How MSPs Use QBRs to Navigate the End of Windows 10 & Grow Strategically with Alex Markov [S03EP01]

Pierre Mol (00:02.489)
Welcome to another episode of the $5 million milestone podcast where Tim and I dive deep into what it really takes to grow and scale a successful MSP business. I'm your host, Pierre Mol. And today we're joined by a true industry innovator who wears multiple hats in the MSP space. Alex Markov is not only the founder of Strategy Overview, a powerful vCIO and QBR platform specifically designed for MSPs, but he's also the owner of Red Key Solutions, a thriving MSP business in the New York area.

This conversation couldn't be more timely. With Microsoft ending support for Windows 10 in October this year, MSPs everywhere are facing both a massive challenge and an incredible opportunity. Alex is going to reveal the strategies that separate the MSPs who merely survive this transition from those who use it as a catapult for substantial growth. All right, With no further ado, hi Alex and welcome to the program. How are you doing today?

Alex Markov (00:55.532)
Hey Pierre, how are you? I'm doing great. Busy as can be.

Pierre Mol (01:00.069)
All right. Yeah. I saw on your social media that you you've been heading to a lot of conferences, traveling left and right. So really happy that we can get you on the podcast today. And just with just to jump in the thick of it, you know, can you walk us through your journey from starting your MSP to then creating Strategy Overview? Yeah. And we'll take it from there.

Alex Markov (01:21.678)
Yeah, so people that have heard me speak have probably heard this a lot of times, but I was a tech in the 90s, got started on Windows 3.1, was a gamer, and really just was on the computer my whole life. Started at MSP in 2002, helping small businesses in the area migrate to Windows XP, set up their first email systems, set up their first cybersecurity and...

and been in the tech world and the MSP world now for 23 years. So I've kind of seen everything from dial-up modems. My first modem was a 33K modem. I remember when the 56K modem came out, I'm really dating myself, but that burst of speed, when the K-modems came out, then we started moving into cloud and now AI. So I'm deep, deep into AI and...

So I was running the MSP and we couldn't find any way to standardize our stack across clients and create a strategic plan. So that's where strategy Overview came from. We built an initial app internally that really saved us a ton of time. And then from there, we had a lot of our friends said they wanted to start using it. So we were part of Connectwise Evolve at that time. Now we're a Connectwise Evolve sponsor.

and we launched it internally. It was great. Our friends started using it. We spun it out as a separate company in 2017. So now eight years later, we've come a very long way. We've rebuilt the app from scratch. And it's, in my professional opinion, it's the best vCIO QBR app on the market. Hands down.

Pierre Mol (03:10.091)
Yeah.

Tim Kelsey (03:10.392)
I love hearing stories where businesses kind of develop organically because you needed something for your original business, for your MSP. And Strategy Overview kind of spun out of that. It makes me kind of think of SimpleSat spun out of Pronto because we're building our own customer satisfaction tool. And I feel like that just makes such a strong business model because it's something that you believe in. You know that your own business needed it already.

Alex Markov (03:26.798)
Exactly.

Tim Kelsey (03:39.274)
And if you needed it for your business, there's probably other businesses out there that need the same thing.

Alex Markov (03:39.522)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Markov (03:44.43)
Yeah, and shout out to SimpleSat too. Great, great. We've been a SimpleSat customer since the beginning and a lot of our MSP friends moved over to them too. In my opinion, the cleanest customer satisfaction platform for MSPs on the market hands down too.

Pierre Mol (03:45.435)
Okay.

Tim Kelsey (03:59.692)
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Cool. Well, as As Pierre mentioned in his introduction, the end of support for Windows 10 is coming up later this year. And I mean, you're so connected into the MSP world, not through only your own MSP, but also the MSPs that you work with through Strategy Overview. What are sort of the opportunities or potentially missed opportunities you see?

Alex Markov (04:12.878)
I don't know.

Tim Kelsey (04:27.934)
MSPs have made in the past when there's something like this big sort of change coming on the horizon. What should MSP owners be thinking about in terms of their marketing or how they approach a massive change like this?

Alex Markov (04:42.412)
Yeah, I think the biggest impact MSPs can have is get regular with strategic reviews of clients. As soon as you blink, a year will pass or two years will pass and you're not meeting with clients. You don't see what they have. And then what happens is you'll meet with a client and you'll say, well, they need to spend $80,000. And then that's a sticker shock for the client. It's bad for their budget.

And then it's even, let's say you were able to push through a thousand computers in your MSP, you'll overload your team. So I preach this to all MSPs that they need to get regular with clients. Quarterly, ideally, but not quarterly is not really right for every single company out there. There are small companies out there, there are companies that are really not focusing on a major growth.

Or there's companies that are really diligent in adopting your standards. So they've already adopted all your standards. And if you're to meet with them quarterly and there's not much changes going on, then you're kind of wasting everyone's time. my opinion, that's doing QBRs now for 15 years, that's what our experience is. So in strategy overview, we have a schedule, a QBR schedule. So you can say, well, this client should be once a year, this client should be twice a year, this client's quarterly or this client's monthly.

Pierre Mol (05:40.731)
Okay.

Alex Markov (06:06.328)
So if they're a really fast growing company, meeting with them monthly is a great idea, even weekly. And you're just really figuring out if they have like seven parallel initiatives happening. And now we launched our new strategy or we plan modules. It's basically like a sauna for MSPs. So you can multi-tenant run a lot of initiatives for MSPs and it all streams on one report, which is really, really convenient. But meeting with clients,

Pierre Mol (06:24.575)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Markov (06:36.278)
regularly on a consistent schedule and then telling them that they should be making upgrades in batches, right? Not all in one shot. So do a few quarter and then pick your highest priority computer. So in strategy overview, we have a live asset list. We have full warranty updating and not only that, but we enrich the data. We clean up the operating system, we clean up the manufacturer, we clean up

the details on the assets. And since Strategy Overview is also fully white labeled brandable client portal, clients can log in and see their asset lists live. On top of seeing their office licenses and all their contacts and users and their strategy and their plan. But based on this conversation of how do you modernize people from Windows 10 to Windows 11, if they see their assets live, you kind of teach customers

Pierre Mol (07:31.195)
So,

Alex Markov (07:34.478)
to get more proactive on upgrading their computers, customers will start to submit. That's been our experience on MSP. The fastest growing companies will learn that a computer, letting a person work full time on an old computer is extremely inefficient. They're paying this person payroll with benefits, payroll taxes, the total burden cost of a person is pretty high, right?

Pierre Mol (08:03.147)
Yep.

Alex Markov (08:03.958)
And if they're working on an old computer, they're really can be spinning their wheels and burning payroll dollars. So clients coming in and starting to upgrade computers on a consistent basis. So as part of this big rollout coming of Windows 11, we're talking to customers now saying that they should be batching and saying, let's do something Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. with a kind of reverse engineer to get all the Windows 10 out.

by then a year, especially now with like tariffs are coming, you know, up and down, up and down, but maybe not, by the time this airs, maybe they're here, maybe they're gone again. But the idea is that no matter what the cost of everything is going up, AI is driving that cost too, because the AI is like a vacuum for silicon chips at the top end.

Tim Kelsey (08:42.4)
Maybe coming, maybe not.

Pierre Mol (08:44.162)
And.

Tim Kelsey (08:49.57)
You

Pierre Mol (08:55.716)
Yeah.

Pierre Mol (09:04.155)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Kelsey (09:04.428)
Right.

Alex Markov (09:04.459)
So people shouldn't drag their feet and should start to upgrade computers. Besides the fact that they're gonna bring more efficiency to their team, it should be consistent in computers.

Tim Kelsey (09:15.948)
Yeah, it's really interesting to think about, you know, having an asset list like that. It's really clear for the end customer where I think that can drive home the point of here's how much work we have to do. Let's make sure we start getting on this schedule of planning out how we're going to approach this over the next six, nine, twelve months, whatever it might be. And I also sometimes think, cause we look out for opportunities like this with Pronto as well.

Alex Markov (09:30.644)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Kelsey (09:45.356)
when there's a big enough change in the industry that it sort of makes some waves in the news. And I mean, it's not going to be on the local news at night, but people might be hearing through other sources that support for Windows 10 is ending. It's a big enough deal that the end client might say, hey, do we need to worry about this? And that's a great opportunity for someone who's not doing QBRs today to say, yes, let's sit down. Let's plan out our schedule.

Alex Markov (10:00.792)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Kelsey (10:12.48)
make sure we have a regular cadence to our meetings and get this all done in time. We did the same thing at Pronto of looking out for something, a major Google algorithm change that gives us an opportunity to go talk to our clients about SEO or whatever it might be. I think this, this windows change is the same sort of thing. It's a big enough deal that clients know about it. They know it needs to be done. And it's a great conversation starter that can lead into bigger discussions about how they.

approach their IT.

Alex Markov (10:44.172)
Yeah, and the other important thing to note is whether or not they do it proactively in a logical plan or reactively as things die, and it's they still have to do it. right? The work still has to get done. It's just how do you want to do the work? Do you do want to do the work in chaos and in without with not budgeting for it?

Or do you want to do the work in a strategic, logical, organized way, spread out over a period of time that aligns properly with your budget? So in Strategy Overview there's a full budgeting component. So you can pick and choose when to upgrade specific computers and it'll all flow down to a budget. So the money will be spent no matter what. It's just, how do you want to spend it? Do you want to do it in a logical way or do you want to do it in a reactive, crazy way?

Pierre Mol (11:16.091)
Yeah.

Tim Kelsey (11:39.148)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Pierre Mol (11:43.003)
Yeah, and sort of switching gears a little bit from like what you can do for your existing clients and to help them upgrade. Looking a little bit more at sort of acquiring new clients actually and new clients who are. You know, trying to do the same thing, which is modernizing their their operating systems and moving away from from Windows 10 to 11. How do you guide that conversation? Do you find many differences or

Are there certain things that MSPs can do in their messaging from a marketing or a sales point of view to kind of say, hey, this is our process. This is how we handle things. And how do you find kind of using a VCIO platform? How can that help? How can you integrate that within your pitch?

Alex Markov (12:33.42)
Yeah. So it's really interesting that MSPs today are still stuck in like MSP 2.0 world, a vast majority of them. And there's a lot of lingo talking about like MSP 3.0 and, but if based on what we see in our MSP and based on what our team tells me, the amount of companies that are still coming to the MSP saying that they don't have an active asset list and they, you know, they don't have a

active information at their fingertips is just silly, especially with all the tools in the market. But a lot of MSPs don't even have a way to tell their clients what they have and their clients have to submit a ticket and ask for a list of assets or ask for a list of what they have and they're completely blind. So I think that's been a major piece to our MSP's success is they really position themselves as

Pierre Mol (13:22.659)
Mm-hmm.

Pierre Mol (13:31.163)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Markov (13:32.27)
Um, a strategic leader in the New York city area, right? And if a client wants proper strategic guidance and full clarity at your fingertips and a modern IT experience, um, they've gone to Red Key. Um, and now at this point, a bunch of our leading competitors use our own platform. They model themselves after Red Key and we, we collaborate and it's, it's, it's, you the market's huge. There's plenty of opportunities for everybody.

Pierre Mol (13:59.939)
Yeah.

Alex Markov (14:02.508)
Right. But, and now also some of the best MSPs in the world have moved over Strategy Overview in the last few years. So, we get to collaborate with some of the best MSPs out there, but I think just having, positioning just it's like fundamental, but like having an asset list that people can access on demand, I think is a, in an app, in a client app, I think is one of the biggest, draws to a modern MSP.

Because when our MSP meets with new clients, we ask them like, can you access your data? Do you have an app to log into? How is it? How was your overall experience? 95 % of people say they don't have it. Now that also comes with they there because they don't have an app in a strategic process. The way that they're managing their network is haphazard. The way they're deploying their network racks is very, it's just very

Pierre Mol (14:54.243)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Markov (15:01.624)
chaotic and disorganized too. There's no rhyme or reason. There's no craftsmanship. So we really focus on that, but having the overarching process makes that much easier. Tech is hard, but having the process makes it so much easier. That's a big way that we've been able to attract clients to our MSP Red Key. And then what a lot of the MSPs that have adopted Strategy Overview you, they kind of run in that model.

Doing things right makes it easier for everybody. It really does. It lowers the core costs. Yeah.

Pierre Mol (15:35.59)
Yeah, no.

Yeah, I like how you can really help MSPs be more sort of a strategic partner. And from what you were saying, you you can really sort of show this kind of stuff within a sales deck or, you know, ask those questions while you're qualifying and working with a prospect. So yeah, I think that's really good advice. sort of Looking more at automation now, sort of many MSP owners are likely thinking about sort of

the logistical nightmare of upgrading a large number of clients from Windows 10 and how can automation help in that process to ensure consistency and ultimately save time and resources? Yeah, during that sort of.

Alex Markov (16:21.774)
Yeah, our app does full warranty updating. So it checks the serial number and then it puts the purchase date, the warranty expiration date, it cleans up the data, syncs that back into the PSA. So there's a number of ways to automate it. You could use workflows in your PSA to trigger opportunities. What we typically are doing is during those strategic meetings, we have a

you identify which computer should be upgraded and then you create one opportunity for that. I'm saying like, let's upgrade these five computers. So there is a little bit of a manual step to it. On top of that, I recommend, our solutions team at Red Key, they have a monthly process where they review all client computers and they reach out proactively. they see a report, they reach out proactively to strategic customers and say, look,

We noticed that you have X amount of computers. Can we get them quoted? So it's actually coming from two directions coming from the VCO team, but it's also coming from our solutions team. So that creates pretty consistent traction. I mean, You're still not going to get everybody. the other thing that we've done is, um, there's a lot of incentives like the great America financial, they have 0%, um, available. I don't know if it's for all partners, but it's 0 % for 36 months. So.

a lot of clients have leveraged financing and leasing options. I know a lot of MSPs also have dabbled into HAAS, Hardware as a Service, and you can partner with multiple HAAS providers. So that's another approach. So you really can take kind of multiple approaches to it. You really have to, in my opinion, because not every approach is going to be applicable to everybody.

Pierre Mol (17:55.461)
Mm-hmm.

you

Alex Markov (18:18.988)
And then there's also a slew of clients that for some reason got Windows 10 and the computers are still three years old and they're basic office users or they're like manufacturing terminals and things like that. another potential source of revenue and processes upgrading computers from Windows 10 to 11. So A certain percentage of computers that are applicable for that. So in strategy overview, you'll be able to see your processor in there.

get that processor into your PSA through your RMM. So You can also very quickly see if a computer is applicable for a Windows 11 upgrade. So I always tell MSPs be flexible. Don't be rigid. There's some consultants out there in the industry that have, like they set hard rules and you have to be this and you have to be that and you have to be minimum of account and this and that. We went down those paths and we tried some of that stuff, but

It doesn't necessarily work with everybody and no one likes that when you're dealing with a company, a very rigid company that has all these rules. So be flexible, be human, be normal, right? Like come up with a way, be a partner, come up with a way to get the job done, to figure it out, but don't upgrade. I've also seen this happen. People will upgrade a five, six year old computer and you're throwing good money after bad. So.

I would say be flexible, find different ways. So I've chatted out a bunch of the ways that really helped us and that our MSP does and I've seen other MSPs be successful with it. So have a multi-pronged strategy to upgrading.

Tim Kelsey (20:01.304)
You know, It's interesting thinking about that flexibility, and you mentioned When we're a customer working with a vendor, we don't like having that inflexibility or facing some rigid plan that we must follow. I think a lot of that is just Everybody wants to feel special, right? And if you're told, well, you just fit into this package, all of sudden you're not special and it doesn't feel like it's a tailored solution to you. And especially if you're going up

into the higher end of the market, there's expectations around, we want real treatment. We want something that's tailored to our business and not something that's like, we're just throwing the standard package at you. It's not going to fit perfectly, but it's close enough. So you're going to have to do this and do that. So I love that take of making sure you're flexible because that's what makes people feel valued as customers. really, You're really hearing their problems.

and providing solutions to their problems rather than just saying, you're just like everybody else, here you go.

Alex Markov (21:07.106)
Yeah, and I would also plug you guys from the Pronto Marketing side that we've been a Pronto for about 10 years probably. And I still feel very special through all of the changes and the growth and all this stuff. You you guys have done a fantastic job on managing all that. So definitely you guys stand out in the sea of kind of

Tim Kelsey (21:17.758)
Okay, great.

Pierre Mol (21:18.89)
Okay.

Alex Markov (21:37.33)
crappy companies. There's so many crappy companies out there. You guys are a standout above all companies.

Tim Kelsey (21:40.5)
Right.

Tim Kelsey (21:46.742)
Well, thank you for that. really appreciate it.

Alex Markov (21:50.926)
Yeah, I genuinely appreciate you guys and everything you've done.

Tim Kelsey (21:54.148)
Great, that's so nice of you. One thing I want to dive in to a little bit more is maybe how you run a QBR meeting. And let's say you've talked about some of these things that would be brought up in a meeting of going through the asset list or planning out how you're going to tackle some major project. But are there any sort of key questions that MSPs should be asking in these meetings?

How do you go about running them and making sure they're valuable to everybody beyond just saying, okay, here's our cadence and here's like our standard agenda. How do you make sure those are valuable meetings that everybody feels like, oh, you you walk away from that great meeting. like, oh, this big problem I thought I had is now going to be solved. And I feel so much better about it. That's the feeling you want to have at the end of one of these meetings, right?

Alex Markov (22:43.96)
Yeah, so I tell MSPs and I tell our vCIOs at Red Key that you need to learn what the companies want to achieve, what the clients want to achieve, what are their goals. Learn what the company does and learn what they want to do because that will help align your strategy and your recommendations and how you structure the network, how you structure the software recommendations, integrations. That is key.

Also learning the operational maturity level of the client. That is a little bit more nuanced where you can't, A lot of companies, they don't know their operational maturity level, right? So you can't really just say like, what's your operational maturity level? I asked that for MSPs. Whenever I meet with MSPs, that gives me a good understanding of where they're at. So if they're like an operational maturity level one,

Pierre Mol (23:27.387)
Thanks.

Alex Markov (23:36.138)
sometimes tough for them to adopt a QBR process because they don't have the fundamentals down. They don't have a proper ticketing system set up or documentation and stuff like that. But we can, can help guide them in that. We've helped guide a lot of MSPs that are just starting out and we give them, you know, as much information as we can to make them successful. So I think getting an understanding of what the companies want to achieve, getting kind of an understanding of their operation maturity and their.

capacity to implement certain things, right? And then we dive into our IT plan, which is kind of like a Asana built for MSPs. And that IT plan is created off of our assessment and our asset list. So our assessment is where we really started was our kind of our bread and butter is analyzing a client's total tech stack, not just the network, not just the servers.

computers, but the entire tech stack, everything that's involved in technology. That's why it's called Strategy Overview, not just technology overview, which was our original name for our report. Then we changed the strategy overview because we want to start talking about policies and strategies that they're using, right? At the MSP, at the client level. So really creating that plan off of the assessment, that is huge. So

Pierre Mol (24:42.33)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Markov (25:00.524)
getting understanding of the goals, getting understanding of the client's capacity to implement things, and then creating a logical plan. the plan is off of your vision for the client. You wanna paint a picture of, you're here today, let's do this over the next five, six quarters, Let's tackle the network first, and you're triaging. You're thinking about what's the most important stuff. Don't talk to your clients about CRM if they're...

Firewall and Wi-Fi is not stable. And if their servers are end of life and could crash, there's no reason to start talking about some of these things. And they're still on like an old act CRM that's living on a server and stuck on that server. So You want to start to talk or prioritize things, but still paint them the vision. Tell them that, look, we're going to modernize your network.

then we'll upgrade your server, move that to the cloud, move your files to SharePoint, move your identity to Entra, like lay this out over a course of, in parallel to that, we'll upgrade a few computers a quarter, right? And then this time next year, all your people are gonna be able to work from everywhere. They're gonna be working on more efficient computers. You're gonna have a much more modern approach to your clients.

Pierre Mol (26:05.642)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Markov (26:25.868)
Your clients are going to have a much better experience. And then they should also speak to Pronto Marketing to get a fresh new website design and branding package, which is honestly, so I'm just giving away our playbook. This is what we do. This is the playbook for success. They come in. We analyze them based on all these things. And then we lay out a logical plan. It's not rocket science. It just takes just basic fundamental logic, but having a place to put it all right.

Tim Kelsey (26:38.274)
Hahaha.

Pierre Mol (26:38.937)
Yes.

Alex Markov (26:55.33)
That's the one thing that I think was missing before we created Strategy Overview, was there's no place to put this stuff. It's not right for tickets and it's not right for opportunities and it's not right for projects. Those are only when things actually have to happen. There's not one single place before Strategy Overview existed of laying out a logical long-term, medium-term, short-term plan.

So that's how we do it.

Tim Kelsey (27:19.234)
Yeah, that's so great. It makes me think of Storybrand, which I'm not sure if you're familiar with, but yeah, where it's the whole idea of you're the guide who is taking the client from wherever they are today, whatever problem they have, and guiding them through this journey of where they want to be. They're on the hero's journey, and you're Yoda on that journey, telling them how to achieve success. And I love that you

Alex Markov (27:41.612)
Exactly.

Tim Kelsey (27:49.186)
started by saying that you ask questions about what they want to accomplish, what are their goals. And you're not just coming in and saying, here's what we do for our clients and we need to do this. You're taking that first opportunity to talk about what do you want? What are you trying to accomplish? I'm here to help you achieve whatever that is. And that puts you in such a great position of trust and showing value.

It's because you're automatically solving problems that they find valuable and not just the, yeah, not just the little issues that are, you know, kind of bother them sometimes. It's, this is what's going to make their business more successful. And if they see you helping them along that journey, then you're coming along for the whole ride. It's not going to be like, yeah, we'll do this six month thing. And then we're done with you. It's like, we trust you. You're helping us run our IT and our technology strategy.

Alex Markov (28:22.359)
is true party.

Tim Kelsey (28:47.348)
and other parts of their business strategy as well, let's make this a full long-term partnership, not just a little transactional thing here and there.

Alex Markov (28:56.11)
Yeah, and it's a full win for everybody. It's a win for the clients because they make more money and they get to grow. It's a win for the MSP because when clients grow, they add users, they buy hardware, they expand offices. It's a win for their clients, right? For Because their clients are local members of the community and they're getting a much more modern service. If you ever work with a company that hasn't modernized, you kind of just see it.

across all levels of their business. It's very frustrating working for companies that have modernized and companies that haven't. And it's a win for all of society because the small business community and the medium business community is a huge engine in the world. So by having small and medium businesses modernize and kind of enter the future, so it's a win for everybody. Everyone wins if this is done correctly.

Tim Kelsey (29:52.216)
Yeah, 100%.

Pierre Mol (30:00.84)
All right. Yeah, I really like that as well. And I think one of the things you mentioned is sort of, you know, trying to really gauge the sense of where that company is in their maturity level. And also it sounds like being patient, I would say is probably another key virtue there because you can't force a company to grow faster than they can actually do. You know, If they can only walk, they can't run. Right. So and

Alex Markov (30:17.762)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Markov (30:27.136)
And be very careful too. You can't push people. to levels that You can't over paint a vision. I've seen that happen a lot too, where if they're, if they're not, they don't have the right team to jump to like operation maturity level four and expand to certain levels. It can also cause that to backfire where companies can invest a lot of money, but they don't have the processes. They don't have the team. don't have the

Pierre Mol (30:36.132)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alex Markov (30:55.49)
foundation to grow. So a lot of it does start with the team too. They have to be having both the willingness and then the skill set to be able to go on that journey of growth. So I would be very careful to also not push people to levels that they may not be, they're not ready for at that time. Just because you do more revenue doesn't necessarily mean there's more profits and it's a better outcome for people. Right? So yeah.

Pierre Mol (31:23.483)
Yeah, yeah. No, and for sure, think when you're growing quickly, you need to be able to scale those operations as a whole. I think that's where there's a lot that goes into growing with keeping up with the quality of service that you want to deliver as an MSP.

Um, your end clients as well, like when they grow, they also want to maintain a certain level of quality as well. Um, all right. Well, Alex, thanks so much for all those insights. I really enjoyed all that you shared. Um, uh, I think You gave some really good, uh, advice as well on, you know, kind of helping people understand, um, the, financial benefits and how to sell that value, uh, to, your end clients for, for MSPs when, um, they're, they're trying to help people.

Alex Markov (31:51.414)
Mm-hmm.

Pierre Mol (32:15.179)
modernize their IT infrastructure and kind of move into sort of a more strategic approach to how they run their QBRs. I I really, What also really resonated with me was, you know, don't don't do quarterly business reviews if your clients aren't ready for that. I think we see that a lot in our own business, you know. Some of our clients just aren't ready to grow as fast as maybe we want them to grow or that, you know, other of our clients are trying to grow.

Alex Markov (32:23.021)
Mm-hmm.

Pierre Mol (32:44.345)
And so really kind of gauging in that, think makes a lot of sense. So yeah, I Really appreciate you taking the time today. And if our listeners want to connect with you, what's the best way for them to reach you?

Alex Markov (32:57.689)
Strategyoverview.com, there's a little chat bubble in the app and they can just chat with me and my team. And Also our pricing is flexible. You can get a free account for three clients. and then it's month to month pricing. The first, The next account starts at $60 a month for five clients, which includes all integrations and full white label portal. And we give away our template. We give away our entire QBR process.

to all new clients. So an MSP can come in, get an account in a few minutes and within five minutes be doing a mature QBR. And then we're right there in the chat and we can guide them. And one thing that I didn't mention is a few months ago, we launched Arya our AI engine. So Arya will streamline and will answer a lot of the questions for you. So We are cutting hundreds of hours a month across MSPs, but

We think that by the end of the year, we can automate 70, 80 % of the QBR and have MSPs just focus on doing the strategic guidance and being that real strategic guide, for the Obi-Wan Kenobi of IT for their clients. So That's also a major innovating piece that we've been working on is our AI pieces is awesome. So yeah, Check us out, strategyoverview.com, get a free account.

play with it and reach out in the chat.

Pierre Mol (34:28.79)
Yeah, That's a great offer. like we talked a little bit about earlier, mean, a lot of companies out there are going to be trying to look at their operational costs very closely. definitely check if you're listening.

Go and check out Strategy Overview and check it out. So as always, if you found value in today's conversation, please subscribe to the $5 million milestone podcast, leave us a review, and share the episode with another MSP owner who's preparing for their Windows 10 transition with their clients. All right, Until next time, keep focusing on those strategic conversations, build systems that scale, and keep chasing that $5 million milestone.

Alex Markov (35:08.334)
Great to spend time with you guys.