Terry Hedden (00:00)
Are you an MSP that’s trying to figure out your answer to AI to make sure that this is the greatest growth opportunity that you’ll see in your entire lifetime and not your death sentence? Well, this session’s for you. We’ve got Paul from ThinkBridge in town and man, does he have a perspective that you need to hear. He was an MSP, now works at a vendor that’s determined to help MSPs capitalize on the AI opportunity and dominate their market when it comes to revenue and profit.
So if you want to run a successful MSP in the age of AI, this is a must see.
Hello and welcome to the Grow Limitless podcast. I’m excited to welcome Paul Doggett of ThinkBridge to the program. And today we’re going to talk about AI. If you’re afraid of it, it’s a good one to listen to. If you’re excited about it, it’s a good one to listen to as well. Paul, thank you so much for coming. Awesome. Awesome, man. Well, you you and have gotten to know each other a little bit and I’m excited to introduce you to the audience. Tell us about you and your background. How did you get to where you are today?
Paul Doggett (00:55)
Well, I’m to share with you there. So, you know, as it relates specifically to your audience, you know, I started about 15 years ago, little man, 15 years ago, in the MSP space here in the Tampa Bay area. worked with an owner led sales MSP was kind of how I heard my stripes in the business. And that company, when I got in the door to interview for the position, the owner had the lights turned off in the building.
$10,000 $20,000 of the MR time had eight and four E’s and was running a really tight ship. Right. He said, you know, I’m happy to bring you on. I can’t really pay you anything. can give you some best equity in your organization as time goes on. And I was sort of the phase of my life who said, all right, let’s go, let’s try it out. wow. That business owner ended up being a great mentor of mine. He was a process oriented person and
You know, we got into like the Gary Pika stuff, right? But that’s from there with that. know this is not everybody is, but, ⁓ you know, that, that really got handed down to me. ⁓ and I really appreciated being a part of that business, what he did, how he treated his customers and ended up, you know, he ended up passing away. ⁓ and I went from there and basically created a.
Uh, it brokerage for NAM services where I have relationships for a couple of dozen different MSPs primarily. And I would go out and find a finding new customers and bring them to the MSPs that I thought were the best fit for that particular customer. So got pretty, uh, got to know a lot of the MSPs pretty well, how they operated, uh, how, you know, what their business model was and, and learn how to go to market.
⁓ onto half of them then really had an affinity for those SMB, SM, you know, maintenance service providers, because that’s where I came from. And that’s kind of who I cared about. Tiny boy cold there. and, so I did that for, for eight or nine years, just sort of got to the point where, you know, I, I had enough, ⁓ mailbox money coming in and, just needed to change. ⁓
And worked in SAS for a few years, but was, had become interested in AI and crypto. Like I went down on these podcasts, rabbit holes, and just became convinced that AI was an existential threat to the SAS business model as we see it, as we understand it, software industrial complex services today. So I basically took my MSP background with my software hobbyist nature and
That’s what’s brought me here to the ThinkBridge today and combining us two worlds.
Terry Hedden (03:59)
Wow. I love it. So, so I want see how good you are. Right. So, so you have, you were a salesperson and MSP that went pure commission. Tell me that says that you’ve got confidence. got some swag. got, know what you’re doing. And then you were a independent hired gun for a bunch of MSPs. What do you think RMR you sold in your career? I give me, give me a number, man. How good are you exactly? Are you a million dollar MSP? You know, RMR, are you, you know, a hundred thousand. Where do you think you got in your career, man?
Paul Doggett (04:27)
Can tell you that first MSP that I was a part of went from, you know, it’s called 15 K or so MRR to within two years being a hundred day. So totally transformed the organization on how it was. then, you know, on my own accord, it fell a couple hundred thousand dollars worth more than MRR. But when I was working for myself, I’ll be honest, the struggle for me and being a solopreneur was.
Terry Hedden (04:35)
All right, that’s impressive.
Paul Doggett (04:56)
Kind of the cabin fever that exists along with that. So you did that for eight or nine years, did okay, made a decent amount of money, all that stuff. But I’m really happy to be in the position I am today, or it’s I’m in a lot more communities. I’m working with people on a day to day basis. have folks to talk to, I have folks to visit with, I have customers to talk to. It was just much more.
Terry Hedden (05:18)
Yeah, I can appreciate it. I mean, you would call us some big things. There are not many mass services salespeople that put 300k RMR in the boat. You know what I mean? So you’ve kind of proved that you know what you’re doing and it sounds to me like now you’re kind of putting it at a higher, putting it together at sort of a higher level. And that’s kind of how we know, which is awesome, man. ⁓ So that’s really impressive. Why’d you pick Thinkbridge?
Paul Doggett (05:42)
Well, Thinkbridge was very well positioned to take advantage of the AI play that’s available right now. So, you know, I, I tell you one of the podcasts I really like to listen to is the all in broadcast was just like super popular. I’m sure some people have started that. And there’s this guy named Shamar, Paulie, how to Tita that he started this business called the night and
Um, basically he’s using AI to do coding and he’s made this case about how the software industrial complex is going to crumble because we don’t need to be slaves to vendor locked into all of these sass brows. said, man, that’s a great message. I love it. And I was like, I got to get a job at being 90 with Chimac polyamory here because that’s the rocket ship. That’s where the world was moving to. And you know, couldn’t get your mouth on the phone.
Uh, and, and, and think bridge, uh, was, uh, in that same space and come to find out they’ve got a lot of, uh, some of the, the managing partners there. It’s a 12 year old company, but people coming from IBM from Accenture that had been involved in things like Watson and a lot of AI background and some internal tooling that was really impressive. And I was just like, I see, I see the market model in my head. I see how this is going to disrupt.
I see the players that can take advantage of it and it’s a land grabber. Absolutely. you know, it’s, think it’s a matter of who can package this correctly, who can fulfill what they, on their promises and, and the people that do that are going to do really, really well, both ThinkBridge and the MSPs or the IT bars who, who, decide to fill a quote.
Terry Hedden (07:27)
Right. I totally agree with you. um, when you know, I met you, first of all, you’re an impressive guy. So, so I was immediately listening, um, because we don’t really work with everybody, you know, we’re pretty darn selected, especially, you know, in a, in, this world that we’re entering now, because the stability of the organization, the quality of the tech, the, the ethics and morals of the people. mean, that’s going to be huge, right? There’s going to be a lot of bad guys, by taking advantage of people in the AI world. And so, so I, I did my own due diligence and I was really impressed with ThinkRidge. I love, I think I just love their go-to-market message. And then when I met you and I realized, okay, so they have the MSP chops on the team and they see the MSP as a critical layer in the AI story for SMB, which of course is the lion’s share of opportunity. Like 97 % of companies are, are, in the SMB category sort of cared for by MSPs and Thinkbridge realizes that is embracing that and brought you in to make sure that it’s successful at that. so, you know, it’s interesting cause I am out there in the community and seeing people that are, you know, roughly competitors in the same, you know, know, of categories you, I think it’s don’t get it. They don’t understand the MSP. They don’t understand the SMB market. You know, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re focused on going up against the big four, trying to get enterprise work because it’s such huge money. And I get that part, but it’s nothing compared to what’s going to happen in the SMB space. ⁓ having someone like you aboard really helps make sure that the MSP is going to be successful. You know, and so I really commend you for that. And I’ve seen some of the technology you have. And I’ve seen, uh, the, the, even the sales support systems and processes that you. It’s just art impressive, man. So it’s going to. I was excited to jump on and, and, and put my toe on the scale, if you will, to make sure that you’re the winner, because I, I think this is the once in a lifetime opportunity for every one of us. And perhaps the last real opportunity to build great wealth arguably in the world, right? I mean, it’s like, what are we arguably doing in 10 years? I don’t really know. I’m curious on your thoughts on that, let’s really cone in on the near term. Like, where do you see ThinkBridge play in a low-income ESMP? And how do you see ThinkBridge working with MSPs to attack that?
Paul Doggett (10:10)
No, I appreciate the question because I think a lot of folks, they look at a business like ThinkBridge and they think about one of those big four firms that you mentioned where the heritage of those types of companies is really in the mid-market space. And I think, well, that’s not for SMB. SMB can’t build these, you know, it costs too much money to do custom software or, automation as this stuff. It’s just too, it’s too time consuming, too risky, too cost intensive.
Really what’s happening right now is the AI tooling is allowing us to come down and market. So traditionally speaking, it was, you you had five million a year business to 500 million a year business was sort of the sweet spot for this type of activity. But, ⁓ the, the dynamic is totally shifting to where we can come down a lot lower. And, know, speaking, I made this analogy the other day where.
When I used to sell NSP services, you know, we wanted to, we didn’t want to do break fix. So we tried to sell contracts that were at least like $1,500 a month back in the day. And that usually meant a company would need to have at least 10 employees in a server. Okay. And anything below that was, we would say that was for somebody else at our MSDs, most of the time.
I think that about that level is where this comes down. This, this scales down to that. Wow. Right. So it’s a big difference. The market has as the aperture of the market has expanded massively. And like we said before, that now it’s a big land grab who can package it, who can position it, who can go after it. The MSPs are uniquely positioned because their customers are asking them about it. They’re asking them for this. They just.
A lot of them that I talked to don’t have the confidence to talk about it. They don’t feel credible. And even if they do feel credible talking about it, they say, okay, great. can, I can sell this thing. I now what I can’t fulfill it. because I come from that space, um, I care deeply, uh, about the MSPs that are the fittest category and their ability to survive and be successful ⁓ if anybody that, that part of the ThinkBridge on day one can become a credible AI advisor, we give you the tools to talk about it. And also we give you, we offload all of the complexity, all of the head count, and we fulfill, ⁓ building and supporting, business systems that you will be enabled to sell and we will support from the side.
Terry Hedden (13:03)
So we’re unable to me resonates, right? Cause at the end of the day, what percentage of MSPs you think are ready right now to sell, to get a lead in AI, to sell AI and to deliver an AI. Give me three different numbers.
Paul Doggett (13:19)
To get a lead in AI, that’s gotta be high nines because yeah. Yes, because I think.
Terry Hedden (13:25)
It’s easy. Is it right?
Paul Doggett (13:33)
Most, most MSPs made a pivot in some way to like cybersecurity in the last decade. And they’ve been having these QBRs or TDRs or, know, everybody has different terminology, but they try to meet their customers on a regular basis and say, Hey, let’s talk cybersecurity or Hey, let’s talk, what you’re doing with the infrastructure. And those conversations have become a little bit not nice and a little less interesting from a customer perspective. And a lot of times I’m hearing that these meetings are getting pushed. You know, but If the NSP calls the customer and says, Hey, do you want to talk about AI strategy? It’s now, yeah. What are you doing for lunch? You to come? Let’s you have an idea. Let’s talk about it. So it’s. The customers want to discuss it. So I think the NSP’s are, know, most any NSP can get a lead. And then the second one was close to sale.
Terry Hedden (14:24)
Close the sale.
Paul Doggett (14:28)
That I think, I think most of them are going to need some help understanding how it position this. is a little bit different. ⁓ but it’s still the good news is it’s outcome based. So NSPs are, are generally speaking used to outcome based, ⁓ with, with software development in the past. it, it wasn’t that way. It was kind of nebulous in terms of what the outcome was going to be, how long it was going to take, how much money it was going to cost. So, so they didn’t, most MSPs didn’t really delve in that area, but you could, it’s almost productized now in the sense that, okay, you have an E, you need a nomination, you need a solution. I can prototype it. I could show it to you in an hour here. Tactically, we can feel what this is going to probably look like. And then I can sell you that outcome and guarantee when it’s going to be in production. So as long as.
There’s a person that’s a polished sales person I would say, on staff at MSP. They can probably do it. How many MSPs have polished salespeople? That’s where the challenge is and I think they’ve got to be honest with themselves. The third was who can fulfill?
Terry Hedden (15:34)
Do you friend? Deliver, yeah, get to Let’s use your category of services. How many MSPs are prepared right now?
Paul Doggett (15:47)
I think it’s one for Seth.
Terry Hedden (15:49)
I you might be generous. And I think that’s where, as we started working together and I saw the vision that you had and ThinkBridge’s vision, I realized that MarketJobby could help fill that gap. It’s easy for MSPs usually to get leads within their existing customer base. Where they struggle is when you get outside of that. unless you want to operate in the pond that they’re in versus the community that they’re serving, they need help. then in sales, I think…
Knowledge equals confidence equals sales and they’re not knowledgeable in AI. So therefore they’re not confident in AI. So I think sales outside of their trusted relationships that are established is going to be really hard. so, you you and I kind of cooked up a solution that really filled those gaps and kind of prepared the MSV to be successful. And it sounds like we’re off to a pretty darn good start.
Paul Doggett (16:43)
I think so.
Terry Hedden (16:45)
I heard there was a Jamie Bain is a friend of mine and a brilliant guy in the channel as an analyst. And he put out some stuff. don’t if you saw it last week talking about how AI, basically cybersecurity is the big opportunity for MSBs for the near term. I’m just looking at it like, am I like in, know, social media tends to kind of create sort of, you know, this closed community where you’re just surrounded by whatever it is you’re interested in. And I’m like, am I just on a different planet than this guy?
But his thought, is valid, I think, which is most MSPs aren’t ready to go to market. And therefore the opportunity is relatively limited for AI outside of enterprise and maybe never in mid market as Jay’s position. I can see why he’d feel that way for the same reason that, you you and I talked about sort of where the MSPs are strong and where they need help in terms of AI. when you start.
Adding in a marketing, lead gen sales solution and that your ability to, to deliver on the promises and throttle your involvement. As I understand the way you work, if the, once the MSP gets super up to speed, they can take some of your tools and start doing some things themselves. and, and, but they don’t have to at the end of the day, they could get a contract in their hand with your help. And then you guys fulfill and they take their margin. Talk to me a little bit about that. mean, should an MSP that’s not.
Paul Doggett (18:05)
Exactly.
Terry Hedden (18:10)
The nose half spell AI, maybe works with market Toby to get Mark with leads and close sales with AI. How is that enough? Can you take it from there? Or do you need some operational maturity in the MSP? That’s extraordinary for the Prospect City success.
Paul Doggett (18:25)
We do not need extraordinary operational efficiency from the, ⁓ MSP to be successful. We basically. Most of the MSPs operate on that, that pretty well defined MSP service model of proactive technology management, reactive support, network administration, and then technology consulting services, which we defined as VCIO or DCSO more recently, right?
Most, most every MSP is going to say that they operate in some kind, in some way, or form within that context. And as long as that’s what you’re operating in today, you can take on AI because your customers are relying on you to give, to give them that technology consulting piece. BCIO, BCCell and now BCAIO. And we, we come in and we make you the credible BCIO from day one.
We can hold your hand at that. We could run that meeting for you. We could, you don’t have to introduce us as Thinkbridge. You could introduce us as Marketoke. You could introduce us as ABC MSP. doesn’t matter. So we can be an extension of your MSP. We can be your AI department, if you will. So ⁓ on day one, let’s say I was dealing with an MSP that could hardly spell AI, right? All right, just all you gotta do is.
Ask your customer, do they want to have a QDR that’s focused on AI? Probably most of them do. Okay. If you don’t feel comfortable having that conversation, ask me how. Ask us how. We have automated tools. We have professional expertise. We can bring that to the table. We can make that conversation flow very easily. And end result of it will be… ⁓opportunities around that are powered by AI tools. Okay. So, ⁓ we can, we can do everything, but for MSPs that are a little bit more advanced, let’s say some of them feel comfortable doing BCAIO functions. Some of them feel comfortable even doing, ⁓ AI roadmapping to a certain extent.
They just don’t have the development resources to do the building of the system and supporting it on ongoing basis. And they just want us to come in and be the plumbers with the electrician forever has to be the architect. We can do that too. So we’re going to be nimble on how we engage with people. And as, as we work with more NSPs, as we scale, we’ll have, you the top managers, well, people that are, you know, that are working directly with NSPs and supporting them and holding their hand and making sure that they’re successful.
Terry Hedden (21:13)
No, we started working together probably two, three months ago now, maybe not even that long. And, and I have been overwhelmed. just got out of a meeting today and basically this is a successful MSP that’s doing really well in cyber. And he has basically done a complete 90 degree turn on his business. Even though this business is feeling it, they’re overwhelmed. He sees this ocean of opportunity over there. And his existing customer base, and then, you know,
Paul Doggett (21:39)
With a
Terry Hedden (21:42)
He turned on his Marketopia team and said, Hey, I’ll do AI. And all of sudden now he’s got leads coming out of everywhere. Right. And if I’m an MSP, let’s say I’m a smaller MSP, maybe a couple million dollar a year MSP, but I’m in a market like Dallas where you got, you know, 10, 20,000 businesses there. And I have a good reputation. not like, you know, IBM or Microsoft, but I’m going to get good reputation in my market. And I joined this program. It’s for Marketopia Think Bridge program.
What do you think I can realistically achieve? Like what’s a realistic number in terms of the kind of opportunities I can get if I’m good at marketing into that market, the kind of sales I might get, kind of revenue I might look at, and what kind of profit did you get?
Paul Doggett (22:27)
Okay. ⁓ well, first of all, I’m to steal something that you told me, which is on, on customer outreach. And then let me know if the summer has changed, but it’s about a nine times the response rate that AI messaging is seen compared to standard AI out and standard MSP outreach. Okay. So, people are interested. They want to talk about it. ⁓ and I’ll answer your questions directly, but there’s a couple of points that I want to make that are tangential to it, which is.
Yeah, we’re talking about, uh, the MSP that, you know, cybersecurity focused something along those lines. There, there is an opportunity and there’s a threat. The threat is your competitor might take up a strategy like this, uh, come in, build a system for your customer and say, but all this NSP stuff. do that too. Why would you want to have two vendors? Right? Why don’t you want to have somebody that supports your infrastructure stack and your system stack? Um,
Terry Hedden (23:26)
Yeah.
Paul Doggett (23:26)
Probably.
Okay. Well, that’s a threat to you. So in order to build up your moat and, and play defense, you almost need to be able to communicate to your customers that this is a capability of yours. And that way, when your competitor is trying to contact your customer, there’s a shield on the customer says, my guy, my guy or gal, they already do that. Right. Right. And then on top of that.
Now, because this is something that you do as an NSP, you have a whale part of them and you can go out whale hunting if you will. You know, the, the, the, the, your ICP expands because there’s a lot more people that you can service. Right. Right. But let’s take your NSP example, sort of my rough estimates here are. I think 80 % of your customers will take a meeting of those probably three quarters of them would want to see some kind of proposal. ⁓ of those that want to see a proposal, probably a third of them will move forward. And you know, the average deal size is highly dependent on the company, the company size and right. But let’s just, let’s just assume the average MSP customer is a 30 employees and a few million dollars a year or something like that. I think.
I think the amount of money that would be made on a deal, we’re a couple thousand dollars a month to the NST in their pocket without adding any layers of complexity to the business model.
Terry Hedden (25:05)
So when you say add layers of complexity, what about costs? Is it at the $2,000 at the bottom line or they got to build a staff of technologists to support what you’re delivering? That’s insane. So one deal, one client, and in a market like Dallas where there’s 10, 20,000 businesses. Right. I like that math. How does that compare in your opinion to the core MSD business?
Paul Doggett (25:13)
$2,000 to bottom line. Pretty good.
Well, the core of the speed business model, if you’re running your MSP really well, you’re making 20 to 30 % margins. If you’re running it really well, a lot of NSPs run it tighter than that. And then there’s a, you know, there’s a handful of elite NSPs that would tell you that they’re doing even better in 20, 30%. Right. So, uh, you think about how far you got to work to earn that 20 and 30%, the level of complexity that you got to scrape and claw to win the business. got to.
You’ve got to keep your customers. got to keep your employees happy. Whereas what I’m saying is in these NSPs is you’ve done all this hard work to create these relationships with your customers. They’re turning you and you’re the one, they’re the ones where you’re the one that they are asking about AI. You just need to be able to do something about it. Right? So the value of the relationship that you have already created, it’s like you’re the, ⁓
Terry Hedden (26:11)
Yep. Right.
Paul Doggett (26:23)
That movie, there will be one. You’re the guy who owns the land with all the oil underneath it. You didn’t know when you bought the land, the oil was even a thing. But here we are. I’ll be the oil bearer coming into town and say, hey, know, let’s put a well in and let’s dig out some oil and everybody makes some money. Yeah. Right. So that’s kind of what this movie we’re at.
Terry Hedden (26:39)
⁓You know, I agree with you, but I want to give you some bad news. The average MSP in terms of gross profit might be in that 20 to 50 % kind of number, but their net profit is often a single digits. So you take an MSP that’s making, after they pay themselves a fair wage, their net profit on the $2 million MSP, let’s say, might be, you know, 50 grand. Okay. So. What I think would go back to this scenario we’re talking about where you have Dallas and 10, 20,000 companies. If you can go out there and get a thousand prospects to be, to agree to an AI conversation, which is definitely not difficult. We’re getting up to a thousand a month right now, um, in the marketopia data, digital marketing, telemarketing combo, um, you know, hundreds to maybe up to a thousand a month. It’s not inconceivable that that, that you’re, the numbers we walked through earlier.
A thousand opportunities becomes what? 300 customers in that little scenario we’re working from. Sure. A 30 % close ratio. And then if the average customer is giving me a $2,000 a month, what exactly is 300 times 2,000?
Paul Doggett (28:00)
Let’s see, free zero. So that’s like six million. That’s pretty good.
Terry Hedden (28:05)
$6 million of profit. Right. And so what I’m seeing is an opportunity for an MST. So if they go from $50,000 in profit to $6 million in profit, that’s a pretty sizable job. how long, know, so you have a question on that? No, no. So I’m looking at this and I’m seeing a ⁓ minimum 10 X increase in profitability. Yes. Probably closer to a hundred X.
But an example we just had, it’s more like 2000X, right? So I just, I look at the situation and I’m like, this is, this is, this is a land grab, but it’s also a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. And I’m like, if you go and go all in and get your name out there as hard and fast as you can and come up with great partnerships that will help you close deals and deliver on services, you’re more scalable. You don’t need to have you know, stable with AI engineers in the office, they got Thinkbridge, right? So you’re there to help. I just see this as a once in a lifetime, once in a generation, and maybe once in the history of mankind opportunity to create massive wealth. And the people that are best positioned to do that is the actual MSP. And I was just like, I’m like, why are we struggling to get people to embrace it? And what I’ve learned is that the average MSP is up to here. of fact, they’re underwater with
Paul Doggett (29:18)
I agree with
Terry Hedden (29:31)
cybersecurity, IT support, their tech staff, they’re struggling to just keep up with the threats that are out there. And so they’re focusing on understanding what hundreds can do for their customers. And then you enter in the AI thing and it’s like, holy cow, it’s business consulting, it’s process re-engineering, it’s automation, it’s software developments, ⁓ it’s agentic AI developments, employee replacement, which lot of MSPs really haven’t dealt with before. And then one day…
I think we’re going to be managing Tesla Optimus robots. I see an MSP out there going, okay, I’m making six million a year and I’m in my RMM. I’ve got a thousand Optimus robots that I’m generating 300 bucks a month, monitoring, patching, whatever, making sure they don’t take over the world. And then I got my agents that I’m collaborating with someone like ThinkBridge to manage. I got my core business, cybersecurity, because I see cybersecurity and AI to be
Paul Doggett (30:07)
Yeah.
Terry Hedden (30:28)
converging. I think the biggest risk in the world right now is AI. And the biggest ⁓ need is in cybersecurity. So it’s like they’re coming together for sure, right? I don’t think knocks are going to be filled with people at an MSP very much. It’s going to be AI that’s defending AI against AI. So I just look at the whole thing and I’m like, what a brilliant time to be at MSP. It’s great time. It’s amazing that you go to conferences and you… I feel like you become who you surround yourself with.
Paul Doggett (30:53)
Yo, you-
Terry Hedden (30:58)
And I’m at shows and I’m just like, you’re in the wrong room, dude. Like if you’re running a community right now and you have hundreds of MSPs in that community, I almost think you have a moral and ethical responsibility to ensure that they’re pro AI, AI forward and being super aggressive at capturing market share as fast as they possibly can. Do you agree with that?
Paul Doggett (31:21)
I 100 % agree. and my sort of light, you know, you know, kind of had my light bulb moment here came in and started working with ThinkBridge and was attending a lot of these same conferences that you’re talking about and knowing these breakout rooms and hearing what the experts were saying. And, know, they have some nice tools and some things that you can sell. And, but I wasn’t.
Terry Hedden (31:46)
It’s weak.
Paul Doggett (31:46)
I went to a big, big name conference, ⁓ last year and, and the keynote speech is obviously about AI and it’s like, Hey, AI is an opportunity. ⁓ figure it out, come back next year and let us know what you’ve, what you’ve, what happened. know, let us know who figured it out, who did it. There wasn’t a lot of strategic advisory. It’s more at-haw this or that. Here’s a, here’s an AI product in a rabbit. It’s, it wasn’t.
Here’s a systemized, a programatized approach to how your MSP model should look like that mirrors what it’s looked like over the last 30 years. And it’s just, it’s just now it’s got AI attached to it, you know, as opposed to, ⁓ you’re selling, as opposed to you’re selling AI products. Now you’re AI advice. Right. So it’s a difference. it’s a different way to look at
But yeah, 100%, I think it’s a great time to be an MSP. think it’s a, uh, the opportunity is limitless. And I’ll tell you an anecdote. I’ve got a MSP that we created a relationship with, uh, at the very end of like, like right around Christmas time last year and just said, okay, I’ll just, you know, here’s who we are. Who’s who you are. And it’s probably an MSP that does about 10 million a year total revenue.
So some think about some of the profit net margins that exist and you can take a guess at what they’re probably earning. Well, a long story short, they ⁓ got hired to consult for a corporate divestiture of, you know, a automobile manufacturer that was being divested and they needed to stand up their, their own.
You know, a brand new, uh, technology stack through this new standalone company. And, know, one of the five big four consulting companies is in there saying, you got to spend all this money and traditional approach. You Microsoft dynamics is that. And they follow us up and said, you guys want to take a right crack to this? Well, that MSP is making $70,000 a month now and that they, that they don’t have to do any work for. So.
Terry Hedden (34:09)
That’s amazing. 75,000 dollars in net profit because we’re not doing any work for it. Except that they did. They helped you get in the door. They got to leave, they helped you close sales. used their relationships to make sure you win.
Paul Doggett (34:10)
Yeah. I don’t mean to say obviously it did a lot of work because ⁓ there’s a lot of relationship building that they’ve done over the years to even being in that position. But there was no way for them to really take advantage. So no, we come in the door, they tee it up for us, we hit it on the park. There’s no additional business company I see to how they operate.
Terry Hedden (34:45)
So I think that’s the beauty of, of kind of what, what you’re bringing to market now when we know we’re working together, we’re going to make sure that the MSP has all the leads they need. We’re going to help make sure they close. You’re going to sit there right with them, make sure they close too. And then you’re going to meet them where they are. If they have a really evolved AI consultancy and they’ve built this amazing capability and internal execution, you’re supporting them almost enabling them, supporting them. And if they don’t, you’re doing it for them and probably everywhere in the middle.
I think that’s one of the unique things about kind of what, what we’re doing is meeting people where they are and making sure they’re profitable either way and capitalize on this opportunity. So we’ve talked a little bit about, you know, the upside opportunity. And I think if, if you’re driving, dropping the $6 million modern line debits here at MSP, you’re probably outside of Dallas at that point. You’re probably doing national campaigns. You know, I’ve got my team preparing right now.
to do campaigns to one to 12 million SMB companies every month. So we’re changing our skillset. We’re changing our technology. We’re changing our capabilities and it becomes a very extraordinary challenge to market to the entire United States small business market. But if I have $6 million MSP, that’s exactly what I’m thinking. I’m not thinking Dallas anymore. I’m like, okay, hold on. This could be you.
Paul Doggett (36:06)
Right.
Terry Hedden (36:08)
So I think that the opportunity is way bigger than 6 million for the average MSP and profitability. And I look at the valuation change of an MSP. It goes from, you know, I my kids some money. I didn’t leave them bills when I died. I paid for my own funeral. Maybe gave them my house to pay for to multi-generational wealth at a high level. mean, we’re not, you know, Bill Gates, but we’re a lot more than the average MSP is currently enjoying in terms of opportunity. But what do think that timeline is?
If, let’s say I want to sell my MSP when it becomes a big number, when my valuation’s, you know, 20, 30 million, is that going to take 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, or is it going to take less? Let’s say we execute. Let’s say you get really good at lead gen, really good at sales, really good at service delivery. What’s the ramp look like? Is it, is it going to be a hockey stick? I mean, are we going to, could we close a thousand customers or 300 customers over the next 36 months?
Or is this a long tail thing? It’s going to take a lot of years to play out. And I got to look at running an MSP in 2056 to capitalize.
Paul Doggett (37:14)
So, well, definitely not until 2056. I think that the, the time to value on that in my mind is. I think, you know, we did a, uh, we did a webinar with, uh, a guy from coaching partners in the MSP. And, um, his thought on it was MSPs have about until 2027 to get on board with some kind of strategy because.
If you don’t and you’re doing business the old way, you, you may not be able to sell your, not that you would be totally unsaleable, but you know, you’re kind of selling for parts. You’re not, you’re not getting high margin. You’re not getting a high multiple on your sale and things like that. So it’s important to think about making that strategic strategic exchange as soon as possible and not adding the layers of complexity, just using what think bridge site company. you’re just giving them the money because.
Terry Hedden (37:45)
Yeah.
Paul Doggett (38:12)
That, that type of revenue is worth a lot more than, you know, the alternative. Uh, how quickly can this happen? I mean, I just gave you the one example of a company that’s making $70,000 a month now on one single deal. And they’ll bring us in on a lot of other things too. And, know, probably within the next couple of years, you could see something like that. Very just, just with their current customer base making a few hundred thousand dollars code.
⁓ and then met a new MRR that’s totally dropping to the bottom line. And that doesn’t include what you’re talking about, which is no park partnering with the market Tokyo like business to go out and prospect into the market. And because kind of looping back to something we talked about earlier, very few, hardly any MSPs can message, that they are AI enabled AI ready MSPs right now. Right. So
If you can build out that motion, prove it to your own, with your own customers, turn to a marketopia, market that message out into Dallas or Houston or wherever you are, that is going to resonate and the leads will flow and the profit will obviously. And so it’s just, know, I can answer your question more directly. I think that this is a two, two years to figure out that you’re in the game or not. And then if you do your, I mean, sky’s the limit, right? It’s, it’s, you’d be able to turn around and sell relatively soon compared to, uh, the old way of doing this.
Terry Hedden (39:57)
groove here. really? Yeah. No, I, I, I think I see two, two whys that are, that that that are going to occur. The first one is this year, which is, am I going to be on, get on this train? Yeah. Or am I not? And then the second why is how am I going to go about it? In other words, if I’m going to try to grow, like I grew my MSP, which is almost exclusively word of mouth leads. Yep. And, you know, I’ve been in business for 15 years and I’m 2 million sales and, know, I’m averaging a customer every three months over the course of my life span or let’s whether he’s six months now. Or do I recognize that this is a, an opportunity that demands a different approach where you’re aggressive and you try to grab land. Basically you get into your market and you say, I want to be the dominant.
AI choice for SMB companies in my market. And then as I dominate that, I’m going to use that money to expand my market into the rest of my state, the rest of my region and potentially.
Paul Doggett (41:07)
With your go-to-market expertise, Yeah. I mean, you kind of are answering the question, but what do you think the timeline is to be able to, for an MSP that makes that decision today, that they want to be the dominant AI MSP in our market? How long, from the moment that they make the decision, they want to do that. How long do you think it’s going to take them to become?
Terry Hedden (41:34)
You know, every, the MSV is going to have to make a decision. Right. Right. Are they going to be aggressive? Are they going to put their money where their dreams are? Are they going to take a chance on themselves ⁓ and believe in themselves, or are they going to tip their toes in and take it? I think my belief is over the next 24 months, where you said they have 24 months to make a decision. I think the decision will be made in 24 months. The decision is take my sweet time, do it the old fashioned way or do nothing at all. The companies that are aggressive are gonna take my customers and they’re gonna establish themselves as the thought leader in the market. And it’s gonna be hard to unseat that.
Paul Doggett (42:19)
Well, yeah, let me amend my earlier account about Intel 2400 because to do what we’re talking about, which is to be the dominant AI player in your market, you need to move down to survive as an MSP. Maybe you have a little bit more time, but if you’re not going to be the dominant player, if you don’t, you don’t start the land grab is now, you know, I make another movie analogy and that far away movie Tom Cruise, right? You know, is the Oklahoma Sooners, they’re running out like
You better get on your horse with your flag and go plan it somewhere. The gun has gone off, the race has started and either you know how to do it or you need to partner.
Terry Hedden (43:01)
I totally agree. And I think those that do are the winners and those that don’t are going to take, so they took, they had their gradual climb to get where they are. now they’re going to do with the other side of the climb. So they may survive, but they’re going to be losing an employee every three months or six months instead of what they were enjoying. I just don’t see traditional managed services as anything an SMB would even be interested in because they can go to a company that does embrace AI and get a true solution. You know, one of the things that I’ve seen is so you’re in the software business and I see ridiculous opportunities there. I know you’re doing agents, you’re doing software, you’re doing ⁓ pretty amazing things from dash forge to, you know, net suite replacement projects. And I think it’s, it’s inspiring to just hear you talk about it. But I’m also seeing customers that MSPs that are so used to selling fear, uncertainty and doubt, so used to trying to get market share in that IT budget that no customer even wants to have. Like they’re buying because they have to, they have no choice. But with AI, they can get into the sales department, the marketing department, the manufacturing department, the operations department, the finance department, buckets of money that have a lot more in it than the IT budget, right?
Paul Doggett (44:25)
I’m so glad that you brought that up because here’s in selling the MSPs and selling MSP services like I did for so many years. After a while, it really became a slog. Honestly, like I was beating my head into the wall. I have all these relationships with these different MSPs, but it was getting harder and harder for even me to differentiate them because, you know, some of them are maybe a little bit better at executing and a little bit more technical, but they pretty much all have the same.
Messing right into the customers. It was, it was hard to get them to change unless somebody messed up the kind of like the offensive line in a football game. don’t hear about it unless they’re, you know, you’re holding call or something. Right. Right. So, ⁓ it, the MSPs always had to be persistent and be there and found a customer and they really only got a chance to be tagged in. Well, if they were tenacious at all times and they were, and they were selling that FUD kind of like you were talking about in a way that
Now finally resonating in a customer relented. Right. Now it’s tone. The conversation is totally different. Now it’s, Hey, we don’t have to just talk about how to maintain your business and how to do uptime. You can talk. can imagine the future together and, and we can build the future together. You know, all those things that you wish, ⁓ how your customer could interface with or how your business could interface with its customers that you never thought you could do. We can help with do that now. Let’s talk about it. Talk about your thoughts, your dreams, like where you want to take this business. That’s the conversation MSPs can have now, which is like, it’s totally should really invigorate business owners out there and sales people. It’s exciting.
Terry Hedden (46:14)
Changes everything. yeah. It goes, and that’s kind why I feel like the timing is so different. You have an MSB who’s like, hey man, know, I ran whatever, the drama of the day, be careful, fear and certainty and doubt, downtime, cybersecurity, gotta buy, gotta buy, you gotta have this, you gotta have that, you know, my God, my God, my God. And then you have another one coming in, go on, dude, that’s like table stakes. Of course we do all that. This is what the difference is. I’m gonna help you achieve your dreams.
I’m going help you grow your business, drive opportunity or drive efficiency in your business, increase profitability of your business. I’m going to make the quality of life of your employees happy and better, right? I’m going to make your business easier to run. I’m going to make it as automated and as efficient as I can. And by the way, I’ll also do your cybersecurity because it’s all integrated. And I’m like, that messaging is so different that I don’t see how that person doesn’t win.
They’re going to take the appointment. okay, let me get this straight Billy Bob. So you’re going to, you’re going to do my sock. Cool. This guy’s like, I’m going to grow your business 500%. I’m going to increase profitability 700 % over the next, you know, year. I’m taking that meeting. And then if I’m in there, it’s like, oh, by the way, I actually think that a much of the cost of cyber and IT support is going to shrink over time to the point where it’s almost going to be like a loss leader.
Paul Doggett (47:31)
Right.
Terry Hedden (47:43)
For an MSP who’s focused on growth, efficiency, automation, robotics, all of the AI, you know, categorical stuff. ⁓ and, and I think it’s, that’s why I don’t believe the timeline is very long is because the messaging is so different that there’s no way that the typical stereotypical tech that’s like meek and scared and basically tried to scare other people to get a deal is not going to be able to compete. And you know what? We’re already seeing it.
We’re already seeing it. The customers that allow us to market AI are getting up to nine times as many leads as those that are. So why wouldn’t you? I get the, the semi MSPs are like, I can’t handle it, but then you get into the solution that we’re working on where it’s like, Hey, plug and play. You want AI? We got AI. We got leads, we got sales, we got service delivery. You don’t have to keep yourself up at night. You don’t have to go back to school. You don’t have to.
You’d clawed bot and a Mac mini and try to figure it out on your own. We’re going to literally do it for you until such a time where you can do it for yourself. And I think it’s a very different message. So my belief is that people’s death sentence will be determined over the next 24 months. You’re either going to survive 48 months or you’re going to be replaced by those that are more aggressive than AI. agree. Interesting. The opportunity. Okay. So.
I feel like it’s a once in a lifetime for the MSP. I feel like they’re crazy not to do it. I feel like the rational reason not to is replaced or is eliminated when you get the solution or will basically help them do it for them plug and play. Talk about society. Fast forward, you have people online, oh my God, 12 months, 24 months. I personally think that’s overstated. I just don’t see the world adopting things that quickly.
I do see the businesses that embrace AI putting out of business those that don’t. Correct. So there’s going to be some attrition and employees and companies over time. Where do you see us in five and 10 years? know, where do you see society, but start with ThinkBridge and the MSPs that work with ThinkBridge. Were they going to be in five or 10 years? And then work your way up to society as a whole.
Paul Doggett (50:00)
Great question. And there’s, there’s two general outlaws. One is a more doomer narrative that AI is coming for you. ⁓ and we all need to be on a universal basic income. And it’s, you know, we’re going to be, we’re going to be wally people sitting in the space thing, looking, looking through our, ⁓ VR headsets. That’s going to be our life. I don’t subscribe to that narrative. I kind of, think it.
Terry Hedden (50:08)
jobs.
Paul Doggett (50:30)
to do a more optimistic lens, uh, make another analogy, you know, look at, look at the Amazon, people attacking Amazon for being this big company, but Amazon has made more millionaires than any other, you know, business, probably in human history as far as I were. mean, that, you know, of fact check down that, but that is probably true. Yeah. Um, and, and, you know, think about it from the perspective of what’s happening now, the cost of code is going way down because of AI.
You would think that that would reduce the demand for software developers, right? Cause it’s easier to code. No, the demand for software developers is going up because even though the cost of so it’s way less expensive, but you’ll meet developers to be able to tie it up up to and to be able to stand up a system that actually, ⁓ works. Right. So to make another analogy there, if, if I have an architectural front and you know,
Today I got to charge $5,000 for an architectural drawing, something like that. don’t be sure. Maybe it’s, can charge, ⁓ $50 for an architectural drawing. Then that affected that in my mind is going to be to drive up the demand for architectural drawing. so, you know, we’re going to, we’re going to, a thousand flowers will bloom and all that kind of stuff in my opinion. So I think we’re going to, we’re heading towards a society of abundance and opportunity and.
The chance right now to be able to stake your claim and to buy Bitcoin at a dollar or a few young is right now. So I would encourage people to go do that. And the folks.
Terry Hedden (52:14)
coin and a dollar and it’s been coming out. I totally agree with you. How I see the long-term is there’s going to be extremely wealthy people. then there’s going to be everybody else and everybody else is going to be having a great quality life because the cost of everything is so low. But the people who take advantage of what’s before us are going to be on that higher end. I, I, I, I literally spend thousands of hours dreaming, nightmarrying.
Paul Doggett (52:19)
Yeah.
Terry Hedden (52:44)
thinking, fostering, and pondering. And I really feel like the people, there’s three people that I think are a sure thing. The mom and pop manufacturing shop in your town is going to have to compete with the world, you know, and if they embrace it quickly, they might be the dominant player, but it’s going to be hard. The ones that I think have the easiest path to being in that prosperous, extremely wealthy category to me is utility companies that are selling…power, right? Because that’s going to be the scarcity, right? You have the AI companies, which are already trillionaires and billionaires that are the engine behind a lot of these solutions. But the third category to me is the MSP.
Paul Doggett (53:27)
The NSP is uniquely positioned to be extraordinarily low. Literally. But you know, it’s, speaking about the future of society though, and backtracking a little bit, would say that in my mind, there’s a mind shift that needs to happen for, you know, there will be a certain group of people that, that need a playbook that need instructions on how to go through life. Right. Those people will not do great with AI because those folks will be replaced. But for the people that can see that are willing to kind of roll the dice and take advantage of opportunities and utilize the tools that will be available to them. AI will give them the biggest tool set and the broadest tool set that bigger than we could ever imagine. Those people will be enormously successful. So ⁓ the future will be bifurcated between the people that make that decision to stake a claim for themselves and do chase, you know, what their dreams and what they want and people that I want to wake up and
I have somebody else telling me what to do every day.
Terry Hedden (54:32)
I totally agree. I think it’s kind of the message really overall is that this is, this is kind of like the spark. We’re the infancy of what’s going to become something incredibly huge. And those that take advantage of it have a very, very bright future. And those that don’t.
Paul Doggett (54:32)
couldn’t feel so great about that.
Terry Hedden (54:58)
may or may not have a business worth selling to anyone in a two or three or four years. Like the time might be argued, but I don’t think it’s, it’s easy to think if you never adopt AI and you’re strictly focused on PC support, server support, network support, and maybe software, whatever you want to call that, SaaS, software, cloud, whatever that’s focused on cyber. I see that as just being a very tough road to play.
Paul Doggett (55:26)
To be fair, ⁓ this year for Christmas, my niece wanted was vinyl records. So there’s still people out there that are interested in playing old school turntable records. it’s probably not great to be in that industry or the post and buggy industry really. I’d probably want to get a little time.
Terry Hedden (55:48)
So really kind of what we’re telling, it sounds like your message to the world is get on the bus.
Don’t procrastinate. Be as aggressive as you can afford to be. Capture as much market share as you can. Take money, reinvest it in growing even faster to capture more and more market share. But then start to pull that out and secure your family and your family’s future generations and take advantage of the fact that you’re blessed beyond measure to be the intermediary between
Paul Doggett (56:02)
Yeah.
Terry Hedden (56:27)
the AI firms and the small to medium sized market, know, small to medium sized business, is the lion’s share of the market opportunity for AI. you agree with that? I love it. And you know what? I just want to let you know, I’m honored to be a part of this ride with you. Cause I feel like there’s not that many firms that understand MSPs like Think Bridge does. I think it probably has a lot to do with the fact that you were an MSP and, ⁓
Paul Doggett (56:36)
I 100 %
Terry Hedden (56:54)
know the heart and soul of those companies and know what they’re good at and what they struggle at. And you’re determined to make a difference for your own benefit, the Anchorage’s benefit, but also the partners that trust you. So I think that says a lot and it’s an honor to fill the gap because having the ability to execute means absolutely nothing until you have an opportunity to do so. And we’re pretty darn good at that.
Paul Doggett (57:17)
Well, listen, I worked in the MSP space, largely in the Tampa Bay area for the last 15 or so years. So I’ve been aware of Terry Deaden and Mark Utopia for some time, and it’s an honor for me to be.
Terry Hedden (57:30)
Awesome. Awesome. Thanks so much for coming in. Appreciate it.
