There’s a good chance you’ve heard by now about a handful of different peer groups for the MSP/ITSP industry, and for good reason - they bring results to business leaders. We’ve even featured some conversations on them here before, specifically taking a look at what to expect if you’re considering joining one.
This time we asked Ryan Markel, President of Take Ctrl, to join us for a conversation on how he’s grown the IT business he co-Founded, as a direct result of joining the Robin Robins peer group. Ryan shared with us about learning to lean on his new network of like-minded industry leaders, to the business lessons he’s learned, how to face and resolve hiring challenges as a leader, and even how to provide more value to customers by focusing on service.  

Leveraging Peer Group Resources to Achieve Growth: Episode Highlights

• Ryan’s intro and background (0:54)
• A day in the life as President of Take Ctrl: how duties are divided between partners (2:27)
• The decision to move from break/fix into a MRR model (4:49)
  • Lessons Learned in the Robin Robins peer group (The Producer’s Club) (6:43)
  • What size MSP business joins a peer group? (13:31)
• Facing the hiring challenge as a MSP leader (14:41)
  • A closer look at Topgrading and how it works (17:12)
• How Take Ctrl is driving growth each year (21:37)
  • Deciding on the price per user (24:37)
• Getting to know customers before marketing to them (27:10)
• New operational abilities that didn’t exist before adopting BrightGauge (30:37)
• Rapid-fire Q&A: best business book, blogs to follow, parting advice, and how to reach Ryan (36:32)

As mentioned in the episode:

Books: Scaling Up, by Verne Harnish and The Big Five For Life Continued, by John Strelecky

Blogs: Krebs on Security, Seth Godin, Technology Marketing Toolkit

An example of Asset Management using BrightGauge, as referenced by Ryan:

Want to find out more about The BrightGauge Podcast? Check out all the episodes here.