Many have turned to Gino Wickman's book, Traction to help turn their vision into actionable goals. This episode's guest, Rocky Johnson of McNallan Technology Solutions shares what it was like to go ...
Many have turned to Gino Wickman's book, Traction to help turn their vision into actionable goals. This episode's guest, Rocky Johnson of McNallan Technology Solutions shares what it was like to go through a company acquisition and how he's helping to foster team growth by extending leadership positions throughout the company. Sticking to something matters more than what you stick to. A bad decision is better than no decision. I jumped on Traction and thought this was it, the fastest way where I can get a small community and a leadership team as the book goes through, to create growth, and create challenges, and create really great arguments of, “Why did we do that? Let’s challenge it. Why did we do that? Lets challenge that. Top episode takeaways: A company 46 years in business scaling their team while staying true to what keeps customers loyal. Redefining and rebranding your company. Using Traction to build community, rotate leadership positions, and recognizing the capacity for change in others. Building employee loyalty -- "We don't punch clocks". Data Driven Workshops make data actionable while keeping it simple. Being super clear about the service you’re delivering. Want to find out more about The BrightGauge Podcast? Check out all the episodes here. _____________ Transcript: Brian: … Thanks for joining us. Rocky: Yeah, it’s great to be here, thanks for inviting me Brian. Brian: So, obviously we know all the speakers ahead of time. We had met a few months back at Data Driven workshop here in Miami. One of the things that I wanted to share with the listeners, is that the reason I quickly thought of you as a podcast guest, after we met, was you’re the only one in the group of the workshop, that kind of really grasped onto the simplicity concept of BrightGauge I remember someone was asking for some crazy chart type, and you were like, “Hey man, just do a number and do this filter and that’s it.” He was blown away and I thought, “I think Rocky just answered my question for me, thank god I love this guy.” You remember that? Rocky: I do, I do like the simplistic approach, the whole breakage thing and looking at numbers, parallels a lot of the Traction side of the business that we run here at my company. Simplifying that data has really garnished a whole lot more power, and glancing at a dashboard, knowing what you need and moving on rather than focusing on it for a long time. Brian: Yeah, I was like, “Like minded people here.” Then we had a few drinks afterwards, so anyway. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Tell us about yourself, and McNallan, a two minute history on the company, what you guys o, in that sense. Most listeners are in the IT services space, so feel free to use the jargo that you would normally use talking to peers. Rocky: Awesome, I’m from McNallan Technology Solutions, my name is Rocky Johnson. We’re a 46 year old productivity company. We started doing IBMs electric service in 1971. And moved pretty linearly through technology, like calculators because yes, it was technology, via the likes of ply ribbons and paper and that sort of stuff. Printers, copiers, IT, cloud. All that stuff. Most of our MRR now is managed IT and cloud hosting, but because we’re such an old company, we have the straggling break fixed, blocktime type accounts that have been with us for decades, that’re really hard to migrate. Brian: What’s the size of the company now? What’s the structure of it, services folks, vs non-services? Rocky: We have 23 employees currently. We have positions open, it’s a fun dynamic to keep and retain the people you really enjoy. We have 15 dedicated engineers, so the rest are three technical account managers, three admin staff and then two multi talented idiots that poked their heads in to the business. Brian: I don’t think you’re 46 years old. You joined the company, what’s your position? Give us that background too. Rocky: For sure. It’s a second generation family business. I’m not family, and I actually sold my business to McNallan and have bought in. So I’m a partner in this company now, I’m currently COO and will take this over as time goes on. It’s been here for a long time, it’s changed a lot of dynamics. It’s been a lot of fun to be a part of company sale and move forward and then get excited about the future. Brian: When was the sale of your company? Was it a merger sale? How do you describe it? Rocky: We describe it as a merger as it’s easier on liability concerns when we brought over accounts, and how we transitioned, licensing and all that kind of stuff. Technical term is, I received money for my portion from Ibeta Data, and value oriented contract so that I stayed on board to make sure that those customers stayed on. It probably was a conversation, maybe a six month transition where I brought it up, because I was in a real estate vertical, and it was tanking in 2007. When we moved, it was great because we had a long running relationship, I actually had a nine year history of McNallan as my customer, and I was doing hire, implementations and migrations for them when they were a little bit new in some of the corporate network space. So it worked out pretty well for me to come on board, get them more sophisticated clients, and then was able to give me the scope and exposure of a huge customer base. I mean, scope of a 46 year old company that stuck to their guns is incredible. We had thousands of customers a year that we dealt with. It was crazy. Brian: We didn’t talk about this too much in Miami, you had merged with them how long ago, from now? Rocky: I’ve been here ten years, we merged exactly ten years ago last month. Brian: And then how many people did you have? It was just a small shop, you and a few other folks doing high end — Rocky: Yep. me and just three other folks that did a real estate vertical. Did kind of a one stop shopping, we did IS programming and IT stuff, all that kind of infrastructure benefits that come along with this small environment where you can manage all that, but was a slow growth environment so was awesome to come on board to greater capital. Brian: So you had a sense of the family, knew the companies, basically a subcontractor if you will, or they outsource projects to you. Rocky: That’s exactly right. Brian: Joined and then the evolution to becoming COO, was that immediate? Or over time for you? Rocky: It was over time, my contract was fairly short. I didn't really know if I’d stay on long terms, I had pretty frank conversations. I know that you’re used to my conversations, I say what’s on my mind. So, after six months to a year, once my contract was coming to a close, I had a conversation and said, “I can double your service revenue in like three months, there’s not a problem with that, but I could quadruple it in six months, where do you want to go with this business?” It hasn't grown for a long time. So it was more of a rocksteady, the currents flowing, everything's good, it just wasn’t going in any kind of double digit growth. Brian: They had services back then? Was it like a traditional var, just recent stuff, or was it some services that you were blown away by? Rocky: They had a pretty good block time, so what happened was the company was very product oriented and product-centric. So they sold you a printer or a computer, it’s like free install, because people were cheap and equipment was expensive. That was the market they came from, so the first network that they put in was like, “Yeah, we’ll put in this nouvelle server and we’ll install it for free.” Think about that concept, that’s asinine. So, they really at a hard time, changing their customer understanding saying, “You have to pay for this service, because that’s really what you’re getting is brain power, anybody can sell you a product. They had blocktime accounts, these prepay accounts, a lot of loyalty, ridiculous amounts, 20 years history of doing services from fixing typewriters to fixing problems with Windows 95. We spent time saying, “Hay let’s write down what we are doing, let’s bill for this time, let’s talk to the customers to make sure they’re on board.” 100% were on board. We actually went from a small one user ticketing system, where people wrote down work orders by hand, technology company writing work orders by hand, and I built — Brian: This is in 2007 is it? Rocky: It was, it was probably ‘05 when they were still doing that. When I came on in 07 they bought Tiger Font. But they only had one licence, so they had four engineers at the time that were writing down things, in 2007.So the potential was huge, it was like, “wow, look at all the stuff I can do.” If I can just give them the ability to write a ticket on their own, can you imagine how many more billable hours we’re gonna see? It was fun. Brian: Thats awesome, so you were the next coming so therefore I can see the evolution for your becoming COO. What part of the country are you in? Rocky: We’re in Minneapolis. Brian: Okay, is it a crowded space over there? What’s your take on it? Rocky: I’m gonna say no. it’s really not that bad, not that I’m inviting everybody to come out to Minneapolis to compete with me, but -- Brian: Very busy. Rocky: --but, yeah it’s ridiculous. We have a few handfuls, so we’re really small business niche. We love where we’re at. We’re a hundred computer users or less. We do it well. We live it. We have a lot of customer base that we can pick from. We have competition in our exac space. We literally have competition with the same birthdate of company. They’ve been along the same evolution we have. Which is superbly unique. But we all work pretty well together and there’s a lot of space for us to fit in. There’s really only a handful of players in this business, with a whole bunch of one man bands and three man shops which, really we don't compete with directly. Brian: Gotcha, okay. It’s surprising with a big city as Minneapolis is, that there’s .. I’ve always found, at least the last 12 months, talking to customers especially at the workshops, everyone is doing really well. Either it’s the economy, people are valuing technology, especially with security and privacy all around. It’s great to — Rocky: I agree, I think there’s a huge opportunity for people to distinguish who they are and gain that loyalty, gain market share. We’re growing organically within our customer base so well, that reaching out to new businesses hasn’t been a high priority as, “Hay, let’s get the customers to pay for the services that we’re giving them.” Brian: I didn’t hear, you said the sales person right? Rocky: Yeah, we have three sales people. Brian: Okay, gotcha. Rocky: Technical account managers and all that. Brian: But the technical account managers, that’s their title? Rocky: Yep, they’re IT account managers, they do the sales process a lot of what we’re doing sells itself. Brian: -- hunting for new business, they’re the ones doing it too? Or is that just more rainmaker sale, the owner or the families, something like that for leads? Rocky: Yeah, it’s more managing accounts than the sale side. We had two people that really do most the sales. Course I’m part of that for influencing traits, and then we have another, the actual owner Mr McNallan that does a lot of that stuff too. He and I are responsible for bringing on some of the new stuff and we both enjoy that space. Brian: Makes sense. So we had a family business for a while, my father started in 1980, it was very similar evolution of technology. He was a salesman by trade, that was his bread and butter. We always found sales were easier when that person was involved, but we needed a technical person, it was very similar. To fast forward now, to the meat of it, last two years SEO, how has the business been for you, what challenges have you faced? What’s top of mind for you these days for the company? Rocky: Well our challenge is the stigma of being a printer company through an advertising age. We have a pretty good recognition in our area as being value oriented, small business, get your copy kind of place — Brian: - like buy your machine or all your printing needs as well like signs and stuff like that, just the actual technology behind it. Rocky: Just the technology behind it, we don't do the physical printing. But we have this connotation that we do networking. Well, no. We’ve done networking since 1980 but we haven't pushed that. We’ve let customers ask. So we went through a rebranding process two years ago. We redefined the company, redefined what kind of customers we would take, redefined how we talk to our customers, redefined our entire service desk. Really changed everything we thought we could change to be unique but still give that historical loyalty the benefit of the doubt in all of our conversations. So, all our migrations have been slow, but we’ve done it for a reason. We’re being respectful to those that need it. We’ve grown excessive percentages every year that we haven’t really needed to step on too many toes. Brian: Who led that charge? Whos idea was it to rebrand? Was it coming from you, the family, who pushed that job through? Rocky: It was a long struggle, that was on me. There’s a lot of challenge here where becoming greater percentage owner, as every year goes on, and being part of that. Knowing what next steps are gonna be, we have conversations we have Traction meetings, and I led that charge. It didn’t take long, you can give a sample group, and have conversations, and hire marketing company to blind interview your customers and ask the questions to go, “Wow, this would be great for you guys, I had no idea you did this.” After five conversations, with five good sized customer that had been with us 20 years that had no idea that we were cutting edge for stuff. It bloomed from there. Brian: So you drove a lot of that stuff, and you said the term Traction, what is your involvement with EOS, most the listeners would know, we’ll put in the show notes what EOS Traction is exactly, but when did you guys adopt Traction and EOS? What’s your history with that program? Rocky: In Minneapolis we’re in Hennepin County, Hennepin County did a grant, to build a second generation business growth group. It was a specific grant looking for second generation business to grow. Most of them become very stagnant once second generation happens, as you can get all these grants for new businesses. This specific push was all Traction oriented. So they invited a bunch of CEOs who showed up, our CEO went. Went to maybe six weeks of this four years ago, and said, “Hey, this is interesting, this has a lot of parallels that are key to what you’re talking about. Why don't you read the book.” I’ve read dozens of self help books, I’ve read dozens of how to run your business. I’ve started, my first business I was fifteen, I did a car audio shop in a store near my school, I’d bike to it. I’ve had a ton of businesses and I love this stuff. So it was fun to read and go through it, I thought you can read zig zig and get up in the morning and say, “Hey, today's going to be a good day.” You believe that stuff, if you stick to something you believe it. Brian: Right. Rocky: So, not to downrate Traction, but I more believe that sticking to something matters more than what you stick to. A bad decision is better than no decision. Traction gave us that Traction as a great metaphor, where I just said, “Yeah, I like this idea.” And I jumped on it and thought this was it, the fastest way where I can get a small community and a leadership team as the book goes through, to create growth, and create challenges, and create really arguments of, “Why did we do that? Let’s challenge it. Why did we do that? Lets challenge that.” We built, based on issues, based on people, based on continual, effective meetings, level tens and the EOS has been awesome for us. We’ve done well with it for over three years, it’s transformed out business. Brian: Wow, and then did you have a EOS coach when you first started? Rocky: Yeah. We didn't get one. Because, have you met me? I don’t need that. I ran everything through and gave all of that, forced it, pushed it, gave accountability and because of my excitement in the process, it really rallies the troops, we didn’t need a third party to say, “Rocky you made a bad decision, let’s move on and build the new decision for how we create the new solution.” I’m more than willing to fall on my sword and admit help, I don't have any problem with that. Let’s keep moving, let’s have some better ideas because I don’t know it. Brian: Looking back on it now, three and a half years ago, what would you recommend for others? In our community, couple hundred listeners that would be using Traction, or would not be using Traction I should say. What tips would you provide them, looking back on your own experience of doing it on your own, here? Rocky: Its an awesome question, because it really does resonate with a lot of the business owners out there. So if anybody is close to owning it, or even just feels like they want their business to go forward. Traction has an idea of a community, or a leadership team, in our case we take rotating positions. I pull a different service member, depending on their needs of the six month period, or a different sales member, and we create different leadership teams over the years, so that we have more feedback. What that gives is a vision and really a good sounding board, where the community and your company feels like its contributing to the growth of a company. Thereby increasing loyalty, and increasing all these things. One of the tricks that we’ve done, as an IT company. I hand out Traction books to most of our customers, and we’ve actually grown measurable from those customers, because they've adopted it or at least they’ve had some checkered balance. So, my advice for people considering taking it on, is don’t be shy to try, even if it’s 3%, you read it and go, “Gosh, I’m going to pick up one thing.” If you pick up that one thing, it’s going to make you trust the book and you’ll do everything else. Brian: Yeah. Rocky: It’s not like you’re gonna read 500 pages and feel like you’ve gotta do it all. Brian: I remember reading Traction, again for the ten second overview of what this EOS, entrepreneurial operating system is, Traction is the name of the book that this gentleman Gino Wickman wrote. A great foundational system in how to run a small company, that’s the basic way to call it. When I read it a year and a half ago, Rocky and I similar, I also said, “This is a lot of concepts regurgitated and consolidated into one group, it makes sense, so let’s just rock with it.” If we’re gonna believe it and stick with it. It’s phenomenally simple, it’s comprehensive and so a lot of small businesses that are using it have been very successful with it. We have three different companies, my brother and I, one of them being a cabling company that implemented it themselves, they needed to implement that consultant. So EOS has this great business model, they have consultants that help you through it. One of the things that I found very similar to you is if you just read a few chapters, if you implement a few of the things it’s a game changer. They have a lot of the processes that a small business can either forget about, or ignore, or just not want to think about because they’re busy doing other things. Rocky: And they can’t be afraid to. There are two big parts of this that I’ve told a lot of my customers, one is the people side, you can’t be afraid to recognise that people are gonna change. You have a lot of history and loyalty to these people, but you know what? They might not be the right person for the company, or they may not be in the right seat for your company. You have to recognise that people who don't follow your values, you can’t be afraid to trust the company. You’re putting food on many families plates here, you can’t let one person burden that possibility that another employee can't get fruit for their efforts. The other side is, those owners that are really being criticized here, when you pick up Traction, and you’ve been a company that’s been around five years, youre saying, “You should read this book because you’ve failed in the last five years.” that’s the connotation, thats the gut reaction, if you’re not the CEO picking up the book, you’re going to think, “Wait a minute, that CEO has to be vulnerable and willing fall on their sword.” If they’re not willing to be open minded and they’re gonna challenge everything, I’ve seen a few accounts get angry with us for giving them the book, because they felt that they didn’t need the organisation and it was just ridiculous and so and so forth — Brian: I think that’s where the implementer helps out quite a bit. I think that’s why they get paid the big bucks. They kind of even the playing field for those people who want to take over certain parts of the meeting, or do things their own way. That’s definitely true. We just got a lot of those books as well, it’s interesting that you do it for your customers. When you came down here, I remember you saying, as part of that intro that you were not that much of a data guy, but you’ve been using Traction all this time. Have you guys been doing the score cards and never got anymore into the data than that? How do you self describe yourself as not a data guy? Rocky: Because of simple things. Theres two big things that really resonated from the data driven workshop, that you took off on. One of them was simplicity. I like keeping data actionable, that was your number one takeaway. That’s me, this is why suddenly my ears prick up. The other is, not all data is automatically generated. You have to put in manual stuff once in a while, and that’s okay because you have to have some subjectiveness once in a while. A lot of the data that we operate on our Traction measurables, and our people analyser and our data element, is based on pulse of various metrics that are only actionable. I’m not a data driven guy, meaning I dont stare at a dashboard watching my billable hours for today or last week. I’m looking at this stuff on a day to day basis. I’m more looking at it as a pulse, I take the data and I only care about the percentage of change, I only care at the beginning of the month. I want to know my pipeline and I’m done. I don’t want to spend my time on the rest. So it’s not fair to say I’m not a data driven guy, but I don’t get into building 35 gauges and hour and end up wanting to have 27 TV screens — Brian: Fair enough, you’re here for the digital workshop. But you said you don’t really use it, but then your experience with Traction. You’re more on the simplicity side yourself, and I agree with you. Everyone else over complicates our product and we even waste too much time over complicating what we build versus whats actionable. Especially if you’re talking about under 100 employee type company. That’s what I enjoyed so much about Traction. It’s one piece of the puzzle, if you get that right just put it in the corner it needs to be in and then your business will improve. Looking forward, am I putting words in your mouth by saying that Traction has been a big benefit to you guys? Rocky: It’s very accurate, for us to be able to educate the rest of the higher level staff in where we’re going in this company, Traction has given us a way to talk about it intelligently, measure it, as time goes on. People know where they’re at on a consistent and level basis. Gives us the future planning in order to confidently say that we’re going there. Brian: Awesome. The one question, did you say that you put different people in the leadership team? Rocky: We do. We do a few different things than what Traction recommends. We have six positions in our leadership team, five that are stationary and one that is rotating. We do that because we have different issues, and sometimes the members in the leadership team are not hip to those tricks. They don’t understand what’s happening down in the trenches, and so I’ll bring in a helpdesk guy for six months. He’ll give us a ton of data that we didn’t recognise and wouldn’t be able to measure with that opinion and gut driven stuff. Its helped us talk to our people a little further. Brian: That’s awesome. We’re 25 minutes in and that might have paid for itself for someone listening in about Traction. I never heard that and it makes a lot of sense to rotate. I think you said earlier, to build the comradery and the team that’s gonna be in there, so that’s gotta be huge. Rocky: Employer loyalty is a big deal. I asked about your employer loyalty and how some of your tricks which I’m stealing. Some of them I’ve done. But, it’s important to give people the validation, and Im super transparent. I walk through the office and give a look to someone and they’ll know what I’m thinking. There’s a lot of challenges to working for that, but to give people a sounding block and show them progress and let them be a part of that team has enabled us to keep -- we have a lot of engineers that have been here a number of years. Those are numbers that people don’t talk about in IT, people job hop, people look for more money. Traction has helped some of that for sure. Brian: That’s awesome. What has you excited moving forward? The next year, 2018 through 2020, what are you guys fired up about? Rocky: To be fair it’s easy, the awesome opportunity we have today, we have business that'd be around forever. I have a customer base that’s massive. Everybody is throwing money at our doorstep. Every customer we talk too and everything that we do gets them wanting more. So, our biggest challenge in the next 24 months is to collect the money. In the sense to actually deliver the product, staffing is my challenge, keeping those people onboard, all the core focus, all my core values. But my vision in the next two years is, we’re getting rid of customers that don’t meet our criteria, we’re building plans to make it work. We may even start another company to support a certain portion of those customers that we feel there’s a market for, but our competition doesn’t. It’s fun and exciting, we’re gonna go up 50% or more in the next 12 months. Thats exciting. Brian: Does a lot of it have to do with having that reputation already built in? Are you able to just capitalize on it? Rocky: It’s really cheating. Everybody else is left thinking that they never got silver spooned a thousand accounts that were already loyal to them. And they’re right. But I was, and I am, and I’m thrilled. I’m going to take advantage of it. Brian: That’s why I had you on the podcast, this is hilarious. You said earlier that ownership grows year after year. I don’t know how much you can share here, but what is your long term vision for McNallan? What’s the game plan after you’ve grown 50%, after you’ve figured out how to hire staff, what are you looking at long term? Rocky: We have feelers out for various geographic locations and how we can staff those. Not necessarily people but more the sales side and that sort of thing. We’re looking at branching out geographically. We have so much opportunity in Minneapolis, it’s not a high priority but we have a lot of potential there. I have a number of guys coming on board that want to buy into a certain portion or want to be invested in this. They see the passion that I show as I really have some sort of profit share, and we’re trying to encourage those things. Encourage people to be part of the family and move forward with them thinking, “Hey, how can I build this business.” As it works out for looking after number one. The geographic thing will be awesome, I have volunteers wanting to go to a community that’s 100 miles north, or they can go to the other community that's 100 miles south, they may have family there and they want to be part of it. It’s exciting to see that stuff. That’s the longer term. We have a transition period of ownership, but everyone's on board and we’re operating on the same plane so nothing slows it down, or speeds it up. Brian: It’s gotta be a credit to you. How you guys have these engineers that have been around for 10 to 12 years, even before the Rocky era, they’re still as fired up now, what are you doing to keep those folks motivated? Competition is a part of it, in the leadership team, rotating them out, but what else are you doing that’s -- you would trust someone to go to wherever you’d send them to. Rocky: The trust has been a big deal. You hit that on the head. A lot of what we’re doing is trust based. We don’t punch clocks, never have and as far as I know. It’s not a thing this business does. It’s trust, family orientated stuff. If people have to get their kids, or be at a conference to be involved, do it. People will cover for you as you will cover for them. Giving opportunities for -- overtime opportunities, and comp time, and travel opportunities, and training, and all that continuing education stuff. Has led to us proving we are willing to invest in our people. Once you make that proof, rather than lip service, people stick around, they enjoy it. Brian: You said Traction, you’ve read a lot of business books besides Traction, who else do you see yourself emulating from a business perspective, if anyone? Rocky: This is a tough question, some people have a sports analogy or they like so and so, I’m really a no nonse guy and I don’t have any problem being transparent being blunt, clear, and I only fight the fight if I know I can win. I play to win attitudes. Brian: You’re like Bill Belichick then? I’m just messing. Rocky: I really want to give props to my dad, he was Mr Integrity. If anyone knows Vince Johns of the Minneapolis area, they know he was a great guy. I love that idea. I love that he stands behind what he says. That’s what I aspire to be, I want my customers to recognise that every time McNallan makes a promise we over deliver, and they see that we want to do it, and they see the passion. That isn’t always an IT thing so I’m excited to bring it to the community. My people are onboard with it. Without naming a specific name, and saying I like the way that Mike Tyson bites people's ears off, really really like the way that we’re forward thinking, and we’ll be sticking around because we are doing what we promised. Brian: Your fathers a good example, I would say the same thing for me, it’s a good example to have a good reputation if you’re building a company to last. A lot of folks in our industry dont have that aspiration, but that’s the type of person that you need to be. That’s probably why we got along so well drinking rum and wine in Miami. Now that we mentioned Miami, this isn’t a shameless plug. But, what do you enjoy about the workshop? Any takeaway that’s worth sharing with some folks here? Rocky: I know that BrightGauge’s main benefit for us, besides the simplicity aspect, is just being able to grab data from multiple sources and putting it into one. I have done a lot of IS programming in the past. I’ve built data warehouses and I’ve built dashboards. It’s been a profitable side of that business. What BrightGauge has done universally has enabled me and my customers to see clarity quickly and much more easily than the steps of data warehousing and all that antiquated crap. The data driven workshop really gave me insight into some of the APIs other people were doing. I do like knowing when people go down the wrong path, because you can chuckle. I also like some of the simplicity ideas you had. Like your example you shared earlier where a gentleman wanted a scatter plot, he wanted to know when hours were outside of a scope. That’s cool, I’d love to know that, but I just wanna know how many of those I have. If I get six that are outside of a 50% scope, I want that monitor to ding, and I’ll walk over to the service manager and give him an application for McDonalds. Actionable items really make it cool. I like the idea and the tools that BrightGauge has put in place for that. Happy hour didnt hurt, it was awesome seeing you start early, first guy pouring a beer and up at the podium not knowing what you were talking about. It made my day. That and the cuban coffee in the morning needed to understand what you were talking about so early in the morning. Brian: You and I are both realists, I think you said in the note earlier. It’s 35 minutes or so, if someone was to reach out to you and ask questions, what’s the best way to reach out to you? Rocky: My MySpace page got taken down but I can hand out my ICQ number. Email works great, just get in touch. I’m very interested and transparent. I don’t like people so I may laugh. But I enjoy the conversations. Brian: The last parting question. Is there anything you haven't mentioned that you can impart on folks listening. What is one thing that you’d say to do or think about. Rocky: I talk to a lot of companies and customers that talk about security and measuring security and risk. I can’t give enough stress on being super clear about the service you’re delivering. If your listener base hasn’t gone to the BrightGate section on how to run your business. They’re pretty good. I’ve read all of them. I’ve changed some of my ideas and my past experiences, in order to further that evolution. Look at those tools. Just like MSSP and all that stuff, but be honest you do things based on what your company wants at that time. They want you to build nine widgets. If you claim to have six widget machines in the back collecting dust, but actually run out and ask, “What’s a widget?” It’s good to know what your service delivery is. I can’t stress that enough. You can subscribe to our monthly podcasts over on Soundcloud.
Staying on top of success requires a little bit of luck and a lot of goal setting. Mainly though, it comes down to picking the right metrics to track. For this podcast episode our guest, Craig Pollack, CEO of FPA Inc. shares how he has come to build his company with a few Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) and a lot of focus on great customer care. Top episode takeways: How Craig got his start -- FPA was born The difference between the word client and customer Their top goals as a company: building out sales and marketing The balance between focusing on the numbers and customer care Service dollars generated is one of their driving metrics Wildly Importants Goals (WIGs for short) & Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAGs) _____________ Transcript: Brian: Hey Craig, welcome to the podcast. Craig: Hey how’s it going? Brian: Not too bad, not too bad. I know this is actually my second time hosting a podcast, and I was very excited to pick a familiar voice on the other end since we met last September in your offices. So how have things been going since then and the New Year? Craig: Things are great. Things are actually really good out here. We’re busy. Lots of stuff going on where we’re planning for a physical move. We are actually moving our offices this weekend. We’ve got a lot of fun stuff lined up, it’s all good. Brian: Can you imagine? That’s awesome! What’s the reason for the move? Craig: Oh technically the lease is up, and so really the big thing is we’re moving to a place that’s going to be a little bit culturally different that we’re looking forward to so it’s going to be a little more hip. The environments cool, and the actual layout of the office is going to be a little bit more conducive to collaboration, and more working together as a team so I’m really excited about that. Brian: That’s awesome. I thought you guys were in a pretty hip area, to begin with, so that’s how much I know LA. Why not give the listeners a background on FPA Technology Services: the company you founded. Craig: Sure okay. So the short elevator speech sort of is I started the company in 1991 so I’ve been doing this for quite a while. So about 27 years now I founded it with myself, and my partner. Originally my background is in Software Development so my Degree is in Computer Science. It started way back when we were working with accounting systems and accounting packages as a Developer programming them, modifying them, customizing them and implementing them. So really we started out with the software side of things and initially we did three things, we did Accounting System Implementations, we did Custom Programming and Web Development, and then we did Network Infrastructure you know the underlying systems to manage, and run the software applications. So fast forward, we grew at our largest point where there was around forty of us, and then around 2009 I split with my partner, sold off the accounting side and I kept the Custom Development and Network Infrastructure side. So right now we’re about 25 staff, and we since shut down the Custom Development and primarily focus on Network Infrastructure, Cloud Infrastructure, and PCIO Security, that sort of stuff. Brian: What was the reason for shutting down the Custom Software Development, and kind of focusing on the Infrastructure services side? Craig: Yeah, well you know the reality is you know that they are two different completely sort of businesses right, and we actually had a couple of applications out there nationally that were selling and supporting pretty specific applications, but they are out there nonetheless. But it’s just a completely sort of business in terms of R&D and development, and support of a Software Application versus a trusted advisor consultative sort of engagement and you know the business structure. It’s just two different pipes and we couldn’t really see this as more of the future for us, and what our focus has always been really around client relationships you know. In terms of our business again the quick elevator speech is we're a boutique sort of firm where we act as an outsourced IT Department for small to midsize businesses, it’s pretty much what everybody who is an IT Service Provider says. So what’s different about us is really is we are very-very service focused, and we always have been we are really about the client relationships. One of our pet peeves is the difference between using the word client and using the word customer. We’ve always kind of preached that clients are people that you have a relationship with, customers are people you sell stuff to, and we’re really about the relationship you know in a quick synopsis. We like to say we’re a Nordstrom in a sea of Walmarts. Brian: That’s right, that’s right. Craig: People say we’re more expensive than the other guys. If that’s the worst thing that they can say about us, I’m okay with that so we have to deliver on that. Brian: So I remember taking down that notice as a unique way of saying, and describing the difference between you and the other folks when we met in person there. So of the 25 people then what’s the breakdown of the team engineers, clients relationship people? How does that break down? Craig: Yeah so we have like I said we’re very service focused so other than myself, and my Marketing Assistant we really don’t have a Sales and Marketing side of the house, it’s just us. That’s two, we have in terms of HR and Accounting, and you know C-level administrative side we have 4 people so that’s 6 so that leaves about 18 or 19 service delivery folks. So between Engineers, NOC, Dispatch, Triage, and what we call Technical Account Managers we don’t really have Non-Technical Account Managers or Sales staff. So again we’re very much focused on the service delivery side of things. Brian: So the Technical Account Managers or TAMS we used to call them at Compuquip in the old days are they selling the product as well? And they were the ones they were closing an upgrade or are they actually an hourly rate of billable resource or both? Craig: I’d say it’s a combination of both but really they are Account Managers, but they’re not sales focused, they’re more solution focused, but they are the guys who are closing the deals. Their responsibility is existing clients, managing them keeping them, making them happy, and providing whatever solutions they need to have. And then we’ve got the delivery mechanisms behind that to go deliver. Brian: Yeah they’re the trusted folks. As if they have the staff, the team of staff I would say hey we recommend XYZ upgrade because we need it, and they have that technical know-how and the client relationship to be able to work the best solution for them that’s the dream. So does that mean most of your revenue or most of your businesses is recurring at least some MFP Contracts or is it projects one-offs as well? Craig: Well there’s a combination, but we’re right now probably I think we’re close to 2/3 or 66%, but somewhere 65-70% of our total revenue is recurring. Brian: I remember again going back to my old days we had about the same split, but then the other 20% more was within the same existing customer base, and 20% was random projects is that kind of how you guys see or are the other 40% all one time projects? Craig: No it’s actually all. I’d say it all existing clients whether it's project, out of scope additional T&M other sorts of things. We don’t really do one-off projects who aren’t already existing clients. Brian: That’s awesome that’s the dream for most of you know the MSP’s out there, but even to this day, there are folks that are transitioning that can’t say no that type of thing so that’s awesome that you’re able to do that. Craig: Yes it was definitely a transition period you know going from 0-2/3 and getting strong enough and confident enough to know when to say no. Brian: Does that and I know that couple years ago you actually switched to ConnectWise you used to have a custom homegrown. Looking back, when was the transition when you said alright we’re going to go down this pure services play? Was that at that 2009 mark when you got rid of Custom App Development or did you then do projects? Okay, I’m switching to services okay I think we need ConnectWise. What was that 2009 to now transition like? Craig: Right, so you know 2008-2009 was the quote on quote great recession. We definitely felt it up until 2009, 100% of our revenue was time and materials based and obviously some product and gross margin and what have you. None of our services were contracted, it was all just time, and material based. So I knew that we had to change in 2007-2008 in 2009 that’s when quote on quote Manage Services was really being a big push in the channel, and I really saw that as we got a transition out of this to get some stability around our revenue flow. And so that’s when we really started down the Manage Services vein and slowly but surely grew it at the same time we were running our own Custom Program that we wrote, and we didn’t transition to ConnectWise we didn’t transition to a non-custom application R&M Application PSA Application until June 2016. So a year and a half it’s almost two years but… Brian: What was the reason, the final push to make you do it? Just tired of maintaining? Craig: It actually worked really well, but I knew that there were some big issues with it. I knew that we were going to have an upgrade. I knew it was written in an old legacy language I mean it ran great, but it was a thick client, and they were limitations to it. And they were limitations to it in terms of what we could ultimately do with it. I mean it was good, but if I wanted to make all these things happen that I wanted to make happen with, and look at a Custom System. It was integrated with Outlook, it was integrated with our web portal, we had it was integrated with our dashboards, it was pretty cool they were a lot of stuff we had with it. We missed the boat on selling it 15 years ago when we should have. I knew that said I knew that we wanted to have these other functionalities added to it- it was going to be pretty expensive, and we want to continue doing things the way we did it or do we want to do things based on best practices and force ourselves rather than forcing the software to do what we do wrong to force ourselves to be more industry standard. And that was really the driver to move to ConnectWise, the ecosystem it was obviously a pretty strong product, and had strengths and weaknesses with things that ours didn’t have. But the ecosystem, and obviously BrightGauge, was a big piece of that. What are these other things that we could hold onto that we currently don’t have that would be really easy to add? And we knew we’re going to be developed in the future, and future-proof ourselves. Brian: Yeah and how was the transition? Craig: It was actually pretty good. I think that we ran into some snags, but it was a pretty hard cut off transition so come June 1st it was we’re diving in new times going in here we’re not running parallel you know our staff I’ve got to say they really took it upon themselves, and really embrace the new system. Brian: That’s awesome Craig: It was difficult but it has they embraced it, and we made it work not without a couple of hiccups and kinks here and there but you know we’re… Brian: I can just imagine the history within the old system that it’s just a huge move so it’s impressive you guys pulled it off without saying man I wanted to pull my hair out all the time I’m sure they’re a few moments that was like that. Craig: There are definitely times we went through a couple of different consultants, and a couple of different people from ConnectWise you know because we were software guys I mean we really push it. I mean a year and a half into it we’re told we were at like a 6 or 7-year maturity I mean we’re using a lot of it. Brian: Yeah that’s awesome, and you guys were the same way with us I can definitely see that being true like you said having the software mindset to begin with you said that a bunch that ConnectWise community we used to use it at Compuquip. I always felt that the ecosystem was one of its biggest if not the biggest strength that it has including and now they just bought HTG which is crazy including that ecosystem the partner in the community you joined HTG right since moving to ConnectWise? Craig: Yeah we did actually we’ve been in a little over a year we started last year last January so yeah. Brian: You’d be surprised how many people that we’ve talked to and therefore listeners are not a part of peer group what’s your take so far in the last year that you’ve been there? What’s the takeaway or you know maybe anything for people who have not joined, and thought about it? Craig: Well we were actually in another peer group beforehand a peer group called Vistage I would say Vistage is a little bit higher end in terms of they’ve got companies from our size to a hundred million dollar company. So you’re learning a lot of different things which is some stuff is really cool, and some stuff is not applicable, and that’s kind of why we moved to HTG to really have something that was just dialled inapplicable to us we’re going to sit in a room with 10 other people who own IT Service Companies from different parts of the country not competing so we can really peel back the onion, and compare notes how do you do this? How do you do that? What do you find successful with? What are you having problems with? It’s great I mean it’s really solid in terms of the benefits that it can add so if you have the time, and you’re at the right size to really be thinking about your business and how to grow it. Being in HTG is really worthwhile I definitely would consider that… Brian: Yeah HTG we have a lot of their customer base we have a lot of shared partner base, but it seems that when you say that size that you’re growing your business it seems that BrightGauge has this parallel target market if you will. That’s like okay you’re mature enough or big enough to have the time to look at things in a different way a little bit further back you have enough people that you need to manage it with data instead of being able to walk around and talk to everyone so there’s definitely size component. I know they have a group that is geared towards 10 and underemployed something like that there’s some other smaller group but that’s true about the size. So I know what you can’t divulge what you tell your HTG brothers in that closed room with the 12 of you in the last 12 months or the last 3 months you know what are the challenges that you are seeing that FPA is facing or the industry? What are you talking about what you think is allowed to be shared I should say? Craig: Yeah you know I think it’s the standard sort of stuff that most of our brothers are running into a lot of it is particular things like hey how are you guys? What’s your onboarding process for new staff? What is your hiring process for new staff? How are you accessing their capabilities? Or what are you doing to retain staff? Craig: I think the big question is always about sales and marketing and what are you guys doing and seeing in your markets? And the thing is to some degree we have a lot of similar issues, and it’s really good to process it and in other situations, they’re completely different. Brian: What’s an example? Craig: Well my sales and marketing mean in Los Angeles the ticket market is it going to be different than somebody in Montana if you market is a population of 500,000 and you were in your city or your greater Metropolitan area. I have 500,000 businesses here it’s just different I have 250 competitors so it’s different, and not that everything’s different just the pieces are different. Brian: So take me going down that thread there on the sales side so you’re doing what I would call the rainmaker sale right? You’re like a partner at a law firm you go in you can commit the firm price, everything builds a relationship, you’re the professional the ultimate professional because you’re the founder what are you looking to do? Or what the…that you're tossing your head and talking to folks is that to continue down that route? Or are you thinking of some other players on the whole gross side or on the sales and marketing side? Craig: Yeah I know that’s a great question I mean for us personally we’re at the place where we are now focusing on sales and marketing, and building up that side of the business. So up until this point you’re right I’ve been the rainmaker, and I’m the only one running point we did have a salesperson we tried that for a year and a half or so it was very poor performance it didn’t work out to get back over myself so my goal, my aspiration is to build up the sales and marketing function. So, I believe that first, and foremost we got up the marketing going to create the lead generation to be able to have salesmen generating closure obviously so the first step is building that marketing fund, and getting those leads going and hiring basically replacing myself so historically I’ve been the sales and marketing guys. So I’m replacing myself with Rian my Marketing Assistant, and developing that side of the business and the long-term goal hopefully within a year is to replace myself on the sales side of things. So that’s in a very simplistic big picture sort of way that’s my goal that’s what we’re trying to do obviously there’s a lot of tasks and things in between now and then to make that happen. Brian: What’s the marketing activities you started working on I mean you have Rian on board have you started working on what those marketing activities are going to be and started trialing everything out or just at the early stages of it? Craig: Yeah no we actually have a pretty well defined Marketing Plan now we rebuilt our website we went live with that in November that’s based on Hubspot so everything that we’re doing is very in-bound focused. So if you know anything about inbound marketing activities Hubspot’s kind of the key for that so doing a lot of that doing a lot of sort of other activities around events, and what you learn on webinars with knowledge transfers a lot of the quote on quote difficult sort of things. It’s just really ramping up the activity level and it’s the noise level around that it’s a numbers game right so it’s the more activity that we have or what we’re going to generate out of that. Yeah I’m always curious because the MSP’s the sales cycle is longer we sell $300 a month on contracts MSP sells 3,000 so it just naturally feels like it does get longer but you still have to have that engine and people that we talk to do both they say I got to merge with another company. So that I can have that other rainmaker sales person to grow this thing better than I can grow myself or the route of letting me make sure the marketing activities let me hire the salesperson to help at least identify the deals. But ultimately you end up probably being involved in almost every closure for at least a couple of years just to close the end of it. Brian: From your perspective with 18 or 19 service people that must be pretty well organized what another thing in the company that is top of mind for you that you are working on? I know you had a sales marketing hat on through what’s the other priorities that you’re working on right now? Craig: Right, well I think as a company our two WIGS if you’re familiar with 4X Book Wildly Important Goals number 1- is to build out the sales and marketing side number 2- is to leverage our Service Delivery Foundation that we’ve built up, and again that’s oversimplifying it in one bullet point. But it’s really the concept of really building up a culture of accountability with KPI’s and really defining what those KPI’s are obviously using some systems to manage and track those, and increase the visibility around them. So we’ve been building up a number of different areas organizationally, and redefining what our service delivery mechanism needs to be built up a level of Mid-level Management to run our service desks, at some promotions, and some shifts over the end of Q4 and getting a really well-oiled for 2018. And, so now we’re actually going through the Performance Planning, and definition right now of what we want to be done in 2018 and what’s that going to look like for everybody so we’re really excited about that side of things so not to pitch BrightGauge, but we’re a huge piece of that in our move one of the big deals is where all the TV’s going to go like with all our dashboards. Brian: Yeah and I appreciate you guys were impressively data-driven when we got there, and we met you guys last September so it was definitely very cool to see. I couldn’t believe it with a team of 18-19 engineers you’re just now putting in that foundational managerial level to kind of scale up so before things were kind of growing, and everyone knew kind of where they were in the different teams and all that stuff what was the driver to kind of formalize that thing? Things got too chaotic? Craig: It wasn’t so much the chaos as it was we could feel pain in the quality of service we were delivering so we knew we had tried a couple different changes we tried hiring somebody from outside, and bringing them into to be like a Service Manager where that didn’t quite work out. You know our COO right now was kind of managing people, but it wasn’t he was being pulled in several different directions so looking back it feels like a very natural progression to get it to where we’re at but it was definitely a number of hiccups, and speed bumps to get to this place at this point it was really organic and good. Brian: That’s awesome yeah you guys seem to run a pretty at least from the few conversations we’ve had a very calm company in the sense of letting the organic side of things play out, and the other things are and I’m not plugging BrightGauge, but I have to since I’ll have to get a tattoo one day of the company. But the very data-driven like I saw you guys there how does that play into your specific management style, and Kyle’s too? How do you see data playing in FPA’s growth so far and in the future? Craig: Yeah I mean that’s an interesting question that’s a great question, and I think for some people it’s difficult for some people because what I mean by difficult is I think a lot of people live in the black, and white either you’re a numbers guy or you care about people you can’t be both. It’s like how can you manage by the numbers, and care? And, you can’t you just use the numbers to help you make decisions you still have to make decisions’ and you have to make them in the confines of how’s this going to affect people? How do you deliver it? How do you manage? How do you drive? How do you help develop talent? How do you mentor? So I think for us it’s critical that we balance both sides of equation both the numbers and the people side so at the same time it’s like numbers don’t lie numbers are what they are and so you can use numbers to help you make a point you can use numbers to help you get to a certain end game it’s one thing to say hey we need to improve quality. It’s another thing to say well our Smile Back Numbers are 85% the industry average is 93% so it’s pretty clear we’re not as good as the industry average or inversely our Smile Back Numbers are 98% and the industry average is 93% were doing a better job than the industry average. But without those numbers it’s just a gut feeling, and you don’t really have like the visibility, and the transparency look at what are the levers that you can move or change to get better quality what are those things whether it’s resolution time, or client happiness, or whatever it is what do they say if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. Brian: Yeah sorry to interject but philosophically you and I aligned in the sense of it's not black, and white like we are Data Company ourselves and we managed very closely all of our numbers, but it’s not the whole story. Context is critical just so the data helps so do you have an example and if I put you on the spot by saying no don’t worry about it but do you have an example when that came into play? Where you had the numbers saying this but contextually it was throwing you off from the outcome or decision made? If I stumped you don’t worry about it I don’t think I come up with a bit more on my own either. Craig: Yeah, that’s a great question I mean I can think of different things that are more related to like ConnectWise not to plug ConnectWise but one of the things that we never knew we had buckets of hours for certain agreements, but we never charged people overages out of scope is pretty clear but overages we would know because we did not have the mechanism to track that. As soon as we go to ConnectWise all of a sudden hey look here’s our overages it’s pretty clear we’re going to start charging clients overages now the question is yeah the numbers are black and white but how do we manage that relationship? And how do we manage that new sort of twist to clients who they agree to this and now they’re going to get charged for it? Or we don’t want to alienate them and push them away and make them feel like it’s all about the numbers. So we had to kind of balance that and take those numbers and go in some cases we’re going to charge for it, and in some cases we’re not we’re going to have a conversation with the client to explain it to figure it out. I think that might be an example of where the numbers said one thing, but our human nature and our relationship with our clients we had to balance that. Brian: It reminds me of an example that people always ask us not us but I hear it often where it’s just like hey can you tell me this number that tells you which client is the worst something like that numbers can tell you a big piece of it there’s a gut feel to it there’s contact there’s the relationship that’s so much more to it so. It’s very-very true just to think of the number theme you showed it to me when I was there, but give me a sense of the dashboard and the numbers you look at now that you care about on a day to day basis I know you have a bunch but what’s the one that first comes to mind? Craig: Well the one that first comes to mind is I hate this because we’re not a sales company but the first thing that comes to mind what are our service dollars generated? So service dollars generated is pretty much the driver for Project Revenue which is like a month or two into the future we generate $50,000 in service fees this month in the next month or two we’re going to execute on that. So we have certain goals, and objectives in terms of what our months numbers are or what our individual numbers are, and we have a dashboard for all of that so we know I mean right now I can look at it and I’m looking up at it on the TV in my office right now here are my Closed Service Dollars, here are my Closed Produce Gross Margins, here’s my Closed MRR all that for the month. And, here’s what opened by Technical Account Manager here’s what our activity numbers are I know everything that’s going on right now. Brian: That’s in your personal office? Craig: That’s in my personal office Brian: That’s awesome you brought up the wigs which I have never heard of and I am supposed to be the goal expert here what was it? The wild something goals? Craig: Wildly Important Goals Brian: Wildly Important Goals I’ve heard of Rocks I’ve heard of the BHAG’s so there’s a difference so you had those… Craig: I was talking to our marketing company this morning from our weekly marketing call and they were like we’re getting really familiar with all your acronyms we know what MSSP is we know what MSP is, but what is this BHAG? Don't we know what that is? Brian: Exactly what is it Big Hairy Audacious Goal? Craig: There you go yeah Brian: So you said you had those two for the year you had mentioned you were sending weekly notes out to the company when we met in September does that tie in like hey weekly this is where we’re at with against X goal? Was towards the WIG of the year? Or the BHAG of the year? Or how does that work? Because I think it was pretty clever or pretty interesting. Craig: So every Monday morning I send out an email hopefully people read it, but every Monday morning I sent out an email to everybody and it depends on the week and what’s going on. It covers recent wins it covers kudos from clients you know different sorts of things that are going on at the same time I also sprinkle it in with how are we doing on some of our most important KPI’s? So just to give everybody a sense of where we’re at with certain KPI’s so it’s not specifically hey it’s a numbers think it’s all about the numbers but it’s more here’s the general sense thing but also the numbers are really important here are some markers and give you a sense of what’s going on and where we’re at against our goals. Brian: You did that weekly do you guys then get together monthly or anything like that to talk about these things as well? Or is the weekly email kind of keeps everyone aligned, and in sync? Craig: No we also have a monthly staff meeting so every month we go through the performance of pretty much in three different areas and the company as a whole so how our service delivery is doing what their KPI’s are and there’s 3-5 of those maybe 3-4 of those how our Account Managers, our Technical Account Managers you know client management are doing how sales and marketing is doing, and then how the company as a whole is doing. So we go through that every month yeah… Brian: So, I feel like you guys have a very dialed in way of running the company at least a feel, for one thing, need to evolve and change what are you looking at again as much as you can divulge? You’ve been doing this for a long time what’s the horizon through your goal that you’re kind of peaking at or talking to other people to get them excited about? What you plan for FPA? Craig: Yeah so I think we’re really excited by just where we’re at structurally, and our big push for sales and marketing, and what’s going to happen with that so that’s going to leverage us and allow us to leverage things and get us to another level. There’s the organic side and then there’s the non-organic side the organic side is probably just getting new clients and increasing sales to existing clients one of our huge KDI’s that’s really critical for us is our Total Expense Ratio to Monthly Recurring Revenue, and our goal is to get that to be 100% right now we’re in the high 70’s so right now that means our recurring revenue is covering 75-77% of our expenses. Yet 100% in everything else is icing so that’s one of our big KPI’s that we’re measuring, and I’ve got a dashboard up here where I can see it every month and see what to do, and so there is the inorganic stuff that we’re doing or the organic stuff that we’re doing, and the inorganic is the next 2 years I’d like to be a position where we can buy somebody and grow inorganically at the same time. So I’m trying to hedge my bets and do both of those things again I think we have such a solid foundation from a service delivery perspective that I think bolting some other companies especially if they are good rainmakers, and not as good at service delivery I think that would be a very natural sort of symbiosis to make that happen. Brian: Yeah I can see that we’ll wrap up here I guess I have one more question, and then you can share where people can reach out to you when they have questions who are you trying to emulate admire? Who’s the North Star if you will for you personally when you’re working as an FPA or even just life in general? Craig: That’s a great question so I don’t know how telling that is obviously they are people right now out there in the world doing what they do the Gary Vaynerchucks, Tony Robbins, they are really cool motivational sort of guys really cool stuff. I mean Gary V had some really good insight, but I’d say I’m very much sort of a competitive very much into sports so I would say that I try to at least to in my head model myself after someone like Magic Johnson or Wayne Gretzky I’m really about the pass. They are people who are scorers and they are people who are passers. And I’m really about you know passing if I can make somebody better around me that’s kind of what I get off on if I can develop talent around me that’s really exciting for me so. Brian: That’s interesting. Craig: That’s what I’m hoping to build FPA into what we like to say is that we’re modelled after a learning or a teaching hospital it’s like we really want people to grow and develop and get better I kind of say that FPA is like a pyramid scheme, but it’s not a scheme it’s like let’s develop our talent, and grow, and bring people in, and grow them. It’s kind of what I’m looking at. Brian: I’m sure we said that you were a pass guy I thought you said past meaning the 80’s Johnson and Gretzky are both big 80’s guys. Craig: There’s that too I’m kind of dating myself no one passes anymore right? Brian: No that’s true those are very good examples of the sports analogy I can see that especially resonating in why you built up a good foundation is that resonating with the team you have? That you care about them, therefore, you care about the company and the clients which it all kind of lets itself grow so that’s awesome with the fact that you can kind of know that about yourself is a huge help as well. So if some work at times we do get some follow up questions that I may have done a poor job of asking where can people reach out? And we don't want to put your email address on the website, but what’s a good way to get connected with you? Craig: Yeah I mean LinkedIn is probably the easiest way to find me, Craig Pollack at FPA Technology Services, or email you that’s cool. Brian: Yeah okay I’ll pass that along thanks Craig for doing this by the way I’m a huge fan not only what you’re doing on the BrightGauge side of course I loved, but also in the way how you methodically grow in the company and sticking around for this long. It is extremely hard to be around for as long you have so it’s a credit to you that’s awesome very motivating for even someone in my position who’s only been around for 6-7 years so thanks for coming on this podcast. Craig: I think that’s a thank you I appreciate that I think that was a polite way of saying I’m really old, but that’s okay. Brian: No we’re big into longevity here we want BrightGauge to be can I say as old as you guys no I won’t say it but anyway. Craig: No worries it’s all good no I appreciate everything that you’ve done BrightGauge is awesome you know like it’s so I don’t know if I can say critical, but key to our business and how we run it I mean not to suck up but it’s on my dashboard it’s on my TV screen every day no question. Brian: Yeah no we will keep at it that’s what motivates us so alright Craig thank you so much appreciate it. Craig: Cool no problem thank you.
