The Vertical Advantage

You've actually been on MSPs in Conversation before. We talked about verticals then, and I'm going to ask you some questions about being in a vertical now. Maybe that's changed, maybe it's still relevant. But you've been focusing on healthcare for, I'm going to say, decades. Decades, yeah. How long has it been?

So we started in '92. The founder started in '92. Obviously I wasn't the founder. I came into medical sort of around 2002, and officially merged into this business in 2009. I don't think I'm ever going to escape medical.

Well, I assume that, given that your company name is Ozdoc. That's right. So why did you go down the vertical route? What are the real advantages? Is it just coincidence, or?

Look, the vertical route was very much based around filling a need. Healthcare providers couldn't get decent IT support, especially for their niches. It's a little bit different to your normal sort of MSP.

Why "Critical" Means Life and Death in Healthcare IT

When you talk about things like priority one issues and critical issues, I'm assuming you're talking about life and death, right? In medical it's very different. What a priority one is to a doctor or a surgeon is very different to, well, it can be a printer issue, right? Yeah, I guess if it's a script or something, right. But if you've got somebody in surgery, for example, and they're operating off of a laptop or a device or something along those lines, and that individual device goes down or loses connectivity, that is a critical situation. Whereas in a normal MSP, you lose a local device, that's not critical. Somebody can just go and jump on another machine. There are very different dynamics in the medical side of things.

Interesting. So knowing the ins and outs of how that works, and how you need to adapt to that, it's completely different to being a standard MSP. I would have thought you'd be much greater than you actually are, being in there, focusing on life and death situations like that. But if that's the negative or the scary bit, what are the positives, particularly for the business?

Oh look, the positives are, well, I used to say that it was recession proof, right? You're in healthcare and that sort of thing. So for somebody looking after that healthcare side of things, it is a little bit recession proof. That being said, you know, things like the COVID incident that we went through, where everything got locked down and people couldn't go and see doctors and critical. Yeah. There were impacts around that side of things. So nothing in society is completely recession proof. Yeah, fair.

Marketing and Telling Your Story in a Niche

So what about things like marketing and that side of it? I'm a marketer. I target a vertical, so I've got to be honest in that sense. Yeah, we like to tell our story of who we are. We've only really started formally marketing. I think when we spoke last time, in MSPs in Conversation, we were just starting to build a sales team. We never had a sales team prior.

How's that going now? It's good.

Any lessons? It was about, what, two years ago that we did it. Yeah, it would have been about two years ago.

Any lessons in that? We're on revision four now. Dealing with salespeople and account managers is very different to dealing with techs.

Moving From Owner-Led Sales to a Real Team

So maybe some advice for people that are hiring their first sales rep. I assume you kind of owned sales previously. Yeah, 100%. So what is that transition? Quite a bit of owner-led sales, and then building a team. All right. No formal marketing up until recently. So we're three, four months in to formal marketing, just getting that revamp of the brand awareness and that sort of thing, updating our conference materials and things like that, because that all sort of fell on my shoulders. There's only so many hours in a day. Oh, I tell you what, it's 27 hours, right? It's a lovely thing to hand over.

So it's still very involved, telling your story, but having that team to support as well. How many people in sales are you at? So we've got one sales admin, two client success managers, which are essentially account managers. I call them client success managers because they're essentially the client advocate inside of our business. When the client needs a voice and needs somebody to translate between everyday speak and technical speak, because technicians speak very differently. Our industry loves that, and they struggle with it as well. But at least we've shifted that struggle away from our clients trying to go through that pain, to being able to have normal everyday conversations, and our account managers take on that pain to translate to the technicians. So it's working well. Yeah, cool. Okay.

The Risks of Committing to a Single Vertical

So it feels a little bit risky, potentially, going into just a single vertical. I mean, coming from me, you know, Hosted Network only targets MSPs. But do you see that there's any risks? Look, it is risky. Selecting a vertical that you're not passionate about is probably a mistake. That's a good piece of advice right there. Yeah. You don't want to be in a vertical that you don't have a love for or a care for, or any sort of drive beyond, you know, this is my vertical because I've picked it for no reason. Definitely have a reason behind that vertical, otherwise you're not going to deliver what you need to to the vertical. That's some really good advice. I love that.

You can shift as well. So, change. Yeah. Would you change, or would you add? We are in the process of expanding that vertical. Obviously, born from medical, we deal with governance and compliance all the time. Okay. So we are in the process of, well, still staying focused around medical, adding governance and compliance to those verticals. So any organizations that need that level, we're more than happy to actually take on board and support, because it's ingrained in us from the medical side. Yeah, exciting.

AI Hype Versus Real Business Problems

So a few general questions, if I may. We talk about the industry, and I've done a couple of these sessions today. The industry is changing, and I'm sure there's people behind me being foolish. If there's Cindy behind me, no comment beyond that. If Cindy was behind you, there'd be another camera on us, right? Yeah, there would be, definitely.

Speaking of exciting things, what's the most exciting thing happening in your mind in the industry? We've gone through a few different changes over the years, cyber security and so on. Look, the industry is still adapting. I think, obviously, AI is the buzzword. We love our buzzwords. Yeah. The difference between automation and AI are two very different things. People are still coming to terms with understanding those differences. People are still coming to terms with trying to figure out what they should be doing, or what business problems they're trying to solve, right? Everybody's pushing the "you should be using AI, you should be using AI" down everybody's throat. But you have to have a business case at the same time. Yeah. So yeah, dabble, learn, but know what you're trying to fix at the same time.

Okay, so that's a good lead into my next question. If there was one thing you could fix in our industry, what would it be? No wrong answer. Look, honestly, I don't think there is any one thing. Our industry is built around change, rapid change. It's one of the best things about the industry. Yeah. I wouldn't change or fix that at all. I love the change. Embrace the chaos. Yeah, exactly, embrace the chaos. So that simply means that what today's problem is, tomorrow's problem is completely different. And that's probably what I love most about being in the industry. Yeah, I'd agree with you. There's never two days that are the same.

Advice, Mentors, and Embracing the Chaos

So, okay, last question. We've got a range of different MSPs here at Catalyst, a range of different size and maturity MSPs who listen or watch MSPs in Conversation. Have you ever been given one piece of advice, particularly for business, that's stuck with you, that you could share? I've been given a lot of advice. There's that, what is that, Forrest Gump? I can never remember the exact quote, but life is always it. Yeah, life is like a box of chocolates. Yep, that's the one. Depends on the aspect, right? No, I honestly couldn't pick one single bit of advice. I've been asked over the years a lot of times, who's my mentor and that side of things. And I've never actually selected a specific mentor. I like to take little pieces and snippets from all sorts of people, because everybody has their strengths and their weaknesses. And sometimes weaknesses are strengths. When it comes to advice, I think I get advice from people almost every day. Nice.

Well, thank you for joining me again, two years later. I clearly owe you a beer. Great conference so far. Thank you. The keynote was absolutely fantastic. Yeah, we've had that feedback from a few people. Who would have thought that IT guys would relate to a sports guy? Well, let's face it, in running a company in an MSP, you're building a team. Always. So almost everything relates to the same thing that sports teams go through, even down to things like salary caps, right? Yeah. Cool.

Well, with that, thank you. I appreciate it. I'll let you get back to the main sessions, and thanks for letting me pull you away. No worries. Thanks. Thanks, mate.