How to Level Up an MSP Business: Interview with Danny Suk Brown of AppMeetup
What allows small businesses to level up to grow or sell? What holds them back?
In the specialized world of Managed Service Providers, Danny Suk Brown and the team at AppMeetup are called on by companies like Microsoft and Amazon to train thousands of channel partners to grow their businesses. In this interview, we dive into common challenges and solutions to business growth. Learn proven levers to growth in this episode.
Full transcript below
Lack of clarity on the vision holds MSPs back
Scott Levy:
Danny, you've run AppMeetup and worked with thousands of MSPs to help them scale their businesses. Microsoft, AWS, and other companies come to you to help train their MSPs. I'm curious as to what you see holding the CEOs, the business owners, the founders of these MSPs back most frequently.
Danny Suk Brown:
That's a great question, and what we found out with interviewing over 2300 MSPs, ISPs and SIs is that typically what holds these organizations back is the owner. A lot of times they think it's a bad sales team or a bad marketing team, but the owner not having a clarity of the vision, the employees not understanding what the owner's vision is, and then not taking the knowledge transfer that the owner has and doing a leadership development program for all employees is what held many of these organizations back. We go back to the foundation and framework. They've been able to get unstuck, and they're no longer just flatlining. They actually start to increase their revenue and scaling quickly. That has been the number one thing that we have noticed after coaching 2300 MSPs, ISVs and SIs.
👉 Read: our ultimate guide to creating a company vision
AppMeetup: top global supplier in enabling partner growth
Scott Levy:
That's awesome and that's a great lead in. Tell us a little bit about what AppMeetup does. So you guys are a value added reseller to MSPs, is that how you operate?
Danny Suk Brown:
No, so we used to be a value reseller and we transitioned into an MSP. A value reseller is a technical organization that would procure hardware and software equipment on behalf of clients and install it for them, or just sell it to the clients and their clients' own IT team would install or manage the work. An MSP would actually manage the whole IT environment on behalf of that client. We transitioned from being just a pure VAR, just a hardware reseller with very low margins of 1-5% plus rebates, into a co-managed MSP. We partner with large architectural engineering firms, and we were able to increase our margins because now we have a two or three-year contract, and we're going to battle with them every single day as a joint technical team.
Scott Levy:
You've scaled not just at Meetup but prior to this as well, so you're not just plugging in course material. You're bringing information from your experience. You guys are like a 2024 Microsoft Award winner, is that right?
Danny Suk Brown:
That's correct. For the last couple of years, the work we've done with Microsoft in partnership with their Channel Community team is that we've been able to showcase revenue growth with the partners, and not only that but tie it back to their partner growth number. We've also been able to show that we can form partnerships, joint ventures - what we call the partner to partner framework. Microsoft has seen the growth over the last couple years spike to the point where they give out awards every year, and we actually won the Supplier of the Year award this year as the top global supplier for Microsoft in enabling partner growth.
Scott Levy:
That's amazing, because you guys are a little smaller than those companies you mentioned. I like that the "mighty might" story is always a great one.
AppMeetup’s yearly goals for 2024
Scott Levy:
What are your three biggest goals for 2024?
Danny Suk Brown:
That's a great question. Sometimes when we hit certain growth markers from the past, we tell ourselves we're done. But one of the things we encourage our clients to do every year, and sometimes every quarter, is to continue looking at your goals and ask how you can stretch yourself and your team a little further. We can't just stop now that we won this Global Supplier award, so we have three new additional goals we're trying to accomplish this year to make 2024 the best year ever, and last year was the best year ever.
So every year has to be the best year ever. One is we created a new Community, a new "Mercury Community" as we call our Learning Management platform. We created a new Facebook "Mercury Learning Community" where we're going to invite as many people as possible to learn about soft skills, improving communication skills, sales tips and techniques. It's going to be a free community for people to join, and we want to really beef it up to add value back to the community.
Number two, we want to launch another book. One of the great things we've done is we've actually created books and journals to help our clients, to help them get a better understanding of thoughts, break through the negative mindset, find positive growth, and scale. We have another book coming out, and it's called "Identically Opposite" and it's how to find your voice in Corporate America so you don't have to be the CEO. You can have a voice; you can add value to that organization. I'm really excited about the two books we have now, the four journals, and now we have one more book coming out by the end of summer. That will be a total stack to really help elevate you as an individual.
And then last, I want to double the content in our online Mercury learning library. This content is really going to be able to enable and give people a clear call to action and actually give them the ability to track their growth. Our Content Library has over 200 courses that we have handcrafted and created in-house with clear call to actions and clear development steps. Our goal now, hopefully by the end of this summer, is to double up that Content Library. So we're on our way, really excited about it. I think those are going to be our three biggest goals this year.
Scott Levy:
That's outstanding. And for anyone who doesn't know, Danny's got an identical twin. I'm guessing that somehow played into the title "Identically Opposite" identically opposite, yeah, that's great. Great book on public speaking that you guys have published, great podcast you also run TwinsTalkItUp that has all kinds of great folks on. I was really appreciative of the opportunity to come on that podcast, so you've got a lot going on.
👉 Read: our collection of resources on company goals
Understand success to create a repeatable process
Scott Levy:
It makes me think of this other question - what holds people back? So you're a very big fan of repeatable processes, and then you're a very big fan of how operations get set up to empower people for success. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Danny Suk Brown:
Absolutely, and that's an excellent question. When I think about my journey and think about how we've grown our businesses - this is my second business - what we found is that the key to success has been repeating the same things that work. A lot of times people say "Hey, I'm going to change this year. I'm going to get in shape this year, I'm going to work on this and that this year." But it doesn't change because they haven't built a process that's worked, and sometimes the process is so daunting that it becomes overwhelming and they don't begin.
What we've done is we've taken what has worked and we've broken it down into many little steps, and then we just repeat those steps every single chance we get. And then we go back and refine the steps. We might have reduced our sales cycle from 180 days down to 90 days, and we go back to "What can we do better? What little things here and there can we change? What words can we tweak?" Even before coming on the call, I was talking to you about one of the challenges I had with people who've already gone through our programs who want more. It's like, how do I even fine-tune that sales process to make it even smaller?
So it's having a repeatable process. I want to encourage everybody - always look at your business, and what we found is a lot of CEOs, when I ask them what was the best sale you've ever had, what was the second best sale, they couldn't explain why the first sale and the second sale were so different. They couldn't explain why one happened and the other one didn't. They didn't understand. And so if you don't understand as a CEO running your own business, your people don't understand, so you don't know what good looks like, and that good can't become great.
The second thing is the employee training, the leadership development. And I always believe that you have to have the right people in the right seats. Scott, you and I are on the same page. I show up, my team gives me my script for the week, my team gives me my schedule for the week, they tell me where I'm going to go, what hotel, where am I staying, what am I going to do. And we are a small company, but because they have the authority to do their jobs, which means they're the right person for the job, they have the right experience, the right background, they have the right authority to make changes without me. They even have their own corporate card that they're allowed to spend up to a certain dollar amount without my approval, as long as that objective is being hit, which is whatever they do, it has to lead our company towards a specific measurable that has to be done every week.
So when you hire the right people and then you train them and you give them what they need to be successful, the tools that are going to be, those are the two things that I've seen from my experience working with 2,300 partners over the last four years that has held them back. It's that repeatable business process.
The second thing is enabling your people to be able to do their role and do their function without you and also giving them the tools they need to be successful, whether that's a revenue optimization tool, a sales enablement tool, or training, and that training could be soft skills-based.
Scott Levy:
Yeah, I like I heard another thing in there which is they've got clarity of what they need to accomplish - here's the number we're trying to move, here's the goal we're trying to hit. And I know we're both big fans of that. I think that focus - I've heard again and again and again from leaders that have had the types of successes you've had is they're able to connect everyone to the results and then empower people to take ownership and keep progress visible. That's something we see again and again and again.
The value of team check-ins
Scott Levy:
How do you guys, when you have all these balls in the air because you guys are very busy, a lot of plates are spinning, a lot of things going on - we were just talking about before we started recording - how are you keeping all those tasks and projects and all the things that are going on straight as you guys are navigating these things?
Danny Suk Brown:
That's a great question. One of the things I like to encourage our team is to check in. You always have to check in, and it's not checking in to make a person feel bad that they haven't completed a task. It's checking in to make sure that their emotional well-being is doing well. And while you're checking in with that employee to understand how their emotional well-being is doing, they will bring up what they need because they feel safe and secure. "I'm behind on this, I'm ahead of that, this is what I need in order to complete projects."
So we like to do this thing called "just check in and see how you're doing." This is different than having the individual one-on-ones. So we still have one-on-ones with employees, but checking in is "Hey, how's things going?" Because what we found out is people that wait until weeks to the end of the quarter to check in with their team, they've already lost their team. Their team's not going to make the numbers. You're not going to close, you're actually going to train your clients to wait until the end of the fiscal year in order to buy things from you because they know they're going to get a significant discount so you can close out your books.
So check in with your employees on a regular basis. That has always been the way that we've kept people aligned, to make sure that they have what they need to be successful. And when they emotionally feel they have what they need from a mindset perspective, then they actually self-manage their own thought process, their own daily tasks, in order to go back to the vision that we set, the OKRs we put together for each division in our team, and make sure that they're hitting their goals in order to help the whole company as a whole meet their revenue targets.
So we always go back. It's not got to be complex, it's not a dashboard where you have to pull up the data and say "You haven't done XYZ." When you check in, they're going to pull up their own dashboard, they're going to pull up their own data metrics, they're going to see what they're working or not working on, because they love the fact that we're working well as a team, and they love the fact that they are the individual that is responsible for helping a team hit their metric for a specific area.
How AppMeetup uses ResultMaps
Scott Levy:
Nice, and you've got a platform to help you do it from what I understand. (laughs)
Danny Suk Brown:
I do, I do. It's an excellent platform, and I'm going to encourage everybody out there today - if you are not using tools to help your organization to be successful, you're hurting your team. And I want to encourage you, there are a lot of tools out there, but the issue with having tools is the lack of adoption. So whatever tool you use out there, make sure every employee is willing to adopt that tool, and that tool can integrate with other tools that you have in your organization. And one of the tools that we like to encourage all of our partners and everyone that's listening today is, of course, ResultsMaps.
How MSPs can keep everybody in sync and aligned
Scott Levy:
Yeah, I had to give you the slow pitch there, had to do it. Very nice. And when you guys do this check-in, can you talk a little more about that cadence? So you've got - you're checking in to see how people are doing, you've got everybody looking at their KPIs and those things. What else do you guys do to make sure everything stays in sync and stays aligned?
Danny Suk Brown:
We celebrate a lot. And I know a lot of times people say you should only celebrate when you have a win. We celebrate every single day. And what we found by celebrating with all of our employees, it doesn't matter what it is - that's part of one of the things we call checking in, is celebration. "Hey, I woke up today and I actually went for a walk." It doesn't have to be business wins. But when you celebrate, you find good things. And when you find good things, you're willing to express about those good things. And then you try to think outside the box in order to help you accomplish your goals.
And trying to make a long story short, by starting off positive, by starting off with celebration, what we found is our employees are more active into doing their daily tasks, are more active in talking about the future. And believe it or not, they know that every day and every second is valuable. They know that if they take a day off, that could be a week loss in productivity. So what they've done is they've created their own internal system of articulating "Hey, I haven't won this deal yet" or "I haven't closed this opportunity, but I'm so happy with the progress that I've made. I'm so happy with the results that we're starting to see, and I believe this is what's going to happen when we close."
By doing that, everybody on the team now is saying, "Well, here's what I'm doing on my side, here's what you..." And we can all figure out how everybody works together to help accomplish that singular goal. And this makes checking in not weird, it makes checking in not mandatory to the point where people feel like "I'm going to get fired." But all these things and all these actions together is what really allows and enables people to find that enthusiasm, that spark internally, to continue to go after what they need.
And what we found is that sometimes they will find better ways to do things. We have a core business operational process for every task - marketing, sales, sales ops, rev ops, everything. But our employees, because they've been empowered, have found ways to make it even better. So we always constantly change up our playbooks, we constantly change up our internal operational processes, to make the person that we have on our team feel like they can do more and they want to do more, because they bought into it.
Scott Levy:
I love that and I love the leading with wins, making sure that you're setting the tone right when you show up. You know, it reminds me of how we do our weekly meetings - ResultsMaps dashboard helps you do this - but we're also both fans of the Entrepreneurial Operating System where you lead off a Level 10 with some form of wins. Networking groups have been part of for decades start off with thanks, wins, before they get into needs and other things. I think that practice is really undervalued because now you're not showing up to the meeting going "here we go again." You're actually asking yourself "what's good? What's good with me? What good progress am I making?" Which is a much better way to start off any meeting.
Why fundamentals are important for good leadership
This also reminds me - so we learned on the last podcast we did together that not only do we both have some music in our background, we also both have some football in our background. So I'd love to hear from you, and I know I'm putting you a little bit on the spot here, but we'll get jazzy in what we're doing and improvise. But I want to hear how your experience as a football coach and playing football, how does that inform how you set things up? Because there's so many books out there on "here's what's happened in large corporations" that are basically manufacturing-based, but there's so much to be learned from these great laboratories we have all over the world that are sports teams. So how has that informed your leadership?
Danny Suk Brown:
Great question. One of the things I love about, and I'm glad you brought up football - I coached community college football for two years, high school football for four years, and we did win the community college football championship. And one of the things I love about coaching is that coaches go to coaching clinics - we are not, what I call, know-it-alls. And I remember going to the Mike Leach coaching clinic. God rest his soul, amazing offensive mindset coach. The way he articulated certain things, it helped you from a defensive perspective understood why he was able to exploit...and people think "oh, just throw the ball up and see what happens", no there, there is a process on how he does things. And then every coach, position coach as well, it went back to the fundamentals. It doesn't matter if he's scoring 30 points a game, 40 points a game, 50 points a game - Mike Leach always went back to the basics.
And what I've learned as a coach myself is you always have to: One, open your mindset to learn new things. Number two, learn how to communicate. And a lot of times when players are in the wrong, when I say "the wrong" is they ran the wrong play, they're in the wrong stance, whatever it may be, that's an opportunity to uplift and coach up, not yell and degrade. And then the third thing I've learned is that everybody really wants to understand why their role is so important. We think it's a flashy quarterback, we think it's the wide receiver, but in reality, a lot of the wins that happen are done in the trenches.
So I coached the running backs and I coached DBs, and I became offensive coordinator. One of the things I found out is that if you build up the trenches and you make them so excited, they're going to fight for you, they're going to be the dogs in the trenches. And then everybody on the team is going to start congratulating, say "Hey man, if you didn't hit that blocking assignment, I wouldn't be able to get through the hole." Because of you, I was able to gain eight yards. And now people encourage each other every single time.
So one of the things I love about coaching is that the coach never stops learning. And if you stop learning as a CEO and as a leader of your organization, your organization will fail. So every day is an opportunity for me to get back in the lab, to understand how to get better, to understand how to do better. And at the end of the day, talk to other coaches. And as myself as a business leader, I talk to other business leaders like yourself and other business leaders out there - "Here's what I'm working on, what do you guys think? What is your thought process?" I have no shame in my game. If I want to grow my organization to be huge, I know that I have to continue to grow, continue to learn, and seek advice outside.
Scott Levy:
I love that. And Mike Leach, for anybody who doesn't know, so he was the Texas Tech coach for years and was known for this style of play called the "air raid" because he would just run like they would spread the field, they would get the ball down field. I think this one quarterback few people may have heard of named Pat Mahomes was in that system. But every coach that was around him, even the defensive coaches, talked about how it made them better because it wasn't just glitz and glamour. It was he understood the fundamentals and he used that to make his offense work, and it was very dynamic. I mean, they kept Texas from being number one on at least one occasion, my dear Longhorns.
But this idea of going back to fundamentals, and that it's really less about the superstar stepping up and super-starring, and much more about how fundamentals create these building blocks that everything else is on top of. Now somebody has a success because all those fundamentals were taken care of, and they may have the opportunity to do something magical or beautiful. But none of that happens if the play gets stopped at the line.
Danny Suk Brown:
Absolutely, none of that happens if the business is falling apart on the customer service end or the sales end or somewhere else. That going back to fundamentals, I feel like as business leaders we can often miss because there's so many shiny new systems, there's so much out there on this or that unicorn. And if you go look at the high performers, it seems to me they're always religious about the fundamentals. There's tons of great books out there that talk about performers in sports that are the same way, very much bring it back to our fundamentals. Kobe Bryant said the same Thing he said people kept asking why are you the best basketball player in the world, he said because I never get bored of the fundamentals. I think it's very true.
Scott Levy:
I think that differentiates performers in all venues - see it again and again. I’ve talked with folks in the Special Forces Community, they're the same way. And oh by the way, they're very humble about it. And the same thing with great athletes. And so we both have a musical background. When I've talked to and stalked musicians, which I've done a fair share of, it's the same thing - they always come back to "here are the things you need to work on, here are the things you need to get together." So fundamentals, getting people in the right seats, empowering them to be successful, building that mutual trust...
Leadership fundamentals: journaling
Scott Levy:
Are there any other things that jump to mind that you really want to make sure that, especially if somebody's maybe they've started an MSP, maybe they've hit a million or three million, they're trying to get to five, they're trying to get to 10, they're trying to get to 20? And I know you've worked with much much larger, but just this is on my mind because I've talked with so many in this land between 3 million and 15 million which can really - you can hit a ceiling. You have any advice for folks in that area?
Danny Suk Brown:
Absolutely. Journal. I know this is weird because a lot of people in my shoes don't like - they don't like the journal. And I've learned from a mindset executive coach, she said you need to sit down, journal, because you need to be intentional, intentionally taking actions that move the needle. When we don't journal, we don't write down our thoughts, we don't understand what worked, what didn't work. We don't understand where we got stuck. Sometimes we need to think about where things are, how things are. And by journaling, we can actually see where we're stuck, we can figure out where we can get progress. We know exactly where to get help, we know exactly where to add those helpers in. Going back over three months ago, looking at what happened three months ago - did I grow in that area? Did I take one step each day in that particular area to grow my business? And what you'll find out is that by just journaling and using a platform like ResultsMaps, the data allows you to make decisions by removing the emotion. The journaling allows you to make the decisions by seeing where you can improve each day of your business, each day of your personal life. And when you put it all together, then you'll be able to see that pattern and get unstuck and actually break through from being what I call a plateaued business.
You have to be able to understand yourself, you have to be able to understand the market of your business. And sometimes the best way to do that is just journaling and being intentional, intentional on taking actions. Not just journaling and just reading it, but being intentional. When you put that together, I've seen a lot of organizations be able to break through. And if you need journal ideas, you can always go to our website at meetup.com/journals and we have a specific journal for every single leader in the organization.
Scott Levy:
I love that, journaling and being intentional. And I've got notebooks, notebooks on notebooks of doing that. Obviously it's built into our platform to different degrees and we've got some - we've got some laboratory projects that involve journaling. But it is so powerful, and we forget so quickly what we've accomplished, where we've been, what we were thinking about even yesterday, right? We tend to think that it's all up there and it's really not, it's not how our brains work. And I love being able to go back and say "Where were we at the beginning of the year?" Even it's end of Q1 as we're recording this going into Q2, because we've been tracking things. Because I've been tracking things personally, we've been tracking them as an organization. Say "Look how far we've come." And you can build that momentum even if you're not hitting a goal. You can see, okay, what to your point? Here's what's working, what should we continue doing, what might we stop doing, and what do we need to start doing? And just that pause and reflect rhythm, I'm just such a big believer in that.
Leadership fundamentals: gratitude
Scott Levy:
Do you have a weekly practice? Is it every day, daily?
Danny Suk Brown:
It doesn't matter what we do unless we sit down and be consistent. So if it's weekly, that's fine, as long as it's consistently the same time. You treat it like religion, nothing can interfere with it. Because you and I, we travel a lot, we go to different events, different conferences, different time zones, different parts of the world. It can change things up. So I just do it daily, it can be 30 seconds, it could be an hour, an hour and a half. But every single day, and the first thing I do in my journal is talk, is the gratitude aspect. I've got to be grateful, that opens up my mind, opens up my heart to put my mind, to put my effort to be intentional into the journey. So you always have to be in that way. But for me personally, it's daily. But if you, an individual, has to do it once a week, that's fine. But make sure you treat it like religion, that you cannot miss it no matter what. It's the consistency is the most important thing that's going to actually enable change.
Scott Levy:
100%. And I do, so I do a daily practice, then I've also got a weekly pause and reflect, then a monthly one, and then a quarterly one where those are larger ones where you're looking at macro. But yes, jumping in, starting out appreciating what's right, and there's so much great data on what that does in your brain. My friend Peter Himmelman first turned me on to how that could inspire creativity, and I was like "That's interesting." Then I read another book by a Green Beret commander on leadership and performance. He's very much a believer in that practice and really inspired me to get very diligent about it. And it is an unlock.
Danny Suk Brown:
I agree. I'm glad you brought the military, and thank you for your support being a veteran myself. I go to a...and apologize if I say this that offends anybody, it's a Veterans for Beer event every single Monday, and it's at a brewery. At the brewery, it's not about drinking or getting drunk; it's a safe space for myself and about 25 other veterans. We gather there to support each other, talking weekly. Some of us served in earlier wars, while others just returned from recent deployments. It's a veterans-only gathering, thanks to the support of the establishment. We also organize annual events related to guns at the gun range, fostering camaraderie and support.
Scott Levy:
I'm also involved with a group called Warrior Rising that helps veterans start businesses. It's really fantastic. I highly recommend anybody out there go look them up. It's founded by Jason Van Camp who's got a great book, "Deliberate Discomfort," talking about a mission-driven community. One out of every hundred US citizens signs up, raises her hand, and joins the military, which is pretty amazing, all volunteer force from day one so nothing but great things to say there.
Interestingly though, it took me a while to have this aha moment. It's one of the few places where leadership is life or death, and you're going to learn about it. In the military, you're going to learn how to leverage processes, you're going to learn how critical it is to think about the person next to you, and I'm just always as I say find it remarkable how well veterans can do whether it's at work, whether it's starting businesses, being leaders. I think it's really an undervalued resource for our nation. I could give you example after example, whether it's a friend of mine, Will Bunker, that started what's now Match.com and he's not somebody who's like beating his chest - he signed up for the GI bill to pay for college, didn't plan on getting deployed, and ultimately didn't get but he signed up. Another friend of mine is a marketing executive, and I thanked him for his service; he's like, “Look, I never got deployed.” I'm like, yeah but you raised your hand, and you can always count on these folks. It's just it's a remarkable thing, absolutely so very much appreciate your service.
How fundamentals help create repeatable processes
Danny Suk Brown:
I want to go back to your fundamentals. People always ask, "How are you able to do so much?" It's because every day we just take little steps and we do the fundamentals. So when it comes to writing one book - and that's always the hardest thing - you write one book, you have a framework; you can do another one, and another one. You write one journal, you have a framework; you can do another one. When it comes to doing one podcast, you have a framework; now you have two podcasts. When it comes to doing sales training, sales coaching, you have a framework; now you have a hundred partners you're coaching out at a time. So everything has always been back to the fundamentals. Coaching football, playing music - when I did the transition from classical trumpet to jazz trumpet, it was the hardest transition in my life until someone said, "Go back to the fundamentals. Just listen to the music, go back to your breathing, go back to when you're supposed to come in." It's the same thing in sheet music - you can see exactly when you're supposed to come in.
And in Jazz, it's the same thing - you're hearing exactly what's going to happen, then when it's time for you to come in, it's your show, it's all about you. So everything's always been about that. In the military, even after a deployment, even after a mission, we went back as a team and we looked at everything - everyone's roles, how everybody was so instrumental to the success of the mission. And then guess what we did? We practiced it again, like we just completed. Not, "You gotta go back"; you got to practice again. Because, believe it or not, somebody can hear a gunfire, a blast will go off, and all of a sudden, they're blank, and they can't think anymore. So it is important that when we go back and we do the training, we're actually using live ammo in order to simulate what's happening, because we want to make sure everyone does their part. But it always went back to the foundations - everything is back to the foundations.
What I do every day, what I do every single day of the week, what you said - once a day, once a week, once a quarter - it's always going back to the foundations. And if you strengthen the foundations, everything would take care of themselves. I tell people that all the time - don't worry about trying to be a $10 million, $20 million, $100 million-dollar business, just focus on the foundations and perfect the foundations, and everything else would take care of itself.
Scott Levy:
That's great advice, I love that - so many great gems in that one. Build up your fundamentals to create processes that you can use to repeat, and I think that gets back to being intentional about it. If you're not journaling or keeping track of how you did something, you're not going to be able to go back and see what worked and reflect on it properly and build out that next process. So I love how that ties things together.
This is one of the things that always amazed me about jazz when I first started learning it because I didn't start out in jazz, and it seemed crazy like how does this fit together, how do you know what to do? And jazz music requires deeper understanding of the fundamentals than anything else. That was the big unlock for me and my first class on it was like, "Oh, okay, there are song forms, there are processes you repeat, you rely on those, and then over the top of those is where you put your improvisation, absolutely." Also learned a ton about journaling because the first piece of advice, or one of the first pieces of advice, was start writing down your ideas, keep notebooks of them. I still have a book, I think the guy's name is Jerry Coker, it's called Practicing Jazz. It's one of the first chapters, it's like get your notebook, record your ideas. And same thing in business - the opportunities that we can't take advantage of today, maybe we'll be able to take advantage of it tomorrow if we're paying attention, if we've got a place to put it, maybe it goes in a roadmap, maybe it goes in a backlog. I love all those ideas, man.
Partnerships grow your business
Danny Suk Brown:
Before we close out, Scott, I want to encourage people to look at partnerships. When you look at partnerships to grow your business, you want to have a partner that has a vision that you have or similar to the vision you have or shares a passion that's similar to yours. And I want to tell people that one of the keys to our growth, success, to our growth, is having the right partners. And I'm excited that when I introduce you to my clients, I don't have to micromanage the calls. I don't even have to be on the calls because I know that your heart, wanting to help them to be the best that they can be, is the same heart that I have for them. And that the way you speak to them, the way you coach them, the solution you have to make their business better is the same desire that I have for them as well.
And so I want to encourage people out there: do not think that you go out it alone. Every mission in the military, it was because of a team. We have this thing called the battle buddy; you never leave your battle buddy behind. And what I feel that with our business, to this next phase four of our growth, is having the right partner that you can go into battle with. So I want to encourage people: find a good partner that you can work with that shares similar vision, the same goals as you, that you know that when you walk away, they're going to articulate.