with it.
there, there’s definitely something around that. t tell me what it felt like. well, tell me why you sold, first of all, what were the reasons for that?
Mit: Well, I wasn’t looking to sell that. That’s the first thing. it was during COVID, and I was kind of adjusting to, it’s strange to say now ’cause I spend 70% of my time working by myself in my office at home now. But, working, I was literally had gone from being in an office all the [00:05:00] time, having all these people around me.
It being fun to being in a room, in the back of my house at the time. And I found that quite difficult to deal with. ’cause I liked being around people. that wasn’t the reason to sell. but I literally just got an offer, from, the private equity company at the time. And I said no to the first offer like everybody does.
then I came back again and then the offer I got, I was oh God, this could actually change my life. And then I walked up and down my garden about 15 times, phoned about three or four people, and they said, if you don’t, if you don’t do this, you’d be stupid. ’cause this is gonna de-risk your life, so you should do it.
And I think I got, I got caught up in the moment and I was like, right, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do this. And then once you’re in the moment, it happens, right? you kind of, you end up going through the
Adam: Yeah, you’re on the rollercoaster. you can’t get off. well, you can, but it’s difficult. yeah, I think we share, I think we share some feelings. Feelings there. and after the [00:06:00] sale kind of, did it feel like the finish line or was it the start of a new chapter? what did that kind of feel like?
Mit: it was pretty,it, no one really prepares you for after the sale of what it feels like. So this is what happens. You, and in my case, this is all in during COVID. So you sign these documents, in my case, electronically via DocuSign. You can’t go really celebrate it because everyone has to, has the distance rule and you can’t gather, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So it was literally signing this DocuSign thing, getting my next door neighbour to witness me signing this DocuSign thing, and the next day I got some money in my bank account and that was it.
Adam: Yep.
Mit: And so I was like, oh,
Adam: where all the fireworks. Yeah.
Mit: yeah, this is a bit unre remarkable. and I think you, you build up to this scenario of selling a company and the transaction being done, but you, in my case and in most people’s cases, I don’t think about what does that [00:07:00] look like on the other side?
yes, you’ve got money to potentially do things, but what you gonna do with your life thereafter? and I struggled with, after, my year was up exing at net star, of having any purpose, right? what am I waking up for every day? What have I got to achieve today? what’s the big problem that I’m solving?
Or what’s the strategic thing that we have to do? So I ended up spending a lot of my time sweeping patio, ending up with Anes obsession about birds pooing on my patio and having to hose that down every day, growing the best grass I possibly could. and you end up doing all these things.
and I did that for quite a long time. what am I doing with all my time? Like, how did, how have I got all this time where I’m just spending all the, doing all this random stuff? It was quite funny actually.
Adam: Yeah, it’s, it really is an interesting process, isn’t it? I think Dan was also nodding along to that. and,something [00:08:00] that nobody really talks about, I don’t think particularly, or they don’t talk about it much. it’s all about the big fanfare of the sale. But anyway,you scraped up the bird droppings and you’ve got your grass and then you decided to start investing in some businesses that us about.
Mit: Yes. So at the time, so one of my friends has told me, why don’t you get involved in something that you’ve never done before? you might like it rather being in the kind of it world. So I, my first investment I did was in a, a sustainable shampoo conditioner company startup. that was pretty interesting.
And actually I was able to apply what I had learned running a business for all those years in that business. I was looking at stuff like their marketing and understanding, what the ROI was and what they were doing and were they repeat customers or existing customers. And a lot of the skills are transferrable in any business actually.
and that was pretty cool to, to see that actually I [00:09:00] can do this stuff. I think that the, the thing with angel investment is you don’t, once you’ve given someone money, you don’t really need to spend any time in their business if you don’t want to, and they’re not gonna pay you necessarily to do that.
so I did some, quite a bit of angel investing actually, just to kind of get involved in stuff. I then. I then did some stuff where I thought I would get into property. So I thought to myself I’d be,a property magnet did that, didn’t quite work out. So I ended up going up north to, buy some blocks of flats, actually, funnily enough.
and what I liked about that process, was it was I got to be the person doing the due diligence on the asset that I was buying. So that was quite fun. And something I’d learned from due diligence, going, selling to the private equity company, was doing an NPS survey, but this time I did it on all the tenants.
So, that was quite fun as well. And then past [00:10:00] that I invested in, scalable, which is a consulting business for MSPs. and then I started to do some non-exec roles for different organisations to,just fill my time up. But I was still only doing maybe four, five days a month for a couple of years.
Adam: Would you, what would you take out of that experience post Net Star? what, what lessons perhaps have you learned from that?
Mit: I think I would’ve, I think I should have made a plan of what I was gonna do with my talent. The time. I think part of the reason that I felt, a little bit lost and didn’t have purpose is I could, I didn’t actually plan out what am I gonna do post sale. And that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do loads of work related stuff.
But even if I’d made a plan of, right, I am gonna do this project for a month, or I’m gonna do this for a period of time, I would’ve felt less guilty about not really doing anything.
Adam: Yeah, I, again, I’m, well, I think we’re all nodding, again,and personally, I remember [00:11:00] when somebody asked me this question when I was a few weeks away from sale, what are you gonna do after the sale? I think I said something like, I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s okay not to have a plan or something like that.
Or, I think I said it’s okay not to be, not to be sure, right? to give yourself breath, room space to, to, let something develop. I, I think maybe there’s some, some honesty in that still. But I’m with you also, that if you are the sort of person that likes generally planning, strategizing, analysing, creating, developing, being creative, all these things, not just going into it completely cold Turkey probably isn’t the best press, best approach.
Mit: Exactly that. I mean, I was quite lucky in the fact that I, I think a year after I left Net Star, we embarked on like a big renovation project at home. So I literally got to obsess over all sorts of stuff like what plug socket to have, where’s the best place to buy [00:12:00] it, what type of sound insulation should I have in this wall?
I want a garage door that opens really quickly. All the things that I now realise don’t actually Miter and didn’t make any material difference to anything. But that’s what I did with a lot of
Adam: What are the things, that I didn’t think I’d experienced, but I did was identity. Did you have any challenges around that? what you were.
Mit: I think, from an identity point of view, what, what happened was, subconsciously I went from being needed by 60 people in my head and,making sure that the company was running in the right way that it needed to do, to not being needed by anybody really. and I think that was a big adjustment for me of, actually I had something that needed me and relied on me, and now I don’t.
So I think that was part of the identity. I wouldn’t say crisis, but issue. This is turning into like an agony session, guys. This is not gonna be fun for
Adam: Oh, [00:13:00] this is good. This is good shit. This is,and it, yeah, it’s OOO over.
Mit: we’ll have to
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. no, we don’t worry about that. o overnight, as you say, there’s people that you know, report to you, look up to you,need you to put food on the table effectively. and then do you know what, straight away you don’t Miter.
Right? You’re not important anymore. it is interesting. Dan, any, any reflections yourself on this sort of period of change?
Dan: Yeah,I think we’ve not yet mentioned the fact that you do go into morning, there’s a loss that you’ve experienced and some of that is the personal,I’m not needed anymore. And in, in my case, I couldn’t wait for the phone to stop ringing. And then when I’m sat at home and the phone isn’t ringing, I kind of missed it.
So, the, the other thing I would say is that I absolutely had a plan post exit. In fact, I was already starting the plan. I didn’t have a particularly long consulting engagement, but in my case, my plan didn’t really work out. So you can have a plan and,and it doesn’t guarantee [00:14:00] that it’s gonna see you through that process.
And certainly I wasn’t prepared for dealing with the loss and the adjustments. and I think in my case, my plan was to do something entirely different in a different industry. That’s really hard work anyway. And I really didn’t adjust well to going from being the expert and senior, with authority to being a junior learning my way again.
it was a lot of, a lot of shock all at once to, to handle, I think.
Adam: that’s a really interesting question, Ashley. and I guess leads me on to my next question. M you then, well, what was the inspiration, let’s start there. What was the inspiration behind the Zu X? Why? Where did that idea come from?
Mit: Yeah. So I, in one, one of my NED roles was, being a chairman of A MSP called Serena. And I was in a board meeting and they were talking to me about how they took on this new client from an existing MSP, and they [00:15:00] were telling me about how the MSP had these really terrible local admin passwords, welcome 1, 2, 3.
And I thought, well, I’ve heard that before, but maybe not in, 20 24, 20 25. and then they were telling me about they didn’t have backups in place and all this sort of stuff, and they told me that the MSP, the client, they’ve taken over, had cyber essentials plus, which means they have some sort of auditing.
And I was like, that’s odd. Like they’ve got that level of terrible passwords and their patching’s not working, their backup’s not, and I thought, that’s a bit wrong, isn’t it? what, why are MSPs doing that? and I kind of, I sat in that room with ’em and I was like, guys, this is not good.
I didn’t understand that MSPs out there. So anyway, that meeting happened, I think six, seven months later they happened to win a new client, from the same MSP again. And the password on their local app admin, local devices, like their laptops and stuff was now [00:16:00] welcome. 1, 2, 3 with a capital double.
So they’d done some sort of cyber training in the seven month period. and I was thinking, just come on, it can’t, there, there has to be some level of responsibility that then, or pride even that an MSP takes. So that happened then I had a conversation with someone who worked for me 10 years ago who had actually set up his own MSP and they were stuck at, I think they were stuck at 700 or 800,000 pounds revenue.
And they’re like, look, can I come and see you? we need your help. I said, look, I’m happy to give you two hours of my time. Come to my home office. you take me for lunch in the pub. Buy me three, three points. We’ll call it, we’ll call it done. So we did that and it, while he was in, he came here, we were looking through lots of stuff.
So part of it was sales and marketing. his actual issue was around planning, actually not knowing where he needed to be by the end of the year and what that translate, what he needed to be every month. But one of the things we looked at was sales and marketing. And I saw that he had an ISO 27,001 certificate [00:17:00] and I was like, wow, that’s pretty interesting.
He’s only four of you. I remember going through that at Net Star in 20, I think 17, and we’d spent 28,000 pounds and we’d spent like 180 or 200 hours as a business implementing this. And I said, have you done that? And he said he paid a guy in India, 500 pounds to do all the documentation. And then he got a, a company over here to do the, accreditation for ’em.
and I was like, well, what, do you know what’s in those documents? He was like, no, I don’t know. I just told him to pass. And I was like, well, you’re not really running ISO properly. and that, and then that combined with the cyber resilience bill, which, which kind of got announced LA I think it was last year, where they started talking about making a change to actually regulate MSPs, maybe thinks that maybe there’s an opportunity, to do something here.
and that’s where the idea came from of a cx and the [00:18:00] kind of mission for a CX is really to raise the bar for MSPs to back good MSPs that are doing the right, right things and to make it easier for an SME, to find a good provider. and that was the idea. I don’t wanna cover too much in case you’ve got another question and you’re
Adam: Sure, sure. I mean, it’s a great story. it’s a great idea. I guess, so there’s the, this new government bill, where, what’s the status of that at the moment?
Mit: So the, it’s actually gone through, its third reading. So essentially at the moment, it’s not far, I think next year, sorry, end of this year is when they think that it will be going through. So it goes through lots of various stages. and the first stage is essentially kinda four things long.
So it gets read first, gets read the second time. I think it’s now moving into the House of Lords after the next time it gets read. So it’s moving along, at pace now.
Adam: so [00:19:00] there’s something around the timing again of this idea. And maybe 10 years ago it may not have worked potentially.
Mit: I think, 10 years ago, would it? Well, prob probably not. and this is the reason I suppose. So what Jix is based on is, two main things, two frameworks, one’s based on cybersecurity, which is aligned to the cyber resilience bill, cyber assessment framework. And the other is based on operational maturity.
So it’s actually is an MSP delivering their SLAs? Are they doing all the, patching that they should be doing? Do they have an offboarding process, onboarding process? There’s 24 things in there, right? Just from the, are you delivering a good outcome to an SME? And then what we do is we, integrate in with all, your P-S-A-R-M-M security tools to be able to prove that live every day.
So every six hours we’re polling that stuff to make sure you are doing it. And the main thing is that if you are not compliant in something, we give the MSP 30 days to fix it. [00:20:00] And if they don’t fix it in 30 days, we suspend the trust mark. So there’s real teeth in it, right? that we’re actually, it’s not just a badge that you get forever and that’s it.
I think 10 years ago, this statement wa was true, but it wasn’t as big. Now we know that service is visible, right? you’ve both, owned, MSPs. So you know that when someone does, when you, when one of your employees doesn’t pick up the phone or doesn’t reply to a ticket, or doesn’t set up a device when they’re meant to, you hear about it, right?
’cause the end customer knows and feels that pain, so service is very visible, but security is invisible. So you don’t really know if your machines are getting patched. You don’t know if everyone’s got MFA turned on in your, in your office even, you don’t even know if your MMSP is secure.
You just don’t know about the security things is EDR working have, is this working, et cetera. And I think 10 years ago there wasn’t as much, there weren’t as many challenges around security for businesses. And I think now there [00:21:00] are a lot more challenges than there ever have been. So maybe 10 years ago, and I can’t think back this far, when was this?
20 15, 16. I think we were selling like antivirus and anti-spam for emails. real, yeah. Real, like low level maybe a bit of DNS filtering thrown in for good measure, but nothing of, nothing like it is now. Right? There’s so much stuff you have to do now to actually protect your business
Adam: no, it makes sense. well, so what do you see as the biggest gap between what MSP’s promise from a sales perspective and actually, and the actual operational reality?
Mit: I think,there’s something that I call the, the price. I think I call it the price gap. I come up with all these weird and wonderful names, Adam, you know me. So we’ve got the price gap where essentially when you are going to see a new customer, a prospect let’s say is an MSP owner.
Everybody says the same thing. So we do cyber security, we do it support, we come on [00:22:00] site, we do this proactive stuff. Some of ’em are now saying they do AI stuff, all this stuff. But the problem is ev everyone’s saying the same stuff. So to a prospect who’s an SME owner who may not know about it, it’s pretty difficult for them to understand like what that other person is saying yet comprehend to work out the difference between one provider and the other.
So what tends to happen is they get, they see four people, they get four quotes. Two people are charging 30 pound a user a month, one’s charging 50, one’s charging 80. So in their head they auto automatically think sounds like a 30 pound a month problem. So they choose the cheapest provider. What they don’t realise is choosing the cheapest provider, there’s a reason why they’re cheaper.
And most of the time it’s because they’re cutting corners in some way. Maybe not maliciously, but maybe they don’t have people looking at stuff where they need to be, that maybe they don’t have someone looking after the proactive stuff in their business or they haven’t got [00:23:00] time or the margin to do that, right?
Because there’s only so much margin you can make on a 30 pounds a user. So what, so that’s what I see is like the biggest problem is around differentiation. And that’s one of the problems that C solves. ’cause we translate what an IT company should be doing and them being able to prove that every year, every day to say to that client or net new client, this is the sure trustmark that we have.
This is the reason we have, and this is why we’re different to the person charging 30 pounds a user. ’cause it should cost more to do the job
Adam: Yeah. the market certainly needs, this, and other things like it to help good MSP owners, sell better, right. Ultimately, that’s what this is looking to do. Dan,what thought, thoughts or reflect.
Dan: I love, the fact that we’ve ended up talking about the price, points. and,of course, it’s exactly right that they’re probably cutting corners in terms of delivery or don’t do something that perhaps they should, but also pro, probably the MSP [00:24:00] business owner themselves are not being paid anywhere near what they should be, paid for.
the work that they’re doing and the risks that they’re taking. And, whatever we can do collectively as an industry to,to rise the, raise the price point, and, help educate the, the end user clients, I think is,it’s a collective responsibility on us all really. of course the SME end user client,where do they go for the truth?
do they listen to the, the person charging 80 pounds or the person charging 30 pounds there, there’s gotta be some independence there. so, so I think it’s a, it is a cri critical topic for the ongoing future success of our, of our industry.
Mit: I think, I, I know I’m not allowed to ask questions on the podcast guide, but I’m gonna throw one ’cause you guys might know the answer to this. like I hear all sorts of wild percentages about MSPs not making profit and what the average profit is. You guys are probably a bit closer, to this than I am in terms of the numbers.
what does that look like? it just, in, even in the uk, like how many [00:25:00] MSPs are not making any profit at all and
Adam: Yeah. Well, I mean, I can’t give you statistically validated,numbers. I can only give you direct experience and it’s very poor, in, in general, which is why Dan and I are on this mission to try and increase this, pricing confidence, right? Or confidence in their own value ultimately at, at an industry level.
and, it’s not just the small guys. We see it with the, the medium sized guys as well, the million plus guys, working 50 hour weeks, maybe 50 grand a year type compensation. we have some very extreme cases that are minimum wage level, they exist. So, I, I think the, the guys who are in the 2, 3, 4, 500,000 a rare, would you agree with that, Dan?
Dan: Absolutely. And and I think part of the challenge is, the, the financial maturity of the [00:26:00] MSP owners themselves in terms of understanding what is a profit like, what’s the difference between gross profit, net profit, how much they’re actually taking home, what’s their direct remuneration versus what is their return as a shareholder of this business and,and a million pound business making a 10% profit, for example.
Brilliant. but actually you haven’t yet been paid and you’ve done two people’s jobs that should have been paid a hundred grand each. So actually you are losing a hundred grand a year normalised. and that’s the sort of thing you’re fighting against. It’s very difficult to.
Adam: no, that, hear that all the time. actually we’re doing really well. I’m making it, I’m making 80 grand a year profit. Okay? How much do I left after you’ve paid yourself about five, 5K. So you’re not making 80 k then, are you? You’re probably losing money actually. so, so that, that kind of, reality check and getting the owners then to start to see their, see the risk and the role in a different way because it, they could go and just get a job right.
[00:27:00] Somewhere else and probably be paid more. so, it’s a big problem, that Dan and I are both very passionate about it and looking to see if we can shift the needle at all.
Mit: Yeah. and I think maybe one of the biggest drivers is how much they charge, right? It’s not necessarily on the cost front. I imagine
Adam: it’s mostly how much they charge.
Mit: it’s mo mostly how much they charge. And I think, sometimes there’s a confidence level from a, from an MSP business owner that thinks I’m small. I can’t charge, X amount per user, I can only compete charge.
I’ve heard people charge like 15 pounds, 20 pounds a
Adam: I’ve heard an eight pound user.
Mit: and it’s just I was speaking to my friend, he’s a property developer and he’s got 20 people in his, business. And he came to me to ask me what IT provider should I choose? I said, oh, I said, well, what’s your current one doing?
And explain it through. So he’s getting charged, 15 pounds a user, so 300 pounds a month. So I said to him, look, I said, look, on average, it costs probably 50 pounds an hour to deliver a [00:28:00] service at like cost. So I said, you take your 300 pounds, 50 pounds an hour, how many hours does that equate to?
Six hours of time. So in six hours of time, you’ve got a, they’ve not only gotta deal with Bob’s print and not working, or Louisa’s laptop not working, et cetera, et cetera, they’ve also gotta keep you secure, proactively, make sure stuff doesn’t go wrong, make sure all your licencing is correct, advise you in some way or form about what you should be doing strategically for your business when it comes to it.
I said, how can I do that in six hours? And he looked at me, he goes, yeah, he is right. I dunno what they’re doing proactively. I’ve never really, they’ve never really advised me on anything. And I was like, exactly. And I said, this is a difference between paying not a lot of money and paying a level of money that actually is gonna give you business, make a difference for you.
Right. and I suppose when you explain that to an SME owner, they kind of get it. They’re like, oh yeah, I mean, my [00:29:00] gardener costs 40 pounds an hour. That’s what they probably think. Yeah. What, why is the IT guy only, gonna
Adam: knowledge. I use the Range Rover metaphor. I dunno if you’ve, have you heard this one? M and it goes back to when I went into a Range Rover dealership a couple years ago, and the servicing hourly rate was 220 pound VAT plus that. So, so work that out and one of these, these guys, these are guys with screwdrivers, right?
So why you as an IT consultant, it owner charging yourself at 80 pounds an hour, how does this equate? so, yeah, I think there’s a lot of work to do still in that area, but that little story there about, we’re relay it back in, in, in terms that the owner business owner can understand, I think is a really good idea.
Try and relate it back to their business and the reality of the overheads of running a business and what it takes to recruit good people. I guess what good people want good salaries, right? How are you gonna pay good salaries if you don’t have good money coming in? You’re not gonna retain good people.
They’re gonna go, the service [00:30:00] quality’s gonna drop. What, what’s gonna happen? Right?
Mit: and I think that’s, when I was talking about my 2013 kind of crisis, one of the problems that we had was,finding that talent is hard anyway, right? Finding good talent is difficult. Retaining talent is diff is difficult as well. Generally, everybody’s got that employee that does one and a half times the amount of work that a normal person can do.
everyone’s experienced one of those people in their life, right? Yet you don’t pay ’em anymore. So when they leave and you’re like, scratching your head thinking, oh God, we might have to hire two people. you’re even better off just paying ’em 10% more or 20% more back then, and you would’ve been okay with it.
But people just don’t
Adam: and we’ve gotta pull the episode to an end. But for me, I think one of the biggest learning points, an owner needs to take on board is that what they needed to get started isn’t what they need to grow. So they can get off, they can get off, get a few clients. They can maybe hire one or two guys, but actually to grow properly into something that’s worth something and [00:31:00] can provide a retirement fund, they’ve gotta charge more.
it’s just not achievable. o otherwise in, in my view, unless you do some kind of scale thing. and then that’s a whole different ball game, a whole different problem.
Mit: Yeah. and I think, just on, like what I’ve done a lot of research on in the past is like, what are the levers that private equity or a buyer comes into a business and does? And normally one of the first things they do is raise the price. And most MSP owners are scared of raising the price. They think they’ll lose clients, but ultimately you are losing money every year when you don’t raise the price.
Adam: Dan, any final questions for me?
Mit: I think when can you come back and join us for another episode? Yeah, sure. let’s do it. I’m happy to do it again. it was really fun having a
Adam: Really good. Mit, if people wanna continue the conversation with you about Azure X, how should they do that?
Mit: Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, it’s Mi Patel. you can find me on there, or you can email me at mit mit@xx.com, which is A-S-U-R-I
Adam: Okay, [00:32:00] perfect. And just before you go, I’ve just got one, one final question just to put you on the spot. You talked about your time back in, in, looking at laptops and all the rest of it. What would the Mit from then, so the Mit from 2000, what would you say to the Mit today? No, what would the may say to the, well, whichever way round it’s supposed to be going back in time, what would you tell your Mit of 2000?
Mit: I think, what would I tell myself then I suppose I’d to tell myself it’s gonna be okay. That’s what I’d say to myself. It’s gonna be okay. Don’t worry. Crack on.
Adam: I like it. Thanks a lot Mit. we’ll catch up soon.
Mit: Great. Thanks guys.
Dan: Thank you.