Mission Over Money
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.
Join Tim Fitzpatrick and Joshua Holloway for this week’s episode of The Rialto Marketing Podcast!
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Mission Over Money
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 farm 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. I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe you must remove your revenue roadblocks to accelerate growth, and marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to have Joshua Holloway from 7th Di Tech with me today. Joshua, welcome, and thanks for being here.
Joshua Holloway
Thanks for having me on.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I'm excited to dig into this with you. Today, you are a... Well, I grew up in Northern California. You live in Northern California still, so it's always nice to connect with folks that are in Northern California.
Joshua Holloway
Definitely.
Tim Fitzpatrick
It never seems like there's more than about three or four degrees of separation somebody from Northern California.
Joshua Holloway
It's funny that you say that. I've had a recent run-in where somebody sitting next to me came from Southern California, and they moved up to Northern California. Exact same area as they knew all of the 711s that I mentioned, going to they knew all about it. Like you said, just a couple of degrees of separation.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, it doesn't take much. Awesome. I'm going to jump into a few rapid fire questions if you're ready to rock.
Joshua Holloway
Yeah, let's do this.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. So very quickly, what do you do and how long have you been doing it?
Joshua Holloway
I'm the CEO for 7th DI Technologies. I started consulting in 1999, so I got about 25 years under my belt working on computers. Currently, right now, I'm the captain of the ship. I'm taking our MSP from zero dollars a year to 4.5 million and growing.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. What's the most important lesson you've learned in business since 1999? You've been doing it for a long time.
Joshua Holloway
Yeah. One, you can't do it all. You need help. There's not enough hours in the day, and the week is too short. So really, it's about handing off some work and learning that a team around you is far better than you run in solo because you miss some things, you forget some things, things slide through the cracks, having somebody there to help with job roles, help grow the business. That's exactly where it's at.
Tim Fitzpatrick
As much as we like to think that we're great at everything as entrepreneurs, we're not. And when we hire people that are better at that particular skill than we are, we realize that very quickly.
Joshua Holloway
It's always fun to not be the smartest guy in the room, right? They say, Don't be the smartest guy in the room. Because you're not really learning too much. I live by that one.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. Look, since 1999, Joshua, we've had a few ups and downs.
Joshua Holloway
Oh, yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick
In those ups and downs, any mantra or something motivational that you say to yourself or share with your team to push through those times of challenge or roadblocks?
Joshua Holloway
Actually, there's two that come to mind. The first one is going to be Mission Over Money. So the idea is as somebody who's providing IT cybersecurity solutions, the mission is to protect as many people as we possibly can. Sometimes if you think about the downturn of 2008, you shore up your your defenses, you save where you can, and you keep pushing to grow. The second one is customer service all overall, everything else. Because if you can provide somebody with really good customer services while you're fixing their issue. Usually, they've calmed down a little bit. They understand that you're there to fix things. And then it does buy you a little bit of time while you're correcting an issue. Not every fix is five seconds or five minutes for that matter.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Joshua, I love mission over money. The reality is the money is going to come if you put the mission first, right? Especially when it sounds like your mission is it's all about the client, right? And if we can help our clients grow, our business is going to grow as a result of that.
Joshua Holloway
Absolutely.
Marketing is an Investment
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love that. So let's jump into it. I want to pull out as much value as we can from your experience. One of the things we always talk about is marketing and sales, right? It's a big... It can be a big driver of growth. As the owner, you are overseeing marketing and sales efforts for the company with a small internal team, what have you learned along the way?
Joshua Holloway
Well, one, there's no easy button whatsoever. Two, if you've only given it a week, give it to 27 more. Because nothing is accomplished very quickly. We have a couple of campaigns that we run, and we really didn't see traction until the 12th week. We got a lot of compliments. They thought that the campaign was really cool, but no real bites. But then about 12 weeks in, we started picking up traction. We started building the funnel. And it's all a numbers game, right? You really need to understand the long The longevity and the time it takes, what it takes to build the funnel overall, and then just to continuously water it and keep it growing. And then that's how you keep people coming through the door. The immediate buys are few and far between. They're really awesome when it happens. But nurturing the relationship and the marketing and getting the message out there is super important, and it does take time.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Your internal team, what does that look like?
Joshua Holloway
So my internal team for marketing is going to be my Marketing Manager. Then we have an assistant that comes in and helps us put together all of the campaigns, generate our lists. Currently, right now, our SDR decided to retire, which I think is awesome. He's been with me for a couple of years. Definitely, he was nearing retirement age, and he just said I was done. So sadly, he's left us, and then that leaves me. And then I oversee the campaigns, and then I do the first touch sales.
Tim Fitzpatrick
One of the things that I see over and over again when owners are trying to run And oversee marketing when it's not necessarily their first skillset or in their wheelhouse. It can be very challenging to lead something that is not in your wheelhouse. Have you found that to be the case? And what have you done to try and fill some of those gaps to make that easier for you?
Joshua Holloway
So you have to be okay and embrace change. One of the things is you're going to have to put yourself through some pain. And the pain is, I'm going to have to take myself away from what I'm uncomfortable with doing, what I gravitate towards doing, which is teching, and set aside the time. And I force myself to learn the marketing. I force myself to work the campaigns, make the calls and test the scripts that we have set up for our people. So you just have to set aside a couple of hours a day, and that's what you do. And when you start to make excuses of adding things to that time, and taking away what it was devoted for, that's when you have to reassess and go back and be like, okay, I'm starting to slip. I need to reel back in. And it's the pain. It's just the pain of repetitively doing something you're not comfortable with. And you have to do it. You really do.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. I want to pull out a few things because you shared some really good gems here that I think are important for people to realize. And a lot of this, you're really speaking my language. You said there's no easy button. That is one of our beliefs about marketing, right? Is there is no easy button. There is no silver bullet, right? And a lot of MSPs, a lot of other B2B company owners are always looking for that easy button. And it's just one problem after another when you try to market that way, looking for an easy button. The other thing you said was give it time, right? Our point of view on it that we talk about is marketing is an investment, right? It takes time. And a lot of people give up before they've given it the time that it needs to be successful. And one of the common questions I get is like, well, gosh, if you're investing in something that's a very long term, like content creation, search engine optimization, do you Just blindly invest in it for a year or 18 months or 24 months and then look at it? And the answer is no, right? Because if you do that, then you're a year down the line, and that's when you go, Oh, my gosh, we just flushed X amount dollars down the toilet. I think the important thing is when you're investing in something that takes time, you've got a clear plan with clear goals and benchmarks that you're going to hit at certain points and you have clear metrics because those things are things that you can use at three months in, six months, nine months to determine whether you need to make course corrections along the way. And that's the step that I think a lot of people miss. So the other thing that you said was you take time to learn marketing, right? If marketing is not your thing and you're going to lead it, you got to take the time to learn it, right? And the tools are out there. So thank you for sharing that. And kudos to you for doing it, because it does take time. It can be learned, right? And you can get there faster, right? You can learn it faster if you've got somebody on your side who can help you with that. But you got to take the time to learn it if you're going to lead it. And hiring a marketing agency does not absolve you as the owner of management.
Joshua Holloway
Oh, absolutely.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Tim Fitzpatrick
So..
Joshua Holloway
We say the same thing about...Yeah, we say the same thing about cybersecurity.
How to Overcome Challenges in a Changing Industry
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. There you go. Yeah. So I want to shift gears just a little bit. And thank you for sharing all that stuff because there was some really good stuff there. IT services, it's become pretty commoditized, like a lot of industries. What kinds of things are... What are you doing to work around this and overcome it?
Joshua Holloway
The biggest thing, yes, it has been commoditized and everybody feels that it pretty much should be free. But at the same time, breaches aren't going away. Problems aren't going away. Even though we have an influx of artificial intelligence, if the computer is not working, artificial intelligence can't necessarily talk to it or fix it. So the human element is always going to be there, but it's how we see the future and integrate the tools. I think some of the things that we do to separate ourselves is we realize that IT is changing and the whole landscape is changing, where fixing a computer, a laptop, and maybe a server network, I don't want to say it's simple because it's not simple, but at the same time, that's a given. That's what you're going to be doing. But IT is fundamentally changing because of all these breaches and because of all security regulations and everything coming down that we have to shift and become more fluent in that cyber landscape, more fluent in the rules and regulations that are coming down. Federal government is definitely just lining up way more safeties and guidelines that we have to adhere to. Insurance companies are also building more and more restrictions for their cyber reliability policy. They're making it harder for people to obtain. And I think what differentiates our company versus somebody who is just a commoditized IT is we realize that and we help the businesses structure their services and structure their offerings to fit in those requirements, in an insurance requirement or a compliance requirement. And that's the job of IT. Like I said earlier, management doesn't escape from the responsibility of the cyber security, but it's our job to help guide them. We don't take on 100 % of the task or the risk. We actually help educate and help them know, yes, part of cyber security is your responsibility. You don't just get to hand it off to another company and say, it's not my problem. Because what happens when there's a ransomware attack or there's a data breach? And then all of a sudden people start pointing their fingers. Well, we try so hard to take away the finger pointing and have a clear definition of what's your roles and responsibilities, what's ours, how they meld together. And then did we follow every rule and regulation to not be out of compliance or not be out of compliance with insurance? So that's really us integrating our business into our client's business to make sure that at the end of the day, we did everything possible and we still stayed within those guidelines, and we helped educate them to stay within those guidelines as well.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So what I'm hearing you say at a high level is, although you're solving IT issues that they may have, you're helping them solve a larger business problem that's related and attached to those IT problems.
Joshua Holloway
Yeah. And it's because more rules and regulations are coming. Most people are.... Their businesses aren't geared for it because they're used to the same mantra. We've always done it this way. This is how we've always done it. It doesn't always work.
Tim Fitzpatrick
No. Well, and like you said, Things change. Just because it's the way you've always done it doesn't mean that it's the best way to do it.
Joshua Holloway
Correct.
Tim Fitzpatrick
With messaging, because look, there are a lot of ways to differentiate. Focusing on specific, who's your target market? And then your messaging to that market, huge differentiators. And then within your message, there are a lot of different ways you can differentiate. But one of the things that I see over and over again, especially in the IT space, is focusing on IT, but that's not really why people buy. And so when your message focuses on the larger business problems you solve and the business outcomes that you help people achieve, that can help differentiate. There are always ways to differentiate in a commoditized market. So I really appreciate you sharing that. And I'll share another one here for the audience, totally unrelated, but because you look at companies like Amazon, you're like, dude, how in the world can I compete with Amazon? And a while back, this was quite a long time ago, I was looking to buy a new driver for a golf. Now, I could go on to Amazon's website and buy that, but I didn't know exactly what I wanted to buy. So I went to the TaylorMade website, and they had on their website this chat feature built in that asked me all kinds of questions. And then it said, this is the driver that you should buy.
Joshua Holloway
Way different experience.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Totally different experience, right? And so that is a very simple example of how you can differentiate even with extremely large competitors, where it's like, I'm never going to get that experience from Amazon. If I know exactly what I want to buy, well, cool, then I can go to Amazon, I can buy it. But if I don't, they need more handholding, there are ways that others within that ecosystem can provide a better experience, and then I'm just going to buy there.
Joshua Holloway
And that's why people shop price a lot of times, too, because they're thinking, I just need a guy to fix my computer. They didn't realize that they needed 25 other things because there's somebody who's hacked into their Office 365. There's other problems going on. The whole world is going to open up to them differently.
Tim Fitzpatrick
And when we fail to differentiate, the only thing the client can default to is price.
Joshua Holloway
Oh, absolutely.
Tim Fitzpatrick
But if when we differentiate, we can command a totally different price.
Joshua Holloway
Well, I think there's one other dangerous stumble block right there when you said differentiate. Sometimes we may not have differentiated eloquently enough for them to realize that there's a difference to where they're just stuck on price because maybe they don't get quite what you're selling or how you're selling or how it benefits them. So you didn't build enough of that gap for them to realize, I have it I have a bigger issue. And what does the future look like? Because ultimately, that's what I'm trying to lead them to is, yeah, you're messed up here, but the future looks so much brighter over here. To take something from a song, you got to wear shades, right? Future's so bright, you got to wear shades.
Growing Through Tenacity
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Yes, that's right. Joshua, one of the things that you mentioned to me during the pre-interview was that you guys have grown through tenacity. I love that word. What What types of things have you done to remain tenacious and motivated? Especially, man, it's easy to be motivated and tenacious when things are going well. How do you do that when the chips are down?
Joshua Holloway
You got to remain hungry. Just as many good days that you have, you're going to have bad days. And on those bad days, you have to remember those good days, and you just have to pull yourself out of it. That's for the tenacity comes in. That's where the hunger comes in. For me, I have goals. I have set... I want to grow the business to X million, mini million. I want to be of a certain size. I would like to acquire more IT companies and continue to grow. So if I let the little stuff that stumbles me at a low level trip me up, then I'm not going to accomplish the loftier goals that I've set ahead of me. So it's just looking towards the big primary goals at the end is what keeps you going. And no, it's not always going to be sunshine and rainbows. You're going to have bad days. The economy is going to have a downturn. Marketing tactics are not going to work forever. And you just have to keep pushing. And yes, you could curl up in a ball and cry a little bit and hope somebody will make it all better for you. But really, the drive comes down ultimately to you. And I was being like the CEO, the captain of the ship. If I falter, the rest will falter with me. Everybody else will lose their drive. They will lose their tenacity. We will just become a place of business that provides a paycheck, and people just show up. So I don't want that to infect my employees. I want them to drive just as hard as I drive, and vice versa. You feed off of that.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I like that. Two of the things that have helped me in situations like this, one is just reminding myself that this too shall pass. Nothing is going to remain the same forever, good and bad. So that has always helped me. And the other thing, too, I think when the chips are down, frankly, I think it can be this way at any point in time as an entrepreneur and business owner. It can be overwhelming. And there's so many different things that we need to do. And for me, it's focusing on the next measurable step. It's not focusing on and outlining every single step I need to take to get here. It's just what's the next step I can take right now to get me one step closer? Once I take that step, then I take the next, and the next, and the next. And it's breaking it down into bite-sized chunks, the overwhelmed just fades away.
Joshua Holloway
One of the things that I use, or I suggest to everybody, kids included, is look at the entire picture when you feel overwhelmed. Look for things that have very obtainable goals so that they're quick wins, because quick wins will lift your spirit. Quick wins will show you that, Hey, I've already knocked out three more things. I'm going to jump on this really hard one. And you have that power, that excitement from the other three that worked out, and it keeps you going. Because like you said, one bite at a time, you can definitely eat an elephant, but it's not going to happen quick, but it's one bite at a time.
Conclusion
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I like it. What do you feel What do you feel has been the biggest driver of growth for you? Does any one thing stick out?
Joshua Holloway
Our biggest driver is, I think it's when I can get in front of somebody and show them where we can help their business grow, because when I walk out of meetings like that where I feel like somebody really latched on to my message and where we were going, that we're going to be moving forward, we're going to be growing. And it's that constant win, right? And then even when we have a loss, right? Because you can't win everything. It's analyzing, what did I do wrong? Was I over excited? Because you get me talking about cyber security or IT. Sometimes I get a little over excited. The conversation is lost in the overall interaction. So it's just loving what you do, living and loving what you do, and then just pushing forward. And then taking the wins and losses as feedback. It doesn't even have to be a positive or negative feedback. Just take it as feedback because it's all learning.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. So what's next? I mean, what are your aspirations moving forward?
Joshua Holloway
Aspirations-wise, moving forward, let's see, my business partner asked me to wait a year before another merger and acquisition. So I got to wait, but I definitely want to look to get a couple more other IT companies at a different geographical locations. My current stretch goal is to get us to 10 million. And then pretty much work on the numbers and making sure that this business is at a good structural point where somebody would love to acquire us and then go from there. Then I can write off into the sunset and do something other than IT. Maybe my phone won't ring as much.
Tim Fitzpatrick
There you go. I love it, man. This has been fantastic. Before we wrap things up, I want to ask you one last question, which is knowing what you know now, is there anything you do differently?
Joshua Holloway
Well, absolutely. Actually, I think that's a great question. And the reason why is it's all hindsight, right? So I would say the first couple of things that I would say, if I could have changed it was get people to help me earlier on in the growth and the endeavor. So hiring the right staff, the right persons in the seat. The second one was definitely be getting into marketing way ahead than when I did. And working the marketing, sending out the letters, and just... Word of mouth is great. Word of mouth is awesome. And I grew this business solely on word of mouth up to about 2.5 million. So I felt like I was doing a really good job.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Good for you.
Joshua Holloway
Why would I need marketing? And then when you see the breaks just slam in front of your face, you realize, oh, I should have done both alongside each other. I should have had my marketing oil wells, my different things that I would use to get the word out, be it digitally, physical mail or whatever it is, I was working on that as well as building up referrals. And that's absolutely what I would change. And, yeah, those two are my two majors that I would change.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Those are good ones. You're not... Everybody that wants to grow beyond a certain point reaches that ceiling of referrals because they're not scalable, they're not predictable. Two, two and a half million is a pretty high ceiling for that. So kudos to you. Thank you. Usually, I think it's closer to that one million mark. But wherever it is, you're going to hit it at a certain point. And the way I think about it is, it's like riding a unicycle. When you're building off a referral, it's a unicycle. Tire goes flat, you are your host, you are not getting anywhere. When you start to expand and you've got three, four different marketing channels, including referral, then you're riding a three wheeler or a four wheeler. And if one of those tires goes flat, you're still going to get to the It may not be as fast, but you're not as dependent on any one tire as you would be if you were riding a unicycle.
Joshua Holloway
Yeah, and I'm having all your eggs in one basket. That's right. That's right.
Tim Fitzpatrick
This has been fantastic, Joshua. I really appreciate you taking the time. Where can people connect with you, learn more about you?
Joshua Holloway
Yeah. So they can check us out on our website at 7thdi.com. Linkedin profile is out there. You have it scrolling on there across the screen. So we post a lot of webinars. We do about a webinar every month, every other month, about whatever is currently in the topics. I just did one for cyber Reliability, looking to do some on artificial intelligence in the coming month. So definitely, if you're going to LinkedIn, look for all of our posts and check out one of our webinars. If you go to our website, I know we have some of our videos posted. We have a YouTube channel. You can go directly off the 7thdi.com and hit the YouTube channel to look at some of the other webinars we've done. So, yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. Awesome. We will make sure if you're watching this, you can see it scrolling on the screen. If you're listening, we will make sure that those things go in the show notes as well. So 7thdi.com. And then we'll put the link to Joshua's LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So go over, connect with them. Joshua, like I said, thank you. I appreciate you taking the time. And those of you that are watching and listening, I appreciate you taking the time. If you want to connect with us, you can do that over rialtomarketing.com, which is rialtomarketing.com. Or if you want to know which of the nine revenue roadblocks are slowing down your growth, you can do that over revenueroadblockscorecard.com. So thank you again. And till next time. Take care.
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