Terry Hedden (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Grow Limitless podcast. Our guest today is Seann Moreno. He is a man about town. You probably recognize him from conferences around the country. And let me just tell you, his story is inspiring. He started out as an MSP like so many people do. A great success with word of mouth leads, growing his business, ended up getting a whale of a customer and rode it until it came off the rails. His business lost that customer and nearly died a result.
It’s a story of resilience, overcoming adversity, trusting in your instincts, believing in yourself and seeing things through to the end. And I’ll just be a spoiler. Seann Moreno won in the end and he won big and I want you to win too. Enjoy this. ⁓
Seann, I really appreciate you making the time to join us in the Grow Limitless podcast. Your story to me is one that resonates with a lot of people because they can relate. They see themselves in you and your story is how they want their story to end. I know your story is still being written and you’re still a young man, you’ve got a lot of years left in you, but where you are today is where a lot of MSPs dream about being. So I appreciate you joining us and sharing with your story.
Seann Moreno (01:18)
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Terry Hedden (01:21)
Seann, help us understand how you got where you, talk about your journey before you started your MSPE. What led to you making the decision to start it in general?
Seann Moreno (01:34)
Ah, yeah, that’s a good question. So during my tenure of I.T., I worked several different jobs. I started off at the throwing computers in to hospitals, helping people out. Started my journey actually prior to I.T. was at the railroad. was doing very well at the railroad. was making a lot of money young.
And I had a passion for IT and it’s just one of those things that I fell in my lap. had an opportunity to join a team that was ⁓ putting up new PCs for a local hospital. ⁓ Fell in love with it, started moving forward a little bit more. That was in the era of Y2K. I started learning little bit about Windows, got some certification, things just started snowballing from there. Got into the enterprise space and worked many different enterprise jobs. And when I say enterprise, large organizations like Pulte Homes, I worked for HP as a consultant for ⁓ American Express, Symantec. So I was working large enterprise businesses. And as I started working and realizing these large enterprises, you’re just a number. They want you to do certain things, meet certain expectations.
Yeah, they say they cared for the customer, but they didn’t have the passion like I did. I really wanted to help people. So on the side, I started helping people. Started helping friends and family. Started helping local businesses around the area in Metro Detroit. Next thing I know, I enjoyed it. I watched businesses grow. I watched people grow their business. So I started dabbling in consulting. And I’ll be honest, I never started an MSP. It wasn’t planning an MSP.
It was not in my cards at all. was, I wanted to be a consultant, come in, help people grow their business with technology in the enterprise space that I knew bring it to a small, medium sized business. And after a year or two of doing some consulting, I landed a consulting part with T-Mobile dealers around the country, helping them just formalize standards IT standards. Once I formalized the IT standards, they asked, hey, how can you help us even more? What does it look like? What does this look like? So next thing you know, here we are early 2009, 2010, formalizing an MSP helped us getting things set up. And I didn’t realize when an MSP was at the time. I had no idea. I just knew I was helping people.
So, ⁓ started digging into it more and then I find this thing ⁓ is snowballing. People are really liking the service we’re giving. The help desk was doing a great job. T-Mobile started recognizing us. We became the number one IT dealer support for T-Mobile nationwide. ⁓ Won many awards with T-Mobile. Started snowballing and we started now having a true MSP.
That’s how it all started.
Terry Hedden (05:00)
That’s amazing. Seann, you know, one of the things, you know, the more I get to know you, the more I realize that you’re like one of the nicest people, like you’re a good dude. So I’m not surprised at all that your passion was helping people and that gave birth to an MSP. think that that’s one of I guess, blessings and curses of a lot of MSP owners is that it comes out of a passion to care and serve and help and make a difference. It’s not, the passion isn’t always about making money, you know? And sometimes you’ll see MSPs knowingly sacrifice financial reward for the opportunity to help. Did you ever find in your journey as an MSP that maybe you weren’t as focused on the business side as you needed to be or were you always just raking it in the whole time you owned it?
Seann Moreno (05:50)
So you’re absolutely right. The passion was there about helping people. again, mind you, I had to make a decision. had a ⁓ opportunity with T-Mobile. ⁓ At that time, I had to make a decision. Great pay, great job. Do I quit that and start from ground up? And possibly not even getting paid for a while. I had to put a lot of money into it up front.
Talked to the wife, wife agreed this is your passion, let’s do it. So I was fortunate to have a wife that was willing to back me up and we were able to put our life savings into a business that was helping people. So I had to make sacrifices for the first four years of the business was really just me helping, doing things myself, had maybe one or two people helping me out. I had to pay them, I couldn’t pay myself yet.
And I really for four years. Yeah. Well, the four years of building from consulting to MSP, you know, right. So those things are, you know, I took either a lower pay than I was making at HP or at another enterprise business. ⁓ So I sacrificed a lot to build the passion I had to helping people grow and watch these other companies get bigger. And then they helped me, they returned the favor. They started affirming. They started bringing in business. That’s when you started seeing the revenue come in. That’s when you started seeing, this is something. This is more than just helping people. This is really a business for me. This is now you’re bringing in employees. Now you have a family of employees you’re supporting. It became bigger than just the passion I had. ⁓
Yeah, it did at first. was a lot of struggle getting into it, taking the passion that I had enjoying helping people. Sometimes sacrificing myself and my family over helping the ⁓ businesses grow. In hindsight, I look back, I had a young one, ⁓ 10, 12 year old son. Those are things that I look back at. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but.
You know what? Today, now we have everything. The dreams are coming true. I’m able to support my grand babies the way I want to. Take them to Disney World. Take them to the condo in Florida. know, recently I spent a week up north at our cottage. Those things came and I’m able to do that today.
Terry Hedden (08:32)
Seann, that’s an inspiring story. talk to me about that. How do you get, what filled that gap? So you have T-Mobile, it’s kick and butt, and here you are, kind of semi-retired, retired, not really, still working because you want to work at this point, but you’re able to do a lot of the things on the side to, like you say, the stuff that you dreamed about doing. ⁓ How was the journey between those two filling the gap for us?
Seann Moreno (09:02)
So we had T-Mobile and a lot of the T-Mobile customers ⁓ were small to medium size dealers. ⁓ They merged with ⁓ Sprint, decided they were gonna start merging with each other as dealers and became larger than just the small medium size dealers. So they became where they could bring it in-house. So I started noticing that right away and realized that ⁓
I didn’t capitalize on the opportunity I had having a T-Mobile size account. had 90%, 80, 90 % of my revenue was coming from T-Mobile. I realized that I didn’t really do sales. I was getting referrals, networking, things like that, but wasn’t really getting the additional verticals outside of T-Mobile.
⁓ Had to reach out to Marketopia met yourself at ⁓ a I don’t know one of the events do you inspired me after we talked a little bit of more and My dream was to continue and not lose the business because T-Mobile left us or is leaving We were able to take that ⁓ Marketopia experience we built on it we picked
At first, you probably remember this, Terry, at first I was skeptical. I said, let’s tiptoe into this. I realized if you tiptoe into anything, and even the next steps after selling my business, tiptoeing into it wasn’t going to work. I had to be all in. I really needed to trust the process, trust everything that was built already. Someone already did this. Someone knows better than I knew. I really needed to understand that. I have to rely on that because that experience is way better than me trying to figure it out myself. So I went all in. As you remember, got at that time whatever the Mach 4, the best plan available. We have full-time callers. So now leads are coming in. Business is growing. Different verticals are going on. We started looking at other things, started bringing in different business partners.
⁓ Yes, business was doing well, but then we took on an additional ⁓ company that does load voltage and some other things. At that time, kind of buried us. We were losing money because we had to put money out for the new company. We had to help make sure to support our employees. ⁓ Just a lot of different things. Brought in a new business partner. At that time, we had to figure something out quickly. So some things happened internally.
Again, we reached out to Marketopia. We reached out to our networking. We need help. How do we get in there? And I started reviewing how I can get better, get better at what we do and utilize resources that are outsourced. So Marketopia, you guys helped us. I’ve learned from that. I started looking into other spaces for tier one support.
Currently found the 20 and that’s how I found the 20 through Marketopia. were in an event and that journey then led into growth. Marketopia and the 20 working together. had Marketopia giving us the leads. I had the 20 helping us with tier one. My team was focused on projects. Next thing I know, I’m getting a knock on the door. Hey, you have won MSP of the year.
And we won MSP of the year with the 20. We did a really good job working with our team and got another knock on the door. Hey, we really like what you did. We like how your operations are. We you’re doing well. And at that time, I took from kind of a not losing, you know, but we were we were not in the black. We were in the red for a little while. And you I had some personal conversations about that.
And now we’re in the black and we’re making money and things are good. Verticals, I mean, now we have no customer took up more than 20 % at most of our business, right? We had several different verticals, several different customers, manufacturing, lawyers, doctors, marketing companies, PR companies, just a lot of different verticals, a lot of different business. So we…We learned from the people. Yeah, we did the first five. Right. Right. We understood that that was our biggest mistake growing. So now that we grew, got people started looking at us and not just, you know, we had individuals talking to us, not more than one or two individuals called us during this time and said, hey, we’re interested in your company. We see you’re taking off. Metro Detroit, you’re you’re well known. Your brand was throughout Metro Detroit. ⁓ You know, everyone knew Data Tech Cafe. They knew what great things we’ve done. They knew Seann Moreno, things like that. So that’s kind of, know, we built it with T-Mobile. Then we had to rebuild and work on bringing it diversified and bringing it up to ⁓ more of an MSP than just supporting T-Mobile. And I learned a lot. The membership with Marketopia allowed me to meet other peers. Mind you, before that, I didn’t even know what an MSP was.
I had no idea, right? I just built something that was supporting T-Mobile. So I got to meet peers that were building MSPs that I wanted to be. ⁓ You know, there are some great people that I’m still best friends with today that, you know, if I didn’t meet those peers, we probably would never met in our entire life. But they changed, they changed me the way I ran my business. They helped me grow. They helped me when times were tough, they helped me when times were great. You know, we celebrated together. So it was a good journey. It was a great journey. I’m not good. It was great.
Terry Hedden (15:29)
Yeah, that’s awesome. And I’m excited to hear what happens, you know, sort of the end of that story. But before we jump to that, Seann, you know, it sounds like you went through some dark times, some challenging times where you were losing money. You had some a lot of success and then the loss of T-Mobile put you into a bad spot. And you mentioned reaching out to your network and that type of thing.
You know, it takes a big person to do that. I think a lot of people, and I’m one of them, when things get dark, you kind of close up and you just kind of try to work on it yourself. And walk me through that. mean, what gave you the courage to reach out, to ask for help, to look for, I think, motivation and inspiration in a dark time, you know, when you needed it most? How did you bring yourself to do that? Walk me through that journey, because that’s really hard to do sometimes.
Seann Moreno (16:22)
Learned early on when I started my business, the consulting business or anything like that, I started it. I was up on my own. Everything was going to be mine, mine, mine. I’m going to have this big dream and this is how I’m going to do it. And I realized quickly that I can’t, I can’t do it alone. It’s just, you know, you’re not an expert in everything. You’re just not. And my niche, was, you know, IT technology. I understood it. I worked for large organizations as solution architect. So I was in the grind every day. I didn’t know anything about businesses. didn’t grow businesses. I had been part of large organizations. Who knew you had to have payroll? Who knew you had to actually have a pay IRS? You know, who knew you had to actually have insurance? So those things early on taught me that at one point I knew I had to stop trying to believe I knew everything. And I reached out at that time and got help. And that’s when I brought in some business partners. that formed the ⁓ initial, I understand that if I’m trying to do it by myself, I’m going to fail. So when things started getting dark and you call it dark, call it, you know, we were, we had obstacles and we had to overcome. So, and I realized how do I overcome those is by bringing in the people that I trust, the people that I know that have done this before. And I knew I wasn’t the only one that’s been through this. There’s no way I was the only one that had a great thing going. And then next thing you know, they have to figure out how to reorganize and do things.
So that’s what I did. I really reached out to yourself, peers, ⁓ fellow business owners that were my customers, things like that. And they really helped guide me. My business partners helped as well. But we really reached out and really pulled together and looked to who could tell us, give us some guidance. Not tell us, but give us the guidance. Hey, this is what I did. This is what went wrong. This is what we feel.
It’s just like anything else when you have those big decisions to make, those things that are affecting not just you and your family, but others. You want to make sure you’re doing the right thing. Make sure you have all the answers and have good solid understanding before you make decisions.
Terry Hedden (19:04)
What was the best advice you got? I walk me through, guess it sounds like you talked to a lot of people, which is really interesting to me. ⁓ You opened up, you shared your challenges, you got some great advice. Give me the best advice you got or the ones that I think helped you through.
Seann Moreno (19:19)
best advice I got was I needed to look at myself, where we wanted to be, and really understand, make some hard decisions. Either business partners were leaving, maybe ⁓ laying off family members, maybe laying off long-time employees.
You know, really looking at your business and looking at yourself in the mirror and say, what do want to do? Where do want to be? And once I did that and once I understood and believed in the path would show me the way, you know, that it was, it was there in front of me. I just had to follow it and allow it to go. It was disappointing that I had to do that. didn’t want to ever do that. I didn’t want to have a business partners leave.
You know, I’ve had a couple of them. you know, we had a parkways due to circumstances and, know, ⁓ that was tough. That was the toughest decision. But again, that was the best advice. If you really want to, if you’re truly want to look out for the business and really grow the business back, sometimes you have to make those tough decisions. And, and, ⁓ I got that a lot of advice, Terry, you’re one of them, some business partners with others. And then I got, you know, my wife.
She was my biggest supporter.
Terry Hedden (20:47)
Yeah, that’s awesome. And I love her. She’s just a fantastic person to be around her energy. it’s nice to have that sort of that rock at home. Yeah. When you when you’re hanging your head a little bit, they’re the ones picking you back up and giving you that courage to keep going.
Seann Moreno (21:03)
the ⁓
Terry Hedden (21:10)
Yeah, it’s ⁓ the partner in life and is a very, I think the biggest indicator of the future is to find a great partner in life because everybody has challenges in their relationship and their professional lives. And, you know, the question is, what do you have at your side or you know, helping you through them, know, pushing you through them. Sometimes it’s some tough love and sometimes with some, ⁓ some comfort. So, so that’s awesome. Yeah, she’s awesome. ⁓ okay. So you, your, your business is kicking it. You had T-Mobile doing really well. Start going through some challenging times, lost T-Mobile, went into dark time where you were not dark. I don’t want to make it.
Seann Moreno (21:52)
Yeah, it’s an obstacle. It’s a hard time.
Terry Hedden (21:55)
You know, a season that’s not so fun. Right, right. And then you get some good advice. Keep going. What happens from there? mean, how do you get the advice? You implement the advice. What happened? How long did it take? And how did that, you know, following couple of years go for you?
Seann Moreno (22:13)
Yeah, so it did take a couple years ⁓ as we started getting reorganizing, moving forward, ⁓ working with outsourcing the marketing and our tier one support, ⁓ really focusing the business on what we needed to focus on and then driving sales because, you know, one of the things that we needed to bring back is that pipeline. We needed to get that pipeline going the business partner I did bring in later on. He helped drive those sales, moving things forward. I built the operations, got it smooth enough that we were the MSP of the year for the 20, so working with them and being able to operationally bring it to a place that most of our support was being handled by tier one.
And as that’s handled by tier one, your seasoned, your senior engineers are not just picking up the phone doing password resets, not picking up the phones, grabbing, ⁓ well, I don’t know how to open my Excel spreadsheet to do this. They’re focusing on the real, my internet’s down. We have internet, but we don’t have anything after that, and focusing on firewalls, and then focusing on projects, SharePoint. At that time,
Even to this day, people are moving from on-prem servers to SharePoint for their file systems. ⁓ Educating people, training, you we offered a lot of training. We started getting into the manufacturing world and that brought in compliance, cybersecurity. So we really got to focus on those things less of the day-to-day ⁓ end user having that tier one issue that we needed a support and the phone ringing. All I heard is my team always complaining, the phone won’t stop ringing. you know, we got that moved to someone who could handle that. We documented very well. if anything, can give anyone advice. Documentation is key. That is where you’re going to be successful. And not only will that allow you to grow, also allows you to bring in and just plug people in where you need to.
If anything, can give advice is documentation, documentation, documentation.
Terry Hedden (24:40)
Love it. So it sounds like you made your tough decisions, had some courage, doubled down on growth, doubled down on leveraging third parties to take away some of the burden of managed services, because there definitely is some grind there. And it sounds like the 20 did a great job for you, just kind of taking that weight off your shoulders, which allowed you to focus on the projects, which make money. And managed services is done by someone else, but it keeps the bills paid. Kind of a good combination. ⁓
Talk to me about what led to that. Your profit started going up, your business started to lean out, and your revenue was going up, but your expenses are kind of staying the same, kind of a great combination of things. You start building that profitability spread.
And then I understand there was a life-changing moment there. Walk me through that. How did that happen for you and what led to the decision to make that change and, ⁓ you get where you created that financial comfort, that multi-generational wealth for your family.
Seann Moreno (25:45)
As we started building that and building the profit EBITDA, know, kept climbing, things were getting better. ⁓ opportunities for, ⁓ you know, new verticals were coming in. ⁓ It just, you know, just started compounding and it really started snowballing. And as everyone’s aware, people are out there looking at you when you start doing that. They’re checking you out. They’re seeing what’s going on. Who is this guy?
Being part of the 20 was the start of that and then Locally we’ve had some PE firms that we worked with they were looking at us and they’re just started asking questions and I Didn’t have any of that before didn’t even you know didn’t exist We had one or two that would you know, cold call us and then once they found out like I’m not sure if you’re ready for us But then once they seen what we were doing and what we did now people are like interested. They’re looking at me. They’re looking at our business. you know, I got the knock on the door from two different individuals, the 20 being one. ⁓ We were already with the 20. We were working with them. I’m learning a lot doing the peer groups with them as well. And it was an offer that it took some time because I didn’t want to walk away. I still thought I had opportunity to grow the business even more. And started talking to people and making sure again, reaching out to my network. Is this the right time? Is this, are we in a position? What do you think? Where do we, once we realize, you know what, what we’re going to sell to and have opportunity to work with and move forward with, we won’t have that. And, and eventually, Yes, I can keep doing this, but my job was to do something great and I wanted to do something great. And this also gave my team the opportunity to do something great and work with some great people and have the ability to grow and really grow at a ⁓ faster pace than I could grow. So the decision became easy. We decided to move forward. During the process, I learned a lot about acquisitions. I learned about negotiations. I learned about contracts are key. Your contracts are really what makes your net worth. That’s what makes you attractive to these companies, these larger companies. you know, the process was great. I love the entire ⁓ back and forth and, you know, here’s what we think we’re worth. Here’s what they think we’re worth. Here’s what we’re really worth. ⁓
And the exciting thing was just having that knock on the door. That was the most exciting thing, to be able to say someone really is interested into Data Tech Cafe and what we’ve done.
Terry Hedden (28:47)
Yeah, that’s like every entrepreneur’s dream, First, it’s to start their own business, and then it’s to make their business successful. And then ultimately, it’s for other people to see value in that and be willing to pay you something that makes all of the stress, all of the challenges, all of the pain and suffering, all the sleepless nights, and all the risk that we take financially, health-wise, just every risk we take as entrepreneurs to make it worth it in the end. there’s such a, I mean, most businesses fail, right? So you have a 95 to 99 % chance of failure. then, Seann, you’re one of that 1%, or 5%, I guess, depending on how you view that, to see that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And that’s awesome, man. And you deserve that. I think it comes down to just…the heart that you have, the spirit for service and taking care of people, that’s who should win. That’s who should win, right?
It’s not the capitalistic pig that’s selfish and greedy and only cares about money. And that person kind of is the one that just deserves to make it and survive in life. The good people are the ones that really should win and be richly rewarded for that. It just happens so infrequently and it’s a shame. So I commend you for having the wherewithal to make the decisions, the hard decisions, the easy decisions, to get yourself in a position where you can have both things. You can look out for your team. You can help your customers. Make a difference in the lives and the businesses of so many people. And still, at the end of the day, create that moment for your family. And so it’s a tough thing, Seann. I think that puts you at the top of the entrepreneurial stack, if you will, to say, founded it, I built it, I lived and learned, made lessons, made mistakes, learned lessons along the way, made some really good decisions, got to the point where, you know someone really loves me and will pay me a lot of money for something that I probably would have given away at moments in my entrepreneurial career. There are times where you’re like, man, maybe I should just close the doors and go home. But you stepped through it and you made the tough decision and you took the big risks and it paid off for you. Seann, that’s really awesome and you should be so proud of that because I was aside you for a part of your journey and I feel like I was a part of the journey where it got the hardest but it got the brightest too, you know? you know, so I’m proud of you, man. I’m proud of just doing everything that you did and having the courage and the…fortitude and the mental determination to power through challenges, man, and get where you are today. That’s awesome. And so you ended up selling out to the 20. My guess is you got a handsome little check, you paid off all of your debts and still had a good chunk left over. Now where are you? What are you doing now? What did you do with that money? How did you parlay that into the lifestyle that you’re enjoying today and hopefully the retirement that you’re looking forward to in the future?
Seann Moreno (32:06)
I was fortunate, you know, when the 20 came to us and that they also offered us positions with the 20 to help build something great. You know, the team there from leadership down, I really respected them and watched a lot of the stuff that they were doing was exactly what my passion was helping people. They built out some help desk stuff that I had when I had with T-Mobile.
So it was really good to see. it was fellow owners and MSPs that I was working with, that I’m working with. So I was ⁓ offered a position there as well. Worked with them to build something great again. Put some money back in to help build this large MSP that’s nationwide. ⁓ I am currently the VP of regional operations.
I have a Midwest team that ⁓ great team. We’re building ⁓ relationships. We’re expanding. We’re getting larger accounts now and the team we’ve built is unbelievable. They’re actually helping build the way that other regions will work with and mimic. So we’re helping build ⁓ a support system, build the MSP the way the CEO Tim Kunco envisioned it. I had very similar visions of the way he’s building it. So I’m part of a great team. I’m having fun. That’s the beauty of it. I’m having fun. It’s not coming in, having the weight on my shoulder that, man, if we lose this customer today, I don’t know if I’m going to make a payroll tomorrow a hundred fires and it’s only the five of us to figure it out. I have a large organization, not only the organization of, you know, the employees, but now we have members there too. So now we have all these people that can help and we can get solutions and I’m watching, I’m helping customers, I’m helping people grow. I’m watching the team that I built, they’re growing. In fact, just recently I had an employee help them grow into his next you know, like he wants to be into networking and cybersecurity. So he was able to grow from my team to that next level. ⁓ Those are things I couldn’t offer people. They had to leave my company to go to get cybersecurity. Now I can watch individuals grow and I’m helping to build a large MSP to take it to the next level. And I think that’s what attracted me to the 20 more than having a P buy me out and call it a day and go live on a yacht for a little bit and come home and say, I blew all my money. ⁓ You know, that’s what drove me and that keeps me going today, but it also gives me the flexibility to enjoy my family, know, enjoy the life I have, enjoy the ability to, you know, provide like I wanted to, you know, I was fortunate.
Terry Hedden (35:08)
But
Seann Moreno (35:30)
Early on, learned a lot of my ⁓ work experience came from Pulte Homes. I’d say that’s where I grew up. Bill Pulte was the same way. He grew a family. He grew things to cultivate customer service. He wanted to help homeowners for life. He wanted you to have the first home with them and your retirement home with them. And that’s kind of my thing. I want to help you start from when you’re grounded up, startup business to that. Well, I get to see that now.
With the 20 being part of the 20, I’m able to see that.
Terry Hedden (36:04)
That’s an awesome story. I know Tim’s a great guy. He’s like a treasure almost within the MSP community in the sense that he’s a joy to be around. He’s a fascinating guy. He’s a good dude, but also super smart, but also real down to earth because he’s just a really unique personality. I enjoy spending time with him and I’m sure that’s got to be rewarding for you as well to just be a part of that. I know the 20s got big ambitions.
They made a lot of acquisitions, a lot of noise. They built a national footprint. I’m sure at some point, Tim’s a super savvy, financially savvy kind of dude. He’s probably got big plans. Were you able to put yourself in a position to capitalize on some of the longer term vision for the 20 or have you totally cashed out now and you’re just another W2?
Seann Moreno (36:56)
I was able to capitalize. I’m a shareholder. ⁓ So that was the opportunity as well. So again, that’s what enticed me. That was the exciting piece of it.
Terry Hedden (37:10)
Nice.
Good for you. That’s awesome, Seann. So I’m happy for you, man. I live the difference in just your energy. I miss you, man. You’re not as around as much as you used to be. I personally, man, I just want you to know you’re always welcome to come back into the Marketopia fold in whatever capacity you want. You’re kind of one of those people that’s as awesome to be around and personal as it is in the business side. I could have a sit there and have a business conversation with you about whatever, going through challenging times things like this, podcast, sales, marketing, we could talk business and I would love that conversation and then break open a rum runner and sit there and enjoy the sea breeze and seagulls.
Seann Moreno (37:55)
and the sunsets and everything. absolutely. I mean, that’s what attracted me to ⁓ to Marketopia. You know, same thing. You know, you were when I first met you, the same thing. It was easy to work with, talk business. And then we also had some some downtime. And that’s kind of, know, you talk about building businesses. That’s the philosophy you had. had Tim has, you know, it’s about getting that downtime, family time, making sure that your work-life balance is good. And those are some of the things that I valued coming into my own business. I really wanted to make sure my peers, my employees all had that work-life balance. And I tell you, it excited me so much. I love Florida so much. I bought a condo down there, so you know this. So I enjoy it. So for sure, I’ll be down there.
I will make it, make time. I’ll be down there for GrowCon. We’ll figure it out. I’d definitely love to talk to some of my peers I haven’t seen in a while. We had some OGs out there that we’ve been around.
Terry Hedden (39:04)
That’s awesome. Seann, I want to move to a section that I really am excited to hear and learn from you and I think other people are as well. If you put on Seann the mentor, Seann the good dude that’s helping MSPs with their journey, what are some of your top lessons? If you were going to teach someone and maybe a group of people MSPs in different parts of their journey, what are some of the wise words that someone has been through what you’ve been through and is enjoying what you’re enjoying today. What are the wise words that you’d share with the MSP community in general?
Seann Moreno (39:40)
Well, the first thing is lesson learned. Never have one customer be even 50 % of your revenue. That was a hard lesson learned. Second, I read this book called Leaders Eat Last and really took it to heart. When I say Bill Pulpy, I worked for Pulpy Homes. That’s how he believed in, take care of your employees help them be successful. And that was my goal is always your job is to help whatever customer you have, help them be successful. Your job is to make sure they’re successful. You will come, you’ll be successful because they are. So that was really those things I tell people time and time again, always look after your employees, make sure that they’re feeling the ⁓ appreciation you know, make sure that you’re working towards that because what they’re going to do is that delightful experience is going to go a long ways with the customer. And when your employees feel that they believe in you, they believe in the work they’re doing and why they’re doing it, they’re going to go and do the right thing for the customer. And the customer needs to be successful for you to be successful. If a customer loses their business, you’re going to lose their business and their revenue. So that was our biggest lessons learned while we’re going through the life story of an MSP. Outside of that, know, we know revenue is something that you should always be looking at. Always look at your KPIs, checking them out, making sure you’re on track and have your goals. Follow your goals and hold yourself accountable to those goals. One of the things I struggled with is I had goals, but I didn’t.
Really they were just there and I didn’t put them in my face until someone sat down and said, hey, put this in your face. What do you want? What do you need? You know, there’s five different ways you can go, but what do you truly want? So ⁓ that’s the advice I would give.
Terry Hedden (41:56)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome, Seann. And I’ve seen you kind of take opportunities to teach a lot, both when formally requested, but also just in casual conversation. I would encourage you to do that, dude. You’ve been through a lot. You’re a wise person. And right now you’re sitting where a lot of MSPs dream about being, and lot of entrepreneurs dream about being.
And I think it’s, you’ve made a lot of great decisions. You’ve overcome a lot of challenges. You’ve capitalized on lot of opportunities. You’re great at building relationships. And that’s what pulled you through all of those times and gave you the exit. And frankly, hopefully the next exit that you’re going to have one day as well. I think good people deserve to win. You’re a good person. You deserve to win and you’re winning. And I’m proud of you. I think. ⁓
I’m sure your wife is too. Just keep doing what you’re doing, dude. You’re doing great things. It’s an honor to know you and it’s an honor to call you a friend, Seann. I appreciate you.
Seann Moreno (42:57)
Appreciate you too, Terry. Thank you for everything you’ve done and things that we’re doing today. I appreciate you. always there. Text away. know, at Sunday when I have a question, you’re always available.
Terry Hedden (43:10)
That’s true. know one of the things that you did when you were with Mark Tobey is bought a beach condo right here so that when you came in town you could enjoy the beach. I’m sure you’ve had some great memories built there as well. That’s one of my goals maybe in the next 12 months. Find a time when you’re going to be there. Maybe rent the condo right next to and toast some of the good times and maybe drown some of the harder times over a glass of rum drink of some sort. For sure. Awesome. Awesome. Seann, well thank you so much for joining us. I do appreciate you and for you making the time to share your story.
Seann Moreno (43:46)
Excellent. I appreciate you. I appreciate these podcasts. really, again, my passion is to help people. So definitely feel free to let people know they can reach out to me personally.
Terry Hedden (43:56)
Awesome. Awesome. Thanks, Seann. Appreciate
Seann Moreno (43:58)
Thank you. All right. Take care.
