Episode 90: Bullet Train

Erick and Rich discuss DarcyIQ and Titan, two companies whose rapid progress in AI for managed services underscores why MSPs need to take AI seriously ASAP, plus three tips for scaling your business without adding headcount. Then they’re joined by Arlin Sorensen of ConnectWise to discuss why MSPs need to think now about the legacy they’ll eventually leave behind, and start planning for that someday today. And finally, one last thing: a few easy ways to become a Guinness World Records holder.

Discussed in this episode:

General Catalyst’s Latest AI Bet Is in IT

New AI Platform DarcyIQ Automates Deal Flow and Accelerates Win Rates for B2B Services Companies

IT Nation Evolve peer groups

Signup form for Arlin’s private daily morning email list that covers faith, family, and business

For information on Arlin’s success to significance peer groups and legacy planning, email [email protected]

Guinness World Records turns 70 – and highlights some unclaimed records

Some guests on this podcast are clients of Channel Mastered. Compensation plays no part in their appearance or the content of the discussion unless the episode they appear on is a “bonus episode” explicitly labeled as sponsored.

 

Transcript:

Rich: [00:00:00] And 3, 2, 1. Blastoff, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the MSP Chat podcast. Your weekly visit with two talking heads, talking with you about the services, strategies, and success tips you need to make it big and manage services. My name is Rich Freeman. I’m Chief analyst at Channel Mastered, the organization of responsible for the show.

I am joined this week as I am every week by your other co-host, our CEO and chief strategist, channel Mastered. His name is Erick Simpson. And I’m not gonna ask you how you’re doing ’cause I know,

Erick: let’s just call it on the mend, rich on the mend. And yeah. So I’ve been out a few days from the office with, something that took me down because, you can’t burn the candle at all ends [00:01:00] and expect just to keep on going forever. So it’s a funny thing, rich, if you don’t take time to rest, your body will force you to take time to rest and recover. Nature’s way of telling you to slow down, isn’t it?

Yeah. Slowly getting back into the mix. And excited for this episode of the MSP Chat podcast.

Rich: Let’s let’s plunge right into our story of the week. It’s actually two stories, both of which I am going to be writing about in my blog channel, holic, which you can find at www channel Holic News. They are unrelated to one another, but they add up to a theme that maybe familiar to regular listeners and viewers of the show here.

Item number one, I at thanks to our mutual friend Dave s Sobel with the Business of Tech podcast, I discovered a company called Darcy iq which is an AI company for really service providers of any kind, but very much MSPs, and they have this new. MCP interface into Kaseya.

Anytime I hear about something like [00:02:00] that, I get interested. Had an opportunity to speak with the CTO responsible for that product yesterday. And the MCP interface into Kaseya. Very interesting. We’ve spoken before about that’s where the future of interfaces it, it lies in managed services, but the tool itself that they’ve built is really interesting.

It basically, they designed it to allow an MSP to go from lead to deal. In an hour, theoretically, and they demoed a lot of this to me, Erick. They, using ai, they can go out and find leads for you online using a lot of the techniques with LinkedIn that you talk about when you do your session or they’ve totally automated that they’ll do research on the companies that they find for you when you are on the call with the customer.

The AI is anticipating questions that the customer is going to ask or hearing questions they have asked. It’s feeding you answers, it’s prompting you with questions you should ask that will [00:03:00] maybe move the conversation along and move the decision along. It’ll generate a complete PowerPoint based proposal for you.

And I saw one it they look really great. It’ll do that for you automatically in moments ba so a, a sort of soup to nuts ai generated lead sales process. Interesting kind of stuff. What’s particularly interesting about it to me though? So they initially developed this for internal use.

This is a product that was created by a company called Innovative Solutions. They’re a big AWS services managed services partner. They created something to automate sales and marketing. They realized it’s a product. They have spent about a year and a half starting from nothing. Slowly turning this into what it is now, but when they made the decision to productize it, that was just nine months ago, Erick.

And they’ve gone from something that was really not ready for use outside the company to something that is now available for use in nine months. It’s a sign of what you can do with the [00:04:00] tools out there and the LLMs. If you’ve got even a little bit of expertise, you can do really big interesting, sophisticated things very quickly, which moves us on to unrelated story number two.

A few weeks back I saw an article on the Wall Street Journal about a company called Titan, MSP Titan. Ms. P is this brand new they’re calling it a holding company. Essentially. It’s a roll up for MSPs. This one, instead of being backed by private equity is backed by Venture Capital, specifically General Catalyst, which is one of the best known venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.

The company was co-founded by people who have on their resume, time spent at scale. Ai. The company Meta just bought Waymo, apple snap X. There are people on the team from Google and Vanta and all. So this is a real sort of hardcore ai skilled Silicon Valley team of people. And they are in, along with General Catalyst investing in this idea [00:05:00] that using really sophisticated ai, you can take a good services company and they’re all obviously all in on managed services.

You can take a good MSP and turn it into a great MSP relatively quickly. And the, this, this is sen and I won’t even get into the details, basically, of the AI stack that they are building, but they’re not going out and just taking this third party tool and that third party tool and stitching it together.

They are building on top of commercial LLMs and so on their own to begin service desk automation stack using ai. They have longer term plans to automate sales and marketing, Darcy iq is doing. This is what you are going to be dealing with. For the MSPs in our audience.

This is what you are going to be co competing with increasingly in the future. We’ve spoken before about new charter giant MSP Rollup. Last year they went out and bought a company called Orchestrate ai. Just [00:06:00] to use it as a sort of in-house AI lab. They’re not building solutions for customers.

At least now they’re just getting really good at capitalizing on AI’s power to run the business more efficiently and effectively and deliver better outcomes for the customer. ’cause a big part of the Titan MSP idea is it’s not just that we’re gonna save money and make technicians more productive and efficient, we’re gonna deliver better outcomes, higher customer satisfaction.

So Darcy IQ shows us how fast you can get from concept to reality. If you know what you’re doing and utilize some of the tools out there, tighten MSP tells you what you as an MSP without that Silicon Valley pedigree are gonna be competing against. And I guess the combined moral of the story, Erick, basically is, if there’s anyone in the audience here still just kicking the tires around, what role is AI gonna play in my strategy going forward?

Internally as well as externally. And what I do for customers, I really cannot [00:07:00] emphasize enough the degree to which speed matters here. And I’ll just close quickly. I did an interview with somebody on a totally unrelated AI related matter just a little while ago, and he’s saying, I would tell you to get on board the train, but you’ll think old fashioned train, this is like a bullet train.

It’s moving that fast and get on board.

Erick: Yeah. Rich. It’s light speed. It’s not lights speed. It’s like warp 20. And not only are these large organizations building out these AI tools and integrating them into service models to compete against MSPs, but we know, many MSPs that are also either launching or building ai solutions internally.

To grow their businesses and to compete in the market. And I know one MSP, who’s a client of ours that is also, that has purchased two small AI [00:08:00] firms and they’re doing roll-ups of other MSPs. So AI everywhere. That’s the story. And I think ai rapidly AI everywhere, AI rapidly and AI aware.

So we go from awareness now and we’ve talked on the program Rich many times about what’s coming down the pike, trying to help MSPs navigate and figure out what’s going on. Remember, it only seems six months ago when we were talking about sounds like the industry and MSPs are still trying to figure out how to monetize ai.

It’s only been six months and now they’re figuring it out and we’re talking about don’t miss the boat, get on the gravy train. It’s a bullet train. So hurry up and get on. There’s also those folks rich that are on the other side that say, Hey, this is a bubble. We’re gonna see it, we’re gonna see it, come down or decrease.

But as you and I both know Rich, knowing the folks [00:09:00] that we know and being connected, and you being our chief analyst staying on top of all this stuff for us, this is one of those industry changing things, right? So it’s like cloud, it’s like cybersecurity, but according to our friend Jamie Bain, it’s even more than those things.

AI is going to dominate for the next 20 years. I. You and I use AI all the time for what we do, and I still feel, whenever I hear something like this, I’m like, man, we’re not going fast enough. What can I do differently to catch up? But it has to be measured and you have to adopt it sensibly and govern it properly.

But man the signs are out there. Don’t want to be the last, we may not wanna be the first, but we certainly don’t wanna be the medal of the pack either. We want to be taking advantage of that first mover opportunity and getting [00:10:00] behind some of these things, which, leads into a little bit of my tip of the week.

Rich: Aha. You have outdone me on the segue game this week. Erick. Let’s wait no longer. Let’s get into your tip of the week. I gotcha. I

Erick: gotcha, rich. Okay, so this is all, we have this conversation about. The scenario or the situation that MSPs are in today’s market where it’s, they’ve gotta scale, they’ve gotta grow, but hiring new folks is costly and expensive and keeping your existing folks is also challenging and difficult.

So a few tips on scaling as much as possible with the headcount that you have, and then being ready for that next hire because you’ve taken care of some of the inefficiencies in the organization and your barriers to profitability that allow you to compete for [00:11:00] those folks while rewarding your existing team to keep them from looking elsewhere.

Some of this stuff may sound like, we’ve talked about it a bunch of times, but rich best practices or best practices, we call him as we see him, automating repetitive tasks. So using integrating platforms, we’ve got four Ps in, or in any organization I call ’em the four Ps.

It’s people, platforms, processes and products or products and services. So I cheated there a little bit, right? So the platforms is this. First tip is how do we integrate and eliminate unnecessary platforms? How do we consolidate but integrate them tightly? And then how do we, how can we automate repetitive tasks with scripting using ai?

There’s the AI connection there, rich and workflow automations to handle routine ticketing and reporting and [00:12:00] messaging and alerting and things like that. You and I have talked a lot on the program, especially recently about the moves. PSA vendors and some platform and marketplace distributors are doing to integrate AI to do just this thing.

And I know in the in the article about catalyst the they are, I read that they are targeting to reduce ticket handling by human beings by 30%. So this talks to that, how can we automate as much as possible to reduce that human load to allow us to scale a little bit broader with our tech team?

Number two, efficient scheduling. I was having an email conversation with a client in MSP just yesterday asking, Hey they were asking me, is it, I’m hearing a lot from my peer groups and things like that. [00:13:00] We should only provide technicians the tickets that they should work on rather than, putting them in a queue and asking them to, prioritize them based on need and do it themselves.

And I said, absolutely, we should deliver the tickets to the technicians so that they can do that. Which only they can do is to, solve, resolve those tickets. Meantime to resolution is what it’s all about. Maintaining and exceeding SLA is what it’s all about, to keep those clients happy. And if we’re asking them to do their own dispatching or cherry picking or deciding what’s more important than the next thing, then you know, they tend to be humans, right?

So that’s the people component, where people are involved and it’s outside of a automated process that a platform handles for you, or a dedicated service dispatcher, which is my preferred method of doing it, making sure that we have an air traffic controller. That’s making sure that they’re tracking all the birds in the air, the tickets, making sure that they’re landing at the gates [00:14:00] correctly the resources, the technicians and moving gates, me moving gates around when things are getting overloaded and managing that.

So the technicians are doing what they do. The brain surgeon doesn’t do the patient check-in. They don’t do the anesthesiologist job. They do the brain surgery. They come in they do the surgery, they’re out and everybody else does everything else. That’s what we need to think about when we’re assigning these tickets to the technicians.

Number three, outsource high repeat or low value activities. If you can outsource some of your knock stuff, if you can outsource some of your tier one service desk stuff to allow you to scale, that may be an option for you to to scale much more broadly and depend on another. Resource or entity that is really good at doing that low value or high repetitive or noisy stuff to allow your team to focus on the most [00:15:00] important things.

It’s just like when we talk about co-managed IT rich, we walk in and we say, Hey, let us take some of that noise away from your team so you can work on high value things. Let’s shrink some of that Kool-Aid too. And the last one for extra credit, let’s fire our underperforming customers annually. Let’s take a look at our entire client list.

Let’s look at our CDNF customers and identify the ones that just aren’t profitable for us anymore, or aren’t growing. They may not be, noisy or PTAs or anything like that. But once you start doing this on an annual basis, rich, I’ve talked about this before you’ve gotta think about. How to make more room for A and B clients so you can stop serving some of these even C customers over time.

You want everybody to be A and Bs, whatever that definition of A and B is to you. But to me, it’s a client that trusts us, that does what we ask them to do, that is [00:16:00] growing and that we can continue to help them achieve their business mission and vision and become a strategic partner rather than a technical vendor or technology vendor.

Rich: I I swear to the people in our audience here, this was not planned, or at least it wasn’t on my part. I don’t know if you have some clever ulterior motive behind your tip of the week, Erick, but I’ll take this moment to do a shameless plug. Basically, because you’re talking about scaling without adding headcount and AI is one part of one way to do that, but it is certainly something that will help you scale without any adding headcount.

We’re recording this on September 11th, one week from today, September 18th. You and I will be moderating a live webinar hosted by the folks at IT Glue. About AI powered Ms. P success, and we’ll be talking to three MSPs who are using AI to automate and reduce costs and create, we, and they’ll get into some really specific things that they’re [00:17:00] doing.

And so I’ll put a registration link in the show notes or something for folks who are interested. But if you want you wanna hear some very specific real world applications of some of what Erick is talking about here I encourage you to to join us on that September 18th, 10:00 AM Pacific time, coming up in a week’s time.

Erick: Yeah. Hope to see you there.

Rich: Speaking of things that are coming up if you do succeed in scaling the business without adding head count, you you, you’re gonna you, you do get on the AI bullet train. Obviously all of that is going to require a great deal of time and effort and thought.

All of which could distract your attention from the idea of what legacy are you gonna leave behind when you’re not running this business anymore? What, what are you leaving for your family? What are you leaving for your employees and your customers? What mark have you made on the world?

All these big sort of existential questions we’re all in our lives, day-to-day lives, often too busy to ask them. But we’re [00:18:00] gonna take a quick break here, and when we come back on the other side, we’re gonna be joined by the great Arlen Sorenson of ConnectWise to talk about legacy and what it means and how to build and plan for it, and why you should be carving out some time in your life to do that.

Arlin will be joining us. Just moments from now. After the break, stick around folks. We’ll be right back

and welcome back to part two of this episode of the MSP Chat podcast, our spotlight interview segment where we are pleased and I would say privileged to be joined by somebody. Both Erick and I have known for a long time, someone I’m guessing a lot of folks in our audience have known for a long time. His name is Arlan Sorenson.

He’s the vice president of Ecosystem Evangelism at ConnectWise. Arlan, welcome to the show.

Arlin: Hey, it’s great to be with you, rich and Erick. Looking forward to our conversation.

Rich: Likewise, darling. Like I [00:19:00] said, I imagine a lot of folks in the audience here are familiar with you, but for the three people in our audience who aren’t, let’s just kick things off.

Tell ’em a little bit about what you do now at ConnectWise, but also your background.

Arlin: Absolutely. Today I am an evangelist at ConnectWise and wake up every morning looking for ways to help partners reach their version of success. So I’m a resource to help partners leverage our tools, but more importantly learn how to run their business effectively.

And that includes not just the, their business, but also their life and legacy, which I’m excited to talk about today. I started back in 1985, so I’m an old guy in the industry for sure. And ran an MSP VAR business for the first 27 years. And then along the journey started HTG peer groups back in 2000 and ran that for 18 years before we sold it to ConnectWise.

And that’s how I became part of that organization. [00:20:00] And I just recently sold my Ag tech company, HTS Ag to the general manager that had been running it for me. So I’ve had three exits and you’re looking forward to my retirement, which is coming up next August.

Rich: August. I did not know that. Okay.

There you go. So you’re in in the final 11 months basically

Arlin: 344 days. Congratulations,

Erick: Arlin. What a legacy you’re leaving behind.

Arlin: Seven 70 years is long enough to be working, so I’ll still be doing stuff. Obviously my wife can’t take me 24 7, but I’m gonna slow down some and not have to go to all the meetings that seem to be part of the job today.

Rich: Indeed. Indeed. You obviously have done a ton of thinking about the topic we’re gonna be discussing here, which is legacy. I suspect a lot of people in the audience a lot of MSPs out there in general haven’t thought much about legacy. And some of them later come to regret the fact that they didn’t think about this.

[00:21:00] Very much define legacy as you see it, and then talk a little bit about something you’ve spoken about before, the difference between intentional and unintentional legacy.

Arlin: Yeah, legacy is really all about what we’re gonna leave behind, right? But it’s not something that happens when we die.

That’s one of the misconceptions about legacy. Everybody thinks legacy. That’s what happens when you die. Death triggers some of the aspects of legacy, but the reality is that legacy is created while we live. That’s why it’s so important that life planning is also a part of the way that we look at things.

’cause how we live every day is what’s gonna determine that legacy that we’re gonna leave and it will outlive us. So day by day, we we create the legacy that we’re gonna lead. Now the real trick is that we want to have intention in how we live so that legacy is what we wanna have happen.

And that, we all leave a legacy. It’s not [00:22:00] a question of if there’ll be one, there will be a legacy that every one of us will leave behind. The question is, do we wanna shape it or do we wanna let the government in some cases or other people shape what that legacy turns out to be? And I’ve seen very positive legacies and I’ve seen some really negative legacies where there was no preparation.

They just kicked the can down the road to the next generation. Almost always that ends poorly because money gets in the middle of things and causes people to do things that you wouldn’t expect. And things really go off the rails and what could have been a beautiful legacy really turns into a very negative one.

Quickly,

Erick: Arlen, we’re talking about kinda legacy planning and things like that, but I wanna unpack a couple of things that you mentioned there. About how life guides that legacy or informs that legacy. So you also encourage MSPs to not only have a [00:23:00] legacy plan, but a life plan and a business plan.

How do all those things connect up together to, determine that legacy that that we leave behind?

Arlin: Yeah so our approach to it is that, the legacy plan is our long-term kind of. End in mind kind of approach. What are we trying to accomplish? What do we want to be left behind?

How do we want people to remember us? All those kind of things that create the legacy, which is a long-term strategy. We encourage people then to create three annual plans every year. Obviously a business plan for your business, but also a life plan. What am I gonna do with the 168 hours I get every week to, to create the legacy that I wanna leave behind?

How do I use that time wisely? Because that’s the one thing we have that we can’t make more of is time. And so a life plan really helps us focus in on [00:24:00] what we’re gonna do with that time, how we’re going to spend that with our family and friends and things that matter to us. And then that third plan that we encourage is a leadership plan.

How am I gonna grow as a leader myself? How am I gonna invest in my team to help them grow? And those three plans are all plans. We encourage people to write annually. So it’s a, it’s three one year plans that when you add ’em all up, are gonna create the legacy that you’re gonna leave behind. Because the legacy is more than just your life and the outcome of your life.

It also is your business. We create a business legacy as well. And so we encourage people to think about creating those one year plans and as they stack together, that’s what will generate that legacy.

Rich: So we keep talking about the legacy plan. Let’s dive into that a little bit and get more specific.

What is a legacy plan and what should go into it? What are the [00:25:00] components of a good solid legacy plan? Yeah so there, there’s a number of areas to really consider. Foundationally, there’s some legal things that are really important that you want to get in place. A will, a power of attorney, a healthcare power of attorney things like that, that are foundational, that will set up the future for success.

Arlin: And particularly if you’re, if you have minor children at home, you know who’s gonna be the guardian in the event that, that both parents are gone. There’s some really important things to deal with that are based on kind of the legal side of things. And these do trigger at death typically.

But there’s also a number of other areas that you need to think about. Things like your generosity. What are you gonna, what are you gonna do with your money? Or how do you want that handled down the road? And do you have charities that you want to give it to?

Are you gonna give it to your family? What’s [00:26:00] gonna happen to your assets that are left? The will helps with that. But, in a lot of cases, people are using trusts and other vehicles to, to put money into or assets into to create a longer lasting effect. A lot of parents that we talk to today they’re concerned about just handing money over to kids and they’ve seen that blow up too many times.

How you deal with your money is a part of the thought process. There there’s just a ton of areas that, that you need to think through and be prepared to, to really talk about.

Erick: So Arlen, I know, you’re a big proponent about, accountability and execution.

Haven’t known you for as long as I’ve known you and learned from you the, it’s one thing for, entrepreneurs and MSPs to say, I’m gonna, build out this legacy plan, business plan life plan. But can you share a couple of best [00:27:00] practices that can, guide these folks into the action that it takes and the accountability to actually, realize the outcome of these plans?

’cause that’s tends to be a challenge, right? Where we’re good at making a lot of plans and all that, but life gets in the way. Can you give us some advice on how we can stay focused and make sure that we’re actually executing the activities and the oversight that help us realize the benefits of this planning?

Arlin: Yeah, the. One of the key things is you need to get a good set of advisors around you. The reality is that it’s complicated, and a lot of people run away from planning legacy because it’s just overwhelming. And so you really have to, you have to find people that you can bring around you to help you prepare and be ready to really make the decisions that are ahead.

This is not the kind of thing that you’re gonna sit down and, a couple hours figure out. [00:28:00] I always say that legacy planning is, it’s a lifetime journey, right? We’re never done because things change. Life happens. And so we have to be able to make transitions and changes. What that looks like.

And so there’s a lot of things to consider, but you need great resources around you to help you be prepared. And, the other thing that’s really important is to have the right conversations. It’s amazing to me that couples typically don’t talk about the things that really matter, unfortunately.

We get caught up talking about the tactics for the day and the things that we need to accomplish. And, we don’t ever get around to really talking about the things that are critical and important. And legacy is one of those topics. It’s not fun. People don’t like to talk about the fact that they’re gonna die.

The reality is I can almost guarantee you with a hundred percent accuracy that it is gonna happen to you. And so [00:29:00] it’s much better to prepare and be ready, other areas that, that, need to be talked about. Insurance and do we need it? And how much if so, what about tax preparation?

This is another area for advisors to be involved and help provide guidance. There’s a lot of things that you can do to avoid tax as part of a legacy plan. What are you gonna do with your digital media accounts? That’s one of the things that people don’t think about, they kinda live on beyond you.

I don’t know about you guys, but I have some dead friends that are on social media yet, and it’s a crazy thing. There’s a spiritual component to this too. So there, there’s a lot of things, Erick, that, that we just need to get communication about. And that’s the hardest part I think, of legacy planning is making the time and having those conversations first with our spouse, but then with our kids.

And there’s a lot to it that just needs to be brought into the open and have some honest [00:30:00] conversation.

Rich: Yeah. And beyond your spouse and your kids there’s also the people inside your organization. What kind of role does succession planning or even succession training inside your business play in the legacy planning process?

Arlin: It’s huge. Rich, especially, when we think about the business legacy side of things. So we talk about the two, two components of legacy. There’s the personal legacy and then there’s a business legacy. And succession planning is definitely a key part of that. But also, contingency planning.

What’s your disaster recovery plan look like in the event something goes wrong? There’s a number of areas around legality that, that should be part of a business legacy plan. And one of those is how do you get out of a partnership that’s not going the way you want it to.

That’s probably one of the biggest challenges I see. Everybody’s quick to get into a partnership, [00:31:00] but they haven’t thought about what’s gonna happen if we need to get out of it. And I’ve seen a number of business legacy issues around just there’s no plan for if the unexpected happens.

And that’s kinda what legacy planning is all about, is preparing for the unexpected. That’s why it’s important to, to do it now. A lot of people say I’m too young to worry about that. I’ve got a long time to live. And for most people, that’s turns out to be true. But I can share some significant horror stories of people that were unprepared and not ready for an unexpected event.

And it doesn’t even have to be death, it can be disability, it can be all kinds of things that can happen. It’s much better to be prepared because if you’re not prepared, somebody else is gonna have to pick up the pieces and try to put it together. And it will never come out as good as it would have had you taken the time and put the effort into to create that plan.

Erick: Arlene, I [00:32:00] appreciate your insight into kind of, building a team of advisors to help you, maintain accountability and bounce ideas off of, and. Nobody knows everything. So having experts on hand to help you through this is really critical, I think. But how do we know when our legacy plan is working and, how do we get it back on track if it goes off track?

So how do you monitor, ar how do you RMM, your legacy plan, Arlen?

Arlin: It’s gotta be reviewed right? On a regular basis. And a lot of people, if they go through the process and they really, get advisors, they put a plan in place. It’s based on what they know today.

And we all know that, things are gonna change. Best practice with a legacy plan is as you do those annual li life leadership and business plans, you’re also looking at the overall legacy [00:33:00] plan and doing an annual review of that. And that means you’ve gotta communicate with your advisors and with your family and others that are impacted to really make sure that it’s on track and it will have to be adjusted over time.

There’s no question about it. Life happens, life changes. And people get older and their circumstances are different and the needs are different. And so it, it’s gotta just have a very specific rhythm of review to make sure that everything’s on track. A well done life plan grows year after year as more and more information becomes available.

And so it’s a discipline really to make sure that you’re reviewing and talking with the people that it impacts and can help you make sure you’re on the right path. Things change in terms of the legality side of things. Laws are passed and things change. And so there, there’s a lot to just making sure that you’re updating [00:34:00] and keeping it current because it will continually change, year over year.

Rich: Are Arron, where in your experience are people most likely to struggle with legacy planning? Either in creating the plan or executing the plan? What are maybe the most common issues, roadblocks people run into and what advice can you give for either avoiding those issues or getting past them?

Arlin: Most of us have the superhero syndrome, right? We’re not gonna die. Nothing bad’s gonna happen to us. So we don’t need to even think about this till we’re, 80 years old, that’s one of the first steps that, that I find as a blocker. People just are unwilling to accept the fact that it will happen, or they just won’t think about it.

They won’t think about what it means to actually die and what that will do to the world around them. That’s step one. The second step is then, [00:35:00] one of the most basic foundational pieces is a will. And the number of people that do not have any kind of a will is staggering to me.

Because, that is one of the guiding pieces of what’s gonna happen with the outcome of your life in terms of, your stuff. We all accumulate a lot of stuff in our lifetimes. But we should care about what’s gonna happen to that, or we shouldn’t at least dump it on our kids or somebody else to have to deal with.

We should have a strategy and a plan for that. And making the time and going through the thought process of what will happen to your stuff and getting a will in place is important, the power of attorney and healthcare power of attorney are both critical documents in terms of, if you’re unable to make your own decisions.

And those things again are, they’re hard for us to think about and, who do I want to empower to pull the plug if that’s what needs to happen. It’s not fun stuff [00:36:00] to think through, rich. So people, they just avoid it. They don’t only wanna talk about it. And, the problem with that is that somebody is gonna have to deal with this if we’re unwilling to, we’re just pushing it onto somebody else.

And, in, in my personal experience, my dad was a planner and I was able to convince him to, put things in order and he and mom did a really good job of thinking ahead and having the conversations and getting things set up. So when he passed. It was really a non-event in terms of legacy and those kind of things.

Things just happened as planned and, we didn’t have to probate anything because he had it all put in trust and it was really a seamless experience, and we had the opportunity to grieve his death and celebrate that without having to think about, oh my goodness, I’ve got all these different pieces that I’ve gotta try to figure out and work with my family on.

I had a different experience with my [00:37:00] bride’s father who didn’t trust anybody, basically. And so he didn’t want any lawyers or anybody else involved. And when he passed away, it became a treasure hunt to try to figure out what was in place, if anything. And in many cases, there wasn’t anything in place.

And so he passed away on a Sunday. I spent the entire week in his office just trying to figure out what was go, what, what was going on. Didn’t really have time other than to go to the funeral to really grieve his passing and celebrate his life. And then it was back into how am I gonna figure out how to help his wife work through this stuff?

It can be so much of a gift to just plan ahead, to have it put in place. If you love the people around you, you need to put a legacy plan in place so that they’re not having to try to figure out what your intentions were, [00:38:00] what assets you have, and all those kind of things. Because it’s difficult.

It’s really difficult.

Erick: Yeah. Arlen, I had a similar experience with my mother-in-law’s passing. Everything was in trust. There was a plan in place, and like you said it’s such a, a relief to those that are left behind, to not have to deal with all of that and be able to, like you said, grieve and celebrate their life rather than worrying about, detective and uncover all this stuff.

So I, that resonates with me a lot. So Arlin as an, as wired as an engineer, right? I think, okay, this sounds like it could be like a project plan, right? So what, how do we set up milestones and how do we know when we achieve those milestones? So if I’m thinking like I normally think it’s okay, it’s a big project plan.

What does success look like for a legacy plan? And how do you are you setting specific milestones to say, by this [00:39:00] point I should have this stuff done, and by this point I should have this stuff done. Is that how we look at measuring. Our progress. And then when things go off track, what does failure look like?

So what does success look like, and then what does failure look like from your perspective?

Arlin: Yeah. So success looks like having the communication and conversations with those that are gonna be impacted and having everybody on the same page, working with advisors, then to set up the structures that will enable those outcomes.

It’s Stephen Covey’s Begin with the end in mind, mindset. And then working with advisors to put those things in place and then having a regular rhythm of check-in and making sure that you’re staying on track and, as life changes, you make the adjustments and adaptation.

I’m glad to share some of the tools we have that to help people think through and [00:40:00] monitor how they’re doing with their legacy plan. ‘Cause there’s a lot to it. There’s no question about that. But it’s not it’s like eating an elephant, right?

You eat it one bite at a time. Once you put that foundational layer in place, you just build from there and adjust as life changes. And you may start out with a very simple will because, as a young person you really don’t have anything to speak up. And as you run business and mature and grow and create assets that has, that will change what that plan looks like.

So the project plan is really, I tell people you should plan on a couple of years to really put the foundations all in place. That doesn’t mean you should procrastinate, for the first year and 12 months or 11 months, but it takes time. There’s no question you gotta talk to a lot of people.

But get that thing in place and then just get on a regular rhythm of annual updates. Some of those [00:41:00] will require you to go back to your advisors and ask for help in, in adjusting. And then other things, you’ll just be able to make changes yourself in terms of what you’re thinking and communicate that clearly.

You need to have a family meeting at least once a year to talk through, what’s in place and people get excited. I don’t necessarily want to tell my kids, how much money we have or any of that. You don’t have to be specific in that regard. But you just need to talk about the conversation.

And one of the things I think that people think wrongly about around legacy is that everything should be divided equally among whoever the, heirs are gonna be. Fair does not mean equal from my perspective. But those conversations need to happen while you’re alive because once you’re dead, everybody thinks fair means equal.

We’re just gonna take it and divide it by however many people it’s supposed to go to. And that’s how it works. That almost always leaves very [00:42:00] unhappy people because some people put a lot more effort into the relationships or whatever, spend a lot more time caring for their aging parents. But you, if you don’t deal with those things while you’re alive than your heirs have to work through it when you’re not there.

And that really can be divisive. And I’ve seen so many families that have blown up because, people didn’t get treated the way they expected.

Rich: Arlin, you’ve been through multiple exits yourself, a lot of MSPs who have exited. What advice could you give? What separates the MSPs who really thrive after an exit from the ones who don’t, and how does legacy planning maybe play into that and increase your odds of thriving?

Arlin: That’s the number one question I get about peer groups. Rich is what separates best in class from the, the other 75%. And, as [00:43:00] I’ve observed co companies for the last 40 plus years, it’s planning there’s no question in my mind that the difference between best in class and the rest is the people that are best in class, they have a plan.

And if they’ve got a de, a discipline around business planning, the odds are much better that they’re also gonna have discipline around a legacy plan, a life plan, a leadership plan. That’s what separates those that are, do, do well from the rest. If you just get up in the morning and you’re not sure why you’re up or what you’re gonna do that’s a problem.

You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna achieve nearly at the level of somebody that’s got a plan and is executing that plan. One, one of the challenges that I see is that, that people, they aren’t educated in how to plan or what that looks like, and they’re unwilling to make the effort to learn and to grow and to become good at it.

But that’s really the big [00:44:00] differentiator from my perspective is businesses that lead the pack. Have a plan. They execute that plan, they review it regularly, they’ve got discipline and so that, that’s really the key to success. Now, one of them, one of the things that, that we also do is we run a peer group program called S to S, which stands for success to significance for people that have exited and have transitioned away from their business.

And the amazing thing to me has been when people sell their company or transition from their company, more often than not, a lot of ’em really struggle with what to do next. What does life look like after business? We run a company for 20, 30, 40 years and that’s our life. And all of a sudden we wake up the next day after a transition and it’s like, what am I gonna do?[00:45:00]

My inbox is empty. The phone’s not ringing. I’m not talking to all my employees and customers anymore. And, they’re wandering in the wilderness basically without any direction or knowledge of what they should do next. And so best in class, you get ready for that before you transition. You do things today to, evaluate some hobbies that you might want to do.

You be, you work on your relationships. We did an exercise with 20 couples that had transitioned out of their business. And we asked them to make a list of their very close friends that they spend time with regularly and have a deep relationship. And if they had a problem in the middle of the night, they could pick up the phone and call these people and they know they’d be there, instantly.

I was amazed at the number of people that didn’t have any names on that sheet of paper because we’re so consumed with [00:46:00] running a company that we really kinda let our friendships go away on the outside and again, when the inside is not there anymore because we’ve transitioned, we’re isolated, we’re back to the way we were when we were running a business.

Only we don’t have any people around us. And we’ve gotta prepare for that. If we want to have success with legacy because things are gonna change. And we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta focus on relationships and people. That’s the one constant that we can have, but we’ve gotta work at it.

And I find a lot of very successful entrepreneurs that are miserable after they transition because they’ve lost their identity and their purpose, and they’re not sure why they get up in the morning anymore. We can prevent that with some planning and preparing, but it’s a reality that I see over and over again,

Erick: and this is a pretty deep conversation.

Arlen, it’s resonating with me in a lot of ways. It’s almost [00:47:00] that, that live to work versus work to live yep. If I were to simplify it to the very what I’m getting here and Yeah. I can, I resemble a lot of, some of what you just shared myself and so Arlen, if our listeners are, really interested and motivated to, begin this journey of developing, a legacy plan, a business plan, a lifeline, a leadership plan, what’s like step one?

If you were to advise somebody, here’s your first step, do this first. What could you share?

Arlin: First thing I would suggest is get in a peer group. Okay. And you need people around you that will help hold you accountable because this is not a simple thing. And you’ll find a thousand reasons why you don’t have time.

You don’t want to have the conversations. There’s so many excuses that you can come up with. You need people around you that will hold [00:48:00] you accountable. And peer groups, I think are a very important part of that potential solution. But, you gotta find good advisors and leverage them to help you, evolve has got, a planning methodology that we share with all of our peer group members that, that kind of guide you through those things. Your financial planners your personal attorney, those folks are really foundational and helping you identify the things you need for where you’re at today, because that changes right when you’re young and don’t necessarily have a lot of assets.

You’re not gonna need a trust or some of the other things that potentially you’ll need down the road as you’ve matured and grown what you’re doing. Picking the right people to be around you is really important. And for me that’s peer groups and advisors. And they’ll guide you through the process and help you identify what you do and don’t need to do right now based on your age and [00:49:00] kinda where you’re at in life.

But there are things that, that everybody needs as foundational pieces and those are pretty easy to get done. They aren’t real expensive. They take a little time, they take a little thinking, but put the foundation in place and then get in the rhythm of every year reviewing, updating, and going over things, communicating with your family and checking in with your advisors to update as needed.

Rich: Arwin, it is always a pleasure speaking with you. This was a particularly useful conversation. I really truly hope that the MSPs in our audience, everyone in our audience frankly heeds your very wise advice here. And doesn’t walk away from this podcast thinking Yeah, he’s right and not do anything about it.

Like we all really need to not just acknowledge this is good advice, but do something about it. For folks in the audience here who might like to get in touch with you, learn more about you maybe learn more about your thinking on legacy [00:50:00] planning, where would you point them?

Arlin: Yeah, they could reach out to me at arlin hornon.com which is my personal ministry address.

And I actually write a daily blog and talk about this and a whole lot of other topics. That goes out six days a week. I’ve been writing it since 2008. I’ve got tons of content that I’ve built and I’m glad to share with people. But if they reach out to me via email, I’m glad to, to connect and give ’em some information.

They can also reach out to a [email protected] and learn more about evolve peer groups and those things. Lots of ways to connect and lots of resources to help. You don’t have to do this by yourself in a vacuum. There’s tons and tons of resources available. There’s a lot of very talented advisors out there, but you do have to take some action.

And to your point, rich, a lot of people hear this conversation [00:51:00] and they say, I should do that someday. And someday never comes until it’s too late.

Rich: Arlan, thank you so much for making time and joining us here on the show. Speaking of connecting by the way, Erick and I will both see you face to face at IT Nation Connect.

In almost exactly two months actually from right now as we’re recording this. So we look forward to that. In the meantime, thanks again for joining us on the show, folks. Erick and I are gonna take a quick break right now. When we come back on the other side, we’re gonna share some final thoughts about Legacy and our conversation on that topic with Arlin.

Have a little fun wrap up the show, stick around. We’re gonna be right back

and welcome back to part three of this episode of the MSP Chat podcast. And Erick, I thank him for having the courage to be just a little bit of a bummer, right? He’s talking about a topic people don’t address, [00:52:00] they don’t discuss. Nobody really wants to think about it. And Arlan I would.

Contend is absolutely right that everyone should be thinking about it in and beyond managed services. And I, th those were wise words. Basically, as we said before th this is not an issue that will come into the lives of your employees and your family and your customers and so on after you pass.

This is something that you need to be thinking about and planning toward in, in, in the financial terms and beyond the financial terms today. And that’s. Why we wanted to have him on the show here is just to highlight to folks who are, focusing their attention on acquiring customers and servicing the existing ones, and investigating new vendors and solutions and business opportunities and so on.

Carve out a little time for this too because it’s important and you’ll thank yourself from the Great Beyond and a lot of people you leave Behind Will. Thank you for having done that. [00:53:00]

Erick: Yeah, rich really resonated with me when he told the story about the both sides of, what he had to deal with both sides of his family, where on the one hand, everything was handled and he and the family were able to grieve and not worry about these things.

And then on the other hand. The other story he told was where he basically spent the week before, the services, just, trying to figure things out and get things in place and wasn’t really able to grieve. That really resonated with me. And, we’ve had experiences in our family where, the person that had passed on had all of that stuff taken care of.

So I haven’t really experienced, the other side that Arlen shared. And, I, we’ve certainly as a family taken steps to make sure that a lot of that stuff is done, but I’m now going to recheck and make sure that everything is up to date and make sure that, we don’t burden the folks that we lead behind with having to deal with things that we should have taken [00:54:00] care of.

While we were still around.

Rich: And on that point, here’s my true confession for the audience. I I have not set a great example on what we’re talking about here. I’m 60 years old, Erick. I got my first really legally proper will and the powers of attorney and all the whole sort of set of estate planning documents.

I only created those last year, right? I was 59 years old when I finally took care of all that. And so I’m glad to say I have taken care of it now. But don’t feel bad if you’re in the audience and you haven’t done any of that yet. It could be worse. You could be me. Please get out there and take care of this.

Now it’s important.

Erick: Rich, both you and I are ahead of the, ahead of the curve according to Arlen’s metrics, stating how many folks beyond 60 don’t have that stuff taken care of. Yeah great session. Always great to catch up with, ar and hear from his wisdom.

Appreciate him.

Rich: So with that, folks, we [00:55:00] have time for just one last thing, and it comes to us from the publication that formerly was known as the Guinness Book of World Records. Everything is online these days, so it’s just called Guinness Worlds Records. Now they are actually celebrating their 70th anniversary, Erick.

And as part of the celebration they offered some opportunities for fans of Guinness World Records to become a world record holder. And it turns out, Erick, it is not that hard to become a world record holder. The here are some examples provided by Guinness. All you gotta do just to kick things off, all you gotta do is sit on a whoopee cushion a few times.

Because there is currently no world record holder for the most whoopee cushions sat on in one minute. You, that could be for some period of time. Just capture that on video and get it in there. How about this? How easy could this be? You just, you get a friend, you get your spouse the [00:56:00] most high fives in 30 seconds.

There is no world record holder for that Erick. That could be your chance to make a mark and tell your friends, boast to your friends and colleagues and family that I was until somebody else beat my high watermark, the world record holder for most high fives in 30 seconds,

Erick: leaving a different kinda legacy, I guess if you think about it that way, right?

Rich, look up something, right? Make up something, folks. Look in there, see what’s missing. Make something up and you could be a world record.

Rich: And by the way the high five thing is a lot easier than fastest time to ascend the height of Mount Everest by bicycle. See now that’s gonna take some work.

The high five, just do that.

Erick: Yeah. But that the Everest one takes planning and endurance and training. Yeah. I like the simpler ones. Hey, your name could be [00:57:00] in the Guinness Book of World Records folks. With

Rich: that, folks, we are outta time for you on this episode of the MSP Chat podcast. We thank you for joining us.

We’re gonna see you in a week’s time. Until then, I will just remind you, as I always do, this is both a video and an audio podcast, which means that if you are listening to us on audio, but you’d like to check us out on video, go to YouTube. You’ll find us there. If you’re watching us on YouTube, but you’re into audio podcasts, go to Google, apple, Spotify, wherever it is, you get your audio podcast.

You’re probably gonna find us there too. And wherever you find us, please subscribe, rate, review. It’s gonna help other people find and enjoy the show just like you do. This program is produced by the Great Russ Johns. It is edited by the great Riley Simpson. They’re part of the team with us here at Channel Mastered.

They can create a podcast for you if you’re interested in that. Podcasts, needless to say, are just one of the many much bigger, more strategic things that we do for our clients. At Channel Mastered, you can get that big picture of all the services we offer. [00:58:00] www.channel mastered.com. Channel Mastered has a sister organization called MSP Mastered.

That’s Erick working one-to-one with MSPs to help them grow and optimize their business. You can learn more about that at www.mspMastered.com. Once again, we thank you very much for joining us. Folks, we’ll see you in a week. Until then, please remember, as we always urge you to, you can’t spell channel without [00:59:00] MSP.