Speaker 0 | 00:09.726
All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today, we don’t really have a nerd on the show, really. I would call you like more jock of the industry, Ali Nehru. Kind of famous. People like to talk about you every now and then. People like to talk about all of us. But the main reason why I wanted to have you on the show today is because you tell… You just tell a different story than me, man. You run a little bit. You support a lot of MSPs in the industry. The MSPs, I mean, most of the people listening to this show are going to be kind of, you know, CTO level, IT director, technology leaders working inside of a company. You support a lot of those leaders also, but you also support a lot of MSPs. And I wanted to have you on the show just to tell the story of the… The backend program that we run over here, really behind the scenes of dissecting popular IT nerds, is a lot bigger engine. And that’s our Converge Network Services Group. And now recently merged or whatever we want to call that business transaction with AppSmart. We’re really kind of a larger, bigger entity now. Maybe looking to go public in the future. But what’s more important is I want people to hear from you, from someone that’s been doing this. maybe four years, four years, five years longer than me. You’ve been around as long as all of us in the industry. And I want people to hear from you what’s important and how we do business from either a carrier agnostic standpoint and really what differentiates and what’s going to make technology leaders successful in the space and how we add to their success.
Speaker 1 | 01:53.771
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think there’s… Some different methodologies on how we conduct business and how we go about discovery and then obviously ultimately supporting the customer and the partner. And our competition is great. Everyone’s different. And one way that is not the only way, or I don’t think our way is the way that makes everybody else successful and vice versa. But it’s worked for us, Phil. And I think when you supported us. You had an autonomous ship to work under any brand or umbrella. And I think you made a decision to work under an ecosystem with people that you trusted. You valued how they conducted business and supported their customers. And I think that’s maybe we’ve all seen eye to eye there. And we like how you supported us and you came here. So it definitely is different. And I think that AppSmart and AppDirect saw that. in their investment in CNSG, that we were a very, very different bird. And we grew, quite frankly, not that much human capital. We really had a family ecosystem. And the fact that we all did multiple things, never asked questions, never really blamed each other, just got it done mentality. And that was, you know, supporting a partner, supporting a client, you know, assisting with a carrier. you know, filling in when we couldn’t make a meeting for each other as we grew and grew. And then we invested in back office. And then 14 years later, we are where we are now and pretty proud of kind of what we built. And we wouldn’t be anywhere without our loyal customers. And obviously our loyal partners introducing us to these customers. And so forever grateful for them. And I think you agree with me.
Speaker 0 | 03:48.291
When you When someone sits you down from a CTO or someone that may not have heard of CNSG or AppSmart, what do you tell them? How are you going to help them? How do you help them?
Speaker 1 | 04:02.536
When they never heard of CNSG, and that’s fine, I don’t expect everyone. We’re not publicly trading. We’re not in a Fortune 500. We’ve been successful and we’re very minute in the grand scheme of things. So obviously our model is very different. We don’t white label or not of our We’re not a consultant that takes a percentage of savings and things of that nature. We are, I mean, essentially, we are your consultant, your sales rep on steroids. Our job is to know what all these mutual funds do and really the value of the customers, the economies of scale that we built, the volume with these suppliers, and the more business we’ve written. Typically, I think we all of us have learned by failing. And so we’re able to make suggestions, learn about technology because, you know, ideally not that because… I don’t think any of us are smarter than anyone else. It’s just, this is a business we picked. And so a lot of us have chosen to study and really understand these emerging technologies before they’ve actually been lifted and understand quickly if it’s a fit for a customer’s environment, if the change management would make sense, and if the emerging technology is something that should even be socialized or deployed in an environment. Every architecture is different with every client. And I think we all can agree that we selectively… work with suppliers and or technologies that make sense for each individual customer. So we’ve taken that approach. I think with everyone, we touch every client. which is very, very different than everybody else in our space. So we were a master agency because we had a fantastic cable practice. We had a lot of partners, but that hybrid model really made us very different from everybody else. And I think we mitigated against churn, attrition, and the customer won because they got an agnostic approach and obviously white glove service.
Speaker 0 | 05:45.982
You refer to technology companies and carriers as mutual funds. You’re the only person I’ve ever heard really use that. metaphor. Why do you use that metaphor? Like mutual funds?
Speaker 1 | 05:58.936
Yeah. I listen to all the suppliers in our portfolio. They’re good. There’s a lot of good mutual funds.
Speaker 0 | 06:06.461
Give me some examples of like some, what are some of your favorites?
Speaker 1 | 06:10.123
Suppliers? Yeah. I mean, we love our suppliers, all the suppliers. There’s a lot of good people there. They supported us. And I do want to say without our suppliers, they enable us to make a living and enable us to. you know, have a channel. So first and foremost, our suppliers are always show a lot of gratitude towards our suppliers. But we have a lot of great suppliers. They are cyclical, right? They go to M&A’s and there’s times where they’re problematic. They have they invest in, you know, either BD and sales or they invest in the back office or they lay off some divisions or silos of the business that that point it’s a snowball effect and ends up affecting all of us in our orders. But I would say that If you ask me, every six months or every year, you may get a different answer. But we put them in different architectures and different technologies, whether it’s UCAS, contact center, ISP circuits, the cable companies, traditional smaller C-Lex aggregators. I think they all behave very differently. I think we all have our 12 to 20 that are our favorite rotation based on deployment. And one thing I would say is I’m not going to mention any names, but if you want to get in that rotation, I would invest in the back office. your project manager, make sure our orders go well. And then you’ll quickly see a lot more activity from us. I didn’t answer your question, did I?
Speaker 0 | 07:27.927
No, no, no. I can answer that anyways. But let me, well, for example, we’ll just use some examples. COVID-19, interesting year. Hasn’t been a slow year for you whatsoever. It’s been probably a faster year for you. Certainly hasn’t affected the unification of technologies. You know, Zoom is obviously. is obviously a partner of ours. RingCentral is a partner of ours. We’ve had a lot of Microsoft Teams direct routing migrations over the years. So those are, I mean, those are kind of a given, right? So how, and would you say that there’s any one provider, well, maybe we don’t need to highlight those, but what’s your general experience been when dealing with technology leaders as an advisor throughout this last year? Has there been any standout changes? And just because, I mean, if you’ve been doing this for a decade, more than a decade, but been out, you know, kind of on your own for a decade. How is this year different than last year? I’m just curious.
Speaker 1 | 08:30.572
This year versus 2020? I think there’s a lot of fear and certain doubt. The world’s going to repair itself. People are trying to decide. The people that got rid of their office space. those for remote work maybe are having second considerations and or vice versa. I do think that we’re going to get back to normalcy. I do think we’re going to sign the LOIs, get back in our office. I think CEOs and executives want their employees back into the office. I think that if force-fed adoption of technology and cloud, something we were doing prior to COVID, and I think it’s enabled people to be more efficient, but I am hopeful that we… we all get back into the office. I think there’s a lot to be said there for that. But as far as our business, obviously it’s a little bit of embarrassment of riches because of, you know, some businesses take a turn in nutrition and a lot, some business people are not in the office. I mean, less dialogue with people does impact rapport. And I always say bandwidth, maybe it’s a lot, but we’re doing a lot more in collaboration, cloud, SD-WAN, VPN security, things of that nature. So, yeah. It has been a pivot. We’ve been very busy, like I mentioned, the last 18 months, but we’re excited to get back and start collaborating with clients live in meetings and our partners and building that relationship. There’s nothing like being together live in an environment. And I think the majority agree with me, and I think we’ll be getting there soon.
Speaker 0 | 10:09.024
One of the common themes that comes up a lot, in technology leadership is the IT department’s a cost center, right? And we’ve got this kind of battle between IT and technology as a cost center versus… technology is a business force multiplier what i think it’s a balance between the two i think there’s there’s paying too much for a good product but what what piece of advice you have for for technology leaders out there how can we come in and add to that how can we help that out how can we help a technology it might be dealing with a cost center uh dealing with um trying to sell executive management on the benefit of a technology and fight that kind of cost center piece which is hurting maybe really the business growth.
Speaker 1 | 11:00.183
So ask that question again. I guess I’m trying to understand is it dealing with the executive leadership teams at these different companies and they’re looking at IT instruction as a cost center to either drive or monetize? Or I guess let me…
Speaker 0 | 11:15.576
One of the problems a lot of IT directors have is that they are being treated as a cost center. They are not getting the respect that they deserve and they’re trying to… battle to use technology to grow the business. But we might have an old entrenched executive management team that doesn’t value technology enough. I kind of like the Sears and Toys R Us versus Amazon. Sears died because it didn’t embrace technology. Toys R Us died. It didn’t embrace technology. Amazon killed them. So how do we come in and help that IT director might be battling that cost center and actually help grow a business?
Speaker 1 | 11:53.655
Yeah. It really is understanding where their workloads sit and how much iron they have on premise, what they’re paying for, like help desk infrastructure projects, and then making them more efficient from an ROI standpoint. So it’s really peeling that onion back and understanding kind of what their costs are for software, for licensing, for maintenance, for firmware, for firewall security. and then obviously what they’re doing from a mid cyber standpoint right proactively and then react to thing unfortunately if that’s where they are so um and then and then making that an i.t optimization plan to build a business process uh with them to make sure that they’re you know both ready for scale they’re lean mean and they’re not obviously being inefficient with you know uh any economic uh responsibilities that they have um but they’re we’re brought into those discussions and to assist and try to, you know, forklift and or move workloads a certain direction to make them efficient. So, but not all the time, but we are.
Speaker 0 | 13:01.202
And if someone tells you, oh, look, I can do that myself. I don’t need you for that. What’s your answer to that?
Speaker 1 | 13:08.024
And they quite possibly may, right? But I think a lot of times when they’re looking at, it depends on the partner that brings this in, obviously, right? If we have a partner that… That’s our core focus of their business. We don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. We focus on what they brought us in for. But again, we explain kind of the differentiating factors, you know, suppliers in our portfolio. We try to make it invisible to do business in the sense of educating them with a lot of value of the different architectures, whether it’s VMware, it’s Citrix, it’s, you know, so many different applications and or architecture designs. And same thing with UCAS, Contact Center, SD-WAN. Every SD-WAN solution, as you know, is not the same. So as long as we’re able to educate, I think by default, we’re able to build rapport and build trust. And if you know what you’re talking about, they quickly can realize that they’re dealing with a partner that will assist them. I think the difference at the end of the day is guys like Phil, you, and other Chris. you know, Ryan, Becca, people on the team that have really taken the time to understand the suppliers and study the different technologies, that’s obviously made all you guys very successful. And then, you know, you can tell when someone’s disingenuous, if they really care about the customer and their motivation, post sale, right? There’s pre sale. And I think that’s a lot where we want, frankly, I think it’s easy to say, but behavior shows and I think Our team is just as aggressive and bullish post-sale. So a lot of times we have our clients come to us and say, you guys are a real partner. I think that’s where we build a lot of our rapport. So it’s a combination, right?
Speaker 0 | 14:59.163
The master agent in the channel, I spoke with a Zoom representative the other day. And one of the things that they were saying, I think it’s Eric Yan is the president over there. He said they have never heard him mention Master Agent or Channel on a, I don’t know if it was like their quarterly business call. I don’t know what it was, but they had never heard him mention it and stress it more times than ever before. When it comes to choosing a master agency, kind of like from the start and from the beginning, when you say, you know, we’re bullish or whatever, how are you fighting to differentiate CNSG versus a CDW versus any other? And I just throw CDW out there because they’re advertising on TV and everyone, you know, a lot of people know CDW, so it’s easy to kind of throw them out there. I don’t need to mention any other master agencies and they don’t really, I won’t even really call them a master agency. They’re more of a kind of like an equipment shop with a master agency on the backend. And I’m not. disparaging them. I’m just using them as an example. And there’s many other master agencies that we could mention, but how do you differentiate? What do you think is the difference between us, our program versus everybody else? Is it, is it that partnership? Is it that one-on-one relationship? What is it? And a lot of people might say they have that.
Speaker 1 | 16:18.413
Yeah. And they quite possibly may. And again, all those different groups are wonderful and they all provide something very different. You know, I, I. focus on just kind of what we do and what we do is uh you know focus on the end user focus on the client uh again we were a hybrid we just happen to do a lot of volume so you know we dance at the same table with some of those other master agencies that will help sound back what’s high huh what was what’s hybrid to you we were hybrid we had we had obviously agreements with every supplier under the moon right direct agreements uh we had our own cable practice um and so that made us as similar to a lot of masters right um but then we had the managing partner program and our client first model client facing model where we engaged with the customer cradle grave and dealt with discovery all things land way in closet cloud project management renewals issue resolution mitigation against problems uh design both you know quotations um and then obviously discovery and evaluation contract negotiations so our our model was very different because we did and there’s a couple others that do the same thing we do and they’re also very successful but um i feel like that’s where we’ve been very different i think app smart sees that and i’ve spoken um we have our calls with the executive team at app smart and that was a huge differentiating factor and i think in the last 18 months we see our numbers uh compared to you know others in our space um i think we’ve kind of risen to the top and we’ve also provided um obviously wonderful renewal rates mitigate against attrition and so um teams should be very proud of what they built and uh again that doesn’t say that our competition doesn’t do anything uh special i think everybody offers something a little bit different um and we have room to grow as well right um we’re doing things investing in in more back office more support because as we grow we need to make sure our customers are still getting white glove support and so i know the investment is there and now we’re looking forward to seeing what this year
Speaker 0 | 18:24.867
you know brings us the second half of this year and as we get out of soviet um we get i think back into reality the you know if this was like a a pre-conference uh ufc fight thing and there was like some haters out there the i i i think you’d be how would you respond to that and you just seem too calm about this where there’s like why would we have haters
Speaker 1 | 18:54.067
Why would we have haters? I mean, you know, typically when you’re successful, you know, those things happen. But if you don’t have haters, you’re not typically making any noise, right? That’s typically what it is. So it’s good that we have some haters out there and I wish them the best of luck and the best energy in the world. And I wish them all the success in the world. But yeah, they don’t want to see us successful or we’re doing something right. And typically they’re paying attention to us. That’s a good thing. So. I don’t, we don’t need to waste any calories or our own calories on, on that negative energy.
Speaker 0 | 19:31.617
I need you to just spell out for me. This is the last question I have for you and you can, you can throw it out or whatever the heck else out there you want, but you, can you just outline what we do for someone from start to finish that cradle, that cradle to the grave model or picture? Like, what do you do every day? You wake up at what time do you wake up? What do you do all day, every day? Can you just give me a picture of kind of like what we do?
Speaker 1 | 20:00.578
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for a lot of us, we’re supporting.
Speaker 0 | 20:04.560
I want to know, Ali wakes up at what time and does what first?
Speaker 1 | 20:08.603
It all depends. And I don’t see how closely my wife is listening to me right now. But there are times where, you know, we’re pulling 18, 20 hour days. We’ve done that. And I don’t think a lot of us needed to do that now in the last four or five years, probably the first 10 years. But I think it’s just everyone’s investment in the business and how entrenched they are. And so it’s a lot of it is, you know. uh working with suppliers get the proposals get the quotes get the designs accurate provide the solutions provide packages to each customer we work with it’s a very white club approach every discovery call we have every customer we touch you know um we’re doing it like it’s our own business so and i think that’s something to be said there so we are we’re waking up obviously we have meetings every day preparatory meetings either with suppliers internally uh customer meetings sometimes can start at 7 30 in the morning um We’ll have touch base onboarding calls at night with our carriers or clients. And during the day, we’re running, obviously, either demonstrations in the telephony space, contact center space, discovery proposal reviews, or just peer discovery with clients that we’ve been engaged in or introduced to. So that’s typically our days. And obviously, a lot of that is post-summary and development for quotations with each supplier and going to the right suppliers, building out those proposals or quotes, obviously, at night. or during lunch or after hours meeting with suppliers that are in town. And obviously project management calls, issue resolution calls, and design and build. That’s typically what our days look like. And so a lot of our days, you know, some days I would say that the shortest day for a lot of guys on the team that I’ve spoken to is 12 hours. And some of the longest days can be anywhere from 18 to 20 hours. So. I don’t think anyone’s ever going to tell us that, you know, we, our work ethic isn’t, uh, you know, viewed as being, you know, someone condemned in the space. And so that’s just the way we are, uh, Phil, I think everybody is, you are that way. And the rest of the team and some of the guys I’ve seen the other day, um, I’m seeing emails at three, four in the morning, uh, responding late at night, uh, to trouble tickets to issues. Uh, I mean, I have to give a shout out to Cindy Offord. There was an issue this morning at 635. She must have responded in less than a minute and a half to a customer issue. So, yeah, I think our focus at the end of the day, wrap this up, and Phil, is that we are – I think our partners that come to us, there’s a lot of different methodologies of how to support partners. Whether it’s tutorials, lunches, it’s go to my website. If it’s events during the middle of the day for us. I think our partners trust us. They know that we know what we’re talking about. And a lot of those really good partners don’t have time during the middle of the day to go on someone’s website or watch a webinar and things of that nature. They entrust in us to really vet and sort through the solutions and the providers. And I think that’s big. And so for us, it’s really about building experience with the customer directly. And that was more of that kind of hybrid model that we built. And so That’s been our strength. And I think you knew that when you supported us because you, you know, you got the, you felt it on the other end, right? We held you accountable. And I’m glad you digested that as a good way. And I think you want to be part of the team. And so fast forward 10 years and you’ve done a magnificent job. And, you know, thank you for crossing paths with us. We’re very fortunate to have you, my friend, on the team. And anybody that interfaces with you. is in good hands and we know that.
Speaker 0 | 23:59.188
You still gave me the easiest job interview I ever had years ago. When I walked in with Donna Wank and she was like, I don’t know if I should be interviewing you or you should be interviewing me because I’ve never had so many people call me and tell me to hire you, Phil. What do you want to get paid?
Speaker 1 | 24:17.843
Donna’s a wonderful woman. She had a successful career and she’s now enjoying her daughter. uh she was a wonderful advocate of csg and uh we did a lot of good business with her but yes uh you know they would ask us suppliers would ask us you know you know what channel managers should we hire to support you and we felt like you were a really good fit and that would take the concern on our level and what you did at broadview so airband
Speaker 0 | 24:42.792
anymore you just you just wanted me to stop calling you and trying to get you to sell fixed wireless in washington dc from the top of like the cnn building or something what i did was as i can repurpose it easy where i Real quick, we’re sitting down. This is just like scenario. Let’s just say we’ve got a scenario here. Okay, you’re brought into a meeting with, I don’t know, IT director, CTO, 2,000 end user company, multiple locations manufacturing around the United States. You know, they’ve got maybe an exchange. They’re thinking of moving, kind of got an old phone system. Kind of. still growing fast, maybe got hit by COVID with some extra business because they’re in manufacturing and that manufacturing was, I don’t know, pharmaceutical labeling, who knows, something like that. Um, what’s your kind of general, how do you start out with these guys? What’s your, what’s, um, I mean, I, I kind of already know this answer. I know how we do it, but for the sake of everyone out there listening, so they kind of get a feel of what it’s like working with us. How do you start that conversation out? What does that mean? Like that initial meeting?
Speaker 1 | 25:49.718
With the client?
Speaker 0 | 25:50.939
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 25:51.079
Um. Well, obviously it depends on, you know, how we’re engaged. Obviously it’s introductory, learning more about their business, learning about their business problems and their pains, their roles, you know, what they have in place today, income and contracts, costs. You know, I would see talent for obviously understanding and learning kind of about the different technologies. I mean, every customer is very different. Some people are more open to learning once, if it’s clearly explained kind of what we do. and our fiduciary benefit for us and how compensated i think that’s a big deal that it really relaxes the environment that real quick uh explain that real quick we’re not of our we don’t white label we don’t push down a certain technology that you know we’ve chosen that we’re going to margin and put on our own paper and make more money so we’re completely agnostic we obviously don’t get paid um until something’s installed in our world that could be six eight nine months after the sale so we’re constantly involved um in the annuity and adding value i mean i think if you’re not adding value you’re not in front of your client’s face um and you’re more worried about points and how much a carrier pays you what you’re up front and spiff is you’re never going to be wealthy and something i think matt party always used to say is point choices never become really wealthy or successful and wealthy is not just wealthy in the sense of you know your economic standing is wealthy in the sense of the business you built and obviously the following you have with your clients, partners, and things of that nature. So it has a couple of different meanings there. And so I think if you just do the right thing, eat all the right suppliers for the right customer, the money will follow, and your partners will appreciate you. And if you make them look good, then obviously you have repeat business. So it’s tough business. There’s issues, there’s outages, there’s trouble tickets, there’s times where it’s extremely frustrating to work with a lot of these people. suppliers they can make you look bad i mean there’s times where sometimes undefensible what happens and so um you just gotta set proper expectations and we’re all learning we’re still learning um all of us and it’s it’s definitely something that we can continue to get better at and as we invest more and more in in engineering and project management i would say that a shout out to dave hopper he’s probably one of the best engineers in the industry i’ve heard a lot of chirp that this master, that master has a better engineer. I mean, I don’t know how you can be any better, right? I don’t know what that really means, but I think that, you know, our team, right, as lean and mean as she was for as big as many clients, we had almost 20,000 clients. I think we did a lot with the resources we had and the influx today and Nick supporting us at AppSmart and investing back into the business is just going to really… takes to another level um as we believe the enterprise customers is more uh now more attracted to doing business with you know the channel um because they don’t have to make that investment and they’re skinning the game on both sides make sure the solutions are deployed well and supported and so i would say that has a big big impact on kind of our models in
Speaker 0 | 29:07.379
other words they can what you’re speaking to is they can leverage our team it doesn’t doesn’t cost anything to leverage our team it’s one more piece that they get um on top of that on top of everything else.
Speaker 1 | 29:18.950
Yeah. For issue resolution, mitigation, it comes to scale, volume, you know, get things done for them. And, and obviously, and hopefully, you know, we operate at a high intelligence level where we know how to sift through different layers and, and take issues and resolve them faster than most people could. Yeah. In the end of the day, we are definitely customer advocates, right?
Speaker 0 | 29:42.861
We’re doing this backwards, but what’s your elevator?
Speaker 1 | 29:45.098
what’s your elevator like one line or two line or someone asked like hey what do you do or telecom consultancy telecom cloud consultancy we work with every supplier and we outfit businesses for all things data closet cloud you know network when boy all center right traditional telco bandwidth procurement etc start there because if it get too heavy with um cyber and outsource help desk and tmc and fedramp and cloud solutions data center, then you may lose it. But those things are all fall under the umbrella. But I think you can just say it in a certain way where it kind of makes it very.
Speaker 0 | 30:26.165
Appreciate your time for everyone out there listening. This is really just kind of a short, brief snippet, so to speak, that you would call for everything that’s kind of going on in the back end of this podcast. For anyone that’s out there that’s been listening to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, the whole point is to highlight the everyday IT heroes, so to speak, and what they deal with. And provide an extra layer of support to what you guys are doing every day. Because most IT leaders out there, and you tell me if you think this is true or not, most of these guys, I would say it’s a 1 to 100 end user ratio. For all the companies that you support right now, how many IT directors do they have per end user? So if you’ve got a company with 1,000 end users, I can’t imagine there being more than 5 to 10 people supporting all 1,000 end users.
Speaker 1 | 31:20.588
Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 31:20.868
absolutely. So that’s like walking into the classroom in college and there’s 200 kids in class and there’s only one teacher. How can they… possibly support technology for that many people when technology is that much more complicated and there’s so many more moving parts yeah i mean i think you you struck you you you made that very relevant in kind of your business model phil and it’s been very successful all right all right brother appreciate your time i’ll let you get back to your let you get back to your day at 5 45 or whatever time it is right now thank you i’m going to sign off get to the kids and the family
Speaker 1 | 31:56.750
uh you do too as well and i’ll be online later tonight but thank you for having me join the call and uh keep doing what you’re doing and and carrying that cst flag in the northeast thank you for all you do thank you sir
