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MSP Mastery Podcast
Welcome to MSP Mastery Podcast, the podcast for IT leaders, MSP owners, and service delivery professionals who want to elevate performance, improve processes, and stay ahead in the fast-changing managed services landscape.
MSP Mastery Podcast
Melissa Hockenberry Reveals Why Client Retention Starts Inside Your MSP
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Welcome to MSP Mastery Podcast, the podcast for MSP owners and leaders who want to build a better MSP, one that actually works for them.
I am Jeni Clift, joined by my husband and long time business partner, Nick Clift. Together, we unpack what is really working in thriving MSPs, including insights from the trusted partners and peers who support them.
In this episode, we welcome back Melissa Hockenberry, a client retention and customer success expert who helps MSPs build stronger client relationships and lasting business value.
With a background in marketing and more than 20 years of experience at Autotask, Melissa now leads First Things First Training and Consulting. She brings deep industry knowledge and practical experience to one of the most important challenges facing MSPs: how to retain clients, support employees and build a more profitable business.
Melissa shares why client retention often begins by looking internally at your own team. We explore the connection between employee experience and customer experience, and why there is no hope for external retention if internal employee retention has not been addressed.
We also discuss the conversations MSP owners often avoid, from billing problems and unclear expectations to difficult client relationships and unprofitable service agreements. As Melissa says, the moment you think you do not want to have a conversation is often the very conversation you need to have.
Nick shares lessons from running an MSP, including what happened after losing a client worth half of the company’s revenue. Together, we explore why a large client is not always a profitable client and why MSP owners need to understand the true cost of delivering their services.
Here is what we covered together:
✅ Finding friction in the client experience: How MSP owners can use the swim goggles analogy to look beneath the surface of their business and identify the issues clients may be experiencing.
✅ Billing and invoicing problems: Why incorrect invoices quickly damage trust and how simple billing mistakes can create unnecessary friction.
✅ The mystery shopper test: Why MSPs should ask someone who does not understand technology to review their invoices and explain whether they make sense.
✅ Clearer client expectations: Why contracts can be silent and how a simple user manual can help clients understand the services they receive.
✅ The difficult conversations: Why putting off an uncomfortable conversation can make the problem worse and why MSP owners need to eat the frog.
✅ Taking action before everything is perfect: How perfectionism can prevent progress and why testing improvements with a small group of trusted clients can be more effective than waiting for the perfect process.
✅ Empowering teams to fix problems: Why staff should have the authority to resolve small billing issues without creating unnecessary escalation or client frustration.
✅ Making better service decisions: Why MSP teams need to consider the cost of labour before spending hours repairing equipment that could be replaced more efficiently.
✅ Hiring for client success: The relationship building, listening, diplomacy and collaboration skills that matter most in a client success role.
✅ Looking beyond the technology industry: Why the right client success person may come from retail, banking, hospitality or another customer focused environment.
✅ Keeping client success separate from sales: Why client success should focus on long term relationships rather than being driven by a sales quota.
✅ Finding the right person inside your MSP: Why the team member who spends extra time listening, coaching and training clients may already have the skills needed for client success.
✅ Protecting the purpose of a new role: Why MSP leaders need to prevent every unfinished task from being placed on the client success manager.
✅ Understanding the roles of CSMs and TAMs: How client success managers, technical account managers and business technology advisors can work together within an MSP.
✅ Knowing the true profitability of each client: Why revenue does not equal profit and why MSPs need to track all the time involved in supporting a client.
✅ Learning from a whale client: How losing a major client can reveal that the relationship was consuming resources and producing less profit than expected.
✅ Improving time tracking: Why tracking time across technical, account management and leadership activities is essential for making good business decisions.
✅ Giving your team the why: Why employees are more likely to follow a process when leaders explain the reason behind it rather than simply issuing instructions.
✅ Internal retention before external retention: Why a strong client experience depends on creating a healthy and authentic employee experience.
✅ Leadership through transparency: How transparency, integrity, humility and authenticity can strengthen relationships with both employees and clients.
✅ Sharing difficult information with your team: Why withholding information can lead people to create their own explanations and spread unnecessary rumours.
✅ Building trust during change: How honest communication during the loss of a major client can help a team stay calm, focused and aligned.
✅ Consistency across every relationship: Why the same values should guide the way an MSP treats its employees, clients and suppliers.
We created this podcast to share the real conversations and lessons we wish we had more of while running our own MSP, with practical insights from people who understand the challenges of this industry.
Connect with Melissa Hockenberry on LinkedIn: Melissa Hockenberry
👉 Read more episode notes here: mspmastery.blog
👉 Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/@MSPMastery
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There is no hope for external retention if you haven't figured out internal employee retention.
SPEAKER_03The moment you think you don't want to have a conversation, that's the very conversation you need to have. We call it eating the frog. Eat the frog. Just just take it. The best leaders really see their team as an engaged group. And they're transparent. They have integrity. And I've said it last time, but I'll say it again: they have humility. Gotta give the why. People miss the why. They just dictate and miss the why.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to MSP Mastery, the podcast for MSP owners and leaders who want to build a better MSP. I'm Jenny Clift, and alongside my longtime business and life partner Nick, we draw on our 60 plus years of combined experience to explore what's really working in thriving MSPs. Our goal with this podcast is to share the real stories and hard-won lessons that inspire and add genuine value to our industry, helping you build a business that is both profitable and fulfilling. This is MSP Mastery. Here's Nick, myself, and our special guest for today. If you are a regular listener to our podcast, this is a name and voice you will recognize. Melissa Hockenberry is a client retention and customer success expert who helps MSPs build stronger client relationships and lasting business value. With a background in marketing and more than 20 years of experience at Autotask, she now leads First Things First training and consulting, bringing her deep industry insight to her work. Melissa, welcome back to MSP Mastery.
SPEAKER_03Thank you so much. It is a delight to be here.
SPEAKER_02We're just saying it's a little bit warmer for you now. Last time, I think you were up to your ears in snow, and it's now summer for you.
SPEAKER_03So much snow, yes. When I was uh when I was looking back on the old video, I'm like, yeah, did I wear the same thing? Oh no, no, no. This time it's it's a sleeveless option. It's still cold.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's a good thing about Bali. It's the same temperature all year round. Just dry and wet. No actual actual change in temperature, really. It's wet or it's dry. Well, actually, the swimming pool does cool down in winter, that is for sure.
SPEAKER_03That is lovely. Does it get to like a an actual swimmable temperature? Because there is such a thing as too warm water.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, in summer it's like 29, and in winter it's probably 23, 24. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's not bad.
SPEAKER_01A bit cooler. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Too cold for me. I understand that. What's my my filter nick is about the water has to be about 27 Celsius? 29 before I'll go in it. To me, 28 is cold. Uh, don't know what that relates to in Fahrenheit.
SPEAKER_03I mean, I do actually know that. I I lived in Denmark for four months, so I've got at least a relative that I remember. Like, okay, certain temperatures, I'm like, that's a coat. That's like three coats. That's yes, I do remember that.
SPEAKER_01Yep, exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Now I can't believe that it's been more uh actually more than six months since we saw you. But please share your personal and professional bests for the last six months.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. It's fun to look back on these. So professionally, I have a very specific one. So that so I'm finally getting to really focus on the business, as uh we were talking earlier, like my daughter's getting ready to launch to university. And so I'm I'm much more time on my hands to get things done. And in Q2, I actually had one month where I invoice as much revenue as I made in my first year. So I was really excited to it's a good thing. So yes, that's that's a nice professional. And that's thanks to, I always say to business owners, sometimes we don't think about getting out and getting about, right? But every single one of those contracts came from conversations had at events last fall. Every single one. So I like I know it's hard to sometimes put the time to do that, and not every event's gonna produce that. But when I look back on it, I'm like, where did that happen? But it's also a story of patience, right? Those things happened in September and October. These contracts landed in June. So it's it's you know a good story of patience with that. And personally, it is it's watching my daughter graduate and uh having her graduation party and remarkably holding it together, like there were only one small amount of tears. So it's good. Yeah, yeah. I I think the the hardest part is the next chapter everybody I've talked to. I think I think we think those 18 years under your, you know, under your household is the hard part. And it's trying, but I think this this next like stepping back and letting them letting them launch is probably harder, but yeah. Done this, got this far without, you know, a breakdown. So we're good.
SPEAKER_02And and the US is very different to for us in Australia. Neither of our boys went to university, but you send them off. In Australia, that rarely happens. Normally they'll stay at home just from a cost factor, usually. So it's usually, you know, the next chapter is when you send them off into the world as they go off to work.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so this is and my daughter believes in fully embracing the sending off. So obviously the US the US has some has some space to it. And I'm located in Pennsylvania, and I won't tell the whole story, but the gist of it is she's going to school in Wisconsin, which if you don't know your new US geography, that's 686 miles from my front door. And she's going from like cold temperatures of 25 above in the winter, pretty consistent, to there will be days where it's 25 below. That's all Fahrenheit. We're talking a lot of temperature today. 25 below, and that's not a wind show factor or a wind. That that is just the actual temperature. So yeah, so she's she's embracing that, but I'm excited for that. I think it'd be hard for harder for me and for her probably to just launch if she was close enough for that quick visit or something of that sort. So I just asked her one thing. I said, Are you running two or are you running away? And she told me she's running two. I said, Okay, then I I did an okay job.
SPEAKER_01Awesome.
SPEAKER_02Okay, now we're just going to jump straight into our question today. If you're not familiar with Melissa, go back and listen to her previous episode. But we're not going to get you to do an intro beyond my intro in the at the start. So let's jump first into something that you talked about last time that I really loved, and that was the analogy of the swim goggles. And I always visualize, you know, that that mark that they leave on your face. So it leaves that mark, but it allows you to see clearly under the surface of the business. And I often see people have quite a different perception of their business than I think clients do, or I do as an outsider. So if an MSP owner actually puts those goggles on today and sees a messy or a cloudy client experience, what are some friction points that they should look to clear that or to stop that immediate churn?
SPEAKER_03Yes. So um I'm I'm always cautious. There's not a lot of this can stop immediately, right? And like you're not going to find things you can a button you can push and have it stop immediately. But I I get, I get, I guess, you wish there was to be a much shorter engagement. And friction does friction does differ, but first of all, I will confirm 100% that it is amazing to me that you can walk into a client and just like a therapist can look into a relationship and go, you guys really don't see this, do you? That that's that's the benefit, I think, of that third-party person coming in, because you you just do have greater clarity. The places I find most common are billing. Billing has incredible friction to it. And when we talk about like quick fixes, billing invoicing issues. I I just started with a client, and um, you know, one of the things they have is that they they're they can't get a few of the invoices right and they continue to go out wrong. And they, you know, and then but part of the challenge is like, okay, then stop the automated process. Stop letting it happen, right? Like there's some little things. It's like, I know that this is gonna take time, but there is truly nothing worse than getting people's money wrong, right? It's like a double whammy. You've got inconsistency in information, like getting payroll wrong. Exactly. You've got yes, for your internal clients, right? So this is like the you you've got obviously there's not a lot of trust in the system because an export of the system is not accurate. So it's like, okay, well, what else is not accurate in the upstream? And you're dealing with my money, and that can't seem to be right. So I would say the play first place when you put the client goggles on are 100% look at billing invoicing. And we talked last time because I did review a little bit. And and Nick, I loved your, you know, we talked about like a mystery shopper. And I think that's so key to have people look at, have a brand new person who knows nothing about your industry look at your invoices, give them 10 different invoices to say, does this make sense to you? Because in reality, that is still the same person who's doing, who's receiving that invoice. The person who's receiving that invoice is not likely to know technology like you do. You know, and and they probably didn't even negotiate the contract, right? So you really do have this straight out stranger. So, so pass off some of your invoices to other people and say, you know, what does this look like? And I think the other thing is unclear expectation is an overwhelming friction point. Where there, so I just I attended uh a channel pro conference this week, and they were talking about the problem with MSP contracts is they're silent, right? That was the exact phrase he used. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's such a great phrase. That's true for everything. There's so many systems that I'm like, you know what, if we if we put a little bit more, and granted that I'm 50% Italian, so more words is never a problem for me, but sometimes you need you need more words, right? You legitimately need to say, what is this exactly? And in the world around us, as I watched all these vendor pitches, there's so many easy documentation tools out there that it's like just just talk to text yourself describing this to a client, you know, um you know whatever that is, record one of your meetings of like, how are you pitching this? Is all the stuff you just said in your contract, in or in your, as this person called it, a user manual. Like you need that place where the service, and I really like that because he was not, he was keeping the contract simple and the user manual was all the service descriptions and the details, and you know, and I was like, that's such a great way to put it because all those details of like if something goes wrong, what what does this look like and and who owns this? And and he had a really great statement. You don't provide any services, you implement those services. Your vendors provide backup and all those things. And I was like, that's brilliant. So I think getting those expectations cleared up, not just legally, but like implementation-wise, like making certain those things make sense, that's really key.
SPEAKER_01So I have a question for you, Melissa, on that, because this this comes up a lot in the MSPs I work with, especially in Australia. So we we tend to go down the model of a master services agreement, which dates the legal T's and C's and it had a compute resolution and yeah, all the tax bills and tax laws, that's all common across the relationship. And then you have service level agreements or addendums to that contract that are for specific services. Like your labor support, your help desk is one, your Microsoft licensing could be another one, your backup, your managed backup is could be another one, for example. Some and this is the question is some people like like we did, we had one invoice with everything on it. Right? So it was one agreement signed with a client, and basically we had this master services agreement, and then we had a quote, and the T's and C's were very simple on the quote. Other people are going down the path of no, we need to have an individual service agreement for each service because of the back-to-back relationship with the vendors. So when you mentioned that just then, I thought that's so true because people get in trouble, and and there's another story I'll go into probably later when we touch on it about getting out of a relationship with the client when it's over, unraveling the contract, if it's all in one, it's really difficult. So, yeah, what do you see happening in the US? What you you know, what's your your experience with whether you bundle it all or separate it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I have I will own the fact that I have minimal touch and conversation around that just so far. But in the in the topical conversations I've had, it is still one master service agreement. And that is, and that is actually what that was kind of what this person was coaching as well. But I think the wording is what saves you from all those individual service agreements. So I I get that. I feel like one's the safe way to take it. One's the easy way is to give them more paper and cover your butt by making them all individual ones, right? The other one is let's do a little bit more work to get the language right that's gonna hold up in the unraveling of it. It's gonna take us more time, but it's gonna be less for them. And I'm always gonna look at that. If you, if you handed me pages and pages of that, I think the impression as a client that I would get is you're trying to confound me and assume I'm not gonna read it all, right? Like you're trying to hide. You could say whatever you want, but if you're gonna hand me now 30 or 300 pages instead of 30 to review, I'm gonna assume there's a there's a bait and switch in there somewhere. Maybe it's just that maybe maybe it's just my brain. But I feel like take the extra time to simplify it, but get the wording right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because it is kind of that balancing act, because to me, as a as a client, I'd love to just get one invoice and you go, yep, manage services, there's my Microsoft, there's my backup, there's my security, bang, bang, bang. Whereas that's easy from the client's perspective, but it might be harder for the MSP because you've got all these different back-to-back arrangements and having five different invoices can be quite challenging when you say get your billing right. I 100% agree. Because uh yeah, but getting it out wrong is better than not getting it out for three months.
SPEAKER_03I I think there's a, you know, there's we don't understand that again, our words can solve some problems, right? So if we need to get it out, we're not 100% sure on it, but we can state that we can give a phone call and be like, listen, I I want to get this to you because we we both need cash flow to be going, right? Like if you can't imagine in your own business, you could wait forever. This is not perfect, this is whatever, and then putting it in writing, whatever you said in the email, sending it along with it, like we know that three-fifths of this is is accurate, and we're gonna work on the other part of it. So this is, but we just don't think about that. We we think it has to be perfect, and we can't go forward with it. And and that phrase of perfect is the enemy of good, which I'm sure is not even perfectly said, but that's the gist of it. It was so relevant to me in my first year of doing my own business because I am perfection. And and I I follow uh a coach here in the US, his name's Dan Sullivan, and he put on an email a little while ago that was like one of those mind-blowing situations on like, how did I get to nearly 54 years old without thinking about this? But he said, as a perfectionist, like there is no thing that's bad. People are like, oh, I'm for friction, it's a bad thing. No, it's not a bad thing. It's understanding where your strength is and not and where your weakness is. And his point was that if you're a perfectionist, you are always going to move the bar. And if you keep measuring yourself to that bar, you're gonna just keep seeing the gap of like I didn't make it, I didn't make it, I didn't make it. And boy, that's not very motivational. If instead you look back and go, I'm still shooting for that that bar, but look at the gain. That's the kind of thing, right? Like if there's somebody sitting right now and going, my invoices are terrible and I don't want to send them. I'm like, okay, take three of your clients that you really trust and invoice them. Why not? This is crazy. You can't always do it, but maybe hand deliver that invoice and sit down with them and be like, let's talk this through and let's see, let's work this out. Whatever. I mean, I know that's kind of crazy. Get on a get on a Teens call, whatever you need to do, but get closer, take action, right? Make the iterative step. And I love the ignore, you know, you're always as a perfectionist going to look at the gap, but start looking at the gain. Look at how much further you came. What would your business look like if you took three clients right now and said, we're gonna get this right with these three, instead of waiting till you get the process right for everybody. You learn more from doing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01One last comment on billing, because we probably should move on to a different topic. But if you've got an invoice, you haven't you've discovered an error and you have not billed something for six months, the chances of you actually getting that money are so slim, it's not worth the angst. And I I I believe, strongly believe, you should never ever send an invoice to a client that they are not expecting. So if you've made a mistake or you found an error or the project went over, or vendor price changed, you need to be having that conversation up front and get approval to amend that invoice from the quote before you send the invoice. Otherwise, you're just creating a bad customer experience, which is what this topic's all about, and you're creating angst for everybody in the process. Well, just send it out. I don't want to talk to them. But then the poor accounts person's getting the horrible phone calls, and then it goes to the salesperson and like, oh my gosh, don't do that.
SPEAKER_03No, the moment you think you don't want to have a conversation, that's the very conversation you need to have. First thing the next morning, right? We call it eating the frog. Eat the frog. Just just take it.
SPEAKER_02I remember getting we had a a property that I think we'd had it on the market and for a while it didn't sell, so we withdrew it. Something like a year later, I get a a visit from the owner of the real estate agency, not the person that we'd been dealing with, wanting to know why the we hadn't been invoiced for the advertising and all of these other things. And I said to him, Why are you asking me that question? Is that not a process problem at your end that there was no invoice? And he he was so confrontational and so angry at me that he left. That's one way to do things. Go and scream at the client. But that doesn't seem to be a wave option. Sorry, there's so much in there done. I was I just remember sitting there and I think one of the team came in and looked at me and said, Are you okay? I said I'm so confused.
SPEAKER_01I think for the people who out there listening, is you need to have a number in your head that you're happy you you empower your people to fix a problem. For us, it was $250. If the issue was $250, you have the power to credit that off an invoice. You use common sense, but yeah, we're not going to argue over $15.27 on an invoice, right? If the customer is really upset and they're questioning $50 out of a $2,000 invoice, absolutely understand. Thank you for bringing our attention. I'll get that amended and send it straight through for your payment. Will you be able to pay that straight away? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'll get that approved straight away. Just have that number in your head, whatever it is for you and your business. But just think of the costs of all the overhead, your time, accounts times, sales guys' time, chasing clients up the angst of the client. Just have a number in your head that you empower people to fix problems because it's such a powerful thing. Takes all the anxiety away from the client and they come out of it going, oh, these people are awesome. They actually listen to me and we solved the problem.
SPEAKER_03I think 100% when we bring that around to the, you know, fix the billing side, that's a big part of it. And and this is gonna sound, I don't mean to be snarky, teach your people percentages, right? So legit, maybe it's even not an amount, it's a percentage. Yeah, exactly. So because just recently I had a client saying me that they spent, I want to say four hours fixing a printer that they could replace for one hour cost of that work. Why, why did we? Why did we, right? So I'm like, that's a percentages is and and it's also a matter of talking through. Like if you're working on a piece of equipment, first thought is probably how much would it cost to replace that? Especially if you've got a backlog like no other. And it's like, you know what, we could just get them a brand new one, which they're always going to love. Like in a in in most cases, they're gonna be like, oh my gosh, they didn't just like they were just like they weren't gonna waste our time. They like shipped it the next day. How many times do you hear stories of people being so impressed that, well, there was a problem and they just gave me a brand new one, right? Like that's like unless it's gonna cause them more work, then yeah, you got to consider that. Like that and that's that's awareness with your internal clients, with those employees, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a really good point because that that to me is a service manager problem because they don't understand the cost of their people. And they think that providing a $150 printer is gonna cost more than a tech for two or three hours, and they are completely wrong.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Hopefully, we'll cover that topic about who owns the service contract profitability at some point, but may not even be this episode, but that's one of my passions.
SPEAKER_02That's a really good segue. The next question I have is around human retention. And Melissa, you talked last time, I think you said it was a hot button issue, that nobody truly owns the managed service contract, the retention and the profitability. So for a growing MSP that can finally afford a dedicated hire to get that client service manager, whatever that title, client success manager, what does that person that's filling that role look like? Because you said last time that they look different from the rest of the tech team. You know, they actually like to talk to people. A lot of people in our industry are not that keen on doing that. So, what specific personality traits or I guess non techie skills do you think are non negotiable?
SPEAKER_03There are a lot of a lot of non techie that are are non negotiable. Relationship building is the first one that comes to mind for me. Being able to not just build, I should say, build and repair. Or and nurture. There's like there's steps to that, right? Like, so they've got to be able to step into something broken and fix it in a non-technical way. So, like, you've got tons of people on your team that can step into broken places and fix it in a technical way. You're looking for a person who who will tell you stories of how, and this is important because these are skills that come from often different markets. They're a person who was like, oh yeah, I worked at Target at the at the custom at the success, or what do I say, the just escaping me, like the service desk, the service counter, yes, like the like the basically the complaint department. I worked there for like seven years and I was employee of the month six times over. You're like, okay, that's a skill set.
SPEAKER_01I want that person. Yeah, I'll want that person.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. And and I didn't need heavy counseling or lots of drugs. So I think I think those are all things that like that relationship building, repairing, and nurturing, those, those sort of things. And those those questions and interviews are a little harder. Like, get some situational questions that are legit from your business. Those are the kind of questions you should be asking this people. You should never go in and ask, are you good with people? Well, I just read the job description. Of course, I'm going to say I'm good with people, right? Tell me sometimes in your past. Or and getting new people. This is the hard thing. I think sometimes you can find young people that actually do this well, or youngish people. I don't want to say that, new to their career, or changing career people, right? People who don't, but you've got to be able to give them those situational questions where you can watch how they think because they might not be able to pull a ton from their past. But hopefully these relationship builders will talk about being like, oh, I'm the middle child. And, you know, I was always the peacemaker in my family. And that those are the kind of things you're looking more for their relational things. And I think, you know, collaboration is key. That that ability to say, like, I get where the ownership is, but I'm able. And diplomacy. Like that, that's one thing I don't know if either of you ever ran into Angela Richer, who worked for Autotest Dado for decades, but she did documentation. She was head of the department documentation department, helped with the massive translation that AutoTest did in there and that effort. She's now back in Germany, German-based. And she used to always say to me, Melissa, we need a diplomatic way to say this. Could you convert this? I mean, now I would do that for you, but legit. She's like, let Melissa say it, because she's like the queen of diplomacy, right? And I think you need that person. I had someone say to me once, way back in my 20s, I worked for JCPenney and I managed about 30 some employees. And I had a young lady, she was probably about four or five years younger than I was, but our life experience put us about a decade and a half apart, right? Like she was just, I had just been able to experience more. And when I landed there, loved her, loved her energy. And she was just so, so good. But she would just, she'd sometimes go off on a project without thinking, right? Like it would just be straightforward. And I would come out and I would see it wasn't what I needed. And I would, you know, from my office onto the floor and I'd like quietly direct her in which direction we needed to go. And and I remember like when I was asking for feedback, she said, Melissa, you're the only manager I've ever had who can come out and essentially tell me I've done something completely wrong. And I still feel good about myself when we walk away from that. Those are the kind of people you're looking for, right? Like they truly will come along to the situation and they'll own it and they'll walk with it. And it's not just I have to do it. It's I love to do it. Like I was helping with interviews for a success manager for a client recently. And there was an individual, and they'd had all these past experiences, but you could tell that like their their major driver right now was AI and process. And like they were so excited about that stuff. Like, oh, and I learned this and I learned this and I learned this. And I they they looked good on camera and then most of their answers. And I turned it up to my client and I was like, in the long run, this is not where they want to be. Like they are so excited about this non-human process. Like the people who love humans, they are really not gonna love to do something every day, day in and out, that has nothing to do with humans, you know, and and she made the case of like, no, I like to make it better for the team. I'm like, great, but she's in love with the tech, and that's wonderful, but that's not the person you probably need. And you really need who people fill them up. They do not deplete them. And that's where you're looking for like proven experiences and you know, give them situations and things like that. But proven experiences are the best and and understanding the skills translate. So this is the person who probably will not necessarily come from tech. They may, they may have had past experience, and you want to understand why they left the role if they were doing it in another technology company. Get the right reasons for that. But in general, they're not. They're gonna come from retail, they're going to come from banking, they're going, you know, hospitality is a good one. 100%. They're gonna have been front desk at a hotel and dealing with, you know, and they're not gonna be the girl that checked me into Hilton, who I was really bothered, I was a bother to her this week. I just was like, wow, this need to get out. You turned up as a guest? What are you doing here? Like, you need to sleep somewhere. So, but I I think I I find many of them, my husband and daughter on the alert for these bad experiences as well. But I think I think you have to, it is a translation and you have to think it through as a company first. And that person, I will say this. Sorry, it's a very long answer, but um, it is not a sales role. If you're growing MSP, that that it's a great thing, but please do not put a quota on this person's head because I can't have to make money and repair, nurture, and restore and build relationships at the same time. Like those relationships that I build in a sales arena are a short term. This person is to build this long term. And long term should never have it. Can have that please don't hear me that they can't have KPIs, right? They they can have, you know, hey, if if we grow organically from the conversations you're having in those business reviews, and you know, that certainly you can you can give bonuses to things, but out of the growth, profitable growth for the client, not out of like, oh, you sold more of this or you offered this brand new service to 10 new people. And it it really should be something where it's like a a whole company sort of thing, and they're they're part of that incentive.
SPEAKER_02And and I'll add one too, because this is something that I was always really set on in our business, is people in these sort of roles have to be able to listen. And I have a a favorite question that I used to ask, and I think I pretty much asked it of anybody, and I won't put you on the spot, Melissa, because but I'll ask you, Nick. So, Nick, you you are a pilot and you are flying from you're leaving Melbourne and you're going to Cairns and you're going to stop over in Sydney. Each leg is about two hours. You've got 200 passengers on board. So with elapsed time, it's around a five-hour journey from point A to point B. What's the name of the pilot?
SPEAKER_01Me, Nick.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I know the name.
SPEAKER_03We had one with a school bus, right? We had one with a school bus that's like, yeah, because you start in the calculating brain and you forget the human.
SPEAKER_02How much fuel will I need? And and what you want is somebody who's actually A listened, because I start with Nick, you are the pilot, but also vulnerable enough to say, this might sound silly, but is it me? Rather, oh, but I've I've had everything from like absolutely clueless, no idea, through to just picking random names out of the air of what a name that sounds like a pilot, is it John? So to me, somebody in that role really needs to have those listening skills, not just, you know, head off on a tangent, which texts can do. They start, you know, the client the client will say X and they're off on a tangent and they just stop listening. So I think though, you know, to add that one onto what you said, I think those it's those, I guess those soft skills. And you often they learn it through, as you said, life experience.
SPEAKER_03I do think you can find people inside your organization. I want to be clear about that because industry and for like information, you know, what do I want to say? Inta intellectual capital about your organization is a wonderful thing to have in a brand new client success role. But they are the people who take too much time on the phone. They're the people that tend to train instead of just fix, right? Like you might have one in your midst, but right now you're currently annoyed at their metrics because they're not closing stuff fast enough, right? So, so be aware of the fact that there might be one in there. And I I wrote, I actually just launched, and since we last talked, I launched the very first edition of my LinkedIn newsletter called Intentional Retention. But the first edition talks about being the inaugural person to a role. And I think I won't go into it, people can go check it out. But the gist of it is it's a hard, you have to stand fast around that person, help them defend what that role was supposed to be. Because that's the hard part with a growing MSP. You're gonna add this role, and then all the stuff that isn't getting done gets thrown on their plate instead of staying true to what you wanted it to be.
SPEAKER_01That would never happen. So I have a couple of clarifying questions for you based on my experience in Australia. So the client success, which I totally get the role. What's the relationship between that and the the VCIO or the kind of the technical account manager who is having these quarterly business reviews, who is absolutely targeted with sales, by the way. In Australia, we are 100%. We're doing a strategy rollout and a roadmap, and we're saying, right, this quarter we're doing this project, this is where you're behind, you need to get up front. So is that person a different person, the same person, or they've just got two hats they wear? How do you see that fit? Because it obviously the bigger you are, you can have separate roles, but you're talking a 10 10 person MSP, it's typically the VCIO has taken all the complaints from the client.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And here you're 100% correct. And there's people that, as we've been talking about this, and I've been talking about this ideal, they're all like, Yeah, but I have 10 people, Melissa, I can't do and you're right. So I think I see it blended often. I I meet with 14 client success managers a month in two separate peer groups through MSP Ignite. And they struggle with this so much because they're doing so many things. Because most of these, most of these companies are some of them are a little bit bigger because I'm just that happens to be my group, but most of them are probably less than 20 employees. So they're like, I'm still wearing the procurement hat and this hat and this hat. I'm not a huge fan of the VCIO term because I think virtual and a C level are I get the concept. It was a nice concept, but I think that's the challenge of it is that that I think I actually love just hear of a technical account manager more so. And then the success individual actually does own that strategic roadmap because I think that strategic roadmap has a lot more listening to it, as we talked about before, than people want to put into it, right? So so that's why I like them owning that. I like them having the business reviews, but then having the person who sits in and talks about like the technical aspect of it and the and how it moves forward and the getting the project work. And and so I think I believe, and I've seen it, that when these people actually own the relationship, get deep in. I did a presentation, I have a client who actually came out of it and he keeps calling it back. And I'm like, I guess I said it well. Getting deep into somebody else's weeds, right? So so it's easy to be in your technical weeds and be like, well, we need to, you know, you know, we know this is a profitable service, we need to get this out to more people. But how deep are you into your clients' weeds, into like what are their true issues, regardless of technology? And so I think to be as direct as possible with it, it is going to blend sometimes. People are going to want to put a quota on it because it is a VCIO, a TAM, and a CSM all rolled up in those small companies. But the faster you can get it to being, hey, we send out the CSM and they're going to own the conversation, they're going to be listeners, they're going to dive deep into the weeds to understand not just what they technically need, but what they're shooting for in their long strategic plan as a company. But we're also going to throw that TAM or that tier three person in alongside of that call or at least have them review the call, right? The joy of like how easy we can now get the recording and the transcript and be like, okay, so this that recorded the call, here's what it is. Let's sit down and you and I'll go through that. But ideally, for your biggest clients, putting two people to that conversation is not a bad thing because it's two more points of contact. It's two P to people that are not the owner of the business, because that's something I'm dealing with a lot. We have a lot of people that want to move out, and I'm like, guess what? Everyone sees you as the reason they work with the company. So the more you can get people who are not you as an owner into a knowledge role, building a relationship, the better, the better. And especially because so much virtual, right? We're not sending two people out and losing an entire day for two resources. We can have this conversation. When you go in person, I think it's worth it. So you just have to goof back to profitability. You guys know this with the OS. You have to know the profitability of that client. And it may very well be worth you sending two people if you actually do the math and think like, what are they spending with us? Like we just think we quickly dismiss these what we call high-touch things because I think so many people don't understand their profitability. But the profitability gives you freedom. It gives you freedom to do things outside of the box because you know you can do this and it's still going to be profitable. So I think that that brings in a whole other aspect. Does that answer your question, Nick? Does that give you sort of where Yeah, 100%?
SPEAKER_01And we've we've I've I've seen a few businesses change the terminology to business technology advisor. Because I agree, the VCIO is the the process, the old you know, true methods process 20 years ago. But yeah, the industry has moved on and we are business technology advisors now. That's what we do. And like you said, we've got to get into their weeds. What are their issues? Not anyone can fix the tech problem these days. That's not an issue. You just jump onto Claude and worst case scenario, install Claude code on your machine and say, go read my logs and fix it for yourself. It'll do it, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, a little frightening, but yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It could break some things, but if it gets really technical, it'll do it. But yeah, so that business technology advisor, and so the other thing I s I get a lot is who actually is accountable to the owner or leadership team for the profitability of the service agreements. And this is like you're paying $2,000 a month, that equals in our world, that equals 10 hours of labor. Who's managing the work to make sure we don't spend 30 hours on that client in that month? And everybody struggles with this. W we cracked that really early on when Autotask bought out widgets. Because I went and did, or we we went, I went, Jenny probably did it really. I had a great idea and said, How do you do this? Yes, I'll figure it out.
SPEAKER_02I got really good at widgets back in the day.
SPEAKER_01And and we we actually set up customer dashboards that had every single client with every single contract and the labor live against it, and it had yeah, green, yellow, red, and they were manually configured parameters on each widget. Today you'd probably have some smart AI, but it that just changed everything for us because people had no idea. The text didn't know. Like you can't spend, like you say, you can't spend four hours fixing a printer that's worth $200. And A, you can't spend four hours on any ticket. Like it's just it's not acceptable. Right.
SPEAKER_03And we were talking about this, this you know, client success manager, and the the challenge there is that nobody ever logs their time, right?
SPEAKER_01Oh, don't start me on that one. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So as I was as I was preparing for this, there's there's a guy here in the US, people love him or hate him. His name is Dave Ramsey, but he he talks about you know a path to financial freedom and that kind of thing. Like, and in reality, understanding your own personal, right? Where what I can afford, what I can't afford, that that is a there's a freedom to understanding, like, here's where I'm what I'm making and here's what I'm spending. And and I can make these decisions. I don't have to stew over it. I'm not gonna sit and and I think that it is, I get that it's so hard for MSP owners. I get that. But you have got to get closer because you can't, you can't make a case for how are you, how much, you know, I'll say people, well, how much should I pay this person? I'm like, well, how much can you afford to pay this person? Right? Like, how what could what do you think they could do? How much revenue have you left on the table this year? How many clients have we not visited in a year and a half? Like, what could this person bring in? And I know it's somewhat of it's a tiny bit of a gamble, but in reality, there should be some hard numbers on projects you wish you could do that you can't do. Throw some estimates on again. We keep talking to AI, but this is something where you can be like, I have 12 of these projects. This is what I think. Does that bet out? Okay, what on revenue would that be? If this person came on and in the first year, that's all they had were those, you know, 12 conversations with clients, or maybe it's six clients to do two projects. They could pay for themselves, like, but you don't know that going into it. And and so I think, you know, owning the service relationship, I think that's there's a high-level person that does that that's like wearing the COO hat, right? Who's because they can't just look at service delivery. That's kind of my point of this. Like, you have to be looking at how much time are we talking about the invoice with somebody? How much time? Because sometimes it's your overhead that's actually making a client unprofitable. It's the people who we were not logging time that are putting it to, you're like, Oh, I got a pretty good margin here. You're like, okay, well, but if if the if the billing people and the client success manager long time, will we still be profitable with them? And you'd be like, no, no, because that's like six more hours a month, and that's with my profit margin.
SPEAKER_01And you know, it's so it's so true. And yeah, we've probably shared this story before, and I definitely written some LinkedIn articles about it having the whale client, and you lose the whale client. We lost a whale client that was half of our revenue, and we were panicking. I was panicking, and then we did the numbers, and the next year we were more profitable, we had less revenue, but that client just consumed everything, and it was a lot of product at low margin. And I just had went through the experience with one of my clients.
SPEAKER_02Now very demanding.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and uh went through this experience with one of my clients recently, and it was a significant chunk of their recurring revenue that was at risk, and we finally got the notification. We knew it was kind of flaky, and it was like, oh wow, that's a huge amount of money. Like, what are we gonna do? We're gonna have to make some changes on headcount. And we we sat down and went, No, look at the numbers. And they hadn't looked at tech time, like engineer ticket time, not the TAM account manager time, not the VCO time, not the owner going out there once a quarter and pandering to the desperate CEO. You add all that up and all the extra time and bits and pieces, and anyway, it it everyone's happy. The situation's resolved, they're parted ways, and the company's gonna be better off, to be honest. But that comes with the story, I suppose, around that is understanding your numbers so you're not making panicky, rash decisions. You need to know. And you sometimes the one you think's the most profitable is not because you're burning so many hours that are not captured in tickets. Gotta figure out how to do that, how to how to capture that sign.
SPEAKER_03We talk about that in my household because my daughter, whether she wants to do business or not in in college, gets the like it's it's revenue, it's not profit. Right? Like that's it's a simple statement. But point is is that people like, oh, what's my biggest revenue client? And that's one of my second questions will be, okay, what are they for profit? Oh, I'm sure they're don't don't like you said, we we those those large revenue people naturally pander because especially if your client concentration is something like that, where it's like, you know, and that that's a concern, and and you never know where they stand. So I would I would even say I've I've said again that perfect enemy of good, get tracking time on your top five clients. You know, just just expect that of your team. Hey guys, I'm not gonna expect everything yet. You can say yet under your breath. Gross mindset here, gross mindset. But let's do these five people, right? Or if there is someone that is a problem, honing in on that and saying to the team, because like you said, I know we mentioned it last time we talked, but like the happiness you bring to getting rid of those difficult people, you know, your your team can do more work when they're content. That's all there is to it, right? Like that's that's 100%.
SPEAKER_01And it's and the tools we have today, uh it's actually a lot easier to track your time. Like you could literally you could literally record a team's meeting as a sales guy or an account manager, record the team's meeting, and you can have an AI agent read the transcript and put a time entry in for you with some action items and jobs done. You don't even have to touch ConnectWise or Autotask or Halo or whatever it is, instead of us going like I was the worst, yeah. Oh my god. Yeah, I know, I know. Everyone does what the leader does, so I've got to do these stupid time entries in it. But it's without it, but once you explain that we need the data to make resource decisions based on the data you guys put in. So if you're not putting your time entries in or you're fudging them somehow, or you're padding them, yeah, then we make we're making bad decisions based on incorrect data, and that that hurts everybody, you know.
SPEAKER_03Gotta give the why. Gotta give the why. People miss the why. They just dictate and miss the why.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So let's we touched on this just now. We talked about retention, which I know is one of your passions. So last time you made a powerful statement that there is no hope for external retention if you haven't figured out internal employee retention. So I guess two questions in this. First, are you seeing any specific leadership habits that are kind of bridging that gap? And also, if you've forgotten if one of our listeners has created that safe space for staff, how do they turn that into a safe space for clients?
SPEAKER_03Those are I appreciate those questions. I'm thoughtful. So I would say I do see some specific things. like traits of people. I am blessed that a couple of my clients have such great culture. Like just phenomenal. Like they have the human, the internal client, aka employee retention down. And it comes from a true, like zero lip service. That's really key. If you're gonna do it, do it. Right. If you're unsure, state that. Be very clear. I think I want to try this, but I'm hesitant. What do we think about this? So I I I presented at the conference earlier this week and I said, you know, when you come back from a conference and you're looking to and guys I said I can guarantee you there are people at your office right now just hating the fact that you're at another conference. And I said, how many people could tell me why right? And and one guy's like, because I'm gonna come back with a million ideas. I'm like exactly so we talked about a simple Venn diagram of like filtering and so anyway, that's another topic. But the the gist of it was engaging with your team to say these are the things I learned, these are the solutions I invented, this is the knowledge I have and I talked about teach back. You have your meetings with EOS on a regular basis, you know, do a little teach back if you have that time to teach them something you learned and go, I think this, you know, touches this pain point, this initiative, this goal. But I think the best leaders really see their team as an engaged group and they're and they're transparent and they they are they have integrity and I've said it last time but I'll say to it again they have humility. They have humility. They will own when it's their stuff. How does that translate you literally can turn all of those to your client and you will see the translation. If you have transparency, you have integrity you have humility in those relationships. Now is transparency a little different even with your employees are there things they should not know. Yes but it's a much smaller bucket than I think most MSP owners think it is. And they don't again we talked seems to be a thing we keep talking about taking the little bit of extra effort to evaluate that bucket go through it and go, these are the things I've always thought they didn't need to know. And maybe you talk with a coach maybe you talk with peers in a peer group and you say how many of you think these are truly still things that I need to keep you know close to my best because I think there's a I think also you have a new generation of people coming up asking more why questions. And I think when you can give purpose and why behind it and and Nick you said it don't don't just dictate time entry. Explain the why I think the same thing with our clients you know if you do have to end up with three invoices say listen I know this is so painful for you but we literally with the system we are using, we have no way not to do this. So what I'm gonna do is my team's gonna roll it up and they're gonna talk about it but you're still going to get three physical things and I know it's more work for you and I'm I'm really sorry about that and maybe think of some creative way. But I'm gonna send your you know your billing person a $25 Starbucks card every month along with the invoice. But question what you have in the nobody else should know it bucket. And that goes with both your clients and because when you build that when you engage them and you ask them for their feedback there you truly invest in them and and it does take time and it does take effort. And it is one of the reasons I think people wait too long to hire client success managers because that is the relationship that they can have. They can go out they can listen they can be the face of it they can get and you know and and that helps in the retention. So I think there's all humans because what I want to say is I think we filter too much to be like these are my internal humans. These are my external humans I think the best people they're an authentic person in every relationship. And so they build an authentic safe space internally and they jolt on a different face for their clients. They are still that same human externally and that keeps the retention. The key is how is that scalable? So it's finding good people that have that same quality and and empathy and you know for for other humans and bringing them into the fold so that you can have that level of relationship. And I don't want to give the impression that you have that level of relationship with the $500 or 500 pound whatever it is a month person right and the 50,000 there is that is not scalable. But you come up especially in this day and age you come up with ways to make that $500 person get that personalized email or something every month that shows that we had a conversation. We know what you're doing here are the things you know you said were important. Has anything changed all automated right and then you have a a not so expensive person not so expensive person processing those emails and you watch how they handle and how they review and how so there are scalable ways to make the relationship important. But I think if you do it internally well and you don't get in your way externally I have I've seen it where owners can start to break down their sales process because they're selling and they're not holding to the values as well because maybe it's been a difficult year or maybe there's I know I just need to close this deer and get deal and get some money in the bank yeah. Oh it works yeah and I I get that but I think the impact of that is just so profound that you just have to kind of take a step back and say if I look three steps down the line from this, how much damage is going to do? And be realistic. Maybe ask a good friend like who knows you and be like what do you think? It's gonna blow up but please don't do it kind of thing. Yeah yeah have those good have those wise counsels but I think it actually translates pretty well it's just not easy to do. The safe space takes a lot of authenticity on the owner and and executive leaderships point because everybody has to be on that. You have one toxic executive and there's no safe space then because it's like well who am I getting today? Who's gonna interact with me? And yeah you have to be careful on that too.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. One thing that came to mind when you're talking about your internal client, your team I can't remember what happened doesn't really matter but we had some shit going on in the business and we thought we'd done a good job of of protecting our staff from that. We got through it and then afterwards I was chatting with one of them and they said what happened? What do you mean? And they said we all knew that there was something wrong and we wanted to help but you didn't share with us you didn't give us the opportunity to help the business for like to to solve that problem and and I think that was a big learning for me and because we thought we were doing the right thing in protecting but they knew that there was something big going on and they wanted to help but they didn't even feel that they could come to us and offer. So I think sometimes we just don't give our team if you've really got that culture and you've got that team that really care. I think sometimes we just don't give them enough credit and enough opportunity to to step in and step up.
SPEAKER_03Percent and and I do I do know that you know one of the most painful emotions is betrayal right like there is there if you've ever experienced it it's like man this like burns to the depth of my soul and that is one of our greatest fears in vulnerability is that but if I give them this much of information, what if they betray me, right? And am I saying like just be completely open and no guardrails. No, no it's it's like how people are using AI right now. For heaven's sake let's get some governance right like so I'm not saying be willy-nilly right I'm saying that you know hire well work to hire well and be honest about the implication of like hey I'm gonna share this with you but this is big like if you if you don't act appropriately in this trust this this is dismissal right like I think be open about the fact that like if you're gonna choose to do this be very clear this kind of information I'm giving you is not something your level usually gets but I love that story because we do we do the same thing with our kids right they we think they're not picking up on whatever is going down and it's like so so I think yes give people a chance I think it also buys well for getting peers you know your same level peers in other businesses and making sure you're connecting with them and talking it through but but question question what's in your bucket that you can't share. And maybe it's time to go back through that and think about you know how could I give a little bit more and would I get would I get a better space?
SPEAKER_01Would I see people open up yeah the other thing I'd say on that was we learnt through experience that if you if you don't present some information about an issue or a topic or share, they're making stuff up anyway. Oh yes we're creative humans because human human nature is you're you're gonna you need you need to understand why this is happening. So if you don't know the truth behind it you're just gonna make shit up and that generally is way worse than the real truth.
SPEAKER_03100% I love the examples they send around where I don't know if you've ever seen them they're like emails that only have so many letters to a word and it's amazing how your brain can still read it right because we're we're literally we can be like oh that's missing this letter that's missing this we do that anyway right you're giving us this cryptogram right and it's like these are the pieces but and we're gonna fill in the gas because our brain needs a continuous story. But you're right absolutely it's like I've had that with my daughter we've cut something and and what we've you know finally been able to kind of reveal she's like well I thought it was this I'm like holy crap that's like a Stephen Kane novel. No that's not nearly as bad as it really was right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah like this this client that recently had a big customer effectively terminate the contract within 24 hours of that notification coming through we had an all-team meeting and said to the guys we've got this notification we don't know what it all means yet but clearly they don't want to do business with us anymore and put it out there straight away and I said that is the right thing to do and it was great everyone was no stress because rumors get around really quickly right oh what's going on here why aren't they not why are they not ringing anymore or why are we not allowed to do this and that that's a a great trust in your team and we did exactly that. We don't know exactly what's gonna happen yet but right now there's no impact business as usual we're just not dealing with air tickets. We'll get back to you as soon as we know more and it took literally took three weeks to sort it all out and yeah it's all and everyone's happy and now now we know when you know no one lost their job and everyone's got a bit of extra time we just got to get a few more clients. So the sales guys have committed and everyone's on the same page. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03And it's almost like it can't even be your own process. It's sort of like a mandate anymore because as we talked before we started recording the world is so connected right now everything shares you like you have no idea like who somebody knows on social at that you don't it sounds so crazy but you're just you never know how it's gonna get out there. It's gonna and it's gonna be so much faster than it was before. So it's just like this this isn't really like you're allowed to live by a different set of rules. You have to be transparent on something like that, right? Because it's people are going to find it out.
SPEAKER_01And it's so interesting we had this with our situation is the communication if you have an agreement with a client and you decide to part company right we're talking about us informing our team well the chances of the client telling their team what's going on are about zero to nothing. Like it's just it bewilders me that and this to happen this scenario the CEO made it an executive decision bang this is happening didn't even tell his own team. So they're ringing up tronologue tickets and we've been put on a service hold and it's like mind boggling you know but it happens so that's not a place anyone wants to work yeah that you're like yes and I'm one more reason I'm good that we're done with that process. Yeah we're super clean we've done everything 100% right and we looked after our team and yeah and let's move onwards and upwards yeah like like just for the people out there listening just yeah we always say that your core values how you run your business and look after your team they should apply to your clients and your suppliers so you've got this common thread where you've got trust and accountability and and you value each other's time and and you respect each other. And when that when the relationship's off either with an employer a supplier or a client you just you can't let that thing just fester away. Do some work and if you can repair it and find out what's going on how can we make this better but don't just ignore it and push it in the corner. Because yeah you've got three sets of clients your internal your suppliers are in a way clients because you know or you're their client so you still need a very strong relationship there and it all needs to be in harmonic synchrony.
SPEAKER_03Yeah had someone say to me once like Melissa you're you're the same person like whether I see you on stage or you just like don't you don't aren't different and I don't have the energy to keep track of three personalities. Right like I it's just it's just easier. I had I had a boss like that in my early life who was a different person regardless depending on where you saw him and I'm fucking more than three he was just so different and it was it was so unnerving it was you were it was just yeah who are we getting today yeah yes exactly and and so yeah I can't unfortunately I am who I am so it's just I think it's a lot easier.
SPEAKER_01It's much easier to be honest and consistent.
SPEAKER_02Yes 100% 100% okay I'm gonna have to call it because we are world truly at time Melissa thank you again thanks for joining us thanks for giving up your time early start for you no I appreciate it very much I'm probably better on this end than I was like on the on the back end of things.
SPEAKER_03So thank you for the late start on a on nearly a weekend. So I greatly appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01That's fine then I got to say that your internet works much better in the summer than the winter.
SPEAKER_03Just saying things are not nearly as frozen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah those bits through the air there those little satellite things they got to go through clouds and sleet and hail and it all impacts it. Yeah it all impacts it.
SPEAKER_03That's actually just smooths the trip, right? And slide on through.
SPEAKER_02Nick, thank you as well.
SPEAKER_01My pleasure.
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