My name is Dave Alton. We’re an MSP based out of Southern California. Our name is Strategic Information Resources, and we’ve had this name for about 20 years and been operating for about 15.

We spent the last year really focusing on our internal company culture and really righting that ship. We had a good culture, but it wasn’t ever explicitly stated. So we did an exercise with the entire staff to define it clearly.

What we found is when we did that, we gained a lot of efficiencies that we weren’t really expecting. And we realized, ‘Oh, we can really take on a lot more clients.’ We didn’t know exactly how to do that – most of our business had been referrals.

So we started looking for opportunities where we could grow, aiming for 20% to 30% year-over-year growth instead of the 3% to 5% we previously targeted.

Meeting Lindsay and Joining 7 Figure MSP™ Inner Circle Elite

I went to IT Nation and met Lindsay and Maria there. The conference was over – we were all eating food by the pool and wrapping up.

I vividly remember Lindsay mentioning ‘7 Figure MSP.’ And I responded, ‘Yeah, that’s not really for us. We’re not going to put any money towards that. Thanks, but no thanks.’

She said, ‘That’s alright. You should come see us in LA.’ And that was the beginning of our journey realizing, ‘Maybe we could really use some help in scaling our business versus trying to figure it out on our own.’

The Struggle to Scale and Hit Growth Goals

Well, we haven’t scaled as much as we want yet, so we’re still on that journey. But I think the thing that really hit this year was we didn’t have the operating capital we wanted by year’s end. That was disappointing.

Management and staff feel we could do better, from top to bottom. What we’re really trying to achieve is, ‘How can we execute on sales?’

I think our issue has always been that we’ve devalued what we do, thinking of it as a commodity that people can’t afford. And some of that’s true – I’m not discounting that it’s expensive and hard to afford.

But we found that was more a conversation we were having with ourselves versus actually with clients. And that’s the biggest fear – going to clients and saying, ‘We want to upgrade you, and it’s going to cost more.’ And we would think, ‘Nobody’s ever going to pay that.’

So we would just avoid that conversation, maintaining the status quo instead of trying to improve.

The other factor was role shifts within the organization over the past year, which we didn’t fully account for in our operations. That also made us realize we wanted to scale and grow.

Embracing the Program as an Investment

We signed up December 27th, 2023. We didn’t really engage until programs started on January 6th. We just finished our sales onboarding towards the end of January and started Marketing Machine this first week in February.

I think the big takeaway for me is the whole ‘negotiating with yourself’ thing. We need to stop having that conversation internally and have it with clients instead.

I can’t count how many times our COO and I went back and forth on, ‘Well, they’re never going to pay that,’ when re-upping a client contract.

Now it’s simple – we just say, ‘Hey, this is what we think we’re going to charge.’ If she says, ‘I don’t think they’ll pay it,’ I respond, ‘Well, we’re going to find out.’

If the client wants the service from you, the rest is just math. And that was freeing because you can set any price you want. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that final price, but if they want it and want it from me, then I can negotiate. But I don’t want to negotiate prematurely because then I’m just giving money away.

Embracing Pricing Conversations

So I’ve only been through my first client ‘no’ so far – I have a funny story about that if you want to hear it. And then I have my second and third ‘no’ meetings scheduled Monday and Tuesday. We’re actively scheduling more client conversations as we go, so we’ve fully embraced this approach as an organization.

I think that’s probably the biggest thing – often you’ll sign up for these programs, get all this coaching, but not really listen to it, which seems a waste.

So when we decided to do this, we thought of it more as an investment. ‘Hey, we’re paying X. We’re going to get the most out of X that we can.’ Rather than second-guessing or saying, ‘That’s too hard,’ or ‘Nobody will listen,’ we’re just doing it.

And I think the results will prove whether I need to modify it. But right now, I don’t even know enough about what I would modify. I could definitely go back to the old way, but I know for sure that doesn’t work. So why keep doing that? I may as well try something new.

Shifting From Technical to Business Development

I’ll be the first to admit – I’m not a salesperson. I’m an IT guy who loves the tech and translating it into business applications. But I don’t like to “do sales” in my mind.

What I’ve found with this is I’m not doing sales; I’m doing a disservice to clients by not giving them all they should have.

And that’s really helped me transition from a very technical role into more of a business development role – a way to serve more people, engage more with employees and give everybody what they need and want.

Marketing and Growth Goals

Our goal is $250,000 MRR – or really shooting for $300,000 MRR. And we know that’s going to have to be a combination of existing clients and new clients.

So we’re super excited about Marketing Machine. We’ve never really done much marketing before. We just started the first week of it, and Lindsay is amazing. Again, we’ve really committed to just listening to her, doing what she says, and we’ll figure out what works and doesn’t afterwards.

Versus that ‘Oh, that’s never going to work,’ or ‘We can’t do that’ kind of conversation – what Cindy calls ‘head trash,’ I think. I’m staying out of that as much as possible. I’m just following the program, doing what works, and then going back and evaluating, iterating, and making it better tailored for how we operate. But not throwing anything out before we’ve even tried it.

The Value of Leveraging Expertise

It’s stuff people say all the time – ‘If you’ve been doing this for a while, trying new things but keep having the same results over and over, then maybe you’re doing something wrong.’

The problem isn’t the programs – it’s probably you. And I think that’s what helps me most about this program. As Chris says, ‘You need to work on your business and figure out how to make it work for you.’

But a lot of that is, ‘I don’t have five years to figure this out. I want to get this done kind of now.’ So rather than wait around, doing everything wrong to eventually figure it out, it’s better to leverage a plan to move you forward more quickly.