#854 Mike Gallagher: From Startup Chaos to AI Leadership 🚀 Artwork

Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations

The #1 Discipline-Based PodcastDiscipline. How does it play a role in your life? How does it drive your decisions? Do you have too much or too little? Every profession, hobby, or passion requires a level of discipline. I have used it in weight loss (+130 lbs.), family death, and found a +25 year business. Am I an expert? Absolutely not!Please join me, as I speak to interesting people and find out how discipline affects their career, life, goals, and decisions.AudienceDo you long for self-discipline growth in any of the following areas? Health, Fitness & #Wellness: #WeightLoss #Exercise. #Fitness & #Athletics #EatingHealthy & #Diet #Relationships#Business, #Technology & #Science: #BusinessGrowth #Productivity / #Process #Empowerment #Art & #Culture: Expanding taste & curiosity in: #Food / #Travel / #Film / #Music & #Comedy

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Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations

#854 Mike Gallagher: From Startup Chaos to AI Leadership 🚀

April 29, 2026 • Joey Pinz • Episode 854

0:00 | 1:35:48

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🚀 What does it take to build, scale, and exit multiple companies… and still stay hungry?

In this powerful episode, Joey Pinz sits down with a seasoned CEO who has navigated telecom, wireless, cybersecurity, and now AI—sharing hard-earned lessons from decades of leadership, innovation, and growth. From playing D1 soccer to leading billion-dollar exits, this conversation blends mindset, business strategy, and real-world execution.

⚡ You’ll hear how today’s fastest-moving leaders think, adapt, and stay ahead—especially in the rapidly evolving world of AI and managed services. This episode is packed with insights for entrepreneurs, MSPs, and anyone looking to grow in tech and leadership.

💡 A key takeaway? Always have a Plan B—and understand the real problem you’re solving.

🔑 Top 3 Highlights:

✅ Why having a “Plan B” can change everything in business deals

✅ How AI is transforming IT operations and creating new opportunities

✅ The real, unspoken challenges of being a CEO—and how to navigate them

🔥 If you're building, leading, or evolving—this episode will challenge how you think about growth, leadership, and opportunity.

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Join us for enlightening discussions that spark growth and exploration.

Hosted by Joey Pinz, this Discipline Conversations Podcast offers insights and inspiration.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Mike Gallagher. Wow, what a great pleasure talking to Mike. Hey, it gives me energy. I mean, uh, you know, serial entrepreneur, multiple CEO positions, bought and sold, or been in companies that sold three times. Um, lots of great lessons he learned from those. He was at 18, and telecom wireless, went networking, and now in AI. Just dynamic, uh smart, well experienced, humble. Um, just just uh, you know, gets me, gets me going, gets me amped up. It's just, you know, when when when experienced people can share best practices and share things that they've learned openly, it's just uh it's energizing. It helps everybody. It really, really does. He's got a great solution now with his Flowmind uh company, the startup. It's AI for managed service providers, does a great job helping them, talks about that as well. But just a uh great conversation with Mike Gallagher. Mike, thank you so much for your time. And thank you, everyone else, for watching. Hi, I'm Joey Pins, and here's my 45-second introduction. After starting my business in the 90s, I started developing poor habits of eating in my diet because of working way too much. Before you know it, I found myself 340 pounds. The doctor told me if I don't lose the weight, I'm not gonna see my daughter graduate. Took the next seven months, lost 130 pounds. People think there's some secret. Ask me, how'd you lose that weight? Like there's some secret. There is no secret. How'd I lose the weight? Just one word discipline. I've had other successes in life, and I attribute them all to discipline. Now I'm not the king of discipline, but I believe that it can help all of us. Friends, colleagues convinced me to start a podcast. The podcast mission, how do we better ourselves and society? I talked to interesting people in health, fitness, sport, wellness, business, technology, science, art and culture. And I eventually asked them how discipline plays a role in their life. Podcast Vision, growth through learning from others. Fantastic, Mike. I'm so excited to talk to you. I I, you know, I I know you a little bit, and so you played you played soccer D1 there at Fordham.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

Are we taping now? Are we already going? Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, start all over.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

So tell me what position you played. I'm trying to figure out what position. You are you a striker?

SPEAKER_03 2:03

I was a center mid, uh, more on more on the offense. And um and and back then, if you're want to go down the soccer path, uh they had different formations. You know, today it's four in the back, you know, four in the middle, you know, kind of deal, and two in the front or three in the front. Um, back then it was four in the back and a diamond, and it was four in the front, and you only had two midfielders. And I was one of those two midfielders. And those guys were generally not the fastest, but they had the most endurance. Uh, they didn't have the most skills, but they were a little bigger and tougher because you had to play offense, you had to play defense. It was a tough position to play in those old days in the formations because you were you were running up and down the field. And of course, I was 30 or 40 pounds lighter, so it'd be a little bit easier, but uh that's uh that's a long time ago.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Yeah, but in this fast-paced MSP landscape, how do you stay ahead? Introducing MSP Influencer.com, your ultimate hub for MSP news, insights, and community connection powered by Forza Dash. More than 75,000 MSP subscribed to our MSP Influencer Pulse weekly newsletter. Staying informed and ahead of industry trends. Tune in to emerging podcast JoyPad and leading MSP voices, offering essential tips, powerful insights and success stories. Explore multiple lives crafted specifically for MSP leaders, delivering fresh perspectives and actionable strategies. Celebrate experience with the industry leading Force Dash MSP influencer, recognizing innovation, leadership, and impacting the MSP community. Join thousands of MSP professionals who trust MSP Influencer.com to grow their business and expand their networks. MSP Influencer.com, where today's MSP leaders connect, collaborate, and conquer. All powered by the ForceDash platform, helping MSP vendors work effectively with MSPs and helping MSPs grow. I mean, the center mid mic, I mean, you're touching the ball every three, four touches, right? I mean, you're you're the general there.

SPEAKER_03 4:01

You're in the middle of it. I mean, it it and I loved it. I mean, I I I just love the game. And I got into it because my dad didn't want me to play football because I was the smallest kid and he was afraid I was gonna get hurt. And so he said, let's go play this safe game called soccer. And um, you know, a couple broken ribs, one broken jaw, and one broken ankle later throughout a long career. Um, wasn't the safest sport in the world, but it's a great game. I love it. My daughters all played at very competitive levels and still play. And uh I just love the game.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah, me too. So you're that was the number 10. You were a number 10 at that time.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Wow. And so if you're controlling the ball, you're switching the ball like that. Did you play that position in high school and uh and pre-high as well?

SPEAKER_03 4:47

I did. I did. I was always kind of a center mid, always in the midfield. Um because uh at the time, you know, I I could shoot and I could have could have been a striker, but I was also um a distributor of the ball. Like I knew how to pass the ball through the creases, which most strikers are usually hogs, they just want the ball to want to shoot.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 5:08

And I was a little bit of a hybrid. I I could shoot from distance, and at the same time, I actually found a lot of joy in passing the ball, you know, with an assist. And um, and that's how I became such a huge fan of Messi. I mean, there's always the debate who is the greatest player ever. And you get into the Ronaldo Messi debate, and and Ronaldo's a phenomenal player, great striker. Uh, but messi was more, you know, his his assists sometimes are prettier than his goals, the way he just sees the game. So it's wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

So, with all the set pieces, Mike, were you in control of them?

SPEAKER_03 5:40

Yeah, I was the guy that always took a shot. That that was my claim to fame. So um, and back then, you know, there wasn't as much training. And I lived by a school, and um, and I I really didn't have a shot. And so my dad said, Why don't you go to the wall? There was this big flat wall, and I I took a soccer ball and it was just me. And like endlessly, like a robot, I would just continue to pound the ball against the wall, and it was concrete, it was off of a basketball uh asphalt court, and the ball would come flying back to me. So I had to learn how to trap the ball because if if I didn't, I have to go run and get it, so you didn't want to run anymore. And then I learned how to shoot a ball, and uh then I painted a goal on the wall, got in a little trouble for that, and started seeing how if I how I could bend it and push it into the goal into corners and stuff like that. But endless hours of doing that was my that was my personal coach at the time. Uh and that differentiated me on the field because I could I get to hit the set piece, but also when I was hitting against the wall a couple hundred times, uh, you know, you you you you learn how to shoot, right? Or or you should hang up your cleats if you can't. But um so what's the old saying? Uh you do something 10,000 times, you get pretty good at it. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Yeah. And we see it like a lot, like here, like the Brazilian kids who play on the street and learn how to knock it off buildings and stuff like that. They get all the tight technical skills there. Uh and um yeah, it's it's wonderful to see. Did any of the your teammates from Fordham go on to the MLS or Europe or anything?

SPEAKER_03 7:15

Um, some of them did. Um, I lost track of them, uh, but that was way back in the MLS days in the pro games. Um, but a bunch of them, you know, they played semi-pro ball, high-level club teams. Um, we played against some some great players. I I remember uh probably my hardest assignment, I I forget who we were playing, was either Columbia or LIU. And my coach said, Um, you have to mark this guy. And I said, Well, who is this guy? And his name was uh, I remember his name was Richard Shinnepu. And and he was from Trinidad. And it just so happens he was the captain of the Olympic Trinidad team.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:55

So he was about the six foot two Adonis that I uh I ran after for 90 minutes all day on the field, and and he had his way with me. He's just uh an athlete on a different different level. So we played against some great great players that went on to pray play in the pro leagues.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

You right foot dominant?

SPEAKER_03 8:13

Right foot dominant, but um not quite ambidextrous, but I could go either way, right? But a lot of a lot of kids are of just one foot, and that is as I like to say, you're half a soccer player because they know where you're going. That's true. And it's it's hard discipline. You know, if you take a hundred kicks, you've got to take a fifty on one foot, you've got to take fifty on the other.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

You really do, yeah. And how long have you been following Messi?

SPEAKER_03 8:37

Oh, almost his whole career, I would say 15, 17 years. I mean, I was always a fan of his in the Barcelona days from when he was young. And um, and then he went to Paris, which I thought it was a catastrophe. And then uh U.S. and now we get to watch him at you know normal times.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Miami, yeah, yeah. Wonderful, wonderful player. And I'm so happy he got a uh a World Cup, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:04

He's got one and he's got a shot at another, and he'll be playing, you know, playing here in New Jersey. I don't think I'd have to mortgage my house to get tickets for the game, but incredible.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Yeah, the World Cup will be here before you know it. It's wonderful to see. And uh, so you think there's no contest between him and Ronaldo? You have respect for Ronaldo, but you think he's much more superior.

SPEAKER_03 9:22

I do. I think he's a complete player. Uh and Ronaldo's a complete striker, right? But Messi is a complete player.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:30

Um, and so you could argue there's no winning this argument if if someone's passionate on either side, but he's just the more complete player. And when you when you look at the style of um Barcelona, you know, like 10 years ago when they had uh Chavez and Iniesta and those guys, that was the greatest soccer team that I think ever ever got on the pitch. I mean, just the way they played. It was um it was magical. And Messi was, you know, he was in the middle of it with these other unbelievably talented players. And and it was the beautiful game, right? You could just see the flow of it. And even before that, you know, you could argue Brazil was the pretty team with Pele and those guys, these guys, they just took it to another level. And I don't think another team has come close yet to doing you know the level that those guys played. And the guy's 34, 35, maybe 36. I don't know. He's he's still playing at an incredible level. Yeah, I think he's gonna have a wonderful World Cup. I hope he does.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

So the knock on Messi would be that he's sometimes a bit too quiet and he kind of leads by example, whereas Ronaldo's a bit more vocal, a bit more, you know, um, get in your face. Your thoughts about that?

SPEAKER_03 10:38

Uh two different styles, and it depends on your team, right? Ronaldo is, you know, they want he wants the team to play around him, and and that worked uh for in many cases, you know, at Man United and certainly at Real Madrid. You can't you can't uh debate the outcomes of some of that. He forced his personality and uh he he had the results. Um on the other hand, you know, Messi has done it this way for a long time, and the difference is I think Messi made other players around him better. Yeah, uh that's the difference of the two. Where unequivocally, Ronaldo, just a pound for pound uh from an athletic perspective, is a better athlete than Messi. He's just you know, he's a freak of nature almost at his age, and he takes care of himself. But I'm not so sure he made all the other players better from a skill or technique perspective or even a system perspective. Some would argue he broke systems down because it was too centered on him. Where Messi, you know, you can have a 11 really good players and come up against a team with two great players and you know nine okay players, the team that's more complete usually over time, usually wins. And and I think he's demonstrated that time and time again. He elevates the whole team, the whole team. And if you watch him closely, uh you know, you'll see plays happen and he'll pass the ball and no one's there. And someone someone will say, What happened? That was a bad pass. And you could see him looking at the player that was on the left wing that should have been screaming down into the box, and he just has to look. He says, The ball was in the right place, you were not in the right place. And so he has his way of teaching uh teaching the players.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

I remember there was a press conference once with Ronaldo, and it was like Pepsi was a sponsor. Ronaldo like push the Pepsi aside and said, I drink water, and Pepsi's stock actually dipped like points the next day. Absolutely incredible. Another thing I noticed we had the Super Bowl here in the States, and um 150 billion people watched, which was just a little bit below last year, but still a lot of people. That day, 150 million. I'm sorry, 150 million. That day, so my team, I'm a Manchester City fan. Manchester City was playing Liverpool regular season game, right in February. 650 million people watched.

SPEAKER_03 12:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

So most Americans, we we don't we don't understand the gravity of the game.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

We don't. It's come a long way and still has a long ways to go, but you know, we think the Super Bowl is the center of the universe. There's another game that's the center of the world, and you can't even imagine how many people. I mean, you know, you go anywhere in Europe during a game and it's their home country or their hometown, the whole city just stops. It's like the Super Bowl every every weekend. Um, and you just and it's generation after generation. I mean, you can sit here and argue, well, my dad was a Giants fan, I'm a Giants fan. This is on a on another level.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

And then like Germany, for example, where the town actually owns a part of the team, so they actually get to vote on some decisions. The only equivalent we have here in the states that I know of is Green Bay. So Green Bay has part of that of that team, but no other major team that I know of in the sport has part of it. So not only is it vested, but in those German cities, it's actually part of their ownership. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

Yeah, it's it's it's organic in their blood. I mean, it's it's it's more than just a sport, you know, it's uh it's a way of life, right? And everyone grows up playing soccer, everyone understands the game and appreciates the game. And and sometimes when you watch a European game and you'll see boos and ahs, and it some people will say, Well, nothing is happening. It's just because you know the average American may not understand the subtleties of where somebody should have been or what somebody actually did, where everybody in Europe and South America around the world, you know, has has played the game at some level. And so they have this deep ingrained understanding of the game.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah, when they see like five one-touch passes to get the ball from the keeper to the midfield, we will start applauding because we understand how beautiful that was. And perhaps, you know, I was I was sitting with a good friend of mine and we were watching a game, and I said, I said to her, I said, I wish I could see the game in your eyes right now because I'm sure I I see you know I see so much through. So you coached your your daughters. Tell me what what coaching uh taught you in the business world now, Mike.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

You know, um there's a couple things that you learn, and it's um I I'll tell you, um, I and you have to go through different licensing things to get there. Um, I sat on the sidelines, you know, almost too many times where I saw dads who may have been athletes who who standing up probably couldn't see their toes at this juncture in their life, yelling and screaming at their daughters, you know, to do things on the field or when they made a mistake. And it would always make me cringe. I I can't tell you how much um that bothered me. And I could see it with the kids, like they were just afraid to make a mistake. Uh and I remember watching one video because, like I said, uh, you have to go through different levels of of licensing to coach at different levels. And um the the most instructive thing I ever saw was a video they showed, and it was terrific, where the dad the game was over, and the minute the kid got in the car, the dad started telling the girl, his daughter, what she did wrong. And you and you know, the the girl's just you know, just crushing herself and and in the skin on the back of your neck is going up, and you say, Oh my god. And then they showed the video again the next time, and the dad gets in the car and he goes, Where do you want to go for ice cream? And the kid goes, Oh, I'd like to go here, I'd like to go there. And you know, I think the thing that it that teaches you, it's just common sense, you know, to most people, is people make mistakes, right? And everybody knows the mistake they made, whether it's on a soccer phone, you don't have to tell somebody they made a mistake, they remember every single mistake. And I think the same as in business. People make mistakes all the time. And you don't have to grab them and you don't have to say it exactly at that moment when it's the worst moment possible to say it. Sleep on it next day, reflect 24 hours, something like that. Pull them aside one-on-one and quietly show them how they could improve, or show them how that was a good try, but maybe here's a better way. And I I just think you get much more of a response uh with that style, or it's worked for me in the business world, and I certainly don't think it works at all, and especially with kids, or almost at any level. Um, you know, really having that shouting. Maybe at the pro level they have they have to do stuff like that. But you know, when you're with the youth soccer, you know, when youth I mean all the way up to about 18 before they play in college, you know, you you there's mu many ways you can teach kids, but I think walking in with the stick is absolutely the wrong way. Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Yeah, we've seen it before where yeah, you have you know, I I coach my daughters as well, and I remember I would have kind of these parent meetings, and I have four or five a season. I remember it was it was a second meeting three or four games in. I get all the parents there and the kids, you know, we're having a great time, and you know, the girls are really learning. And uh, you know, you have any questions, and this one father raised his hand and said, I think we could do a better job on corner kicks. We're not capitalizing, we could score so many goals more goals on on corner kicks. And I said, Oh, this is great. This thank you so much, Mr. Smith. Did you hear that girl? So the last 10-15 minutes of our practice, Mr. Smith has volunteered to come and teach us how to do corner kicks and how we could score more. This is gonna be great, and he just kind of stepped back, and nobody else asked any more questions about that.

SPEAKER_03 18:33

Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, just completely disarmed him. Right, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Don't disagree, don't shout out. These girls need to know how to dribble close to themselves, they know how to first touch, they know they need to know how to understand how the dimensions of the field were offside traps and and corner kick set pieces are really nice, but let's get a lot of the fundamentals down. Let's that's right, let's let's get them to understand how and I can always tell the girls by the way. Tell me if you saw this. I can always first practice, I can always tell the girls that had an older brother.

SPEAKER_03 19:06

Yeah, yeah. They were rougher and they they knew how to elbows and push fight, yeah. The feisty, because you know, they're they're knocking around with their brother, right? That's right. Whoever had an older brother understands.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

I would say, I say, uh, what's your brother's name? She said, How do you know I have a brother? I said, I I know you have a brother.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

I know.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

I know, yeah, and it's uh it's it's wonderful. I miss those days. I know your empty nest now, they've gone away.

SPEAKER_03 19:31

Yeah, yeah. I have a daughter at Cornell and a daughter at Wake Forest. Uh so it's it's uh yeah, I miss the days of uh of seeing them, although my daughter is playing at Cornell on the on the club team, and um, which is they just went to the nationals and came in third place in the country. So that was exciting. And so she's playing on a very competitive club. I mean, it's like Division I soccer. I mean, uh some argue that the club team's better than the division one team. Uh so that's been fun that she's still continuing to play and uh she's having a great time.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

But such a wonderful sport.

SPEAKER_03 20:02

I miss, I miss the uh I miss the sidelines. I do too. I had plenty of fun, so it was it was great.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And now you've made the transition to pickleball.

SPEAKER_03 20:12

I have, and I love it. My wife started playing uh in the fall, or she was playing uh maybe in the summer, and and then in the fall she pulled me into it and played a bunch of times, and then I got into a club in January, and all of a sudden now I'm in the uh the men's uh some men's league and I'm playing, you know, two or three times a week, and uh it's fantastic. It's a great game, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. Um, and you be it's interesting, you know, yeah as you get older, you know, your skills diminish, and you don't realize how much they diminish. And you can work out, work out regularly and you know, elliptical, lift weight, do all the stuff, but you don't do anything with your reflex as much anymore. And when I started playing pickleball, man, the ball was whizzing by me. And it's like my brain saw it, but my hand didn't move. And I was like, what's wrong with me? Like I should have gotten it. And it's amazing how quick your reflexes really, your lateral movement and your and your bursting increases as you play the game more. And I remember watching these guys playing. I was like, I can't even believe that they're hitting that the ball back and forth so close, so fast. And you know, now I'm I'm three months into this thing, and all of a sudden now, you know, those reflexes are getting better. So it's um it's a great game from that perspective. But you gotta be careful too. There's a lot of the guys with I've seen a few hamstrings go and uh a couple rolled ankles. Um, you know, it's not without its risks, but it's uh it's a lot of fun. A lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

A lot of fun. You gotta stay out of that kitchen.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

And uh there's uh there's some neighborhoods though that are shutting it down because it's louder than we think. I don't have any near my place, but the knocking of against the paddles and on the ground is making neighbor. Have you heard like some of these uh sites are shutting down?

SPEAKER_03 21:53

I haven't heard of them shutting down, but I certainly like um we live by a pretty big park. It's got a lot of tennis courts. And um I never heard any sounds on the tennis courts. But now when you go to play pickleball, especially on a on a summer night or on a fall night, all you you get out of your car and you're a hundred yards away and it's like you know, like a little bunch of crickets going off all over. So if you live real close to the park, that's probably not a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Yeah, it's still fun though. It's good to get out there, get a sweat going, get those competitive juices going, you know, and um it doesn't take as long as golf, you know, and uh, you know, which is you know, which is a big time suck, but just as addictive. Mike, you spend your you had an incredible career in telecom, right? ATT to Bay Networks to Nortel to Flatiron, SpiderCloud, XEM, and now at Flowmind. Tell me about the transition there. What what did you like about it?

SPEAKER_03 22:49

You know, I I kind of went with the wave of each, you know, whatever, you know, three plus decades. You know, telecom was was bursting, and you know, that was an exciting place to be, got great training at ATT. Um, and then, you know, I had my shot at uh a startup company, um, which was really exciting in the wireless space when that was exploding. We sold that to Qualcomm in 2005 for $800 million. That was a great exit. Uh, and it was a 4G OFDM play, but I I didn't really know much about mobile, but I knew a lot about networking. Um, and then I parlayed the you know, the technical uh absorption of wireless, which is when wireless was really exploding. And so that was that was a lot of fun. Um, and then I parlayed that into SpiderCloud Wireless, um, where I met um Alan Baugh, who's uh co-founder of of our company, uh FlowMind, and uh he was the founder of this concept. Can we take Wi-Fi size access points and can we make those uh for license spectrum for indoor buildings? Because there's a lot of problems getting a signal inside of a building. And everyone thought that was impossible. You couldn't do it, the chips didn't exist. Um it was just a different, different problem to solve. But we successfully did it, and and we shrunk we shrunk the base station, as we like to say. So that was an extension of um my wireless career. We sold that to Corning, and they had great success um uh with that product. If you if you go into any Apple store across the country, that product is in every Apple store really around the country. So that was a lot of fun. And then um I did Exium, which was this my first foray into security, and that just made a lot of sense because it was, you know, kind of the cloud consolidation, right? You know, you think back of um you know 365 servers when a lot of MSPs were selling 365 servers, and then all of a sudden Microsoft put that in the cloud as so many things migrated to the cloud. Uh SASE, right, was that was the next iteration of that in the cybersecurity. And it made so much sense. Consolidate all of these technologies and these pizza boxes into one cloud instance and deliver the services to the customer from a platform provided in the cloud, encompassing everything. Because you really need you really need all of the technology, and there was a lot of gaps, you know, with this discrete pieces of equipment. Uh so I did that for about three years. We sold that company to Netgear. And um, and then I remet Alan. We had stayed in touch, but I hadn't talked to him for a while, and we bumped into each other again in the summer, and he explained to me what he was doing at Flowmind. Um, and so that was it was uh, you know, it was a one one-hour call on a Monday, uh, a second call on Wednesday, and it was a handshake on Friday. Wow. And we were we were off to the races. We were I just fell in love with it. And I just said, this is this is so compelling. Um, I I can't walk away from it. And you know, it's it's so much bigger than anything else, right? When you think about you know networking and the internet exploding, you think about mobile exploding, you think about cyber exploding, you know, the whole AI thing is is so so many dimensions, as we all know. We're just a a tiny sliver of this dimension, but it's it's breathtaking and it's breath, and just something exciting that I just couldn't, I could not do. And especially with um with Alan, who's just a a brilliant, brilliant engineer with vision and foresight and um super hardworking, and he's just really developed something very special here.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

So the first acquisition was to Qualcomm. Could you tell uh share some of your best uh your learn what you learned from selling to a big company like that?

SPEAKER_03 26:45

Well, um, always have a plan B.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Really?

SPEAKER_03 26:49

Yeah, um, because uh I'll give you one short story. Flareon was a terrific company, and and Rajiv LaRoya uh was the founder, Ray Dolan was the CEO, and I was the president. I had zero mobile background. Um and we had put all our eggs in one basket, mostly in North America, and we were selling to Nextel, who also had invested in the company, um, and we were going great guns. Uh, and the phone kept on ringing from these guys in Europe, and um, and everyone was like, don't forget about Europe. They're all 3G, they'll never look at anything different. But I kept on saying, I'm not so sure, I'm not so sure. Because I had a clean sheet of paper, I had no biases at all. And I took uh Rajiv and I went to Europe and we met with a whole bunch of customers, Vodafone, T-Mobile, et cetera. And we came out, came home and shocked at how open the opportunity was for us in Europe. So we started an operation in Europe with great success. And uh the long story short is that when Qualcomm came uh to acquire us, I don't think I'm telling tales out of school now, it's um they bought us for X one, we wanted X dollars, and then the price came dramatically down because um they found some cross-licensing issues because we were spun out of Lucent New Ventures, and the price came dramatically down. And we said, okay, and that's fine. You don't want to buy us, that's okay. And we were moving straight ahead to enter into major licensing agreements with all of the suppliers in Europe, and that diversity and having the ability to have a plan B, I think was really important for the company to give us leverage in those negotiations, and we finally settled at what you know was a very fair price for both sides, I think, at $800 million. I can assure you that if we didn't have a plan B, we would not have sold a company for $800 million. And so, you know, lesson learned, right? You're running any company. Um, it's easy to get excited at the shiny thing or the strategic partner or some big account that's just gonna bring you, you know, to the moon. Um my advice to any younger CEO or executive running a company is you always need to have that plan B or plan C because plan A's a lot of times don't work. Um and even if you end up with plan A, you want plan B so you can have leverage with plan A. Um, so and that's happened time and time again, you know, in my career. There's no epiphany here, but you know, uh it can happen, and I've seen it happen, especially with less experienced um young entrepreneurs, right? So always have a plan B.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Should you always be willing to walk away?

SPEAKER_03 29:46

Well, you're always willing to walk away when uh you know, when you have a plan B, you can walk away, right? If you only have plan A, uh you have two choices, right? Uh suck it up and you know, they're pitching and you're catching. I mean, uh I mean you're they're pitching and you're catching, and you you don't get a vote, right? So if your company is in trouble or you don't have an alternative, uh they're gonna dictate the terms of the partnership and acquisition, uh whatever, whatever you're working on with that other other you know, prospect, um, you've always got to have that plan B. And it and it feels bad sometimes because human nature is, no, no, I know these guys, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. And I I always say, uh, yeah, I used to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter bunny, but it doesn't always happen. Right. So have a plan B.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

And did you use did you use what you learned there for your next acquisition, I believe, was that Spider Cloud?

SPEAKER_03 30:40

Yeah, you always use it everywhere. You know, you always have to have that diversity in every wherever you go, you have to have it. And sometimes there's weak, weak plan B's, and sometimes there's strong plan B's. Um depends on the company and the situation. In the place of Flareon, we had a very strong plan B. I mean, it was absolutely an alternative, you know, for us to license our technology uh for the next generation uh of 4G uh into the European marketplace. And and Qualcomm wanted to own and dominate, you know, that that 4G space. And we had some terrific technology that got included in 4G, but we could have we could have done it a different way. It would have been a longer and more painful path and maybe even more lucrative. I don't know. But we certainly had another path that we knew we could drive. And we had big guys around us that were willing to stand with us as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

So the advice to the you know, a great serial entrepreneur like yourself that goes from one venture to another, you just what is the old saying, the godfather, every time I go away, they pull me back in, or you know, something like that. And so what you you bring all this knowledge to Flow mind. What are some steadfast rules that you had that you know you shouldn't you shouldn't go past now in this new venture?

SPEAKER_03 31:58

Well, you know, sometimes you um, you know, you have to have a plan, right? And um, but you also have to be able to adapt, right? Especially in the early days of a company. Um, you don't want to be zigging and zagging all day long. You really you've got to have a team that has an open mind that wants to vet, you know, every issue or every pivot that you go through. Like, what is the evidence? You know, what what makes you think that? It's not like I have a good feeling that we should do this today or we're gonna do that tomorrow. You know, you have to have the patience to stick on a call for an hour or two when you think you have all the answers, and you have to have an open mind. Um, and it's got to be evidence-based, right? That's the hardest thing. People get into emotions or or it's personal, or you know, this this was my baby and this was my idea. Uh, you know, if if you're running the team, you you've got to say everything's open for discussion here, and I'm I'm wide open to criticism as well. You can criticize my idea and tell me why I'm wrong. Because if I make a decision and you support it, and we find out that that decision was wrong, and you come back to me and say, I knew it was wrong all the time, then I have the wrong employee. Right. Right. I I want somebody that's gonna tell me before I make the mistake that it's a mistake, not after I make a mistake, that you knew it was a mistake. That's easier said than done because a lot of people will just sometimes tell you what you want to hear. But in this environment, you know, it's the Wild West with AI. And you need to move fast. Uh, you got to be alert, you got to watch everything that's going on, uh, you got to figure out how to differentiate yourself. Um, you know, you got to market yourself with small dollars generally with a small company. Uh you got to find your niche. Um, you you need to know the problem that you're solving for the customer and talk in their language. What's your pain point? Like, what are you doing? Like, one of the things that we're doing now is uh in talking with MSPs and putting our product into their offices, is that we're offering, can we come sit with you for two or three days in your office and just watch the operations? Just sit there. And you know, we've been on a couple of these now, and like we're finding out all sorts of things that we had no idea. Like we thought we solved, you know, we have this beautiful shiny thing. We think we solve this problem, and this is the biggest problem. And sitting next to some of these MSPs, it's like, oh, they they have other problems, like you know, and some of which we can help with, and you know, it's kind of expanded our footprint a bit. And then there's other problems that we can't, but it puts context around how they operate and how they think. You know, it's the old axiom, walk in the other guy's shoes. And you know, that to me is is incredibly important so that when you're having that dialogue with somebody, you know, a lot of times I see it with young salespeople, it's like I've got 42 points and 42 slides, and we're gonna get through all 42 slides no matter what, because if I get through 42 slides and you say you'll have another meeting, that's success, right? To me, if I get through three slides and I touch their pain point, that's success, right? Because now I'm solving a problem. And so it takes a little discipline to do that. But I always say, just find out what their problem, what are you solving, right? Just you just can't have a great product and yell at somebody, this is a great product. If they don't click, and the click is you make my life easier. If you can't walk away asking the question, does this make your life easier? Um, does this help your business? Um, and they can't answer that question, then either one, your product doesn't do that, or or two, you you didn't explain it properly.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Could you ever imagine? I mean, you're in telecom, you're in these enterprise areas of wireless and networking, and a technology like AI is here and it's just at its infancy. I mean, it's amazing that we can both be alive and see some of these great technologies in our in our own lifetime.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

It's accelerating so quick. Yeah. Uh I I mean, it's it's breathtaking. And, you know, you get all the news feeds every day, and you know, I I spend probably a half hour every morning just catching up on crap that filters in. And then, you know, you tag something that you know you want to read later on. But you got to be aware of like kind of everything that's going on because they're all it's all influencing each piece. Like everyone's trying to find out their swim lane, and there's so many dynamics going on from the hyperscalers to the chip world to the software. What's happening to the SaaS guys now? Uh, what pressure are they underneath? You know, is is AI really gonna eliminate all software people? Are the jobs gonna go? You know, there's so many, you know, it goes from the technology, it goes to the organization structure, and it goes to impact on human beings, right? It's it's across the board and it's happening. Like, what's that movie, Everything All at Once? Is that movie? Like it's it's like everything's happening and all at once. And it's hard to hard to keep up with it sometimes, but you have to, right? You have you have to understand it.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

So, why work with managed service providers? MSPs?

SPEAKER_03 37:10

Well, you know, I think there is um a huge opportunity um with the MSPs, right? So you think about the dynamics that are going on, they're at the forefront of this, right? They have all these enterprise accounts. Um generally they're not big organizations that says I have my AI research staff, or I've got this group and I've got various people that I can push to. So here they are, they have multi-vendor environments, um, they've got multiple customers, uh, they've got the dynamics of uh security issues, uh, they've got downtime issues, um, they've got skill gap issues, um, and they're under tremendous pressure, right? So, how do you solve those problems for them? How do you help them? And I think that's a great opportunity there. I, you know, I think that uh the MSPs, and it's not not the first time you've probably heard this. I think the MSPs have an opportunity to reinvent themselves over the next one or two or three years. Um because the world's changing, right? Uh their customers are saying, you know, make sure I'm secure, right? You have to make sure I'm secure. So how do you do that? Number two, you've got to do this in a cost-effective way. Like I can't, I can't, you know, they're selling to other companies that are they're under cost pressure as well. How do I synthesize this and make sure my organization is running as lean as it can so that I can still make a profit margin, but I can still solve my customers' problem. And then the third one, which is kind of my new pet rock, is that I I think the MSPs might have the opportunity to become the AI consultants to these enterprises. I think there's a whole business of just becoming AI consultants to that community. And I think it's a it's a big opportunity because um these enterprises they don't have the expertise, um, and that they never will. They may have some, they may have one or two IT people, and some of the big organizations have more. But the MSPs can really walk in and migrate. You know, they've migrated them to the cloud, they've done security for them, but inside the business itself, how could they how can they use AI? How does that help them? So I think there's an opportunity there. And in a weird way, I think we could we could actually help with that.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

You mentioned that the customers that they have are enterprises. By that do you mean small to medium businesses?

SPEAKER_03 39:32

Yes, yeah. Yeah, small to medium, they're customers. So the MSP would be our customer, and the MSP would deliver our service and services, all their services, whatever's in their portfolio to the enterprise. So I think the enterprise, the MSP has the opportunity to be even a deeper consultant to those enterprises and become even more valuable and more sticky to those guys. And I think everything around this AI, because AI is touching everything, right? It's going to touch the cloud, it's going to touch security. Well, everything that's in their portfolio is going to be touched by AI. And so being able to really organize that and help small and medium businesses use that as a productivity tool for the enterprise, not just a solution. And instead of being um, especially on the service side, being a cost center, it you know, it could turn into a into an asset, right? It's just you're not just the the per se trouble-ticketing organization or um, you know, there's no there's no joy that comes, right? The only time you're you're happy is when no one's talking to you because there's no problems. And then when there's a problem, they associate it always with you. So you're kind of a cost center. Um, what about if you turn it upside down and you solved and relieved that time that the uh technicians are using to fix problems, and they became proactive and they became an asset where they're actually selling consulting services, architectural issues, uh, migration to the cloud. There's so many different things that they could do uh that would make them invaluable to these enterprises. And so I think that's the that's the change as opposed to saying, you know, we'll we'll we'll take care of your passwords, we'll set up your 365, and uh, you know, we'll get your security in, and then that's it, and then we'll just monitor your networks. I think there's a metamorphos here where they can now proactively go out and start real, you know, and they and they are, there are some very good ones that are doing real consulting services now, right? Where they can go out and add a lot of value. And I think those are going to be the guys that don't lose customers. They're gonna have the lowest, the lowest churn.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

How does FlowMind help MSPs, Mike?

SPEAKER_03 41:44

So, you know, our claim to fame is, you know, what we saw as the opportunity is that we were old networking guys, and we saw kind of how uh network resolutions happened, right? And and we saw that not a lot of technology or a lot, not a lot of automation and progression had happened in the space. You know, the techs were still getting onto the Meraki dashboard and looking down and checking the Wi-Fi, getting on the Fortinet to check the firewall when a trouble ticket came in. And we we kind of did the analysis on this, and it's like it it takes two hours. So what trouble ticket comes in, that doesn't mean it's it's in somebody's hands immediately, so there's some delay. And then you get the skilled tier one, tier two, or tier three tech who starts working on these problems, right? And it's almost like manual intervention, right? And so it's an hour at least, if not a two-hour process. And if it's a tough ticket, a tier two or tier three ticket, um, you know, it could take an hour, it could take three days, you know, or they can't find a problem. And so when you when you cross-pollinate that across an organization, it's it was so inefficient. I mean, that there's got to be a better way to do that. And what we saw as the first iteration moving to utilizing AI were companies that were using what we call automation, right? Like, uh, let's automate this, let's get linked into the RMM of a system, and let's have all your old trouble tickets. And so now when a trouble ticket comes in, we're gonna look at all the old trouble tickets, and then we're gonna come back and say, you know, we think it could be this, and then hand it back to the tech. So some efficiency gets derived, and but the tech's still got to do the work to figure out what was wrong. So some movement there. Um, and what we saw it was is um what we call as a discovery problem, right? So you you didn't really investigate the network, you didn't do anything. It's like if you walked into a doctor's office and they didn't take your blood pressure, they didn't look at you, didn't check your heart, didn't do anything. And you walked in and you said, Um my wife's got a got a cold. And the doctor said, Well, you probably have a cold. So go home, drink a lot of water, and take some rest. Um What does that mean? Right? That's just, you know, because the automation told you you've been around someone that's got a cold, you've got a cold. When you go into a doctor's office, they take your blood pressure, they monitor you, they give you a flu test, they give you a COVID test. The doctor does an analysis and investigates what's wrong with you. And it comes back and says, Well, your husband, you know, your wife has a cold, but you have COVID. And here's the medication we're going to give you for COVID. And so it's a rough analogy, but when you look at our system, it does the investigation. So when a trouble ticket comes in, you know, we immediately start doing the tests. We are looking it at the Wi-Fi network, at the SD-WAN network. We're looking at your 365 network. We're doing a complete analysis that a tier one, tier two, tier three tech would do that generally is an hour to two hours of work, but we do that in about 120 seconds. So it's breathtaking in how fast it is. There's no agents involved, there's no on-prem equipment, it's all software-based. But you know, we've put together this operations intelligence platform that can analyze someone's network extremely fast in an automated way, and do all of the discovery and diagnosis, um, and then come back and summarize in a tiered way what the problem is, and here's why we think this is the problem. And so all of that work is eliminated, right? And it's and it's route work, right? It's it's a pain in the ass work. Um, you know, tier one text can take care of tier one problems, and then you get your tier two and tier three guys, you know, they start looking at some of the more complex things, and they have years of experience. Um, and then they start doing what we call cross-domain analysis. Like just because you know your Wi-Fi's slow doesn't mean you have a problem on your Wi-Fi network, because you know, a lot of analysis is done that way. Up a little slow down on the Wi-Fi, it's the Wi-Fi's fault. Well, it wasn't the Wi-Fi's fault. It actually happens to be the policy's off on the on on the on the firewall, or something's wrong with 365. There's some, it could be a networking problem. And so the cross-domain complexity of this is really where the hard work gets done. And so that's where we really shine, where we do cross-domain, right? We take in not just the networking information, we're taking in office productivity technologies, we can ingest anything. And the and the secret sauce of our company is the orchestration and synthesiz that utilizes um AI. It's not AI perspective in perspective, it's just not AI alone. It's really the platform that does this. So it's super intelligent and it gets smarter as you go. And so when we when we walk into um an office uh or meet with an MSP, the first thing we do is like, let us show you our demo on our website. First click is a four-minute demo, and they watch the four-minute demo, and no matter how much I explain it to them, when they see the demo, they say, I got it, I got it. Now I know what you're saying. So it's exactly, you know, as as I described, it automated all of the tests that a tech would do, but it does it in two minutes or less, and what would take two hours. And so the manifestation of that is that what by the way, with all complete documentation, you'll see the network topology, you'll see every test, you know, it's all correlated, you know, a lot of the stuff gets lost in the sauce. You have a direct root cause. But the beauty of this now is that, you know, when you have a problem that even we can't solve, then you bring in the superstar to find out what the problem is. But 95% of the time, we've solved the problem, right? We know what the problem is. So what does that do to this, you know, with back to the MSP to walk in their shoes, right? So what does that do for the MSP? They may have uh, say, five engineers, knock engineers, or IT engineers, maybe 10 in their organization, like, and they're just working on problems. What would happen if they just weren't working on problems, right? They could be working on the technology. And, you know, IT people, you know, they're a rare commodity, right? They actually understand technology and they understand the use case and they understand the customer. If they had time to really understand the client's architecture or or their strategic goals as a business, and that's why I went back to these AI consultants, you could really do redirect and repurpose a lot of the MSP resource into these other pieces of the business, right? And so it's not like you have um five IT engineers and now you want to open up a consultancy business. Now you've got to hire five more people for consultancy business that you have no revenue for. That's a you know, from a business model perspective, somebody's outlaying a lot of money and betting on the cum that you know it's it's gonna work. How about you could take three of those personnel and say, focus on this AI consultancy because we've got deriving all that efficiency out of the system. And so that's that's the story, and it's resonated extremely well. Everyone that we've talked to thus far has said, yep, you're solving a real problem here because uh, you know, I I've got three problems. One, trouble tickets are increasing 20% year over year. I mean, that is extraordinary, right? So in two and a half years or less, um, the amount of trouble tickets you have are going to double and they're gonna be more complex. So the second problem is the skill gap. So complexity is in it. AI is in the middle of this, security is getting more complex, cyber is tough, every technology piece is accelerating. So, what's the skill gap? So now you have uh this superstar tier two, tier three tech that's been with you for five years, he's learned everything, it's in his head, and he said, sorry guys, I got another offer, I'm leaving. And they're gone. And and while he walks out the door, he's walking out the door with all that experience. You know, and so how do you replace that experience, right? That domain experience, and start from scratch one, where all in our system, the all of all the data is retained and actually is a good training tool. And then um, the last piece is the cost issue, right? You know, these these SLAs, when when the digital infrastructure goes down, you know, it is, you know, even if you don't have an SLA, that enterprise is saying, you guys were supposed to take care of me, and I'm not so sure you're taking care of me. And you know, if I've heard one, I've heard a thousand stories of when a big trouble ticket happens or a big problem happens in the digital infrastructure, six months later that MSP might not have that account anymore. So you you really gotta be looking at the churn and the cost of downtime in these networks. And you know, today, if your digital infrastructure goes down, you're out of business. I mean, you you're out of business. I mean, there's so many examples. I mean, if you're if you're a retail shop, uh your Chick-fil-A and your point of sales goes down in a store, you just lost $10,000 that hour, five hours, that's $50,000. I mean, you know, you think about, and that's maybe an extreme example, but it applies to every office, even it's a small dentist's office, right? If their system goes down and they can't process things, you know, they are in they're in tough straits.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

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SPEAKER_03 52:21

We can pardon me. We can integrate with anybody at this time. So we're integrated now with Service Now, uh with Halo, and we're working with a bunch of the rest of the ecosystem. It takes us about um a week to integrate any other technology, more or less. Amazing. So it's not that it's not that difficult. Um, so if you said I'm working, you know, uh we were working with um Meraki and Aruba, and you came to us and said, Well, I've got ubiquity, you know, we could put ubiquity into the system. It'd take about a week to integrate ubiquity into the system. On the RMM side, the same thing. But we're looking to cover all of the RMM players um so that it's just so simple. Because our claim to fame, we call it uh no more pain, P-A-N-E. Um, because we you you you have a pane of glass, right? And we don't want to sell you another UI. And so that trouble ticket comes in. Um, if you're on Halo, it comes into Halo, and you don't leave that screen. It stays, the trouble ticket stays inside of Halo. And you can see that in the when you when you look at that four-minute video, the trouble ticket stays right in there. You click and it's running, the process is running, and two minutes later you get the full diagnostic report. You haven't left Halo, it's in the same screen that you had. So you don't have to do anything different. There's no new system, there's no new desktop, um, there's no new icon for you to go through. So, you know, the ease of onboarding and managing, you know, it's gotta be simple, right? You just can't say, I've got something completely different here and you're gonna love it. You know, every startup company says that. You really have to do it, right? You gotta make it easy for the customer.

SPEAKER_00 54:01

Does FlowMind will it replace a tech?

SPEAKER_03 54:06

I don't think it replaces a tech, right? I think it makes the tech better, right? Because now the tech um is going to see the diagnostic flow, right? They're gonna be able to recognize a lot quicker what the problems are and how to solve the problem. I think, I think it makes a tier one tech a quicker tier two or tier three tech, right? And so if you if you had uh more tier one techs who could become tier two, tier three techs, you know, you just improved, you know, the skill set of your employees. And, you know, with that, I mean, there's so many other things you can do, right? As I said earlier, like can they now can become an asset. They can actually generate revenue, they can do things that you could never possibly get to as opposed to just being that cost cost infrastructure, um, which is you know, it it it's the way we do business today, but you know, I don't think that's gonna be the way we're gonna be doing business in the future.

SPEAKER_00 55:00

Former MSP Mike, you know this. Talk to MSPs every day. The three things that keep them up at night have been pretty consistent over the last five or six years. This is a little permutation to this, but number one is cybersecurity. They're worried about their clients getting attacked. If the clients get attacked, they're flat rate. So they gotta now allocate all of these resources. They're probably gonna get fired, they might even get sued. Number two is human capital. These engineers you talk about, they're getting great offers. Unemployment in IT here in the States is, you know, less than less than 1%. And so, you know, how are they gonna keep their current engineers happy? How are they gonna attract new ones? And then third, private equity has poured in hundreds of millions of dollars into this wonderful managed service pool. So the their friends are selling their MSPs, they're getting nice cars. How am I gonna sell my MSP? So growth, they're worried about growth. How can I have a great tool set, keep my engineers happy, keep attracting new clients to organically grow that way? I'm more attractive to PE. How does FlowMind help in one or any of those?

SPEAKER_03 56:04

Well, I think we we touched on a few of these, right? One is that you know, when you start to think of the skill set of your employee base, right, you don't want to lose that guy, right? If you're just doing trouble tickets day after day after day, that can be that can be tough, right? And and so there's a huge churn and there's a huge attrition to that, right? Think about if you if you had a system that could automate all of that work and say, okay, I want to intellectually challenge you and I want you to do the following. And then you laid out a path for them to improve their skill set. And now they can do the AI consulting. Maybe now they can really look at the cybersecurity architecture, not just be reactive and really understand what the gaps are in a proactive way, actually trying to break into the network to understand what's going on. There's so many different ways that um you can improve the life of that tech. When it gets to the private equity guys, I mean, I I think this is um, I think this is not going to go away, but if you're an MSP and you want to increase the value of your company, you know, how do you do that? One, you want to have more customers, you want to have less churn, uh, you want to have higher quality employees, you want to have better service offerings. And so not that we can solve all of those problems, but you know, if you have a system that can respond to downtime a lot quicker, you you inherently know you're gonna have a much lower churn. So you're more valuable. Number two, if you can get your employees to up their skill set because they're not doing maybe the drudgery work, and now they're actually doing the AI consulting, I can tell you that a PE company will value um an MSP at a higher value if their employees are highly skilled in AI, because that's where efficiencies don't happen. Like when you see an MS when you see a PE firm roll up a hundred MSPs, you don't need a hundred CEOs, right? You don't need a hundred CFOs, right? And so you see the consolidation that's happening. And and maybe if he rolls up a hundred MS MSPs, you might not you might not need a hundred, you know, uh uh technicians or operations guys, right? So that's the jeopardy. But I can tell you, if you've got advanced skill sets, they're not gonna let that go, right? They're gonna want that. And it's gonna be if I'm gonna buy Mike's MSP or Joe's MSP, and Joe has got the much higher skill set of employee. One, I'm I want you more, and number two, I'd be willing to pay more. And because if you have that higher skill set, it you know, it residually comes downhill. You're gonna have a lower churn, your revenue is probably growing quicker, your downtime is probably better, you've probably had less SLA infringements. You know, these are all metrics that the PE guys are going to look at. So it's a dynamic that's not gonna go away. So, you know, the bar just keeps moving, right? The MSP has just got to continue to improve their portfolio and the skill set of their employees. Um, and if they do that, they'll have you know better relationships with their customers and they'll and they'll get more customers, and inherently they'll get more value for their company.

SPEAKER_00 59:04

Mike, you've been a CEO many times. What what's the loneliest part about see being a CEO that nobody talks about?

SPEAKER_03 59:17

That's a great question. Um I think um one of the hardest parts is sometimes knowing um when your team isn't up for the task, right? Like you you know you've got somebody on the team that's really strong but not strong enough, and you're taking the company to the next level, um the CEO always knows that. Right. Always knows that. Um because at the end of the day, uh whether it's in a private company or a public company, normally a private company will have some sort of board, especially if if they're uh venture-backed. And I I learned a long time ago from a dear friend and uh someone that's invested in me multiple times, uh, gave me one little story, araxium, and he said, if there's doubt, there's no doubt. And uh that hit me like a brick. And I was like, okay. And you know, you just don't walk away from that. And I had one other life experience. Um this is at Bay Networks, when they took it was a combination of synoptics and Weltfleet and became Bay Networks, and then the board came in and brought in new management, and they brought in two top guys from Intel. And um, it was a great leader, his name was Dave Shrigley, he was the chief revenue officer, and uh he was the head of marketing. He did the Intel inside advertisements, and he was a wonderful man and one of the hardest working guys I ever saw. And uh he promoted me into a big job. I was a young guy at the time, and I had about a billion and a half of revenue, had about 1,500 people working for me in a two and a half billion dollar company. I ran North America for Bay Networks, and um I had five uh regional, I was a senior VP, I had five regional VPs underneath me and one government VP. And um and and he was the most friendly guy in the world, but then he sat me down one day and he says, Okay, he said, Um, when I do your review, here's how I'm gonna judge you. Five of the six of these guys have got to be as good, if not better, than you, because if you don't hire those guys that are better than you, uh, I don't need you. And um, that's another one that stuck with me. And uh it made me have the courage to, because it happens a lot, not be afraid to hire people that were better and smarter than me. And there's plenty of those people in the world, but I really did hire people that were better than smarter than me. And and I think almost all of those five guys, as I recall, all went out to be CEOs, but just the ability to make sure you have the best people all the time. So it comes down to the people thing thing is your answer your question. You know when somebody doesn't have it and they're not going to scale. And um, you know, dealing with people, you know, especially at a high level, um, that's a hard thing, right? Because you're taking something away from them or you're telling them they're not up to the challenge. Letting somebody go is always the worst part of any job. But the CEO knows that first, and uh it's it's in their head and it's lonely. Um, and then you have to you have to make a choice because like I said, if there's doubt, there's no doubt. And you have to do something about it because you're now responsible for the whole organization, right? And that and that weakness permeates across the board.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:43

I remember, you know, when I started my tech firm back in the 90s, we turned into an MSP, and I remember at our height, we had a picnic, I think it was Memorial Day, and uh, you know, we had all these employees there, and then they brought their kids and grandkids. I was getting introduced, Mike, to grandkids, and I remember thinking to myself, this little business I started in my father's garage now affects grandkids. It's like, what is happening? I did not feel happy about it. I was like, I felt more pressure. I remember going back to the office after the picnic and thinking to myself, some of these people that I have that have been here from the beginning are not going to make it as we continue to grow. And I'm gonna have to make some I'm gonna have to make some hard decisions here, exactly what you said there, because darn it, I'm affecting grandchildren. I mean, this is like a real business, and it was tough to take. It was it was uh it was a wake-up moment, I should say. Is that what you think separates a good and a great CEO to make those kinds of decisions?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:42

Um, well, you know, back to the story with with the the Intel guys, that's how that's how Andy Grove ran his business. So those two guys got it from Andy Grove. Um, and so you know, in the day, Intel was you know the premium company.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:56

I read his book, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:57

And um, you know, I think it's a it's an important part, right? Because you you have to be fair, you represent the business and you have to be fair for the business. And so you have to have that silo on.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:07

But you're not immune to not having the human silo either, right? It's painful, and oftentimes that person is out of their depth and they probably know it as well. There's been times when I've told somebody they're just not going to make it and they knew it, and they actually said thank you in a weird way. Um, but that's the hard part, right? You you have to be fair to them to let them know and just and be able and prepared to tell them why, right? You just can't say, you know, you're not making a team because I don't, you know, I just don't think you're making a team, and or you know, the numbers aren't here, you're terrible, get out the door. Um, you you know, you have to have a conversation with you know with the person. And that's always the hardest part, right? Is the the human part of that. But you can't walk away from it because you know, if somebody else isn't gonna make it, for whatever reason, it's it's impacting the rest of the organization. And, you know, uh invariably, you know, when I've had to do that, you know, you you do a lot, you have a lot of you gotta think about it for a while. But you know, you know, you know before anybody else knows. And you know, when when the hardest part is the anticipation, and then when it's over, invariably you say, I was unfair and I should have done that earlier, right? I I knew it and I kept it to myself. And um, and as I got older, you know, I realized, you know, the sooner you, you know, the sooner you move uh when somebody just doesn't have the skill set or is ill placed in a position, um, it affects everybody. And ultimately you're making the company worse. You're not helping that guy out, you're making his life or her life work miserable because they're not up to the task. And then it's impacting the rest of the company. And you own it, right? You you're you're the CEO, you you own it. There's no one else to turn to, right? Um, you know, and you've got a boss too, right? You know, everyone says, Oh, CEO's the boss. Well, you know, I I don't have most of my career, I've had five. Or seven bosses at the same time because you have a board, right? And so, you know, invariably, you know, how's the team doing? Can you rank the team? And, you know, you've got to rank the team because the owners of the business, whether they be venture guys or investors, they want to know. And um, and you've got to be clear-eyed with that, and and you've got to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:22

I remember when, you know, the first couple of years I started my business, my friends would say to me, Must be nice not having a boss. And I I have more bosses now than I've ever had. I don't know. Every one of my clients, everyone on the board, everyone, vendors, employees to a certain degree. Please do not go into business thinking that you're not going to have a boss again. It's a it's a clear myth. Mike, what's the difference between a leader and a manager?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:48

Well, I think you can be a leader and a manager. Um, but you know, I think managers are are more, you know, task-oriented. And and managers who are are leaders will manage the task, but will show people how to do it, right? And help people do it. Um, and I think, you know, especially as the years go by, you know, I gave the example of, you know, the you can tell the difference between a younger salesperson and the and an older salesperson, right? The younger salesperson wants to get through the the 20-slide deck because, you know, they think if they do that, they've got it, right? And as opposed to a more experienced or seasoned salesperson, um, you know, they're listening to the customer. They're more, they're more confident, right? And I think that leaders listen, right? They have to listen. And and they become better if they listen. Um, and I think they get more respect. You know, people know when you're actually listening, and I think people know when you're not listening. And I I think that is almost a left-right turn for leadership and for respect. You know, leadership and respect are kind of intertwined. Um, and so I think, you know, you have to have that listening uh ear. And if you do that, it's easier to manage. You know, anyone can manage tasks, right? You come up with a set of tasks, you manage the tasks, you know, blah, blah, blah. Three o'clock on Friday, we're gonna review review the task. But if you don't make the task, you don't make the task, the leader is how how come we didn't? How do we do better? How do we and and be part of the process and listen to the team, listen to your customers? And I think that's the difference with leadership. You know, it's just you have to have that aptitude to listen.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:29

I've had to have some tough discussions. I wonder if you have had to in the past with managers who thought they were leaders, you know, because the ego kind of gets in, and they're both very important, like you said. But if you're not actually leading, you're not a leader. It can be a tough, tough discussion sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:45

Do you know it's a very tough discussion, but you know, it's easy to see, right? Um when when there's a when I've had a manager who's been a great leader, um the the team just rallies around the leader, right? There's no um, you know, you can almost tell by the volume of people, there's always people going behind your back, but the volume of people going behind your back, you know, to complain about something, right? Um when you have a leader and it's a team, right? We're in this together, and you know, we're we're a club, and we're gonna sink or you know, or swim together. And you can see it. You can just see it, like, and almost get defensive, like, you know, you're not gonna get to us, you know, we're we're gonna we're gonna get this problem solved, or we're gonna be the top sales district, or whatever it is. You know, there's a spirit of corpse uh within the team. I think that starts, you know, it's almost like a sports analogy, right? You got your captain of your team, you rally around your captain and or your coach and you want to win the game for the team. You know, that's it's a subtlety, but it it exists in the corporate world. You know, I think the corporate world is you know sports for adults, but you know, uh it's kind of that way. And you know, and the people that treat people lousy or like crap, you know, it all comes around, you know, it all comes around. There's no hiding it over time. It just seeps through the walls, and people will come to you or you observe, you'll see, and there's just no hiding. There's no hiding, especially in this world, because it's it's so it's moving so quick. Um, if somebody's not up for the task or they're not working hard, or you know, whatever the issue might be, or they have the wrong style and they don't fit, it's it maybe it's easier to hire because companies are so lean and efficient now, you know, it's it's hard to hide. In the past, I think it might have been easier to hide some of those um not so favorable attributes.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:36

It is hard to hide now, isn't it? Yeah, with all the technology, with uh everything linking together. Mike, has there been something about 10 years ago that you believed firmly and strongly that you no longer believe now?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:54

Well, the the one thing uh I can't I can't say that I I I don't believe now, but the thing that has surprised me the most is I can especially, you know, I've been looking at AI now for the past two years, I guess. The thing that has surprised me is how much you can do with so little. It is breathtaking. I mean, it is just amazing how fast you can move. Um and you know, and everyone's concerned is AI gonna put me out of business and you know, we're gonna lose, you know, that that that that script will be written over the next couple of years. Um, but you know, I I've lived through a couple cycles, not like this, but I've lived through a couple cycles where everyone's job was gonna go away or this wasn't gonna happen at and other businesses uh happened. You know, I think Jensen Wong says it best, right? He doesn't care CEO of Nvidia. Yeah, he says people are are out of their minds if they just think AI is just gonna get rid of jobs and you know we're gonna become obsolete as people. And he actually, his his theme is, you know, embrace AI, learn as much as you can about AI. I don't care what school you go to, or if you even if you go to school, he says you have something that you can use to ask any question in the world. And so your weapon is to become inquisitive, right? To ask questions, to improve yourself, because there's an answer behind that. So you can learn. So people who will adapt and will learn and apply themselves are gonna become better and they'll become more valuable and they will always have jobs. And the people that um that don't, that aren't going to embrace you know the technology and aren't going to increase their skill sets, I think sure, there's gonna be dislocation and there's gonna be um difficulties, you know, in that portion of the population, there's no doubt. But if you're in this technology business, you know, you need to embrace it, right? You need to embrace it and you need to learn it and you need to be curious and inquisitive. Um, and I just can't believe how fast it's happened, right? And I witness it every day, you know, things that you know would take for weeks, you know, we're we're doing in days. I mean, it's just it's just incomprehensible how fast we can go. You know, we had to we had to work on SOC compliant. Okay, so here's a real live example. SOC compliant. And, you know, to become you know that level of of security clearance and and and uh compliance, it would it was it was a six-month process, you know, and it cost $150,000 in previous company. I mean, it was a pain in the ass. And uh we took our first cut in less than a week, we probably got about 80% of SAC compliant done just by using AI. Uh and I, you know, just one person, and it just blew my mind away, right? I mean, that's just one example. There's hundreds of examples. But I think, you know, that to me is um the thing that I think's changed the most, and it's not a 10-year view, it's a two-year view, is that uh you could see AI coming, you know, 22, 23, so 24. But really in in 25, now in 26, when you're really into it, and I'm I'm in the middle of it now, I just cannot believe how fast you can move and how many things you can get done with a small, focused, skilled team. That's that's a huge difference. And people are finding that out every day. I mean, uh, you know, the the kids that are coming out of school today um that have that general technology background and that skill set, you know, I think there'll be more startups than we've ever had, you know, in our in our lifetimes that are gonna morph into all sorts of businesses and all sorts of other new jobs, you know, we talk about the Mag 7, there'll be a Mag 20 here eventually. There's gonna be all these other unicorns and all these other businesses and all these other jobs and careers that we can't even imagine. And I I think Jensen Wong's got it right. You know, if you're inquisitive and you have a bright mind and and you're curious, you can improve yourself tenfold more than your degree can by really, really applying you know AI and really, really utilizing that tool as a power.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:00

I don't know, 10 years ago, uh whatever it was, you know, with these companies, these new companies were had a huge advantage because they were born in the cloud. Of course, these new companies now are born in AI. Imagine the advantage they have. Is there a question, Mike, that you wish more people would ask you?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:20

Um yeah, I I mean the question, you know, we're we're really coming out of stealth mode now. We're you know, we're commercial now, and um, I, you know, we'll get our our word out there. It's it's always just the simple, simple questions. Like, what problem are you gonna solve for me? What what problem? I mean, if I went into every meeting and they said, What problem are you gonna solve for me? That would be great. Because I know that the person on the other end, they they have a problem, and they're trying to find out if I know what their problem is. And I go into meetings saying, What's your biggest problem? Right. I I I just want to understand what your problem is. Because other than that, we're just talking past each other, and this is like an educational forum. And I, you know, okay, we're gonna do a half-hour call. I'm gonna tell you everything about us, and you're gonna say, Yeah, thanks. That's great. I'll think about it and I'll get back to you. Uh, as opposed to a meeting that starts with, this is my biggest problem, and our second biggest problem. And, you know, I can sit there and say, we don't touch any of those problems. So maybe this isn't uh, you know, we didn't vet this call enough. We shouldn't be on this call. But invariably, if we're on the call, we've vetted it enough. And I can say, What is your problem? And you know, to have someone ask me that question is the most invaluable thing for me because now they're telling me what their problems are. I'm not telling them I'm solving your problem because I don't know your problem, but you're telling me your problem. And that the conversation takes a whole different vector. And so now I'm telling them how I'm solving the problem and they're engaged. And say, well, you don't understand this part of my problem. Okay, tell me more about your problem. And now you're you're having a conversation with them and you're like a consultant with them, right? You're giving, they're giving you their day-to-day problem, and they're trying to figure out can can these guys fix this? Is this gonna help me and how is it gonna help me? So that's to me, that's uh I don't know if it's a clarifying point or or screening point, but to me, that's the question I'd I'd love from someone to say, you know, how how are you gonna solve my problems? My question back is what's your biggest problem?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:24

So, Mike, I I think you know my story, but I started the the MSP back in '93, and I was working way too hard, 14, 16-hour days. You know, stranger to this, and you know, I was paying a lot less soccer, you know, a lot doing a lot less exercise and developing poor eating habits. And next thing I know in front of the doctor, she tells me I'm at 340 pounds. So yeah, I had gained 47-inch weight. So I had gained all I knew I was getting big, but I didn't know I was, you know, in your 20s, you're invincible, right? Yeah, I'm getting big, but I can handle it. So what? Uh but the next thing she said, you know, rocked my world. She said, Look, if you don't lose this weight, you're not gonna see your daughter graduate. So my my oldest was just born. Oh, wow. Scared the life out of me, right? It didn't motivate, it angered me, right? So I'm I'm driving home, you know, punching the steering wheel. This is my pie hole. You know, I can abuse myself all I want, but the the decisions I make are much bigger than me right now, you know. And so spent the next six, seven months, lost about 120 pounds, kept it off. You can't look at these things like a finishing line, right? These are lifelong changes that you have to make. So when I tell people this story, they always say, What's your secret? You know, how'd you lose the weight? And I said, There's no secret. Discipline, right? Motivation, routine, focus. How does discipline play a role in your life, Mike?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:50

You have a routine. Like um, I go to bed at night, and before I close the computer, I always write down what my to-do list, what I didn't get on my list. Um, and that has always been my guiding post, right? Just I have my to-do list. And, you know, it's easy to go through a day and say, I'm gonna get to that, I'm gonna get to that, I'm gonna get to that, and you never get to it. And then the next day happens, I'm gonna get to it, get to it. But I literally make a list of things that I have to get to. And I get annoyed when I look at the end of the next day, and I might have 10 things I was supposed to get to, and you know, I got to three or I got to four. You know, that's a lousy day, right? Like I got to get to seven or eight. It's okay to play two to three over. So it goes to your whole point, it's it's discipline. Um, and then, you know, and discipline in every aspect of life. Like, you know, um the the the league I play on the weekends, but on the on a league night, um, it's at 7.30 at night. And so on Tuesday nights, like I'm not, you know, who's in the mood to go play pickleball at 7.30 at night, and you gotta get in the car and drive half an hour to the court and play for two hours and then drive back. And, you know, it's like it's like I'm not missing this. I'm not gonna miss it. Uh, you know, I'm gonna do it. And invariably, when you do it, you feel great. And so that that said for just going to the to the gym or yoga or going for a long walk every day. You know, if if you don't have uh some physical aspect in your life or some outlet, uh you're it's gonna work into your whole life. It's gonna work, especially into your business life. You just won't have the energy. And everyone says, I have no time. You know, you're you're right, you're working 16 hours a day or you're working long days. If you don't do some form of exercise in your life, you'll it'll you'll you'll pay for it. Somewhere along the line, you're gonna pay for it. And obviously, you you recognize that in a in a big way. But to me, it's it is just the discipline saying, I'm I'm I am gonna work out today, uh, I'm gonna fit it in from 12 to 1230. I'm going for a 30-minute walk with my dog or or whatever it might be that you're gonna do. And here's my list, here's the things I've got to do. And you know, it's the clarity of thought when you've got to put it pen in hand. What do I have to do? Like there's always something that you're forgetting. But when you write it down on a piece of paper, you know, because you can't remember everything, when you write it down on a piece of paper, it doesn't go away until a line goes through it. I don't put it on my computer, it's on my notepad, right? And I in old school, I gotta put a line through that thing. And it works, you know, it works. Some days uh it goes better than other days, but if you don't, what's the old saying? If you if you don't have a plan, you know, any road will take you there, or destination, there any road will take you there. Uh so you gotta have some sort of organization.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:35

If you plan to fail, you fail to plan. Is that so the the Jets uh Herm Edwards, I think? Yeah. And as a child, was discipline talked about in the household, or was it just kind of exemplified?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:51

Um, well, my dad was uh very much a disciplinarian, right? You know, when he spoke, you jumped, right? It was uh he was a classic uh Irish Catholic strong presence in the family, didn't say many words, but when he said something, you did it immediately. Um so there was always that discipline, right? And you know, he was always instructive, but when he spoke, you know, you listened and you knew he meant business. And so there was there was no messing around. You know, my mom was the uh trying to keep the stray cats, you know, together or running around. But you know, when dad walked in, it's you know, we're we're all sitting down to dinner at six o'clock, you know, you were at the dinner table at six o'clock. You you knew where you had to be. Uh or if you had to go do something on Saturday, whatever it might be, there was something he told you you had to do, or you had to mow the lawn, you know, you did it. There was no excuse. And so, and and if you didn't, there was a price to pay, you know, and so it was the be the beginnings of, you know, uh you need to do this, you've agreed to do it. If you don't do it, this is the consequence. No emotion, just the facts. And um and and in an unemotional, detached way. Um, you know, that's maybe something terrible to say about a father, cold, detached way. He he wasn't a cold, detached person. But when it came to the the discipline or the structure, whatever it was, when he said something, he meant it, right? He wasn't frivolous with his words. And you know, that impacts you as a as a kid growing up, right? You you what and he worked so hard. I mean, he you know, he killed himself working, trying to help us go through private school and then through college. We didn't have any money growing up, you know, working two jobs, and it was it was tough, hard scrabbled life. Um, but he was he was disciplined in his own life, right? He was up and every day at 5, 5:30 in the morning, worked long hours, didn't get home to seven at night. You know, he he wasn't uh he didn't have an easy road. So uh and so you to watch him, so you see the hard work and you see the discipline and then the respect. And so what when he says to do something, there's usually a purpose. You know, he wasn't dictatorial, there was a purpose before, you know, wasn't asking to, you know, you know, climb climb the side of a building or something, but you know, these are the things I need you to do to help the family fabric stay together, whatever it might be, mow the lawn, do this, or whatever it is that you gotta do. You had your assignment, you did it. Uh, and so that's he was a great, great mentor in that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:18

Yeah, we can all learn something from that generation, can't we? Uh I'm trying to figure out, Mike, it is an art versus science question. How often in decision process in business personally, do you rely or ask the gut? Does it come first? Does it come last? Does it come at all?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:36

Uh so I grew up as a sales guy. And so my my uh maybe only real skill is is people's skills and feel feelings. You know, I I read people for a living. And um, I would say I have a very, you know, my gut barometer is very good. I mean, it's it failed, it doesn't fail me often, and um so I get a sense right away. I can I can I draw an opinion, I can tell, and it sticks with me. You always try to go through logic and process, but invariably, you know, the gut usually is right. That's been my experience with me personally, anyway. And I try not to let my gut interfere with, you know, it's just like I walk in a room and meet somebody, I don't like them.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:21

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:22

But, you know, as I get to know people, you get to know people, right? And you pick up if you're attentive to that, you pick up all sorts of nuances, whether, you know, little things. Um, what's the old saying? You know a lot about somebody when no what they do when nobody's looking, kind of thing. But you're just watching people, and you know, in in any of these businesses, you're all in the same hot tub together, right? It's hard to hide. So you really get to know somebody, you know, at an interpersonal level, professional level, and you know, instinct just takes over for me. And um, you know, I keep that to myself, you know, I don't advertise, you know, I just it's in there and it's open to change, but my gut has has guided me quite a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:05

So when you got to make some of those hard decisions we talked about earlier as a CEO, and you know, the data is all there, you know, whether to make a decision, but then your gut tells you something different. Now, certainly it depends on the gravity of the occasion, but how much was in that type of uh scenario, how much weight do you put with your gut?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:24

You know, so so the gut, you know, it somehow the gut always comes to being personal to you, right? And so what you have to separate um from the gut from from the business is the impact on everyone else. So that's that's the dividing line, right? It's just like if it was if it was um just me and that other person, that's one thing, and my gut could say, Yeah, I just don't want to be associated with you, or I just don't like, you know, it's just not working. The chemistry's not there, we don't we don't compliment each other from a skill set perspective, you know, those kinds of things. That's one thing, right? That and the gut can prevail, but you can't let your gut prevail in in a corporate setting, right? You it can guide you, it can give you um perspective, uh, but it can't guide you. And to me, the guiding post is the impact that that person is having on the rest of the organization. Um, you know, whether it be they're bare performer uh or they're they're extremely caustic or negative and they're having an impact on morale, um, you know, that that's a gut thing too, but you know, it's the impact on the rest of the organization, right? So you can't let you can't let gut drive things. It's part of the equation. And I think the gut for me makes the antenna goes up, and then you're more attentive and you start to probe, right? And then but then when you probe, it's gotta be, you know, on the facts, right? On on what's really happening. And you you start to dig, and oftentimes the gut gave you the impetus to go dig. And you find out more and sometimes, you know, the gut was right, sometimes the gut was wrong. But you can't drive the bus by the gut though.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:09

I I like to cite the exam, I'm a golfer, you know, so I I'm 150 yards out, there's very little wind, I've got an even lie, the pins in the middle, you know, everything is saying eight, you know, all the data saying eight, but you know what? I'm not getting there with an eight. I gotta go with my seven. So I got I, you know, I get all the data, and then I said let's just you know, let's ask the guts. So I don't know, i i I had and as a trivial, well, some would say it's that's serious, but that I just kind of give that one example of how you know uh have it be kind of the last gate, uh, you know, to make those kinds of decisions. I'm like, what motivates you?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:45

Um you know, I I think um the hard part for me is is kind of doing nothing. And um and I've always um I've always been in the middle of something, right? There's always you know the chaos of stuff, and um and I enjoy that. And and it doesn't bother me. A lot of people don't like chaos or abstraction or non-conclusive situations, and you know, startups and especially in a technology world, um, it's exciting. You know, it gets your adrenaline running, right? You know, uh on Monday you wake up and it's like, oh, you know, we're the next unicorn. On Tuesday, you wake up, it's like we're going out of business, right? And that that scares the crap out of me. And then on Wednesday, and it's and it's not for everyone, right? But I like that. I like the excitement of the of the challenge of it, right? Um to me, that's like uh, you know, Flow Mind is is my baby now. Like I'm I am so committed to making this successful, and I know we will. And so I'm it's it's like I'm in a I'm in a hard pickleball game. Like I'm I'm so focused, and yeah, I gotta beat the other team, and you know, we're gonna win, you know, and I I can feel that. Like I want to grow the business, I want to bring on a lot of customers and really be successful and have an impact, you know, in the MSP community and and just help people's businesses. Um to me this it's it's so rewarding to do that, right? It really is. Um so that's what gets me going. It's the excitement of it, right? And and then also sharing it with other people, right? I mean, everyone's you know, you're when you're in a startup like this, everyone's like on hyper, hyper pins and needles, right? Everyone's adrenaline is running, you know, it's it's exciting. You can feel it, it's palpable, right? You know, some you get a phone call, it's like I got 10 minutes, let me tell you what's happening. You're listening for 10 minutes, and that like that is an amazing piece of information that's really invaluable, and then some another call comes in and something else is happening, and you're sitting there, you know, trying to put all the pieces together, and then how does that impact the overall company? You know, or or should we be doing something different, or is it validation that we're really on the right path, or or or boom, you know, we're we're really going right into the right into the iceberg here. We're going in the wrong direction. So it gets your attention, right? There's no sleeping on the job, right? It's just you're not mailing it in. And um that that makes life exciting, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:10

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SPEAKER_03 1:32:14

Oh, there's so many ways to measure success, right? I I I think having um a company, especially when you take something from nothing and make it into a real a real company, um, you know, whatever the size is, right? You know, we're we're at zero revenue right now, right? We're just starting to deploy and put it to the customers. You know, I I've got some numbers in my head that I I want to reach that I'll keep to myself for now. But you know, I have some numbers and things that I want. I I think there's a couple strategic partners that I I think I really want to go after, right? When we started to go after. So I have all these internal metrics, you know, that I have and I've shared with with some of the team. Um and so I'm measuring, I'm measuring myself, right? I think. And and so you'll know when you get there because um you'll matter, right? You'll matter to people, right? When customers deploy you um and they really like your system, you know, you're you're you're part of them, right? You've you've made an impact. And if you're if you've got strategic partners that want to bigger companies, more sophisticated companies that want to work with you, you know that you matter, right? You you've made an impact. And um I think there's a good chance that this company is going to matter to a lot of people. Um and that that will make me infinitely you know proud of the work that the team's done and the concept and uh the idea and the hard work that's gone in, gone in from you know, all of the team, especially Alan, who's the the brainchild of this, to see where we were eight, nine months ago to where we are now. It's it's almost intoxicating how much we've done in nine months. I can't even imagine what we're gonna do in the next nine months. So yeah, it's it's fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:58

Absolute pleasure talking with you, Mike. I'm excited to learn more about you. I love what you're doing to help MSPs and ultimately the small to medium-sized business, which is you know the backbone to the world economy. If anybody's watching or listening, how can they get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_03 1:34:14

Well, um Mike at FlowmindNetworks.com. So again, FlowMindNetworks at dot com. There's other FlowMinds that are out there. And just get on our website, uh Flow Mind Networks, and there's a nice little deck of slides there. It's not your traditional website, but there's a four-minute video right at the top. And in four minutes, it'll synthesize, you'll save you a lot of reading. It'll either be for you or not for you. But in four minutes or less, you'll you very efficiently know if this is something you want to pursue, and you can just click at the bottom and set up a call and be happy to get on with the team and give you a briefing.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:51

Fantastic, Mike. We'll make sure to put in the show notes. Thanks so much for your time today. I can't wait to uh break some bread with you next time I see you face to face.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:58

That would be great. Look forward to doing it, Joe. Have fun. Bye now. Bye bye. Cheers.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:02

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