For each edition of our printed MSP Success Magazine (sign up to get your FREE subscription here), we feature an MSP who has excelled at growing their business and give you tips and hacks you can swipe. This story features Bryan Hornung with Xact IT Solutions. He made one, KEY decision that he says was his “secret to success” this past year. Read on to learn what it was.
What Are The Top 3 Metrics You Use To Measure Your Business And Why?
We look at sales to make sure we are adding to our funnel and the sales process is working. Next, we want to make sure we are being efficient with our money. Part of that is looking at our labor efficiency ratio and working on that every month to improve that number.
Another big indicator, from our customer service standpoint, is what we call our reactive hours per endpoint. This is an indicator of whether we’re doing a good job for our clients. If a number starts to skew downward for a particular client, we can dive into that and make corrections from a high level.
What Is A Top Lesson You Had To Learn That Allowed You To Kick-Start Growth In Your Business?
I had to learn how to delegate and get out of my own way. The more I delegate, the more we grow. Also, we had to learn to create a process, an environment, and a culture that will, when we do insert somebody in a role to take those duties on, allow an employee to be successful in that role. There are going to be mistakes and failures. I’ve learned not to let failure prevent you from continuing on that path of building a team and delegating.
It’s easy to have a mindset that you can do everything better yourself. But training and delegating people to do the roles in your company is what leads to growth. I consider good leaders to be good coaches. If you’re a good leader, you’re a good coach. Being a good leader means you can bring people up. You can teach them a new skill that allows them to create more wealth and more income for themselves.
If you’re not helping the other people around you or think you are the only one who can handle it or get it done right, it is counterproductive because you can only do that for so many people before you run out of bandwidth. Embrace the idea that you’re a coach.
Your job is to coach and skill people up by teaching them how you did it. Don’t get frustrated if they can’t do something right away. If you keep your own emotions in check and understand nobody’s perfect out of the gate, have a coachable person in front of you, and are willing to coach them, then you have a recipe for success.
What Would You Say Was The Single Secret To Your Success This Past Year?
It was definitely our decision to move into the mid-market. We traditionally built the business on SMBs. With cybersecurity and the opportunities we saw, we thought it was a good idea to start targeting mid-market companies. We shed 20% of our revenue from the SMB market in the first half of 2022. We were still at zero revenue from the mid-market by August 2022, but by the back end of 2022, it really started to pay off for us. By December 2022, we’d added $30K MRR from mid-market companies, and in March 2023, we were at $45K MRR from mid-market.
Mid-market companies are acquiring other companies, and they’re growing quickly. If you can land mid-market companies, you’re going to be adding seats and revenue without having to do additional marketing. While a small business may only add one or two employees a year, mid-market companies are adding 20, 50, or 100 people in a shot. That can dramatically change your business.
What Was The Biggest Challenge You Had To Overcome This Past Year?
We had to figure out how to craft the marketing to get to the decision-makers in the mid-market. With mid-market companies, you could potentially be targeting three different roles: CEOs, CFOs, and IT directors. The three of them care about very different things within their role and organization.
We had to learn who those people are, what makes them tick, and how to get their attention with our marketing. We had to learn to create three different messages for the same market depending on who we were addressing. We were really stuck in the mud for a while, but once we got it figured out, it started working.
Name A Partner Or Tool That Has Helped You Along The Way And How It Helped You.
We built our security practice on RapidFire, which is a Kaseya product. That was a big piece of how we built our cybersecurity practice and our reputation over the past five years. We’re deeply involved in RapidFire Tools and all their suites of products for cybersecurity.
In addition, RocketCyber increased our ability to provide 24/7 security to our clients around the world, and that was another tool extremely important to us at this stage. Having eyeballs on somebody’s network 24/7 and being able to detect malicious activity is critical today. Working with Kaseya and using their tools to provide these solutions to our clients is tremendous for us.
Who Would You Say Is The Most Impactful Business Leader Whose Techniques Or Leadership Style You Emulate, Follow, Or Are Influenced By?
I’d say John Vanderslice from Sandler Strategic Solutions Group. John helped us build a rock-solid sales process. He also worked closely with me and was the one who called me out on a lot of my behaviors that were counter-productive to my being an effective leader. He’s the only person in my 19 years in business who came along and called me out and held me accountable to that level. Not only has he made me a better leader, but he’s also made me a better father and husband.
What Book Would You Recommend To MSPs Or SMBs Trying To Grow Their Business?
Read “Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want From Your Business” by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters. It shows how to understand your role in your organization, whether you’re a visionary or an integrator, and how finding the right person to work with can make your business thrive.
In Closing, Any Specific Advice Or ‘Words Of Wisdom’ That You Would Give To Other MSPs Looking To Grow Or Build A Successful Exit For Their Business?
Work with industry experts on pricing and packaging, and get rid of the head trash. Far too many MSPs are not charging nearly enough for what they need to do today to protect and serve their clients properly. When they don’t charge enough, they cut corners. They leave the clients vulnerable. We’re constantly going in and discovering this across the board.
It’s prevalent and common. I would advise MSPs to really understand their costs. Understand that a profitable and valuable MSP looking to exit is getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 70%–80% gross profit. When you’re trying to build those kinds of margins into what it costs to do this, you’re quickly at $250–$300 a user.
Many MSPs are afraid to charge that kind of money, and we’ve been charging that for over five years. The key to why most MSPs, in my opinion, don’t grow is that they just don’t charge enough money and are afraid to ask for it.
For more information on Xact IT Solutions visit www.xitx.com
