Breaking Free: Transforming from Employee to Entrepreneur
Tim Fitzpatrick
MSP & B2B Professional Service Firm Marketing Consultant/Advisor | Fractional CMO | Build and manage your marketing engine to get where you want to go faster. | Remove Your Revenue Roadblocks
Welcome to the Rialto Marketing podcast. Today's episode is a revenue acceleration series interview where we talk to seven figure B2B professional service firm owners that are actively trying to grow their business and get to the next level. We talk about the good, the bad and the ugly so that you can learn from their experience.
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Breaking Free: Transforming from Employee to Entrepreneur
Tim Fitzpatrick
Welcome to the Rialto Marketing podcast. Today's episode is a revenue acceleration series interview where we talk to seven figure B2B professional service firm owners that are actively trying to grow their business and get to the next level. We talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly so that you can learn from their experience. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to have Jason Dittmann from MicroAge with me today. Jason, welcome and thanks for being here.
Jason Dittmann
Thanks for the invite. Looking forward to the conversation.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, me too. I'm looking forward to digging into this with you. Before we jump into the heart of the conversation here, I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions. Are you ready to jump in with both feet?
Jason Dittmann
Let's go.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, very quickly, what do you do? How long have you been doing it?
Jason Dittmann
So I'm the owner of MicroAge Regina, president and owner. My wife and I have owned the business for seven years, and I've been part of the company for 24. In the it services realm.
Tim Fitzpatrick
It's a long time, man, a long time. So what's the most important lesson you've learned in those, those seven years or the 24, wherever you want to pull it from?
Jason Dittmann
Certainly a combination of both, but certainly from a business owner perspective, just learning from those that are doing it. Surround yourself with a good peer group and learn from their successes as well as their opportunities to learn. I've avoided a lot of problem and created a lot of great opportunity.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that's a fantastic piece of advice. Right? There's so many people out there that we can learn from that have already gone down the path. And why make the same mistakes they did early on, the first business I was a partner in was a wholesale distribution company. I owned it with my dad and some other partners, and we ended up partnering with other distributors across the country. We were business partners, but it was also very much like a mastermind and a peer group because some of the distributors were much further along, some were not. Some were grouped in the middle. And every time we got together and we shared things, there were learning lessons and things to pull apart. Right. We were greater as a whole than we were individually. And so I love that. So we all know growing a business is hard, man. And certainly in 24 years, you've seen a lot of different ups and downs. Do you have any kind of mantra or motivational saying that you say to yourself or you share with your team to push through those challenging times?
Jason Dittmann
That we're all better together. You know, sometimes we think we need to put our head down and push through. And there have been times, you know, obviously over the last challenging two or three years that I thought that it's better if I push through myself. But the reality is if we work together collectively, we're always better than the sum of our parts, so to speak.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So, yeah, cool. I love it. So in the pre interview, you had mentioned that you didn't actually start MicroAge. You've been there for 24 years, but you're now the owner. Can you share that journey with us a little bit?
Jason Dittmann
Absolutely. So it was very interesting. The owner at the, when I first started, I started in January of 2000, interesting time in technology. And probably within the first couple of years, I had told the owner at the time, she kind of asked, well, what's your plan? It's like, you know, I'd like to stay here a few years, learn the business and probably start my own firm up. Right. Just being honest. And, you know, the reality was that we had a great ownership group, learned a lot, had a lot of opportunities to learn, and I progressed through the organization and it was good people. Right. We had great, a great team. And as we progressed and as our business kind of changed and evolved over the years, I got to be involved with that. And so instead of reinventing a wheel, I'm already in a wheel. And, you know, as, as the conversation of the owners, you know, started to progress, that they're ready to move on and retire, then I was able to kind of jump in and, you know, put my hand up to say, you know, now I'm ready to start that ownership journey. So I guess I had, you know, a real interesting opportunity to kind of learn the ropes and maybe kind of quasi start my own business without the risk of starting my own business. So, so that was, that was great. And then, you know, certainly our business has evolved over the years from more of a value added reseller to an MSP and certainly had a lot of changing growth there. But it was, it was very interesting. And as we kind of go through the transition of, you know, being the employee to being the owner, certainly, you know, that opened up a lot of interesting conversations with, with existing staff that, you know, looked at me as a peer and then now, you know, kind of the owner of the organization. So there was, you know, a lot of different pieces that we had to work through in terms of, you know, long tenured staff that may have had maybe a little bit more allegiance to the previous owners, bringing in my you know, some new, some new leaders from, you know, who I felt I needed to help support the business grow. So, you know, there's some change and certainly some change management. So it's not, you know, just because you have a, you know, a successful business, that transition can be a little tricky. So you have to be ready for it. And, you know, thankfully, like I said, I spoke to a lot of people in that pre planning period, so kind of had my ducks in a row for what to expect and didn't all kind of come to fruition. And obviously some different challenges popped their heads up too. But it was an interesting adventure. But seven years later, we're in a real good spot.
Tim Fitzpatrick
And now we were talking just briefly before we started recording MicroAge. They're kind of individually owned franchise businesses, if you will, is that right?
Jason Dittmann
That's correct, yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick
And how long... Has the company always been MicroAge, or did they shift to the MicroAge platform methodology at a certain point while you were with the company?
Jason Dittmann
So we've always been a MicroAge, so we've been around as a MicroAge in our market since 1991. So, yeah, long, long history in our market.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So it's been a really long time.
Jason Dittmann
Yeah. The franchise organization in Canada started in, I believe, 1981. So long, long, long standing organization representing it in Canada, for sure.
Digital Risk Management
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Okay, cool. Now, one of the other things that we talked about in the pre interview that I thought was really interesting was, you know, you guys are big on digital risk management. Why do you call it, why do you call it this, and why do you lead with it in your marketing and your sales efforts?
Jason Dittmann
You know, 5-10 years ago, we used to fix computers. You know, we used to back up data. Used to, you know, make sure people's productivity wasn't affected. Today's day and age, you know, certainly over the last five to eight years, the cybersecurity threat landscape has evolved so much to where it is today that it's no longer, it's, you know, still, you know, making sure users are productive with technology. But the risks to organizations is far beyond employee productivity. It's, it is about protecting the data. It's about making sure that should data get compromised and locked up by ransomware, that we have the proper plan to get the organization back up and running and mediate or mitigate any of those risks or dangers to the organization. Because if you don't have the right recovery plan, then we're looking at some real financial risk, financial liability, you know, to hopefully get the data back. And so really looking at what is the, what is the greater risk to organizations? Is it, you know, a desktop or laptop crashing, or is it, you know, a threat actor getting into the network and getting the financial information, the customer information or credit card information? I think that's the bigger risk. So, you know, really the shift for me and our team is really looking at it from a digital risk perspective. Certainly, you know, you need to have that great customer service looking after the people day to day. That's becoming, you know, everyday stuff. Everyone should be doing that. But on top, we really need to make sure that we're protecting clients from a digital perspective to make sure that, you know, they're not going to have the pain of having to go through an experience like that.
领英推荐
Tim Fitzpatrick
So when you talk about digital risk management, Jason, essentially you're talking about cybersecurity. Is that right?
Jason Dittmann
Yeah, that's correct.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Which, look, I think most of us have heard of cybersecurity at this point, but for most of us, it's probably more like black magic. It doesn't really mean a whole lot. And so rather than leading with cybersecurity, you guys are talking about it as digital risk management, which to me, from a marketing perspective, you're just positioning it differently than how a lot of people talk about it. But you're also positioning it in a way that your ideal clients are going to better, that it's going to resonate better with them and have more meaning to them. Is that what you have found when you talk about it as digital risk management versus cybersecurity?
Jason Dittmann
100%. And that's a really key point. The things that we do are valuable to people that value their data. And the reality is if people do not have valuable data or valuable IT process, then protecting it from a digital risk perspective isn't important. People that have assets that doesn't really matter to them, they're not going to necessarily get the top level of insurance to protect it, because if it goes away, we can still continue on. And that's reality for some businesses. But for really, our target customers are the ones that have a high value of technology, a high value of productivity. So we want to talk at that next level because, you know, cybersecurity, you know, protection in our industry, that's table stakes. Everyone is doing, you know, the core pieces. We need to take that next level of just making sure, do we have an incident response plan? Do we have some of these other pieces, in place so that we can really make sure that we've upped our clients game? And so when they, you know, if an event were to occur that you were able to kind of get things up and running in a reasonable amount of time.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, well, it's like you said, a lot of this stuff is table stakes, not only in the, you know, in the managed service provider industry, but just in most industries. There are things that are table stakes that people expect. Yet most businesses in that industry are talking about it the same way, and when that happens, they end up having a really hard time differentiating and creating a competitive advantage. And although you're talking about cybersecurity, the way you guys have positioned it, you're talking about it differently. It's resonating with your market better, but it's also positioned as different, which helps start to create this competitive advantage, which I love, and which is one of the reasons why I wanted you to talk about it a little bit, because, you know, especially in managed services, it's like, man, nobody, but nobody loves buying IT. They don't buy IT. They're buying solutions to business problems. Right. And they're buying business outcomes. They're not buying IT to buy IT. They're buying IT for what business outcome. It can get them.
Jason Dittmann
Right.
Focusing on Building Internal Relationships?
Tim Fitzpatrick
Right. And so I love how you guys have done that because I think it's. It's different than how a lot of, what a lot of people do in the space. So we already, you already kind of touched on about seven years ago you bought the business. And when I'm talking to people that have. That have bought the business, I always like to ask this question because I think there's a lot of learning lessons from it. But when you initially bought the business, what did you focus on initially, and why did you do that?
Jason Dittmann
I initially focused on relationships, internal relationships, and just making sure that people knew my vision of what we're up to that there wasn't, I was as clear and honest as I could be with everybody, just so that they didn't think I was coming in with my own, you know, completely radical agenda to do all these different things is, you know, just... Just talking to people about really where I want to take things. And then got their feedback on how. How the heck we're gonna do it. So I think that was... That was some of the important parts, and then really focused on trying to set up some, like, so, management process. You know, one of the things we did really early on is we adopted the traction methodology, and that really, really helped us out getting ourselves a little bit more organized. So those are two of the main things within the first definitely relationships and having those conversations.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So I want to pull a few things out here. One, I love that when most people buy businesses, they are talking about like, hey, this is what our plans are, right. There's a lot of unknowns. Right. People on the team are not sure they're uncomfortable, but one of the things you said was, we asked for feedback, you brought them in to some of those decisions rather than, hey, this is what we're doing. If you're on board, cool. If you're not freaking jump ship. And my guess is that helped people buy in to the process a little bit more. And then from there it's, did you do what you say you were going to do? But I love the fact that you asked for feedback. And the other thing, too, when you talk about traction. For those people that are not familiar with it, traction is the book eos, or the entrepreneurial operating system is the company itself. And certainly it's very prevalent all over the place in the MSP space. There are a lot of people that have latched on to eos. So it's a very good system. And so you guys, you guys have been on that well for seven years now.
Jason Dittmann
Yes.
Sales and Marketing is Always a Moving Target
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Cool. I love it. So what are the biggest things holding you back from getting where you want to be?
Jason Dittmann
You know, it's, sales and marketing is always a moving target. As soon as you think you have it dialed in, things change. You know, algorithms change, consumer behaviors on social media change. It's, it's such a moving target when, you know, we try to get the right messaging out in Youtland, I, you know, from our sales team and going out to some of the meeting ones. And, you know, what was important and impactful last year isn't as important. So it's always just trying to find, you know, the right talking points, the right value propositions when we're talking to our prospects to, you know, to kind of acquire new clients and always making sure that we have the right balance because we could spend millions and millions of dollars on cybersecurity, but we have to find that right balance of security and fiscal, fiscally responsible budgeting for our clients. So there's a lot of, we're in an industry that has a lot of different moving targets and we have to really balance a lot of spin and plates.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So let's dig into sales and marketing being a moving target, because this is not, you're not alone in this challenge. Right. It's, gosh, a lot of people, a lot of businesses just try it and they just stop. Because they're like, I can't do this, right? It's not working. I'm trying all these different things, and I think this is appropriate to multiple aspects of business. But especially with marketing, especially the tactics, the channels, the marketing vehicles that we use are evolving very quickly. Like you said, there's new social channels coming up. There's algorithm changes, SEO is changing, there's AI now. It's like, how do you stay on top of all this? And the thing that I always come back to with marketing is the fundamentals, right? The principles of marketing, the strategy behind it, because those things don't change in any discipline, right. The fundamentals of standing up and hitting a major league fastball. Right. Or, you know, we talked about the jerseys behind you in our pre interview. You know, like you're in Canada, right? The fundamentals of hockey, right? Skating, you know, hitting the puck, passing. There are fundamentals there that doesn't matter whether you're a professional or you're just starting out, you've got to master those fundamentals. With things that are changing and very dynamic, like marketing, I think it is that much more important to master the fundamentals because if you've got the fundamentals in place, as things change, those fundamentals lay the foundation. The tactics are going to shift, but the fundamentals that drive those tactics are never changing. And so making sure that when we jump into our marketing vehicles, we've got that strategy in place behind it is what makes the road and the path smoother. Right. It's still going to be bumpy. Plenty of marketing and plenty of sales tactics we try are not going to work. That's part of the process. But when we've got the fuel, we can, we're still going to get to the destination. Right. It's, we may have to make a few turns that were unanticipated, but we're still going to get there because, and that's another thing is with marketing, it's information overload. Right. And when there's so much information out there, I, that's another reason why it's so important to have that foundation, have a plan so that we can be disciplined enough to not get distracted, because it's very easy to get distracted and go, I'm going to follow that one. This is the best, newest shiny clubhouse is a perfect example. Clubhouse was super popular during the pandemic, and I haven't heard anybody say anything about clubhouse in at least two years. So, you know, the marketing tactics are going to change, but the fundamentals behind it won't. So hopefully, people that are, that are listening find that helpful because it's, it is a moving target and you're never done. It's not like you've conquered the marketing hill and you're like, I got it. Everything's peaches and cream, right? Because once you get over that, that first hill, then, you know, you may go down a little bit and you got to climb another hill. You're never done. Constant process. So looking back at your MicroAge experience, what are the top two to three things that instantly stand out for you?
Jason Dittmann
You know, I think understanding. So, like, kind of looking at our evolution, you know, right around 2012 was a real big inflection point for our business. We were primarily a VAr, hardware related business. Probably 80% to 90% of our revenue was, was hardware based. But they increased competition. It was increased, decreased margins and decreased, you know, gross dollars. And we had, we had to shift and we had to really, you know, be disciplined to say, we need to, we need to grab a whole new base of clients. You know, we, we were fortunate. We had some that we were doing it services for, but we had to adopt the MSP model and it was really difficult. We had, you know, some text didn't fit the way we needed to do services. The sales team didn't do sales the way that we needed them to. So we had like a massive shift for from 2012 to 14 in our business because we saw the writing was on the wall. But had we not had the discipline to say, we need to foundationally change, we may not have been here. That was the reality, but we successfully made the transition. But it did take, you know, a yeoman's yeoman's effort in terms of changing, changing the mindset and changing, you know, people's, you know, well, changing some people that didn't fit and, you know, a lot of people voluntarily said, this isn't the right direction, and others would say, hey, this is great, let's go. So, luckily, you know, by the time I was ready to buy in 2017, most of that fundamental shift had kind of taken place. But there were just so many components that just allowed us, and maybe another point when we made that shift, there was just so many pieces of technology that were ready for small medium business. Offsite backup became reasonably priced. Microsoft 365 was in its infancy, but it was allowed people to get enterprise exchange email. We were able to really offer a whole new value proposition to a market that really hadn't had access to it. So that was the real exciting part of that whole transition is that we could unlock an entire portfolio of technology solutions to clients that wouldn't have had access to it in a safe and secure way. So we're really excited about that transition. But it certainly was. It was scary.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, you know, it's, this example really points out, especially in business, but I think in life in general, being open to change and embracing it like it's going to happen whether we want it to or not. And you guys saw this starting to happen, and rather than fight it, you embraced it. Perfect example is Blockbuster and Netflix. Blockbuster. I mean, geez, it's not. Maybe. Maybe it's not the biggest business failure, but it's a pretty damn big one. I mean, they owned a huge section of a market, but they did not adapt to the changes in the market. They refused to, really. And if they had, what, who knows what would have happened with Netflix, right? And so it's a man, we can fight change, but it's not going to serve us at all. And because you were willing to adapt and accept it early on, it gave you that much more time to transition. Right. And get ahead of the curve rather than be behind it. But two, I mean, your business going from 90% hardware sales shifting to MSP services, like you said, it's a lot of work, a lot of changes that had to happen in the business. But long term, you're getting recurring revenue, you have higher profit margins. Those are all good things.
Jason Dittmann
Yeah. Yeah. You know, had we done the same type of business through Covid, it would have been massively different. You know, a lot of our clients very much relied on the technology services we provided, and, you know, from a recurring revenue perspective, those, you know, those are the things that. That really allow us to have some stability in our business and predictability. So.
Conclusion
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, and. Well, with product sales, when everybody else is buying the same products and selling them, you know, there's always. There's always price compression in the market, and that's... It's just a really tough place to be. So kudos for. For being open to the transition. So, one last question, Jason, before we wrap things up, which is, knowing what you know now, is there anything you would do differently?
Jason Dittmann
I think, you know, really, I had a lot of pieces of the puzzle put together. Honestly, I think I would have wanted to do more research around different financing options when I did buy. And if there are any employees that want to buy their business, like, look at some different options and just... Just understand how it all works. At the end of the day, it all worked out great. But just know that part of you may know the business, you may really have a good plan to do the business, but bankers sometimes have another, another thought process as well.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So did you have, did you have any other advisors that were helping you through the purchase process?
Jason Dittmann
I had some, some, one, one specific owner in, of one of the other MicroAge franchises that I leaned on and certainly. Yeah, a legal counsel.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, it's, you know, man, I have made this mistake multiple times. I think many of us have where it's like, man, if we're getting into something and we don't have prior experience, like, man, we are so much better off hiring somebody to help advise and guide us through that process that has that experience because they bring visibility to the blind spots that we have. They can help us avoid missteps, get through the process more efficiently with less pain. Gosh, sometimes we just fight that.
Jason Dittmann
Yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I don't know why, but like I said, I have made that mistake myself. And like what? There's no reason for us to go through that kind of stuff. We just need to be open. Well, and, you know, look, it's going to cost money to get that advice in most cases, but a lot of the times you can end up making mistakes that cost you far more than paying for the advice. Jason, fantastic, man. I appreciate you taking the time. Great stuff. Where can people learn more about you if they want to connect?
Jason Dittmann
So I'm on LinkedIn under Jason Dittmann on LinkedIn. Certainly our website, microage.Ca/Regina is our homepage. Lots of information about what and how we do. And certainly I'm very active on LinkedIn, so give me a follow and check out some of my video content that I offer as well.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. I love it. We'll make sure that those links are in the show notes. So if you guys want to connect with Jason, please do so. I have enjoyed chatting with you now twice, so thank you for that time. Those of you that are watching and listening, thank you. I appreciate you. And if you want to connect with us, you can do that over at rialtomarketing.com. We talked about a lot of different things in Jason's experience about growing microage. If you want to know which of the nine revenue roadblocks might be slowing down your growth, you can do that over revenueroadblockscorecard.com takes less than five minutes. Customized report there's a ton of valuable info there, so go take advantage of that. And until next time, take care.
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