Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / Grow Your Business Without Sacrificing Your Family With Matt Sidman

Transcript

Grow Your Business Without Sacrificing Your Family With Matt Sidman · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

• 0:00
  Matt Simon, founder of Tech Works, appreciate you coming on
• 0:02
  the show. Morning, Alex.
• 0:03
  Thanks for having me. We'll do a little.
• 0:04
  Cheers. Yeah, cheers.
• 0:05
  Here we go. Thanks.
• 0:05
  For being here, good to see you at the event too.
• 0:07
  Random X matters if you're in Fox Valley, St.
• 0:10
  Charles area, a really good organization that is doing a lot
• 0:13
  of good. And Jim and you guys, I know
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  there's a few people on the board that we're all connected
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  to that it's just cool to hear the stories back.
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  We were talking about before we we aired here and went live, the
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  stories of the impact that people are making really, really
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  cool. The reason really does matter I
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  mean the acts matter right you know the the brainchild of Jim
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  T'challa yes Charlie Murphy. I know they kind of came up with
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  it just kind of sitting around at one of the local coffee shops
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  our see and throw out to them. But you know, when Jim handed
• 0:41
  off to Michelle and she's, she's really kind of solidified that
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  it's not just a gym thing, which is a great thing, but and then
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  I'm now handing it off to Lisa as the current president.
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  They they recognize an opportunity to really make a
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  difference here utilizing the business community as well to to
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  forward their message. Them being able to to really
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  just put something together in relatively short notice that had
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  amazing response, full community support at this little event at
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  the exchange. It was the the showing was
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  fantastic. The message was great.
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  Love being involved with them. Yeah, it's it was a good turn
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  out 90 something people are. Yeah, they, they, they had
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  planned for just short of 80 and they had over 100 people respond
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  and confirm. And I think they were really
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  close to that. Not a whole lot of no shows.
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  What's cool about hearing the stories of the impacted, those
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  types of events and any kind of non for profit or organization
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  that's doing good for the community, not trying to just
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  make a dollar, but just really trying to help people.
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  It kind of puts life into perspective for me.
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  And I'm sitting there listening to stories.
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  I'm like, man, I need to get more involved in this stuff.
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  Like, you know, you get so busy in your day-to-day stuff and I
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  know you're a father. I'm a father.
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  It's like you just get really busy and then you you kind of
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  sometimes put that other stuff on the back burner and then you
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  go to one of those events and you hear the stories and you go,
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  man, I got to, I got to what am I doing that's good?
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  You know, obviously I'm helping Michael.
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  I'm doing good things. I'm going to try to be a good
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  person, but like, am I going out of my way to make an impact?
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  You're right, you know, and it, it, you can tell when people are
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  doing doing the work because they love to and they want to
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  and they want to make an impact versus are they checking a box
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  while I'm doing my community service And then right, or
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  things like that. It's it's when you meet those
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  people and you get involved with those organizations that you
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  start to feel this is a pretty special community.
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  There are there's great hearts here.
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  There's wonderful non for profits and wonderful for profit
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  and government organizations here, right in this community.
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  It really makes so much life worthwhile around here.
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  So, yeah, I don't know about you, but if there's something
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  about when you can see the impact that you make, it just
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  means so much more. Like, for example, if you're
• 2:49
  online and you see a donation for, hey, send $50 and it goes
• 2:52
  to this program. Totally fine to do that.
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  But when you have somebody in the community that's a little
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  bit closer to the, the, the heart and your friends and
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  things like that, and maybe even you see the outcome.
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  Like they told the story about buying the kid that, you know,
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  he got his bike stolen or whatever had happened and he he
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  rode his bike to and from school and after school and stuff like
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  that. And, you know, they show up with
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  a new bike and you get to kind of hear about that or see the
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  impact. I think that to me, like pulls
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  on my heartstrings and makes me think, man, I would, that's what
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  I want to do. I want to see the impact if I
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  can, not because I want credit, I just want to.
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  If no one knows I did it, I just want to see the impact because
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  that makes me feel good. Selfishly, you know?
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  Unfortunately, there's a lot of need in our community that you
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  don't see every day. And so you still need those
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  organizations who have that visibility, direct impact, but
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  to understand who those organizations are that you can
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  make that impact, you can show up and volunteer and see the
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  direct impact as well. You know, you know, throw more
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  out, you know, Lazarus House is one of those organizations.
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  It's right downtown Saint Charles.
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  You can volunteer, but knowing that it's there and meeting a
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  real need that's right in our community that you may not see
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  every single day, but it's really here.
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  But you're right to impact all types of individuals and
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  organizations right here in our community.
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  See how you help them to get the validation, even if you want to
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  call it that, that they thank you, an improvement that you
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  know that you helped. It's it really becomes part of
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  the why. Yeah, yeah.
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  I have a soft spot for kids too, as I think a lot of people do.
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  There's just something about a kid that like didn't have a
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  choice and sometimes in the environment that they're at.
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  And even though adults go through hardship too, and
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  there's things out of their control sometimes and everyone
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  needs help at times. And now you're hitting a soft
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  spot for me. I know I can tell, I can say me
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  too. I, I, you know, especially when
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  you have kids too. And I, I've been into tough
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  times years ago, you know, with my kids too.
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  So it's like you, you just really have a soft spot for
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  those kids. So at the event we're going to
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  get into a bunch of stuff. Obviously you're founder of tech
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  works. So we were talking before we
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  went live. You're kind of doing some
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  resetting in the business and I think a lot of people seem to be
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  doing that right now. And I think as we come to the
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  end of the year, you're kind of going through a reflection
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  moment. Anyways, I'd love to dive into
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  that and a bunch of more things on how you've grown your company
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  and you've been in business, what, 24 years?
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  Yeah, we're in year 24. I mean, that's incredible, man,
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  and, and growing. And so I, I first wanted to ask
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  you back to that event. You're wearing an orange suit
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  and it seems to be that's not the only place you've worn that.
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  It's it's you're very vibrant when it comes to that.
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  What is there a purpose behind that?
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  You know, somehow just over the years the color orange has
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  seemed to pervade and just about a lot of things I do.
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  I mean obviously in your logo and.
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  That kind of stuff. Yeah.
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  Logo, you know, to be completely transparent, I went to the
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  University of Illinois, so I'm a fighting Illini at heart.
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  So you kind of have orange and everything that you do there.
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  Yeah. Random Axe Matter seems to have
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  orange. That's right.
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  Yeah. When I had a choice of building
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  my company and I rebranded it in around 2000, 2009, decided to
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  pull that in there. It wasn't your traditional red
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  or blue that you see something that we thought was just going
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  to be a little distinctive and it just kind of felt part of the
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  heart. Yeah.
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  And so all the other things there too.
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  So, yeah, Orange is fun. It's vibrant.
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  It shows up a little bit. It, it, it shows confidence yet
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  fun and playfulness. And so that's what we liked
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  about that. Yeah.
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  It's. Bold, it's, it's
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  differentiation. We'll get into a little bit more
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  of that later, but I like that. How would you describe what you
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  guys do in a sentence or two? Sure.
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  We are IT providers. Basically, we are the IT
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  security that our whole mission is to bolster and help all the
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  organizations in our community be stronger in our own local
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  community, local economy. That means making technology an
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  advantage for them. And because so many
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  organizations find it as a scary thing and we try to remove the
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  fear, try to help them move forward, use things to help
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  their organizations just grow better, find more clients, reach
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  public and do their mission better.
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  Incredible. And in 24 years, what, what's
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  the timeline, if we could look at the timeline kind of on a
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  macro level? Because I think, man, I've been
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  in business for, you know, five years.
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  I guess we'll be going on 6 next year, which isn't a lot compared
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  to 24. So my timeline looks a little
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  bit different. But I think back like the first
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  year had a certain elements and properties to it.
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  The second year, the third year was a different season for me.
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  Now I'm in a new season and they're both full of challenges
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  and upsides and things like that.
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  But if you were to look at the timeline, what was what was the
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  journey like? Yeah, you know, the journey
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  starts way before that too, but you know, as far as and we can
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  get to there but. How so with a different
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  business? Well, sure.
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  This is a family run business. My father and I started this in
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  2002. Wow.
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  He and I had put together 45 years combined and working in
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  corporate America in IT and management consultants.
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  Wow. See around today.
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  Yeah, he is. He's he lives here in Geneva.
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  Nice. So, yeah, he's, you know, kind
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  of out of the business, but he he is probably my most trusted
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  advisor. If I had a chair, if I had a
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  board of directors, he is my chairman.
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  He had brings so much acumen and expertise of how to work with
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  people and processes and business and, and all the things
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  when even when I think I'm an expert, there are always things
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  that I don't know that he's a phone call away, which is
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  wonderfully cool. But you know, I worked for
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  Accenture at what was Anderson Consulting back in the day for
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  about 10 years. He worked for large
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  organizations like IBM and GE, Keene Consulting,
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  Pricewaterhouse. And so he and I brought this
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  really just big company rigor and expertise and how they help
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  change how they manage their people and their processes.
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  And you know, if you remember the old Y2K thing, that.
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  Yes, I do. We both managed projects people.
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  So weird, right, Right. We freaked out.
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  What we felt like a lot of nothing.
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  But the time was. Oh, yeah, felt like a Cliff.
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  Yeah. And when we got done with all
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  that, when it was around 2000, 2001, you know, he's traveling
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  around the world. I'm traveling around the world.
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  And both of us somewhere on the same time said, yeah, this is
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  this, this is kind of enough, right?
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  At the same time, I'm starting to raise a family.
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  And I knew what it took to become like a managing partner
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  for a large organization like that.
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  And I knew that if I were to raise a family, I probably was
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  not going to have that home life that I, that I craved.
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  So stepping away was a was a decision both hard and handed to
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  me at the same time. And both of us looked at each
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  other, said, well, what, you know, should we do something
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  together? And I'll never forget, he said,
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  well, as long as I don't have to get on a plane ever again,
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  again, let's figure it out. So we kind of thought, well, we
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  have a lot of expertise on how to grow and manage businesses.
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  We thought maybe there was a community local that maybe there
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  were small businesses that wanted to get out of the small
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  business field. And so we thought we'd bring
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  that expertise. So Fast forward to 2002, we
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  opened our doors, named our company Argus Business
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  Consulting Services, which I. Like tech works better.
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  Yeah. A few years later we realized
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  that's a really hard name to market because it doesn't say
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  anything about what we do other than business consulting
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  services. In those first couple years was
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  really just trying to figure out what is it we do well that would
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  be taken well. And our first handful of clients
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  right here in the community said, sure, yeah, we'd love some
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  coaching, but could you fix this computer while you're doing it?
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  Because we're in that mode of whatever, you know, you're going
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  to pay me for it Sure. Started crawling under desks,
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  replacing servers, doing cabling.
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  And within a couple years we started figuring out that that
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  was that's something that we could do.
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  Well, we were not your, your average, you know, techie in the
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  back closet. We were more business focused,
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  but we can do the tack again. We kind of got into this thing
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  where we didn't run it get into the billable hours thing.
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  It was called was chasing the, the the mechanic type way of
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  going about things. We didn't feel like we were
• 10:53
  being a partner. So in 2004 we changed everything
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  over to basically a, a flat fee. However, size business you are,
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  whether it's one person or 50, we're going to come up with a
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  plan and we're just going to do everything as if for an IT
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  manager for you and staff. The birth of managed services is
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  really what that was. Two of us, my mom joined us to
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  help us do billing. So now it's the three of us for
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  about 3-4 years. Brought on my first real
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  employee in 2007 who then stayed with us for 17 years.
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  My brother then joined us in 2008.
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  He was a by trade, a civil engineer working in the, the
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  home building industry and if you recall 2008, the home
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  building industry disappeared. So he joined us at that point
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  and has been with us ever since. He is now my COO Chris.
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  So that first, you know, six to seven years was really a lot
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  about finding ourselves surviving a a recession.
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  And and so that was kind of our first round there, that second
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  round, that second, you know, pause.
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  You really quickly on this first six or seven years, sure.
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  I think a lot of newer entrepreneurs have and even ones
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  that maybe I'm doing a couple years think that by year three
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  or four or five everything is going to be figured out.
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  And it's almost refreshing to hear you say that.
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  And it's six or seven years in. It's kind of when you started to
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  really find yourself and find your groove and get you know,
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  some momentum. Is that right?
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  It, it was, it was a, it was a combination of a lot of things.
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  It was this real desire to build something that was our families,
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  that was something legacy that we can do at the same time,
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  dealing with all of the, you know, imagine working full time
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  with family, your father, your son, your kids, your husband,
• 12:41
  your wife, your whatever. Is that fun?
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  Sure. Not always.
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  To be honest, it's not always fun because work seems to arrive
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  at Thanksgiving dinner too. So there's no real break break.
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  But at the same time, we knew that there was.
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  We, we just felt that there was some value there that we were
• 12:58
  doing. There was a phrase that I
• 13:01
  started using very beginning when I did this because I had to
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  keep in mind, you know, what it was like at my old job to this
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  new one. And the whole phrase that I
• 13:10
  always kept saying was never miss a moment.
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  I now had a son in 2006. And at that point, I, I just
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  made a commitment that I got to be there.
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  You know, I, I got to not get on a plane all the time.
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  I got to be there for, you know, the, the first steps and then
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  those first baseball practices and driving him to the first day
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  of school. And then all of those times,
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  those years being at all the, at all the band concerts in
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  baseball games and tennis matches and school events.
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  So when we looked at those first couple years, yeah, it, we
• 13:45
  weren't getting huge success. We were paying bills, but we
• 13:49
  were getting feedback from clients that we were doing good
• 13:52
  things, and the personal joy of knowing that I got to work with
• 13:57
  my dad was something I knew I couldn't have traded in.
• 14:01
  So it was worth stretching out the time to see what would work.
• 14:05
  I. Think that's an important
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  sacrifice to make sacrifice some revenue for being not missing
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  the moments, as you say, what was there a period in time?
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  And I think that's important to say.
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  I want to go back to my thought here, but I've never missed a
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  single event of my kids because of work, you know, but I will
• 14:24
  not lie and say that I haven't been working late at night or
• 14:27
  like, you know, they wanted to do something.
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  I'm, you know, I'm not working, whatever it is.
• 14:30
  Of course, you have to make trade-offs to, to grow a
• 14:33
  business. But there was never an event
• 14:35
  that they had or a birthday or something that really was
• 14:38
  meaningful to them that I missed.
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  And I feel like whenever I was with them, I tried to be as
• 14:44
  present as I could. I did the best I could.
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  And kids remember that, you know, that's really all they
• 14:49
  want from you. And I think I was always like,
• 14:52
  look, maybe I'm not going to build an X deal with Google,
• 14:54
  right? Like I'm OK with that because I
• 14:57
  don't what I don't want to do. And I hear this from a lot of
• 14:59
  older founders where they they did, they did the opposite of
• 15:01
  what you did, man. They sacrificed all these things
• 15:05
  and they look back and they never say, you know, I wish I
• 15:06
  would have made a little bit more money.
• 15:08
  They look back and say, I wish I would have just spent a little
• 15:10
  more time with my family and my kids.
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  And I was never home. I was always gone traveling.
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  And I was just like, that's never gonna be me.
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  You know, I have my kids, 50% of the time I'm separated from
• 15:20
  their mom. But we have a good relationship.
• 15:22
  And when I'm with them, like I try to be all in with them.
• 15:26
  And if I travel, it's the days I'm not through with their mom.
• 15:29
  And so I just really try to make it work from that standpoint.
• 15:32
  And I don't regret any of that. That's that's the best.
• 15:35
  I'm so happy I made that decision.
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  And that was always clear for me.
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  It was never probably like you, it was never a a question.
• 15:40
  It was just like, no, I'm not trading that time.
• 15:42
  Alex, This is why we're talking here today.
• 15:45
  I, I, I feel this as well. It's the same, same on this side
• 15:48
  here to be able to look back. My son is now 19, a sophomore in
• 15:52
  college. I just got to spend the weekend
• 15:55
  with him just a couple days down there for dad's weekend down
• 15:58
  there. And, you know, he, he and I just
• 16:00
  spent most every minute we could together that he wasn't, you
• 16:03
  know, committed to being in the marching band down there, which
• 16:05
  was great, too. But just to walk in the door and
• 16:08
  just see the welcome and feel that he's really enjoys your
• 16:12
  company. You're right that that's, I
• 16:14
  think that is all the little moments that don't seem to
• 16:18
  matter at the time. But when you look back, they all
• 16:20
  add up. And just again, never missing a
• 16:23
  moment, moment being there, being present at that moment.
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  Is is is hard, but it's but it's absolutely worth every every
• 16:32
  little bit of fiber of effort. Definitely.
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  And even I would say for me, entrepreneurship has actually
• 16:38
  given me more flexibility because I'm able to pick my kids
• 16:40
  up, drop them off. You know, my youngest or my
• 16:42
  oldest goes to Red Ling. She's a middle school, you know,
• 16:45
  early release on Wednesdays, 150.
• 16:47
  I mean, it's like kind of in the middle of the day, but I pick
• 16:50
  her out. We make it work, you know, So
• 16:51
  it's like those are the things that if you did have a
• 16:53
  traditional job or you're grinding away in corporate,
• 16:56
  someone else is going to have to make that pick up, you know?
• 16:59
  And so, yeah, when you were 5-6 years in kind of before you
• 17:03
  maybe start taking off or really feeling good about the business,
• 17:05
  were there moments where you said and you thought maybe this
• 17:09
  isn't going to be something big? All the time, all the time.
• 17:13
  At that point, it, it really still wasn't that far removed
• 17:18
  where I was working again, this Big 5 consulting job where I was
• 17:22
  based in, you know, downtown Chicago.
• 17:24
  And I, I knew, let's put it this way, I knew what, you know,
• 17:29
  associate partners and partners took home to pay.
• 17:33
  And I knew that was a path for me, Had I chosen that direction,
• 17:38
  even just from the financial standpoint, like, well, am I
• 17:41
  ever gonna get that dream? You know, do I ever, am I ever
• 17:44
  get to get to that point where, you know, I want to come take a
• 17:46
  vacation whenever I wanted to, which was another thing there
• 17:49
  when I was doing this thing those first four or five years
• 17:52
  taking a vacation, it wasn't really a thing, right?
• 17:56
  You know, taking a vacation somewhere when I was the person
• 17:59
  clients would call. Right.
• 18:01
  They didn't shut down for a week.
• 18:03
  You know, IT services still needed to happen and being
• 18:06
  anywhere, you know, with my wife at that time, we would take a
• 18:09
  trip to to Napa Valley and I'm having her drive because I have
• 18:13
  to take a phone call or or whatever.
• 18:16
  And you just never really never you never really stick stepped
• 18:20
  away. Excuse me?
• 18:23
  So that was always a challenge. You always wondered.
• 18:25
  I always thought about, well, what did I really sacrifice for
• 18:28
  this? Is everything what I was hoping
• 18:30
  for plus? It takes a lot of mental
• 18:33
  toughness to stay in the game. I think too, because you you do
• 18:36
  lose some confidence at times. You do get knocked down a lot in
• 18:39
  business. And for you to kind of stay in
• 18:40
  the game. Because I'm sure if you were to
• 18:42
  come back now at the, the spot that you're in now with yourself
• 18:45
  in the business and where you're at in life, if you're to look at
• 18:48
  that mat of, you know, five years in four years in whatever
• 18:51
  it might be, you can sit down and go, everything's going to be
• 18:53
  good, man. Just just stay focused, keep
• 18:55
  going, keep getting better, keep serving your clients, keep
• 18:57
  making an impact. Remember the moment, you'll stay
• 18:59
  in the moments and you're going to be fine.
• 19:01
  And that's, that's what you have to keep telling yourself.
• 19:04
  And you know, the state of the sole entrepreneur.
• 19:07
  And even with my dad and me, he's still the still the phase
• 19:09
  of the sole entrepreneur really is, you know, it's always the
• 19:12
  chasing the right, where's the next work coming from?
• 19:15
  OK, let me do the good. Let me do the work and do it as
• 19:18
  well as possible. And you wonder like, well, how
• 19:20
  do I separate the doing from the finding new work?
• 19:24
  How do you get a sales process? How do you get a, you know, how
• 19:27
  do you build new tools? How do you keep up on new
• 19:30
  technology? How do you do all of those
• 19:32
  things without a staff, right? So those all become big
• 19:38
  questions in your head of like, well, if I really want to scale,
• 19:41
  how do I handle handle all of these 17 hats and finally grow a
• 19:45
  way that I can put some hats on other people and you're just not
• 19:48
  in that position early. Sometimes I think about the my
• 19:52
  journey as an entrepreneur and again, only be in five years and
• 19:55
  you know, it's not been a ton of time, but I sometimes think
• 19:58
  about, man, is this kind of it? If I reached my, you know, peak,
• 20:01
  you know, and like, do I want to grow the company and have
• 20:03
  headcount, you know, and sometimes I think I don't know,
• 20:06
  is this was it bigger than what I thought?
• 20:08
  But also like a lifestyle wise, it's really good and I'm doing
• 20:11
  well and. We're not struggling, you know,
• 20:13
  so it's like a night my clients are happy and I'm having fun and
• 20:16
  we are growing, but not at the rate that maybe I would have
• 20:18
  loved to four years ago or thought it would have been.
• 20:21
  And then I sometimes have to tell myself, Alex, this is just
• 20:24
  chapter 1, dude. Like you could start another
• 20:27
  business off this or this business could turn into
• 20:29
  something else with one partnership or one this or that.
• 20:32
  And it's like in I find myself telling myself, enjoy the ride
• 20:37
  as much as you can. And it's like, Hey, it's, it's a
• 20:39
  little slower right now, OK, It's always busy right now.
• 20:41
  It's like enjoy those moments when it's slower, Enjoy the fact
• 20:44
  that you have a little more time, you know, think, reflect a
• 20:47
  little bit more, spend more time with the kids when it's busier,
• 20:49
  Enjoy that you have work and be grateful for that, You know, So
• 20:53
  I think it's just reflection and putting things in perspectives,
• 20:55
  everything. 1000% and something that I had noticed as well as
• 21:00
  sometimes the journey is what matters, right?
• 21:03
  The journey is that the are there people that you all of a
• 21:05
  sudden meet who step up to help you or you've helped and they
• 21:10
  impact you in ways you never expected because I don't have an
• 21:14
  online store business. Everything that we do is
• 21:16
  interpersonal. The people that I've met have
• 21:20
  taken they've, they've given me thoughts on how we can run our
• 21:24
  business and how we can impact the community or organizations
• 21:28
  that I've then decided to become part of simply because I met the
• 21:32
  people and the, the different chapters.
• 21:35
  You know, whether I'm in one chapter right now, we hit maybe
• 21:38
  Techworks is my one, my chapter 1.
• 21:40
  And who knows if I have a chapter 2 later on or whether
• 21:43
  it's 10 chapters. It I've gotten to a point where
• 21:46
  I'm not quite sure I'm concerned about what those chapters are.
• 21:50
  To be clear in it took year 19 and 20, OK, for me to actually
• 21:57
  say, you know, we're paying bills, we're happy.
• 22:00
  I got a staff of nine people, which is pretty good.
• 22:03
  We've, you know, we, we made the, the big small business
• 22:07
  thresholds of getting out of that first year and making your
• 22:10
  first $1,000,000, which are big deals.
• 22:12
  And but there is a point when I looked at it and I said, is this
• 22:17
  all we can be? Yeah.
• 22:18
  You know that question you just asked?
• 22:21
  Is this it? And is it all you want to be
• 22:23
  too? And am I OK with that, right?
• 22:25
  If this is as big as it gets and I'm just, you know, just, you
• 22:29
  know, just churning and, you know, making, making good lives
• 22:33
  for our employees and impacting our community in the way we can
• 22:35
  and bringing home enough to pay the things that I'm paying for
• 22:39
  at home and being able to send my kid off to college.
• 22:42
  Is that really what I want it to be?
• 22:44
  And that takes a lot of soul searching because of what you've
• 22:48
  done for now 20 years is a lot of who you are, right?
• 22:52
  And so we had to go through a lot of that.
• 22:54
  And I actually made the decision and sat the family down.
• 23:00
  My dad, my mom, my, my and my brother, call it my steering
• 23:04
  committee. And I said, you know, let's talk
• 23:06
  about this. Where do we want to go?
• 23:08
  And we all made a decision, said, OK, well, what are you
• 23:11
  thinking? What does that look like?
• 23:14
  And should we should we try to make some leaps?
• 23:17
  Yeah. And that's been their last three
• 23:20
  years is we put together a plan to see well how how broad can an
• 23:24
  impactful in our community. It's always been our focus, and
• 23:28
  our mission is to be a technology firm that supports
• 23:31
  our community. I can tell.
• 23:33
  We don't advertise really outside the Fox River Valley
• 23:36
  area. We have clients throughout and
• 23:39
  global, but basically the things that we get involved in are the
• 23:43
  events that are here, whether they're Saint Charles, Geneva,
• 23:45
  Batavia, Elgin, Aurora, organizations that are right
• 23:48
  here supporting. And so we decided, well, what
• 23:51
  does that look like? If we were to take this and make
• 23:55
  a quantum leap here, what does that mean for us?
• 23:57
  Does that mean infusion of cash? Does it mean look, look like
• 24:00
  investors? Does it mean just looking at our
• 24:03
  processes and getting better people or adding our people?
• 24:06
  So we, we, we've been kind of heading down that path.
• 24:10
  No, not kind of. We've been heads long down that
• 24:13
  path for the past three years just reevaluating that.
• 24:16
  We feel that we have more impact to the community.
• 24:19
  The stronger we are as an organization, the more impact
• 24:21
  that we can make. And so that's where we've
• 24:23
  started to go. It's interesting because I kind
• 24:26
  of with this podcast, you know, we're talking a little bit
• 24:28
  before we went live, you're asking me what made you start
• 24:31
  the podcast and, you know, kind of curious about this.
• 24:33
  And one of the things I I love deep conversations.
• 24:36
  That's so you seem to be that same way too, like I'm at a
• 24:38
  service level. How's it going?
• 24:40
  Good? How are you good?
• 24:40
  You know, it's like I liked, I enjoy going deep on on whatever
• 24:44
  it is, if it's space, entrepreneurship, you know,
• 24:46
  where the world is right now, whatever that is.
• 24:49
  So I enjoy these conversations, but I, I really thought it was
• 24:51
  an opportunity to, you know, I done well on LinkedIn and with
• 24:55
  social media and that kind of stuff.
• 24:56
  And you meet customers from all across the, the country and
• 24:59
  really the world. And that's been good for us.
• 25:01
  But I'm like, man, locally, I haven't really like built a
• 25:04
  community and like gotten involved and made the impact I
• 25:07
  wanted to in this. And I love this area.
• 25:09
  If you live here, you're just, you love it, you're passionate
• 25:12
  about it, you know, and I was like, if I were to have a
• 25:14
  podcast, I'd done a couple other ones that were virtual and I was
• 25:17
  like, but if I were to do 1 live and you can only be on it if
• 25:21
  you're willing to come here and have a conversation face to
• 25:24
  face, because that interaction is totally different than what
• 25:27
  you get on a Zoom call. As you know, it's just night and
• 25:29
  day. I said, well, that would that
• 25:32
  would probably start some pretty cool relationships that would
• 25:34
  make an impact in the community and it would allow me to bring
• 25:37
  founders together. And I think, you know, the way I
• 25:39
  look at this podcast is this is the start.
• 25:42
  We're going to have some virtual events coming up and then we're
• 25:44
  going to do some, maybe we just go straight to live set live
• 25:47
  events. We're going to start doing some
• 25:48
  live events and bring because they're pretty much all founders
• 25:51
  that have been on the show or local and they're awesome
• 25:53
  business owners. They're doing incredible things
• 25:55
  in different industries and I'm like, this would be a cool way
• 25:58
  to kind of branch off and start doing some, some events and what
• 26:01
  that looks like I got to kind of come up with.
• 26:02
  But I felt that same kind of desire the, the community, the,
• 26:07
  and I think especially with AI and automation and everything
• 26:10
  virtual this and we're going to automate and streamline this.
• 26:13
  And it's not going to, I'm like, I think we're all going to crave
• 26:15
  over the next few years is human connection and community and
• 26:18
  purpose. You know, you know that was you.
• 26:21
  You use the word and I, I know people say it, you know, with,
• 26:25
  with some lip service, but the word you used was relationships.
• 26:29
  And I know people talk about, well, you got to build
• 26:31
  relationships, but you know, the people who know how to build
• 26:34
  relationships and build relationships have to be
• 26:36
  meaningful. And business, business
• 26:39
  opportunities more times than not come because there's a
• 26:43
  relationship, whether it's a sales client relationship, you
• 26:46
  know, where it's traditional or you're having a relationship
• 26:51
  with people in the in, in your community because you show up to
• 26:55
  the same events and you show the same interests as them.
• 26:58
  You know, relationships have to do with what you are offering.
• 27:02
  That's you know, how you are enriching the other person.
• 27:06
  You've learned through growing your LinkedIn and if you were on
• 27:10
  Twitter or other social media, you know you get followers when
• 27:14
  you are offering them something. You gotta give give give, give
• 27:18
  give. If you are going out there with
• 27:20
  your sales message every single time, you're going to the
• 27:22
  Chamber of Commerce Leeds events and you're just saying hey, buy
• 27:25
  my stuff, not many people are following you unless they had
• 27:29
  that urgent need and that's transaction.
• 27:31
  Yeah, and the same on LinkedIn. When you have companies just
• 27:33
  posting, here's what we're doing, here's this, here's what
• 27:35
  we do, it's like no one cares. True.
• 27:37
  Personal and business growth happens when things are when
• 27:42
  when there's a cycle right then that there there's a perpetual
• 27:46
  give and take that enriching the lives together when it leaves
• 27:50
  the transactional state of yeah, I have this thing by it, walk
• 27:53
  away. Hey, I have this event come to
• 27:55
  it, right. But when you're when you are
• 27:58
  interested specifically in the other person or the other
• 28:01
  organizations mission, what makes sense to them, what meet
• 28:05
  what, what really gets their emotions up and you support
• 28:08
  those things, trust gets built and they learn who you are as a
• 28:13
  person and learn who you are as an organization or a service.
• 28:17
  And you are. You're giving to theirs, They're
• 28:19
  giving to you, and you're all three times stronger than you
• 28:23
  ever would have been on your own.
• 28:24
  Totally agree. The reset, is that what we were
• 28:28
  describing before we went air on air and you were talking about
• 28:30
  just a little bit of the last three years.
• 28:31
  Is that what you're talking about when you had to hit the
• 28:33
  reset? And I'm curious if so, what did
• 28:36
  you guys decide? You all sat down.
• 28:38
  You know, it's interesting the, the, the story I like to talk
• 28:42
  about is when I go back pre pre tech works.
• 28:45
  When I was back with Accenture, my whole job at that time was
• 28:51
  teaching Fortune 25 and Fortune 50 companies on how to evaluate
• 28:56
  what they do, how they do it, who they do it with, right?
• 28:59
  The people, processes and technology that are either
• 29:02
  hindering or enabling them to grow and meet their mission,
• 29:05
  right. I spent a long time with, with
• 29:08
  Ameritech and SBC Global working on their systems.
• 29:12
  And, you know, we had this incredible methodology that was
• 29:15
  built by this super large organization.
• 29:19
  But when it came down to it, it, it really had to do with what
• 29:21
  are your core values? What's your mission?
• 29:24
  You know, are the people that you have aligned with those
• 29:27
  things? Are the systems that you have in
• 29:28
  place supporting your people? Are they enabling your people?
• 29:32
  So when I looked at my organization, I, I, I dugout all
• 29:37
  those materials and these materials were 25 years old,
• 29:40
  right? You know it.
• 29:42
  Took the dust off him. Exactly.
• 29:44
  And I started reading through it at the same time another friend
• 29:48
  of mine dropped off the the, the Traction Buck.
• 29:54
  Yeah, you're familiar with Traction the EOS, right?
• 29:57
  And I opened that book and I said, this is exactly the same
• 30:00
  stuff I did 25 years ago. Different words, different
• 30:04
  tools, different templates, but the concepts were exactly the
• 30:07
  same. And I asked myself, why am I not
• 30:10
  treating myself as a client? This is what I would have done.
• 30:13
  This is how I would have coached another organization that was
• 30:17
  running into an existential question about what are we
• 30:20
  doing? And so I dug it all out through
• 30:25
  this process, met several other wonderful people, people you've
• 30:29
  had on your podcast here, you know, Keith Seeback and Robert
• 30:32
  Sachs and others who have been in this, in this, in this space
• 30:35
  for the longest time and just bouncing ideas off of them.
• 30:40
  And there is a, there was a point that I said, you know, if,
• 30:44
  if I really what would make me happy, right?
• 30:46
  How, how can it really help our organization, impact our
• 30:51
  community? How I, how do I enrich our own
• 30:54
  employees and how do I create legacy in this organization?
• 30:58
  So we as a, as a family looked at this and said, all right,
• 31:04
  well, what is it that we want to be?
• 31:05
  And over the last couple years, we, we kind of went back and
• 31:08
  looked at all the employees that we've had.
• 31:10
  We looked at all the commentary the clients had ever given us
• 31:13
  and said, you know, what are the core values that that not only
• 31:17
  that we perceive internally, but the, our clients in the
• 31:21
  community sees in US? And we did this thing where we,
• 31:24
  we talked to all of our people about, you know, what do you
• 31:28
  think these look like? And we came up with five really
• 31:30
  strong core values. We built a core value wall in
• 31:33
  our office. We moved into new office space
• 31:35
  and it's wallpapered all over the place.
• 31:37
  Really cool impact, but not lip service.
• 31:40
  Again, that's the key. And so when we did that, we
• 31:43
  started looking at that and then when we started implementing
• 31:45
  that, we also realized that there were some people in our
• 31:51
  organization that just didn't believe it.
• 31:53
  You know, they weren't pulling the weight with us and nothing
• 31:56
  against them or us. We, it's a, it's a really hard
• 32:00
  decision, decision to make and realization to realize that
• 32:04
  people who have been on the journey with you are no longer
• 32:09
  the right fit for us or or vice versa.
• 32:12
  Maybe the direction we're going isn't something that they want
• 32:15
  to do. And culminating to 2024,
• 32:19
  probably the hardest year we've ever had in 20 in the not what
• 32:23
  was 22 years, 23 years. We, we said goodbye to almost
• 32:28
  half of our staff, turned it over.
• 32:31
  And you know of, of all those, only one person we let go.
• 32:35
  The other ones were conversations of where do you
• 32:37
  want to be, helping them move on to other things, while we found
• 32:40
  people who wanted to do what we wanted to do.
• 32:43
  And that was really, really hard.
• 32:46
  Not only internally, a lot of it internally, just because we're
• 32:51
  training new people to do what we think we do well, but also
• 32:55
  the impact to our clients. Our clients see that's a lot of
• 32:58
  new names coming through here, but what we've seen over the
• 33:02
  past year have been more comments of wow, these people
• 33:05
  really there. And that's what we're looking
• 33:07
  for, people who care what we want to do, people we can care
• 33:10
  for as well. So not.
• 33:12
  Just checking a box. It wasn't so on top of the
• 33:15
  things that we already do from the IT support, the security,
• 33:18
  cybersecurity, training clients on AI, all that stuff.
• 33:22
  We just knew that we needed a better approach because every
• 33:26
  single person in our organization is a relationship
• 33:28
  builder, right? We are not just, again, we're
• 33:31
  just not techies in the closet, you know, just doing the things
• 33:34
  and fixing the stuff and dealing with your spam.
• 33:37
  We, we had to really double down on our culture that we had
• 33:41
  people who are relationship builders with our, with our end
• 33:44
  users and our clients and business owners and community
• 33:46
  partners. And that's been hard, but we
• 33:50
  think that's going to reap immense benefits down the road.
• 33:54
  So when you're sitting down with your family, right, your dad,
• 33:56
  brother, mom, you, and you're saying, hey guys, look, we can
• 34:00
  keep going the route we're going now.
• 34:02
  And this is kind of not it for us, but this is kind of where
• 34:04
  the business sort of plateaus or peaks, right?
• 34:08
  Or we can decide we want to take this thing to the next level and
• 34:11
  we see more potential than what is currently here today.
• 34:15
  I'm curious what the driving motivation was to it.
• 34:17
  Sounds like everyone said yes, more potential.
• 34:20
  Let's go for it. Let's put more into this.
• 34:23
  Is that right? Did everyone say yes?
• 34:24
  Or was there a couple people that were like, I don't know.
• 34:26
  Yeah, you know, it's a very, very, very trustful.
• 34:30
  Obviously, you know, we're a tight knit family.
• 34:33
  But you know, the the first conversation, let's just say I
• 34:38
  was, I was more energetic about it than everybody else.
• 34:41
  What was? Your driving, your motivation to
• 34:43
  want to take it to the next level because why not just you
• 34:45
  know, you could just kept it there.
• 34:49
  There were a lot of different motivations and, and I wish I
• 34:53
  could say that it's just, hey, we could be making more money
• 34:56
  because that's a motivation for a lot of people.
• 34:58
  And that's part of it. You know, there's, there, there,
• 35:01
  there's, you know, are, are we, are we able to pay our people
• 35:05
  where we want them to go? There was a, a significant
• 35:10
  desire that I thought that we could make be more impactful in
• 35:14
  the community. For example, I've been serving
• 35:17
  on the board at Cassicane County for a long time now, for almost
• 35:21
  6 years and I, I see their needs and I wanted, I was limited
• 35:29
  either either on a financial standpoint or even a bandwidth
• 35:32
  standpoint of what I could do for them.
• 35:35
  We saw other needs in the community as well that I had
• 35:37
  this desire that, you know, can we grow a philanthropic end of
• 35:41
  our, our organization that just simply based on our revenues
• 35:46
  didn't support. Also, I was seeing people in our
• 35:50
  own organization saying, you know, is, is this everything I
• 35:54
  get to do right? You know, do I just get to be a
• 35:56
  tech on the phone all the time? Are there areas for us to grow?
• 36:00
  And the way we were structured on that side limited them.
• 36:04
  You know, they could be a tech, they could be a level 2 tech,
• 36:07
  they could maybe add some cybersecurity and maybe they
• 36:10
  could manage A-Team and, but if they wanted to be something more
• 36:14
  like they said, you know, I, you know, can I get into the sales
• 36:17
  end of this? Because some of your really good
• 36:19
  techs have a great personality to work with end users and end
• 36:22
  clients and, and, and business owners.
• 36:24
  But if they don't have the opportunity, you lose them.
• 36:27
  So just with again, there are maybe about 891011 different
• 36:32
  reasons there that we just knew that we were limited and what we
• 36:37
  can offer the community, our family and the people that if we
• 36:41
  didn't restructure and re evaluate how we did our stuff,
• 36:44
  we we were just going to be what we were.
• 36:46
  Was any of it based on your potential as an individual?
• 36:51
  Meaning like, you know, I sometimes think about like Alex,
• 36:54
  you know, there's that saying, I don't know if you heard it
• 36:55
  before, but like they say, hell is when you get, if there is a
• 36:59
  thing, you know, hell is when you get down there and they say,
• 37:02
  hey, you were this person. You were mapped throughout your
• 37:05
  entire life. Here's the map that you could
• 37:07
  have been. Here's the person that did go
• 37:10
  for it, that did risk it, that did work harder, that did put,
• 37:13
  you know, this first or whatever it might be.
• 37:15
  And they show you that person. Then you see, wow, that's that's
• 37:19
  who I could have been. And so I sometimes don't think
• 37:22
  about that exact example, but I think about am I living my full
• 37:27
  potential or working really towards it?
• 37:29
  And that could be that's health, that's being a dad, that's being
• 37:32
  a partner, that's being a business person.
• 37:33
  It's not just like growing the business.
• 37:36
  But I'm curious if that was part of the two, maybe an internal
• 37:38
  dialogue to say hi Matt, is this?
• 37:40
  It's a great question that I'm not entirely sure I've actually
• 37:44
  dived into the concept of what you're saying is is not foreign
• 37:49
  to what I'm thinking back on. And you know, obviously I was
• 37:53
  asking the question is Techworks everything it can be, right?
• 37:56
  No desire for it to be this global powerhouse.
• 37:59
  Sure. Competing with the huge
• 38:02
  organizations that do a lot what we do for the enterprises right
• 38:05
  you. Know because we're probably gone
• 38:06
  all the time and that defeats your purpose of being in the
• 38:08
  moment, right? Sure.
• 38:10
  And and let's, let's also look at it this way.
• 38:12
  You know, we, we focus on, we support organizations that are
• 38:16
  one to 100 people, OK. And most organizations we
• 38:20
  support like between 2 and 15 people.
• 38:23
  There are so many other tech companies to say, yeah, it's too
• 38:25
  small for us. To me, that's where the impact
• 38:29
  is, right? We make we're, we're dealing
• 38:31
  with that, that entrepreneur, that business owner, that, that
• 38:35
  attorney, that managing managing partner of a small law firm who
• 38:38
  goes home and sends their kids off to reveling, right?
• 38:41
  They're, they're here in the community.
• 38:43
  Not that corporate corporate managers or whatever don't live
• 38:48
  in our community, but we just felt that if we stayed focused
• 38:53
  on this small local business, there's a lot here for us,
• 38:59
  right? But the, the thoughts of, well,
• 39:03
  does tech works evolve into one of these large organizations?
• 39:08
  And maybe we're a tired target for, for acquisition.
• 39:11
  And that's where we can, you know, we can really get our, you
• 39:13
  know, our generational wealth. That's never from far from your
• 39:17
  mind. The the private equity world is
• 39:19
  incredibly weird right now and a lot of stuff going on, but
• 39:22
  that's never been our motivation with me personally, which is
• 39:26
  kind of where your question was. I think that came later through
• 39:32
  this process. Remember when I said, you know,
• 39:35
  when I wanted to figure out is this, can we be more?
• 39:38
  And I dusted off all that stuff. One of the things that rekindled
• 39:42
  was where did I see myself back when I was working, you know,
• 39:46
  right out of college and working with one of the biggest and most
• 39:48
  successful organizations in the world.
• 39:51
  You know, you have those when you're 25 years old.
• 39:53
  You have those dreams and you look back after 25 years now
• 39:58
  I've doubled my age. And I said.
• 40:00
  That feeling hasn't gone away, you know.
• 40:03
  Where? Where can you go?
• 40:05
  Would this mean anything for me? Of course it would.
• 40:09
  But what I have found over the last couple years, I have gotten
• 40:14
  more enjoyment and I can't explain it any more different
• 40:18
  than that. Then again, back to
• 40:20
  relationships that my decision for us to be way more visible in
• 40:25
  the community and waste some way more supportive in our
• 40:28
  community. The relationships and the people
• 40:31
  that I've met and the, the look on their faces when they say,
• 40:34
  you guys really helped us. That's the stuff that that's the
• 40:39
  stuff that I felt like, all right, well, if when I'm done
• 40:44
  and somebody looks back and say, hey, what did Matt Sidman do for
• 40:47
  us? If it was that, that we brought
• 40:51
  joy or we brought them confidence that they can grow
• 40:55
  their organizations and we or even I get known for that, that
• 40:59
  that to me is absolutely everything.
• 41:02
  So it sounds like the the move three years ago is worth it.
• 41:06
  It it has been, it's a never ending thing.
• 41:08
  If you talk to, if you talk to anybody who's done this traction
• 41:13
  or EOS and implementation, it's not a one time project.
• 41:16
  Right. It's kind of lifestyle.
• 41:18
  Right. It's kind of like getting in
• 41:19
  shape, right? You can't just do the do the
• 41:22
  diet and be in shape and you're good, you know, it becomes a
• 41:24
  lifestyle change. So yeah, that that the shift in
• 41:27
  focus to me has been, it felt like we kind of came out of a
• 41:32
  cloud of, well, let's come in every day and let's answer the
• 41:36
  questions and deal with the, the security breach and let's deal
• 41:39
  with the tickets that the trouble tickets.
• 41:41
  Every day to me, it feels like we're working towards something
• 41:46
  greater than just the, the blocking and tackling every
• 41:49
  single day. And that's what I needed.
• 41:51
  I needed a direction. Looking back in the last three
• 41:54
  years, what would you tell yourself that or what advice
• 41:57
  would you give yourself that maybe you missed, maybe you
• 41:59
  overlooked or someone going through this founder listing
• 42:01
  Right now it's kind of getting ready to go through this
• 42:03
  process. 1 might be one piece of advice you'd have.
• 42:06
  I I wish that 3-4 years ago I had spent more time upfront
• 42:11
  talking to other people about it.
• 42:13
  I was still in that mode of, well, I've done this largely by
• 42:18
  myself all this time, I can fix this, right?
• 42:23
  And the real value has come out when I've actually realized I
• 42:27
  don't have all the answers, which is a really painful thing
• 42:31
  for me to say to myself when when I say I need help is
• 42:34
  probably one of the hardest things I ever have to do.
• 42:36
  But once I started asking questions, so many people were
• 42:41
  willing to talk or listen. And you know, everybody's
• 42:45
  willing to give advice, but to getting so much feedback and
• 42:50
  being able to balance it out and, and, and feel out for us
• 42:55
  what was right and, and works. And even then, the relationships
• 42:59
  that built from that was I wish I had done a long time ago and
• 43:03
  gotten out of my head and thinking that I can just do this
• 43:05
  myself. That there's a good lesson there
• 43:08
  just getting vulnerable, pushing the ego aside because naturally
• 43:11
  we, we have a strong ambition and you go to want to build
• 43:14
  something from scratch. It's hard, it's tough.
• 43:16
  You know, it takes a certain level of let's go get it.
• 43:19
  And you have to have that. But on the flip side, it
• 43:21
  sometimes can slow us down and then, you know, we, we cannot
• 43:24
  ask for help or be vulnerable or share certain things or admit
• 43:28
  that we don't have all the answers.
• 43:29
  And then we find ourselves coming to the conclusion that we
• 43:31
  don't have all the answers anyways.
• 43:33
  And we have to maybe get help or seek guidance or even just
• 43:35
  sometimes talk to somebody else about it.
• 43:37
  It's just nice to, that's why I love these conversations too, is
• 43:40
  that's really cool for me to hear, you know what you've been
• 43:42
  through. And then that's going to give me
• 43:44
  things to reflect on and I'll share things that hopefully
• 43:46
  people can listen and can reflect on.
• 43:48
  And I think that's like what it's all about.
• 43:50
  I heard through that. I heard the one message that was
• 43:53
  probably loudest and it just basically goes right to what you
• 43:55
  were just saying. Is it of all that feedback, the
• 43:58
  one thing that people said, well, what's keeping you from
• 44:00
  growing the way you want to? And through all the assessments
• 44:04
  and all the feedback, it all ended up being that I was the
• 44:07
  limiter, that I had control, that I wanted sales to go
• 44:11
  through me. I wanted our client satisfaction
• 44:13
  to go through me. I wanted the the tools that we
• 44:15
  decided that I wanted to. I wanted to be impactful on
• 44:19
  those hiring our people, dealing with HR issues and legal and the
• 44:24
  finances all went through me, which meant only the capacity
• 44:27
  that I could handle it, which was also part of the reason why
• 44:32
  sometimes I lost people that didn't, that didn't stay out
• 44:35
  stick around with me because I this insistent of control, right
• 44:40
  that I that this is my thing. I'm responsible for growing it.
• 44:44
  Therefore I'm going to be the one to do it.
• 44:47
  The feedback that I got was I have to get out of my own way
• 44:49
  and I've got to trust people and build all the internal
• 44:52
  relationships to get things going and allow if, if I hired
• 44:57
  the right people and if I had the right people working with us
• 45:00
  and following, I had better let them do what they're going to
• 45:02
  do. And that was probably one of the
• 45:05
  hardest things other than just saying I need help and actually
• 45:09
  to step aside and trust the people around us.
• 45:11
  And I'm, I, I think I'm reaping the benefits of today.
• 45:14
  I am surrounded by some really, really good hearts and minds in
• 45:21
  our company right now that right now I would trust them to, hey,
• 45:25
  I need you to pick up my son or right they're, they're just
• 45:28
  really good people and I need to trust that they can take things
• 45:31
  when things need to be taken. Yeah.
• 45:34
  What's if you look at kind of some of the key drivers to grow
• 45:37
  in the business over the last several years, whether it's
• 45:40
  client acquisition, retention, client service, what are some of
• 45:43
  that maybe one or two key things that you're like when we're
• 45:46
  doing this, it took the business to the next level.
• 45:49
  And maybe that's something that, you know, somebody listening, a
• 45:51
  founder, entrepreneur listening could, could take whether it's
• 45:53
  again, client acquisition, client retention, client service
• 45:56
  to think about those kind of the main 3 buckets in a business.
• 46:00
  So I think the differentiator for us as to why, why client
• 46:04
  retention works for us and over the last couple years why client
• 46:08
  acquisition has been better is because the feedback that we
• 46:12
  have gotten is that when our people work with our clients
• 46:15
  from a, from whether they're setting them up or helping them
• 46:19
  in that incredibly stressful moment that their computer just
• 46:22
  flat out does not work. It is that care and empathy.
• 46:27
  Care and empathy is really one of our core values.
• 46:30
  We feel like it sets people aside that when it sets us
• 46:33
  aside. But when we really started
• 46:36
  focusing on guys, you can solve your tech, you know, my guys,
• 46:41
  our, our, our team, you can solve tech issues all you want.
• 46:45
  We can handle their questions about our bills all I want.
• 46:47
  But if we are not looking at it from their perspective on how
• 46:51
  how crappy their day is because something's not working, you
• 46:55
  know, we're just not building relationships.
• 46:58
  We've not, we've not exploded growth in quantum levels.
• 47:02
  It's always been this trickle growth, but our client retention
• 47:06
  is, is second to none. We just don't lose our
• 47:10
  relationships with our clients because they come to us and they
• 47:14
  like working with our people and the empathy and care that we
• 47:18
  provide with them let's them know that we feel like we're
• 47:21
  part of them. And so, you know, that's a hard
• 47:24
  thing for me to say that that's an advice or one step say, hey,
• 47:27
  you need to do this to grow. It's what worked for us.
• 47:31
  Well, I think it's important because some people they're so
• 47:34
  focused on getting the next client that they don't take care
• 47:36
  of the current client that they have.
• 47:38
  You know, it's kind of like this, this hamster wheel that
• 47:40
  you keep going and going to going and then you end up losing
• 47:42
  clients and having to replace them.
• 47:43
  And I think there is value of just times.
• 47:46
  I know I've had to tell myself times, many times.
• 47:48
  Slow down, focus on the clients that you have, make the impact
• 47:52
  they'll that will lead to other clients that will lead to
• 47:54
  retention and good things will come from it.
• 47:56
  Exactly. If you if you are just looking
• 47:59
  for a new client and old ones who aren't being taken care of
• 48:02
  or going out the door, that relationship goes back to what
• 48:04
  we were saying before. It's transactional.
• 48:07
  What do they pay to buy those new computers that they need to
• 48:10
  refresh and they don't take care of them and make sure they're
• 48:12
  using things properly or or in ways that are beneficial to
• 48:15
  them. They just go out the back door,
• 48:17
  which is a really expensive way to grow a services company
• 48:22
  because client acquisition is hard.
• 48:25
  It's expensive, it's taxing on your people because there's
• 48:28
  stress there. There's stress at the client
• 48:30
  level. It's it's really noisy.
• 48:34
  New clients want to get to that peace level, right?
• 48:36
  And my team wants to get to that peace level where they know the
• 48:39
  client that when they have an issue, they know where to go to
• 48:42
  solve it, you know, put in solutions that avoid problems
• 48:46
  down the road. And that's why clients come to
• 48:48
  us as well, that you know, that we're going to be caring for
• 48:50
  them and we're going to get them to a level of stability and
• 48:53
  peace and let's get those ripple waves down a little bit.
• 48:57
  How has AI impacted your industry or how might it change
• 49:02
  in a in a big way moving forward as a managed service provider?
• 49:05
  AI brings a lot of dimensions to complexities for us.
• 49:11
  Most people, we joke. Most people use AI for what we
• 49:14
  call fancy Google. Really.
• 49:16
  You know, you go to chat, you can ask nearly the same question
• 49:19
  you would have asked Google to get a broader answer, right?
• 49:23
  An interaction, There's a conversation there versus
• 49:26
  Google. Or exactly where it can take
• 49:28
  context. The that brings what the first
• 49:33
  challenge is that most people say, well, great, well ChatGPT
• 49:37
  or cloud or Clod or, or or copilot are there for me to use,
• 49:41
  right? So they go out there and use it,
• 49:43
  it's free. I can use a free system.
• 49:45
  And then they get into a situation, they have a problem
• 49:47
  with a customer or a client or an issue, and they start putting
• 49:50
  that information in there, not realizing you just broke all of
• 49:54
  your data governance. You've not realized that when
• 49:57
  you use those public instances, which are incredibly powerful
• 50:01
  and valuable, that every word, context, name, document that you
• 50:06
  put in there became part of the public model, which now becomes
• 50:10
  part of the answers others get, which could really compromise
• 50:15
  you, your organization and your clients.
• 50:18
  So that brings to one of the very first things we've that
• 50:21
  we've had to deal with our clients is teaching them data
• 50:23
  governance. How do we keep, how do we keep
• 50:27
  your work product, your client information, your internal
• 50:30
  financials, your, your personal safe while using the power of
• 50:35
  the, of the language models and the, the AI processing.
• 50:39
  So teaching them how to use that, how licensing it using a
• 50:42
  using a private instance. That's one thing that's your
• 50:46
  generative side of this where you're asking it for questions
• 50:50
  and how you how you use that system.
• 50:53
  We're getting a lot of questions now on using the agentic side of
• 50:56
  it, using the AI agents to help them either automate, simplify
• 51:02
  their processes, right? And that brings in integrators.
• 51:06
  You know, there are some really good people in our community
• 51:09
  right here who are integrators who, who can help bring AI
• 51:13
  solutions to the everyday, the real, the next problem that we
• 51:19
  seem to run into. And I, I, I, I tend to meet with
• 51:23
  several AI developers in our region.
• 51:27
  They say, you know, I we have these great ways to develop AI
• 51:30
  that solve, you know, all sorts of stuff, but we can't seem to
• 51:34
  get that in front of the small businesses.
• 51:36
  Meanwhile, small businesses say, yeah, I don't even understand
• 51:39
  this. Yeah, I don't even know the
• 51:41
  first question to ask about AII. See, I see commercials about
• 51:45
  AII. See, when I open up Microsoft
• 51:47
  Word, it's telling me to use AI to make a document.
• 51:51
  But I don't know what that even means.
• 51:54
  So I see a gap, right? I see a gap between the the
• 52:00
  problem that a small business actually perceives.
• 52:05
  And I'm going to be clear, the problems are the same problems
• 52:08
  they had 10 years and years ago and 20 years ago and 50 years
• 52:10
  ago. It's how do I how do I get
• 52:14
  clients faster? How do I make them more
• 52:17
  profitable? How do I get my people more
• 52:20
  productive, right? And when, when an organization
• 52:23
  realized these are the, these are the issues, you know, back
• 52:26
  in the 90s and 2000s, it was all about getting CRM or ERP systems
• 52:31
  in there, right? Then, you know, other tools that
• 52:35
  came in or mobility came in. I look at it similarly that AI
• 52:40
  is that it's the tool that you need to be able to identify what
• 52:46
  the problem is and a client has that we're actually solving that
• 52:50
  problem. When's the last time an
• 52:53
  organization came to me or a web developer and says, you know
• 52:56
  what, I really want Python. Right.
• 52:59
  Great tool, absolute answer to getting a great website or, or
• 53:04
  automation in place. But they don't ask that.
• 53:07
  They ask a question more like, are websites terrible?
• 53:10
  How do we rebuild that? That's how they talk.
• 53:11
  And then and, and, and that right there is the need.
• 53:14
  What do you want the website to do?
• 53:16
  Now a developer is going to go to them and say, based on what
• 53:18
  you said, OK, you need a blog. You need to be able to integrate
• 53:21
  with social media. We want to have a chat bot on
• 53:24
  there. WordPress is the right answer,
• 53:26
  right? Or whatever it would be the same
• 53:29
  kind of thing that the conversations we're starting to
• 53:32
  have have with our clients or well, where are your challenges?
• 53:35
  You have a goal for growth. We're the IT partner, but we
• 53:40
  have insight into the tools that work for you.
• 53:43
  If your client acquisition is is slow or, or, or whatever it
• 53:48
  would be where you would have, you have a CRM system right now,
• 53:52
  but it doesn't integrate with your outlook or it's tough to
• 53:55
  get that data out of there. You know, if, if analyzing that
• 53:59
  data is a problem now we can probably figure out a way to use
• 54:03
  AI to create the, the data crunching that gets it into a
• 54:07
  report or a, a cadence that you need that solve your problem,
• 54:11
  that gets the right information in front of your salespeople and
• 54:14
  your producers. So there's this is the evolution
• 54:18
  that I'm seeing right now that the, the small business knows
• 54:23
  it's out there. No idea how to ask the question.
• 54:26
  The developers are out there, but don't know how to approach
• 54:29
  the small businesses and there's an integration challenge that
• 54:32
  we're going to be seeing in the next year that I think are that
• 54:35
  are going to be amazing. And so many of them are not
• 54:39
  necessarily about job replacement.
• 54:41
  They're about, you know, your salesperson is always guessing
• 54:44
  about what that, that prospect needs.
• 54:48
  But if you can use AI to, to, to hook in with the public model
• 54:52
  and your CRM to nail down a specific product that you have
• 54:57
  give you insight into that client, what their, what their,
• 54:59
  what their struggle is that you can go to them prepared on your
• 55:02
  sales message and AI can, can present that to you.
• 55:06
  That's where their solutions come from.
• 55:08
  So I know that wasn't the question you really asked.
• 55:10
  No, it's good, but. We, we just see AI as it's a,
• 55:14
  it's a challenge from a communication standpoint and
• 55:17
  understanding standpoint. It's also got a scary side of it
• 55:21
  because all the news says, well, it's going to replace all of our
• 55:24
  jobs. But at the same time, there's a
• 55:27
  there are real opportunities for all the small businesses in the
• 55:30
  area to embrace and see and ask, learn how to ask the right
• 55:34
  questions. Yeah, I think it is a skill to
• 55:36
  separate the hype from what can actually solve a problem.
• 55:41
  You know, I see in my world, in the content marketing world,
• 55:43
  everyone's like use ChatGPT for everything.
• 55:45
  And now all their content and posts.
• 55:46
  I just had a conversation with yesterday with a, a business
• 55:49
  owner and she's like, you know, I'm really proud of myself.
• 55:50
  I'm learning to come out of my shell and I'm, I want to be
• 55:53
  myself and really like let that show on the content.
• 55:55
  And then we reviewed her content and I'm like, this is all
• 55:58
  ChatGPT. And she's like, yeah, I guess it
• 56:00
  is. And I'm like these slow down,
• 56:03
  right? Like make sure the human voice
• 56:04
  in your story and the things that matter are in the content,
• 56:07
  not just, hey, write me a post, write me a post, write me a
• 56:09
  post, Automate, automate, automate.
• 56:11
  And I think that's where people just AI so great and it's going
• 56:14
  to solve a lot of problems that already is and hopefully make
• 56:16
  things more efficient. But I think there is the lens
• 56:19
  you look at. It has to be how can this help
• 56:21
  me solve a problem or genuinely maybe better, not just, you
• 56:25
  know, eliminated tasks that I was doing before that I don't
• 56:28
  want to do anymore. And I'm just going to AI do
• 56:30
  everything for me. I look at that like a creative
• 56:32
  assistant. It's someone that sits beside
• 56:34
  you as I'm writing maybe. And I say I'm stuck on how to
• 56:37
  phrase this. Hey Chet Petit, help me give me
• 56:39
  5 other ways to phrase this or rewrite this one sentence or
• 56:42
  help me come up with a bold hook for this or a thumbnail design
• 56:45
  or whatever it is, right? But it's not controlling the
• 56:47
  actual message or the story. You're absolutely correct.
• 56:51
  I think so many of us start to feel the the drug of AI when we
• 56:56
  start to realize of realize, well, you know, this was a
• 56:59
  document that would have taken me 3 weeks to create and that
• 57:03
  now I can get it to an 85% in about 15 minutes.
• 57:06
  It's incredible. The time saver part for those of
• 57:09
  us who are are are serial over taskers and over schedulers is a
• 57:14
  is a is a wonderful thing. But that slippery slope is,
• 57:18
  well, do I let that 85% be 100%, right?
• 57:20
  There you go. And knowing that, that 15%, now
• 57:24
  I can actually add the stuff that if I was spending three
• 57:27
  weeks getting this document ready, right?
• 57:29
  How much am I really focusing on the details to making it really
• 57:33
  something, a special product? If I can have something create
• 57:37
  that 85%, now I'm using that last 15% to say, you know, you
• 57:40
  know what, I'm going to kick this over the top and make this
• 57:42
  different from everybody else. The, the construct, the bullet
• 57:47
  points, the, the compliance, right?
• 57:50
  You know, for example, I just used it to help give me some
• 57:55
  ideas and where my my employee handbook was missing things.
• 57:59
  It couldn't create all the things, but it did help me pull
• 58:01
  in what are this? What are the statutes in the
• 58:04
  Illinois laws that came up over the last six months that I was
• 58:06
  missing? But I still had a lot of work to
• 58:09
  do in our own office to make sure that this document was what
• 58:12
  we needed or or possibly even just a marketing document,
• 58:17
  right. Look at what we've done in the
• 58:19
  past. Look at what our clients are and
• 58:21
  our tickets that people are calling in for.
• 58:23
  Can you process this data? Give me the stuff that I needed
• 58:27
  to make some, make it sound like Matt wrote this.
• 58:29
  Yeah, AI does have the ability to start to pick up a little bit
• 58:34
  of my tone. Yeah, but it's still not the
• 58:35
  same. Yeah, right.
• 58:36
  I agree. One of the questions as we get
• 58:38
  to sort of the end here is I've been trying to ask founders on
• 58:41
  the show. A newer segment that I'm doing
• 58:43
  is, you know, we've spent this time growing this business.
• 58:45
  You've got some revenues and profits.
• 58:47
  I'm, I'm curious where founders are investing outside of their
• 58:51
  business. Is there anything you can share
• 58:52
  there? Where are you putting some of
• 58:53
  the money? You know, whether it's like
• 58:55
  crypto, is it stocks, is a very traditional mutual funds, is it
• 58:59
  real estate? Is there anything you can share
• 59:01
  as much as you want to share? Obviously there's some things
• 59:03
  you're you're private about, but I'm just curious to get your
• 59:06
  thoughts. And I'm going to kind of ask all
• 59:07
  the founders that are on the show because I think other
• 59:09
  founders are curious, what do they invest?
• 59:11
  What are they where they put their money to make it grow?
• 59:13
  Yeah, I, I, I have a, a very dear entrusted financial advisor
• 59:17
  right here in the community as well.
• 59:20
  I am not financially investment savvy.
• 59:24
  That's just really not my not my world.
• 59:27
  Trying to take, you know, money first, just like the rest of us
• 59:31
  goes to making sure the people around me are taking care of.
• 59:34
  I'm really focused right now and making sure my son gets through
• 59:36
  college. Yes, that's been planned for.
• 59:38
  But you know that that's the thing, you know, I've had a
• 59:40
  principle that just like my parents did for me, I would love
• 59:44
  him to exit college without the burden of debt.
• 59:47
  So making sure that happens as well as far as my future goes, I
• 59:53
  do a really good job of balancing making sure I've got
• 59:56
  something going. But any?
• 59:59
  Crypto. No, no, I'm always curious.
• 1:00:01
  Not, not a crypto guy, Very, very, very conventional and
• 1:00:06
  traditional as far as I go, you know, but honestly, they're even
• 1:00:11
  closer to a fault. I I believe that tomorrow is not
• 1:00:14
  guaranteed to me. Feel the same way.
• 1:00:17
  So it's like Live Today. Then the the never miss a moment
• 1:00:20
  blended with I can sponsor a lifestyle that I would like to
• 1:00:24
  have now without being stupid and you know, and and spending
• 1:00:29
  everything but there there's a significant amount just allows
• 1:00:34
  me, my partner, my my son to live a life that we are we are
• 1:00:39
  enjoying right now. Speaking of that, I've got a
• 1:00:43
  picture here, this little guy. That's my boy.
• 1:00:48
  Your son. Yeah.
• 1:00:49
  I'm wearing close us out by asking you.
• 1:00:52
  Aaron is his name. What's one thing that Aaron has
• 1:00:55
  taught you, whether about business or life, that you hold
• 1:00:59
  pretty dearly that maybe you didn't expect to get from?
• 1:01:01
  Because, you know, they're little.
• 1:01:01
  They're not like sitting you down to impart wisdom on you,
• 1:01:04
  but they teach you things as you raise kids.
• 1:01:07
  And I'm curious, what's something that, you know, Aaron
• 1:01:09
  has taught you, whether he was little or where it's, you know,
• 1:01:11
  even now? Boy, the overarcher.
• 1:01:17
  It still goes back to the Never miss a moment and be.
• 1:01:20
  Present. I forgot you were going to say.
• 1:01:22
  That everything that this guy means, means to me has really
• 1:01:29
  grown from that look. You get back right when you,
• 1:01:33
  when you, when you open your eyes and you look straight and
• 1:01:37
  let him see into your soul that you just, you just be there.
• 1:01:43
  And then when they're, when they're 4, they're 10, they're
• 1:01:46
  15 and now 19. And you walk into his apartment
• 1:01:49
  in college and you get that look back of the trust that you've
• 1:01:53
  been here, you're here again. He is paid that back in
• 1:01:58
  dividends by just just showing the presence, presence back.
• 1:02:05
  He and I take an annual trip together and it's awesome when
• 1:02:10
  I've, when I've, when I've told it to other friends.
• 1:02:13
  This last one, he and I spent 9 days together in hotel rooms.
• 1:02:18
  They're like, my gosh, how did he not kill you after two days?
• 1:02:22
  And what we do is that we're, we're touring the Major League
• 1:02:25
  ballparks. OK.
• 1:02:26
  So we, we're, we're seeing the country, just the two of us
• 1:02:29
  going to see the Major League ballparks.
• 1:02:31
  This last summer we, we flew out to DC, spent three days in DC5
• 1:02:36
  days in New York to see the Red Sox, Yankees, and then trained
• 1:02:39
  and saw the Cubs in Philly, saw three ballparks, 9 days touring
• 1:02:43
  around hotels. And by the end of the trip, we
• 1:02:47
  were, we were talking about, I wish this wasn't over, you know,
• 1:02:51
  and I had worried about it that by day three, we were kind of
• 1:02:54
  going to be at each other's throats.
• 1:02:56
  And he, he trusts, he shows me how to trust.
• 1:03:01
  And he, he, he, he reminds me that it's just all worth it
• 1:03:07
  being in the moment at all times.
• 1:03:09
  Man, I love that. I feel the exact, the in the
• 1:03:12
  moment thing I think is so spot on and something you really do
• 1:03:15
  learn from kids. I think the other thing isn't
• 1:03:18
  appreciating the little things, you know, like I remember when
• 1:03:20
  they were little and we didn't have a lot there, they didn't
• 1:03:23
  care. They don't care.
• 1:03:24
  They just want, you know, they want you to be with them and to
• 1:03:27
  to be doing whatever you're doing with them in the moment
• 1:03:29
  And right, you know, appreciate the small things in life because
• 1:03:32
  they get they especially when they're little, they get excited
• 1:03:34
  about the littlest, stupidest stuff.
• 1:03:36
  And you're like, Dang, I got to make sure I don't lose my inner
• 1:03:39
  child and my excitement and my curiosity.
• 1:03:42
  I got to sign this as be curious.
• 1:03:45
  Those are things too, you know, be curious.
• 1:03:47
  Stay, stay vibrant. Stay looking at the world with
• 1:03:50
  amazement, you know, because I think sometimes you, you grow,
• 1:03:52
  you have all these things that happen to you and you kind of
• 1:03:55
  get this chip on your shoulder and it's, it's sometimes easy to
• 1:03:58
  forget that stuff. Don't forget that you were a kid
• 1:04:00
  once and you can still be one, right?
• 1:04:02
  That's right, go ahead and that's right.
• 1:04:04
  Act like it be be silly, ask ask the dumb questions.
• 1:04:08
  Because when you do that, you start thinking about, you know,
• 1:04:12
  other ways you're curious and saying getting out of that, that
• 1:04:17
  that rut and roll that you get everyday that you have to be the
• 1:04:20
  expert. Yes, now I really appreciate you
• 1:04:23
  coming on the show, man. It's been an amazing
• 1:04:25
  conversation. I'd love to have you back at
• 1:04:27
  some point, maybe next. Year or two, that was amazing.
• 1:04:29
  I absolutely love doing this. Thank you brother.
• 1:04:32
  I appreciate you coming on. Where can people find you,
• 1:04:34
  connect with you, learn more about what you guys do?
• 1:04:36
  Sure, techworks.com, TEQWORKS, you can get get on there and see
• 1:04:42
  a little video about another great person who in the
• 1:04:45
  community who put a little video, put together a video
• 1:04:48
  about what our clients think of us.
• 1:04:50
  LinkedIn is a great way to meet, to reach out to me.
• 1:04:53
  That's probably where I'm most active.
• 1:04:56
  So Matt Sidman, SIDMAN on LinkedIn, come reach out to me
• 1:05:00
  and would love to connect and see real, real, see where the
• 1:05:03
  relationships go. Beautiful.
• 1:05:04
  We'll link everything in the description of the show too.
• 1:05:07
  Appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Alex.
• 1:05:09
  Thanks.