Building a Meaningful MSP: Growth, M&A, and the AI Revolution
Tim Fitzpatrick
MSP & B2B Professional Service Firm Marketing Consultant/Advisor | Fractional CMO | Build and manage your marketing engine to get where you want to go faster. | Remove Your Revenue Roadblocks
You've built a business, and like many in the MSP industry, you're navigating a rapidly changing landscape, whether it's M&A activity, cyber security threats, or the impact of AI. But with so much noise in the market, how do you create lasting value and a business that truly stands the test of time? In this episode, we're diving into what's really happening in M&A, how MSP owners can build meaningful high-value business businesses and what's unfolding on the front lines of cybersecurity and AI. Stay tuned for an insightful conversation that could redefine your growth strategy.
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Building a Meaningful MSP: Growth, M&A, and the AI Revolution
Tim Fitzpatrick
You've built a business, and like many in the MSP industry, you're navigating a rapidly changing landscape, whether it's M&A activity, cyber security threats, or the impact of AI. But with so much noise in the market, how do you create lasting value and a business that truly stands the test of time? In this episode, we're diving into what's really happening in M&A, how MSP owners can build meaningful high-value business businesses and what's unfolding on the front lines of cybersecurity and AI. Stay tuned for an insightful conversation that could redefine your growth strategy. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am really excited to have Craig Fulton from Evergreen with me. Craig, welcome, and thanks for being here today.
Craig Fulton
Yeah. Thanks, Tim. I'm excited to be on this episode with you.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I'm excited to dig into this. So before we jump into it, I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions if you're ready to jump in.
Craig Fulton
All right.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So when you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?
Craig Fulton
I do a lot of stuff, and people always ask me, Do you ever sleep? So here's the order of my hobbies, aside from my family: cars. So I do a lot of car restoration. I built a little shop and pretty heavy in that. If anybody ever sees me, you'll see I always have a blood blister on a finger. I think that'll happen for the rest of my life. Then there's fly fishing. I took to this when COVID hit, got out in the woods. I was like, wait, I really enjoy this, standing in the woods Like with the sound of water and the constant action. I could never just sit there and stare at a line in water. And then traveling around. Yeah, I love a good road trip. I have this role, staff the interstate and start a conversation with a stranger every day. And let me tell you, it's led me to some weird things. I've mowed stranger's lawns in Alaska. I have shared drinks on the outer banks with complete strangers in their campers. You will end up in some weird places. But it's something I learned from my mentor. It's like you can take the path most traveled, the path least least traveled. And then there's a third one a lot of people don't know about. You just go off road.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love it. That's awesome. You never know when you start talking to people, where conversations are going to go, right?
Craig Fulton
Yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick
What's your hidden talent?
Craig Fulton
All right. So I thought about this one. I grew up loving David Letterman, huge fan since I was five. And he had a thing on there called stupid human tricks. And I actually have one. I could do a dog bark.
Tim Fitzpatrick
You can do a dog bark.
Craig Fulton
So convincing that the dogs even come. All right. You want to hear it?
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I want to hear it. Let's do it.
Craig Fulton
All right. Let's see. Hopefully the microphone doesn't silence it. Let's see. Did you hear it?
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I heard it. Oh, my gosh.
Craig Fulton
I used to work at Accenture, an IT department, and we would play pranks. And I got into one of the server boxes once, and they're wheeling me through the office, and I was barking in there. People were like, what's going on? And the other techs like, I just found this dog, wandering around and throwing it back.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Oh, my God. That's great. Thank you for sharing that. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?
Craig Fulton
Have the courage to be yourself. Too many people think they need to be something else. It's like, don't worry about what other people think, be yourself. If they don't like it, that's really not your problem. And it's just not that person's off for you.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that's it. What's one thing about you that surprises people?
Craig Fulton
I guess... Okay, here's another weird one. I'm really into designer handbags. I just stunned some people in Australia last week when I was all excited about the Chanel store in Brisbane.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Now, okay, so do you carry the handbahs or do you just buy them?
Craig Fulton
I know my wife. She's also very happy that I'm into this. I think it's just, I'm really into the craftsmanship and the details. And then high-end luxury brands are fascinating to me. How do they get people to part with their money like this? And then I'm like, I'm doing it. The craftsmanship. I really get into, look at the stitching and the hardware and How do they do that?
Tim Fitzpatrick
You know what? I could see that, though. You're into restoring cars, right? So there is some transfer over into that.
Craig Fulton
The details, yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So, yeah, I get it. What does success mean to you?
Craig Fulton
Yeah. Success to me, this is something I end up talking about a lot. I read a great book called The Settle Art of Not Giving an F.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes, I have not read it, but I've heard of it.
Craig Fulton
There's a part in there where he talks about a lot of people will set their success on a financial number, owning a house, having this, having that. And when people get those things, they're left with a midlife crisis because they realize they set their success parameters on the wrong things. And when I read that, I'm like, wait, I was a victim of this as well. So my new success values are, at the end of the day, will people say, well, Craig operates with integrity. He delivers on what he says. He's a man of his word. Success to me is knowing I've lived up to those things, and I've helped people achieve their goals, too.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Here's what I really like about that definition of success. Those are all things that you can control. Too many of us, and I've fallen into the same trap. We set these metrics of success that we can't completely control, and you are destined to not be happy. And so these metrics or definitions of success that you've set, you can control. So you can be successful every day, which is awesome, and we should be successful every day. So thank you for sharing that. Where's your happy place?
Craig Fulton
I like to just be in the garage where the core is light and some music playing. The mechanic memes right now are like, Creeds blasting in the background. I do like some '90s rock, but just have some Motley Crue on. There's something about just staring in a car for hours on end I don't know.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. I like it. What qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?
Craig Fulton
It's the things I mentioned earlier, too. I like to align. I'm a very open person. I have a therapist tell me, Hey, you got to find your kindred spirits and link with those people, Craig, because you're a very strong emotional bonded person. So I do gravitate towards people that operate with integrity, deliver on what they say, or of their word, right? When I come across someone like that, I really stick to them and try and keep them close. Like, Can we be friends? I would really love to be your friend.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Recommended by LinkedIn
So tell us more about what you're doing at Evergreen.
Craig Fulton
Yeah. So a lot of people tune in. My memory from Connectwise. I was there for 16 years. I actually started with the MSP that was there. And I've had this wild tech journey. I got my first certification in '95. And a friend told me, got to get in computers. And I got Novels certified. And I landed at Connectwise at the MSP. Then I saw the software side growing, got into that, was a part of their community. And I met so many MSPs along the way. I watched people give up-time with their families, sacrifice themselves, building a business, struggling to make payroll, struggling to land deals, struggling to keep it together. And when I left and joined Evergreen, I believe, I mean, personally is the best option for someone looking for the next step in their entrepreneurial journey of selling their business. And I was really attracted because we operate with integrity. We deliver on what we say. We have an NPS score with our sellers of 100, because when we say this is how it's going to go, that's how it goes. And I was attracted to it because whenever Green acquires a business, we keep the business independent, keeps its name, keeps all the people there, keep the customers. We just work with it to grow. And we're never selling a company. And I think that really changes things. We're not after these short term returns, so we don't make short term decisions. And it really helps us preserve business because I absolutely love small business. I've tried building my own a couple of times. I'm not good at it, but I love that we keep that. I love that people can keep a career in small business because we preserve it. That's a mission I'm on, and that's what we're doing here at Evergreen.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. That's certainly, it's a very different approach than most in the space. Most in the space are buying and they're rolling them up, right?
Craig Fulton
Yeah, because we're a holding company, and that's why it's different. We're not a private equity firm. Yes, we do get funding from private equity, but I tell people, we were inspired. The founders were inspired by Berkshire Hathaway. And that's what we love. We love that they bought those companies and they still own them 50 years later. They've helped them grow. They've created wealth for everyone. There's a lot of corny statements out there. This could sound corny, but when I got into tech, I didn't have anything for a long time. And when I got connected to people in this community, and I learned from business owners and operators that helped my career connect-wise, and now I'm here, and I have this financial independence that is... It's just nice. I want everybody else to have that. It's a great feeling. To not worry about money every day is really, really a great feeling. I'm not Warren Buffet, but I live a modest life, and it's just nice. I want everybody that's helped me to have this, too. If that's what's important. And I'm not saying that's a success metric, but it helps.
The Current State of Mergers and Acquisitions in The MSP Industry
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, it definitely does. So, Craig, let's talk a little bit about the current state of mergers and acquisitions in the MSP industry. What's going on?
Craig Fulton
Yeah. And I do like to tell a little history. How did we get here? In this industry, you saw private equity come into the SaaS businesses. Totally made sense, right? Here's high EBITDA margin, high growth businesses hitting this rule of 50, 55, 60, which is the SaaS private equity love to tell that number because that's the combination of EBITDA growth and revenue growth, combine them together. And then all of a sudden they were like, wait a minute, there's MSPs here. They have recurring revenue, too. The numbers are smaller. A SaaS company, yeah, you can get 35, 40 % EBITDA growth. But a services industry business is going to be smaller. But you saw private equity about 10 years ago. Wait a minute. Let's invest in that, too. And you've seen waves of this, right? The first wave was like, we'll buy these businesses and we'll operate them on our playbook. Well, the SaaS playbook doesn't work. It's service. And I think they quickly learned and adjusted. It's like, wait a minute, we'll invest in big MSPs, make them the platform and roll a bunch in there. You still see that happening. That is an absolute try and true method. It works. That's more of the short term investment. It's like we're going to invest in this. We're going to find some cost efficiencies here, bring these companies together, roll out best practices, grow it, sell it. Shareholders get paid. That's great. And that's one option. And there's a lot of that going on. But I think what's happening in the current state is those businesses that started doing that five or seven years ago, it's time for them to sell. And you're seeing this happening. Some of the big platforms have sold recently into new ownership. And it's going to be interesting to see what change comes with that. I'm not saying everybody acquires a business and changes it, but they typically do, right? It's like, all right, what changes can we make to get more return out of the business? So we're going to see that happening now. There's more platforms being built. As more investors are turning away from public markets and more into the private markets. There's just more money coming in, like in the United States and North America, it's super competitive with M&A because there's a lot of money here and people want to put it in low risk, high return. That's an MSP. I think we're going to see more emerge. We're going to see the ones that have been around a while, they're going to maybe sell or they might recap, find more financing. That's happening. There's MSPs buying MSPs. That happens every day, joining forces. And then every market is different, right? In the UK, this is just, it's like in its middle territory where there are some platform rollups there that are about halfway through their journey. And Australia, New Zealand, there's not a lot of activity happening there. There was just a few big MSPs buying others. Now you're starting to see private equity go down into that market. But one thing I want to say, let's go say all this. And people are going to be like, what? I tell me all the time, chill on the M&A frenzy. Okay? Yes, there's a lot of activity going on, and I do feel this created a bit of a frenzy. And I don't exactly mean this in a bad way, but I do talk to people are like, I should... Craig, should I be doing something here? I feel ashamed that I don't raise my hand, that I'm buying somebody else's business, or should I be selling? And sometimes I'm like, no, no, don't feel bad that you want to have a lifestyle business and slowly grow it. There's nothing wrong with that. Ten years ago, I would have been, this is what I'm doing. I don't care what's going on. I just ask some people sometimes, it's just, hey, breathe for a minute. You're not missing out on anything. But if you're ready, there's people that are ready. Find out what your options are. I would say with the state of M&A, you're going to have a lot of people coming at you. And there's a lot of things you have to weigh in on. It's not the total purchase price sometimes. Total enterprise value. I always compare it to selling a house. If you list your house at $500,000, and you have a cash buyer come along and say, well, I'll give you all cash right now, 475 as is. Then you have someone come along and say, I'll give you 525. I, but I want inspections, and I want to build in these repairs, and we're going to... Look at deal. Look at the way the deal is. That's really important. Sometimes there's value in that that's not financial financial and how the deal is going to go down and how much cash you're ultimately going to end up with, what's the time periods and things. But there's just a lot going on, and I just beg people, don't get caught up on it. Breathe. The best place people can truly invest in their business is sales and marketing right now.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Thanks for saying that. I didn't pay him to say that. Yeah.
Craig Fulton
No. That was a long answer.
Tim Fitzpatrick
No, No, there's a few things I want to pull out of what you said because you and I talked about this before the interview about it's okay to want what you want. And if you don't want to sell your business and you're happy where you're at, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. And as business owners, we shouldn't feel bad about that, right? So if there's all this M&A activity going on and you feel bad because you're not interested in it, that's okay. And I appreciate you for saying that. Now, I also want to tail off what you just said, which is sales and marketing. I am biased, but if you do not have marketing and sales on the front at the end of your business generating leads that are turning into clients, you don't have business. You can be the greatest MSP, you can have the awesomest infrastructure in the systems. But if you don't have clients coming in, none of that stuff matters. And it is those two categories are things that I see MSP struggle with over and over again. I also think that a lot of MSPs see larger MSPs thinking, oh, my gosh, they're growing. They've got it all figured out. And the reality is a lot of larger MSPs are growing through acquisition, not through organic sales and marketing efforts. So it is a difficult thing in the MSP space because it's just it is a very it tends to be a very long sales cycle, which is why you have to have a system and an engine, because a lot of the people you connect with, they're not looking. They're not in that small segment of the market that is ready to buy. And so if you don't have a system to stay in front of those people, you're constantly going to be disappointed. So I don't know if there's anything else you want to add to that, but I appreciate you sharing that.
Craig Fulton
I can add to that. And the reason I brought that up is I get asked, Craig, I hear the valuations are six to eight X. Well, what drives it being eight X versus six? Well, there's a lot of factors, but a big one is, do you have a growth engine in the company? That's not the founder. And look, I'll repeat it again, do not feel bad if you are a founder-led sales company and you're working on referrals. It's okay. But if you're saying It's time to generate some wealth from this company. This is my retirement plan. I got to get aimed and focused on growing value in it. First and foremost, get your business development going. It's time to hire your first person in. We all joke, it's really not funny, but it's like you probably fire your first salesperson within 9 to 12 months because you're going to learn a lot about what it takes to manage a salesperson. That first one usually ends up managing the owner. And it happens a lot. I'm not saying it's every time, but I hear this often when I'm in peer groups talking to business owners. But you're a important thing. You got to get that system going. You got to hold them to a system. Are you using HubSpot to generate the leads? Are they working a pipeline? Are they entering opportunities in the PSA? Are they converting those? Are they creating quotes? Are they working a system versus, I'm a sales rep. This is my magic. Don't try and put a system on me. It kills the magic show that's happening over here. That person is not going to be for you because you got to get them working in a system. That's something we pride ourselves on Evergreen is we are really cracking the code on this. And we have found you absolutely have to use system. I use a system in Evergreen. We have a CRM. I talk to companies. I put my follow up date in there. I enter my notes. I keep And going, right? Persistence. Let's say all the time, you will get a higher return investing in a sales and marketing engine and function in your business than acquiring another company and merging the two. It will bring a higher evaluation.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, the other thing, too, that just blows me away. If you have a sales and marketing system or engine in place and you're acquiring all those acquisitions, you can plug into that system and maximize the return. But so many that are acquiring aren't doing that. They don't have a sales and marketing engine. And to me, you're just buying top line revenue at that point, which I don't know. I guess that makes sense. I'm not a private equity person, but-
Craig Fulton
Well, inorganic growth does not bring the value that organic growth brings because it's manufactured. And again, and that's okay. It's just good to know the expectation. One plus one does not always equal two situations. It could equal 1.5. And one thing I want to address, too, and I hope this doesn't step on you.
Tim Fitzpatrick
No.
Craig Fulton
I've seen people systematize referrals in a way that turns this thing into a growth engine. They rely heavily on their existing customers. They set up processes and procedures to draw referrals out of their existing customers. They turn this little system on, and that could be the system, and there's nothing wrong with it, but you got to have something. It can't just be, let's see what falls out of the sky and hits me on the head today, whether it's a referral or a conversation with a stranger. By the way, I've had that happen. I was in Pittsburgh at a game, and I started talking to this guy, and he's got a business. And I'll say, hold on a minute. I know someone you should talk to. That hit me in the head.
Tim Fitzpatrick
No, Craig, you bring up a really good point. Creating a referral system and potentially a program along with that is very often low-hanging fruit, not just in the MSP space, but just in general, because most of the MSPs I talk to are growing through referral. It is their largest growth source. And I say, well, how's that happening? And in most cases, it's just happening naturally, right? And so it's like, what happens when we put some things in place for gas on the fire? It is very low-hanging fruit. There is nothing wrong with it. You should be taking advantage of it as an MSP. In my experience, what tends to happen is once you've maximized that, you want to start to expand out into other categories because it's not necessarily consistent or predictive. But you absolutely should have a system around it, and most don't.
Craig Fulton
I love to give people some how-to, and I'll make this quick. Set up a time-based track with a customer that during the QBR, you ask them, hey, is this a business you can refer to me? Set it up to remind you monthly to reach out to new customers you brought on. Is there someone you can refer? Just give me a name. Create a bonus program. Hey, if you give us names to make introductions, we'll give you $500. If we end up landing the business, we'll give you 5,000. Just need to have something.
Tim Fitzpatrick
That's right That's right. And you highlighted a couple of the really great points in that customer experience where you should ask. Those QBR, support tickets, right? Did you solve a support ticket quick? All we're looking for are those places where it's an opportune time to ask and then have the system in place to do it consistently over and over again. So thank you for bringing that up.
How to Grow Meaningful Value in Business
Tim Fitzpatrick
So let's transition a little bit. As an MSP owner or an operator, what are things I can do to grow meaningful value in the business? And we may have touched on some of these things, but whatever we didn't, what other thoughts do you have there?
Craig Fulton
Yeah, sales marketing. The next one, get a handle on the solutions in your company. That's an easy lever. I think business owners to get surprised when they start asking around in their business, hey, what are the solutions we're Are you paying for a monthly here? It's like, you see these commercials on social media where it's like, how many subscriptions you have in your life? And it's like, oh, I have this. And then, no, Netflix, Paramount, the next scene, I'm like, holy, wait a minute. I'm paying $1,000 a month. I didn't know this. It happens in business. You start finding out you have all these solutions, and then you start finding out like, wait a minute, we haven't renegotiated this contract in a while, and we're doing more business now. Like, to me, that's a great way to grow a value in a business quickly is look at those expenses because most companies, tech companies have stuff. Another one, Get focused on growing recurring revenue or turning things you have into recurring revenue. Contracted recurring revenue is what drives high valuations. That's what grows enterprise value in a company. Because that's what everybody is interested in, is what is the contracted recurring stuff that reduces the risk? And I did this study in the past, and it was like, for every dollar you invest in your existing customer base, you get nine times return. Every dollar you invest in going up to new business is like two times. I'm pretty sure that was really close to what we found. It's because existing customers, you can cross-sell advanced cybersecurity into. You can start cross-selling AI, which we're going to get into in a second. Customers you have that you do a lot of project work with, can you start converting them into MRR customers, getting them on things. There's a lot of opportunity in the co-managed space. This economy got real tight there, and some of these bigger companies start outsourcing, maybe tier three work and some infrastructure work. And start cross selling into that. And a thing to be real important about, too, when you're growing value is don't make one customer be everything. We call it customer concentration, you do not want to concentrate a high amount of revenue on one customer.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Do you guys have a number that you look for specifically there?
Craig Fulton
Less than 20 %. Once it's over 20, it's like this is risky. Yeah, it's a lot. Here's the thing. We're talking about it right now. A big customer is an acquisition target in their industry. And then what happens when they get acquired? They have their own IT. Sorry, guys, we're out of here. One thing you want to protect yourself. You want to have a good contract in place with them with a termination clause in case they leave, well, you got to pay off the rest of this contract. That sounds good. And that'll be in their due diligence when that happens. But You got to make sure that one client doesn't start getting too big, because then and even if you're getting acquired or not, right, you don't want to send, oh, shoot, we just lost this big customer. You don't want to go through layoffs, right? So when you bring on a big one, get real focused on supplementing that revenue growth with others to keep it down.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. You know, Craig, it's funny we're having this conversation because I had a conversation this with somebody else in the MSP space who said that he was surprised at how many of the MSPs he's speaking with aren't categorizing their support tickets in their PSA. And it got me thinking about, I see another opportunity for adding meaningful value is just, are you tracking the right metrics within your business so that you have data to make really strong decisions about how you can make improvements and efficiencies within the business. Do you guys see that as well?
Craig Fulton
Yeah. I mean, you see it in retention numbers. There's two retention numbers to pay attention to. There's gross retention and net retention. And gross is you got a new customer in and are they sticking with those services? And then net retention is, are they adding services in? If you don't see high net retention, then more than likely you're not delivering great value and they're not getting more from you. Yeah, you should absolutely be categorizing things. You should be having an outcome conversation with the customer, right? And I don't know this is a tough one, but this is where AI can help everybody. I feel like I've been beating this drum for eight years. Not that I'm keeping track. I went through this product management class at UC Berkeley that changed my life. It was like, wait a minute. Yeah, we're not selling features and functions here. We're selling an outcome for a business. And MSPs are, too. The outcome they're probably selling their customer is through technology, you will meet your goals and be competitive and grow. We're not selling them back up and ransomware protection. We're selling them. You're growing your business with technology. And when you change that mindset, you start having a different conversation with the customer. It's not the, hey, we did these tickets and we solved these problems and you paid this much and we did this. It's, hey, we enabled your business like construction company. We enabled your business to work on more jobs with technology, complete your projects on time so that you could do more business. We provided this growth in your company. And people tell me, well, I can't understand all of this. AI to the rescue, right?
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes.
Craig Fulton
Start loaning these clients into copilot and all the work you're doing with them and ask copilot to create that narrative for you that you can have that discussion at the next QBR. And then that customer is going to be like, wait a minute, we can't do it at this company.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Look at them. I love that. I talk a lot about using AI as a thought partner. And that's exactly what you're talking about. It's like, hey, I'm going to load this data in here and I'm going to ask questions of the AI to give me some feedback. Analyze this data. Here's what I would like to do. How can I utilize this data to accomplish that? And it does a really damn good job at going through that very quickly, seeing things that we may not see ourselves. I love that.
What's Unfolding on the Front Lines of Cybersecurity and AI
Tim Fitzpatrick
What else is going on with cyber and AI that you're seeing that MSPs need to keep an eye out on?
Craig Fulton
Yeah. I mean, here's this is the obvious, right? Selling cybersecurity is hard because the customer is not getting like a tangible thing. They're getting a feeling of projection and real protection. But at the end of the day, the outcome for the customer That is all right, we feel safe and protected here. We can continue to grow our business and compete and meet our goals.
Tim Fitzpatrick
It's like insurance, right?
Craig Fulton
Yeah. It's a hard sell because you can't sell a thing. You can't say, here's this device It doesn't have any buttons on it. It changes your life. You're doing all this. You're saying you're going to be protected. And customers have a hard time parting with their money because they're thinking, wait, I could spend that same amount of money inside my business and generate this much revenue. But then you have to tell them, hold on a minute. I'm selling you low risk on that revenue is what I'm selling you here. So we've got to get better at selling the value of cybersecurity and delivering on0 That job is never done. That's the thing with cybersecurity that a lot of engineer minds have, because in an engineer mind, there's a beginning and an end. And there is done here. It's like, this is it. We're doing this right.
Tim Fitzpatrick
It's ongoing, right? I would imagine from the customer side of things, like with cybersecurity, it's operating in the background, so they don't see it. They don't have a lot of visibility to it. And unless something bad happens, they don't really care.
Craig Fulton
Right. And the people feeling it are the MSP. So you've got to figure out a way and leverage AI to help you deliver that value statement to the customer of what's happening. And again, I want to someone... Man, I wish I remember the name. I would love to give them credit, but they said, cybersecurity is protecting the revenue of that business, protecting the business. You got to frame the conversation right. And also in cybersecurity, everybody's tuned in has probably been to an event. What's the number one category vendor you see in these expo halls and solution pavilion? Cyber security. There's so many solutions out there. Just make sure you're partnering up with the one that makes the most sense that you're not buying something that's more than what you really need. And it's really well aligned. There's great vulnerability scanner software out there that helps you align the technology and you're getting the right stuff. It's a high risk game because of cybersecurity. So you just want to make sure you're working with the vendor you feel most comfortable with. And then it just goes hand in hand with AI, because this is my latest thing. I'm like, you see AI going after all these jobs, and everybody worried about their job. And I'm like, yeah, why is AI going after these intellectual level jobs? Can I just get AI to do my laundry? I would prefer that for me. Why is it... Let's get it doing the things we don't want to do, not the things we love doing. So if someone's tuned in to do an AI, if you make a laundry AI, I'll buy it in a second. Put it in a house and wash the cars and all this. But the reality is, AI is complementing the higher-end jobs, digital side, but goes hand-to-hand with cyber, because right now, we're seeing AI come in and everyone's just a lot of talking and a lot of headlines and a lot of features to buy, and people are still trying to figure out how can we monetize this. But right now, like you said, it's complementing my thought process, helping me there. But I think we're going to start to see it get into the physical side of things over the next five years, where you're going to start to see, all right, we're going to start putting sensors on things. We got to put a sensor on this fuel tank. We're going to put a sensor on this vehicle. We're going to put a motion sensor, this, this, this. And now AI is going to start getting into the physical world. This means more devices on the Internet. This means more things to manage. This means more things to secure. We got to get ready because I... This has been my latest talk track. It's like when I was a tech and I worked at help desk, it was like, Craig, you got to support 100 to 150 people. Those are the ratios. Then managed services came along. We got RMM. We got all these tools that, all right, 250, 300 endpoints per tech. We're pushing this. This is going to be 750 to 1,000 because of all this stuff. Ai is going to help. It's going to help scale. And it's time to start adopting it. And I've got examples of how I've seen people leverage AI more than just ChatGPT and create revenue streams already. Again, it's an AI frenzy, just like everything else. But yeah, that's what I take.
Conclusion
Tim Fitzpatrick
Craig, this has been awesome, man. I appreciate you taking the time. Any last minute thoughts you want to share with us before we wrap things up?
Craig Fulton
Yeah. I'd say the next five years are going to be interesting. We've got a lot colliding. There's M&A, there's investments, there's AI, there's cybersecurity, there's growth, there's scale. Everybody's got to focus on scale. But at the center of all this, what we cannot forget about is customer experience. Something I learned in product management is map out the customer customer experience that you want to deliver and then map out the customer experience you're currently delivering. Find weak spots, find gaps, start working on those things. Because at the end of the day, I mean, these are people getting your product and service. They got to feel good about what they're getting. And it's that classic, if you build it, they'll come. If you do the right thing by the customer, things will fall in place. You could catch up on the rest of the stuff, but just don't forget about that. So At the end of the day, most people working in MSP or a product manager, and they don't realize it, right? They build a product, they build a service, they're delivering it, they're billing on it. You got to make sure the differentiator is the experience the customer gets. What's it feel like? Are they aware of you? What's it like buying it from you? What's it ongoing? What's the build process like? Think about all these things in that journey and just make sure you're building something that's going to be resilient and can scale. That's what I would be ingrained. Everything I do would be have that weaved in it.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. Craig, if people want to connect with Evergreen.
Craig Fulton
Yeah, there's a website evergreensg.com I love this. If you go to the bottom, Sydney Hockett's phone number is right on there. You can call her phone. She's going to kill me for saying that, but you can. Or you can reach me, cfulton@evergreensg.com. But one thing I want to say is, you don't have to sell your business, but we'd love to have a conversation. I'd love to hear what your journey is, what your long term goals are, the whole team would, whether you're selling today, five years, even as someone else. We love to help people grow their business. We want to see people be happy with the outcome of their next step. And we're invested in the community. We want to see the whole thing grow, whether it's through us or someone else.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Head on over to EvergreenSG. Craig, it has been a pleasure connecting with you. You guys got to go connect with Craig because he seriously is incredibly genuine and I mean, he means what he says. So even if you're not looking to sell, connect with them. You will enjoy the process and the experience. So, Craig, thank you for taking the time. I appreciate you. Those of you that are watching and listening, I appreciate you as well. You can connect with us over at rialtomarketing.com. You can also head on over to revenueroadblockscorecard.com. When we help clients build their marketing engine, we focus on nine key areas. If you want to know which the nine are you can do it. So take advantage of it. Again, Craig, thank you. Thank you to our listeners. And until next time, take care.