From IT Support to Strategic Technology

00;00;02;15 – 00;00;35;02
Speaker 1
Welcome, everyone. To the fractional operator. I’m Mike Nelson from hourglass SaaS, the operations platform built for fractional by fractional. And, you know, the last couple of podcasts, really had me thinking about data and the fact that really, that is what hourglass is all about. It’s having all the data that you need to be able to make informed decisions in one place, one pane of glass, so that you can run reports, see where it’s happening, see where everything’s going, and then make informed decisions based on that data.

00;00;35;04 – 00;00;46;01
Speaker 1
So check us out. Hourglass, Ask.com. And without further ado, let’s get to our show. We are joined today by Lauren Groff from Groff networks. Lauren, how are you?

00;00;46;03 – 00;00;46;10
Speaker 2
Hey.

00;00;46;10 – 00;00;48;09
Speaker 1
Pretty good. Yeah.

00;00;48;11 – 00;00;51;13
Speaker 2
I appreciate I always I always love your energy. Mike.

00;00;51;16 – 00;01;08;10
Speaker 1
Thank you sir. You know, I, I solely have caffeine to thank for that. Lauren. It’s, nice. I always, I run myself very well. Caffeinated for most of the day. If you saw me in the afternoon, you might not even recognize me. You know, you’d be like, who’s that guy in Big Lump over on the couch?

00;01;08;12 – 00;01;13;21
Speaker 2
You should be my. Or, my operations manager. She’s. Oh, yeah, I got the. She’s got the mug all day, too. Yeah.

00;01;13;24 – 00;01;39;20
Speaker 1
The. You know, I mean, whatever it takes, Lauren. Whatever it takes. So, Lauren, you know, kind of to kick us off, probably, you know, obviously fractional operator. We want to get into some of the CTO work that you guys do, but more than that, we want to talk about you, your business, the story of it. You know, as we were just talking about before we started recording 21 years in business, which is quite a accomplishment for any business, right?

00;01;39;20 – 00;01;53;04
Speaker 1
You know, we know we all know the stats, right? Lucky to make it harder, even luckier to make it five years. But making it 21 years means you’ve obviously done some of the right things and you’ve learned some lessons over those 21 years.

00;01;53;04 – 00;01;55;10
Speaker 2
So yeah. And so me.

00;01;55;13 – 00;02;02;16
Speaker 1
So we want to talk about that. But before we do, maybe just kind of, you know, tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your business.

00;02;02;19 – 00;02;26;20
Speaker 2
Yeah. So, lovely wife of 26 years. And five kids under that. The oldest is as old as the business is. Happened about the same time now, and then gone down through, 11 as the youngest of five. The boys in the middle, the 16 year old and, Yeah, that’s. But not a lot of fun there.

00;02;26;23 – 00;02;49;03
Speaker 2
But yeah, as far as, graph networks, we started as outsource IT support, you know, managed services became a thing while we were in business like we were before it was even a thing. And software. Right. Enabling that, the promises of all the software, like, we we should be able to be proactive now.

00;02;49;05 – 00;03;11;29
Speaker 2
Yeah. We bought this expensive piece of software. Yes. I mean, we learned pretty quickly that it’s about people process and really dedicated time to, to make it proactively actually work and happen. Unfortunately, most of our industries, we’re we’re adrenaline junkies. I have to rehab. Adrenaline junkie, you know, kind of kind of thing. We have to get over chasing the chaos, right?

00;03;11;29 – 00;03;34;26
Speaker 2
I think that’s one thing that, gets a lot of, in any business, right? Gets us stuck. Is the fire, the crisis, you know, not taking the time to plan strategically what you’re doing the next quarter, what you’re doing the next year, three, five and so forth, sort of thing. And so that’s been some of the big, you know, pieces of success for us is like pulling in the fractional coaches.

00;03;34;26 – 00;03;54;01
Speaker 2
Right? Sort of piece and, you know, and in fact, the one that we had the longest, he fired us because it’s like you have already been with me two years longer than you should have it. Like, so they actually we actually have a cycle of, of, you know, going, going through different, different coaches, you know, for a few years and then, yeah, changing up, sort of things.

00;03;54;06 – 00;04;16;24
Speaker 2
I definitely believe in the fractional models. You know, early on, the only thing you outsourced was your hosting of your website. Yeah. And and your payroll. Right. Like, those those are the early, you know, kind of setting the stage for what could be outsourced. But HR we, we have in our head of HR, as it were, is, outsourced.

00;04;16;26 – 00;04;38;00
Speaker 2
That’s fractional. Our CFO is fractional, even though I do have an internal controller, slash bookkeeper, type of thing. But yeah, obviously we we bang the drum on. I would, I would position a little bit more as CIO. See, as I usually use, I usually think of CTO as like, you know, like if for yourself are you have something that knows the nuts and bolts inside that software, something.

00;04;38;00 – 00;05;02;20
Speaker 2
Right. Like you have that that role. So this is less of the technical that we’re focused on when we’re consulting, when we’re coming in, and we’re helping with the strategy so that the CIO is what we used to call it, or instead of fractional, we would say virtual, whatever, like the CIO, kind of thing. But that’s what we did when we planned your when you should replace your computers.

00;05;02;22 – 00;05;25;06
Speaker 2
Right. Like your servers old. You should replace it. Yeah. Unfortunately, largely became with without early on for us without a process underneath it, without dedicated time, without charging the right amount, all the sorts of things that go into actually getting, something not only proactive, but strategic.

00;05;25;08 – 00;05;28;09
Speaker 2
It was just virtual captain Obvious vehicle, right?

00;05;28;09 – 00;05;30;17
Speaker 1
Like virtual Captain Obvious.

00;05;30;19 – 00;06;00;19
Speaker 2
Right? Like, get your servers old. You should. You should replace it. I mean, you just got three tickets on this server. Mr., client, you you should really replace it. Like, there’s obviously there’s not a lot of process or people, you know, and and definitely not, 357 questions that, that, you know, you’re asking of the client month in, month out at a technical level to know that, hey, you know, your servers next year or the year after that, it’s not not making as far as you want it to because you started doing video.

00;06;00;21 – 00;06;21;04
Speaker 2
Right. Like you change your strategic, you know, objective, sort of piece because, you know, then when we were virtual Cap Navis back in the day and unfortunately, many, many MSPs are still there, you find out that your server needed to replace I mean, it’s not the server anymore. It’s just the analogy, because we’re in the cloud for small businesses these days.

00;06;21;04 – 00;06;49;24
Speaker 2
But just obviously the analogy is tangible, right? The sir, you know, you get that message that the server is 90% full on January 7th, right? Like the budgets are already set for the year. If they’re fiscal, calendar year type of thing. And, they would have loved to know that in December, right? Yeah, yeah. They already spent a extra 30 grand that they had for, for that because I had to get it out, out the door.

00;06;49;27 – 00;07;13;12
Speaker 2
And in that budget. Yeah. Like so so it’s a different thing, you know, be able to sit down and be able to manage it. So that’s, that’s kind of our CIO background as far as fractional, but we’ve positioned in recent years, last three to 3 or 5 years to more strategic technology advisement. Okay. And it’s really fun to come of age of this with eye because everyone’s like, oh, you can help us with.

00;07;13;13 – 00;07;39;11
Speaker 2
Yeah. It’s like, yeah. But for a small medium business, the opportunity isn’t actually in AI as much as what this is, is so many things, such an exciting time to be a small medium business SMB, because technology is way more accessible. Yeah, right. Doing automation, connecting your pieces of software, like nobody should be doing double data entry anywhere, right?

00;07;39;18 – 00;08;05;15
Speaker 2
And you don’t you don’t need AI to to solve that problem. But why when you’re going to invest any time, of course, is going to be part of it. And everyone’s branding everything as I automation is I yes, whatever. Like artificial intelligence it has it has a level, you know, of sophistication that automation doesn’t. But I think there’s so many opportunities that small businesses really need to be looking at where somebody who can take the time and understand their business.

00;08;05;15 – 00;08;21;28
Speaker 2
We sit down at a strategic level and really figure out, all right, what what is your business plan? I just like we have a coach and I doing the strategic planning. Like I can tell you, you know, the one three and five year plans type of thing, mission vision type thing. Like we ask our clients what that is for that.

00;08;22;01 – 00;08;58;06
Speaker 2
And we want to be involved in that, to accept that they’re willing to have us, when they are setting that plan, but definitely understanding what it is, because as we are spending time in their business, not not just remotely fixing things, but that’s still a lot of what we do on the support side. Right? But as our proactive, dedicated, proactive people are on site running and managing the data and you know, the things that need to be looked out and managed and ask lots of questions of they’re also looking and seeing what in the world are you doing over there?

00;08;58;09 – 00;09;22;21
Speaker 2
You know, some of the some of the things that that have been witnessed. Again, using a know the old school analogy, the print out, they took something from the facts and they went over to the scanner and. Right, right. Like so I mean, that’s a fax server, right? That’s old school solutions. So that’s the analogies of things seen all the time that

00;09;22;23 – 00;09;44;23
Speaker 2
They, they didn’t really know that they needed building access controls. Right. Until like the management of the keys, you know, one of the, one of the, one of the people and one of our people, they just met them on the site for one of the locations, and they got there and like, well, we can’t get in because so-and-so six they have the key is like, yeah, okay, well let’s talk about that.

00;09;44;25 – 00;10;02;11
Speaker 2
Right. And we don’t do building access, but it’s still those sorts of things. Like we want to help the money make up the business, make more money, grow faster, grow the bottom line, those sorts of pieces. That’s when, you know, and so now give you a more modern example.

00;10;02;14 – 00;10;27;07
Speaker 2
One of the, one of the clients they want to do, they want to look at other projects. Right. They, they want to be able to query their projects details in order for the next project to really put that together. And they know that AI is going to do the actual final thing. But setting up that data structure, getting that positioned, and this came out of the conversation of where you want to be, where are you going?

00;10;27;09 – 00;10;46;27
Speaker 2
Source of and he wants to be he wants to be a firm like 2 or 3. They want to function as a firm 2 or 3 times our size. All day long, all day long. It’s going to be automation. And, yeah, AI is going to be part of it. But but that sort of thing where our strategic technology advisor understands where they’re coming from, where they’re going at the business level.

00;10;46;29 – 00;11;16;09
Speaker 2
And then it’s like, well, have you considered this as a as a technology sort of piece removed from their tickets? Right. Yes. We got to do tickets. Yes. We’re going to have opportunities that they need to. You really need to consider X, Y or Z because of your issues that your people are reporting and what you’re doing day to day and where you want to go, even with the speeds of the server and infrastructure for those so unfortunately are still stuck on a server or looking at, you know, what the pieces are changing in, Microsoft 365, the pieces changing that.

00;11;16;11 – 00;11;38;13
Speaker 2
Yes. We have to advise and consult on all that. Like that’s that’s table stakes I think for a managed service provider, outsource I.T source stuff or co-managed where there’s internal and external. But the strategic technology advisement, I think is really the really that sort of piece. And, you know, they would be budgeted probably with CIO as far as the general concept kind of thing.

00;11;38;13 – 00;11;46;21
Speaker 2
But again, our industry is kind of stuck. CIO is as though technology management type stuff. So.

00;11;46;24 – 00;12;16;00
Speaker 1
So, a lot to unpack there. And I’m sure I think I have 17 questions based on things like that. But I will, you know, like one of them is I mean, well, first of all, I’m going to rename the podcast to, Virtual Captain Obvious. That’s it. That’s amazing. Because I think every single, you know, fractional at some point in time kind of feels that way, right, with some of the conversations.

00;12;16;01 – 00;12;36;19
Speaker 1
And part I think is because we deal with it so much, whatever it is, the industry that we’re in, that to us it really is obvious. Right? So, but I, you know, one of the things that really hurt that I heard in there was your, ability to pivot with the market changes that you’ve been presented over the last 21 years.

00;12;36;19 – 00;12;40;26
Speaker 1
Right. Because when you started, was it just you?

00;12;40;29 – 00;12;43;20
Speaker 2
I was fixing laptops in my basement. Yep.

00;12;43;22 – 00;13;12;24
Speaker 1
Amazing. As my favorite business owner stories, right? Is that it almost always starts like like that. Right. And then you grow into this huge business over the years. But one of the things that it takes is your ability to adapt, see opportunity, change what you’re doing, how you’re doing. And so I guess the first question I have based on that and with the idea for our audience, like, you know, if you are the the man or woman in your basement right now doing the thing right, like what?

00;13;12;24 – 00;13;27;24
Speaker 1
What did that look like for you over the last 21 years? To be able to recognize, like, I need to do this differently. The market’s changing. We need to change either me as an individual or us as an organization. Like what does that look like for you?

00;13;27;26 – 00;13;48;15
Speaker 2
I mean, the couple different pivots along the way. I mean, going from time, a materials break fix sort of business all. And oh five when I started, and it was it was called computer consulting at the time. Nice that that meant I fix a computer like consulting. Like we did not know what the word consulting meant. Yeah.

00;13;48;17 – 00;14;07;07
Speaker 2
To the the ebb. A manager managed services where all these tools don’t work hourly anymore. So you can’t charge at all. You have to charge monthly. And then we realized the results that we can do if we put actual proactive, dedicated roles in place. And that’s what we that’s what we sell, right? We sell an entire sort of product there.

00;14;07;09 – 00;14;29;05
Speaker 2
Whether or not, you know, it’s partnered with internal IT or it’s fully outsourced, depending on the size and complexity of the business and what they got going. That was a pretty big pivot. Then there was definitely peer group type stuff that got me into it and then figuring it out and then go out. So always working with other industry leaders, selling their sort of stuff.

00;14;29;08 – 00;15;00;02
Speaker 2
But more recently, well, I think the next phase was really cybersecurity and figure out what is what are the cyber offerings to put in place. Because default is to like sell the antivirus replacement EDR are the bunch of bunch of the alphabet soup type stuff. And then I sell cybersecurity again, coming from the consultant sort of perspective where we want to help the business, like there’s there’s factual CSL we can talk about it with.

00;15;00;03 – 00;15;03;04
Speaker 2
What does that look like? And what does that.

00;15;03;09 – 00;15;04;29
Speaker 1
What what is CSO.

00;15;05;01 – 00;15;32;09
Speaker 2
Yeah. So CSO stands for Chief Security officer okay. Right. That that perspective of somebody running the strategy project. Manage your initiatives. Right. Somebody that comes alongside and really helps push those things forward. Now we do some of that inside. Yeah. For our IT clients. Right. We do some of that as part of our strategic technology advisement. But we expand it out like it’s a pretty big market.

00;15;32;11 – 00;15;58;10
Speaker 2
We, we’ve provided some of those services to non clients, non IT clients. So that was one pivot. Like how do we do this. How do we package it. How we bundle it. How do we make money on it. Type thing. And then and then more recently obviously what are we doing around taking the consulting that we’ve been doing for our clients now, doing that outside of our client base.

00;15;58;13 – 00;16;21;27
Speaker 2
Obviously I is a big, you know, like flashy on the front of it. Because that’s what, you know, people are buying. They’re saying, oh, my goodness, I don’t want to I don’t, you know, I’m we’re falling behind in our industry. We don’t want to fall behind yet. We don’t want to screw it up. Right. Okay. So many are the create their own breaches.

00;16;22;00 – 00;16;45;23
Speaker 2
Right. Because it’s just not set up right. The guardrails aren’t in place. The policy isn’t set. The education isn’t set. The the comfort level isn’t set. Some are going to be, when I’m one of my consultants, one of my, I consultants, one of her favorite analogies is running with scissors. Right. So you got you got the agent you got going.

00;16;45;25 – 00;17;04;26
Speaker 2
But Matt, but coming and sitting down with a business and helping them figure out the strategy based on their business. Sure. For I, but even bigger is what’s next for technology. What’s next? What’s next? Pretty exciting one for for a nonprofit that we just engage with. We we don’t do it. They have an internal I.T. They have externality.

00;17;04;28 – 00;17;28;14
Speaker 2
We’re coming in and we’re sitting with them and and we’re saying, how are you going to make more money? You are a nonprofit that just survived Doge last year, right? They know they need to get money from elsewhere besides the feds, you know, besides the fed and state structures. So, you know, they’re engaging the figure and, and we’re just gonna help them figure out the software to put in place, like, maybe they need a business consultant as well.

00;17;28;14 – 00;17;44;20
Speaker 2
Maybe they have it kind of thing. But we’re asking the questions from the result of that how to put in place, you know, what are the next pieces of software that are going to help them, the power, make them efficient. And yeah, some of it could influence their process and whatnot. But yeah, we can help companies make more money.

00;17;44;22 – 00;17;49;16
Speaker 1
So do you look at it from.

00;17;49;19 – 00;18;09;26
Speaker 1
The types of opportunities that people approach you on to say, you know, like, hey, this isn’t something that we currently do, but it’s something we could do. So like when you’re going to add like a new service, like that’s it. So like is it you’re talking to someone, they’re asking you to do something. It maybe it’s not something that you’re already doing and you’re going to say yes to it.

00;18;10;03 – 00;18;18;21
Speaker 1
Or is this something where you’re deciding, like, hey, I see an opportunity in the market, I’m going to go out and find these people to talk to.

00;18;18;24 – 00;18;44;04
Speaker 2
I follow like I really love peer like that element of week in, week out. I am with other technology leaders from across the country, right. And half the time they have higher expectations of what we can do in this business than I do. And so I want to I want to run with them. Right? I want to continue to raise my expectations, encouraged to increase my discipline, around around activities and business.

00;18;44;04 – 00;19;12;18
Speaker 2
And what, you know, our team is doing type stuff. So I’m listening right to what they’re doing as well. And, you know, we’re finding things as well and then bringing that to it. But that’s that’s shared. We can we can act like, I don’t know, like a $50 million. It could be between the ten of us, you know, working together as, you know, 3 to $5 million businesses, type thing because, you know, we can help each other with those, sorts of ideas and, and pieces.

00;19;12;18 – 00;19;38;08
Speaker 2
And so we pick then our leadership team picks like, okay, what do we want to go after? Like we throw up hurdles, opportunities, do the Swot, you know, figure that out and and do that on a quarterly basis even definitely annually reexamine where the, where it’s at and what we’re going to do next. And, you know, we put it on sometimes we fall flat on her face trying to do something new.

00;19;38;08 – 00;19;49;25
Speaker 2
And other times we, we get some, get some traction, and we, we we, we judge the market, right? Based on peers and based on the conversations we’re having.

00;19;49;27 – 00;20;18;21
Speaker 1
It’s interesting you say peers because, I mean, I’ve been doing podcasts in multiple industries now for about 5 or 6 years, right. We’ve got our local podcast that we do for small business owners locally. We’ve got our blue collar startup that focuses specifically on the trades. And then obviously now fractional operator I gotta say, I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve been in where business owners like yourself have talked about the value of that peer network.

00;20;18;23 – 00;20;27;04
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I would love to know, like I guess, first of all, like, how do you find a peer network? Like what does that look like for someone?

00;20;27;07 – 00;20;30;29
Speaker 2
Well, there’s so many IT companies out there, so there’s a whole bunch of peer.

00;20;31;03 – 00;20;32;11
Speaker 1
It’s easy to find.

00;20;32;13 – 00;20;53;13
Speaker 2
Their communities for us. Yeah, some industries obviously if there’s only, you know, a handful of that business in our metro. Right. They’re going to have a little bit more trouble, you know, finding finding what’s that bit. But if, if you look you know, I mean you’re, you’re going to the trade, your trade, you know, association, trade conferences, all that kind of stuff.

00;20;53;15 – 00;21;13;24
Speaker 2
There’s, there’s something there. And if not, at least working with a coach who might know, you know, some others, if there’s if there’s a theme, right, to find a coach that that special, you know, maybe even has a couple clients like you like that’s helpful as well. Even a, like, official peer sort of thing is not put together.

00;21;13;24 – 00;21;36;20
Speaker 2
But I mean, start your own peer thing, like just. Yeah, get together with one other, I don’t know, an example of something that might be at that level, cleaning companies. Right. Like, like there is one like that talking to one of my friends that that runs up. I think he found something international like that he can do.

00;21;36;20 – 00;22;00;13
Speaker 2
And so, yeah, you just pursue it. It’s super valuable. And and obviously the better ones are. They all raise your expectations of what’s possible. Will you bring it back? And you implement some of the things that you’re learning? Yeah. Yeah. Even one, one company that we talked about potentially consulting with them, they have a couple peers.

00;22;00;15 – 00;22;22;18
Speaker 2
They’re in a couple they’re in an overlap of, of different trades. So they’re a little bit unique. So trying to find like their exact thing might not be, but they can find the peer for, for one of their, one of their main areas that they’re, that they’re hitting. And then yeah, it’s just getting in there and think tank accountability is a big help for me for sure.

00;22;22;18 – 00;22;42;04
Speaker 2
Out of that, which they’re not all structured like that, but it’s been helpful. But getting that input and feedback I hear I hear a lot of ideas come from, you know, those those peer ideas about their technology, for example. Right. Because that’s yeah, that’s where we’re at. That’s where we’re closest on that sort of aspect.

00;22;42;07 – 00;23;00;21
Speaker 1
Yeah. It’s interesting. I used to in one of the interviews I did maybe a couple of years ago, the business owner was talking about that. He was in a peer group, and they were huge on accountability where they would like each quarter they’re getting together. They were bringing their numbers in financial statements like where I am like, here’s where I was supposed to be.

00;23;00;21 – 00;23;14;14
Speaker 1
And, I mean, they got into it and they would, not just meet live quarterly, but they also I think they, they did like monthly, like zoom calls or something along those lines. Is that accountability? Is that the kind of stuff that you’re looking.

00;23;14;16 – 00;23;39;22
Speaker 2
For now is it’s weekly. Every other week we do operations. Every other week we’re doing sales. So there’s sales accountability and even, even some who aren’t doing the sales themselves, like they might have a salesperson running all wholesales underneath them, like there’s the owner still reporting on the sales, and we’re asking them questions about it, type stuff.

00;23;39;22 – 00;23;58;08
Speaker 2
We get operations every other week, and then we get like, next month I’ll be in Orlando and we’ll be, you know, spend two days together. Really deep dive in on how the quarter went, what our problems are to some great idea contests, you know, do a little bit of, you know, sharing of ideas and that sort of capacity.

00;23;58;10 – 00;24;06;26
Speaker 2
And yeah, that’d be a sales and marketing pre day, as well. Then we’ll all, huddle in and bring back those ideas.

00;24;06;29 – 00;24;27;05
Speaker 1
How do you, oh, I’m sure you probably handle it very well, but I’m, I’m, you know, it’s, as a business owner, right? We’re, we’re quote unquote, our own masters, right? And, we’re accountable to no one. And, it was that a little uncomfortable to get used to it first, when you first started doing those peer networks where there was an accountability side of things.

00;24;27;07 – 00;24;52;19
Speaker 2
That’s a good one, because I would show up and I would like, you know, shuck and jive, just like, I’m gonna tell them, tell them what? They I think they want to hear you. Right. It didn’t it didn’t change me, like, at first. Like, until it’s like I could be honest, get the honest feedback. And because we were, like, average of eight people in one of these groups, it would be every two years that I’d be on the hotseat, you know, quarterly, type type stuff in each hotseat.

00;24;52;22 – 00;25;15;03
Speaker 2
And we would get we would get real, right, and then find out what stuck up here. You know, what’s what’s stuck in my belief that has me thinking, you know, I’m still in the basement fixing laptops as opposed to, you know, doing a, you know, creating a world class, it company. Yeah. Right. So, so there’s there’s always steps along the way of that, to get there and.

00;25;15;03 – 00;25;35;07
Speaker 2
Yeah, they help. They help me see the blind. You know, you’re familiar with, the Johari window. Know where, I, I know some things that, you know. I know some things that you don’t know. So that’s the hidden, you know, some things that I don’t. So that’s the blind I’m blind on this area. You can see it.

00;25;35;09 – 00;25;58;22
Speaker 2
And then obviously those things that both of us don’t know about, you know, about me, that type of thing. And that’s, that’s, that’s a tool that we use in EO. Speaking of peer groups, at an organization that, yeah, that really helps us learn and see. And so that’s what those hot seats always have been, really helped see where I’m stuck, why I’m stuck there and what it’s going to take to to get out of it.

00;25;58;22 – 00;26;22;03
Speaker 2
And I’m sure it’s each growth up there. I mean, that’s we’re always hitting ceilings. And I didn’t even realize I was hitting the ceiling last year, but I knew something had to change, right? So growth was flat, kept adding clients but losing stuff and not most of it. Not even forever. No fault of our own, but we had to grow faster.

00;26;22;05 – 00;26;48;16
Speaker 2
Right. Just, just just the nature of the business like small medium businesses is volatile. And so we, we were doing decent on sales, but we needed to do better and come to the point where I needed to add another person, additional processes needed to change up. Some of our process, overhaul some things and obviously also belief that, well, I can’t really hand it over until I can afford it or whatever.

00;26;48;16 – 00;26;58;10
Speaker 2
I was stuck in thinking, and, yeah. So now we’re now we’re on onto the next, next focus and initiative.

00;26;58;12 – 00;27;26;24
Speaker 1
Yeah. You know, you’ve said a couple of things already in this interview that I have legitimately dealt with recently. One of them was I hired a fractional CFO. Right. And this is something for years I knew I should have done because I’m a sales guy. I’m a marketing guy, that the financial side of the business is not who I am or my strong suit.

00;27;26;25 – 00;27;45;27
Speaker 1
Right. So it’s always a struggle, which means it’s always a mess. And, I just finally made that decision and it was such a hard decision to make. But then as soon as I made the decision, I was like, oh, that was a really good decision. You know, like, why didn’t I do this three years ago? Five years ago, ten years ago?

00;27;45;29 – 00;28;05;10
Speaker 1
But the other thing you said as well was how you get so stuck in the putting out fires side of things. Right? And you kind of get a I think you said you get addicted to it. And I actually had that realization, in the last couple of weeks where I was looking back at the last year’s business.

00;28;05;10 – 00;28;35;13
Speaker 1
I’m like, wow. I’m like, I don’t enjoy all this firefighting, right? But I haven’t fixed the problem to eliminate all the firefighting I’m doing. So obviously, like, I’m keeping myself in this scenario. I, I would love to hear from your, viewpoint and experience, you know, what was it for you that finally helped you understand that? Like, I’m, I’m addicted or my team or as a company were addicted to this firefighting, and we need to move away from this.

00;28;35;15 – 00;29;01;03
Speaker 2
Well, I mean, it’s it’s built into the industry. It used, it used to be literally the financial incentive. Time and materials. We we needed things broken. Yeah. Right. Like and and the promise of a monthly contract you know. Okay. Now we’re on the same side of the table. If I can help you save time and money from fewer problems, that’s going to save service.

00;29;01;03 – 00;29;30;09
Speaker 2
That’s time and money we can spend you know more time on higher, higher value things. Preventative, strategic. You know, that’s all we always wanted to get to the strategic level. But we couldn’t like starting out like my cash flow comes from broken things. Right. So so getting to the point of literally switching the business model, you know, managed care is going through this now, you know, the pay for service versus the outcomes based, you know, care.

00;29;30;11 – 00;29;54;08
Speaker 2
It’s the same sort of things like you got to go that transition because your money still is coming from wanting people to be sick. Yes. Versus versus, you know, getting paid better for that. I actually don’t come back. Yes. For the, for the second, aspect of things. So really looking at it from how do I get that wedge in between the reactive and proactive.

00;29;54;08 – 00;30;15;04
Speaker 2
And for us, that’s, that’s when we added a person that was just doing proactive and tell you what, get out of the office. Go, go sit in front of the client. You’re not early on and say, okay, fix a few things, but get everything over to the people that are fixing things and and get to what we can prevent.

00;30;15;06 – 00;30;31;17
Speaker 2
And so it’s that flywheel. You got to start turning it. You got to start somewhere. Pick your low hanging fruit. Who the heck is your noisiest client? It’s how we looked at it, right? What’s what’s your noisiest thing you know in your life? You know, in your business process? You know, how much time is it going to take to fix?

00;30;31;17 – 00;30;46;00
Speaker 2
It’s like, oh, it’s gonna take way too much time, or don’t do that one. I do something that’s low hanging fruit ROI that’s, that’s, that’s, you know, more and more how where it’s like and how much time or money to invest to get what return. How soon is it going to pay for itself, either in time or money or both.

00;30;46;02 – 00;30;57;28
Speaker 2
Right. And so grab some low hanging fruit so you can get that wedge thing, get that breather, and then maybe go after your, your biggest opportunity, to invest in.

00;30;58;00 – 00;31;30;14
Speaker 1
You know, it’s interesting how you frame that with moving away from TNM break and fix, hourly. How are we want to describe that right into that recurring contract based work? And I never really looked at it that way. Right. Like where it’s that recurring work is what allows you to be proactive. If I understand what you’re saying correctly, exactly how it allows you to be proactive, it allows you to have a client that never has to call you.

00;31;30;17 – 00;31;44;05
Speaker 1
And, you know, and I guess my question would be at some point, do clients, because they don’t have to reach out to you, feel like they’re getting less from the contract because they’re not in fire mode.

00;31;44;05 – 00;32;03;18
Speaker 2
All the time now? Well, well, that’s that’s why, you know, we put that person on site in front of the client and it’s and we aren’t showing up there to say, hey, what do you got for me today? That’s reactive mode. Like, oh, you have something you didn’t report your service. Just let me help you open that ticket, because I have a long list of things that I’m doing for preventative maintenance.

00;32;03;20 – 00;32;33;07
Speaker 2
Okay. Right. So and that’s the relationship. We don’t even have servers there. There’s no reason we need to show up there. Right? Right. And sure, we have some clients that are even out of the area and we’re doing them virtually. But that day is dedicated, right. And we’re checking in. We’re checking out with our point of contact like it is about setting them foundation because yeah, we we don’t want any tickets, but we just we don’t want to just sit back and like like we want to change the world through small medium businesses.

00;32;33;13 – 00;32;54;01
Speaker 2
We want to help them change the world. And to do that, we’re looking how we can influence and affect the technology decisions that they’re making that are going to help them fulfill their strategy, help them fulfill their mission. Or reach reach where they want to go. And to do that we have to we have to be proactive, obviously prevent things.

00;32;54;03 – 00;33;24;04
Speaker 2
We have to be secure, you know, do all those sorts of things. And then on top of that understanding of the business that that proactive technology role is, we’re calling it a client success manager. We used to call it technology alignment management, like it was aligning to a standard. It’s managing the client to success. On top of that role is the strategic, you know, strategy changing technology advisement, really getting them looking out and seeing the success.

00;33;24;04 – 00;33;47;29
Speaker 2
And the more clients that are like that, obviously, then obviously the less noise, the less reactive. But we’re going to spend a lot of time right now chasing new things for and with them, learning new things. And this is where vertical ization really makes a lot of sense. Really doubling down on for us as engineering engineering firms.

00;33;48;01 – 00;34;07;05
Speaker 2
We investigated a couple of the verticals and we we love a lot of them, and we have a bunch of clients that we’re going to have for a long time. They’re not engineer. That’s fine. We’re still taking on clients that aren’t engineering because our pipeline is 17 years in the making. So we have, you know, a lot of opportunity that we still have to walk through kind of thing.

00;34;07;05 – 00;34;28;09
Speaker 2
But more and more, our pipeline is going to be, you know, in that engineering space, followed very closely by nonprofits, just by the nature of, you know, what we’ve done. And so as we do that now, we get to know those problems. We get to go deeper in those problems. We get to know those business problems that have technology solutions, regardless if we’re going to implement it or not.

00;34;28;09 – 00;34;39;24
Speaker 2
There’s so many different ways that can go after the consulting, but that’s we get to help be that catalyst for change and help them implement something that maybe they didn’t even know they had an opportunity for.

00;34;39;26 – 00;35;05;26
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s interesting because I remember, in previous years, one of the problems that we had with our recurring contract work, you know, our subscription work or whatever, whatever label we want to put on that flat monthly fee for a scope of work that repeats every month. One of the things that we ran into was clients didn’t really understand all the work that was happening behind the scenes.

00;35;06;01 – 00;35;21;01
Speaker 1
They don’t understand all the things that work can make, you know? And so, you know, every few months we’d be having the conversations like, well, what are you guys doing? You know, like a couple Facebook posts. And it’s like, well, no, that’s that. I mean, that is part of it, but there’s a whole bunch of extra work.

00;35;21;01 – 00;35;49;22
Speaker 1
And to be fair, it was one of the reasons why with, our hourglass software, we created the client portal so they can log in and see every single minute that was that was done every single day, right? So they can get scope on it. But also what I hear you saying is you you created a position for people to go into, whether virtually you’re in person, to kind of assuage that, that misnomer that you’re not really doing anything right.

00;35;49;22 – 00;35;57;22
Speaker 1
Like, no, no, no, we’re doing a lot of stuff. It’s just you don’t feel it because we’re doing such a great job. Is that fair? Yeah, yeah.

00;35;57;22 – 00;36;18;14
Speaker 2
And that’s that’s the sort of thing of, you know, if is the client is a mess support wise, technology wise, old crap breaking all the time. Whatever. You know, so you got a boulder rolling down a mountain, you know, that whether it’s, you know, we don’t know the distance to the village or whatever, but, you know, there’s going to be an incident or an outage or whatnot.

00;36;18;14 – 00;36;43;10
Speaker 2
So, like, slowing down the boulder, stopping it, pushing it uphill. Like once you get to the top of the mountain, you still gotta keep a hand on it, still gotta walk around, you still maintain it. And then obviously you know that in that process as well, we’ve we’ve discovered along the way ways that are going to help their business, you know, slow down their boulders and, and, and and grow.

00;36;43;12 – 00;36;47;02
Speaker 2
Yeah. Get out of their own way. Yeah.

00;36;47;05 – 00;37;11;23
Speaker 1
Lauren, I know, I know, we’re getting close on time here, and I don’t want to tie up all day, but I, you know, 21 years, obviously, just from the quick couple of minutes we touched on it. Your business has changed a lot from fixing computers in your basement, to where it is now, where you’re, you know, you’re running teams yet you have tons of clients, you know, like you’ve got a full fledged business, right?

00;37;11;25 – 00;37;26;20
Speaker 1
As you look back at that all, if you were going to say one lessons learned or give one piece of advice to a fractional that maybe there in the first couple of years of their career, what would it be?

00;37;26;23 – 00;37;49;23
Speaker 2
It was one of the biggest turning points, for us was getting the core values captured, like we had done core value work before, but it wasn’t effective. It can’t build it with everyone in the IT who’s in the room. If you don’t even know if some of those shouldn’t be in the room. So I think but if you understand of captured, maybe, you know, we did it with a coach.

00;37;49;25 – 00;37;52;07
Speaker 2
We did it with my good friend Dave Borland.

00;37;52;10 – 00;37;54;07
Speaker 1
I was gonna say was in Portland.

00;37;54;09 – 00;38;20;18
Speaker 2
When I was CEO. IOS. Yeah. Was was our first, kind of methodology there for, for that. But the, the process going through, I figured out what the core values are, and we just updated it too, because there is one little thing hanging on that just always had more of a conversation. I was like, I think that’s another core value, type thing.

00;38;20;20 – 00;38;24;05
Speaker 2
But the secret to the advice?

00;38;24;07 – 00;38;46;09
Speaker 2
You get those core values. And now, you know, obviously, if you’re going to start bringing in subs or employees, the sort of thing like you need that, that lens to be an inside good or not. But it’s also for the clients, right? The clients that you take on like you, you don’t want to be bring in ones that are, you know, completely out of alignment with what it is that you want to do.

00;38;46;12 – 00;39;01;26
Speaker 2
So figuring those out, just so you can help have that healthy right lens, both for, you know, potential employees, partners. Yeah. Even vendors. Right. And but definitely our clients.

00;39;01;29 – 00;39;04;27
Speaker 1
At.

00;39;04;29 – 00;39;09;16
Speaker 1
I said so many questions. Laura. We’re happy to have you have you back on here. And another.

00;39;09;18 – 00;39;12;24
Speaker 2
Part so I love this is how.

00;39;12;27 – 00;39;29;21
Speaker 1
One last question though, before we let you go here. I, you mentioned a couple time business coaches working with people like Dave Portland from iOS. Well, I love Dave. I think it might have been the last episode we did. Might it might have been Dave that was on the show. Actually, he was just on recently.

00;39;29;23 – 00;39;48;13
Speaker 1
So and I love iOS. I think it’s amazing. But, as far as business coaches in general goes, it sounds like you’re an advocate for using coaches. How do you evaluate what a good coach is for where you are in your business and who you are as a business owner?

00;39;48;15 – 00;40;08;16
Speaker 2
Yeah, and it goes into two different directions for me because one is the coach. Like, who is the one who’s helping us with our strategy, like our quarterly annual type initiatives and, and what we’re going to do outside of the day to day to move the business forward. So there’s there’s there’s some but there’s a facilitator for that.

00;40;08;16 – 00;40;34;05
Speaker 2
So that’s a coach. But for me the peer groups have a coach, right? I’m like a group coach or, you know, the the peer coach whatnot. And and for those but so for the individual running, you know, helping us run things. Right. That’s that’s been like, can you help us be effective in our strategy and planning? The, the group coach, the peer thing for me.

00;40;34;08 – 00;40;52;14
Speaker 2
Some of the metrics, like I started out with a peer group, right. And it was built around sales and marketing because that was like what we needed the most at the time. And, and, and she had a package, and, you know, process. And so that was my first group, like getting in the room with those like it was amazing.

00;40;52;14 – 00;41;11;15
Speaker 2
Just the ideas like I loved, like the dinner before because we were just exchanging ideas like, oh, you’re doing that, like that. That kind of stuff was just so new to me at the time. I was, you know, definitely early on. And then the next group for that, like the expectations were just higher, for what we can do.

00;41;11;17 – 00;41;37;20
Speaker 2
So partly because of their experience and the same thing now with, with, the group that we’re working with, like, the expectations are higher. And obviously there’s a connection, right. Along the way, there’s a personal connection, or synergy, you know, like, cultural fit as part of it, but that they get me right is a is a big, big part of it.

00;41;37;22 – 00;42;03;19
Speaker 2
But industry is helpful for sure. Not always necessary because again, as we consult with, our clients, the themes come up. I could go we can go a lot deeper when it is the same, of our primary target and vertical. And, so that’s helpful if you can find someone that’s like worked with others of your industry for sure.

00;42;03;21 – 00;42;06;12
Speaker 2
Oh, yeah. Amazing.

00;42;06;15 – 00;42;22;05
Speaker 1
Laura, I really appreciate you coming on. And good seeing. Enjoyed seeing you again. Of course. And, you know, like I said, I the insight and the experience that you have, I think is amazing. And, Yeah, definitely. We’d love to have you back on. Definitely. I’ll do a part two.

00;42;22;08 – 00;42;24;03
Speaker 2
Yeah. Awesome.

00;42;24;05 – 00;42;28;01
Speaker 1
Lauren, if people want to learn more about you, about your company, how did they find you guys?

00;42;28;03 – 00;42;33;20
Speaker 2
Yeah. Graph networks, dot com. Oh, yeah. Best place to start. Perfect.

00;42;33;22 – 00;42;59;27
Speaker 1
Well thanks again. Really appreciate it. And of course, thanks everybody for listening to the fractional operator here. You can find this episode, all of our episodes at hourglass, Ask.com. Of course, you can, also sign up for our weekly curated content. So each week we send out an email to our list. And really, it’s just different articles from around the internet that focuses solely on business from a fractional standpoint.

00;42;59;27 – 00;43;13;07
Speaker 1
So if you’re looking for fractional content to help you grow your business, be more efficient, get better. All the things that are changing. Please sign up. Subscribe. Thanks everybody for listening again. Thanks again Lauren. Really appreciate it.