Terry Hedden – (00:00)
Hey everyone, and welcome to the very first episode of GROW Limitless. I’m Terry Hedden, CEO of Marketopia, and I’m really excited to kick things off with someone who’s been a major force in the IT channel, Greggg Lalle. You probably know Gregg from his time at ConnectWise, and today he’s here with me to discuss something that’s on everyone’s mind, AI. What it is, what it isn’t, and what it means for MSPs right now, not just five years from now. We’ll talk about…the big shift happening in SaaS, why MSPs can’t afford to sit on the sidelines with AI and how Gregg’s new company, Synthrio, is helping turn AI into something real, usable and profitable. If you’ve been wondering where AI fits into your business or how to actually do something with it, not just talk about it, this is the episode for you. Gregg, welcome back, buddy. It’s been a while.
Gregg Lalle – (00:57)
Doing well. Yeah, doing good. Thanks for having me.
Terry Hedden – (00:59)
Yeah, no problem. Glad you can make it. know, Gregg, you’re kind of one of those people that is kind of like a who’s who in the channel to me. You have a lot of global visibility into trends. You’ve worked with MSPs all over the world. You work with one of the most influential, if not the most influential firms in the channel. So I really value your experience. And so what I really want to talk about today is AI and what, ⁓ I guess what the MSPs need to think about and what to worry about. ⁓
First, catch me up. You know, I know you left Connectwise not too long ago. You’ve been sort of heads down, hunkered down, working on some secret projects. I’m eager to learn more about those and, and, catch me up.
Gregg Lalle – (01:42)
Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. Like you said, it’s been 15 years at ConnectWise as we’ve known each other many of those years. And thank you again for having me in and a couple of weeks ago for your advisory, your peer groups. So it was very nice to come in and it was very generous of you to have me come in and speak to your groups as well. But yeah, really kind of working on this new model, this new age of AI, kind of thinking about the transition via ConnectWise, what the next step would be. And, you know, looking in the mirror, do a lot of reflecting about what I wanted to go, right? ⁓in my mid 50s and kind of looking for kind of that, that ⁓ work life, not necessarily balance, but kind of giving back as we’re working as well. Right. And so the whole such a comment about SaaS being dead, like floored me, like as I was going through transition, I was looking about staying the ecosystem, another SaaS provider. And then I looked and I was like, why would someone who’s the head of the largest SaaS company out there make such a bold statement? Right. And that all became just kind of unfolded from there. And so kind of tweak that whole curiosity around where AI is, where it’s going. And really, the more I dug into it, the more the need that MSPs need to be awakened and understand themselves because it’s moving at such a rapid rate, like the wait and see approach is really, really, it’s not, not, it’s not going to work this time. Right. So trying to kind of form this, company with Vince Kent, many people know in the channel, Jeff Hurst as well. And some advisors and folks that we have Ivan our CTO in, Czechoslovakia, this, this platform to help MSPs.
Build agents to actually participate in the digital workforce, but also reduce the risk to market. So help them with their go-to-market motions to capitalize on the opportunity to say aye.
Terry Hedden – (03:18)
So I want first hit the such a comment because I just saw that comment. I think it was yesterday or the day before. So I had not seen that before. You saw it a little while ago. Tell us about the comment and why it hits so hard to you specifically.
Gregg Lalle – (03:30)
Yeah.
mean, again, here, I mean, I’ve been in the channel and with connect watch for 15 years. And as we look around, we see everyone’s a SaaS company, right? MSPs are in the business of selling, bundling, packaging SaaS companies and doing that. If that’s going away, what is the next evolution? What does that look like? Right. And so that kind of piqued the curiosity and started digging a little deeper. And really it’s, what we’ve talked about for the last 30 years. It’s a pure service related industry. It’s the services that MSPs put on top of whatever that platform is in the back end that they’re going to be able to deliver and able and help their customers unlock all of the opportunities to drive their businesses to higher ground, to better, more efficiencies, to grow their revenues, better interactions with their customers. So this whole, the legacy stuff, again, we all know it’s not tomorrow. So a lot of people say, well, yeah, it’s coming, going back to the wait and see. It’s not going to happen immediately. But for someone to make that profound of a comment to me meant that there’s a fundamental change that people aren’t picking up on. you know, it just, it shook me a little bit, to be honest with you.
Terry Hedden – (04:30)
So what did he say exactly? For those of you who didn’t see the… guess I saw it as like an excerpt from a speech,
Gregg Lalle – (04:37)
Yeah, this was from, I think, November or December. really? Yeah, but just commenting again. This is because I had Exit run January web time frame coming on the actual ⁓ place of the SaaS world. eventually, you can think of SaaS applications being nothing more than database with an interface. But if you have a prompt or a ⁓ user-friendly interface that can prompt any database or any source, You don’t need all of the applications on the back end. need the data, right? You just need whatever data you can collect. So a lot of the front end applications then, where although they’ll their own line of business applications they’ll develop, ultimately you may want to combine five or six or seven of those together in order to get the outcome from your agent. You may not just need the information from one application. So again, it’s going to be that integration to those databases tying into a conversational user friendly interface that people feel comfortable with.
Every user feels comfortable with interacting with to extract whatever information they want.
Terry Hedden – (05:33)
So the idea then is, and Satya is Microsoft? So for Microsoft to say that obviously it’s going to hold away and for Satya to say that considering it’s not his best interest, definitely as the CEO of Microsoft, even though obviously they have a role with OpenAI, but for him to come out and say that software is not the future. ⁓
Gregg Lalle – (05:37)
Yeah. OK.
Terry Hedden – (05:56)
It should speak to all of us. It should be like a wake up call. And so what you see is AI sort of taking on that interface. Instead of going to different line of business applications, you’re going to one interface and telling that bot slash agent slash AI employee, however you’re to call it, I need to accomplish this. And it does it for you instead of having to the human to go to the different software applications entering information.
Gregg Lalle – (06:19)
Yeah, look, and I think that timeline you’re describing is debatable, right, as far as when we get to that point. And that’s where we’re just, just posting on LinkedIn this morning and where, before I stepped in here, I was kind of, kind of chatting back with with MSP online. And, you know, there’s this, you know, internet feeling of the 2000s, 19, 1999-ish, where people are kind of in this, you gold rush. They’re not sure which, direction to go. And again, my whole point, our thought process, it’s not necessary. You have to know where it ends.
But directionally, you have to get in line and start joining that stream of thought that when you’re planning your business for your mid-year term, you’re coming up in June, you’re looking at your business and how you’re performing, what you want to do for the end of the year, what you want to do in 26, if you can believe it, probably a couple of months, people will start planning for next year. So how are you going to adopt that? And it’s because of the pace it’s evolving as well. So again, I don’t expect that it’s going to be here next week or the week after.
But my point to kind of the call to MSPs is a little bit, it’s coming faster than you think. And there are ways to do things elegantly if you start now versus the scramble, you know, I’ve got to put something together later on. ⁓
Terry Hedden – (07:26)
You know, and I see this huge opportunity to me. It’s like cloud times a hundred or a thousand or 10,000. I felt like the cloud was sort of the next generation of how technology was going to be delivered. But you could, the old one would still be around. Whereas it feels like with AI, it’s like almost like a tsunami coming at us. And it’s coming after individuals, especially knowledge workers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, architects, IT people, people that depend on the knowledge and skills within their brain to be effective. And all of a sudden it’s going to be like, it’s going to rock the world of all of those people. And I feel like MSPs are uniquely positioned because they not only face a risk like a librarian would or like an attorney would, but they also are like incredibly well positioned to take advantage of it and capitalize on it and ride the wave. They’re not going to be mowed over. At least if they get on board and they start paddling,
You know, using the surfing analogy, feels to me like one of those once in a lifetime opportunities that if you get on board and start surfing the wave and riding the wave, it could propel you to stratospheric success. Not just, I feel like MSPs, you know, and I’m just as guilty and I’m sure you are too. Sometimes we kind of get set of thought up into the, it’s $20 more a month. It’s a hundred more dollars. A big customer is 3000. All of sudden, if you can really ride this wave right, you might double or triple profit in the near term.
And at the same exact time, mitigate the risk about what the future might bring. know, it’s like, I don’t know. I kind of see it as that. And I share your concern in terms of MSPs not seemingly understanding either the opportunity or the risk. They’re just sort of like, yeah, let’s just wait and see.
Gregg Lalle – (09:13)
Well, I think there’s a risk to doing nothing. And then there’s obviously a risk of, you know, data privacy of, you know, the risk to AI doing something that, you know, as a representative of their company, that’s going to do something that’s going to fail. So I think there’s a lot of different risks. And again, it’d be remiss if we didn’t say it starts with a responsible ethical AI policy. Something we’ve talked about in user groups is like every MSP out there, I’m talking to them every day. Many of them don’t have a responsible policy, like they have a security policy for their own colleagues.
So how do you expect them to know and be knowledgeable the fact how they should be interacting with AI? Because open AI isn’t asking permission to come in and downstream and talk to the end users, right? Google built 35 million chat bots. This was for their last earnings release. None of that came through the channel. They’re asking permission to address SMBs or businesses or anybody to come and interact. And so like it or not, at this point, MSPs are somewhat being left out of the conversation.
Now again, we’re not in widespread adoption yet. It’s just, it’s coming mainstream. But what I’m saying is I think this is the point where MSPs have to insert themselves into the supply chain and make sure that they know that the value they bring is that knowledge is that training that they can help them use it responsibly, effectively, and, you know, stay ahead of the curve because as we said, it’s just going so fast.
Terry Hedden – (10:26)
Yeah, 500 million people a day are using chat GPT or something.
Gregg Lalle – (10:30)
I think it’s a weekly figure. I’m not sure. think it’s 500. We can I looked up as a marchers like 400 because I looked at their projections, but they project a billion by December. So a billion people on planet. Yeah, on a weekly basis.
Terry Hedden – (10:41)
Especially when it’s not the only chat, it’s not the only AI platform, that’s just one of them. If you add them all together, it’s going to be darn near half the population of
Gregg Lalle – (10:51)
Anybody who goes there, you feel empowered. You get this information. You’re like, wow, this is like, I walked into a library talking to me. Right. You’re doing, we’re doing voice to text now. I don’t have sit on a keyboard. You can be driving in your car and communicating and be getting the information back. Your reports compiled, whatever it is for you to go back to the office. You have your information, right? So the efficiency, what you can do with productivity is going to just.
Terry Hedden – (11:11)
What it reminds me of is like, remember the holiday and select commercials where it was like, they become an expert because they say the holiday is kind of like that. Like you could become like a mini attorney in like 60 seconds by asking chat, GBT to come up with a legal agreement and non-disclosure agreement between two parties.
Gregg Lalle – (11:27)
Yeah, you know enough to be dangerous. Yeah, again, I wouldn’t be so as something of the professions that we could go out and replicate exactly what they do. But it does do enough in the folks in those professions that they’re rattled by. They understand the power. We’re just getting started. Right. So so it’s only going to get better from here. And that’s the point, I think, is to try to get people in the mindset of going, OK, I’m at ground zero. It’s time to start building. And this is where we talk to MSP. It’s not about, know, holy heck, you’ve missed the opportunity. Jump in, do something for something sake.
It’s about a methodology and approach that’s going to take some time to build and put together. So you want to do some testing of your GPTs, of your models. It’s going to take time to evolve. You’re not going to just stand something up and start making money tomorrow.
Terry Hedden – (12:12)
Interesting. I don’t, I, I feel it and see it. I just, love the passion in you by the way, Gregg. It’s in some different stages in your career. When I’ve talked with you, you could tell you when you’re amped up about something. And this is definitely one like, this is keeping you up at night. This is making your heart beat fast and you enjoy talking about, I think it’s a really cool thing. And honestly, I think the, the MSP community needs to hear it. They need to hear from someone like you that they trust that has been around a long time. And for you from connect wise, talking about something, a CEO.
Microsoft also saying, Hey, this is a big deal. It should be a reality check to everyone who who’s listening is trying to figure out is can I just keep my head in the sand and just keep status quo and keep making $150, $250 a month per user as a managed service fighter. And I think the answer is no. mean, not only do you face the risk of employee counts and your customer shrinking. Um, but, but also I see, I see it almost in Marketopia, you know,
AI, feel like hit our industry first. I feel like the content writer role, I felt was the first one to get attacked, you know, where it was just like a 500 word blog on why Gregg Lali is, would be the best friend in the world. And it would literally come up with something in 30 seconds or less. Whereas a copywriter used to get paid $2 a word to write that. And now ChatGPT creates something that isn’t as good maybe, but it’s probably
It depends, arguably 80%, 90 % is good and 30 seconds or. Yeah. Um, so it came to us first and, and, and my world, at least it feels like that. And, and, and now I think it’s, it’s spreading, but how I presented to my team is that it’s like, it’s like, uh, Ironman. You know, it’s a normal human with an exoskeleton that makes them into a superhuman, a superpower, uh, uh, a hero just that can help save the day by.
Gregg Lalle – (13:38)
Three.
Terry Hedden – (14:03)
Basically being their capability being multiplied. see that’s what AI is released right now. know, obviously that the there’s, there’s going to be the people who are wearing that exoskeleton. can accomplish far more, far faster, far cheaper and protect potentially far better than a normal person doing it the old fashioned way, trying to go against iron man. And that’s not going to end well for that person.
Gregg Lalle – (14:23)
And that’s, and that’s what I’m really trying to do with MSPs is wake them up and go, they have to be the enabler. Even coming in here to talk to you, I was thinking to myself, your background in consulting is so applicable today. Right. I go to, as I’m talking to MSPs, I’m on their website before I talk to them and it says, Hey, we do IT support and 365 and we have backups. like people, they want to, even small business, they didn’t need to know about staying agile and transformational in this time of AI and how you can bring and change your business. So the wording, the attitude has to change for MSPs. We talked about this for a long time, but it needs to happen now because of that is what’s required to deliver AI is to know the business at the middle, not just the technology. So that mind shift from the MSP needs to occur where they need to start looking and going, know all the IT tools and the systems they use. I know nothing about their operational workflow that has to change. You have to start billing yourself as an MSP is that consultant.
And if you can’t convince your current customers, I’m telling people now, go get new ones. Like now’s a great time even to do marketing about, you know, responsibly. I would ever just get people to raise their hands to start conversations and build yourself to them. They won’t know any different, right? They’ll, they’ll see you as a consultant if that’s what you come out of the gate doing and we’ll help you do that. Right. So, so that’s the whole point of trying to speak differently, act differently, because you’re going to need to, you won’t be able to do that as a technologist.
Terry Hedden – (15:45)
I think MSP, I appreciate what you said about consulting because I think this is, ⁓ I feel like in the SMB market, consulting was almost impossible because people wouldn’t be willing to pay what it’s worth because the cost saving to a florist for high level IT advice wasn’t enough to pay for that person. Whereas enterprise obviously was huge. I remember my first million dollar sale as a consultant at Ernst Young was, I was 23.
And General Electric was my client and I was teaching them how to, ⁓ you know, merge systems and do post-merger integration and, and, and a million dollars was nothing. Whereas the SMB market, that’s called sales. It’s like a cost of sale. The most valuable thing that an MSP offers is the advice on what to do. Yet our industry has always given that away for free. It’s like a sales cost. Whereas AI is the first one to me. It’s like, listen,
Some MSPs that are too technically oriented are not going to be able to do it. They don’t understand business enough, but for a lot of MSPs, they are a business person. They do understand what AI can do. If they just start using it themselves, they’ll quickly gather enough knowledge and experience to help other people navigate the thing. It’s not like you got to go to college for eight years to learn how to use AI.
You just have to install ChatGPT internally and use Co-File it and start embracing the AI integrated with different tools like ConnectWise or Datto or whatever, right? AI is everywhere.
Gregg Lalle – (17:15)
And it’s not theoretical, it’s here now. people keep saying it’s not here, there’s pieces of it here now. Is what it’s going to become here now? No, but there’s pieces of now that MSPs need to their hands on and start working with so that they can become consultants and advisors to that technology.
Terry Hedden – (17:29)
What do you think, talk to me about it. I hear these words like agentic AI, walk me through the different types of AI. Where are we now? Where are we going?
Gregg Lalle – (17:37)
Yeah, well, look, agentic AI is in existence today. It’s not common practice, but think of an autonomous car, which was out in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. That car’s going by, there’s nobody in the driver’s seat, right? And no one was in the passenger seat. There was just an empty car at that point, but I’ve seen them go back and forth. It’s picking up all, it has zillion sensors on there picking up everything that’s out there from weather conditions to traffic lights, to buffers in the lanes. It knows where it needs to go.
It’s not quite sure how to get there yet because it doesn’t know what the best route is. Something closes down, it’ll automatically pivot and change. So you have to think about agentics as being something that has the ability to make decisions, can have its own autonomy when given the right skill set and trained over time. You see these cars, again, some of them haven’t made it. think there’s one or two that have already folded. I know there’s one like at CMU at Carnegie Mellon. think that they had it going for a while and they closed it down. But there was a couple that are still going, obviously the Waymos and the Elon Musk and all the robot actions coming out.
So if you think about something that has autonomous, have something people using agent, like again, loosely, if it’s just a GPT, if it’s an RPA, so if an RPA is just straight together. so if you’re just processing and you’re saying do one, do two, do three, you get outcome four, you do it on a repetitious basis, chain these together, right? Whether that be, it be in a certain language, but repetitiously so that I get that result and then I don’t have to consume that in due time. And that’s great. That could feed into an agent because that might be an input.
By doing that, you get to a certain point and then you might want to have it make its own decision by seeking other information. So ⁓ you have the, the RPA piece, get the component to it, which again is, ⁓ is, is critical because it helps automate. You have GPT, which is, you you can do, you know, chain prompting, same thing. You kind of connect these chains together to get them to do something. Right. But in the end, you have to have it where we’re going ⁓ is the digital twin is somebody who knows as they spend time with you digitally everything that they know about you could someone could query you if you’re busy, I could say give me virtual Terry. And what would Terry say? What would Terry do right? Because if it’s spent time with you, it’s been fed all of the information has consumed every podcast you’ve done. right. And you keep feeding the beast. I keep calling the age of the beast feed the beast with everything you have. It’s going to get smarter and smarter. So you have something that can eventually be you talk about productivity. Think about how many times ⁓ you repeated yourself. If you’ve said the same thing, I mean, whatever Terry in a
Terry Hedden – (20:02)
Whatever you thought. My team may find that scary.
Gregg Lalle – (20:05)
scary movie. you don’t get the things while we’re saying while people are answering questions and if there’s always the human, there’s a human on the loop or in the loop and there’s a human on the loop potential, right? And that’s what we believe in kind of the ethical piece right now where we’re at is you have to trust and verify. So humans have to be as you said before, using this technology ingrained in the technology, there will be a time, I believe where it’s become more more powerful, where it’s going to be more and trustworthy. But we’re not there yet. ⁓ And there’s for good reason, I think everybody needs to kind of put their finger in it and test it and test it multiple times. We’re not, not here to say accelerate AI at irresponsible speed or at a rate that becomes dangerous, but there’s things out there now that can absolutely, like I said, increase productivity, interaction, the, you know, and the marketability of your business, all of those things that, as you know, you’re, you’re, I’m sure your staff, your colleagues are using today.
Terry Hedden – (20:55)
Think again, we were more on the bleeding edge of this. came in and I think being a copywriter has been one of the hardest jobs in the world in the last two years. ⁓ But it’s affecting everybody. Designers, finance, it’s really creeping into every role. But so far, we don’t really see it. We see it as a way to make a person more efficient and more productive and more successful. But it’s not like it replaces a team. It may make one person capable of doing the work of two.
But it’s not like it’s, you know, all copywriters can stay at home and collect a paycheck, even though the AI bots are writing the work to them.
Gregg Lalle – (21:33)
But it’s incremental steps, right? But you can see, guess what I kept saying is trying to, have to be the visionary is where it’s going. at what point you decide to get on that highway, I think you the on ramp, that’s up to MSP or every individual, but it’s going that way.
Terry Hedden – (21:46)
I don’t use any question. Everyone has to get on board. you’re an employee, a business owner, an MSP or an attorney, we talked about attorneys. I don’t see what the alternative really is. To me, this is like, this isn’t the kind of technology. This isn’t like a new iPad coming out that might make someone, you know, at 1 % more productive or whatever. It’s like, okay, this is a transformational shift in the way technology operates and what technology can do with us and without us.
I don’t see really the option. And frankly, I find it mind blowing that MSPs literally don’t jump on this train. It just seems like an incredible way to get more customers, help your customers from a business perspective, cut costs more or make improved productivity. I see it as ⁓ a way for them to come in and elevate the level of which they’re operating in the company to more of an advisor or consultant versus a tactical, you know, screw turner kind of dust bunny removal kind of kind of role that some people have fallen into. I feel it is just it’s an easy leg up on the on the chain of influence that you have your customers. And with that step up, there’s a tremendous change in bill rates and stickiness and value. And we’re seeing big opportunities and managed services revenue that AI can bring, as well as consulting project revenue to help implement and and and and do some of the things you were talking about earlier where you’re configuring it and picking the tools and then helping sort of be that sherpa for them, guiding them down that AI journey as a consultant. Do you see that same opportunity?
Gregg Lalle – (23:22)
Yeah, I mean, look, I think I was watching there was a video from Jay McBain, I think last week or whatever, I don’t know if you saw it or not. But one of his comments, was either short thing or I can’t remember how long it was. But he said, one of his comments was in where there’s mystery, there’s margin. Right? He’s like, when you think when you see the technology waves, when they haven’t been figured out yet, and someone has to figure them out, you’re going to get paid to do all these things. Eventually, these things you’re talking about probably will be commoditized. Right? The the some of those things will in the margins will come down.
Terry Hedden – (23:44)
Mm-hmm.
Gregg Lalle – (23:48)
But I the people that are consultative, I do think that there’s an opportunity, but it requires a mind shift change. So you’re talking about people like the folks that have kind of gotten that mindset of, know, this is what I do. I’m going to turn my ship a little bit at time or I’m growing my business. already, you know, I’m hitting my targets. I don’t need to incur, which is to me, I perceive this as risk because it’s diverting me from where I need to go. And there’s some truth to some of that, right? You can’t chase shiny objects. So you have to put that on the scale and go, how shiny is it? Is it really shiny or is it?
Should I not be dedicating some part of my mindset or my team’s mindset at the time, talent and treasure in order to start developing and looking into it? that’s what saying. Before it’s too late, you’ve got to do a fundamental shift. And I think when you talked about, hit a very important point is there was a, world economic forum, you can look it up online, ⁓ said there was going to be 14 million jobs lost by 2027. This was a couple of years ago. It was commissioned in 2023. So it was about a five year study. They’ve tweaked it a little bit since then, but don’t say where the jobs are, you know, what kind of jobs it just says, you know, that that many jobs will be lost due to, you know, AI. And so we know new jobs are going to be created. There’s also studies say they’re not same rate, I can get you that data. I think it’s 83 lost 16, which is a net of 1469 gain, which gets you that 14 million, which is from their survey. So, minimally, and this is when go back and forth today, minimally, people aren’t going to hire as fast businesses, they’re going to use AI when someone leaves, they’re going to want to have them investigate every bit of AI and leverage. can you be more efficient instead of me hiring somebody else? And worst case scenario for all of our sakes, but it’s gonna happen is that they’ll make somebody redundant and say, I’ve actually got AI to do this. Instead of four copywriters, I got three. Because the three I have are more efficient. They’re my top three and I can afford to. So it will lead to labor changes and disruption. I’m not trying to, when we talk about this, I don’t want it to come across as fear and Armageddon and cause panic because a lot of people will go, well,
You know, this is just all pie in the sky and it isn’t. But it doesn’t also have to be fearful. You just have to get on board, I think, at some point.
Terry Hedden – (25:53)
I love that. I love that statement. You have to get on board at some point and there’s not a lot of benefit, especially if you just look at it from your perspective. If I say, Hey, Mr. MSP, there’s some tools out there that can make your techs even better. Why not? Like what’s the downside to jumping in at least internally and getting a start. The worst case scenario is you spend 30 bucks a month. You didn’t want to spend. It’s not like it doesn’t have, it doesn’t have to be incredibly expensive to dip your toe in and get going, the upside, so the downside is rather limited. The upside is potentially infinite. know, if you can, if you get the knowledge by using it yourself to have the confidence to start advising others and then parlay the knowledge equals confidence equals sales, all of sudden now parlay that into a new line of business, something that I think you can get 250, 350, maybe $450 an hour for most MSPs, that’s a multiple of what they’re currently enjoying. you know, do you see that kind of opportunity for them? Do you think that them use drinking the Kool-Aid and using it internally is the ideal starting point for someone who’s maybe trying to decide what’s the best force course of action?
Gregg Lalle – (27:04)
Yeah, I think it is because I also think as technologists, that’s what they want. They want a tool to get, what am going to be building? What am I going to do? Right? That’s where the mindset goes to versus I need to understand the business problems and then go figure out how to create. I would talk about even in Gentic AI, we talk about a right to left movement where before it’s, I’ve got these tools and I could build these things in this, in this fashion. Don’t worry about the tools. We’ll go find the data wherever it resides. Figure out what the business problem is that really hurts that customer. And then let’s figure out how to go build that and go and go solve that.
Right. So it’s kind of a right to left a little bit from working from the resolution backwards than to the way. For moving left to right. So I think it’s a, a, it’s an incredible opportunity. Um, yeah. And I think that internally that’s what they have to start piecing together. And that motion is relatively painless. You can do it in a, uh, you know, side environment. Um, we talk about, you know, again, I talked to MSPs, I could tell you over 50%. Um, and I won’t say what the number is, but it’s a big number⁓ don’t have, again, policies in place for their own colleagues to be in a secure fashion navigating. So they’ve got to get their own house in order and that you could do that now, it only makes sense to do that. Like you can’t afford not to do that, right? So you’ve got to do it anyway. So why don’t you start working on that? And then the lessons you’re learning about getting your own house in order are going to translate when you go talk to your customer. So they’re mutually applicable. It’s not like you’re learning something and throwing it away. When you learn something, you just modify, tweak it to the SMB, but the principles are all the same.
Terry Hedden – (28:24)
Right, right,
Gregg Lalle – (28:29)
Every MSP wants to grow their sales team and their marketing. Well, how can they leverage automation to do so? They want to become more operationally efficient. They want to become in the back end, their accounting, right? So all of those things they can start developing internally. And again, it takes a lot of curating. And talking to one MSP, and it’s all last week, said, you know, for me, I was running a business, I would put up bonuses every week and go like, maybe it’s pizza and beer for, you know, 25 bucks or 50 bucks, whatever it costs now at the local pizzeria, probably more than 25 bucks for you and your partner, whoever to go out on a Friday night. it’s, know, have a ballot box, like a suggestion box, and whoever comes up with the best, you know, GPT idea of the week to drive efficiency in the business wins every week. How many are you going to get? You might get eight, 10, 12, 15 different ideas of which you’re to give money away. And those are things that you incorporate into your business practices, right? And people feel like they’re actually contributing, they’re helping the business. So there’s creative ways, I think, that people can get their colleagues on board. They can provide it in secure fashion. know what’s going on and they can help, you know, make the impact and drive the
Terry Hedden – (29:33)
So what I hear you saying is you’re your first customer and your implementation team is your team. And you’re, you’re, you’re motivating, you don’t, you don’t have to have all the answers to get started. You don’t have to know where you’re trying to go. You just know that you’re, you’re going to start and then you’re going to enlist your team and all the aptitude and horsepower of that team to help make your first customer, you the best it can be. And in the process you’re learning.
You’re getting experience. You’ll have stories to talk about, success stories, failure stories. ⁓ You’ll learn how to win on the implementation, which will give you the confidence to learn how to win on the sales side. Is that kind of what you’re saying?
Gregg Lalle – (30:14)
I think that the companies have to decide at what level they can go at it because it’s daunting. If you’re like, hey, I’ve got to dedicate time and resources and not to get too far into a plug, but what we do is we reduce all that risk. Like for Synthria, what we’re doing is taking on all that responsibility. So if someone says, hey, I want to go on that journey, I’m working with them, taking my 15 years in the MSP space, that knowledge, helping them globally with the go-to-market plan. Just figure out what their unique value proposition is. What industries do they serve? Do they want to narrow in on? What type of sales and enablement collateral do they need?
So building this toolkit for them to help them get to market, right? Helping them with the responsible AI policy, helping with a gap document to figure out where am I as an MSP and where do I want to go three to five years from now? Do I want to hire AI architects and use case managers or do I want to rely on Citriog to help me do all that stuff, which we do all of those things. So what we’re trying to do is reduce the time and the risk for MSPs to get to market by saying there’s an opportunity to go get it and we can help you get there sooner in a more ⁓ disciplined structured way, frame, we’re using the frameworks we have, the tools we have to help you build and then get to market. And so we will help you build that.
Terry Hedden – (31:19)
So that’s what’s getting you so excited. That’s what’s getting me excited. All right. How do I spell sent through? How do I spell it? Sent through. Is there a reasoning for that name? Did it come from somewhere?
Gregg Lalle – (31:22)
⁓ That’s a pot of gold at the end. Alright.
S-Y-N-T-H-R-E-O.
Yeah, synthesis on the website, this is in 3.0 kind of the divine interaction of everything, right? It’s kind of that combination of the two. So I’m the president.
Terry Hedden – (31:40)
And so what’s your role there?
Okay. Yeah. So you’re, you’re leading the charge. So that’s why you’re so excited. That’s what’s keeping you up at night. All right. That’s cool. Great. ⁓
I’m excited for you. I think you’re in a really good spot. And frankly, if I was an MSP right now, I’d be grasping for two people. One is someone who’s going to help me figure out what to do for my customers. And it feels like that’s kind of where you went, right? You’re going to help people get them started with that use policy, but also be there to help as a consultant to the consultant, which of course gives the consultant their own superpower because they have a team of behind them.
They don’t have to start with all the answers. They don’t have to start with all the engineers. They can start with a phone call to you and you can sign them up into this program. I’m sure you’ve got some great entry points that aren’t too daunting. then you’ll kind of guide them through what it’s going to take to stand up the business, start making money and probably pay exponentially more to themselves than they have to pay for you for help. I’m assuming.
Gregg Lalle – (32:46)
Yeah. And it’s navigating the transition to that, to that, you know, to, that evolution. As we talked about, you’re not going to just flip a switch. You have to decide, lift a look in the mirror and go, am I going to build a team? What does it take to do that? How do I budget and figure that out? Right? So there’s a lot of conversations around internal strategy, their own strategy that they need to evolve and their own go to market. But then they should be out there again, they could be out there having the same conversations with their customers. Right? What is their strategy? What do they want it to be? What are their big pain points? And it helps. So again, there’s AI for ops.
Terry Hedden – (33:08)
Right now.
Gregg Lalle – (33:15)
And you think of companies like Thread and such that actually do that piece, right? To help the MSPs become more efficient and really drive that to the business, the MSP’s business. We kind of are focusing, not that our platform can’t do that, we’re focusing a lot more on the interface to the customer, right? How do they monetize it? How do they start these conversations? How do they transform to a consulting business, truly? And hopefully, again, position themselves in a different light to their customer. It’s gonna be hard. Like, again, some have a customer for 10, 15 years, right? They know them as the people who fix my cracked screen or know, reset my password. You’re not the guy who’s going to come in talk to me about growing my business. And they need to make it about that because if not, somebody else down the street will.
Terry Hedden – (33:55)
And I think that’s the big risk, right? If I’m an MSP and I love my customers and I want to get more of them, there’s no bigger buzzword in the world right now than AI. So it’s a great way to get a conversation going. I can tell you, we’ve got 100 MSPs that are getting more leads because they’re leading with AI. They’re adding pages to their website. They’re adding campaigns to their ⁓ marketing. They’re basically…eating it themselves, using it and consuming it themselves and learning while marketing it to get new customers and getting out there and generating money to pay for that transformation. In terms of paying for your tool, all it takes is one customer and that’s going to be what they need in terms of engaging you to help them grow their business, right?
Gregg Lalle – (34:42)
Yeah, I mean, and the cool thing again, so there’s a model we have, has obviously with a piece of the tool of cost, but it’s more about a flat fee, we’re trying to flat it out. So if you run a lot of tokens, you see a lot of different pricing models for AI, right? If you if you have a lot of memory, a lot of tokens, we’re flattening that out to try to make it very predictable for MSP. So that they could just pay a flat fee, they can go and we can work on the business at hand, which is getting AI at the door.
Terry Hedden – (35:04)
So from an operational billing perspective, it’s really just another recurring service that you’re offering a subscription on that’s got a fixed monthly fee and you buy it. What kind of margins can take out the consulting? It sounds like you’re really focused on the, obviously helping on the advisory and implementation, but also the recurring side. kind of margins can MSPs expect on both the consulting side and the recurring from your perspective?
Gregg Lalle – (35:28)
Yeah, I mean, look, I’ll just talk on the products. I don’t know the portal itself that we have, which is a window to the world. It’s a GPT interface. Okay. ⁓ You’re looking at 100%. You know, you could you can make on.
Terry Hedden – (35:38)
100% markup. So 50 % margin. Yeah. That’s beautiful.
Gregg Lalle – (35:41)
Yeah, and so you’ve got that and you’ve got when you get to the actual agent that we kind of leave that out in the open. We charge the MSP 250, 250 a month for an agent that’s custom built, right? We recommend 699, $700 a month. So if you can’t solve a problem, going to cost the customer $8,000 to $10,000 a year, you should look for something else, right? Time savings, all of that. If you can’t put it in a calculator and figure out that it’s going to be that much, then we should probably kind of look to something that’s a little bit meatier.
But if you have that, then you can look, know, again, we’re charging, you 250, you got the door, say you get 500, you got the same.
Terry Hedden – (36:14)
So if I’m not an expert on AI and the buzzwords, when you say an agent, that the same as like a virtual employee? Is that a good way of thinking about it? Because that’s a big number. $8,000 as an opportunity slash problem is a big number, but it’s nothing compared to the salary of a person. Is that agent a virtual employee? Is that what you’re seeing in terms of the opportunity?
Gregg Lalle – (36:34)
You kind of think of it as both. You can think of it as an assistant, right? An HR assistant. of it in the most, probably the most widely practical application would be everybody has multiple sources of truth for their HR. And in order for a colleague of any company, they usually have to go to five different spots. Where’s my, the payroll, where is this? And on the backend, there’s no reason why you can’t have memory. You can’t put all of those as an MSP in your own storage. And you can actually query that, get rid of all the questions in a conversational way. All your colleagues can ask the questions and get the answers. Now the data has to be good.
Right. You’ve got to keep that. got to make sure. And that’s where the training and make sure that the results coming back. If something seems to miss, you’ve got to go through and make sure what you’re putting in there is good, but that’s where you’re going to build it and test it. Every document that goes in there, make sure that when you’re putting in that repository, this been looked over, it’s tested. It’s good to go. But as you keep putting reliable data in there, it’s going to give you great answers and be able to scale. So it could be assistance. could be, um, you know, lot of, again, a lot of law, a law firms assistance, right? You think something like that, going databases, looking at historical cases, uh, predictive, even analysis of how people ruled in the past.
If I had all of these cases and I want, I have a case that looks like this. What are my chances of, of, of winning this case? If I go at this angle, right. So taking and using the analytics of, the data itself and saying, how, why did, why would the rulings this way? And what would you, what would you recommend? How would I argue, litigate this case? You could ask it, right? And so that’s, that’s what it has to do is consuming all of whatever you put into it. Obviously it’s going to consume. So it could be an actual function, a lot of business function, or it could be again, you know, in a little.
Terry Hedden – (37:51)
Absolutely.
Gregg Lalle – (38:02)
You an outcome that you win one case because of it. Right. Or it helps you. Is it worth a K? Right. Sure. Right.
Terry Hedden – (38:07)
So you charge for it too, I’m sure. They can charge some sort of overarching fee for the technology.
Gregg Lalle – (38:11)
So you want to, as an MSP, want to have the reoccurring. You want to the project work of creating the agent or setting it up and that kind of stuff, but you want a reoccurring of bringing them new ideas on AI, right? On agents and continuing to work with them. And what we didn’t touch on was, you know, again, the more assistants or agents that you have in your customer’s environment, it’s really hard to pull you out as an MSP, right? The retention, your stickiness. If you’re part of their digital workforce and you’ve created all of that,
Terry Hedden – (38:37)
Yeah.
Gregg Lalle – (38:37)
It’s very difficult to kind of change that. So it helps with your retention.
Terry Hedden – (38:42)
So really, so you have Chat GPT and the engines on the backend. You have ⁓ an interface to them, which Synthrio offers. And then what you’re saying, I think, is you’re positioning the MSP between the customer and that interface to the AI. And they’re putting themselves in as a trusted advisor, as a conduit. And they’re really hard to replace because they’re the ones controlling what’s happening behind the scenes.
Gregg Lalle – (39:08)
And you’re
Terry Hedden – (39:08)
Versus if they were direct to chat GPT they could bypass their MSP in a tenth of a second
Gregg Lalle – (39:12)
Correct. Correct. And we have, again, with the builder, have another product we have. actually that’s the construct. That’s the actual how you build an agent. Okay. And so they’re working with our teams, the MSPs are, to then relay those concerns to the customer or our use case manager, again, gets on with the MSP and the customer says, let’s walk through it. You’re like, what is it you’re trying to solve? Let’s build that prototype. If we do this kind of stuff, is that nailing your problem? Right? So helping you be consultative, if you’re not quite there yet, if you could just ask what challenges and problems they have, we can identify those will be the backing to come in and help to show you how to go down that road.
Terry Hedden – (39:45)
Gregg, you know, one of those things to me that I think a lot of heaps, a lot of people from getting into new opportunities is just that feeling of being overwhelmed with all there is to know all there is. You don’t know all there’s, ⁓ opportunity out there, how to, how to sell, how to service, how to, how to, how to get leads. mean, it sounds to me like you’re kind of positioning yourself really as, a, as a, as a real partner for an MSP who’s got, understands either the opportunity or the risk associated with not doing it, but wants help.
And so you and your organization are really positioned to help on the, the front end, helping secure clients, helping, um, uh, implement, helping support and sort of being that consultant to the consultant to help make sure that they do it well and they’re successful. So they don’t put at risk the revenue that they have today and the relationships they have today. Is that a fair statement?
Gregg Lalle – (40:37)
Yeah, you nailed it. And again, I wouldn’t be so arrogant from my side or anybody to say that our whole team that we’ve got it figured out. Like, of course, everyone’s coming to consulting, we’re brilliant. know it’s changing that quickly, as you can see. It’s adaptability. It’s the platform that has the flexibility to incorporate different language models, different data structures, different languages, whatever it is. And that’s the brilliance, I think, of the back end that we have versus what other people are developing on a silo or OpenAI. Again, OpenAI can sell something to your customers.
They’re not going to go and consult with them. They’re not going to plan the three year strategy of how to roll out AI into their environment. And that’s what the MSPs have to get in front of because it won’t take them long to figure it out. going to put videos out there. They’re going to put where people can do self-service. So we want MSPs to jump in and kind of reassert themselves as the authority and somebody to help them along. And they don’t have to know it all. that’s why I start by kind of raising my hand. It’s not about knowing it all. It’s about knowing that again, there’s an opportunity there. There’s a chance to lead.
There’s margin and money in that and we certainly can take advantage of that collectively in a way that’s going to help our businesses.
Terry Hedden – (41:44)
And I appreciate that. I think it’s probably the, the, that sort of sense of comfort and knowing that someone’s there to help them, that’s going to help MSPs to get through this. Cause I can tell you from, know, we have a lot of experience on more of the lead gen and sales side, and there is tremendous appetite for more information about AI, how it can make them more efficient, how it can make them more successful, productive, you know, it’s not hard to get an appointment to talk with a prospect about AI. And ironically, it’s easier than it’s ever been because people almost, not only, obviously an MSP can offer infrastructure and AI at the same time, but we are able to get appointments with people who already are happy with their MSP. In other words, it’s like a shoe in to get in the door and talk about AI and then they can parlay that into what they’re, you know, what they grew their business on sort of user support and, infrastructure management. So I see a tremendous opportunity and the apprehension.
Apprehension that I see in resellers when they see the opportunity out there from a lead job perspective is incredible is yeah, but I don’t want to mess up. And so I commend you for having that perspective and you’re trying to be there to help the reseller capitalize on this opportunity and do so in a way that doesn’t put everything that build at risk.
Gregg Lalle – (43:05)
Yeah, and we’re not coming across or should they as the ultimate authority in AI. What they’re there is to have a conversation to figure out it’s dialogue. They’re used to having again a speed or a feed or something that’s very precise. It does the same thing. We’re not at that point. We’re there about talking about the business and what could potentially be and then what is the art of the possible? How can we make that happen? So it’s a little different conversation, different mindset.
Terry Hedden – (43:28)
Gregg, I know you probably had a lot of opportunities coming at ConnectWise. You’re obviously one of the most influential and well-known and well-respected people on the channel. I wanted to thank you on behalf of the entire industry for getting into, instead of taking a safe route, I’m sure you probably had a lot of opportunities and businesses that you knew quite well and instead decided to help the channel thrive and survive in what’s coming next. And I just wanted to thank you for that because not many people in my mind have that servant’s heart where they’re trying to help people make a dollar helping people, make a dollar making a difference instead of going with a quick buck and all of that. And you probably could have had a lot of opportunities to make a quick turn and capitalize on your experience. But I think what you’re doing right now is I’m sure lucrative from a business perspective, but it’s also noble because you’re trying to help people and make a difference and helping people out there overcome fear, uncertainty and doubt about where the world’s going and where their business can go to make money.
Gregg Lalle – (44:36)
Yeah, I appreciate it immensely, personally. And, you know, again, I think, you know, to kind of think about my journey in the years and where I’m going, right, it’s kind of that, you know, from the art, HG, and Arlen’s mentality of kind of we’re in the legacy mode now, as we start looking at our careers, and where we’re going. so money is important. And we all kind of work for things. But it’s if it can make a lasting impact, really, and really help people transform and make this that would be more personally rewarding for me that a paycheck and that’s comes from a career sales guy that it would be at this point in my life that’s more important to me. ⁓
Terry Hedden – (45:10)
Good. you know, I think the reality is this is a big opportunity and no one knows where we’re going to be in 10 years. Hopefully we’re all, ⁓ all the people in the channel that have been around a long time are sitting in a Caribbean island, maybe on catamarans that are, you know, docked each other, tied together, drinking Mai Tais and enjoying life. But let’s have some fun in the meantime. Let’s not be afraid of where the world’s going and what we don’t understand because that’s where you grow. It’s going into something that maybe isn’t so comfortable and maybe isn’t so sure. And I also think that’s where really wealth is created. It’s not doing what other people do, just a tiny bit better. True wealth comes from trying to do something that maybe is harder, that is scarier, and maybe a lot of your peers maybe are too scared to do. your help.
Gregg Lalle – (45:56)
I appreciate you championing the whole bit too. think your vision to be able to see that is very important because as a leader in the channel as well, from a communication standpoint, a veteran, an MSP owner, all of the above, you have that foresight. And again, if I could make a difference of one, two, I’d love to make hundreds. I’m out to the people that really want to go on the journey that have the right mindset, then it’s time to get going.
Terry Hedden – (46:20)
Well, Gregg, I’ve seen you in a servant leader capacity. I’ve seen you in front of our peer group. I can tell the passion for this that you have, the passion for making a difference, man. So I have zero doubt that you’ll be successful. And I have zero doubt that you can have an impact, not just in the future, but also today. So I would recommend everybody who’s on to reach out and learn more and don’t be afraid. There’s a lot of people out there that will help you get leads. A lot of people that are willing to help you close sales.
And there are a lot of people out there that are helping you, ⁓ implement and be successful and make money doing this. So go for it.
Gregg Lalle – (46:55)
Yeah. Thank you very much.
No, I, I guess ⁓ Gregg L at Synthrio.ai. You can reach me with two G’s. G-R-E-G-G L at Synthrio. S-Y-N-T-H-R-E-O.ai.
Terry Hedden – (47:09)
Awesome. Thanks, Gregg. Appreciate you coming in. Appreciate it. Good to see you. ⁓
