How to Scale Revenue Consistently for Any Tech Services Company
Revenue is the life blood and oxygen of business. What if you could have business development chops to grow ANY type of tech business - from consulting to MSP/ISV to SAAS from zero to 12 figures. By the end of the episode, you'll have a formula proven to work for multiple founders. The bonus, it uses gamification to make it fun, and turn even stalwart techies into business development machines. John Humphrey went from consulting to leading sales at big software companies, to launching and growing multiple IT businesses that have scaled and exited. His secret: he taught his techies to sell, do business development and have fun doing it. He's an amazing entrepreneur and leader and this one is special.
Full transcript below
Origin Story: The Beginning of a System that Creating $100s of MM in enterprise value
Scott Levy:
I'm really excited to talk about KPIs related to business development, because that is really the lifeblood of the business - getting cash in and how to make that less of the process drudgery that I think people can make it, people get caught in overthinking it. You really turn it into something that is easy to track, is pretty fun to track and is motivating to track. Give us an overview of the different companies that led you to start this and the successes you've had.
John Humphrey:
I was a senior manager at Accenture back in the 90’s and had met a guy that I started going to lunch with. You're dreaming about building a better mousetrap, and of course, you know Bruce, Scott. So it occurred to me as we were talking about how to build a better consulting firm - a pretty bold idea since we were both at Accenture, at Anderson Consulting at the time - and he came very clear that I was going to be the sales and marketing guy, and he was going to be finance and the technical architect, because we were going to build custom software and that sort of thing. I was self-aware enough to know that I had never been formally trained in sales. So, I quit in 1995 to get a job in the enterprise software space around Y2K and all that.
Scott Levy:
I didn't realize you guys had met before that.
John Humphrey:
We had met. That was part of the plan. We had met in like 1990. Anderson had purchased a company called BankA. It was a software company, it's a startup and in financial services. My background was in banking. We hit it off and I'm like, okay, well, I gotta go learn how to sell. So I quit and starved to death for a year, and then finally figured out that selling was kind of a Gantt chart.
If I just worked my work breakdown structure in the same manner on every deal, and I didn't chase deals that I couldn't do my process for, that I would win. And so, fast forward, I had a really good friend that worked with me. We would sit around on a Friday afternoon and think about, well, what are the things that we can do, like above the sales funnel, to always make sure that we had enough deal flow?
How Gamification Created Top Producers in a Legendary Software Company
John Humphrey:
The dilemma that a salesperson has is this oscillation between, I got a lot of pipeline, no, I don't have any pipeline. I got a lot of pipeline. Then I don't have any. And it is really hard to start that process over. So we created this little contest between ourselves and it had to do with writing a decent piece of content.
Now this is back in … we just got email and mosaic and just started. We were at a pretty progressive company that did self-evident web apps for things like HR. And it was pretty cool. And so we came up with all these categories and a point system that we kept in a spreadsheet. And we called it the Big Dog contest.
You know, if you want to run with the big dogs, you got to get off the porch. Every week, Matt and I would total up our activities, whether it would go to a networking event, taking somebody to dinner, writing an interesting piece and emailing it to a client. Somebody won and somebody lost every week and you'd win a ball cap or pay for the golf game on maybe a Friday afternoon. We got serious about it. It became kind of a competition. We woke up and we were like two of the top guys in the company two years later. That was the genesis.
Scott Levy:
Was that Lawson software?
John Humphrey:
Yeah, that was at Lawson.
Scott Levy:
That's a seminal name for anybody that doesn't know their tech history. Jeffrey Moore was on the board of Lawson.
John Humphrey:
Bill was kind of the accounting ops guy, and Richard was the visionary. We had self evident, we called it S. E. A., self evident applications in 1998, where if you had a life event, it looked like Candyland, and you'd say, where are you on your life event?
You'd say, oh, I had a baby, and then it would automatically update the payroll system. All the deductions happened, a new person, new dependent. He was a great guy. So long story for about five more years, my income went up by 50%. And then Bruce kind of calls me and we'd go to lunch once a quarter and he’d be like, Hey, I sold our little business that we had, we had started some little side business, uh, Tactica Technology Group, and we'd like you to come be a partner and start an oracle practice. I remember the conversation was like, I got to take a 50 percent cut pay? There'll be a partner in that firm? I wasn't there for nine months when the company was sold to Hitachi.
I lasted a couple of years there. I launched Paraveda in 2003 by myself. Bruce was a co-founder, but he came in October. I started June 1st of 2003.
Scott Levy:
I remember going to dinner or something. You guys were just starting, maybe this was a Thursday night and the next Monday, the first client was right there.
John Humphrey:
I called one of my ERP clients and I said, Hey, I just quit my job. I took my relationship with my clients very seriously and there's lots of stories about our manager on this particular account that was managing this implementation of a supply chain distribution software. She couldn't show up on a Saturday work session because somebody had run over her mailbox. So I said, Kristen, you go to Dillon Gage, I'll go fix your mailbox. I went to Home Depot. I bought concrete. I rebuilt her thing, sent it in, and then bought everybody lunch and, and showed up and showed up with lunch.
That kind of endeared me to the folks at Dillon Gage. So I called Terry Hanlon and I said, Hey, I just quit my job. I need a customer. And he hired me.
The Value of Authentic Relationships
Scott Levy:
What is interesting about that is that it sounds like a cute story on some level. It's just that that happened over and over and over and over since I've known you, and I've watched it then go happen to the people you coached. It's not that everybody built a mailbox, but everybody created value, built relationships and those relationships authentically … not like, Hey, I'm going to build this relationship so you'll give me something. I'll use the go-giver mentality, I'm going to dig my well before I'm thirsty - which was a book you first recommended to me, fantastic book - and I'm going to cultivate this network. The word network gets thrown around - the personal connections, right? Actual, authentic, personal connections with people you happen to care about.
John Humphrey:
I tell people today when I'm teaching my ConnectForLife workshop: the most valuable asset that you have, it’s not on your financial statement, it’s your network. What would you really give if I was going to buy your network off of LinkedIn and, and that was transferable? Of course it's not, but what would it be worth? For me, it would be worth tens of millions of dollars.
Scott Levy:
You say that, I just want to make sure we clarify. That's not hyperbole and actually I think it's far underestimating. Because we're talking about that company. You started with your buddy and exceeded a hundred million dollars. I don't know what the exact figures are, but it exceeded a hundred million in sales.
I know one of the former employees who you coached, at their company, they went from zero to a hundred million. So right there, there's two and you've coached, I don't know how many other companies that have, that have had similar successes.
John Humphrey:
We have 15, at least 15 entrepreneurs that left Paraveda to start their own companies and all of them were successful. They didn't all have big private equity exits, but I can think of maybe five, six that did.
Scott Levy:
They're all having outlier success. Everybody I talked to, everybody has made, I don't know what everybody's revenue is, but I think everybody's north of 10.
John Humphrey:
Oh yeah. These are companies that were 20 to 50 million at a minimum. I'm getting work now, because CEOs of current services companies knew … our friend that we were talking about, when he was just a snot-nosed sales jockey before I turned him into a delivery guy - talk to him now, you wouldn't think that he started in sales and learned delivery. He learned how to be a CEO and built a magnificent company.
It's worth investing in it. And it is amazing. I probably do one-on-one coaching every week with 25 people. Some get it. Some don't.
KPIs That Move the Needle
Scott Levy:
You've actually reduced it to - this word gets thrown around a lot - key performance indicators, KPIs, what are the KPIs I should have?
There's a long list, and we're intimate with it because we've had to research our articles and talk to people. You've taken this idea that we talked about of nurturing that network, and letting that be your business development, and created KPIs from that. Can you talk about that a little?
John Humphrey:
I think what's really fascinating to me is how it's almost more relevant today than it was 20 years ago when I started the company. Now, content is a real thing. It's not just a little bit of dipsy doodle on your website. It's like, if you're not producing content, if you're not nurturing your network, if you're not figuring out how to get a warm introduction to a new client, if you're not doing those three main activities every week, every day, you're not going to build a pipeline. And so inside of Connect, Create, Engage, there are three different discrete activities that we score.
Scott Levy:
These are the buckets into which you create these as your kind of KPIs, you're going to hit a certain number of points, and you've got different activities within those that you use to accrue those points. And those points represent the meaningful activities you're doing.
John Humphrey:
Yeah. To achieve those ends. A point system is kind of like the foundation of the house. It's the meat and potatoes, the blocking and tackling, whatever cliche you want to assign to it. So there's three things. There's messaging, which is reaching out and nurturing your network, messaging somebody inside of LinkedIn, sending a note to somebody on Facebook. There's meetings, any kind of meeting in any venue, virtual, physical. Then, there's events. So, any time there's like four or five or more people gathered. It could be a traditional networking event, it could be you got together with the five guys that you went to college with 10 or 20 years ago and you're having a beer night. Well, that's an event because what we're trying to do is hack your brain into doing these activities on a regular basis.
In the creating phase, it's all about content creation. I read an article in the Gartner Group that said 89 percent of buyers today do all this research before they ever engage anybody with a company. So if you're a knowledge worker and you're not actively creating knowledge out on LinkedIn - you pick a platform - then what's the point of having the knowledge? If you're really a giver, then you're giving that knowledge away. Never worry about whether you're going to monetize that knowledge. So we have things like commenting on somebody's post, writing an original piece of content and publishing it in LinkedIn or speaking.
When you are speaking, that's the pinnacle of sort of knowledge work and content creation because you're now an expert, if you're on the speaking circuit at a trade show or something like that. Then the engagement is the last one. And that is all about getting that net new meeting in either a new division of a multi-billion dollar company or a net new meeting at a client doing discovery.
John's Net Connector Score™
John Humphrey:
The outcome you're looking for is the proposal. So when you put all of that together, we created this thing called the net connector score, sort of ripped from the net promoter score. The net connector score is how many points do you have to do a week? On an annualized basis to hit your financial target? So if you've got to do a couple million dollars, then that's going to break down - what's your average deal size, what's your conversion rate, because I know that points lead to meetings, meetings lead to proposals, proposals lead to revenue, revenue leads to growth.
Scott Levy:
To the tune of $10 million, $50 million, $100 million in revenue starting from zero. Like that is the thing I really want to underscore here. This is not theoretical, because I've watched this play out and the third or fourth time I was in shock.
John Humphrey:
I think the fun thing is that at Paraveda, we didn't have any commissioned salespeople. They wear that as a badge of honor on their sleeves because like, Hey, you know, you don't have to talk to a salesperson, but [instead, we’re] coaching introverts and teaching them this system, which sounds so easy, right? It almost sounds like that couldn't possibly work. Well, it does. I can go out in 90 days and build a $5 million pipeline.
Scott Levy:
I've seen you do that multiple times. It's putting that together with the idea that yes, these activities, everybody kind of says you should do, of course you should do, but it's different when you get them on a scoreboard. And you've got a target for the week. I've had success that is directly, directly attributable to using the ConnectPoint systems. That's one of our KPIs on our weekly dashboard. How many points am I generating? How many points is the team generating? It changes the game and iit's impressive how quickly it can.
John Humphrey:
I had a client - I'm building out their entire sales team, had all the sales team in place, and I was teaching my weekly sales dojo. They finally got the guy that they wanted to be the sales manager. He came over from a very successful firm, a really good guy. I went to lunch with him the week before he started, just to make sure that he didn't think I was a threat, you know, like, Hey man, I'm just a tool, just use me, right?
So he's sitting in this workshop and we're talking about ConnectPoints, which is our application that keeps score. Sales guys don't want yet another tool, right? I'm sure this wasn't the most honest answer- he set his guys up, just meeting their new sales manager, he says, so what do you guys think about this program? - and they went around the horn. Now granted, I was sitting in the room, he was in the room, so it might have been the “right answer.”
But they were like, well, you can't manage what you don't measure, basically. That was the gist of it. This helps me make sure that not only am I doing enough of the right activity, but I look back at my week and I go, gee, Jiminy Christmas, I've done connecting and I'm doing creating, but there's nothing in the engagement category. I'm not writing enough proposals. That's confusing activity with accomplishment. So the model allows the user to manage their own activity and then gamify it with their colleagues. I think that there's some magic to that. Nobody wants to not be on the board. It's like a club.
Gamifying
Scott Levy:
Totally. And it's motivating. I've always loved looking at my numbers, whether I'm on the bike or I'm in the gym. I love that idea of, Hey, if you get your reps in … I did the same thing when I was playing music, like I had timers or certain exercises I did for certain amounts of time. There's such power in doing it. With this one, it's actually fun.
John Humphrey:
It's fun. I mean, and this goes back to Peter Drucker, who I think he's the one that said, you cannot manage what you do not manage.
Scott Levy:
Yeah. I know he was a big fan of it if he didn't originate it.
John Humphrey:
So make it fun, and it's: I get calls all the time, I did this this weekend. Can I count it? Count everything. If you think you're cheating, all you gotta do is set a higher goal. Every week, I probably have 40 points just baked into my week. Just because it's on the calendar doesn't count. I don't count it. So what I do is I say, well, I got to have a higher goal. I got to hit 80 or a hundred points as opposed to 40 or 50. I get that internal tension to go do the right activity.
Some people think it's hard, but what's hard Is laying somebody off. What's hard is collateralizing your house down at the bank. What's hard is deficit spending when you're trying to start a business. That's hard. This is easy. This is just being a good person and helping other people succeed. Whether it's finding me a Honda mechanic, or a used car guy that you know is reputable, I've had people enrich my life all over the world. If you want to live a rich life, you unlock your network, and you get help.
I don't do anything, investments, real estate, travel, without talking to somebody and going, Hey, what do you think about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? That pays dividends. If you gamify this whole approach, what you end up with is a measurable pipeline. That's the first set of KPIs that we track, as points, meetings, and proposals.
And then that translates into pipeline.
How to Set Company Goals for Business Development
Scott Levy:
This is, I think, incredibly helpful for technical founders. When I say technical, I mean people who enjoy making things, doing the work, solving the problem.
It's a little counterintuitive how easy this can be if you let it be. Just that you have to set the goal so you don't get lost just in delivery mode. It's so easy to get lost in delivery mode. You stop selling. Now you're dependent on that one customer. You're dependent on that one client. I've experienced that. I talk to people who are experiencing that. Having these as your KPIs, your ConnectPoints as your KPIs saves you from that and allows you to actually grow the business and take your family to Jules Verne on the Eiffel Tower.
John Humphrey:
Everybody wants a predictable business model. I come from more of a sales background than a delivery background. I've sort of morphed myself. I started in delivery and. Nothing happens without a sale. That's kind of where I start. And yes, you have to be authentic. Yes, you got to do great work. Those things have to be in place, but you can have a lot of really smart people in a company. If you can't get a piece, you can't get a new deal, you're going to have less people in the company, unless you want to deficit spend. I see a lot of companies make that mistake.
The ConnectPoints Foundation
John Humphrey:
So, with the ConnectPoints idea as the foundation, now what you do is you start putting opportunities and there's a whole funnel we haven't even talked about around content, right? Or, what's a marketing qualified lead and how do you figure out the SEO and the organic or paid search and all that stuff is an additional tool that I try to bring people in to help with that because generating leads is hard.
Let's assume that's part of this creation process and we're getting people to raise their hands. Hey, come tell me more about that article you wrote on cloud computing or Snowflake or the Microsoft Azure data-lake or whatever it is. It goes into the pipeline and we have a very discrete set of weightings that we do in the pipeline.
Pipeline Weighting and Discovery
So if something's in identification, which basically means it's a client we want, they have a need, we're qualified to do the work, put it in identification at 10% So that means if I put a million dollar deal in there, I'm only weighing [it as] $100,000. Now, by the time I moved to discovery, I'm not only looking for requirements, but I'm trying to figure out, what is the organizational structure? How do they make decisions? What's the formal and informal political structure look like? How do I win? Is there an incumbent? Am I column fodder? Do I have a chance to win? Is it in my sweet spots? All of those things happen in discovery. Now, that million dollar deal is worth 25%, so $250,000.
At the end of discovery is what I call a pre-proposal where I'm sending them a very deliberate deck that says, here's my understanding of the problem. Here's the approach we're going to take. Here's the value prop of fixing this problem. Here's my fees and here's an appendix on the cup. I send that because that works for me when I'm not there. Now it's confirmation, 75%. I'm giving you these numbers for a reason. Now, by the time I start finalizing negotiation and start dates and all, it's all that kind of stuff, I'm at 90%. So we look at not only the total pipeline, but we look at the weighted average pipeline, because the weighted average pipeline should be more than your next 90 days of forecasted revenue.
Scott Levy:
You've mentioned this before to me. It just clicked for me.
Managing Pipeline and Backlog
John Humphrey:
In the services space, the problem is that none of the pipeline management tools put pipeline in the same vernacular as revenue. What is backlog? Backlog is work that's sold that hasn't yet been delivered. So if I sell a 90 day project and it's $10,000 a month for 90 days - let's call it June, July, and August - I invoice for $10,000 at the end of June, that's revenue. What's in backlog? $20,000. That's monthly, but in the pipeline, it just says $30,000. So we also try to kind of hack these pipeline systems to where I put revenue in by the month and then automatically total the amount. That becomes really important.
We're coming to the end of May, I will be invoicing clients. Let's say I do it on Friday the 31st. Then the backlog for June, plus my weighted average pipeline for June, should be more than my overhead, right?
Challenges in Services Companies
John Humphrey:
In most services companies - I've worked exclusively with knowledge workers, so we're selling, we're selling our brains and people are paying us for brains, that covers lawyers, architects, uh, software developers - every 90 to 120 days, those businesses are out of business because their cost line goes above that revenue line, which is a bad thing, right? We do 90-day projects and small teams.
When you get out into the future, in month three and month four, your pipeline and your backlog are sort of trailing off and your costs of course are fixed, they go above the revenue line. The reason I started this weighted average thing by month out into the future is that I can compare revenue and backlog for a particular period and add it to the weighted average pipeline, just for that month and say, do I have enough pipeline in August to make money in August? It totally changes the way you think about managing your pipeline, right? Because when people just bring up the CRM and they go, let's look at what's in negotiation and let's do it … what I do when I'm managing it is I'm like, what revenue do I need in August and September? Maybe I got something sitting here in discovery. Well, maybe I got to do a deal storm, add brains and horsepower to that deal to move it along, maybe faster than it might've gone so that it hits with enough oomph to get me through August and September.
Scott Levy:
Yeah. That's interesting because I've seen companies stall around 20 million. I've seen them stall much lower, but I'm thinking of one case where a company had a situation. Now they were using some different mechanics, but not too different, certainly not as simple. I like the simplicity of this. It's not simplistic, but it's a simple concept. You can understand that makes the math so easy to think about.
Predictable Revenue and Metrics
John Humphrey:
I don't really even know of a pipeline tool where you can list them all that you don't have to cut.
Scott Levy:
Oh, I can tell you there's not.
John Humphrey:
So, I built a custom one. I've done that three times. We built a custom thing at Paraveda. We actually created a dynamic data link with a spreadsheet and that got updated from our billing system and our pipeline system and just put it all right there. We built one in NET that we used. I've done it in Salesforce before. I was helping a client and we built it in Salesforce. They're still using that today, two or three years later. It's all metrics driven, right? What's my forecast for the year? And by forecast, I mean my budget, not what I think I'm going to sell. You start the year and you do a million a month and, okay, well, how much pipeline do I need to do a 3 million in a quarter? How much of my next quarter is in my backlog? You need to know those numbers. If you don't know those numbers, you're just guessing. By getting predictable revenue, you always know, do I need more? Because everybody always says, well, I don't have enough pipeline. Well, how do you know? Because I don't see a bunch of things in negotiation that are about to close. Okay. Well, you don't know.
Common Pitfalls for Founders
John Humphrey:
When you think about most of these services companies, especially founder-led companies, they get stuck, right? Because they get out of the box on the charisma and the network of the founder. Then, they try to hire a salesperson and that doesn't work. Then, they hire another one and that doesn't work. Then, they hire a sales manager and that just costs them more money before they fire those guys. They don't know what they're hiring for, they don't have their outcomes.
When a business gets above $10 or 15 million, the pipeline is a tricky thing, knowing whether you have enough and how much. It's usually about 20% of your total pipe. If you’ve got a $10 million pipeline, you probably have a $2 million weighted average if you're good. Depending on your average deal, if your average deal is $50,000, you need to like 250 deals. If you've got 125 deals in your pipeline and it's only $5 million, and you got a million in weighted average, if your cost is more than that on a monthly basis, you're screwed
Scott Levy:
I'm curious too, as you're talking about this, you've ridden this curve from multiple perspectives. Hitting that first million, hitting the first $10m, hitting the first $50m. Very few people do that, let alone do it multiple times, and then go on to a hundred million more.
What do you see holding founders back and holding CEOs back, such that they hit a ceiling and they don't progress past a certain point?
John Humphrey:
Well, I think they all hit a ceiling. Our friend had a very high ceiling when he did it. Then, he started hiring salespeople and busted through it. But I think that entrepreneurs by definition are rainmakers. My experience is that those guys that do that, they don't know what they do to make it a premium. They can't tell you, oh, I did this, then I did this, then I did this. People ask me all the time, how did you figure it out? I said, well, I started as a consultant. When I say my life was a work breakdown structure on a project, I understood that and I figured out cause and effect. I mean, that's what I did as a consultant. I do this, this happens. Oh, well, you do these 25 meetings over here and all of a sudden you have a lead. Oh, that's interesting. Let's do that again.
I think what happens is founders don't know what they're doing that causes the results, therefore, they don't know how to teach it. If you can't teach it, you have to have somebody like me that's on the business development side. On the management, If you take EOS, they stress that you’ve got to know your numbers. You've got to know your dashboard. You've got to know your metrics. You've got to know, what are you supposed to be working on today? That’s what ResultMaps does. It gives you the framework to make sure that everybody's pulling on the same rope.
I have a client that, it's really funny, they've got all kinds of people in the wrong seats. They're having a challenge from revenue. They lost a client. So what they did is they exercised this 30-day out in my contract. It's like the exact opposite of what you should be doing. You should be doubling down on teaching these guys and figuring out who are the people that can sell their way out of the problem. Most problems that small companies have are problems that you can sell your way out of. Instead of thinking about cutting and where I got to cut the bone and the muscle, when you have enough revenue and you have enough pipeline, you can come out of those things and, even in a recession, Scott, companies don't stop spending money. You just gotta beat the other guys in a smaller pie. You gotta work harder. So that means you've got to be really focused on your sweet spot. In slow recessionary times, you don't go start a new offering or in a new industry. You need to be able to say, yeah, we've done a thousand projects in financial services or distribution or healthcare or whatever energy.
Trust and Client Relationships
John Humphrey:
You just go deep and if people trust you, they'll buy from you. The last thing I'll say about that is trust. At least the way I see it is now, more with the individual than it is with the brand … we used to say, I'm going to buy Anderson or Accenture because of the brand, I know what I'm going to get. Today, they would say, I know what I want. I need that guy who knows how to manage a complex Microsoft Azure data-lake. I don't care who you bring along, because I trust that you're going to bring the right team to be successful. So it's not only poured kerosene on the solopreneur, but a lot of times the solopreneurs are the ones that have those deep relationships, are the ones the executive trusts the most, and say, tell me what you need to get the job done. You might use different integrators and just source them. So the network is valuable because you develop trust between the constituents in the network. You're there serving, they know your heart. The triangle of trust is authenticity, empathy, and logic. You do those three things, that's what develops trust. The metrics that we run just create collisions in the marketplace where people go, aha, you can help me do this. Yes, I can! Happy to!
Scott Levy:
So many collisions are happening in my brain right now, as I think about this. We're kind of sitting back talking about it, but usually when we're talking, it's in the heat of, you know, I don't know how many projects we've been on together and how many efforts, there's this, this idea of having a channel that you own when you are going to market with a SaaS product or maybe an informational product. What you are advocating creating is your own channel. It happens to be called the network, but that becomes a form of channel.
John Humphrey:
Yeah. I know where I'm good. I'm not good at the Fortune 100. I don't play the schmooze game. I'm a really good hundred million to 2 billion guy, which is perfect for a small to medium sized business. The reason I like those companies across a narrow number of industries that I'm an expert at is, I can talk to the executives. I can get to the people that really make the decision and that care about the quality of the work. Every client has a 30 day out, every client, and I give a money back guarantee every month. Hey, before Invoice you for June. Are we good? Or do I need to give you your money back for May? I mean, isn't that what the EOS system says? What's your guarantee?
Scott Levy:
Exactly, they have your guarantee.
Conclusion: Building Technical Services Business
John Humphrey:
You have your proven process. If you didn't think I earned your money last month, I'm going to give you your money back. If you want to end engagement, you know, that's why I don't need a long MSA, right? What am I going to do? Go up against the attorneys for my client and win? I mean, talk about a waste of time. If you want me gone, I'm out. Just give me a notice just so I can prepare. It works so beautifully. You need to make it easy for people to fire you, and it's not that you're doing a bad job. Sometimes, they've just learned what they can learn from you. I always try to work myself out of a job. The service business is really, really fun, but it is not easy. It's not for the faint of heart. You got to understand your metrics and what really drives value for your company and for your clients.