Terry Hedden (00:00)
I’m excited to announce today’s guest, Jason Caras Jason and I were fierce competitors back in the day. Our managed service providers went toe to toe, head to head for the biggest and best customers in Tampa Bay and really throughout Florida. But now I consider him a friend. He is a guy who’s a source of inspiration for so many, whether you’re a business owner trying to overcome conflict or an issue, or just a person who’s got things they’re dealing with and wants the source of inspiration to overcome them. Have a listen. Jason’s a great guy, has a great story to tell. Enjoy.
Hello, my name is Terry Hedden and I’m excited to welcome Jason Terrace to the Grow Limitless podcast. Not only is he a strikingly good looking gentleman, but he’s also an amazing business owner and grew one of the most successful MSPs that I’ve ever heard of from scratch. I’m excited to welcome him and encourage him to share his stories so that we can help you grow your business and achieve your dreams. Face the welcome. Yeah, I know.
Jason Caras (01:03)
Thank you. Nice to be here.
Terry Hedden (01:06)
Man, I just talking to you makes me smile. We’ve had such a long history, uh, you know, starting MSPs in the same market and I literally, Was I okay. know. Yep. Yeah. Wow. That’s a, I didn’t want to be a freer head start. It makes it makes it even more depressing. Uh, no, you know, I remember that those days, you know, we started before MSP was a thing. Right. And, You know, we launched this fixed cost unlimited support model in 2003 and had a lot of success. It was super easy early on, but when you and probably a few others joined in, it became a lot more ⁓ competitive and a lot more challenging to grow. But we both seem to do that and achieve it well. So Jason, tell me a little bit about you. Tell me your backstory. Tell me about your life a little bit before you became an MSP.
Jason Caras (02:04)
Uh, so, you know, if I go back, you know, I guess I am a true serial entrepreneur. was painting houses at 14. I had two crews working while I was in high school. ended up selling water filters door to door. Then I get into the insurance business and I lost everything. And then I found myself in Florida. I wanted to build someone. And I went from selling multi-million dollar insurance policies to becoming Willie Loman from death of a sale man, selling a phone system. Literally I had a briefcase this big when the working phone system and I was selling them to like gas stations. And was humiliated by this because I had never been an employee and always owned my own business. And I was like, here’s my card, account ejected. And I was just, wow. And I was broke, flat broke. And I was too proud to ask for help and little mad at myself too. But I ended up, that’s how I get into tech. And I noticed some books in the hallway of this place I was working in.
And I just took a moment, consumed them every day. I just took them and read them. I discovered that there was telecom deregulation going on right at that time, 1994. And so I started doing it on the side. was selling phone systems, but I was selling long distance to generate savings to sell the phone systems. nonetheless, I ended up going off and starting that and then it failed. I got a bad contract. didn’t pay a bill and went bust. I started over and went to work at another company.
Nice man, Jim D’Ambrosio, Telco. I went there for two years and I told him, said, look, I’ve got this thing on the side. And when I get it to a point where I can make a living, I’m going say adios. And he said, cool. And it actually complimented, right? So that could cost justify the savings, ⁓ the investment at the phone system. And then one thing I was partnered up with a company called F1 and they did all the data. We did all the voice. One of the things I realized is they had all the respect. Yeah. Like they could bill for sneezing.
You know, but we couldn’t bill for anything. You know, like they were like, you’re telecom data is everything. And I just wanted to get into that, you know? So I grew that business though, about 10 years. I ended up selling the book, got a nice loan residual for a few years, about five years afterwards. And I was getting ready to move to California because I wanted to make movies. I wanted to make, I didn’t want to be in them. wanted to make movies. Cause I wanted, look, I thought that you have this huge microphone and all it’s just silly and trivial and nonsense.
help the world help, you know, educate people up their lives. And that’s what my passion was, but nonetheless, F1 became available to buy. And my business partner at the time, Jason Polner came to me says, look, I’d to this company. I’d like you to pair up with me. I’m not like a front guy on operations. And it was a pair made in heaven honestly. So we bought the company, raised a little bit of money, bought the company and just enough to buy it, not capitalize. So was shoestring. Grow it. ⁓It was, we bought it when it was due to about 400 grand a year and we grew it to about 2 million, but got caught in a bad contract again. And it was a Rob Pita to pay Paul swirl to the bottom of the tongue. It was just very tough. ⁓ we didn’t file bankruptcy. ⁓ I’ve never filed bankruptcy, although I’ve lost everything three times. I took a lot of pride in that because I feel like it’s just stealing. I have this loss is for you, you know,
Um, but we, took me a long time to pay everybody. I knew like 10 years to pay everybody. And there was one for 250 grand on the judgment. And they paid that those times when we were paying 250 bucks a month on a $250,000 loan. Right. But we did, we did do anything anyways, that went. And we were sitting there. We actually had a competitor call us up from cops service and like, I’ll buy your company. I’ll pay zero and I’ll hire you as sales people.
Terry Hedden (05:55)
What a deal.
Jason Caras (05:56)
I don’t know. But we actually had a client and said, listen, man, and these are, I’ll help you and you can use my MX of financial business. was awesome. Well, so we started to IT authorities. literally got $5,000 left. Yeah. Sold out. I down after I paid the debt for years later, but wound it down, started IT authorities and this guy, hooked us up with this credit card.
Terry Hedden (06:11)
So you sold F1. Shut down, got paid.
Jason Caras (06:25)
And then we started growing really fast and we started like needing a lot more than credit cardless, know, that he was willing to do. Finally, he just said, Hey, let’s, why don’t you just pay the card off? We’ll call it a day. By the way, he owns 65 % of IT authorities. Wow.
Terry Hedden (06:41)
Yeah. Oh, he was your money. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. All My money, your time. I’ll get 65%. All right. Yeah.
Jason Caras (06:43)
So here we So we said we parted ways, still friends to this day. And that’s when it really took off. And you saw the meteoric rise, seven times Inc 5000, and best places to work, all this stuff. And we were competing right then and there. And that’s how we got into IT, and that’s how I got into IT authorities. And competing with you was actually, you’re right, you said steel, sharpened steel, hired sharpened fired. It was great.
Terry Hedden (07:16)
Yeah, I love it. I love it. I mean, have some quotes that you may appreciate. Whatever we have to do, we will do. Whether it costs us a hernia or I have to lose a finger, we’re going to win this. You know, we were willing to do whatever. But it was fun, man. I loved it. I loved it. And I don’t know, one thing I think I really appreciated about it, and even more so now that I’ve been exposed to more business situations, is it was almost competition.
It wasn’t like we were like stealing employees and hacking environments and doing, doing or saying this on this things. was just freaking good old fashioned capitalistic competition. And so I really, really enjoy those days. So, so, so let me, guess, give me timelines there. So, so when did you start it authority?
Jason Caras (08:04)
That was 2006. So by the way, to buy him out, my partner and I had to sell our house. And I bought his house for more than it was worth in order to free up enough money to pay him off and then capitalize this. at the end of that, we still had no money. We just paid off our old debts. We had to pay a million dollars in debt in Wow. And we financed the last 250 grand took us like 10 years to pay, but the rest of it, we liquidated everything we own. He started IT authorities literally with $5,000 in a friend card.
Terry Hedden (08:37)
Yeah. And a million dollars in debt.
Jason Caras (08:38)
Yeah. Well, yeah, basically. And then, um, so 2006 was the start of it authorities and, uh, we ended up selling it in 2020 to a couple of new traded company. Uh, lots of lessons learned there though. I think I’ve told you in a story where I don’t know if we’re ready to get into that yet, but I took a huge haircut because at one point we had an offer for the company in the $30 million range and It ended up selling for eight. Should have taken a… Should have done. Break that in there.
Terry Hedden (09:13)
Either way, it’s impressive, but 30 is a lot better than 80.
Jason Caras (09:16)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot better, know, life changing better.
Terry Hedden (09:21)
Wow. walk me through, so you started by T-Thorys in 2006, is that right? Okay. And then sold in 2021. So 15 year run, Walk me through the, work rise. Help me understand that. Like, what was your revenue approximately? How quickly did you grow? ⁓ And where did you end up revenue wise?
Jason Caras (09:40)
I think this is pretty accurate in the number. So 2006, did a 1.1.
Terry Hedden (09:47)
First year. First year. Because you inherited the customer’s frame.
Jason Caras (09:49)
Some customers from F1. Then 1.3, then 3.5, then four and a half, five and a half, seven, nine, 11, 16, 21. I’m not sure. then I’m not sure what number I’m at, but I’m doing memories of revenue from, you know, Inc and all that stuff. Ended up at 34 billion in revenue. the peak.
Terry Hedden (10:16)
Okay. Does it peak where you sold? No. Okay. Which is the reason the price. Yes. Okay.
Jason Caras (10:22)
Made some bad decisions ⁓ and, you know, put all our eggs in one basket. We were riding a ⁓ SAP, you know, tangent, you will, shiny object, a big, tiny object. And we had landed Coca-Cola. And actually it does have a big part here, right? We didn’t land Coca-Cola until we hit about eight or nine million in revenue. So we did have good growth without being customers. And those are all base hits. Single, doubles, triples, singles, doubles, triples, maybe a home run.
One whole one, ⁓ which was MCS and they really helped us grow over the years. Very grateful for them. But once we hit Coca-Cola and this is for your listeners, you know, people would say like, how do you land Coca-Cola? Well, there’s actually not a lot of competition there because everybody thinks it’s unrealistic and unrealistic goals are for, ⁓ whips. Right. Well, ⁓ they are, I was going to use another word, right.
There’s not a lot of competition because not a lot of people willing to play in that. And we ended up getting a phone call ⁓ from an investment banker saying, Hey, I’m buying Coca-Cola Florida. I’m like, is this a prank? What are you talking about? a minute, really? You can do that. You can buy Florida Coca-Cola. Like there is a Florida. I thought it was all one co- you don’t know anything about the ecosystem, but it turns out that Coca-Cola was going asset light, which means they had Coca-Cola refreshments and they own swaths of territory.
We’re exclusive territory. So Florida was on my CCR. Most of it was anyway. And then the rest of the nation was owned by big bottles like United and Consolidated and Swire where they own huge areas of the country. ⁓ Well, we ended up getting up to bat and we ended up competing with IBM and didn’t know this until later, but IBM came in at like $33 million and we were at 4.7. That was the biggest deal we ever did. That’s a huge deal. Yeah. It was like boom, right? ⁓
And we had a, we had an onboard, ⁓ something like five or six buildings, 1500 employees. And we only had two and a half months to do it because they had been like when Coke said we’re taking everything, there was a immovable date period. And if those red trucks don’t roll the next day, you’re in breach of contract, Mr. New buyer, Mr. Entrepreneur or owner of Coca-Cola. So immovable dates and they were up against it.
And we came in and my business partner literally almost killed him. His wife would plead to me, Jason, he’s going to die. Cause he was working 12 o’clock, one o’clock in the morning, then four o’clock conference, five o’clock conference call. I mean, it was insane. Um, but if we weren’t ready for that, cause what is luck? Cause it, yes, luck, they call us, but opportunity meeting preparedness. We might not because of me, because of my business partner, Jason Polner.
He was so like adamant about process and documentation and automation whenever possible that when we took on this client, we actually ingested it. It didn’t come without bumps and stress and almost killing him literally. ⁓ we pulled it off so well that Coca-Cola said to, ⁓ the Coca-Cola company and said to CCR and everybody else, anybody’s going to buy one of these. They use this little company called IT authorities.
It wasn’t a mandate, but it was a high suggestion. Very strong. I know, right? This little company, right? And then it just, it was on. We ended up doing all of Florida, all of the Northeast. We literally sold every Cisco piece of equipment ⁓ for the entire North America, for all the new bottles. I mean, huge deals. The last deal we did was ⁓ in 2017.
It was 60, the entire country of Canada was one model. It was 65 locations, 10,000 devices, 6,500. Everybody needed a new laptop, cell phone, wireless access points, circuit, servers, email, hundreds of applications, turnstiles to get in, access control, surveillance camera, $21 million. We had 400 people in the field, coast to coast, and on a single week. Most, a lot of SAP experts. And then they were our largest Manit Services customer. were spending over $320,000 a month.
Terry Hedden (14:50)
Wow. So, so when you say SAP, were you actually providing the SAP consultants or were you piggybacking on another firm that was doing that? You were doing the infrastructure.
Jason Caras (14:58)
Sure. We were doing functional ⁓ SAP support. So basically we hired a bunch of SAP experts that helped them use Kona, which was Coke One North America. If you’re a big bottle, you do over 50 million cases, you have to use Kona or you become part of this elite group. You sit on the board of it and become a shareholder in it. So there’s about 10 or 12 bottlers that are part of that. And that means you use Kona SAP and that is all the logistics. And some really cool stuff from like gloves that you could point at something in a robot goes and grabs at really, really cool stuff. And, ⁓ but, ⁓ what was I? So I forgot where I left off there.
Terry Hedden (15:41)
Here’s from the coast to coast, Canada deployment, all those users. Jason, you know, I think everybody dreams about having that opportunity, right? mean, $4.5 million is a day one starting point. And then it blew up from there. Every MSP dreams about that. Tell me about your journey. You talked about base hits and I don’t mean the terminology you just used, but talking about how you kind of grew a normal MSP. First start off with how did that.How did you get leads? How’d you close sales? How, how, and what was your average deal size before Copenhagen? Like tell me about that journey because that was the foundation that compared you for that big event.
Jason Caras (16:21)
Yep. And you know, because goals will affect your behavior. We had a goal to be a large, sophisticated managed service provider. We wanted to be the most sophisticated MSP on the planet and we wanted to serve larger clients. So we wanted to swim upstream. in order to do that, we ended up buying technology that the normal MSP wasn’t like NIMSOFT, if you remember the name. Yeah, I do. And then got bought by CA.
And it wasn’t an easy tool, man. If you, you had that infrastructure, you had like 10, 12 servers to run the thing. And it wasn’t connect. Why? This is really intense. And it was really designed for really large companies. And that was another little luck thing where we implemented this technology so that we could serve larger customers. I’ll get to the small customers in a second, but just to, so how we prepared for larger and more sophisticated clients. We spent big money on tools.
Our competitors weren’t doing that. We were spending big money on tools so we could offer a sophistication to a larger and larger clientele. And then we became really good at that. So good at that, better than them. So then they, when they got purchased by CA, CA hired us to do implementations of their software. So we spun up IT authorities internationally. And it was headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. We rented an apartment there.
I regret never ever visiting it when I could have. and we, we served the entire APEC all, Asian Pacific. China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore. I mean, a little in Australia, New Zealand, we did Tata. We set up Tata’s knock to beer’s diamonds. I some really cool stuff. anyway, so that was the goal of mine. That’s where we wanted to go, but what got us there, those bass hits.
And I’ll tell you this, this is what, we fell in love with the employee. And I encourage your listeners to have this approach. Fall in love with your employees presence, present time and their future. Invest in that. And then you won’t have the turnover. Because what do you owe somebody as an employer? Is it just a paycheck or is it a pathway? I believe there was a pathway.
So it was not just professional development. was personal development. wanted to introduce concepts that maybe they didn’t get brought up with, you know, and philosophies about leveling up your life, about raising your standards and about givers get. So how did we build it? We didn’t place a single ad in all of those years, 20 years now, whatever it’s been, not a single advertisement, not a single Google ad, not a banner ad, nothing.
All of the business came by way of referrals and virtual agents, virtual salespeople. I’ll explain. So I believe givers get, there’s a beautiful word called reciprocity. If I have an interest in you, a genuine interest to help you Terry, I’m going to look for ways to do that. I’m going to find opportunities to do that. And after I go two or three, You know what happens is magical thing called reciprocity kits in and you now feel obligated to return the favor. One, because it’s a nice thing to do and to say thank you. And two, you kind of feel obligated, right? You’re like, I don’t want this to happen. This is a gravy train. I keep getting leads, ⁓ introductions to employees, introductions to bankers, whatever it is. I had a mindset of being resourceful to everyone around me and to feed them.
And givers get, because when I did that, it all came back. So then the virtual salespeople, I would just recruit people. said, listen, you’re talking to the same kinds of people I’m talking to. The next time you have a conversation, interview us, see if you can set up a call. Tell them, don’t know if it’s going to make sense, at least give this guy a listen. These guys are rocking, blah, blah. And then I’ll pay you a commission.
Terry Hedden (20:21)
So when you say virtual, that just means they’re not in your company. That’s right. contractors.
Jason Caras (20:26)
They’re selling leasing, they’re selling copiers, they’re selling the system. And I recruited as many of those people as I could. And it was a nightmare to deal with the conditions because there’s no software out there for conditions. You have to really write your own stuff. We ended up writing our own stuff. But yeah, so I recruited virtual people all over the country. They’ll be like, Jason, I got one for you. Because they felt obligated. I didn’t want them to feel obligated. Givers get was my philosophy of life.
Terry Hedden (20:30)
Part of the office. Yeah.
Jason Caras (20:56)
I know God brings it back. you give it, God will deliver. So that’s how we built it. Those are the base hits. So base hit was like $500 to $3,000.
Terry Hedden (21:03)
Okay, so what’s the base hit? Okay, so that was your bread and butter. That’s what you got to 9 million.
Jason Caras (21:13)
About 80 customers probably. And at one point before we started taking large chunk customers, there was about 80 to no, I take that back. It was about 120, 120 clients. And I’d say the average was between 3,500 and 5,500 over time. like it had to flow. You win deals, you lose deals. Customers would go from MSP to MSP.
Terry Hedden (21:39)
I don’t blame them, right? They’re trying to up one up and down their price and up their service. Gotcha. Okay. So, how do you get from 500, 2000, 3000 to an average of 3,500 to 5,000? It seems like a disconnect there. What was your average deal size? How did it change over time? Did it start off as a 500, then a 1000, then 2000? As you kind of became more mature, you’re able to handle a bigger customer.
Jason Caras (22:01)
yeah, I just telling you. That’s right, we started getting bigger customers, 30,000, 40,000, 80,000 a month. Those are big days. And then at peak, we had $140,000 a month customer, $120,000 month customer, $320,000 a month customer. These are all big boys. And you know what happens, You got to pick a horse, man. You can’t really service big companies like that and a $500 a month account.
Terry Hedden (22:35)
It’s hard, Different tools, it’s different technologies, it’s different types of maturity in the salesperson. Your marketing’s got to be different and your engineers probably have to have very different skills, right? Is that the complexity?
Jason Caras (22:35)
It’s a very Intensely, yes. But in, it would look at the small customer, do they really care that you use this software or that software? They don’t. They don’t care. All they care about is good service and taking care of my stuff. And I feel confident in it. The larger ones are like, you’re not putting that on my network. This is designed for small companies. That’s why we had to go to a NIMS off. We felt we had to go to an instance. I said, I’m convincing them otherwise, but
We ended up spending millions of dollars on technology that probably didn’t have to in hindsight. Yeah, because there were tools that would do it good enough. You know, it was an IT buyer thinking, I need my bits and bytes. Instead of a business person saying, I don’t really care. I just want to make sure you’re patching, you’re updating, you’re available. And my backups are done. Yeah. You know?
Terry Hedden (23:19)
Why? Interesting. So it sounds to me like you had a big picture goal and you kind of marched toward that goal by your partner, especially focusing on processes and scalability systems, kind of getting ready for those big, bigger clients. ⁓
Jason Caras (23:53)
⁓you know what, let me fill in the blank back. Okay. Cause you asked about the revenue and the disconnect. Yeah, I know where it comes from. Projects Hardware
Terry Hedden (24:03)
We got a thing in our room right
Jason Caras (24:04)
We did. We sold a lot of hardware, did a lot of projects and that was the revenue. And frankly, that’s where we were making the money because we spent so much on the tools and so much on the high end engineers to run the tools that our profit margins were way lower than our competitors. So we had to make up for that in projects.
Terry Hedden (24:22)
Okay. projects out was your average RMR. Like you get in those early days that it’s for when you’re in that.
Jason Caras (24:29)
$2500 to $5000 a month would be the app. Well, it was, it was, but the infrastructure projects were huge. We were doing complete standups and we stuck to our knitting though. I will say that we didn’t try to do everything. Like we didn’t sell voice over IP phone systems and we didn’t do cabling and access control and surveillance and all the shiny objects that, oh, I’m an IT guy so I can figure it out. I’ll just offer it. And then you become a master of none in a shit show, pardon the language.
Terry Hedden (24:32)
Okay, so it’s still pretty big. Yeah. Everything’s hard and then it looks like it’s gonna be. Yeah.
Jason Caras (24:59)
And you know what, that affects culture. You can’t have a good culture if you have a shit show for operations. If everyone, if the left doesn’t know what the right’s doing and there’s always a catastrophe, how do you manage around that? How do you manage ⁓ mental mindset? Because at end of the day, you have to be a saint to be in the MSP business. know, the people that are on the front lines that are taking those calls, who are they talking to? People who are mad. I can’t do this. It’s worst possible time. Right? this guy’s like, I understand where you’re coming from. Like, how do you do that? I was always in awe of this piece. I like, I can’t even give my mother a patient help desk support.
Terry Hedden (25:32)
Yeah, me too. Yeah. I can, I can appreciate that. And you have some great people, you know, so I knew you had that passion and, and that was sort of part of your brand to your point. was, made it, it had to make it lot easier to find people, ⁓ because they wanted to be there.
Jason Caras (25:52)
That’s it. Okay. We wanted to be a destination for you. So, you know, which kind of goes into what I’m doing today, you know, like, cause when you joined IT authorities, it was mandatory that you sat down with me either individually or in a small group of, if we hired a batch of people, five or six people, and I would walk you through what is now called fundamentally unstoppable. The 10th, it was eight, it was seven, then it was eight, then it was 10 fundamentals that I was teaching. Okay.
And that became our culture. The culture, like for instance, you’ve heard, you probably have seen us advertise the 212 degree principle. I’ll explain it for anyone that’s listening, which is at 211, water’s hot and at 212 it boils. It will never boil at 211, but one degree more will take hot water to boiling water and boiling water can turn into steam, it will turn into steam and steam can power a locomotive.
So how do we translate that into our culture? said that one degree is your very best. It’s better than yesterday. It’s more than you’re comfortable with. It’s more than you can, you think you can handle. It’s your push. It’s your level up. And it’s also your standard, your new standard. So if someone left a coffee stand on a table, someone would be like, dude, that’s not 212. This is a from the heart, off the record symbol, right? We’re like, dude, that’s not 212, right? And people are like, you’re right. know, it became.
Terry Hedden (27:11)
Interesting, I love that.
Jason Caras (27:17)
And that’s why I had this investment in these people. wanted more. And if I wanted more for them than they wanted for themselves, they found their way out eventually. But if they locked arms with me and they really wanted to take their life to the next level, I wasn’t under any illusion they were going to stay with me forever. But I would say to them this promise. said, listen, if you come here, I promise you, you work harder than you probably have ever worked anywhere else, but it would be worth it. You will grow and you will become this unbelievable, formidable force in life, not just here, but at your home, the way you’re a dad, the way you’re a husband, the way you’re a wife, a mother, know, level up. And that was it. So we became this destination employee and people were like calling us, hey, you got anything? So we had a pipeline of resources to hire.
Terry Hedden (28:08)
That’s amazing. And it all started with, that culture, obviously became tentative, became self, self, I guess, reinforcing, but you have that meaning with those employees and you sort of set the stage for them.
Jason Caras (28:20)
And I handed them the photography, that’s the thing. Culture is not the CEO’s job. Yes, I influence, I instigate it, but I can’t carry it. I can’t maintain it. So when you’re on that call, what’s your 212 on that call? How do you soften the blow? How do you make sure you follow up? How do you articulate that email, 212? A little bit better. Don’t just sloppy do it, do it right.
Terry Hedden (28:44)
Nice.
Jason Caras (28:44)
It’s interesting. And so they’re the ones who have to carry the torch. And I used to say, listen, when you come in here, you’re to be all jacked up. You’re all excited. You take your hand up like this. You’re like, yeah, baby. And then you’re going to see one of us with your hand like this. Now, here’s where I want you to get uncomfortable. What do you mean? I want you to go to that person and raise their elbow. Well, how do you do that? You encourage them that that’s not 212. That’s not our culture. And that ain’t going to fly here. Or else you won’t be here long.
And I want you to say that to someone who’s been here 10 years. And if you don’t, I’ll be talking to you. So if you come to me, all this guys, did you have you done any encouragement? Have you tried to nurture and help? No. Okay. Go do that. Come back to me. Most of the time it would work. Hey, I saw you doing this. don’t, you I’m not your boss or anything. But it’s what you just say, look, we’re all in this together. And if there’s a weak link in this culture, it’s going to affect everything. So come on. Don’t do that again.
Like we had one guy, a network engineer. Someone asked him, hey, can you help me with this client? A salesperson asked him, can you help me with this client? said, well, why would I do that? It’s not my job. I heard that. I’m like, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy,
I remember I can remember walking in on our Laurel Street office. There was this one little quad. One guy got rotten, stinking thinking. Just entitled. Yes. love it. Entitled, know, and just prima donna and negative. He had a problem for every solution. And then it spread to the guy right next to him. And that’s all four of them. And we let it spread. And you know what? I had to address the company. And I said, you know what?
We point our finger at this guy, he’s bad. I looked at three fingers pointing back and said, we let this happen and I apologize. I’ll never let that happen again. Because that’s a kick in the face to someone who is living the cult.
Terry Hedden (30:48)
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. You kind of gave them purpose, but also got their buy-in and their support. And to your point, you set that, but then it is not your role. You can’t enforce it and reinforce it and ensure that it’s consistent in the moments that you’re not a part of. So everyone’s got to kind of live it, feel it and own that. I love that. I love that. Okay. Really interesting. So,
So I had no idea about the virtual Salesforce, how you basically enlisted a bunch of people. doesn’t work for you to sell for you. That’s really interesting. ⁓ and that explains why you didn’t have to advertise because basically you paid real money, I’m guessing real money.
Jason Caras (31:29)
Digital money, rich money. Like for instance, uh, at one point it was like 8 % of the monthly recurring for the lifetime of the customer. And then we added in anything they ever buy. And that’s literally so hard. Yes, hardware. So, and we created this pool, a commission pool. And if there was a referral agent, it came right off the top. And then the sales person who did the deal got his, so, Hey, what does it matter? And the sale, it’s a deal. The sales guy wouldn’t have gotten in the first place.
So he’s making six instead of eight points. Two is easy for him to give up, right? Or whatever the number was, you know, the percentage, 20%, you know, that’s pretty much what it, tail.
Terry Hedden (32:00)
So you get 20 % of commission to the referral.
Jason Caras (32:14)
So if the salesman initiated the sale, gets his 100%. But if he didn’t initiate the sale and he got it through a referral partner, the referral partner takes his and he gets the gifters.
Terry Hedden (32:23)
Okay. It’s like a life. That’s a big deal. Yeah. How did that affect?
Jason Caras (32:28)
Here, ask me the question, is that necessary? No. And frankly, they were only good for a couple, one or two deals every one, two, three years. It wasn’t like they were pounding deals.
Terry Hedden (32:42)
They jumped and came across something in the end.
Jason Caras (32:43)
And they were in the right spot at the right time. I was top of mind. They inserted me and we read capitalized. So that’s how it works.
Terry Hedden (32:50)
How about that when you went to sell did that work against you? I would guess saying you have a residual income stream do
Jason Caras (32:55)
A lot of those agents went away by the time we sold. It really started ⁓ pivoting to the larger.
Terry Hedden (33:03)
Okay, so they didn’t want those little
Jason Caras (33:05)
And if you were to evaluate the product set, it’s very designed for enterprise. know, like, you know, the typical MSP will come in and say, we’re going to do a monitoring software. We’re going to put on antivirus. We’re going to do some cyber security. All banked into the price. You go to an enterprise that has 50,000 employees. You’re like, you’re not putting that on my network. I’ve already spent millions of dollars on this. All right. So we’ll be handling that. You’ll handle this. So within the largest base, end up kind of being like a SEAL Team 6. You go into a company that has a larger IT department than you have a company. Yeah. Right. So you just play a role. Yeah. You stay in your lane.
Terry Hedden (33:45)
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Very interesting. As an owner, you know, to me, they’re very different clients and the different, they bring you different joys, you know, like laying coke had to feel really good and accomplished at a certain level, but helping your neighbor down the street or your friend in the chamber of commerce with their local business on in their local products has a different reward. How did you, where’d you find the joy? If you could kind of look back on that time.
Did you enjoy the small to medium sized business that five, 10, 20, 50 person environment where you got to know the owner well and it’s a personal thing or did you really enjoy the cold or corporate, you know, I’m vendor 2742 and I get $25,000 a month.
Jason Caras (34:31)
It’s a great question. know, the thing I enjoyed about the larger one was the hunt. was big game hunting. Yeah. It was the excitement of landing a huge deal and knowing how it’s going to change lives. you know, if people are going to get raises, we’re going to add more people. Our companies going to grow.
Terry Hedden (34:50)
So the return on your eternal sea.
Jason Caras (34:52)
That was my internal like excitement came from like the big hunting. You’re teaching. But no, I did love ⁓ the relationships that were built with the owners, you know, and, and frankly, you know, there were times where we would disappoint them because you you ebb and flow in your service levels too. You’re not always doing no bad. You know, like, you know, always the best. Sometimes you’re the best. Sometimes you’re not so good.
Terry Hedden (34:57)
I guess I would have been
Jason Caras (35:20)
There were times when we were not so good for some people that I really regretted that happening today. You know, call our whole time, we’ll get in some like 20,000 tickets a month or something. It was crazy, you know? And then the whole time was like literally at 1.9 seconds. And then at one point it literally went to like the three, four, five, six minute holds. And those customers were not going to deal with that.
Terry Hedden (35:43)
Right. Right. Right.
Jason Caras (36:19)
In different world. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting is that we’re sitting here side by side, kind of going to these awards ceremonies, you know, um, building our businesses, but we did it in totally different ways. I don’t think I even really appreciated that folium. So today, so, you know, first of all, I came from management consulting, right? I was a consultant. Um, I worked in, know, Earth Studio before I became an OSP. So I get there into the OSP and I didn’t understand hardware. I didn’t know hardware. I never sold hardware.
I didn’t even want to sell hardware. Like we got to where we were like 90 something percent recurring revenue. You know, like, so we, I mean, I was a Cisco partner and didn’t want to sell it. Like I wanted the recurring revenue, right? want to get a service revenue. And then, um, there’s this one thing that’s kind of interesting is we never got there. I think our, at the end, we were probably 85 % recurring revenue, 85 % service and 15 % hardware software project. Um, and I think it’s because of how we commissioned our sales team. We didn’t really want to go after that. I, never even tried, but our fact, we had a customer and you may have had them after I sold, but special operations, warrior foundations, you ever come across those guys? Amazing organization. They, they provide college education to the children of fallen soldiers. It’s like super noble, awesome people, great group. And, ⁓ when we first got them on, much like you were talking about the wholesale refresh, it was like everything new.
And they loved us. mean, I loved them. They loved us. They loved me. We were personal with this and that. And then they became really angry one day and not really angry, but for them it was very angry. and, ⁓ and I remember just like, how did this go wrong? We were like, could not be any more loved to where they’re really frustration. And I could see they were considering leaving us. And I went back and we’d sold them all that equipment. And then six years later, they still had it. We never went.
back and refreshed anything. We didn’t think about that. There wasn’t even part of our business. And, and, uh, to the point where I was looking to buy a VAR to learn how to Because I was like, wait a minute, we got to go back and you know, you’ve got to, know, the user of a two year old or one year old laptop is much happier than the user of a six year old laptop. Right. So, so that was our lesson where I’m like, wow, the server’s slow because it’s freaking six years old.
Terry Hedden (38:10)
The monitors, everything has changed so much in one out of years. So, um, yeah, that was one of my thing that I kind of invented that life cycle management philosophy that we teach today. Um, but anyway, you really 50, 50, 50, what? Yeah. Yeah. You were like a hybrid of our MSP combo, which I’m not so sure. I mean, I might, what I teach now is it try to to 70 30, like 50 50. I struggled with the,
Jason Caras (38:21)
This looks like a lot of murky.
Terry Hedden (38:40)
So one of the things I really, when we launched in 2003, we were an MSP before there was an MSP. We have fixed recurring revenue service contracts from the day we launched. was like IBS Unlimited. The original name was InfiniBusiness Systems, Unlimited. And then, ⁓ and it was a fixed fee concept. And I was obsessed with making sure that all my expenses were covered on the first of the month for the month. Whereas you’re dealing with the ups and flows of projects, you know, when it is running, you’re killing it.
And when it’s not, you’re trying to make payroll. And so I was just, I was good, man. All my expenses were paid on the first of the month. ⁓ but the downside is I had not as happy customers. I probably weren’t, I wasn’t getting in the door with some of the bigger opportunities because I wasn’t selling hardware. In other words, it’s, it’s an important part of running a successful MSP.
Jason Caras (39:30)
Yeah, it’s a good beach out. Yeah, no, because, hey, we’re gonna spend some money. Maybe we ought to take some bids. Yeah. And then whoever wins the infrastructure is going to win the main services. Yeah. That was our philosophy.
Terry Hedden (39:40)
Yeah, no, I think it’s brilliant. We had some big customers like WellCare, ⁓ TechData. ⁓ We had some, ⁓ I’m trying to think, some others, US Slumber. We had some enterprise customers, but we didn’t come in that way. At Mavericks, we didn’t even ask about it. Like we literally didn’t even ask about it. It was all, all services. know, if we needed to, if we needed, even if we needed to replace the equipment that we were servicing, we didn’t even ask about bidding on it. That’s how ridiculous we were.
Jason Caras (40:11)
Look, we had to pay for these guys. Right. To sit on the bench. When there were no…
Terry Hedden (40:15)
Yeah. Right. was what I was I’m willing to do. Yeah. was. Yeah. You have some great people and, and, you know, it’s pros and cons with everything, but if you could kind of go back and we’re, focused on right now in the time before you started lamb as whales, what would you go back and do differently? Now? Did you like the agent sales model or do you wish you did more traditional marketing?
Jason Caras (40:18)
Tough. Yeah, totally. We would have quadrupled size if we had an actual sales and marketing engine. And it really wasn’t the fault of my business partner that we were more of an operations driven company. I used to say, we’re like a giant tick in one leg, on the leg. Drag the body, right? And because was the only salesman most of the time, very rarely had any salespeople. But most we ever had at one time, I think was like three.
Jason Caras (41:06)
So we’re really good at operations, often sales and marketing, like, you know, in the creating a reliable, consistent marketing machine. We didn’t have that, ⁓ other than through the referrals. So the referrals are pretty reliable and obviously they worked, but imagine what we could have done if we were spending the money to do the ground game that I now profess for everyone to do. Like you need to be making phone calls. You need to be doing email. You need SEO. You need to evangelize your company. You need to dive into public relations and make your company newsworthy. All of that is in the Sandler, Babcock would say. It’s in the recipe, right? It’s all, you have to have that grounding. we didn’t, you know, so imagine what we could have accomplished if we were doing that. There would have been so many more leads, so many more opportunities. And I blame myself.
Terry Hedden (41:42)
Yeah.
Jason Caras (42:01)
Well, because it was good enough, you know, like I was getting the referrals, I was doing the thing, but it was unfamiliar to me. had never done marketing. I’ve only been a salesman my whole life, right? But I’ve never done marketing. I didn’t understand it. And my business partner, if he actually ran that, if he had the time, it would have been successful because marketing is about discipline and consistency. I’m playing long game. If you think you’re going to run an ad for a month and you know, you’re going to hit it, you’re not.
Terry Hedden (42:23)
Yeah.
Jason Caras (42:30)
It’s a year, two years, three years. You need to be top of mind for when the event occurs exactly. And the only way you’re going to be top of mind is if you do what my old friend Aaron Hurlburt said, pound them into submission. ⁓
Terry Hedden (42:45)
It’s drip marketing. Yeah. Pounding them.
Jason Caras (42:48)
Just constant, never ending until they say unsubscribe. Right? That’s what I tell people to do today. I’m like, if you’re not doing that, you’re not even doing the basics. Forget about referrals. You better have the basics going before you because you’re not going to succeed. Interesting. And hardware, by the way, that who’s selling hardware nowadays? What are you selling? You might sell, you’ll sell laptops, but you’re not selling sands. You might tell him that we’re not selling this huge cluster of sands anymore than we were.
Terry Hedden (43:19)
Did that part of your business decline over time?
Jason Caras (43:21)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Then you know, the cloud came around. I don’t know when, the year, but it may have been 2007, eight when cloud like started and we built our own private cloud. remember I did, I did a post on, I think it was Facebook. It was called IT porn, right? It was, it was a Cisco unified server with 192 gigs of Ram. And that was like, and I’ll take a picture and I was selling our cloud. This is what our clouds mean. You know, and that was a nice little run until the big boys got in. It was a, it was a chase, a race to zero profitability.
Terry Hedden (43:57)
Yeah. Private cloud was a thing and so it was, yeah. I all said, you know what? You know, we only need these servers for like Friday. We, ⁓ well we ran them out so that people. Okay.
Jason Caras (44:00)
Yes. I remember on maintenance on a NetApp saying that we had was like 250 grand. We were like think we should resell Azure.
Terry Hedden (44:17)
Yeah, I did the same thing. built my cloud and I’m super proud of it. Had a bazillion. We just make you feel even more. So again, we’re not the hardware junkies that you were. So we hosted desktop before there was hope. We literally built this. don’t remember the gains of all that. That wasn’t my point stake, yeah, we had probably a hundred, 200 hosted users that had downtime like not weekly.
It definitely wasn’t one time it happened more than I, I, uh, I, I, I probably blocked out 90 % of the downtime we have. It was painful. And then of course that, industry is maturing quite a bit and this still hasn’t really taken off. There’s not, not many people on host the desktops and very interesting. Okay. So, so we’re at nine million. You started to be going into the bigger enterprise customers and you found joy in that because it, what it did with your team. Talk to me about that. the, the, the, the, you, go from meteoric rise to that sort of starting to dip. How did that affect culture? How’d that affect your business? you mentioned two different purchase moments, the big one for 30 million, they didn’t take, and then the one you did walking through that segment of your journey.
Jason Caras (45:28)
So the whole time we’re getting courted by every investment banker on the planet, just like you are. Hey, we’re going to solve it.
Terry Hedden (45:36)
So not not even entertaining and we were were you we were better than me. I was made no way
Jason Caras (45:42)
We were really considering selling to Volodya at one point for like three and a half million dollars. And we were thinking, Hey, this could do life changing. It’s amazing what you change in your goals, your perspective. didn’t take that. Glad we didn’t, but, ⁓ there’s a lot of opportunities along the way to do that. And, but, know, so the ebb and flow, ⁓ very tough, very tough. You know, you could say, Hey, the sky’s not falling, but if the sky’s fallen.
You deal with reality and we lost good people along the way. Uh, and it affects people’s lives. That, that affected me personally. You know, I remember sitting here, I had a, I had a fire to people because we couldn’t afford them. And I literally cried in the meeting. like, I was so emotionally distraught. I knew these people needed the job, you know, and we couldn’t afford them. And if I didn’t pluck them from the staff, other people would have to go to it. And it was tough.
You know, so there’s a result from loving your employees so much.
Terry Hedden (46:45)
Somebody to do your job as CEO makes the tough decisions, but still.
Jason Caras (46:49)
That, cause it’s not just that person, it’s their kids and their husband and their lives. know, it’s a whole. We took a lot of responsibility for that and try to do our best to take care of people. And then we had to constantly adjust, right? Someone moves your cheese. The cloud went away and then we got to do, they need just to adjust and reassess and go back in. You learn one thing that would good though is we failed. tried to fail fast.
Terry Hedden (46:54)
Yeah.
Jason Caras (47:19)
And fail period. Like, and we had a saying, if you’re not failing, you’re not trying. It it’s cliche to say if you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough. And we would tell people part of our, we had this, um, it’s part of our culture was that, you know, this is a, sense of significance and certainty. want to make sure you have, we want you to feel important and we want you to know that you can fail without getting fired. Don’t fail in the same thing over and over. That’s a different conversation but it’s okay to fail. So like, how does that translate in every day? what, you know, we had mix and match plans. Well, you called up on something that didn’t have that plan. What are you supposed to do? Tell them to go take a hike? Sorry, you’re not on the plan. Do the right thing. We’ll work it out later. I told, we were trying to encourage them. What would you do? What would you want? The person on the other end of here, well, want to just take care of them. So we get to the point where we said,
Look, don’t care if you call us for support from an airport using your daughter’s iPad, we’re going to help you. If we have to figure out, if we have to add that device later, we’ll do that later, but do the right thing. You know, so that was really, you know, part of the, the, what held us together during tough times too. It was people that, cause we were failing, we would try stuff. And there was a point when, you know, I’ll tell you, this was a big part of, you know, that moment where I had to come back. The company was going great.
And then, we made some big decisions on some management and that’s, know, customers are peeling off in record amounts. Employees are peeling off. Everybody gets blood in the water. All right. Two authorities are going out of business. People taking our people, our client, everything was falling apart. That’s when I came up with that $99 a user covers your entire infrastructure. I was out of desperation. Now I had to stop the meeting. So.
I came back and I kind of like retired in 2017. I stepped away. hired somebody to take my spot management, try to run the company. I had to come back in 2019. If I didn’t come back in April of 2019, the company would have been busted in July. Wow. All those years, all those blood, sweat and tears. Wow. Wasted. If we didn’t do that, we had to pay off like $3 million in debt.
And that’s why we ended up selling for what we sold. took a huge haircut and went, you know, look, I’m grateful for being able to sell. I’m grateful for the company that bought it, you know, and they’re, they’re very nice people and I love them personally. ⁓ we really messed up. We really messed up. what we did was, I didn’t sell, just became chairman of the board. You know, they took over the.
Terry Hedden (50:00)
You sold during that time?
Jason Caras (50:08)
Well, no, no, no. oh, so before that, when, when 2017, we hired a management team, which ran the company, not so great. And, and, and, and some of it’s their fault. Some of it’s not their fault, you know, like some stuff just dried up, you know, the shiny object was not so shiny in the end. You have to pivot again, but it was a big investment. I mean, like lots of people being paid lots of money, like almost everyone 200 cat way, like a lot of money. And it was, it was a hard pivot.
Terry Hedden (50:15)
Can I have some oil?
Jason Caras (50:36)
But when we came back, we had to restore faith in the employees. We had to get the clients to stay on. We desperation mode. did that advertising for $99 a user. We ended up paying off the debt. We ended up selling the business and I’m grateful for that. Business? Yeah. Yeah, there was probably a little bit of left on it, but not to the tune that it was.
Terry Hedden (50:50)
So you paid off of that and then sold it. wow.
So think you go back in that chapter and do things differently. We talked about the first chapter, you’d probably grow faster and achieve more because you would invest more in the front end of the business. wouldn’t. Okay. Mind the pees and fuses.
Jason Caras (51:05)
Yeah. I’ll take my eyes off the numbers. Oh my word. That was the biggest thing. was the finances. It was the salaries and the hiring. You you hire somebody and then they, they, you know, end up hiring people, uh, by default. They throw people at problems. Next thing you know, you have a lot of people. But when we came back, we had a fire like 40 people. were doing nothing. 40. Yeah.
Terry Hedden (51:36)
That’d be a fun day.
Jason Caras (51:37)
That was awful. It’s heartbreaking. I’m sure you know I have mental health issues already. It’s just exacerbated that it was tough man a very tough time in my life I I sunk to the depths of hell and depression honestly. ⁓ wow. Yeah, I mean As low as you can go, I’ll just leave it at that.
Terry Hedden (52:03)
I heard you there. But you pulled it out.
Jason Caras (52:07)
By the grace of God.
Terry Hedden (52:08)
Yeah.
Jason Caras (52:10)
Yeah, I was, my wife really saved my life. was, I had planned my exit of the world. She kind of caught me just before, know, life. And I got my life together again and just, the enormity and the pressure and the stress and the failure that I had failed so big this late in life, so hard. But by her grace and the grace of God,
I found the strength to rebuild and start over mentally, you know, and I am now here because of that moment, that decision to not do what I was planning on doing.
Terry Hedden (53:06)
I didn’t know that about your journey, I did. do know and sense the passion for your wife and the fact that your love for her and your relationship with her is almost deeper than a normal marriage. that kind of probably ties back to. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Caras (53:22)
She really is my best friend. I used to hear that growing up like, yeah, like, well, she is my best friend, yeah. And she ultimately was responsible, saved me with five seconds. There was a time when she goes, I’m gonna take the kids away here today because I don’t want them around. I’m like, what? She goes, you haven’t smiled in two days, in two nights and didn’t, you have not said a single word. What she didn’t know was I was in another world planning.
Terry Hedden (53:33)
Wow.
Jason Caras (53:49)
Videos that I was going to leave for my kids for lifelong lessons. was delusionally convinced they’ll get over my death, but they’ll never have to worry about the money. Like I did. That was what I was delusional about. And for me, I’m the dad who goes to bed with each of my kids. I spend time co-talking, loving on them, talking about life. I wake them up with kiss. I come in sneak in the room and I kiss their faces. I’m that dad. And here she was telling me that I was like,
I was stunned. sat there for like 40, 50 minutes staring at the ground going, my God, they won’t get over this. And I went downstairs and I apologized to my family. And I said, I’ll never do this.
Terry Hedden (54:32)
Hmm. Wow. That’s an incredible story. When you send me work, I do this again. does that mean? Get yourself in that position. Yeah.
Jason Caras (54:42)
Never let myself get to the depths of depression like that, you know, because basically what I was doing, I was doing things to negate my medicine. I’m a… And I’m bringing, you know, just basically negated the medicine and I sunk to a spot where my medicine typically prevents me from… I have bipolar disorder, so I can go to the extremes of both ends.⁓ the one on bottom is not a good place. That’s when people actually go forward to things. Yeah. And I have the ability to go there when no person for the most part, they get depressed if they don’t get that.
Terry Hedden (55:16)
Right, right, right.
Jason Caras (55:18)
⁓ and I was there for about two weeks.
Terry Hedden (55:22)
to ace and, and, and your wife too. It shakes you a little bit, but it shook you your core. Yep. Which, led to the bottom. Talk to me about the journey back up.
Jason Caras (55:36)
⁓ militant discipline, ⁓ it was required. had to restructure my mindset, restructure my habits. I started creating disciplines. started taking my own medicine stuff. I’ve been teaching all my employees and all these people. I was like, your time now. Right. Drink your own Kool-Aid. And I did, I started doing things like creating disciplines, holding myself accountable, getting a mentor, ⁓ communicating. ⁓ I started.
⁓ dealing with my doctors more often, just being on top of it until I felt unstoppable to where I am now. I’ve not deviated. I’ve not gone down. I haven’t end. I’ve been flowing ever since. Yeah.
Terry Hedden (56:19)
That’s, you know, and I can feel that even when, you know, you’re, in this chapter of your life now where you’ve sold, you’ve, you’re probably short of some of your financial things, but you’re not done yet. You’ve got a lot to give. And I can see that you wrote a book, tell me about the book and, and, and, and what led to you putting it, putting them kind of paper and making that sort of stamp on the world that will last long, long after you’re gone of natural causes, of course.
Long after you’re done, can make an impact on anyone that reads this. Tell me, tell us about the book. What are some of the key lessons learned? And then where do you see your career going next now that you’ve kind of departed the firm that watched it?
Jason Caras (57:01)
You know, ⁓ so the book was, ⁓ just, was like, need to like, put this into a book. I’ve been teaching this since I was 17 years old. I did my very first speech at 17 years old. was first, let me back up first. I was arrested nine times before I 17 years old. And I got to a point where I hit a bottom there and with the trouble and stuff. And finally, I just came across a book by Wayne Dyer and it changed my life. And I was like,
I wanted to learn and grow and be a great leader and a great person in sense of the world. So then I sought out Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins worked for Jim Rohn, ROHM. And he was in Boston speaking. So I got dressed up in a suit and I drove in there at 17 years old and I saw that speech and I waited to shake his hand. It was like this long line. And I went up there, I looked him in the eyes. said, I’m going to do this one day. And you’ve inspired me. And I immediately went home, found a juvenile detention center. I said, I want to come speak.
And I didn’t, I purposely did not have a speech. said, God is going to feed me what’s supposed to come out, when it’s supposed to come out, how it’s supposed to come out. I’m going to trust in that process. And I went there and I probably gave my very best speech to this thing. That’s 17. Wow. And these kids were 12 to 18 years old. And I’d sat my car after that and I never felt more fulfilled. I said, I’m going to do this for a living. But I didn’t end up chasing the dollar. I’ve had 12 companies.
Terry Hedden (58:11)
17.
Jason Caras (58:26)
Three successful, lost everything three times. 12 companies chasing the dollar, not my passion. It brings me to where I am today. After I sold the company, I’m like, what do I want to do when I grow up? It’s like, you know what? What do you love? Let’s start there. I love helping people. My wife calls me Captain Sabre Hall. I will literally help anybody, but I get my sense of significance helping someone else. That makes me feel good.
And I said, well, let’s start with iterating all the stuff I’ve been teaching. Let’s just make it into a book. So I made it into a book. Then I was like, you know what? The book’s not enough. I’m going to turn this into an app because it needs to be interactive. want them to look into their soul. I want to put them through exercises that make them make decisions of their life and pivot. So I made an app. And then I said, you know what? I’m going to help other people with the journey that I had in the entrepreneurial world.
Help them grow, scale their company, help them sell it. There’s so many things I did wrong that I can bring to bear so that they don’t have to do it wrong and cost them potentially millions of dollars or even the depression. So I started coaching. I started coaching and, but then I realized I’m not like, you know, the typical coach. you do a search on the internet, you’ll find a bunch of people who took a course on coaching and they’ve never run a company. They’ve never been sued. They never bought a company, never sold a company, but they’re going to tell you how to do all of
I said, have a lot to offer here. I get a really good sense of significance by doing this. I can help people make a difference. So I stood up a coaching business, but was really more on management consulting. And this is why I came to you. was like, these guys, all these clients need marketing. They need to, they’re not doing the ground game. That’s why I’ve been, you know, this relationship has been re fostered between us because I’m bringing you now to these clients because they need the building blocks to want a business. And,
So then I started there. at the very top, I’m doing this advisory, but I’m really doing work, manage the consulting. If they needed sales, I’m restructuring, I’m writing the documents, training their people and implementing new things. If they need marketing, I’m rewriting content. I’m saying your messaging is all wrong. You’re selling the bits and the bytes. It’s not selling the problem and the solution and so forth. So I’m doing that. I’m providing like EO, consultant to help them get management infrastructure in place. You know, they might need.
I had a client and this is where it went from coaching and consulting. And there’s always that book, the book and the motivating employees. love to motivate sales teams. When I’m done with a sales team, they’ll feel like they could chew steel gum. I mean, they just feel empowered, you know, cause I’m giving them tools to do that. And then the bottom layer, which just recently got added was doing this business process outsourcing. So client needs marketing. Here you go, Terry. Client needs a finance. Here’s my fractional CFO.
client needs payroll service, that payroll company. I had a client, he’s like, I need some money. Like, why would you like cash crunch, da da da. said, let’s start with a fractional CFO, bring him in here. We discovered that he had no record solid books. He wasn’t tracking anything, he had nothing, it was just a mess. Typical for a small business growing really fast, So I brought in a fractional CFO, fixed all that, but we did uncover that he had certified payrolls in that file, 80 of them.
Now people get paid, but he didn’t certify the payroll department of transportation. It took $600. I brought a payroll expert come in, $600 to fix that problem and then automate it. So it never happens again. And what did that do? It freed up $3 million in receivables. He didn’t need money. It was sitting right there. ⁓ So now I’m affecting change. That’s a life-changing thing right there. Right. And I’m loving what I’m doing.
So that’s what the company has now become is, you know, it was Jason Karras, LLC, cause it was just going to be a lifetime, you ⁓ know, lifestyle business. And I was like, you know, I got the bug. I want to scale and grow and sell it for tens of millions. So I turned it into the Karras Institute. Cause I can’t sell Jason Karras. I can sell Karras Institute one day. So that’s where I’m at now. just taking on and I don’t take on too many.
But I started to recruit other CEOs that have sold and they’ve seen the movie before. And I’m going to start assigning them to my, my leads. And by the way, I’m doing all the marketing that I never did before. The click funnels, the ads and that. ⁓ thank you. I’m finally doing the right stuff. ⁓ God. Yeah. I that’s what the light bulb went off. like, why didn’t I do this all these years, man? I get hundreds of leads.
Terry Hedden (1:02:46)
See them. Good. They look great. Is it working? ⁓
Jason Caras (1:03:01)
Entrepreneurs that are looking to take their company to the next level. And the conversation is kind of hard. It’s like, look, man, if you coulda, you woulda. You’re not doing something right. Maybe it’s an infrastructure management system that you’re not doing. Like you’re not running your company right. Maybe your product’s set. I just took on a client, can’t say their name, but large MSP and they’re in the hardware business, but moving into managed service, they have a pretty good sized book, but I’m being hired to assess everything all their go-to-market, their tech stack, their people, everything. It’s gonna be so much fun. Literally just got the shared documents today. Just kicking it off. Can’t wait to dig in, man.
Terry Hedden (1:03:38)
That what you’re focusing? Are you focusing on MSP’s? and everything.
Jason Caras (1:03:41)
It’s anything and everything, but you know, I have a lot of credibility in the tech space. It’s good. know the MSP space, but I’m also helping a lot of AI companies and software as a service companies. Like I have a software as a service company and I’ve implemented EOS and I implemented Sandler sales training and now I’m taking on their marketing. just started diving into their Google analytics. ⁓ and then eventually finance it. But the goal is my clients want to grow scale itself.
And that’s where I’ve made my money. I’m going to help them all the way through to that sale. So it’s kind of a loss leader. I’m not charging too much money on the, on the retainer, but I want to kick her on the end. If I get you, you want to sell for 20 million? All right. At 20 million, I get X over that. get a little bit more. Right. And that’s where I’ll make my money.
Terry Hedden (1:04:27)
Yeah. Yeah. Love that. that’s okay. And how’s the business going so far? I’m going for a year.
Jason Caras (1:04:34)
I just signed a million dollar business process outsourcing contract. Wow. So the company that I just fixed up with their finances and payroll, it’s like, look, take it all over. I just took it all. We just took over the entire back office. We do everything. IT, well, not the IT, it’s outsourced to somebody else, but the payroll, the finance, the accounting, the project management, all of that is done. We took it all over. And it’s for a fraction of the cost of use on time and like.
Terry Hedden (1:05:05)
Is that because of AI or how are are you are you getting them?
Jason Caras (1:05:08)
Partners, people, partners and people. ⁓ got some big groups, domestic and I have a gigantic group in India and Pakistan.
Terry Hedden (1:05:17)
Interesting. I see a lot of people doing that. Yeah. And AI is only going to accelerate that because you don’t have to speak English to speak English anymore. You can speak Mandarin into a computer and then it’s like, what’s that going to do to the average American work? People are worried about AI, but it’s not, it’s not always automation. It’s people who are less skilled are now empowered with AI to give them knowledge and AI to make, to level playing field. I’ve seen a lot of
Jason Caras (1:05:24)
I know. It literally comes out the other editor. This was a guy
Terry Hedden (1:05:45)
You know, the work from home thing to me is something I’d never understood. I’m like, why would anyone hire a work from home person in a market that’s expensive? If they’re going to not be in the office, they may as well be in lower Alabama or Bangladesh or something. Exactly what’s happening is you see this push toward, you know, Latin America, Asia Pacific, you know, just where it’s a lot lower cost of labor.
Jason Caras (1:06:11)
Don’t have the luxury of that anymore. have to look at the pricing pressure on demand and service provider on the IT company. Our costs went up with COVID. Nobody got any smarter. They just got way more expensive. The guy you were paying 80 now demanded 120 and he’s going to get it all day long. So our costs went up exponentially. And where are we going to find that money? So it’s not a luxury. It’s a necessity of survival.
Terry Hedden (1:06:25)
Right. Yeah.
Jason, last, every time I’m with you, I learned something and I learned business. So I’m not surprised you’re successful as a business consultant. I learned a lot about you personally. And, and I see this a tremendous opportunity for you to give back, whether it’s a, a parent with a 12 year old that’s starting down the wrong path that you could maybe help pivot toward.
Jason Caras (1:07:04)
Do a of that, by the way. I love that. a lot of that.
Terry Hedden (1:07:06)
I can, you know, it’s like as much as helping other business owners succeed and achieve what you have has got to be a passion for you for the same reason, which is your personal story and the fire within you started as a child when you were doing things you shouldn’t do. And that led to consequences that you don’t want for other people, which motivates you to help them. So I could see the Keras Institute being something that has many branches. One, you know, helping children to helping business owners, but there’s probably an ocean of things that you can do over time.
Jason Caras (1:07:41)
I said that I’m actually writing. It took fundamentally unstoppable. My books, 222 pages, writing one for teens and one for kids. So the teens are to be under a hundred pages to do more with body images and peer pressure and drugs and full forth. But same fundamentals, but communicate in a little different way. And then the, it’s going to be a 20 page illustrated book. the kids same principles, philosophies that have been around for thousands of years, you know, so that, that those are my next projects, by the way.
Terry Hedden (1:07:46)
Be fair. Yeah. Wait, just really, are you literally ready? And then he was a ghost writer. Yeah. That’s awesome. Okay. Can’t wait to see that. Jay. So like, to watch you, your, your, your, your passion for life, your passion for change, your passion for helping others is, is evident in the energy that you bring to every conversation I’ve had. And, and I just want you to know as someone who’s a peer of yours in some respects, I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and what you’ve done and sharing for you and want you to do.
Jason Caras (1:08:10)
Barry starts writing. No, I’m writing. Ow!
Terry Hedden (1:08:40)
I want you to exceed whatever dream and whatever vision you have for you because you’re going to make the world a better place because you’re in it. know, so keep doing what you’re doing, man. I’m cheering for you. appreciate that. Thanks so much for talking about it. Thank you.
