Building an MSP that Runs without You with Allan Michelmore

Welcome to MSP Mastery, the podcast for MSP owners and leaders who want to build a better MSP; one that actually works for them.

I’m Jeni Clift, joined by my husband and long-time business partner, Nick Clift. Together, we’ve spent decades building, scaling, and eventually exiting our own MSP business.

Over the years, we’ve seen firsthand that the MSPs who thrive are the ones willing to evolve. And right now, few shifts are more important than the way we structure our teams and leverage modern tools like AI.

In this episode, we sit down with Allan Michelmore, Managing Director of Control Networks, to unpack what it really takes to build a business that is an entity in itself. Allan shares his deep experience with offshore resourcing and why systems and documentation are the only true path to freedom for an MSP owner.

Here’s what we covered together:
 ✅ Why the 80 20 rule is the secret to overcoming documentation overwhelm
 ✅ How to put essential guardrails around AI to protect your business and your clients
 ✅ The biggest myths about offshoring and why it fails for most MSPs
 ✅ Why treating your offshore team as true colleagues is non negotiable for success
 ✅ How to transition from being the bottleneck to having a business that runs with or without you

We created this podcast to share the real conversations and lessons we wish we’d had more of while running our own MSP; practical insights from people who understand the challenges, pressures, and opportunities in this industry.

Whether you’re already using offshore resources, starting to think about AI governance, or questioning how to finally step out of the day to day operations, this episode with Allan offers a grounded and timely perspective on what leaders need to do now to stay ahead.

👉 Connect with Allan on LinkedIn: Allan Michelmore
🌐 Learn more about Control Networks: Control Networks
🎧 Listen to other MSP Mastery Podcast episodes here: mspmastery.blog

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

And you don't have to have a hundred percent of all things documented. Like focus on the normally it's the 80-20 rule, right? 20% of your procedures will cover 80% of the workload.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

You have to make sure as a business owner to put guardrails around the use of AI, what it can access, and things like that. I can step out of the business and know everything is going to run without me. Because it's exactly the business is no longer just about you. The business is an entity in itself that's going to run with or without you.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Welcome to MSP Mastery, Control or Deliver, the podcast for MSP owners and leaders who want to build a better MSP, one that actually works for them. I'm Jenny Clift, and alongside my longtime business and life partner Nick, we unpack what's really working in thriving MSPs, including insights from the trusted partners who support them. Between us, we've clocked up more than 60 years in the MSP industry, long enough to have tried all the shiny tools and the latest game-changing SAS product that promises the world. This is Control Alt Deliver. Here's Nick, myself, and today's special guest. Today we're joined by Alan Mitchelmore, managing director of Control Networks and someone a lot of you will already know. Alan's built his MSP a bit differently to most, using an offshore resourcing model long before it was common and doing it in a way that's actually worked for both his team and for his clients. More recently, he's taken what he's learned and started helping other MSPs by providing offshore technical resources. Alan and I have been friends for years, so I'm really looking forward to hearing his perspective on what's worked, what hasn't, and the lessons he's picked up along the way. Alan, welcome to Control Alt Deliver.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Thank you. Thanks, Jenny. Thanks, Nick. Alright, it's good to see you again, Alan. Likewise.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

It has been a while. I think you keep coming to Bali to visit us when we're in Australia. I think this year we've got it aligned though, April.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Looking forward to seeing you then. Okay, so let's kick off as always. As an EOS implementer, I start all meetings with. I'll get you to share your personal and professional bests from the last six months.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Basically, um I run three different companies. I've got the MSP, I've got a telco, and I've got a consulting business, which is Halo Implementer and Consultants. So between the three, it keeps us busy. But um because I'm dealing with a lot of MSPs under the uh data flow banner, I get to hear a lot of their pains and idiosyncrasies that they have going on. And one thing that become evident was having MSPs set up correctly with SAPs and things like that, because they need assistance. They're just not sure where to go. And a lot of MSPs are in that position.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Absolutely. Yeah. I think we everybody knows that they need to have them, but it's pretty daunting to where the hell do I start?

SPEAKER_01 3:13

That's it. That's what we find a lot. A lot of uh people they're in.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

And it's easy when you look at something like that that's so overwhelming to just go do something else. Yeah, I'll go and watch a space launch video on YouTube or something.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Put it on the back burner, I'll get to it tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Hey, hey, hey, hang on. There are two big space launches coming up. I'll have Artemis 2 mission is gonna be launched to send four people around the moon. That should be going in a supposedly two or three days, and then SpaceX will have its flight 12, I think, with the new Starship version three. That's not gonna happen till March. So they're the two big ones I'm watching. So yeah, I don't watch as many now because it's just normal, but those are two are pretty big. So I will be watching those gen. So don't annoy me when I'm they're on.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Much more important than doing SOP's. Personal best, what's been happening in your personal life?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Yeah, look, it's all the businesses, especially the consulting business, is taking off dramatically. We're at the stage now, we're putting on so many people to handle other MSP's requirements, our own requirements. And we've got a task at the moment to find 11 new people for a project that's gonna last two to three years. So yeah, and our biggest problem at the moment is having enough space. All right, so we're looking at other buildings to to move into. I already have capabilities of 240 desks. All right, I already have those, so I've just got to find a building to put them in and then bums in suits after this. So this is in the Philippines? This is in the Philippines.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Yep. That wasn't my question though. My sec my question was your personal best. Do you have time for a personal life with all this stuff going on?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Not at all. I am doing it traveling a lot, you know, thanks to Quantas' sale in the last week. I now have seven trips booked, and uh at this stage there's only one month that I'm not overseas.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Nice. Alanaki to introduce yourself, share a little about your professional journey and how you ended up here with three businesses.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Basically, well, the MSP is 29 years old, I think, by memory. And uh that grew from just me to three, three, four staff here in Australia. And then about 10 years ago, I had the opportunity. I had a someone I was working with here actually moved to the Philippines. And cut a long story short, we set up the business over there and started having some staff for control networks, and it just grew and grew. And yeah, for the last 10 years, we've that's just gone got bigger and bigger. In the last uh two years, we've started helping other MSPs with their requirements for VA staff, and that has taken off a lot, very much so in the last uh two years as well.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

I think it's a common thing offshoring or outsourcing some of the work because it's just getting harder to find people that with specific skills and also just cost effectiveness is what it was five years ago, but it's still more cost-effective to have someone offshore, that's for sure. It used to be like a quarter the price, it's probably half now. Uh, because they've all got used to the Western lifestyle and want to have better benefits, don't they?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

My my telco, I have a business partner with that. I was working with him on a number of things, and we seem to be competing on a number of things, so we just said, let's just join forces. So we did. And that was about eight, eight, nine years ago. And then the uh Dataflow, which is the Halo Consulting and implementation business, it's taken off dramatically. It's just about 18 months old now, and there's a massive, massive move over to Halo, and I'm just getting you know, Halo themselves have turned around and said, Can you take some more? And you know, I'll get three or four phone calls a week, just people that are already using Halo and want to take things to the next level, right? And that's what we're all about. So that's basically the history of all three businesses.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

With you moving more into that consulting space, how have you set up the other two businesses so that you're not needed day to day, you're not working eight-hour days every day?

SPEAKER_01 7:32

I have a great team around me. I I have Michael, who's my two OC. He's been for us 12, 13 years. I started as an intern and yeah, I like him so much, I like you know, a bit like John Weston. I bought him. I like it. So, and he basically is my two O C. So he essentially runs control control networks when I'm not available. The telco, the business partner, and I. So if I'm if I'm not available, that one runs runs as well. We got it, we got four or five people in the team there. And the data flow is just myself at the moment, and I've also got an admin VA that holding solely works under the data flow banner. And I'll basically I will looks like I've I'll have an someone that possibly worked with at Halo quite a few years ago coming to work with us as well. And that's uh certainly going to help us out catering for all all the requirements.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

These companies get bigger and doing their acquisitions and getting bigger and trying to get to that one-stop shop. I think a lot of MSPs like that personal touch. And I get it. Nick and I had this conversation a few days ago about why they do it when they're bought by VC and their plan to grow that path. But but yeah, I wonder if they're they're missing out ultimately on some of their or just overlooking some of their smaller clients that do to have that relationship rather than working with a big corporate.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, we're we're nowhere near as the biggest you know, Darren and Peter and things like that from T TGT. But where a lot of people come to us is because we're running Halo and other customers we have, or is also running Halo, the teams can bounce one another's ideas or issues off one another to get a result. And that seems to work well. I'm hearing that more and more each of our MSP customers. That's why they went with us. And it they see it as a positive thing for their for their customers as well and their team.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

We really wanted to talk about the whole offshoring because it's been a thing for a long time. We certainly we had a couple of failed attempts early on in DWM and and ended up with quite a big team at later on and then with Otto. But there's a strong belief in the industry that offshore only works if you're looking at cutting costs, you're looking at cutting corners, not telling people that you're offshoring, or not telling customers. But what's the biggest myth you hear about offshoring that you just think that just doesn't, it's not right, it doesn't stack up.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Well, one of the biggest ones is I don't have control over over them. They're you know, they're they're not part of the team. They're very much part of your team. The you know, the the PCs that we set up are joined to the MSP's tenant. So they have full control, they can manage the PC, have you know, they've got cameras so they can include them, and we strongly encourage them to build them in and treat them as one of their own staff. Have them part of staff meetings on on the Monday morning or the Friday morning, and give them some responsibility. I've I've got one MSP at the moment that's just literally putting on their second person because they had a uh VA from another company, which was costing them twice as much, and couldn't rely on it. And we've been lucky recently, there was a Microsoft data center that was shut down, and so we've been able to score some ex Microsoft virtual assistants right into the team. So they come pre-trained on all the Microsoft products.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

So your staff does VAs, or do you have tech resources? You've got pretty much whatever you need.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Tech resources, admin resources, yeah. My accounts person, right, is over there. She does all the accounts, answering the calls, she she's the triager. She's not doing the accounts, she's answering calls, disseminating the calls, chasing the guy, the techs up, everything like that.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Just to get on my soapbox for a minute, I've been saying this for years that if you treat your offshore team like they are not part of the team, that's exactly the behavior that you'll get. But if you actually they're part of your team wherever they're sitting, whether it's in your office, whether it's at their home office or in the Philippines or Indonesia, wherever it may be, they're all just part of the team. Their location, their geography doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

That's right. I just recently come back from the Philippine office and I took and one of the other MSP customers and his wife over with us, and it was the first time going to meeting, meeting their VA, Tech. And the amount of change that they seen in the time they were there, he just all of a sudden he just stepped up, right? Yeah, and they looked after him, you know, and took over some uniforms. So all of a sudden, he was then part of the team because he was wearing the uniform. That was like a switch and it clicked straight away. And in the next couple of days are going, we've seen so much change in just 48 hours.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Yeah, it's good. Alan, if if someone was thinking of they need an extra resource, but they don't really need a full-time one or can't really afford a full-time resource in Australia and there are options, what kind of tips or tricks would you give the person to help them evaluate the situation? Because I can you get part-time people, or is it better to go with a full-time person even if you don't have the full-time work yet?

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Essentially, it's better to go for full-time, right? We have done it in the past where we've had two MSPs that have said, Oh, I only need someone part-time. So, you know, we've tried the four hours, four hours, but then there were calls coming back in, and there was you know, there was issues, right? And then the person actually realized, oh, I do actually need them more than four hours a day. And because there's you know, there's one thing we strongly push with every new client is get your SOPs in place. Right. Because if you don't know what you're doing, how do you expect the new starter to know what they're doing? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Yeah, and we we had a we had a our first experience was gee back in the late 2010s, I think, or earlier when that was um and it was uh her call slash, you know, you basically bought a block of calls, I think it was, through an organization out of India, and their time zone was not aligned with Australia, obviously, because our way, they were like nine hours out or something. And we would the idea was that they would do all the monitoring alerts and any kind of scheduled work we could do overnight. So we'd queue up, we had an onboarding meeting at the at about 4 p.m. Aussie time. This is the 20 tickets we want you guys to work on tonight, come back in the morning, do a handover back to us, and blah blah blah. And after about three or four months, this is going nowhere. Like we're getting back more tickets than we give them. And it was a combination of problems. One was we didn't have SOP, so when they got to work on a ticket, they couldn't find information about the client properly. They didn't know what the next step was in our process. And then the other side of it was they just wouldn't ask questions, they just put a note on a ticket and go, Oh, need extra information. And we had an escalation process.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

There was no dedicated person, so every night that they work for us, it was a different person. So it didn't go well. It did not go well.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

The follow-up to that would be what we do a lot is with the Philips, it's a culture thing that regardless of whether they understand you or not, they'll just say yes. Because they don't want to annoy you. And that's one of the first things we we say. If you don't understand, say that. Don't just say yes. And it's just it's just something within their culture that just say yes, yes, yes. And you automatically think that you know they are they've understood and you know, they're going to do. What we generally do is, okay, so what's the job? You tell me what it's about, and 10 chances to one, yeah, you'll you'll pick up any issues at that stage, so then you're gonna get the result you want after that.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

We joke here in uh Indonesia in Bali that there are three forms of yes can mean I understand what you want and I'm going to do that. Yes can mean I understand what you want and I have absolutely no intention of doing it. Can also mean I have no fucking idea what you want.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

We've learned the body language associated with yeses.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

And yeah, one one of the guys we met over here who's been in Bali for a few years, he said it works better for him if you ask what is the percentage chance of yes happening. If you ask, can it be done by Friday? They say yes, can it be done by next Wednesday? Yes, can it be done by next Friday? Yes. So what's the percentage chance of it being done by this Friday? Or 10%. But you said it can be done by this Friday. So yeah, he's learned to use the percentage thing. Because they're much more because they're not saying no, they're just giving you a number and it's I get the culture thing, but that's what you have to work on. Yeah. Yeah. I agree.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

You've proven offshore can be quality. You've been doing this for a long time, it's working. So rather than just cost, and I think over the as Nick touched on earlier, it used to be a big cost saving, it's not so much now. What do you think MSPs usually are doing wrong when they say, we tried offshore and it didn't work?

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Big thing like we just talked about is the SOPs. If you're not prepared, if you don't know how a job gets done, or it's all in the owner's head, or all in some one person's head, that's where it's gonna start. So we if we're taking on an MSP, we'll generally get it's one of the first questions. What SOPs have you got in place? Because we're we're at the stage now, we we won't take someone on if we know there's gonna be issues. Right? We'll send them away, go back, show us your SOPs. Okay, now we're happy because we know they're going to get a satis satisfactory result. Right? And they they're going to have a VA that's working for them, and we're not not in two, three months going, oh, this is a waste of time and everything else. Right? It's in our best interest and their best interest to make sure that VA works for them. And we've got many a many a case study now to that effect, and to the point, okay, I'm ready for money up next person.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

I agree a thousand percent, and it is a struggle because generally Australian-based techs have a bit more initiative and they can problem solve on the fly. So, especially the senior guys, that's so they tend to strict documentation as a secondary, tertiary thing, and fixing the problem is the most important thing, and then the next important thing is getting to the next problem rather than doing the documentation on how I fix that or how someone else can fix that. If you're an MSP out there and you're struggling in this area, what's some ideas to help people get into that mindset of building SOPs? Is there tools out there? Is there some AI-assisted stuff? Is it just a matter of having a shadow follow your tech? What have you seen work for people to build the SOPs?

SPEAKER_01 19:24

There's a number of tools out there that we recommend to the customers to use. It really depends on which one works for them. But essentially something that documents, takes screenshots, everything like that. Having just text-based SOPs is not an ideal solution. Yeah, give them give them screenshots. You know, I've seen some SAPs that like 16 pages, but it's fully documented. And when you know, you can literally hand that SAPs to someone that's never done the job and get the right result at the end.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

I'm a big fan of video, like Loom or whatever it may be, recorded on Teams. What's your view on video over just a straight 16-page text document?

SPEAKER_01 20:13

In some cases, we'll combine, you know, video and and the documentation, because not everything can be picked up out of a video. But I've got some clients we're working with at the moment that are sitting there and producing a video on how to do a specific task. Yeah, I've got customers that have gone to the extent of having an SOP for putting the bins out ready for collection. Yeah. Because which side of the nature strip do they put it on? And having the bins a meter apart. You might think that's funny, right? But the thing is when the claws come in to grab the bins, if they're too close, one of them ends up on the ground and the rubbish is all over the ground. So they've gone to the extent of, you know, there's an SOP for everything in the business.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

I used to run training on how to put cups in the dishwasher at the end of the day in our office. Because some people didn't know how to open the dishwasher and put the cup in. They'd put it on the sink on top of the dishwasher. So I used to run regular training.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

I don't want our listeners out there that get freaked out and think that they have to have a full video production studio and a or a podcast studio. Literally just team, saloon, zoom, whatever it is you use, any kind of screen recorder, just record, get your text to record what they're doing, and we can fix it up later. You can actually hand that off to a VA to watch the video, and then they can create the documentation out of it. Because if you go to a level three engineer who's you're charging out at 200, 250 an hour and say, I need you to document all this stuff. I had a guy say, Oh, I need three days to prepare to write a script so I can record this. No, just record what you're doing. You already know what to do. And we can, if you can't, if you haven't got the mindset to do documentation for somebody else to read, we can get someone else to watch your video while it's Through the process and they can generate the documentation because a lot of people get a bit funny about trying to record what they're doing, and when I don't want to be accountable for that, what if someone makes a mistake and they blame me?

SPEAKER_01 22:10

The other thing is what we've found is from previous VA experiences that people have had is that the staff don't want to document. Reason being, if I document, that means someone else can do the job and I can be replaced. It's not a matter of that. You've got more chance of being replaced for not doing the documentation.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Yes, correct. It's the other way around, which is exactly what we've got going on with one client at the moment. He's replacing staff for the reason to remove the old stuff.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Yeah. And like if you take the current, you know, there's lots of discussion and current trends around AI out there, and the general consensus is AI is not going to replace every job, but it is going to replace the jobs of people that don't learn AI and don't use it to actually make themselves more productive or make the business and the business's clients more productive. We've got that opportunity now with extra capacity, and we can ask a question, do some research, figure out how to do stuff much quicker. And sure, I wouldn't take everything you get out of an AI chat as gospel, and you need to, as a business, as an MSP, you've got your own policies and procedures and your own liabilities and compliance. You've got to figure out a policy on AI in your business and make sure it's it is documented and it is shared with everybody and everyone knows what's going on because the guys are using it. Even if you ban it on your work computers, they're still using it on their phones. It is taking a screenshot and say, Oh, how do I fix this problem? And the AI will help them. So you're better off to lean in, embrace it, run some education, but it's funny, it's like the old, I don't want to document it because someone will take my job. If you don't document it and you're not a really smart documenter, then the AI is going to take your job.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

The thing is with the AI in an interview that I did the other day. You have to make sure as an as a business owner to put guardrails around the use of AI, what it can access, and things like that. Yeah, I've I've seen an MSP actually connect his 365 to Chat GPT. And it's like, okay, everything that's on his you know, SharePoint in OneDrive is now open to the whole world.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

What could possibly go wrong?

SPEAKER_02 24:26

Yeah, it's but maybe not the smartest move.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

I've heard of clients doing that, but not MSPs.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Yeah, I know I had one the other week to do it do that, and it's like, no.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

So we've talked about we've talked about SOPs. What about leadership and management? Because going down this path of putting offshore teams is a bit of a change of mindset. So what do you think is important from a leadership management perspective? And I'll start by saying Nick, I'll throw you under the bus, uh, which I know I do regularly. Oh my god. Just that we'll have to go and check everything they've done because maybe they didn't do it right. But that feeling of trust, they're gonna make mistakes, so do people in Australia. What's that shift that people need to make to go down the off-shoring path?

SPEAKER_01 25:17

It's important from top down that everyone has the same mantra. And like any employee, any new employee, they're gonna make mistakes. But just like any employee, if it was a local employee, you guide them, correct them, yeah, and and you know, eventually they will usually within the first two to three months, we'll see whether they've got it or they don't. Simply black and white. And uh if they've got it, you know, and we've we've been lucky, we've only had one that's no, we'd we're gonna have to move them on because they just the comprehension and remembering just wasn't there. But everyone else who said in the control networks team, have a great team around me that I can actually walk away from business, jump on a plane, do whatever, and I know the business is still gonna run.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

It doesn't make a difference whether onshore or offshore. Like you get people like that all around the world.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

As I said before, we uh strongly recommend you make that that person as part of your team, and we're seeing now that okay, I've got a local person, the one one in the Philippine is actually better than that, has a better rapport with customers and things like that. You know, the the sign when the c when customers ring up, and can I speak to now? Can I speak to Emmanuel? And they're not asking for you.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

I've heard different stories about this stuff, but what is the minimum amount of engaged, physical engagement that an MSP should have with an offshore team? As in meeting the staff, getting the staff to come to Australia, then going to the facility wherever they're hosted. And what's that ideal engagement level there?

SPEAKER_01 26:57

I've got customers that haven't been over yet to the Philippines, but are trying to. As I said, we took one over recently, really felt that they wanted to get to meet them, spend some time with them, and things like that. And as I mentioned before, the just 48 hours, all of a sudden, they they just grew in what they're wanting to do, what they were able to take on, and everything like that. It was just such a dramatic change before we come back. They actually turned around and said, probably be putting another one on before the end of the year.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

For us, somebody from the team would go over there every quarter, whether it was starting a service manager, just to build that rapport up. And if you had a bigger team based offshore and you end up with a team leader, you've got four or five people in a team, that team leader should spend some time back in at home base at the MSP, just to, like you said, meet the people, you just build a better rapport, you get to even get to meet some of the customers. Hey, this is actually a real person. Yes, they speak a slightly different accent and they sit behind a different desk in a different country. But look at Australia. 52% of Australians are immigrants. Their parents weren't born in Australia. So, yeah, this whole thing about, oh, I don't want to deal with someone offshore, it's just a load of crap. That's exactly right. But you've got to make the effort, you've got to make the effort. You save 10 grand a year on the salary, but you've got to spend five grand to go over there and meet the people. Or you might say 30 or 40,000 on the salary. Spend five grand of that. Go to your team, spend some time with them and build that room.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Give me a dream law.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

So, what about the wider team? I remember when we went down this path that we really had to sell it to the team, if you like. And this was really early days, as Nick, oh, I reckon it was maybe 2008, 2010, somewhere around there, it was a long time ago. And within the team, it was there was a bit of resistance, probably changed now since in those years. But what do you think needs to change inside the MSP for offshore to work properly? Because offshoring isn't magic. You put a person in and the business is transformed.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

To make it work properly, as I said, the most important thing was the SAPs, as we mentioned before. Without those, it's just it's yeah, it's just not going to work. And having the owner or the manager having the right mindset, you know, to make them part of the team to give them responsibility. They're quite capable of handling it. You give them the right training, give them the responsibility, yeah, maybe taking care of the alerts every morning and disseminating anything that needs to be actioned, passing it back to the team. Because if those alerts don't get done between 9 and 9:30 of the morning, and it was urgent, and here it is 4 p.m. in the afternoon, something is going to happen and it ain't going to be pretty.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

So, what about the wider team, the colleagues, the people who are part of the Australian onshore employees? What have you seen works that sort of gets them on board with having an offshore team?

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Didn't have too many problems because as I mentioned Michael before, he's Chinese and he lives here. I've got quite a quite a cross-section.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

I don't know a single MSP who's got a whole bunch of fifth generation Australians working for them.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

We did back in 2000.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, 2016.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

Because we're based in regional Victoria. Yeah, that's yeah, it's 20, that's 25 six years ago, yeah, exactly. But today, it just doesn't happen that way. We have all different characters from different places, you know.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

In the control networks side of things, we really don't we have a team meeting there which everyone is part of. Our team meeting consists of another MSP who is in in our office in the Philippines. So we combine our staff meeting. So we're all in one meeting of a Friday morning. The the tech from the other MSP has got problems, yeah. We'll usually, hey, have you tried this, da da da da, and everything like that. So it it it works, and no one no one has a problem. And it's it's what we try to invest into our clients, the MSPs. I'm saying, you know, this works for us. I suggest trying it in your business and your phone, you'll have the same same output.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

I come to you and say, Alan, I want to put a couple of team members on. We really don't have much in the way of SOPs. How do I start?

SPEAKER_01 31:27

First thing we'll will help you work on those SOPs. I have Duane, who's who's the Aussie that I started working with that went over there. He heads up the team in in the Philippines. And he'll generally work with the MSP to build out your SOPs to the point where we can say, you're right, now you're ready to take someone on. Right? Not much sense bringing someone on and working on the SOPs while they're sitting there and what we do. Right? So I've got working with someone at the moment doing their Halo implementation, and we're building out Halo to the point where, okay, now we've got some SOPs, now we've got some structure in the PSA, now we can bring some on, right? It's a waste of everyone's time unless those things are in place beforehand.

SPEAKER_02 32:22

Actually, that's a good segue. Are there any specific like service boards or queues or ticket types or statuses that you would set up differently from the team of offshore to onshore, or is it all combined together?

SPEAKER_01 32:35

It is it'll be all combined together. The statuses are all all the same, but what we generally do is build out and with Halo, and what I promote with clients I work with is the ticket will come in, you know, and we can set up that it comes in with onboarding and offboarding as a tag on the subject line, and that's enough to kick off a workflow, allocate the task list, and the task list is all the onboarding or offboarding tasks, right? So for that, you know, for that ticket, right? So as they go down, they tick all those. That's seen on the audit log. So if there's more than one person working on the ticket, he records who put a tick in the box. So if something was ticked and it wasn't stun, you know, who's bum to kick?

SPEAKER_02 33:26

Coaching opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

And w we also make a child ticket for the accounts team. So adding the person to the agreement, adding any tools that are being used that don't directly integrate into Halo, they all be taken care of. So at the end of the month, all your additions and subtractions have been taken care of. So instead of your billing taking two days, it's 40 minutes. And that's how I work with uh the customers that I do for exactly for exactly that. I've I've had customers, oh, I've got my billing pair, it's a week long. All right, and we're now down to 40 minutes because of exactly that structure.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

Yeah, the automation or using this. Yeah, I see it a lot too with it. All the doesn't matter which PSA you're using, or it's like dozen of them out there if you want to really stretch your imagination, but it's the mindset and the workflow. And I use this for that, I use this for that, I use that. Hang on, if you're gonna commit to a product, why not invest in learning everything that product can do? And it may not be 110% what you want, but it's my argument would be it's better to use something that gets done is better than perfect. So if you can get more things done in the one tool, I think that's the better way to go. And I just wanted to make a comment out there on documentation because I I've done a lot of work on this over the years and going through our EOS journey in our own three or four businesses, we've been implementing EOS in our own business, plus the clients we work with for 20 or 30 we've worked with over the last five years. The EOS principle on documentation is at a high level, you document the core processes in as simple a form as possible. So you take a flow a one-page flowchart that talks about the process. So your client onboarding process, your staff onboarding process, your end user onboarding and offboarding process for a client is just one simple flowchart. And underneath that, each point or each box in the flowchart has a checklist assigned to that. So you can go down and say these are the tasks that need to be done to get this part of the process completed. And then underneath that is the SOP, the detailed documentation. You may be something you've generated yourself. It may be a vendor document because it's a sp I've got to set up an XYZ in something. And it when someone new starts, they're doing the whole three steps. They're looking at the flow chart, they're looking at the checklist, which matches your task list and ticket list inside the PSA, and then there's SOPs, detailed procedure documents beyond that that you need to refer to for the first two or three times you do it. Then you don't probably need to do that, you just need the checklist, and then at a very high level, you can explain. So I've learned that that works really well to help people understand why we do it, because a lot of people won't do documentation unless they understand why we're doing it. And if you can explain the high-level process, the checklist of the steps along the way, and then the detailed procedures underneath, I think that covers it all often. And you don't have to have a hundred percent of all things documented, like focus on the normally it's the 80-20 rule, right? 20% of your procedures will cover 80% of the workload. Just focus on those first, and then you can work on the outliers. And if it's a process that happens once a quarter and one person knows how to do it, I wouldn't even worry about that one, honestly. You'll figure it out if you have to, you know. But if it's something that happens a hundred times a day, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

And following on from that, Nick, I think that helps with this is what I advise EOS clients to do is it helps with that overwhelm. Start with the flow chart. What are the things that you need to document and just write that that front page, start here and finish there, and that gets you the outcome because and then you can get other people to write the checklists and then others to do the SOPs that are behind the checklist. It's a place to start and it's uh easier than holy shit, I've got to write 10,000 SOPs, I'll just go and watch a space launch video.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

Because if you that's if you ask an engineer to do documentation, they're gonna start here and then like me, I think I'm doing this. Oh, okay. What format's a document going to be in? What color should the dots be on the bullet points? Should I have check boxes or ticks? Should I have emojis? Should I not do that? Should it be in conflict? Should it be in SharePoint? Should all of that stuff is irrelevant, but some people can't help thinking like that. So they won't even start before that's all complete BS. You just need to record what you're doing and hand it on to some other detailed person that knows this stuff. Or I was very hesitant to tell people what to do or how to do something because I hated being told what to do or how to do something myself. I was smart enough to figure it out. I would read the documentation, I would go and talk to people. I would I had I had the definition of an escalation engineer back in my old company I worked for back in the 80s was that you have one phone number in your phone, my number, I have two phone numbers in my phone. I have a phone number for the guy in the factory that built the product. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Um and you don't need to keep all that information in your head. You just need to know where to get the information. And today we would but that was before the internet, obviously. But today, you can have Chucky in your own environment. Just whatever system you choose, one sitting on the fence with one foot on either size of an electric barbed wire fence is painful. Pick a camp and get in it, whether it's conflict or one of the the doco systems, or there's your own thing in Word documents or SharePoint, who cares? Just pick one.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

It's whatever works best for you, right? But get it in place, right? That's exactly what we say to what I get my team to do. And the best people to actually document it is the the tech team to do, you know, because what the owner has in his head, which by the way, probably hasn't been actually doing tech support personally for months or years, right, might be out of touch. So the best person to actually do it, people on a day-to-day basis.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

Here's my favorite test, Alan. How many different versions and product names are there of Copilot? Yeah, no one knows, not even Microsoft knows. They change it every damn week. It's a moving target.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Can can copilot create a Word document?

SPEAKER_02 39:53

No, it can't. But I can create a Google Doc for you. I just absolutely fell off my chair laughing when that happened to me the other day. Using a Copilot Pro, full license inside of a client's environment, doing some documentation and said, Oh good, give me the Word document to download so I can put it in SharePoint. I can't do that, but I can give you a Google Doc. So cracked up.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

It's the first time I've seen that. I've had it being able to create a document.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Oh, there you go. Teach me.

SPEAKER_01 40:20

So I had I did it the other day on something, and I said, okay, can you export that all to a Word document?

SPEAKER_02 40:26

And I managed to do it. But my point in bringing that up is use your favorite AI tool to help you with documentation. If you've got nowhere to start, just say, Oh, I've just started a brand new MSP. I look after this type of client in this environment with this kind of tech stack. I need an 80-20 holistic documentation of all the different processes in my business. And it'll chew a whole heap of AI token credits, but it'll come back with something that's halfway there. At least you'll know what documents you need to do. Then you can go in and customize them. And the world is so easy these days. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Okay, we're nearly a time. Alan, if you had to bust one last myth for MSP owners sitting on the fence about offshoring, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Yeah, I I hear a lot that it doesn't work. And not from their own experience, but it's what they've heard from others, right? Don't leave you know, don't listen to others. You know, every business is different. And in most cases, we've seen the ones that have failed as being because of the SOPs and the mindset, you know, that they don't include them as part of the part of their team and things like that. They're they're overseas, so they don't build build them into their own team, so they never become part of the business. All right. So my best advice is get in there, try it, try it for yourself. Work with people that can help you get the things set up properly. So it will be a success.

SPEAKER_00 42:00

Nice. And one last thing, I wanted to put on a VA. So I own an MSP, I've got 10, 12, 15 staff, whatever, and I want to put a VA on to work directly with me as the owner and take some of that stuff that I spend an unknown amount of time doing. What sort of things would a VA do that would take some of that load for the owner?

SPEAKER_01 42:25

In a lot of cases, we see their outlook, you know, their unread items is up to 15,000 unread items in their inbox and things like that. What's INC on? 1500 at the moment? Doing those tasks and actually, yeah, somewhat over PA. So, you know, that they've got someone they can delegate to that they know it's going to get done, right? Coordinating meetings, things like that. I've been in a position before where all of a sudden I'm not in a position to work. I've had to take two days out. So I've all all I've had to do is notify the team saying, guys, I'm out of action. And all of a sudden they ring your customers, can we reschedule that and take care of all that for you? And as long as you've got the processes in place, it just works. It works without you. As I said, as I mentioned earlier in the podcast, that I can step out of the business and know everything is going to run without me, which is perfect. Because it's exactly the business is no longer just about you. The business is an entity in itself that's going to run with or without you.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

Yeah, and that is definitely a great feeling when you get to that point. Because I remember way back in the early days, we started our kids had grown up enough and we just started decided decided to well, Jenny decided that we should do some international travelling, and I was freaking out. I said, No, I can't. I'd never had a week's holiday in the first ten or whatever no, five or six years of running our own business. And I if I did go away, it'll be from a Wednesday Work Monday, Tuesday, go Wednesday, and come back the next Wednesday. So I had Thursday, Friday. So I always had two weeks, two days of the week in the business. So we go away for seven or eight days. Did that for probably five years. And then when we finally got to the point of establishing a good leadership team, offloading, getting the processor documented, and went and had four or five weeks away and only had two phone calls. I thought, this is good. That's when we started to come to Bali. And I said to the team, I got no reception, no internet at our villa. So my phone will be in locked in the safe in the room. I'll check it in the morning, I'll check it at night. It's super urgent. Texts get through, but no phone calls. If you if it's super urgent, here's the fax number of the resort. I got a fax once. They said, Oh, that's great. We're I think we're in Samoa, weren't we, Jeff?

SPEAKER_00 44:45

I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:46

The fax said, That's everything's good back here in Ichuka. Have fun, bye. And that was it.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

One comment that we still laugh about is don't fall off your deck chair, but ex-customer finally paid their bill. So this don't fall off your deck chair has become a thing with us. And and we respond, and there was something about Dell as well, and we went back and we said, No, Dell is the name of the resort manager here. Lovely man, he brings us cocktails.

SPEAKER_02 45:12

And he offered me a job on a dollar ninety-five USD an hour. And I was seriously considering it because that he said, Yeah, you can have a room in the resort, whole food that drinks, everything covered. Just have to answer a few silly questions every now and then go, two bucks an hour and no expenses. It's gonna take me like five years to save up for an airfare to get back to Australia. No, mate, I don't think I can do it.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

I love coming over to Bali because I can have those cocktails, I can have my massage foot massage every morning, have yeah beforehand, get up, have breakfast, go and have the foot massage, and then go back to bed.

SPEAKER_02 45:46

It's a crazy thing, isn't it? That's the difference of the economy. In Bali, a cocktail costs the same as an hour foot massage. Whereas in Australia, you pay 20 bucks for a cocktail and a hundred bucks for an hour massage, so that's five times more expensive. Well, the labour component in Australia, and that's the big difference in this South East Asia area is that you know buying alcohol in Bali is no cheaper than Australia, really. Maybe a little bit if you coat the local ones, but anything that involves a lot of labor is cheaper, and that's where this whole concept of offshoring out not mail outsourcing, offshoring came from originally 15, 20 years ago, and it still makes sense, but you've got to do the work. Take some tips from Alan, he's been in the trenches doing this for 20 years, but documentation will set you free. And yeah, we tried two or three times without documentation, and it was very painful. The projects did work though, because we could document a specific project and say, do that as a project. That worked really well. But tickets and support, it was really tough. Thanks for Alan for coming along, mate.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

Okay, thanks again to Alan and always thanks Nick. If this conversation hit home for you or got you thinking, head to mspmastery.blog and keep the conversation going. You'll find all our episodes there and more insights from people who've been in the trenches. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. We've got plenty more great guests and stories coming your way. Until next time, this is Control Alt Deliver.