Using “Moneyball” to Hire & Retain Top Talent for Your MSP
Are you burning precious management calories interviewing candidates who look great on paper but fail in the real world?
Hiring for an MSP is uniquely difficult. You need technicians who can handle the technical pressure of a dozen different environments, but who also possess the soft skills to handle stressed-out clients. Most MSPs rely on "post and pray"—throwing a job ad on LinkedIn and hoping a unicorn applies.
But the best candidates usually aren't looking at job boards.
What You Will Learn in This Episode
[07:16] The Hiring Mistake: Where most MSPs screw up their recruitment process (and why doing it yourself often costs more than a fee).
[11:32] Active vs. Passive: Why the best candidates are "passive" (currently employed and heads-down) and won't see your Indeed ad.
[19:05] Vetting Tactics: How to use scenario-based questions (e.g., "The client can't reach the internet") to spot candidates who rely on Google vs. those with troubleshooting logic.
[36:53] Retention via Structure: Why "Career Pathing" and clear KPI benchmarks are the only way to keep your best Level 1 techs from leaving.
[51:02] Hiring Hacks: The specific resume traits to look for: Community College grads, Collegiate Athletes, Military Vets, and Eagle Scouts.
Resources Mentioned
Guest: James Bier (VAR Staffing)
Book: Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Company: VAR/Apollo Staffing
Deep Dive: The "Moneyball" Strategy for MSP Hiring
A major theme of this episode is applying the concept of Moneyball to recruitment. In the book (and movie), the Oakland A's realized they couldn't afford "five-tool players" (superstars who do everything), so they focused on undervalued players who were elite at one specific thing (getting on base).
James Bier argues MSPs should do the same. You might not find the perfect "unicorn" technician who knows every stack and has perfect soft skills. Instead, look for "Trade Craft" and "Grit"—traits that are often undervalued by traditional HR but predict massive success in an MSP environment.
James lists four specific "Hacks" to spot this grit on a resume:
Community College Grads: They often have more "drive" and less entitlement than graduates from blue-blood universities. They had to work to get there.
Collegiate Athletes: Regardless of the sport or division, these candidates understand discipline, practice, and waking up early to train.
Military Veterans: They understand "service before self" and working within a team structure.
Eagle Scouts: This achievement proves they can stick with a difficult, multi-year goal starting from a young age.
By hiring for these underlying character traits, you acquire talent that can be trained on the technical specifics, rather than hiring a "certified" technician who lacks the work ethic to succeed.
Related Reading
Once you have successfully recruited this top talent, you need a structure to put them in so they don't burn out. Check out our guide on How to Scale Your MSP Service Desk: The "Pod" Structure to learn how to organize your new hires for maximum efficiency.
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Andrew Moore (00:08)
Howdy, y'all. Welcome to the How to MSP Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Moore.
James Bier (00:14)
the best MSPs are structured. And I mentioned peer groups, I mentioned EOS. But if you have a structure in place, it then becomes possible to plug and play.
but one of the things that I always preach, especially how to retain, is there needs to be some career pathing. have that org chart and make sure that any team member
can look to that that org chart or that career path and say, look, this is my next evolution. What are the benchmarks that I have to hit so I can move from help desk two to help desk three?
Andrew Moore (00:57)
That was James Byer, co-founder of Apollo Var Staffing. He's also their chief channel development officer. They've worked with 600 plus partners providing strategic placement of talent in the technology sector for over 25 years. They're also one of only a handful of MSP centric talent placement firms in our industry. Today, we're going to talk with James about recruitment, retention, and building processes to help scale your MSP.
Andrew Moore (01:23)
Good afternoon. Welcome to the how to MSP podcast. My name is Andrew Moore. I'm your host. And today we've got a wonderful guest for you. His name's James Bier He works for and owns of VAR staffing with his brother, Mark. They are remarkable individuals that I've known for going on 15 to don't laugh. You guys are awesome. yeah, old, remarkably old. ⁓ but we,
James Bier (01:46)
We're We're old. There we go.
Andrew Moore (01:53)
We've known each other for at least 15 years, if not longer, ⁓ working together in the MSP space. So why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself, ⁓ James, and kind of what you guys do over at VAR and, ⁓ or Apollo, or as you guys go out in the real world, you're there, VAR staffing.
James Bier (01:55)
Yes.
Call us. Yeah.
So ⁓ thank you for the intro. And yes, the kind words, are old, unfortunately, my friend, we are. But yes, we have known each other for a while. ⁓ I am James Bier one of three co-founders ⁓ of Apollo VAR Staffing, which is ⁓ a search firm ⁓ dedicated to the MSP ecosystem.
There's a handful of us out there. like to think that we've, again, due to age, have been around the longest. ⁓ And we're very fortunate and blessed to have ⁓ our tribe, and we consider Andrew Moore to be amongst that tribe. So I hope you will reciprocate as well, Andrew. But yes, we have known each other for a while. We have a lot of friends in common, and we have a lot of war stories. And yes, it was, I remember meeting you and Ryan.
Andrew Moore (02:43)
Nah.
James Bier (03:02)
It was probably 15 years ago, I think a CRN event in San Antonio at the JW Marriott, if I could be wrong on the venue.
yeah, it has been a hot minute for sure.
Andrew Moore (03:15)
Yeah, that didn't surprise me if there is a an opportunity to be at a conference somewhere my my old CEO Ryan Lakin will be at that conference So that tracks especially in San Antonio, but ⁓ yeah, it's been a lot of fun ⁓ watching you guys kind of really get focused as MSP has changed over the last like 10 years and ⁓ you know working with us and
James Bier (03:23)
For sure. For sure.
Andrew Moore (03:41)
growing your business. And we've had a couple of opportunities to enjoy ⁓ some whiskey at some conferences, like we were just at IT nation and ⁓ we had a really good first night that as far as I remember, yeah, yeah, yeah. So
James Bier (03:56)
Everybody made it back to the room. So that's right, their own rooms. So that was 100 % true. it
definitely was a good time. that's kind of as we lead this off, as I reflect on my almost quarter century and running our own shop here, ⁓ it seems to me that that's really what it's about. And ⁓ we're big and heavily involved in peer group communities. know you guys.
Andrew Moore (04:06)
Yeah.
James Bier (04:26)
or TBG members, ⁓ the Evolve community and ConnectWise is really ⁓ a community we've worked with a lot of their
Andrew Moore (04:27)
Yeah.
James Bier (04:35)
members as well. And they like to echo what they call the go-giver spirit. And that's one of the things that I really kind of nerd out about. Unlike most vendors when they do a lunch and learn or they do a strategy session with
any peer group or any MSP, I myself am also an entrepreneur. So I get it. I totally understand
So it's never about us. It's always about our clients and our candidates. And I try to never lose sight of that. I do.
Andrew Moore (05:09)
physically, where, does the podcast find you? this
I guess we're early afternoon. Where are you at this afternoon?
James Bier (05:14)
So we're in
our Dallas headquarters. We're located just outside of the Dallas area in Richardson, Texas.
watching this podcast, there is a chance that you may have visited our office. If so, come back and see us. We'd to say hi. I have the cowboy hat. So that's Texas there, of course. And I know that you've had some recent relocation in your world as well, Andrew, that from one part of the state to another. how are things in Austin? Yeah.
Andrew Moore (05:28)
Yeah, you got a cowboy hat. You got a cowboy hat in the background. Yeah. Moved up to Austin.
I do. I love Austin. I just, I, I.
I 100 % miss my neighbors, right? Like I had the most amazing cul-de-sac in neighbors and the most ⁓ fantastic opportunity to like raise a family in a place that I just felt completely safe with the people that lived around me. But now that my family's all, I'm an empty nester, living up here has been absolutely incredible. Like I wake up every day, I see deer, like I've got trees behind my house. Like it's freaking awesome. Like I love it.
James Bier (06:11)
Yeah.
Yeah, the area
Andrew Moore (06:16)
let's do this. Let's let's let's jump in and talk a little bit about, ⁓ you know, what you're seeing right now, because I can tell you this is having been in an MSP and worked with you to help do some placement. And then within my peer group, you know, you you've been in a couple of the other companies there that you've been doing that.
it's been really helpful for me as a consultant to be able to bring you in to help my clients try to find opportunities. what I'm finding is that with us and with the other MSPs that you've worked with and my clients, there's like, people screw up a lot. When it comes to hiring.
What I mean is when we screw up, say like, we don't know how to post, we don't know how to vet, we go we spend a lot of our precious management calories in the hopes of saving a recruitment fee by trying to do all this yourself. Like, where do you see MSP like, fuck this up? Like, where are they not doing it the right way?
James Bier (07:16)
Yeah, it's a kid and look, Iron Edge was one of our favorite accounts here, signature account, of one, and we always enjoyed working with you guys, great team. But ⁓ we see it all the time, because hiring is risk.
there's never not going to be risk. People are a very unpredictable commodity. So whether you have internal HR like or you choose to partner with a firm like Apollo VAR Staffing, you're going to have risk at any level. And you mentioned it earlier, burning these calories. Does it make sense to try to in-house this and not outsource it? Well,
One of the things that we realized as we matured, again, our relationships kind of drive everything that we do. it became, we got to an inflection point where a lot of our partners kind of had an aha moment, the light bulb clicked. And I vividly remember this with a very large partner of ours that said, you know what? We were sitting down, we were having lunch.
And he said, he looked at me and said, you're asking me to eat my own dog food, aren't you? And I took a pause, I thought about that and he's like, okay, what does an MSP do for their clients? Whether that's a law firm, a dental office, they look at them and say, look, you don't need to worry about your IT, your spend, your services, your hardware, your life cycle, all of that.
let me be your trusted advisor. So as we grew our practice and really sharpened in and dialed in how we do what we do, it became apparent to a lot of our really strong partners that we're doing pretty much the same thing they are. We're saying, look, let us be your trusted recruiting partner, just like you're the trusted IT partner for your clients. And that's where we were really able to, when we can.
morph that relationship into that mantra, it becomes very easy.
Andrew Moore (09:25)
But where do they like, so I 100 % agree with you that the opportunity to frame it for that, like they come in and they're just like, you know what, Monster works just fine or I'm dating myself. I, yeah, I know exactly, yeah.
James Bier (09:38)
Yep, ostrich dad now it's indeed or zip or whatnot. You're dating yourself again, again, Andrew. Yeah, so
that's a very good point actually. When you look at online postings, whether that's your website, whether that's indeed or zip recruiter, whether it's LinkedIn, that seems to be the primary candidate pool or resource that most people.
go to, they start there to your point. It's free or it's cheap. I actually, I used to have this question in my evolved peer groups. like, I said, well, what is your number one go to when you first started Joe? What's your starting point? And I took a poll, this was probably back in 18 or 19. And the majority said Craigslist. And I had to chuckle at that, take a step back. Like you're looking for your next.
Andrew Moore (10:06)
Right.
James Bier (10:29)
engineer, solution architect, service delivery manager, the same place that I would look to get a used microwave. you really that that's the play here. So but it costs 25 bucks or 50 bucks to post. And this was again years ago. But but really, regardless of what platform you post a job on, what we have found is that will get you what we call an acvtive
candidate. They're actively replying to a posting. Again, your website, your posting, or your LinkedIn profile, whatever. They're active. Where we try to differentiate ourselves and what we would advise everyone, whether you want to partner with Apollo VAR staffing or try it yourself, is go after that passive candidate market. Now, how do you do that? I don't have the silver bullet, Andrew. I wish I did.
Andrew Moore (11:20)
So let's,
hold on, let me interrupt you for a second. Can you explain what the, for people who don't follow the lingo, what's the passive market mean? What do you mean by that?
James Bier (11:32)
Absolutely. So a passive candidate. A passive candidate is probably high performing. A passive candidate may not have a resume. A passive candidate doesn't have time to reply to a posting anywhere. passive candidate typically has a job and most of the times may not even realize they may be looking for another job. So.
Andrew Moore (11:48)
So passive candidate has a job.
just
they're just they're just in their job and they're kind of not super happy.
James Bier (12:00)
They exist, they're doing their job, they're
heads down, maybe they're happy, maybe they're not, they don't know, but they're good at what it is that they're doing. And because of that, they don't really have time to come up for air or reply to ads. Again, this isn't a blanket statement, but this is one of the takeaways, the hacks that I like to say that I always like to plant, again, when we present content in a Lunch & Learn environment or not.
or whatever it may be, is try to go after that candidate pool that won't reply to your ads. How do you do that? It's very tough. That's a passive candidate. Every candidate, most recruiting managers, recruiting directors, or lot of the bigger search firms, they do a lot of posting, and they cherish those postings, and they try to get it to go viral, and then...
to see what comes in. it's like if you're fishing and you're throwing a net out, let's get as many fish in the net and then we'll go through and sift through the net and see what's the good fish and what we can throw back in the ocean.
Andrew Moore (13:05)
But isn't that isn't that what most MSPs are doing themselves, right? Like so even beyond like
James Bier (13:08)
That's, that is
yes, yes. I would say, I would have to say that the majority of them, they try posting it first, then they try to partner maybe with another search firm that does the same mechanism. Now, albeit at a more professional setting. And we all have what we call it ATS, so an applicant tracking system.
various different versions. So we have a lot of partners that actually use their PSA platform as and use that as their ATS as well. So everything has a ticket, every candidate has a ticket so they can go back and reference that. ⁓ But really what we think is the most richly untapped candidate pool is that passive candidate pool. That's a candidate that simply doesn't reply to an ad.
And maybe they could be looking, they don't have the mental bandwidth, they've got other things going on in their life, they've got kids, they've got golf, they've got whatever, and they just don't want to mess with it. but that's where we try to push people towards.
Andrew Moore (14:13)
Yeah. And so when you're looking at like, like as an MSP, you're out there and you're, posting on LinkedIn, you're bringing in a bunch of people there, you know, as you would call them active candidates, they're out there looking for a job. They say open for hiring and you know, all that stuff. Yeah. So then
James Bier (14:25)
green sash, what we call it. Yep.
Andrew Moore (14:29)
Then you bring in 10 or 15 of them and you are a busy MSP owner or operator and you're in the process of running your business, running your service delivery team, whatever. And then you have to sit down and ask these people some questions, right? Like you're vetting them, you're trying to figure out who they are, where they came from. You look at their list of accomplishments. You ask them a few questions in an interview process and...
they tell you they put their best foot forward. I'm not going to say that I'm not going to say that they lie to you, but I'm going to say that they that they put their best foot forward. ⁓ How so like, when that starts to happen, ⁓ I haven't I have a decent bullshit detector, but like I'm it's not perfect. Right? Like I don't do that every day. Right? And I've been honestly tricked by some people that I thought were going to be fantastic. I've looked at their
James Bier (14:59)
Sure. Yeah.
Yeah.
Andrew Moore (15:18)
their resumes, I looked at their experience on LinkedIn, they had a great interview, I talked to them for 30 minutes, a couple of different times, they came into the office, they represented well, and then they were not great, right? So like when the MSPs are trying to find that next hire, are they doing it wrong when they're vetting, or should they be asking different questions? Like what do they need to do?
from your experience as a recruiter, just to help them understand, listen, this is hard, but if I were to give you some advice, here's some things that I would at least do to vet your candidates better, even though you probably should be working with a recruiter. But if you don't, here's some things you probably should be asking. What would you say?
James Bier (16:01)
Yeah,
it is. think I see on both sides of the fence. I see some clients that are what I like to call victims of paralysis by analysis. They overtest and then they may have a ⁓ go no go on or baseline ⁓ metric that you have to hit to be able to progress along in an interview process. And then I see others that are just like ⁓ very loose and ⁓
fly by the seat of their pants and they just, they can get deceived or snowed over. what I like to tell, I'm not gonna sit here and tell, here's the perfect interview script, here's the perfect process that you should go through. What I would say is, is trust your process.
Andrew Moore (16:42)
Right.
James Bier (16:48)
if you have a process, and we do consult on this with partners all the time, hey look, if you have five interviews and then you have a writing sample and then a mock ⁓ QBR presentation, if you go too long, and I think we had an experience with this not too long ago as well, you can really bite your nose despite your face type situation. So in that regard,
Let's get a process that works, that makes sense, that's feasible. ⁓ Okay? And to your point,
even if you post an ad and get 10 really good candidates, you still have to workflow those 10 good candidates. And if it's just on average two, three hours per candidate that begins an interview cycle from resume review to interviewing, ⁓ to second interviewing, and then to a final interview to offer, it's probably three or four hours total man hours just on the hiring manager side.
So if you do that times 10, then that's 40 hours right there that you're investing in Canada. So being able to ⁓ kind of offload that burden onto somebody that really knows what they're doing, there's a value in that as well. But back to your question, how to vet better, trusting the process.
Andrew Moore (17:54)
Right.
James Bier (18:11)
I always like in testing, okay, if you want to do some baseline cognitive stuff, back in the day it used be called the WonderLek, now there's 18 to 20 different versions of that, it's great to have baseline data. If you're going to test somebody, my strong advice is have it be a scenario-based test. And it could be nothing more than on a panel interview saying, okay, client calls you,
Andrew Moore (18:20)
Yeah.
James Bier (18:39)
end user and a client calls into the help desk and says I can't log on to the internet what do you do and just watch the hamster wheel spin in the candidates head are they gonna get the perfect answer all the time or exactly no but hopefully you're gonna see them back in the day guy like me you know the scientific method is what it used to be called how do you get from step one to step two to step three to solution and oftentimes
Andrew Moore (18:48)
Right. Right.
James Bier (19:05)
look, somebody is going to have to Google or use some level of automation to find out an answer, that's okay.
Is it every little thing password reset? Okay, there's some stuff that you should be able to clean but ⁓ I've seen a client actually to use the term loosely bear trap a candidate where they they want them to stop and say, okay, you know what, I need to stop here and catch my breath and collaborate with a peer this is a little over my head. So they actually put a little landmine in there to see if they'll actually do that. So, so the vetting that I like I think works out the best scenario based vetting, heck bring them into a tick
Andrew Moore (19:16)
Right.
James Bier (19:44)
Open up on teams, open up a ticket and say what would you do here? Things like that. I think you're gonna get your best bang for the buck out of vetting and testing.
Andrew Moore (19:45)
Right.
But what I want to echo there is
I found that when we vetted, didn't ask, we didn't, asked what we thought were good questions, but they were more like off on questions and not, ⁓ yeah. And so like the questions that we would ask was, you know, do you know how to configure a firewall? And they would say, yes. Right. Like, are you, are you, are you proficient with a sonic wall? Yes. Okay.
James Bier (20:10)
open-ended.
Andrew Moore (20:24)
We moved to questions then that from that point, then we moved to the next question, which was tell me the last time you configured a firewall and did you do it from scratch? And then a lot of the times it'd be like, well, it's actually been a couple of years since I've touched a firewall from scratch. you're like, ⁓ okay. Yeah. Like you're familiar with it, but you don't actually do it. Right. Like, you've been around, you've been adjacent to it. You're like, you smell a firewalls, but you. Yeah. Yeah.
James Bier (20:49)
Or you were part of that process. You weren't the driver, you were the
smart hands. You were on the team. to even, to maybe tie bow on this, could even, in that scenario, ⁓ have you ever configured a firewall? Yes. Okay. Customer A had this firewall failure and they can't...
Andrew Moore (20:54)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
James Bier (21:12)
replicate it. What do you do? So to your point, let's just see how they react to that situation. Go into whatever and try to figure it out. And not so much are they turning this exact screw at the exact time that you would do it, but are they using the process that makes the most sense, that we'll get to the conclusion.
Andrew Moore (21:13)
Right, right. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. No, that's a great way to put it.
Okay, so when folks are looking to work with a recruiting firm, I just, in general, right? Like, I mean, I know that you're obviously partial to your firm, but like, no, but I mean, just, but just, you know, what do they need to be looking at? Like, one of the things that I used to like to do with, when I would talk to my clients and when I would sit down and think about, you know, how I wanted to be perceived in the market as an MSP is I would like,
James Bier (21:48)
No, I know where this is going. No, trust me.
Andrew Moore (22:03)
What do people really need to ask? What's going to allow them to make a better decision, whether it's me or not? Because my company wasn't always going to be the best fit. But I did want the client to be able to make a good decision. And even if that meant later, they found the error of their ways and came back to use me. But when you're working with a ⁓ recruiting firm, what should people be looking for?
Why is it important to look for somebody that's more MSP centric other than just a generalized, you know, business recruiter or headhunter? Like, you know, talk about a little bit about like what that looks like and what kind of questions they should be asking and what do they need to be looking for?
James Bier (22:42)
Sure.
Yeah, there are hundreds, if not thousands of IT recruiting firms out there. ⁓ what I would advise, there are a small handful that do focus in the MSP ecosystem. ⁓ We have some friends that are there. We have some ⁓ relationships that are at some other.
other of these firms, ⁓ one of the things that I would advise, and if somebody's catching this that may be not in the MSP space, but running another small accounting firm or maybe a mid-sized law firm or whatnot, ⁓ is being specialized in one particular area really is crucial in this.
just the amount of knowledge that I've accumulated and my team has accumulated.
over the past 25 years in our business and the past 18 years that we've been really exclusive to the VAR MSP solution integrator ecosystem. That's invaluable data. I can't teach that to anybody. When we were at IT Nation last month, that was my 14th IT Nation. And just all of the information I've been able to glean and the...
pieces that I see that a lot of people use this solutions, use this vendor and pair it with this vendor and conversely they don't often pair these two products together. That's all ingrained not only in mind but in the walls of Apollo of our staffing is that that comes down and especially when you get into some ⁓ redundant roles as an L2 engineer. ⁓
you can sometimes get victim of a keyword search and say, well, this person knows Active Directory and Azure and 365, but then you look at a little deeper and they've been at a healthcare system for 18 years, which means one network and they can't triage and they don't understand the pace and the cadence of an MSP. So when you're looking to, if you choose to partner with a search firm,
That's one thing that I would encourage people to focus on. Find one that specializes in your patch.
Andrew Moore (25:16)
No, that's good because I think it's important for people to realize that if you're going to work with a recruiter that it listen everybody in the MSP space knows there's a difference between a person that has worked on a service desk in an MSP and a person that's worked on a service desk in a in we call them internal IT right anybody that's come out of corporate IT they've got a different pace they've got a different like like
like kind of focus, right? They're just, it's not the same.
James Bier (25:40)
Absolutely.
But it is, it's tough and partnering with an MSP focused partner that really knows the MSP space, that's where I again, really think
Because if you know MSPs up, down, left and right, and you say, look, I know you're really good at finding good help desk talent, we now need to find our new director of professional services. I do believe that it's easier to teach someone that type of role than it is to teach somebody that doesn't know what an MSP is, what an MSP is.
Andrew Moore (26:19)
So when you're when I'm out, I'm an MSP and I'm like, look, when I'm vetting the the recruiting firm, the placement firm, like, what does that look like when we're dealing with our
fees and structure and like, so if I'm, if I'm talking to different, to different recruitment firms, right. And different placement firms. So I'm like, listen, sounds great. You're MSP centric or, ⁓ you know, it sounds like you've got depth and breadth so that you can pick up people in any one of the situations that I might need.
What is your contract look like in case you're not awesome at this like because this is our first time to go down this road like What does that look like? What are those last couple of questions that I think you should be asking if you're an MSP when you're talking to recruitment firms like what do you need to be asking about like placement locations and like contracts and that sort of thing?
James Bier (26:56)
Sure, yeah.
Yeah, contracts are more or less boilerplate. And there's really two primary models that most firms exist in. I'm talking any industry, any firm. And where we kind of like to model ourselves now as we've kind of grown and matured our practices, we like to use the corn fairy model. so corn fairy.
they're sort of the gold standard when it comes to executive search. ⁓ An executive can be used loosely. But their primary revenue model ⁓ is some bit of a retained search model. And we do quite a bit of that right now as well. But by and large, the majority, would say we do about, probably the split is 60-40 between retainer and then what's most.
common is contingent. So contingent search is very safe for the client. ⁓ Simply put, if you don't want to hire, if you don't want to pay the fee, then you're not going to hire the candidate. No fee is due. Now the risk you run as an MSP when you're in a contingent relationship ⁓ is that there's other fees or other retainers that that firm is working on that may get priority. ⁓ So
you run that risk and you also run that risk if you try to beat somebody up on their fee schedule too hard because then the firms are going to go where they think they can make the most amount of money and the least amount of time. So sometimes you can become penny wise and pound foolish as I like to say in that regard. Oh wow, I beat my recruiter up and I got a 10 % fee or whatever. Okay, well, how's that working for you?
really, really getting success that you want and when you're not, are you looking yourself in the mirror and saying, okay, I won the negotiation, but I'm not getting the candidate inflow, I'm not getting the success I was looking for. So in that regard, ⁓ fee structure to some degree, we're fairly dug in, I won't get into specific numbers, but it's more than 10%, I'll say that much. ⁓ But ⁓ when,
when we do have these conversations, and I said it earlier, I let off with it, I totally get it. This, what I do for a living, I'm a steward and a purveyor of information. I'm a steward of the transaction and a purveyor of information. That's it. It's never about me, okay?
I totally get it that my fee for a small business owner, and most of the part, even ⁓ the ones that I call large, I don't work with the Fortune 100. So when you're looking at that, everything's SMB. ⁓ Those fees matter. I totally get it. And we're not ignorant to that. We don't ignore that.
Andrew Moore (29:48)
Yeah.
James Bier (29:55)
especially in a mid-sized MSP where it's usually an owner, operator, husband, wife, or two partners come together. And when we look at them and say our fees or when they do the math, That's a vacation. That could be their 16-year-old's first car. And they're investing that in us. And we have to be a steward of that as well. And when we are trusted with that, I don't take it lightly. And we stand behind our work.
Andrew Moore (30:05)
Great.
James Bier (30:22)
And I would hope that any recruiting vendor that anyone uses does as well.
kind of veer off here after this statement, but really what makes our firm unique is that the partner level involvement is almost unprecedented. So there is literally nothing in the recruiting cycle that I myself or my partners won't do.
So that's what makes us really unique is that we have that partner level involvement that will steward and shepherd the entire process. So if something starts to go off the rails, it's not with an intern or a second year associate that's going to be the safety net. It's me or one of my two business partners on all deal, all transactions.
Andrew Moore (31:06)
Yeah.
Well, it's to your point. And I think that that's something that people should be asking, like, who's going to be recruiting and how does the process work and where the relationships lie and who are the folks that you're currently working with? What is your stable of?
placements look like and you do you feel comfortable that you can go back to that? Well, because I think that's important. But I guess what guarantee should ⁓ MSP be looking for if God forbid that, you know, everybody misses something, right? Like we bring in somebody who sucks and we didn't find it so weak for, right? What does that look like?
James Bier (31:35)
Yeah, yeah, yep, it happens.
And again, in the boilerplate language, there is typically a ⁓ very good runway when it comes to what we call a guarantee period. ⁓ So again, I'll get into specifics offline, but yeah.
Andrew Moore (31:55)
Right, right. Just generally, like based on like what you're seeing in the industry,
talked about the, I've never heard of corn fairy. Maybe that makes me a complete big Mariamis. But like, when you said corn fairy, I was expecting like some sort of like really interesting, like, analogy to some like, Dungeons and Dragons character.
James Bier (32:04)
That's you!
So let me give you this analogy. when the university,
as a sports guy too, when the University of Texas initiated their search for their next head coach, they partnered with Corn Fairy. So you're in Austin now. when Sark was placed by Corn Fairy, the list was already short and a lot of, again, we can go offline on that, but that's who, lot of the Fortune 50 use Corn Fairy.
Andrew Moore (32:23)
Okay. Yes. Yeah.
There you go.
James Bier (32:39)
lot of the ⁓ bigger players out there sports franchises they use they could use corn fairy It's pretty pretty cool stuff. But anywho corn fairy is is a lot of
Big Four Consulting, that they would partner with Korn Ferry. ⁓
Andrew Moore (32:55)
I swear
I'd never heard that I was either like a deer feeder company or it was like
James Bier (32:59)
Yeah, no, and
the other thing that they do that they're very well known for now is they sponsor the PGA tour. It's corn with a K not a C K O R N fairy.
Andrew Moore (33:10)
Like
the band. Yeah, like, like, like the band. Yeah, like your favorite band is corn because they spilled it with a K because that's marketing. ⁓ So when you when you so just kind of back to the question. When you are dealing with when if I'm an MSP and I'm out like having conversations with two or three other
James Bier (33:11)
Yeah, yeah, exactly like the band. get there right now. That's Yeah, spoiler alert. It's not it's not corn for me, by the way. Yeah, no. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓
Andrew Moore (33:34)
placement firms and I'm trying to pick the right one. I mean obviously like fee structure is really important but then also there's got to be and again like we don't have to get into specifics but typically a range anywhere between 30 days and six months or something where you can negotiate or you can have something where you're just like make sure that yeah give me some guarantee on who you're putting in here right.
James Bier (33:43)
Sure, Here's one.
yeah, the guarantee is, yeah.
yeah, yeah, and even with us it's like we will, even beyond that guarantee period, if we know about it, we're gonna make it right, okay? So ⁓ there's credits that can be issued, there's make rights, there's all of that, so. ⁓
Andrew Moore (33:58)
Right.
James Bier (34:11)
So yeah, so that, mean, it's pretty standard. And again, as I mentioned earlier, it all revolves around risk and what you pay for if you do execute a fee with a firm is you're gonna get that guarantee, but you're also gonna get our lens. And I like to say if they've gotten through us and they get through you and the MSP owner.
COO, whatever, the odds are pretty good that that candidate is going to work out there. It's never going to be a hundred percent. It's never going to be that. But we know that if we're the work that we do, the vetting that we do, and we're able to get that candidate through our process and then all the way through the interview process of the client.
We've hedged that risk and that's really what we're doing. And that risk, I think, is much lower when you partner with a firm that specializes in the space, now, it may be cheaper, you're not gonna pay the fee if you get that ad response or you bring in 10 candidates and then you have three finalists and then pick the winner. I'm not saying that can't work and it can work.
I just don't think that that's entirely scalable when you're looking at that. It's more time consuming. if you listen to what is being preached in EOS and in peer groups, it's focus on growing the business and get outside of the weeds of the business, right? So you get that in that relationship that comes with that trusted.
MSP recruiting.
Andrew Moore (35:58)
So let's switch gears. Let's talk about what the best MSPs do, right? When it comes to hiring and retaining. Let's let's take, let's take you guys out of the equation. So let's not even talk about what what folks are doing with their recruiters. Just from what you're seeing, right? What are the best MSPs doing? When they're when you're interacting with them? What are the best MSPs doing where you're like, they're
man, they're bringing in the right people. They're keeping the right people. They're training the right people. even the people that aren't great, they're still able to get the most out of them. Like, what are you seeing that makes those MSPs great so that people know where they need to be, right? Based on all of the like, that's what I really want to pick your brain about on this particular topic is
talk about the MSP space and what you're seeing that the best MSPs are doing because you touch so many of them on a daily basis. What are the best ones doing?
James Bier (36:53)
great question. And I really think the best MSPs are investing in themselves and really the peer group communities chief among them. And they are investing their time and their energy. And as you know, it's an evolve, you know, we we would go and we would do the lunch and learn we would do the dinners and all this and it looked like it's a lot of fun. But I knew that that those those
Andrew Moore (37:21)
Right. .
James Bier (37:21)
evolve members, had spent basically nine hours, okay, nine hours,
one of which may have been a lunch and learn by me or another vendor, but they were in that room for nine hours, do that for three days, okay, three days, or two and a half days, whatever. And then they do that four times a year. So that is a tremendous investment in your team, whether you're the owner or whether you're the service leader or you're the operations man, whatever.
But taking your team and saying, look, let me invest my time, my resources in this process. So to your question, the best MSPs are structured. And I mentioned peer groups, I mentioned EOS. But if you have a structure in place, it then becomes possible to plug and play. So if you have a.
I may be jumping ahead a little bit, but one of the things that I always preach, especially how to retain, is there needs to be some career pathing. Now, we all have seen the career help desk that wants to be help desk one and help desk two, help desk three, and they're very good and they're very content about that. Okay, so there's a place on the team for that. So have that org chart and make sure that any team member
is always has that can look to that chart, that org chart or that career path and say, look, this is my next evolution. And if I don't make it to my next evolution, well, why? Okay, what are the KPIs? What are the benchmarks that I have to hit so I can move from help desk two to help desk three?
And then if I don't do it, that's on me, that's not on the client. And when you're doing your peer review, your yearly reviews, you've got that there. Hey, did you hit your benchmarks? Did you get your AZ-900, whatever, whatever it may be? And if no, I didn't do that, well, that's what we need to do. We agreed upon this. That's in our, whether it's in the handbook or the jobs or whatever, but the organizational piece is key. And having the right structure.
Andrew Moore (39:17)
Right.
James Bier (39:33)
which actually I think comes from leadership. That's what we're seeing a lot now too, is ⁓ really over the last
12 to 18 months, my biggest ask has been, I need director of client services. I need director of professional services. I need VP of operations. Because I think it's become apparent now, and certainly it's become very loud and...
echo chamber, you know, in some of the coaching I'm sure you do with your partners is like, let's build that team. And sometimes we can go bottom up. But if we get the right leadership in place, it's easier to get the branches put in place beyond that. And once those branches are there, what's next? Where do they go? And so and so forth. So to answer your question, it's having that structure in place, regardless of what you do, peer group, EOS,
Andrew Moore (40:05)
Right. Right.
Top grading. Yeah, I was going to mention that. Well, and what I found too is that, you know, when I'm starting to see, and I've talked to a couple of different folks about it is I guess they used to call it the Peter principle. And I think it's a little probably ⁓ negative in regards to that, but you've got some great folks that start out with MSPs and they grow with the MSP over time. And eventually they become the service manager. And some of those folks don't have any formal business training. They don't have any formal like process management training. They don't have any of that stuff, but they're really good at like,
you know, working a, ⁓ an engineering issue and they're really great at like working with the other team members, but they don't understand the processes and the systems that are required to scale a business. Right. And so I feel like that has been an underserved part of our MSP community over the years, because, ⁓ as you said, like the better MSPs have got management in place that understands processes and controls and
the importance of job descriptions and, you know, being more than one person deep on a team and that sort of thing. So I echo your your sentiment.
James Bier (41:27)
And
I know EOS is big on like accountability. If you write it down and you do a review, whether it's a six or a 12 month review, you should have clear expectations of what you as a, if you're the leader, if you're the manager, are looking for in your team members. And if as a manager, you can't give that to your team, well then that then falls on you.
Andrew Moore (41:56)
Right.
James Bier (41:56)
And if you
can give it to your team and they are unable to hit those benchmarks, well then that's on them. and together, hopefully it's not a...
a sporting event where there's a winner and a loser, know, everything should be collaborative. that's shoring up those processes. And I see it all the time, too, that you may have a MSP that started out as 10 or 15 person and now all of sudden they're 90. And I think you mentioned it, that service manager, that help desk manager for the 10 person MSP may not be the right fit for the 90 person once they turn into 90.
Andrew Moore (42:08)
Yeah. you
Right, right.
James Bier (42:33)
So
Andrew Moore (42:33)
Yeah.
James Bier (42:33)
being able to layer up or layer mid layer in between and kind of adjust on the fly, that's pretty crucial as well. looking at self-evaluate, self-scouting again, from a sporting perspective, from a diehard and delusional cowboy fan that I am, being able to self-scout is key, is a key element.
Andrew Moore (42:43)
No.
Yeah.
Well, and so one of the things that I wanted to talk about, which I think I've seen with some of the better MSPs out there and just want to get your take on it is I think some of the better MSPs when it comes to hiring do actually look at the hiring process as part of their sales and marketing efforts. And what I mean by that is like a lot of people don't understand like level of urgency, right? Get to know quickly.
you know, ask upfront, like budget timing authority, that sort of stuff, right? So like if you're recruiting, I feel strongly that the MSPs that are getting the better recruits have been doing a really good job of putting stuff about themselves out there culturally on social media. They've got a great like package that talks about what they do, right? Like they've got their job description is, is specific, but exciting. can you talk about like the difference that you see in placement from the MSPs that are
that are able to capture those great candidates and the ones that like they get away from them, even though they're probably a decent MSP, but they're just not polished. what are the better ones doing in regards to the marketing and urgency of trying to hire the right people versus the ones that like haven't really thought that process through?
James Bier (44:07)
Yeah, so where I see this going with social media exploding, especially over the last four or five years, ⁓ it becomes ⁓ kind of a slippery slope. Because you post about the Christmas party or the time you went to Topgolf or we're at IT Nation and having a good time, seeing the Goo Goo Dolls or whatever it may be. ⁓ Where does it end? How do you stop? ⁓ So it becomes.
Andrew Moore (44:26)
Yeah.
James Bier (44:37)
almost like a snowball effect. And then if you're not feeding the machine, well, what's wrong with these guys? They were just out throwing axes or whatnot. And now I hadn't seen them in eight, nine weeks. What's going on? So it's almost like
careful when you do that type of stuff, because then you may inadvertently push out the wrong messaging by even silence.
Andrew Moore (44:55)
Right.
James Bier (45:05)
Is that can be?
Andrew Moore (45:05)
But that comes back to your point, right? Like the
companies that are intentional and structured are gonna have like, I guess, what like what I'm hearing from you is, if you're gonna go out and decide that you're gonna have this full press to start putting a bunch of stuff out there on social and start building out, collateral for training and hiring and all that sort of stuff, like, don't do it. then like,
get excited about it for three months and then stop doing it for six months and then right be consistent right
James Bier (45:32)
Yes,
yeah. I think it's pretty easy now to see when somebody's blowing or gaslighting or whatever you want to call it, just making it look like, ⁓ this is the greatest place. it's just sometimes it becomes almost desperate. So ⁓ shoring up processes, ⁓ having, you mentioned job description too.
Andrew Moore (45:48)
Yeah. Right.
James Bier (45:59)
I can't tell you how many times that we've got a job description and now chat GPT or there's any automation platform right to a job description, but I've got a reservoir of them. And by large, an L2 in Dallas looks pretty much the same as an L2 in Atlanta and an L2 in Washington DC. So I've got a pretty good barometer for that. ⁓ But it's a situation where ⁓
Andrew Moore (46:05)
Yeah.
James Bier (46:28)
make sure that you're adhering to those same standards. And if you're looking for some specific ⁓ skillset, put it in there. Because a lot of times, especially when we begin our engagement cycle with a candidate, they're gonna keep that email or keep that PDF or keep that word doc that says this is an L2.
at XYZ MSP. They're gonna say, well, it never said that I had to have.
Microsoft certification by by month for even though that was the expectation so so put that into your job description when necessary. But but
Andrew Moore (47:06)
Right.
James Bier (47:10)
Certainly, if you need baseline benchmarks, put them in there. That way you can, again, help hold the team accountable.
Andrew Moore (47:21)
Well, and I also see too that like to your point about processes, right? Like you should have a process for hiring and it should be pretty consistent because I've personally seen some of ⁓ some pretty good candidates that if you're not following a process that you're upfront with them about, let's just say that you've decided that you're going to hire somebody and they're going to have two interviews and then then you're like, well, you know what? The owner needs to talk to them and I didn't really think about that. So let me go ahead and get the owner scheduled. And you know what?
James Bier (47:46)
Yeah.
Andrew Moore (47:49)
owner said that he should go probably talk to this other person too. So we're to talk to that person. And by the time you're, you're, you're four weeks into this, they've met with six different people. They're like, listen, I wasn't, I didn't sign up for, for all this. Like I, I, I'm a huge fan of something we talk about with clients a lot. ⁓ when I talked to my MSP is a client will let you burn down their house as long as you tell them when you're going to do it and how long it's going to take. So, so
And so I think that the same thing comes with setting expectations in the recruiting process, right? Like you sit down and you have that conversation and you say, this is what our process looks like. You're gonna have two phone interviews. You're gonna take a quiz and I'm gonna have you come into the office for two, yeah? .
James Bier (48:27)
yeah, go in that for modern candidates? Absolutely, yeah.
I'm kind of a naysayer when it comes to the younger generations, which I guess is sort of a generational thing. Once you get to be the elders in a society, can get off my lawn and it's all that stuff, exactly.
Andrew Moore (48:43)
They're all lazy.
James Bier (48:47)
And an interesting pivot that I've seen really over the last two years is...
Certainly you have an MSP that may have brick and mortar and we have some partners that actually don't and some that have never have even before the pandemic. But what we've seen now is sort of a shift of candidates saying, you know what? I kind of want to go back in and maybe not four to five days a week for 10 hours a day. Be chained to my cubicle, but I want I want the engagement. want the I want to collaborate. I want to work.
Andrew Moore (49:01)
Yeah.
Yeah.
James Bier (49:22)
as I mentioned that like you hear at our shop, that's where we get the most bang for the buck. once that candidates are asking for that now too. And again, not an overall statement, but the exception to that is what's coming up now is the Gen Z. I mean, they are dug in.
They think that remote 100 % work environment, remote work environment was in the Constitution. that especially we'll get people that the first question they ask now, ⁓ and I can always tell it's Gen Z, is this remote? Not.
how much does it pay, but is this remote? And really to me, that's like, you know what, you're probably not a serious candidate. And
Andrew Moore (50:03)
Right, yeah. Yeah.
James Bier (50:10)
that's typically where I take that down. I always make a mental note of that if that's the first question. And it can never be about money. And truthfully, I don't think it can never be about, well, I can never go work in an office again. To me, that is a, you know.
Andrew Moore (50:23)
Right.
James Bier (50:26)
next to their name if those are the first words out of their mouth.
Andrew Moore (50:31)
Right.
So what I want to ask you one quick question before we get into our questions to wrap up here. But the last one of the last things I want to ask is, um, you know, what advice do you have for MSPs that are out there that are looking to grow with or without a recruiter when it comes to hiring? Right.
Doesn't matter and a lot of them are probably gonna have their shit figured out when they're at seven eight nine ten million dollars Like, you know, I'm hope right maybe they don't but the ones that are three four million dollars, right five million They're starting to grow they've been used to you know getting people that they know and you know They've been using Craigslist or LinkedIn, but it's just not working the way it used to like what advice do you have for them? Generally, like what do they need to be doing?
James Bier (51:02)
Yeah.
So build that process. You can help, I can help. Find somebody that you trust and that has some success and get a process built. I always like to give some free nuggets, some hacks, if you will, and I'll kind of scatter shoot them. And I think ⁓ these are things that are pretty obvious, but sometimes get overlooked.
First off, probably the most obvious is tenure. It matters, okay? If somebody's had eight jobs in seven years, the odds are pretty high that if you hire them, they're gonna be looking for their ninth.
within six to 12 months. It's just data. And again, that's another victim of Gen Z is that they think they can always grow. And they think that they should start out, maybe work a month or two in the mail room, and then they'll be the VP, and then in a year, they'll be president. So that's, my naysaying of this upcoming generation. But two, another hack, okay, is ⁓ colleges.
And we oftentimes like to see and think that it's very attractive when people come from, I don't know how to put it lightly, ⁓ non-IV league schools. So trade schools, technical schools, ⁓ just a school that you had to work at to get to rather than a blue blood institution, which I don't mean to knock that, obviously for millennia, not millennia.
Andrew Moore (52:47)
Brave.
James Bier (52:51)
centuries there have been bedrock ⁓ institutions within academia. So, but for an MSP hack is find somebody that maybe went to community college got their associate's degree and then started to work.
Andrew Moore (53:06)
Yeah.
James Bier (53:07)
What does that tell you?
This is somebody that comes with trade craft and drive. Somebody that wants to better themselves. They went to a trade school. And again, hopefully they've got good tenure. I used to say four to five years is good. Now two to three years is good. If you have three jobs and eight years, that's, think, probably within the realm of acceptability now. So now, another hack. ⁓ Collegiate athletics.
Again, doesn't matter the college, doesn't matter the sport. But if you went to college and you also were a varsity athlete in college, is it rowing? Is it track? ⁓ Doesn't matter. That is tremendous trade craft and discipline right there. It often translates directly to the workforce. They get up early.
They train, they practice, and they go to school. So all of those things mashed together means that that's another hack to say this is probably a good candidate. Next, military service. At any level, for any length. I always like to see it.
And it is again, an indicator that again, not a blanket statement, but typically if you served, you're probably going to make a good employee. And for whatever the reason as to why you served at whatever level, if you were enlisted, if you were... ⁓
if you were an officer, ⁓ you again believe in something bigger than yourself. You're trying, a lot of people, I love to see people that went for like the GI bill. So they went in, then they went to college, and then they maybe, ⁓ experience wise, they're a little more advanced, but that's because they went in and received some pedigree training in the military, then went to college, and now they're hitting the workforce.
So using that, those hacks there, and maybe you'll get this bulletized out, I think is a tremendous advantage when you're looking at candidates and there's a tie. The last one I'll leave you with, and I think it's really cool, and I hope people still look at it, is Eagle Scouts. That to me.
is a really cool thing. Most people will put that on their resume or their LinkedIn profile, but that shows you that they started this as a child, as a kid. And an Eagle Scout, that's no bullshit. I mean, you can't fake that. I'm not an Eagle Scout, but I know people that are, and they really worked to...
to get there and they did so at a young age and they learned that. That was learned at an adolescent age, during adolescence and it's ingrained now in their bloodline and that's how they're going to attack the workforce. So hope that helps, I think it might and using that as you go through recruiting cycles and if you see any of those little nuggets just put a little gold star behind that can and say, hey, let's look at it.
Andrew Moore (55:48)
⁓ Yeah.
No, that's fantastic. Thank you for that. And thank you for taking your time to be with us today. I'm going to
hop in here and ask you our closing questions so that I can let you get back to the wonderful world of recruitment and placement. let's start with what is the best business book that you ever read to help you in business.
James Bier (56:16)
Yeah.
Okay, so, and this, I had two books that came to mind, but this is really the one that I like. You did send me this question, but I did think of it right away. My favorite book that I applied to business is Moneyball by Michael Lewis, okay? Some people, I don't know, I actually read the book, saw the movie and read the book. And it taught me a lot about business. And I was a baseball guy ⁓ growing up in high school. the being a... ⁓
Andrew Moore (56:45)
Nice.
James Bier (57:00)
Dallas guy to baseball,
Andrew Moore (57:00)
Yeah.
James Bier (57:01)
Dallas guy was a ranger fan and the Rangers actually the Texas Rangers were a big player in the book because that's kind of what drove them to look at these metrics a little differently.
But the cool thing that I took away and being an oak, I was never really good. I was okay. Billy Beane was a five tooled athlete, a baseball player. So he run, pitch, catch, throw, hit for power. So five tooled, yay. But what he noticed is that he burned himself out. His gifts were given to him largely by God and he matured and honed those skills. But what he found...
Andrew Moore (57:35)
Right.
James Bier (57:40)
really were.
one or two tooled players. And that spoke to me a lot because I've always had to work really hard to be.
Andrew Moore (57:51)
Right.
James Bier (57:53)
And you don't have to have God-given talent to work your ass off at whatever it is that you're doing. And there's a lot more in that book, but I literally read that book in like three days. And it's phenomenal, totally recommend it. So Moneyball, Michael Lewis.
Andrew Moore (57:59)
Right.
Yeah.
Love it. love anything by Michael Lewis. Like he's got some denser stuff, ⁓ but he's...
James Bier (58:15)
Yeah, Big Short,
that was pretty, I have not read that, but I've seen the movie, I've been recommended that one. ⁓
Andrew Moore (58:23)
if I've read almost everything he's done and everything he's done is I'm able to take something away from it. And especially Moneyball, we used that analogy in my previous MSP because we focused on finding candidates for hire that we were like, listen, they may not present in all the ways that you would want to have this unicorn, but they're really good at, you know, being an engineer or killing a ticket.
James Bier (58:46)
That's what it was in Moneyball. College walks. You could walk in college, could walk in the pros, you get on base, that increases the odds that you're going to score runs with more people on base.
Andrew Moore (58:53)
Yeah. Yeah. You
just, you, you look at something and then you got to know that like, and I think the other part of money ball that I was that I, took me a while to realize as an MSP, uh, operations manager and I had to manage a budget and whatnot was you're going to bring people onto your team that no one else has given an opportunity to. And you're going to spend a bunch of time and money.
and they're going to accelerate and they're going to be gifted as hell. And at some point you have to make a decision. Can I afford this person? Right. And if you've got two or three of those people on your team, you're lucky, but you got to realize that at some point, if you look at the Astros, it's a little bit different. weren't money ball, but when you bring three or four rookies onto your team over the course of two or three years, at some point you got to pay them all big money when they mature. And so you, so sometimes it's a badge of honor.
when somebody leaves your company better off than when they got there because you realize you were like, yeah, Mm-hmm.
James Bier (59:47)
That is a fantastic statement and you should take pride in that. And it should be, and I know we're tight on time, but so many times I see the heartache or the vitriol ⁓ or just the sense of betrayal when somebody leaves. It should be quite
the opposite. If it's done right, you should honor and praise and look at what I've done.
plucked you out when you were in double A and now you can get this big dollar contract from the Yankees or whatever analogy you want to make there. But I love that point, Andrew. That's fantastic that you would look at that. Yeah.
Andrew Moore (1:00:25)
Yeah. Yeah. See, I read the book too. I read it. I didn't just watch the movie. Okay,
let's let's try we got just a couple minutes off. So we don't want to belabor this point. What's your favorite curse word? That's your second. What's your second? What's your second favorite curse word? Second favorite curse word.
James Bier (1:00:38)
We talked about this earlier. me say it this way. Okay, so there is an acronym
that I think can... Don't? Don't? Okay, all right. I would say then the F word, which can be morphed into, I forget the comic that did it. I should probably look it up before I my algorithm.
Andrew Moore (1:00:47)
Do it. Do it. Second favorite curse word.
James Bier (1:01:00)
that you can use it in so many different varietals. It means so, it's a verb, it's a noun, it's an adjective, it's so many things. And as a golfer myself, it's like golf is, what do they call it golf? Because the S word and the F word and the D word were already taken. So that's why it's called golf. Yeah, it's important. So trying not to cuss here and keep this family friendly. I know we can, I know we can. But see, I changed it from the other one.
Andrew Moore (1:01:18)
It's a four-letter word, right? Yeah, no, I dig that. mean, we can't, I can, you know, you can use, yeah.
Yeah, no, I think that's probably good for everybody for that other one. But yeah, if you ever catch James out at a conference and you've had a couple of drinks, ask him what his favorite curse word is and prepare to be scandalized.
James Bier (1:01:33)
Yeah.
I don't buy But yeah, there we go. I'll buy the drink.
If you come up to me and ask me what my favorite curse word is, I'll tell you and then I'll buy you the drink. There you go. I like it. Let's see if anyone gets to the end of this and actually does that. I would love to see it. Worth it.
Andrew Moore (1:01:48)
I love that. I love that. ⁓ Yeah. What's your favorite?
What's your favorite band and why?
James Bier (1:01:55)
Okay, my favorite band, again, of my age is Pearl Jam. Yes, yes. I went to Lollapalooza in 1991 and I was hooked at that point in time. they are the sound of our generation. And by far, I would go to any show, better than the Goo Goo Dolls, although the Goo Goo Dolls were okay. But that's my ride or die. I will know every word to every song.
Andrew Moore (1:01:59)
Yes! Yes! My favorite band. Yes.
Yeah.
Okay, what is the worst sales call or client meeting that you ever had and why? And you don't have to name names, because I've...
James Bier (1:02:31)
Okay, I will not, I'm definitely not naming names.
So it was a very odd situation. It was a decent sized member of the MSP community. It's a name that I think most would know. And it was just, it was weird. We started a, it was a discovery call and about five minutes into the discovery call,
Andrew Moore (1:02:37)
Yeah.
James Bier (1:02:59)
principle from the other end of the phone line. Actually it was a zoom. So it was face to face, made it even weirder. Basically hijacked it ⁓ out of nowhere.
Andrew Moore (1:03:09)
Yeah.
James Bier (1:03:15)
leaving too much context out. That's another one. If you find me at a bar, well, can talk to you about it maybe. But it was very memorable and it was ⁓ it was jaw dropping that I didn't understand what was going on. I think that person probably was just having a bad day and took it out on their 230 or whatever time the call was at. This was by the way, many years ago, probably, I think it may have been like 21.
Andrew Moore (1:03:41)
Okay and then MSP owner, operations person, vendor, by name, by name, a person. Who do you recommend? Yeah. Yeah. You do travel. You do travel. Yeah. Yeah.
James Bier (1:03:45)
Yes, yeah, by name. All right, I've got it. I've got it. And of course, we spent ⁓ IT Nation together, good part of that. We got to meet a lot of friends. We have some friends in Comet. Like I said earlier, I think I like to, I have a tribe. I'm very blessed and fortunate that I have good, good, I did not as much as I once did, but yes, I do. But I do
have, I do have a very good, knit.
tribe as I like to call them. but there is another member that ⁓ we called them a brand ambassador and he has been in my
Andrew Moore (1:04:13)
Yeah.
James Bier (1:04:21)
at IT Nation back when we had a poof. So it's been a couple years. But just a really interesting guy. His name is Sam Chockett. His outfit is called DNS Dynamic Network Solutions. They're based out of Columbia, Maryland. So Sam is an engaging ⁓ and
Andrew Moore (1:04:34)
Okay. Okay.
James Bier (1:04:42)
very thought-provoking.
⁓ And I actually want to tee you up with him. hope and think. Sam is a hard charger. There's no need for a Red Bull or a shot of espresso before you get with Sam because a lot of people have ⁓ made no Sam. Not a lot, but some and he and I are often times seen together, but ⁓ Sam Chockett DNS out of ⁓ the Columbia, just outside of Washington DC. Good people, great operator.
Andrew Moore (1:04:44)
Okay, all right. Yeah, I would love for the introduction because I'm not familiar with it.
Okay. Yeah. I love that. Okay. Well, yeah.
James Bier (1:05:14)
great, great team that he's got there.
Andrew Moore (1:05:15)
And that's, you know, one of the things that I like, you know, I want to
Being in some of these peer groups and being at these conferences and stuff you run into people that you would have never heard of before and you run into people and they were running like an eight or a nine million dollar MSP and you don't know them. They're not on anybody's radar. They're running a tight shop. They're doing shit that you've like you're like, why would why what are you doing? And then they'll tell you and you're like, how does that work? And they explain it you're like, ⁓ shit, like you're doing something real innovative. And so not that I think that people want to give away their
James Bier (1:05:47)
Sure.
Andrew Moore (1:05:50)
their secret sauce or whatever, but I want to highlight some of these people because I don't think that there's enough of that that goes on in this industry because we're really good at sharing with one another in person. But this format gives us the opportunity to really talk to some of these operators and other folks and say, Hey, you should tell people about what you're doing because it's bad ass. Like what you're doing should be something that our industry should be considering so we can all benefit from, the hard work that you're putting in and you get some recognition for it. So I'm, ⁓
I love learning about other operators because I think it's fascinating to find out how all these other MSPs function. ⁓ yeah. We, yep, yep, we, yeah.
James Bier (1:06:23)
Yeah, and Sam's a good one for sure. He's one of a kind and he's memorable. People don't often forget him. So I'll tee that up on the back end of this, but I certainly appreciate the platform. You know, I'm a huge fan of you, Andrew. So it's great to you and I could probably do this all day every day. We could just do ⁓ like a Rogan podcast with just
the stories and whatnot from our years.
Andrew Moore (1:06:51)
Yeah, no for sure. But it's been a pleasure to have you on. And I can't thank you enough for your friendship and for your time today and then just the professionalism that you showed my clients and my companies over the years. just again, ⁓ thanks James for being on the show.
James Bier (1:07:07)
honor and pleasure is all mine, Andrews. I appreciate your trust and our partnership and our friendship and I look forward to continuing to grow that.
Andrew Moore (1:07:14)
Well, that's all for today, folks. We'd like to thank our special guest, James Byer. And if you like what you heard, please subscribe to us on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting platform. If you watched us on YouTube, please like and smash the subscribe button. Until next time, keep learning on how to MSP.
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